Do you Believe In God

[donkarlito]

Yes we would. Aristotle thought about physical ideas. The actual application of Mathematics to Science was established in the 16th or 17th century, can't remember off the top of my head. But that was the foundation of Physics as we know it today. I don't believe that in over 2400 years we wouldn't have come across Physics by another man either, and unless you can show me where Aristotle applied Maths to his experiments and came up with Physical formulae (Go Google, seems you're good at that), then I believe we'd be where we are now anyway. Although I admit, Aristotle was a great thinker and inspired many, many scientists. And I still don't see why you're so hung up on Aristotle since it's not helping your (Googled) God argument in any way.

EDIT: Never mind, found a link: http://www.physlink.com/Education/A...cba56cfbf-5883B270-15C5-EE01-B95613888B82BF96

So there were glimmers of Science way before Aristotle's time any way, can we do away with you being hung up on him now?

The Egyptions more technicians, than scientists

The Egyptians were perhaps more technicians, than scientists, who seek explanations for what they observe, and perform experiments to verify what they think may be the case.

We must wait until the Ancient Greeks 600-200 B.C. before we can see the first glimmers of Science as we know it. They speculated in a logical way as to how the universe was put together but they did not carry out experiments in an effort to prove their points or distinguish between Hypotheses, ie provisional explanations, which is the essence of Scientific Method.

From your website

 

[Joel`]

The Egyptions more technicians, than scientists

From your website

Your point?

 

[donkarlito]

Your point?

They just got on with it without any sort of experiment.

 

[Joel`]

They just got on with it without any sort of experiment.

Hence why they said technicians not science, which you quoted at me. Plus Egypt was before the Greeks. So either Egyptians invented Science, or neither did, since neither followed the scientific method. So still, what you quoted has no relevance to your point.

 

[donkarlito]

Hence why they said technicians not science, which you quoted at me. Plus Egypt was before the Greeks. So either Egyptians invented Science, or neither did, since neither followed the scientific method. So still, what you quoted has no relevance to your point.

Ancient Greeks did with a Hypothesis which if im not mistaken is a part of the scientific method. For someone talks about quantum physics, mathmatics and thinks his opinion is far more important than everyone else I would of thought you would of known were Hypothesis is from.

 

[Joel`]

Ancient Greeks did with a Hypothesis which if im not mistaken is a part of the scientific method. For someone talks about quantum physics, mathmatics and thinks his opinion is far more important than everyone else I would of thought you would of known were Hypothesis is from.

I don't think my opinion is more important than anyone else's at all.

A Hypothesis is a part of the scientific method, it isn't the scientific method. And a hypothesis is essentially just an idea to explain something, you wouldn't get far without an idea. The scientific method is observing something, design an experiment to test the phenomenon, gather accurate data from a repeatable experiment, repeat to test results, modify your hypothesis to adjust for your evidence.

An accepted hypothesis is one that has been tested by the scientific method and has become an accepted part of scientific theory. A hypothesis, is simply something someone has come up with and has not been proven. I could hypothesise that magic fairies are pushing things to the ground, and say that is gravity. I'd have a hard time proving that though.

And the scientific method is more complex than those steps, I was just rushing through the basic principles.

 

[donkarlito]

I don't think my opinion is more important than anyone else's at all.

A Hypothesis is a part of the scientific method, it isn't the scientific method. And a hypothesis is essentially just an idea to explain something, you wouldn't get far without an idea. The scientific method is observing something, design an experiment to test the phenomenon, gather accurate data from a repeatable experiment, repeat to test results, modify your hypothesis to adjust for your evidence.

An accepted hypothesis is one that has been tested by the scientific method and has become an accepted part of scientific theory. A hypothesis, is simply something someone has come up with and has not been proven. I could hypothesise that magic fairies are pushing things to the ground, and say that is gravity. I'd have a hard time proving that though.

And the scientific method is more complex than those steps, I was just rushing through the basic principles.

Which the Ancient Greeks started. Egyptians must had some science and mathmatics because the things they built are brilliant. My point both cultures worshiped gods and yet both had an influence in science and maths.

 

[Joel`]

Which the Ancient Greeks started. Egyptians must had some science and mathmatics because the things they built are brilliant. My point both cultures worshiped gods and yet both had an influence in science and maths.

They knew something of mechanics. They did not know anywhere close to what we do now. They didn't fully understand our own planet, yet alone our whole solar system and the sun. And then the galaxy, and the whole universe. God explains a lot of that for them. We've made rapid progress in science in this century, and understand our world in a far more in depth and more precise way than they did. I don't see your argument, they had a tiny influence on mechanics and optics compared to what Newton and Gallileo did, and even those two didn't know close to what we know of our universe now. Just because they were geniuses of their time doesn't mean they didn't believe in a God, but it's totally irrational and illogical to take God considering everything we know right now.

 

[Zagallo]

The true reason why I don't believe in God is because horses still can mate with donkeys!!
What the f**k is that all about?

 

[donkarlito]

They knew something of mechanics. They did not know anywhere close to what we do now. They didn't fully understand our own planet, yet alone our whole solar system and the sun. And then the galaxy, and the whole universe. God explains a lot of that for them. We've made rapid progress in science in this century, and understand our world in a far more in depth and more precise way than they did. I don't see your argument, they had a tiny influence on mechanics and optics compared to what Newton and Gallileo did, and even those two didn't know close to what we know of our universe now. Just because they were geniuses of their time doesn't mean they didn't believe in a God, but it's totally irrational and illogical to take God considering everything we know right now.

What Im saying is in Ancient times someone bit more cleverer then normal back then started to apply logic to explain how something works then that person taught other people. Then someone even more cleverer explain it in more depth and so on and so forth unitil to day were we have theorys left, right and centre explaining pretty much everything. So religion or believing in Gods hasnt stopped us, It has encourge people to ask why and how a lot more.

 

[Joel`]

Human curiosity encouraged that, if we followed the word of religion we'd have believed the Earth is flat, and questioned little. Religion was a constraint, we released the shackles and blossomed. Religion didn't stop us, it slowed us down greatly though (Gallileo had a fun time.)

---------- Post added at 01:10 AM ---------- Previous post was yesterday at 01:30 AM ----------

Thread needs m0ar Gervais :wub:

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_pbEjOH7t0Q"]YouTube - Ricky Gervais bible comedy part 1[/ame]

"Thank you God for making me an atheist" - Ricky Gervais.

 

[Joel`]

Although I'm not religious I really disagree with your interpretation of religion. There's no way you can describe such a comprehensive aspect of culture and society to having "contributed little to society," and no way you can measure its "contribution" to this society in comparison to science...they are two completely different things. But this belongs in a different thread. Also, it's not ridiculous to believe in religion, especially considering that people have for just about all of human history. Atheism is new. So I don't think labeling everyone that disagrees with you as being ignorant is fair, and we should be tolerant of their viewpoints, whether or not they agree with ours or are politically correct. Also, the concept of political correctness doesn't "advance society," as described in the previous post, and neither does trying to exterminate religion, which would be much more intolerant than anything anyone said in this thread.

Where have I called them ignorant for disagreeing with me? I am perfectly tolerant of religion, if people choose to practice it, then fair enough. However, influencing discrimination is okay? Why should it be? Why is it accepted for religion to be homophobic, and it's okay "because it's religion"? People have clearly been influenced by the views on homosexuality because of what religion preaches. Why should we be tolerant of homophobia because they are religiously influenced? People have and are discriminated against for their sexuality because of religious teachings, there is no way this should be allowed. Imagine you're a gay man, and you're atheist too. A man tells you that you are evil and are unnatural, you question why he thinks this and he tells you because of his religious views. Are you really telling me you'd be tolerant of that? A book, writings we know nothing of influencing this person's views against you? I doubt you would, so why should society.

It's unfair to say they make their decisions based on discrimination and prejudice, they simply make their decisions based on their religious beliefs. They may be open-minded people but they have to follow the rules laid out for them by God (so they believe, at least). Also, it is unfair to portray your own beliefs as rational and theirs as irrational...I know a lot of rational, intelligent people that believe in religion, and their beliefs aren't irrational, either. They just took a different path of logic than you did. The incorrect one, yes, but I don't think it's fair to portray it as irrational.

You contradict yourself saying they took incorrect logic. Just because they're intelligent makes no difference. Believing something without evidence nor logical explanation defies belief, it's faith. Blind faith. If that suits you, then fine. But I won't and nor should society base things around something with no evidence.

