Gay marriage is not "bad for children" — Unbelievable?

Currently listening to the Unbelievable? podcast from a week ago — the one about the detriment that children allegedly suffer when brought up by same-sex parents:

http://www.premierchristianradio.com/Shows/Saturday/Unbelievable/Episodes/Unbelievable-Is-gay-marriage-bad-for-children-Bobby-Lopez-James-Croft-Jacob-Clark

Direct audio download here:
http://cfvod.kaltura.com/pd/p/618072/sp/61807200/serveFlavor/entryId/1_047ph51w/v/1/flavorId/1_0tcghp1u/name/a.mp3

Knowing in advance that James Croft was a participant, I expected him to shred the idea that same-sex parenting is detrimental, and so it proved. Bobby Lopez, in fact, turned out to be something of a conspiracy theorist. Jacob Clark, who was fostered for a short while by two gay clerics, also contributed, further supporting the case for gay parenting.

My own stance on this issue is that it should not be surprising that a family with same-sex parents will be different in some substantial respects from families with opposite-sex parents, but those differences will be small in comparison with the difference in families of any kind, due to the fact that people are in general fundamentally diverse.

Obscure reasons to believe

Two weeks ago it was the second Unbelievable? conference. Premier are now taking orders for the DVD set, for those who were unable to attend, or who did attend but want to hear the sessions they inevitably missed in a single-day, multi-track event.

Here's what Premier are saying is on the DVDs:

"God & Science: Cosmic Reasons For Christ"
"Whose worldview? C.L.E.A.R. reasons for Christianity"
"Gunning For God: Why the new atheists are missing the target"
"Evangelism remixed: new models for evangelism in the 21st Century"
"Evangelism in a sceptical world"
"Evangelism in a multifaith world"
"Confessions of a compulsive thinker"
"Confessions from the mission field"
"Confessions of a former atheist" 

I can't work up much enthusiasm for anything listed above, so I won't be sending an order. I bought last year's DVD set — for reasons I set out in the first of my three blogposts about it:
http://www.evilburnee.co.uk/2011/09/unbelievable-punishment.html
http://www.evilburnee.co.uk/2011/10/unbelievable-conference-disc-2.html
http://www.evilburnee.co.uk/2011/11/unbelievable-conference-big-questions.html

This year's conference was in association with "Reasons to Believe", and Hugh Ross — the President of Reasons to Believe — was a guest on Unbelievable? prior to the conference. He was also on Revelation TV opposite Malcolm Bowden, a Young Earth Creationist, which by comparison made Ross's views seem fairly conventional. But Ross, and Reasons to Believe, strike me as leaning further towards the fundamentalist side of Christianity than Premier — or at least Unbelievable? — have so far appeared to do.

As an atheist curious about the prevalence of religious belief, I've been interested to learn what makes religious people tick, but my investigations to date have been disappointing and inconclusive. As part of those investigations I read and reviewed a recommended book purporting to offer scores of arguments for faith, and I watched and reviewed the whole of last year's Unbelievable? conference DVDs. Both were underwhelming. That John Lennox was promoted as a star attraction at this year's conference leads me to conclude that it was more of the same — a notion reinforced by the inclusion of someone from the Alpha course.

The conference itself may have been inspiring and invigorating for its participants, but I imagine the vast majority of them were believers — and if they want to spend a day in the company of like-minded people and listen to Christian apologetics that's fine by me, but judging by last year's DVDs I'm not sure what influence the talks will have outside the conference and the circles of its attendees.

For the present, I tend to agree with former Unbelievable? (and recent Skepticule Extra) guest James Croft, when he says, "Apologetics is a waste of time."

More on the myth of objective morality

Earlier today I drafted a comment to post in a discussion at the Unbelievable? Group forum. But this evening when I went there to post it, the discussion had disappeared. I started a new thread and posted it anyway, but I'm including it here as well. The original discussion was started by Chris Baird, about whether "common sense" is a suitable basis for morality. The ensuing comments, including some especially insightful ones from James Croft, put me in mind of my recent post here about "objective morality". This is what I posted in the new thread:

What happened to Chris Baird's discussion about the "Is the Bible unbelievable?" show last Saturday? It seems to have disappeared. I was about to stick my oar in, and found the thread had vanished, which is a shame because the exchange between Chris and James Croft was getting interesting. Anyway, this is what I was going to post, prompted by Justin's brief but insistent quizzing of Leslie Scrace:

I agree with James. The theistic claim to transcendental moral knowledge is bogus. Its basis is in scripture, which is no more than "it's written in this book, therefore it must be true." The suggestion that this is some kind of superior "foundation" for morality doesn't hold up to inspection.

For instance, why this book and not some other? Is it a matter of personal preference that a Christian takes his or her morality from the Bible? If a Christian claims to have had a personal revelation that Christian moral law is true, is that anything more than a subjective feeling?

Christians are forever asking (as Justin did on last Saturday's show) for the atheistic "foundation" for morality, when their own "foundation" is nothing of the kind.

Sticking resolutely to an arbitrary list of rules regardless of the consequences is morally irresponsible. It's an abnegation of one's duty to do right by one's fellows. And before any theists ask me again why I have any reason to think that such an attitude — or indeed duty — is moral, I will simply say this: basing my actions on what appears to promote progress towards mutual wellbeing produces results that are on the whole beneficial to the human race. What more do I need?

There is an odd notion in theistic circles that morality must by definition be transcendent. The sooner we get rid of this erroneous idea the better for humankind. (More on my blog.)

We'll have to wait and see if the new thread gets as interesting as the one that vanished.