To be fair he's not breaking the law, nor is he even challenging the law and saying homosexuality should be illegal. He's simply saying he doesn't like it, and that's something protected by the freedom of speech. While I find his opinion disappointing, that's his right to believe it and we're only making ourselves look bad by telling him that he can't have his opinion. It's hypocritical because we are guilty of the very thing we're criticizing him for, intolerance,

We didn't say he can't have his opinion, that his opinion is ignorant and disgraceful we did.

Religion doesn't need the "right" to dictate how a person lives their life, western religions are based on the concept that there is an objective morality that God has revealed to us through scripture, intervention, and tradition, and religion calls for us to follow that morality. Previously, the church was so infused in our society that these "religious" laws of morality, we could call them, were enforced by the worldly authorities. Hence homosexuality would certainly be punishable, and still is today in countries that strictly follow Sharia law, for example. This is how society always was and always has been, and the idea of secularism is a modern concept. I really like secularism and prefer to live in this society because that's what I grew up in, but part of secularism is freedom OF religion (not just from it), and that means allowing people to believe what they want, whether or not we label it as misogynist, prejudice, or homophobic.

What is the point in being religious if you don't adhere to its teachings? If you are following its teachings based on what the bible and the church/pope tells you, then your life is being dictated by religion. So again, why should we be tolerant of people being prejudiced based on nothing but ancient scriptures?

 

[curtis290]

Jeez Joel, somehow we find ourselves on opposite sides in every debate! It seems that you're very much an Enlightenment thinker and a classical liberal...so why then are you so against weed?!?!?! That's one issue on which I can almost always count on liberals to be on my side. Oh well, maybe you'll try it someday and change your mind.

First of all, before I go into your post I want to correct a little post you made in the homosexuality thread:

How the **** is it a sin?

It's a sin according to Leviticus and according to a few of Paul's letters, 1 Corinthians, 1 Timothy, and Romans. Of course this is homosexual BEHAVIOR, ie male to male ***, not homosexual desires...you can be gay and that's OK, it's just acting on it that Christians find to be a sin. Sexuality for Christians was only to exist in marriage for the purpose of pro-creation, obviously meaning that homosexual behavior was a sin. Recently, the Catholic Church and many protestants have accepted the idea that *** is OK if for the purpose of uniting the couple inside of a marriage. But the fact remains that in the Bible and for most Christians, marriage is between a man and a woman. And since Christianity doesn't believe in *** outside of marriage, homosexuality is a sin.

Where have I called them ignorant for disagreeing with me?

I'm pretty sure here:

Why should religion dictate our lives and their decisions. It has contributed little to society compared to Science, and it dictates people's lives; makes people live with being miserable based on what? A few lines in a book with no proof to the author, with zero evidence to support their claims. It's ridiculous.

And here:

I won't reject their religious beliefs, I said it's ridiculous that religion still drives so many of our beliefs though. I'm an atheist, you're a homophobe. I base my beliefs off rational and logical decisions, you base yours off discrimination and prejudice. There's a BIG difference.

If you say you base your beliefs on rationality and logic while religious people don't and claim that it is ridiculous that people base their lives on religion and the Bible, then yeah, I'd say you're calling them ignorant.

I am perfectly tolerant of religion, if people choose to practice it, then fair enough. However, influencing discrimination is okay? Why should it be? Why is it accepted for religion to be homophobic, and it's okay "because it's religion"? People have clearly been influenced by the views on homosexuality because of what religion preaches. Why should we be tolerant of homophobia because they are religiously influenced? People have and are discriminated against for their sexuality because of religious teachings, there is no way this should be allowed.

Religion should be accepted to be 'homophobic' (depending on how we define homophobic and how religion expresses homophobia) because that's what they have believed in for thousands of years and because in the case of Islam and Christianity, their sacred texts tell them to. You can't expect the Catholic Church to reverse two thousand years of teaching and to ignore the Bible just because you don't like the conclusions they draw. And you can't tell religious people to believe in what you want them to believe, especially considering you're an atheist who thinks the whole thing is a crock of **** anyway. You're saying that we shouldn't accept this because they are intolerant, but in doing so you are being entirely intolerant of their religious beliefs. I think that's hypocritical. Sure, disagree with them and try to convince them they are wrong if you want to, but you have to accept their point of view if you are trying to take the moral high ground in the name of 'tolerance.'

Also, as far as your claim that "people are discriminated against for their sexuality because of religious teachings, [and] there is no way this should be allowed," there are a few problems I have here. First of all, you're saying this "shouldn't be allowed"...this is a complete violation of free speech and freedom of conscience. If you don't want to allow it on an internet forum, that's one thing (it's up to the owners of the forum), but in general, prohibiting people from having certain and expressing religious beliefs is a complete violation of the basic fundamental liberal principles you claim to uphold. You claim that you are doing this in the name of tolerance, but you are being even more intolerant than they are! All they are saying is that homosexual behavior is a sin according to their religious beliefs...they're not telling gays they can't be gay, they're just saying that they believe they will have to answer to God on judgement day if they chose to engage in gay acts. You, however, are telling people what they can and cannot believe.

Which brings me to my next point. If anti-gay Christians go around discriminating against gay people in an unlawful manner, than they should be prosecuted by the full force of the law (of course this depends on your views of "multiculturalism," some people who believe strongly in certain "multiculturalist" principles would call for a much less harsher sentence for those who are against homosexuality due to religious viewpoints, others don't believe that). For example, if a restaurant in the US did not serve gays, this would be against the law (the Civil Rights Act of 1864, which was upheld in the 1964 supreme court cases Heart of Atlanta Motel v. U.S. and McClung v. Katzenbach), and of course under our legal system they should and would be prosecuted to the full extent of the law. I don't know about the legality of this in the UK, so I won't comment. This is how we enforce and stop "discrimination."

However, that does NOT mean we can prohibit people from holding and expressing certain viewpoints...we can't legally force people to not be racist or to not be homophobic, or to prohibit them from expressing these views. This would be a violation of the First Amendment in the US, which protects the freedom of speech and the freedom of conscience, and I'm sure it would be the same in the UK. It would be a violation of the very liberal principles you believe in so strongly.

Now, I believe that as a society we should be intolerant of racism: we can't make the belief or the expression of racist beliefs illegal (would be a violation of the First Amendment to do so), but we can make them socially unacceptable through social pressures. Should we do the same for homosexuality? It's a much stickier issue...there is no religious basis for belief in racism, and the modern concept of biological racism comes from liberalism and its justification for slavery. It is scientifically incorrect.

Homosexuality, however, is not a biological/scientific issue for these people, but a moral one. Sure, you can claim that it exists in nature and that we have the biological desire to do so, but for a Christian, that doesn't mean God condones it. God gives us sexual desires of different kinds, but we can only express them in a certain situation (inside of a marriage between a man and a woman). Just because we have the desire to practice homosexuality doesn't make it "right," for these people. So I am more "tolerant" of people who believe homosexuality is a sin than people who believe in racism (and can at least see where they're coming from), although I fervently disagree with them and am very sad that they don't accept homosexuality, but I will defend the freedom of speech for both of these groups (I will just be much more likely to inform the racist that he is wrong than the Christian who thinks homosexuality is a sin).

Also, Christians aren't supposed to be intolerant, homophobic, judgemental, etc. to gays, and being gay isn't a sin, they just believe that engaging in homosexual behavior is a sin. You aren't supposed to be intolerant of sinners, because we all are, but you're supposed to help them stop sinning, so that's why they publicly preach it is wrong. Of course saying things like "God hates f#gs" is not the "Christian thing to do," since God doesn't hate anyone and you shouldn't be so judgemental of someone and cast the first stone. In fact, most Christians I know are tolerant of gays and don't think there is anything wrong with them, they just think that they have to refrain from committing homosexual acts because those acts are a sin.

Imagine you're a gay man, and you're atheist too. A man tells you that you are evil and are unnatural, you question why he thinks this and he tells you because of his religious views. Are you really telling me you'd be tolerant of that? A book, writings we know nothing of influencing this person's views against you? I doubt you would, so why should society.

If I were gay, than yes, I would be angered by this, and I may or may not be "tolerant" of them (depending on how you define tolerance), but of course I would defend their rights of free speech and freedom of conscience, and I would allow them to express their views. I would be angry if they were very uncool about it and were intolerant of me, but if they were accepting of me as a human being but simply told me I was wrong, I would still be frustrating, of course, but I would respect them. But maybe I wouldn't, maybe I'd be just very angry at them. If that were the case, I too would be protected by the law and could say what I want about them unless I crossed the line. The solution in that case (if I lived in a conservative area) would be to live in a liberal area that is accepting of gays if it bothered me, because that's what liberal society is, it's about choice. If I were gay I certainly wouldn't want to live in the American South. But I wouldn't want to try and indoctrinate anyone either or take away their freedom of speech.

You contradict yourself saying they took incorrect logic. Just because they're intelligent makes no difference. Believing something without evidence nor logical explanation defies belief, it's faith. Blind faith. If that suits you, then fine. But I won't and nor should society base things around something with no evidence.

A few problems here. First of all, you assume the universe operates entirely on rationality, which many people, particularly religious people, would disagree with. Second, for Christians, taking this leap of faith is a completely rational decision. My favorite professor from college, who was brilliant and an accomplished scholar, became religious later in life, and mostly came from researching Jesus and his life. Third, many believe that even if the universe is rational, that doesn't mean that humans can easily discover what is objectively right and wrong and that rationality's search for truth can often lead us to the wrong answers. For these people, a certain higher truth exists that they can "feel." They can't prove it with rationality, but they have a feeling that God exists that to them is more meaningful than any belief or decision based on rationality. They are willing to take a leap of faith from this feeling because it is so great, and because it means much more to them than 2+2=4.

Also, I agree with you that in my opinion society shouldn't "base things around something with no evidence," if you're referring to religion in that case. But I won't say that I believe society objectively should not base itself on religion. I like secularism. I grew up in a secular society where I can have premarital *** (not that it ever really happens, but I like the fact that I would legally be able to if I could ), say what I want, believe in what I want (atheism, among many other things), do what I want, and were marijuana is relatively accepted (though unfortunately not legal yet!). Since I grew up in such a place, that's what I like, and that's the type of government and support and vote for. If I had to live in Iran, I would be upset because I'm not used to having to live in a society like that.

Not everyone thinks like us though, and that's why I disagree with you that "society shouldn't be run by religion." I believe in democratic values more than liberalism. If the people desire a theocratic regime, than so be it. If they approve a Constitution that allows law to be based on Sharia, than they should be allowed to do so without our condemnation. I don't believe in trying to force liberalism on people, whether implicitly (through markets, which is what neoliberals seek to do) or explicitly (through military force, which is what American neoconservatives seek to do). We tried to do that in the Middle East, and it has been an utter failure. Since we believe in liberalism so much, we assumed that the rest of the world does. We thought that the Afghans and Iraqis would greet us with flowers as liberators and that as soon as we got rid of their regimes they would immediately support us in putting in place a liberal regime.

Well, we were completely wrong, and 10 years later, Afghanistan still uses sharia law because anything else would be absolutely impossible: the populace would be extremely opposed to a secular regime. So yeah, I don't believe in forcing liberalism and its secular values on people, and they desire to have religion play a role in their society much more than atheist liberals are willing to admit. There is a human need for religion, and that is something that is obvious to many with common sense but nearly impossible to prove through rationality or empiricism.

We didn't say he can't have his opinion, that his opinion is ignorant and disgraceful we did.

But that's what happened. Madridista was banned for saying that he believed homosexuality was a sin, and on top of that, the thread was closed, even though people on the pro-gay side were making lots of interesting and enlightening points (there were some great posts on there). Also, we had a chance to listen to and have a dialogue with people who are against homosexuality. Rather than letting them express their views (which is more or less what the OP called for) or allowing people to prove them wrong, the thread was simply closed.

One of the reasons I have a problem with this is because it is so typical of the culture of political correctness. It condemns people for being intolerant and then is completely intolerant of their viewpoints. How do you expect to change madridista's mind, to make him less intolerant, if we do so by being intolerant of him? In that instance, we have lowered ourselves to his level. Freedom of speech and conscience is supposed to be given to EVERYONE, no matter their political or religious viewpoints. Also, by simply closing the threads and being intolerant of anyone who doesn't have politically correct views, all we are doing is forcing people to shove their racism/bigotry/homophobia under the carpet. So they continue to hold these views but aren't public about it. That is much more dangerous, and it makes their bigotry much more difficult to get rid of (if that's the goal).

What is the point in being religious if you don't adhere to its teachings? If you are following its teachings based on what the bible and the church/pope tells you, then your life is being dictated by religion. So again, why should we be tolerant of people being prejudiced based on nothing but ancient scriptures?

Yes, their lives are dictated by religion, as everyone's life was until the recent invention of atheism (which never really took hold on the general public until after World War II in Europe, and that is pretty much the only region in the whole world that is atheistic). Why should we be tolerant of them? Because their freedom of speech and religion is protected by the Constitution in the US, and in the UK, by your Constitution I'm sure (it's not in written form and I don't know anything about it, but it goes against the liberal principles it is based on). And especially because you are telling them they are wrong and you are right on grounds of "tolerance." So in being intolerant of their viewpoints, you are being hypocritical.



I'm not an atheist and I'm totally supportive of homosexuality but I think you're being unfair to some people and unfair to religion (especially in the first post I responded to), which is why I'm arguing. Also, we need dissenting viewpoints, as someone who believes in the Enlightenment, that's something you'd agree with, and not just all of us parroting the same thing without really trying to question it and develop a more nuanced understanding of it. Lastly, I am sympathetic to Christians in this situation, because their Bible and Religion pretty clearly condemns homosexual behaviors, and I think people should be more tolerant of them.



Also, if anyone else wants to respond, go ahead and do so, I didn't participate in this thread because I didn't want to get involved, and then it got up to 34 pages, so I don't have time to read it. But I am going back and reading it right now, and will respond to anyone's responses to my post. I'm atheist, but I'm sympathetic to religion and I think atheists are way too anti-religion in a lot of different ways.

 

[Joel`]

First of all, before I go into your post I want to correct a little post you made in the homosexuality thread:



It's a sin according to Leviticus and according to a few of Paul's letters, 1 Corinthians, 1 Timothy, and Romans. Of course this is homosexual BEHAVIOR, ie male to male ***, not homosexual desires...you can be gay and that's OK, it's just acting on it that Christians find to be a sin. Sexuality for Christians was only to exist in marriage for the purpose of pro-creation, obviously meaning that homosexual behavior was a sin. Recently, the Catholic Church and many protestants have accepted the idea that *** is OK if for the purpose of uniting the couple inside of a marriage. But the fact remains that in the Bible and for most Christians, marriage is between a man and a woman. And since Christianity doesn't believe in *** outside of marriage, homosexuality is a sin.

I was being sarcastic, I know it's a sin by the word of the bible, I was questioning how it is in the modern day sense of the word.

I'm pretty sure here:



And here:



If you say you base your beliefs on rationality and logic while religious people don't and claim that it is ridiculous that people base their lives on religion and the Bible, then yeah, I'd say you're calling them ignorant.

They don't base their beliefs on rationality and logic, it's faith and that is all. Faith that our logic is wrong. I'm just saying, we're living in a modern society, and we should be basing our principles off a little more than faith. How is it fair that religion can condemn homosexuality based on faith in the bible? There are gay people born into a catholic community that either face being oppressed for their lives or being disowned by their community. Also, if it's so wrong, why did God make it possible. And if it's a choice, why are their gene mutations influencing such behaviour? I'm still not being ignorant, I haven't refused to listen or accept their beliefs. I'm saying it's stupid of society to base our principles off ancient scriptures, in the same way they'd call me a sinner and that I'm going to ****.

Religion should be accepted to be 'homophobic' (depending on how we define homophobic and how religion expresses homophobia) because that's what they have believed in for thousands of years and because in the case of Islam and Christianity, their sacred texts tell them to. You can't expect the Catholic Church to reverse two thousand years of teaching and to ignore the Bible just because you don't like the conclusions they draw. And you can't tell religious people to believe in what you want them to believe, especially considering you're an atheist who thinks the whole thing is a crock of **** anyway. You're saying that we shouldn't accept this because they are intolerant, but in doing so you are being entirely intolerant of their religious beliefs. I think that's hypocritical. Sure, disagree with them and try to convince them they are wrong if you want to, but you have to accept their point of view if you are trying to take the moral high ground in the name of 'tolerance.'

As I said before, you have to be intolerant of the intolerant. Every law in the land is in fact just a punishment of the intolerant for the intolerant itself. Someone has to take the morale high ground or society descends into chaos. I'm not telling them to believe in anything. I believe their 2000 years of teachings are wrong, so do many others, Science continues to solve many of the mysteries posed. We're an advancing society, we no longer rely on the bible to offer an explanation of the unknown to us. Why should faith in ancient writings be taken over logic and rationality? Practice it in your own personal time by all means.

Also, as far as your claim that "people are discriminated against for their sexuality because of religious teachings, [and] there is no way this should be allowed," there are a few problems I have here. First of all, you're saying this "shouldn't be allowed"...this is a complete violation of free speech and freedom of conscience. If you don't want to allow it on an internet forum, that's one thing (it's up to the owners of the forum), but in general, prohibiting people from having certain and expressing religious beliefs is a complete violation of the basic fundamental liberal principles you claim to uphold. You claim that you are doing this in the name of tolerance, but you are being even more intolerant than they are! All they are saying is that homosexual behavior is a sin according to their religious beliefs...they're not telling gays they can't be gay, they're just saying that they believe they will have to answer to God on judgement day if they chose to engage in gay acts. You, however, are telling people what they can and cannot believe.

You know as well as I do though that true free speech doesn't, and never will exist. And by "shouldn't be allowed" I was referring to religion influencing discrimination, rather than saying they can't have an opinion.

So there aren't Islamic states that forbid homosexuality? And the pope didn't say that homosexuality was a moral evil. I'm challenging their opinion, and if they reply that an ancient book told them to, then it does make me mad. It's archaic and way out of line with modern society. If you went on a murder spree, and you were questioned why; and you replied by saying you found some ancient book with no identifiable author, with myths and magic that claim to have some connection to a higher being, you'd be locked up and probably sent for mental health checks. The exact same applies here.

Which brings me to my next point. If anti-gay Christians go around discriminating against gay people in an unlawful manner, than they should be prosecuted by the full force of the law (of course this depends on your views of "multiculturalism," some people who believe strongly in certain "multiculturalist" principles would call for a much less harsher sentence for those who are against homosexuality due to religious viewpoints, others don't believe that). For example, if a restaurant in the US did not serve gays, this would be against the law (the Civil Rights Act of 1864, which was upheld in the 1964 supreme court cases Heart of Atlanta Motel v. U.S. and McClung v. Katzenbach), and of course under our legal system they should and would be prosecuted to the full extent of the law. I don't know about the legality of this in the UK, so I won't comment. This is how we enforce and stop "discrimination."

Yes, we have anti-non-discriminatory laws too. It doesn't change the fact that religion influenced these views in the first place. Still influences these views, even the head of catholic church calls it evil. It doesn't matter what laws you put in place and what rights you give, you can't control people's social opinion by law though, but religion can. Why should someone who is gay be made to feel excluded by his own society over blind faith?!

However, that does NOT mean we can prohibit people from holding and expressing certain viewpoints...we can't legally force people to not be racist or to not be homophobic, or to prohibit them from expressing these views. This would be a violation of the First Amendment in the US, which protects the freedom of speech and the freedom of conscience, and I'm sure it would be the same in the UK. It would be a violation of the very liberal principles you believe in so strongly.

Again, I never said that we should prohibit their views. I was saying it's wrong for religion to influence these views.

Now, I believe that as a society we should be intolerant of racism: we can't make the belief or the expression of racist beliefs illegal (would be a violation of the First Amendment to do so), but we can make them socially unacceptable through social pressures. Should we do the same for homosexuality? It's a much stickier issue...there is no religious basis for belief in racism, and the modern concept of biological racism comes from liberalism and its justification for slavery. It is scientifically incorrect.

Of course.

Homosexuality, however, is not a biological/scientific issue for these people, but a moral one. Sure, you can claim that it exists in nature and that we have the biological desire to do so, but for a Christian, that doesn't mean God condones it. God gives us sexual desires of different kinds, but we can only express them in a certain situation (inside of a marriage between a man and a woman). Just because we have the desire to practice homosexuality doesn't make it "right," for these people. So I am more "tolerant" of people who believe homosexuality is a sin than people who believe in racism (and can at least see where they're coming from), although I fervently disagree with them and am very sad that they don't accept homosexuality, but I will defend the freedom of speech for both of these groups (I will just be much more likely to inform the racist that he is wrong than the Christian who thinks homosexuality is a sin).

God is omnipotent, omniscient and benevolent. If he was omnipotent, he wouldn't have made it possible to homosexuality to exist. If he was omniscient he would understand their homosexual urges and would not have allowed them to occur. If he was benevolent he would love you regardless, but apparently he doesn't. If he is neither omnipotent, omniscient or benevolent; then why call him a God at all?

Also, Christians aren't supposed to be intolerant, homophobic, judgemental, etc. to gays, and being gay isn't a sin, they just believe that engaging in homosexual behavior is a sin. You aren't supposed to be intolerant of sinners, because we all are, but you're supposed to help them stop sinning, so that's why they publicly preach it is wrong. Of course saying things like "God hates f#gs" is not the "Christian thing to do," since God doesn't hate anyone and you shouldn't be so judgemental of someone and cast the first stone. In fact, most Christians I know are tolerant of gays and don't think there is anything wrong with them, they just think that they have to refrain from committing homosexual acts because those acts are a sin.

If Christianity is supposed to accept it, then why did the Pope - the head of the catholic church, publicly condemn it a moral evil? That's condemnation not helping their sins.

If I were gay, than yes, I would be angered by this, and I may or may not be "tolerant" of them (depending on how you define tolerance), but of course I would defend their rights of free speech and freedom of conscience, and I would allow them to express their views. I would be angry if they were very uncool about it and were intolerant of me, but if they were accepting of me as a human being but simply told me I was wrong, I would still be frustrating, of course, but I would respect them. But maybe I wouldn't, maybe I'd be just very angry at them. If that were the case, I too would be protected by the law and could say what I want about them unless I crossed the line. The solution in that case (if I lived in a conservative area) would be to live in a liberal area that is accepting of gays if it bothered me, because that's what liberal society is, it's about choice. If I were gay I certainly wouldn't want to live in the American South. But I wouldn't want to try and indoctrinate anyone either or take away their freedom of speech.

So if you were gay, why should you be forced to live away from where you born because of their intolerance? Away from your family and friends, wouldn't that anger you? If you were straight you'd have the choice, why should religious doctrine make you lose that choice if you were gay?

A few problems here. First of all, you assume the universe operates entirely on rationality, which many people, particularly religious people, would disagree with. Second, for Christians, taking this leap of faith is a completely rational decision. My favorite professor from college, who was brilliant and an accomplished scholar, became religious later in life, and mostly came from researching Jesus and his life. Third, many believe that even if the universe is rational, that doesn't mean that humans can easily discover what is objectively right and wrong and that rationality's search for truth can often lead us to the wrong answers. For these people, a certain higher truth exists that they can "feel." They can't prove it with rationality, but they have a feeling that God exists that to them is more meaningful than any belief or decision based on rationality. They are willing to take a leap of faith from this feeling because it is so great, and because it means much more to them than 2+2=4.

Good for them, I can't see me ever believing anything without empirical evidence though. I'm perfectly fine with 2+2=4 rather than an enlightenment from blind faith. The universe is described perfectly by Mathematical formulae. There are no discrepancies. The area of a circle is pi*r^2 with infinite accuracy. Why does God make it behave in this way, when it contradicts everything about him? And the whole of the universe is here now due to an error. It's all one big chain of errors leading to more, that's not very God-like, surely his creation would be perfection not erroneous. It's perfectly rational to believe something when you are shown evidence for it. It is not to believe something without having any evidence for it whatsoever. "To explain the unknown by the known is a logical procedure; to explain the known by the unknown is a form of theological lunacy"

Not everyone thinks like us though, and that's why I disagree with you that "society shouldn't be run by religion." I believe in democratic values more than liberalism. If the people desire a theocratic regime, than so be it. If they approve a Constitution that allows law to be based on Sharia, than they should be allowed to do so without our condemnation. I don't believe in trying to force liberalism on people, whether implicitly (through markets, which is what neoliberals seek to do) or explicitly (through military force, which is what American neoconservatives seek to do). We tried to do that in the Middle East, and it has been an utter failure. Since we believe in liberalism so much, we assumed that the rest of the world does. We thought that the Afghans and Iraqis would greet us with flowers as liberators and that as soon as we got rid of their regimes they would immediately support us in putting in place a liberal regime.

Do you not think the people would desire a theocratic regime because that's what their society is? The middle east for example has never seen past religion, Islam is their way of life. We abandoned it, we explored Science. Do you really think we would ever go back now?

But that's what happened. Madridista was banned for saying that he believed homosexuality was a sin, and on top of that, the thread was closed, even though people on the pro-gay side were making lots of interesting and enlightening points (there were some great posts on there). Also, we had a chance to listen to and have a dialogue with people who are against homosexuality. Rather than letting them express their views (which is more or less what the OP called for) or allowing people to prove them wrong, the thread was simply closed.

Because it was getting quite out of hand. How much further in dialogue can you go than "Why are you so ignorant?" and "My religion told me?" Madridsta and others took it way too far, they weren't debating they were being offensive. It backs my argument if anything.

One of the reasons I have a problem with this is because it is so typical of the culture of political correctness. It condemns people for being intolerant and then is completely intolerant of their viewpoints. How do you expect to change madridista's mind, to make him less intolerant, if we do so by being intolerant of him? In that instance, we have lowered ourselves to his level. Freedom of speech and conscience is supposed to be given to EVERYONE, no matter their political or religious viewpoints. Also, by simply closing the threads and being intolerant of anyone who doesn't have politically correct views, all we are doing is forcing people to shove their racism/bigotry/homophobia under the carpet. So they continue to hold these views but aren't public about it. That is much more dangerous, and it makes their bigotry much more difficult to get rid of (if that's the goal).

How do you expect to change his mind when it is his religious belief? It's deeply ingrained. "You can not convince a believer of anything; for their belief is not based on evidence, it is based on a deep-seated need to believe." - Sagan

I'm not an atheist and I'm totally supportive of homosexuality but I think you're being unfair to some people and unfair to religion (especially in the first post I responded to), which is why I'm arguing. Also, we need dissenting viewpoints, as someone who believes in the Enlightenment, that's something you'd agree with, and not just all of us parroting the same thing without really trying to question it and develop a more nuanced understanding of it. Lastly, I am sympathetic to Christians in this situation, because their Bible and Religion pretty clearly condemns homosexual behaviors, and I think people should be more tolerant of them.

Read through some of the past pages, a few us were quite strongly against religion. Another quote: "Properly read, the Bible is the most potent force for atheism ever conceived."





EDIT: Screwed up the formatting, sec.

 

[curtis290]

This isn't a debate about a single issue or even about competing political systems, and it ultimately comes down to values. You value "rationality," and your opinions and government and society based on this rationale, and believe in that religion has negative qualities and should be eliminated. You argue over and over again in your posts that religion is "bad," and that we should be intolerant of it because of its attitudes towards homosexuality. I believe that we live in a liberal society where since people have the right to believe in what they want and say what they want, we should be tolerant of them. I also believe that it is hypocritical to be intolerant of these people when you attack them for being intolerant. And I don't believe that religion is "bad;" I don't believe that something that formed the basis of our culture for two millenia is "bad," nor do I believe that a system of morality that provides billions of lives with meaning is bad either, something that is "rationally proven with psychology" to give people higher levels of well being

You also try to prove at several points that God doesn't exist (and that those who believe in it are very irrational). I'm not here to debate whether or not God exists, but I will say that belief in religion is not extremely rational because there are many intelligent people that believe in it and justify it well, and of course because for many of these people, the belief in God is not necessarily based on rationality. They don't worship rationality the way an Enlightenment thinker such as yourself does, and can make this leap of faith because they believe that their connection to God is more real than anything they can "prove" with rationality...this belief is so strong that they are willing to base their life around it. I disagree with you that this is a bad thing, and this is a belief based on rationality, common sense, and experience (having grown up religious and having attend both public and parochial schools).

I was being sarcastic, I know it's a sin by the word of the bible, I was questioning how it is in the modern day sense of the word.

What is the modern sense of the word sin? Sin is a Christian concept that entails committing an act that is wrong according to an objective morality. Since when do we believe in an objective morality in the "modern day?" What is this objective morality? And even if you violate it, would that be 'sin'? I think sin is a Christian term. Also, a Christian wouldn't care what a sin in the "modern day sense of the word" means, since they look to the Bible and to the God for guidance.

They don't base their beliefs on rationality and logic, it's faith and that is all. Faith that our logic is wrong. I'm just saying, we're living in a modern society, and we should be basing our principles off a little more than faith. How is it fair that religion can condemn homosexuality based on faith in the bible? There are gay people born into a catholic community that either face being oppressed for their lives or being disowned by their community. Also, if it's so wrong, why did God make it possible. And if it's a choice, why are their gene mutations influencing such behaviour? I'm still not being ignorant, I haven't refused to listen or accept their beliefs. I'm saying it's stupid of society to base our principles off ancient scriptures, in the same way they'd call me a sinner and that I'm going to ****.

What you wrote here was a response to my claim that you were calling them ignorant...that was the only point I was trying to make. On several occasions you have claimed in more words or less that it is silly to believe in religion, and that religious people are ignorant for not basing their beliefs on logic. In some ways I agree with this since I am an atheist, but I don't believe that religious people are ignorant, nor that their leap of faith is, either. I have known too many intelligent people to make that leap of faith (and many of them made that leap when they were older) to believe this claim to be true.

As for the claim that we "should be basing our principles off a little more than just faith," says who? Since we live in a liberal society, we are allowed to make that choice ourselves. You might personally think that religion is a crock of ****, but that doesn't mean that we as a society should discourage it. I don't see any reason to try and eradicate something that has ordered our societies for two thousand years overnight. If people want to stop believing, they will. But I don't think we should force them.

And even for the modern thinker, religion provides a very useful function. Psychological research has proven that religious people are happier and live longer than non-religious people. Both rationality and common sense show us that religion allows people to live their life with meaning, purpose, and happiness. It does a lot more for us on a human level than liberalism, with its emphasis on the pursuit of individual gain, usually in monetary form. This is easy to see with common sense, especially if you have experience with religion (and as someone who was raised religiously and spent plenty of time in religious schools, it is something I have some experience with), though it is much more difficult to prove rationally. But even recent psychological research demonstrates the "goodness" of religion (of course that depends on how you define the good, something that liberalism fails to do). And of course the high rates of depression and suicide in the OECD countries (particularly the atheist ones with extremely high levels of material well-being) should also clue us in.

As far as "how is it fair that religion can condemn homosexuality in the Bible" goes, there are a few problems with this statement here. First of all, it isn't unfair to the Christian, because it is God's word, for one, and also because God/the Bible/the Church teach us the appropriate expression of our sexual desires. That is, that this can only occur within the marriage of a man and a woman. This applies the same to gays or straights, so it's not unfair because the law applies to everyone equally. Is it "unfair" to those who aren't married for whatever reason (that they can't have ***)? An Enlightenment liberal might think so. Again, for the Christian, no, because God's law applies to everyone equally, and second, because the notion that you have the right to have *** with whoever you want doesn't exist. Whether or not the society allows it (like ours does), Christians think *** outside of marriage is wrong by God's law.

Also, the liberal society that you are defending believes that religions can preach what they want and that people can believe and say what they want as long as they don't break the law. Christianity can be against homosexual behavior because it has the freedom to do so. Yet you seem insisten on attacking this freedom and being "intolerant of the intolerant."

You've brought up the argument that certain genes make people more likely to be gay, which is unfair, but to a Christian this argument would be entirely irrelevant. Just because God makes us genetically more likely to do something immoral doesn't mean that it is OK. There is research that shows that certain genes lead to people being more likely to be violent murderers, but that doesn't make it right (obviously I'm not comparing gay *** to murder, I'm just saying, from a Christian perspective this type of biological argument is irrelevant). Also, the existence of genes that make one more likely to be gain may be unfair...but to a Christian, this is irrelevant. Certain genes also might make us born blind or mentally disabled or a paralytic or whatever, but that's the way of the universe. Life on earth isn't fair and God didn't intend it to be, either. But we're all children of God and if we follow God we will join him in heaven for eternity. That's what makes up for the unfairness on earth.

As for this quote: "There are gay people born into a catholic community that either face being oppressed for their lives or being disowned by their community. Also, if it's so wrong, why did God make it possible. And if it's a choice, why are their gene mutations influencing such behaviour?" I'll repeat myself. One doesn't necessarily have to be oppressed and gay in a Catholic community. You can be a gay Catholic. You're just not supposed to have gay ***. You might call that oppression, but believe it or not celibacy isn't all that bad. In our modern, liberal perspective we worship *** and think it's the most important thing in the world, but it's really not. You're supposed to be celibate unless you're married, and that's how people usually acted in history (and when they didn't do so, it was a sin that was punished by the society, and this is how it is/has been in most cultures for most of history). Being celibate isn't a bad thing for a Christian (and of course for Catholics, is a requirement for being a priest), and it's not really considered "unfair" to have to be celibate.

And of course a gay person doesn't have to be celibate, they can get married and have kids. Would this be difficult? Perhaps, though maybe the gay person just wouldn't have *** with the wife that often (and the positive would be that they could have kids). But for a Christian, God exists and would probably help you through the way if you prayed. And of course if it didn't appeal to you, than you could just be celibate and wait until you go to heaven, at which point you wouldn't have to worry about sexual desires.

As for the God making it possible and the gene thing goes, I answered that a few paragraphs up. Life isn't fair and we were born with original sin. Part of this is sexual desire. We want to ****, but we can only do so in the proper setting. Some of us have the desire to **** members of the same ***, and some of us only have the desire to **** members of the same ***. Too bad. God never said life would be fair, but you just have to live your life the best you can and hopefully you'll go to heaven. Also, why is fairness all of the sudden such an important criterion for you? Life is unfair, and liberal society accepts this. We start off in different circumstances: the poor kid who goes to ****** schools in a poor area that doesn't have jobs where pursuing a career is not a social value will almost always do worse economically than the wealthy kid who goes to the nice school funded by high property taxes in a nice area (or his parents pay to send him to a nice school) surrounded by wealthy peers, who gets his parents to pay for tutoring sessions and his university education. Or the fact that the dishwasher that works his *** off cleaning up **** gets paid a fraction of the CEO whose job is much more pleasant in comparison. But we don't change this through policy because "life isn't fair." And then of course there's the unavoidable unfairness of life, for example, that you have bad parents compared to someone else.

As I said before, you have to be intolerant of the intolerant. Every law in the land is in fact just a punishment of the intolerant for the intolerant itself. Someone has to take the morale high ground or society descends into chaos. I'm not telling them to believe in anything. I believe their 2000 years of teachings are wrong, so do many others, Science continues to solve many of the mysteries posed. We're an advancing society, we no longer rely on the bible to offer an explanation of the unknown to us. Why should faith in ancient writings be taken over logic and rationality? Practice it in your own personal time by all means.

And as I said before, the very reason you said these people were wrong was for being intolerant, yet then you are being intolerant yourself. It's hypocritical. Second, as I said before, we have to the right to believe what we want, but it seems like you don't want to respect this right. You want to eliminate religion because it is intolerant. You are calling for society to reject it. Not only is that intolerant, but it's also a total violation of the liberal principles that you believe in.

It also is not "good" in the sense that you are trying to take away from people something that they find very meaningful and worthwhile, and something that generally makes them better people. Sure, they don't think that people should have *** outside of the marriage between a man and a woman, but this is a small part of their whole morality, a morality that calls for them to be good people. And so many of them are. In my experience, religious people tend to be better, nicer people than the non-religious, and happier people as well (something proven by psychological research). This is pretty obvious since they believe that if they do good they will go to heaven, which is a much more pleasant worldview than the liberal worldview of "make money, fill your own desires, and then you die." It really frustrates me that liberals (and often times these types of liberals are European) are so insistent upon getting rid of religion. At least it is some form of morality that gives people some hope for their existence on this planet.

As far as "Every law in the land is in fact just a punishment of the intolerant for the intolerant itself" goes, no, every law of the land is dependent upon the Constitution in both the US and the UK (in the US, this is in written form). These are based on certain liberal principles, but I don't see how this sentence fits in to any of this. No where in either of our Constitutions does it call for society to try and get rid of the viewpoints of people it doesn't agree with. It protects our freedom of speech and of conscience. Yet over and over again, you seem to want to get rid of this right. You want society to be intolerant of Christians since they are irrational (according to you) and because they believe homosexual behavior is a sin...but this is a violation of liberal principles. Sure, if the Christians don't allow gays into their restaurants, than that's against the law and they should be punished. But they're allowed to believe what they want, and any attempt to get rif of their beliefs seems to be very intolerant and illiberal on your part.

And as far as "taking the moral high ground so society doesn't descend into chaos goes," I don't see how society will descend into chaos if it continues to be religious. We were religious for 2000 years (and of course we were religious before that until the dawn of man, just in different forms) and for those 2000 years homosexual behavior wasn't tolerated. Did it suck for gay people? I'm sure it did, but there were much more serious problems in the world. I don't think society "existed in chaos," and in the instances where it did, it was due to reasons other than Christianity (perhaps Barbarian invasions or something like that). Recently, atheism was invented and just in the past generation or two became the common belief in Europe. But I don't think you can seriously claim that if this trend is reversed there will be chaos. The US is a Christian, homophobic place, and it bothers me sometimes. But do we live in chaos? I don't think so.

As far as your claim that you're "not telling them to believe in anything," I find that hard to believe. It's pretty clear throughout your posts that you want them to either abandon Christianity or to revise it so that it fits in with your own liberal parameters. You just said in the same paragraph that we have to be "intolerant of the intolerant," so yeah, I'd say you're telling them to believe in it. You've also repeatedly said that a)religion is bad for society, and b)it is irrational, and that we shouldn't have irrational beliefs, and c)that we shouldn't base society on this (you didn't say just the government, you said the society, and even if you did confine it to government, there would be a whole different argument as far as democracy goes, and I though I believe strongly in secular government, I believe more strongly in democracy). We can deduce from this, along with your comments about being intolerant of the intolerant, that you want to get rid of religion or revise it to your liking.

As far as this goes: "I believe their 2000 years of teachings are wrong, so do many others, Science continues to solve many of the mysteries posed. We're an advancing society, we no longer rely on the bible to offer an explanation of the unknown to us. Why should faith in ancient writings be taken over logic and rationality?" first of all, you again are implying that we should get rid of religion. You keep on claiming that we as a society are using science more and more, and that we should stop using religion. As I've said before, that's not your choice to make. People are allowed to believe in what they want in liberal societies.

Second, YOU believe their 2000 years of teaching are wrong, but they don't, and what you believe is irrelevant to what they believe. "Science continues to solve many of the mysteries posed," but again it is your personal belief that a)science and technology and religion are irreconciable, and for many Christians, they aren't, b)that science and progress matter as much as you think they do (many Christians, and I personally believe, that there is a lot more to life and to the "good" than material and technological advancement) and that we should give up religion on account of their "success," the entire universe can be explained using science.

Except that it can't. First of all, 95% of the universe is dark matter or energy, which we don't really understand, second, most astronomers/physicists realize that we barely understand the universe. Most Enlightenment liberals really overestimate the extent to which we understand how the universe works. Do you know which discipline out of the math and sciences has the highest rate of theism? Physics. They seem to grasp how little we know much better than the economist who thinks he can disprove the existence of God. And even on a human level, we don't know how we work. I don't think any serious thinker would claim we understand how the human mind works. As Freud said, we're just looking at the tip of the iceberg. The human mind is so complex that psychology hasn't even scratched the surface, and all it can do are deduce a few tiny "truths." Human beings are ultimately so complex that rationality fails to completely understand them (and perhaps they are ultimately irrational and the mind is a non-ending decimal), which is why we are almost always wrong about everything. I think you give far to much credence to your Gods, Rationality and Science, something I'll talk about elsewhere.

"We're an advancing society, we no longer rely on the bible to offer an explanation of the unknown to us. Why should faith in ancient writings be taken over logic and rationality? Practice it in your own personal time by all means." You might think we're "advancing" by not believing in religion, but of course there may be a backlash (the US looked like it was heading the direction of Europe, and then in the 80's we had a big evangelical revival), but that doesn't mean we actually are "advancing," since it depends on your own definition of the good, and second, people are free to choose what they believe in. Just because you think we're "advancing" doesn't mean we should force this on people.

As for "why should faith be put in ancient writings instead of logic and rationality," no one is asking you to believe in God. But you seem to want to pressure people to not believe in God, to believe in what you think is rational. This is what I have a problem with, your intolerance of those who disagree with you. As for why they do it? Lots of reasons, and I won't get into it, but they think it's personally rational to believe in something based on the ancient scriptures, and that's what almost all of humanity has done for almost all of history. As far as "practice it in your own personal time by all means," that's all they are doing. When asked, they will tell you what they think about homosexuality (for example, in an internet forum that asks questions about homosexuality). They are simply informing you of their beliefs, and that's something protected by law and by the liberal principles of the freedom of speech and the freedom of conscience. They're not forcing it on you. But you seem to want to force your beliefs on them.

You know as well as I do though that true free speech doesn't, and never will exist. And by "shouldn't be allowed" I was referring to religion influencing discrimination, rather than saying they can't have an opinion.

Actually, at least in the US, freedom of speech is protected to the extreme. It is only suspended in cases of imminent danger (ie you can't yell fire in a crowded theater). You're allowed to burn the flag, which in the US is about the most disrespectful thing you can do. This is liberalism, and I'm shocked that as someone who uses liberal values to take the moral high ground seems to hardly believe in it (stating that the freedom of speech really doesn't exist is quite a loaded statement, and I'm not sure what you mean by it but it doesn't sound good to me). I'd guess by some of your statements here that if it were up to you, saying homosexual behavior is immoral would not be protected by free speech. As far as "religion influencing discrimination" goes, which is what you said shouldn't be allowed, you're going to have to be more specific. Discrimination that is against the law (ie not allowing gays into your university or your restaurant) of course should be prosecuted by the full extent of the law. But simply stating your view point is protected by the law, and shouldn't be infringed upon. We have to be tolerant of the intolerant, and that's what this society is about. I'm not calling for Christians to be allowed to break discrimination laws, I just believe they should be allowed to believe and speak freely.

So there aren't Islamic states that forbid homosexuality? And the pope didn't say that homosexuality was a moral evil. I'm challenging their opinion, and if they reply that an ancient book told them to, then it does make me mad. It's archaic and way out of line with modern society. If you went on a murder spree, and you were questioned why; and you replied by saying you found some ancient book with no identifiable author, with myths and magic that claim to have some connection to a higher being, you'd be locked up and probably sent for mental health checks. The exact same applies here.

When did I say there weren't Islamic states that forbid homosexuality? And I'm not sure what this statement was in response to or how it's relevant to the discussion. As I said before, in many Islamic states the law, society, and government are based on sharia. This is because the people desire it. Would I want to live in such a society? No, because I was raised in a liberal society and because I'm not a Muslim. But since I support democracy and the concept of popular sovereignty, I believe they should be allowed to have such a state. Many people around the world don't believe this, they worship liberalism so much that they want to pressure these countries into being liberal, either through neoliberalism and pressuring them to adopt free market oriented policies (especially free trade), or through force (the neoconservatives wanted to do this, and that's why we are in Afghanistan and Iraq). I disagree with this concept.

As for the rest, you again claim that you don't think they should believe in religion and that it's irrational. I again will tell you that a), it's not irrational for the people that believe in it, and b) that it's their right to believe in it. Even if they disagree with homosexual behavior, we have to be tolerant about them. Because we live in a liberal society that prides itself in tolerance. You claim the moral high ground on tolerance, but are only tolerant of those who agree with you. Your opinion that religion is irrational is entirely irrelevant. I might think some of your views are irrational, but I'll defend your right to speak your mind because I believe in free speech. Also, on your comment that they should be locked up for being insane, again Christianity was the norm in the west for two millenia and atheism is a recent invention that is only common in Europe, so maybe we're the insane ones.

Yes, we have anti-non-discriminatory laws too. It doesn't change the fact that religion influenced these views in the first place. Still influences these views, even the head of catholic church calls it evil. It doesn't matter what laws you put in place and what rights you give, you can't control people's social opinion by law though, but religion can. Why should someone who is gay be made to feel excluded by his own society over blind faith?!

Non-discrimination laws in the US actually came from racism and sexism, which ultimately come from liberalism and the form in which its justifications came for the existing economic structures. But yeah, religion can influence discriminatory behavior against gays when its members take things too far. Does that mean we should get rid of religion? Not allow them to speak their mind? Since we live in a liberal society that champions the freedom of religion and expression, we should allow them to have and speak their views. As far as why a gay person should be excluded by his own society, Christianity doesn't call for exclusion, it simply believes that homosexual behavior is incorrect. Do I like this? No, but I believe that Christians should be allowed to believe what they want and speak what they want. The gay person, however, if he lives in the UK or US, is relatively accepted by his society, and is allowed to be gay as he wants. That's because we live in a liberal society. Just as the Christian can speak out against homosexuality as long as they don't break the law.

Again, I never said that we should prohibit their views. I was saying it's wrong for religion to influence these views.

Well it seems like you want to prohibit their views with your statements that we must be tolerant of the intolerant and that freedom of speech really doesn't exist, and that we as a society should ban religion. As far as religion goes, sure it influences their views, but it influences many views. Their idea that homosexual behavior is immoral is such a small part of their moral system but you seem to think its the defining feature and that we as a society should try to get rid of it for this reason.

God is omnipotent, omniscient and benevolent. If he was omnipotent, he wouldn't have made it possible to homosexuality to exist. If he was omniscient he would understand their homosexual urges and would not have allowed them to occur. If he was benevolent he would love you regardless, but apparently he doesn't. If he is neither omnipotent, omniscient or benevolent; then why call him a God at all?

I'm not here to get in a God vs. no-God debate, but for Christians this doesn't matter as I explained previously. We have sexual urges, but we're only supposed to express them in certain circumstances. We also have homosexual urges, but this is sinful because engaging in those behaviors would be not in the right circumstances. Just because we have urge to do something wrong doesn't mean that we should do it, and it doesn't mean that God doesn't exist. Original sin explains why we have many desires to do the wrong thing. But if we do our best to refrain from doing so, we will win our place in heaven. This is what Christians believe.

If Christianity is supposed to accept it, then why did the Pope - the head of the catholic church, publicly condemn it a moral evil? That's condemnation not helping their sins.

The pope said homosexual behavior was immoral, as I've said many times. He didn't say that gays should be excluded or that they were evil. They just believe that expressing these desires is a sin. And through prayer you're supposed to overcome this. He's not condemning them nor refusing to help them with their sins.

So if you were gay, why should you be forced to live away from where you born because of their intolerance? Away from your family and friends, wouldn't that anger you? If you were straight you'd have the choice, why should religious doctrine make you lose that choice if you were gay?

You're not forced to do anything. In a liberal society, you can do what you want. If you want to live in a Christian area where people think what you're doing is immoral, that's your choice. if you don't, than you can move. The same goes for politics. If you live in a conservative area, you might want to move, but you don't have to. I support the right of Christians to believe in what they want to and to say what they want to as long as they follow the law. I also believe in the right of gays to do what they want to. This is because we live in a liberal society that protects these freedoms. I'm not sure what you believe in though, and from many of your statements it seems that you want to make it illegal to believe and state your belief that homosexuality is wrong.

Good for them, I can't see me ever believing anything without empirical evidence though. I'm perfectly fine with 2+2=4 rather than an enlightenment from blind faith. The universe is described perfectly by Mathematical formulae. There are no discrepancies. The area of a circle is pi*r^2 with infinite accuracy. Why does God make it behave in this way, when it contradicts everything about him? And the whole of the universe is here now due to an error. It's all one big chain of errors leading to more, that's not very God-like, surely his creation would be perfection not erroneous. It's perfectly rational to believe something when you are shown evidence for it. It is not to believe something without having any evidence for it whatsoever. "To explain the unknown by the known is a logical procedure; to explain the known by the unknown is a form of theological lunacy"

Good for you, I'm not calling for laws to make you give up your atheism, and neither are they. As for your questions as for why God did these things and made the universe the way it is, Christians have a variety of answers, and I'm not an expert. I'm not here to debate the existence of God either. But Christians do believe that the universe and how God made it may or may not be rational, and that the universe is very mysterious and that we ultimately can't understand it or God or why he made it the way he did. We can only take shots in the dark. This actually isn't too far from the truth when you think about it, because even with our advances in science and technology we understand so little.

As far as your claim that it is irrational to believe in religion, I've already answered this. It isn't irrational for many people, and many of them believe that the connection they feel to God is much more real than anything that can be proven empirically. It's something you just won't understand if you're not religious. It's something I am sympathetic too, and I don't buy so much into the liberal notion that you can only believe in something that can be proven empirically. Some of the most obvious truths about man were never proven by logic and rationality (sometimes they were much, much later, but even still we understand so little about how the human mind works), and our logic and rationality has taken so many wrong turns along the way. This isn't the orderly process of discovery people make it out to be, it is a slow process of groping for the truth that often times is fruitless and leaves us farther from the truth than we began with. Often times it leaves us realizing that there is no objective truth in the matter at hand, or that if there is, there is no way we can find it. There's a lot I believe in that may or may not be proven by empiricism and rationality, because so much about humans and the universe is very difficult to quantify or prove.

Do you not think the people would desire a theocratic regime because that's what their society is? The middle east for example has never seen past religion, Islam is their way of life. We abandoned it, we explored Science. Do you really think we would ever go back now?

Many people do desire a theocratic regime, because their society is based on the principles of sharia. They want it like that, and I'm not one to tell them not to. Even when their leaders are overthrown, they often times do not call for secularism. None of the movements right now in the Middle East are seriously calling for an end to government based on religious principles (of course in Egypt they already have a secular government). In Afghanistan and Iraq, because we are liberals that think like you do (the belief that everyone is a liberal at heart, that everyone wants to be "free") we assumed that we would be greeted by flowers by people who were excited to be freed from their captors. We assumed that they hated living under sharia law and that they would be thrilled to adopt a liberal, secular government. That's not the case, as neither government has much legitimacy and exist because of US backing, and both of them are based on sharia law because if they weren't they would be entirely unacceptable to the populace. And of course there are plenty of instances of secular government loosely based liberal principles being overthrown in favor of theocratic regimes. The most famous is Iran, where a secular, Western regime that was performing very well was overthrown by a popular uprising in favor of a much "more theocratic" regime than the country had ever seen (in that religious leaders never had so much power before in Iran).

As for us, I don't think Europe will go back because we're used to liberalism and that's what we like. But the US has a strong history of secularism yet we have had a huge religious revival recently and many, many Americans no longer believe in the separation between Church and State, so yeah, it could happen. But ultimately it's irrelevant. Some societies will want to remain in a society where religion dictates the laws. Others will want a secular government based on other principles. I believe in democracy and popular sovereignty and that we should let the people choose. In our societies we chose a secular government based on liberal principles. So I think we should follow these principles and allow people to believe in what they want and to voice their opinions, rather than being "intolerant of intolerance." And of course since I grew up in this society and am accustomed to it, this is the type of society I personally would like to live in. Had I grown up as a poor farmer in Iran, I'm sure my views would have been different.

Because it was getting quite out of hand. How much further in dialogue can you go than "Why are you so ignorant?" and "My religion told me?" Madridsta and others took it way too far, they weren't debating they were being offensive. It backs my argument if anything.

I wouldn't say that, they pretty much just stated their views, and everyone got mad at them for being intolerant.

How do you expect to change his mind when it is his religious belief? It's deeply ingrained. "You can not convince a believer of anything; for their belief is not based on evidence, it is based on a deep-seated need to believe." - Sagan

First of all, I was just saying that you can try to change his mind if you want to because you have the freedom to do so. I was saying that this would be a better route than not allowing them to speak (which is what happened, and it seems that at times you want to make this the law or at least get society to make a concerted effort to remove religion). Also, you can change their minds, as I have changed my mind many times from reading books and from discussion with people on the internet.

Read through some of the past pages, a few us were quite strongly against religion. Another quote: "Properly read, the Bible is the most potent force for atheism ever conceived."

Yeah that's what I had a problem with, people worship rationality, science, and liberalism too much and it makes them far too anti-religious. They oversimply a lot of history with ridiculous statements such as "religion is the most destructive force ever" etc. etc. as if the crusades had no political or economic causes and that it was only religion that motivated them. It's also ridiculous because of how infused religion was and still is infused in our culture, you might as well say that if Christianity sucks, western culture sucks. I'm not going to get into it but to say "religion this" and "religion that" is such an oversimplification and generalization of so many complicated things. I don't think serious thinkers try to make such generalizations about "religion" (which, of course, is impossible to define an inseparable from "culture."

 

[Joel`]

You also try to prove at several points that God doesn't exist (and that those who believe in it are very irrational). I'm not here to debate whether or not God exists, but I will say that belief in religion is not extremely rational because there are many intelligent people that believe in it and justify it well, and of course because for many of these people, the belief in God is not necessarily based on rationality. They don't worship rationality the way an Enlightenment thinker such as yourself does, and can make this leap of faith because they believe that their connection to God is more real than anything they can "prove" with rationality...this belief is so strong that they are willing to base their life around it. I disagree with you that this is a bad thing, and this is a belief based on rationality, common sense, and experience (having grown up religious and having attend both public and parochial schools).

Intelligence isn't a measure of rationality and logic. Just because they choose to have faith in it because they're intelligent, in no way means it is a logical decision. By definition belief in religion is an illogical thing. As I said many times a few pages back, why does society deem Santa Clause an irrational thing to believe in, and not God? When both of these have the EXACT same proof supporting them. If Santa is irrational and stupid, so is God, by society's standards. You have faith that your religion is correct, and you don't in Santa. Nothing more, nothing less.

As for the claim that we "should be basing our principles off a little more than just faith," says who? Since we live in a liberal society, we are allowed to make that choice ourselves. You might personally think that religion is a crock of ****, but that doesn't mean that we as a society should discourage it. I don't see any reason to try and eradicate something that has ordered our societies for two thousand years overnight. If people want to stop believing, they will. But I don't think we should force them.

Indeed I do think it's a crock of ****. And since I do, and since many others do, why should we be forced to live in society that adheres to religious principles that we don't. As I say, if you were a gay man living in a society that was still controlled by religion, you'd be miserable. And for what reason? The UK isn't like this any more, we moved on. But it's still a fact that there are Islamic states that forbid it, the deep south in America is vehemently against it. These are all due to religious influences. That is why we should be basing the laws of the land on logic and not some **** blind faith. If we have logical laws, they were created to logically take care of everyone. If religion influences everything, they are designed to only cater to the believer's. Why should the atheist's out there, those who are people that religion condemns; be forced to live in society controlled by something they don't freakin' believe in, and something that has no evidence to support a belief in? It's nonsense.

And even for the modern thinker, religion provides a very useful function. Psychological research has proven that religious people are happier and live longer than non-religious people. Both rationality and common sense show us that religion allows people to live their life with meaning, purpose, and happiness. It does a lot more for us on a human level than liberalism, with its emphasis on the pursuit of individual gain, usually in monetary form. This is easy to see with common sense, especially if you have experience with religion (and as someone who was raised religiously and spent plenty of time in religious schools, it is something I have some experience with), though it is much more difficult to prove rationally. But even recent psychological research demonstrates the "goodness" of religion (of course that depends on how you define the good, something that liberalism fails to do). And of course the high rates of depression and suicide in the OECD countries (particularly the atheist ones with extremely high levels of material well-being) should also clue us in.

I never denied it didn't do this, you're still going to be ****** when there's nothing there when you die.

As far as "how is it fair that religion can condemn homosexuality in the Bible" goes, there are a few problems with this statement here. First of all, it isn't unfair to the Christian, because it is God's word, for one, and also because God/the Bible/the Church teach us the appropriate expression of our sexual desires. That is, that this can only occur within the marriage of a man and a woman. This applies the same to gays or straights, so it's not unfair because the law applies to everyone equally. Is it "unfair" to those who aren't married for whatever reason (that they can't have ***)? An Enlightenment liberal might think so. Again, for the Christian, no, because God's law applies to everyone equally, and second, because the notion that you have the right to have *** with whoever you want doesn't exist. Whether or not the society allows it (like ours does), Christians think *** outside of marriage is wrong by God's law.

This is what I've been saying. Religion issues control over people's lives with no evidence at all. Plus the chances that Christianity is actually correct is so, so tiny, it isn't worth your life being controlled in this way pointlessly.

There are an infinite amount of religions that existed before, exist now and will be thought of in the future. We can't prove or disprove any, so the chance of you picking the right religion to believe in is 1/infinity, which is zero. It's good to know that there are people who have been killed, who are currently seen as sinner's by their community, disowned and forced to live away from their home, over a 1/infinity chance. This isn't about fundamental ideals of liberalism or not, it's the fact that people are forced to live being unhappy due to their culture for no reason. And this isn't about the US or UK, it's about how we lived in the past, how Islamic states are now, and even the influence it has in our country's today. I'm perfectly fine with someone practising their religion in their own time, in private. I am not fine with it exerting force on other people's lives when they don't even believe in it.

Also, the liberal society that you are defending believes that religions can preach what they want and that people can believe and say what they want as long as they don't break the law. Christianity can be against homosexual behavior because it has the freedom to do so. Yet you seem insisten on attacking this freedom and being "intolerant of the intolerant."

There are terrorist's influenced by Islam too, should we be tolerant of that too? Have extremist's not been arrested for preaching hate?

You've brought up the argument that certain genes make people more likely to be gay, which is unfair, but to a Christian this argument would be entirely irrelevant. Just because God makes us genetically more likely to do something immoral doesn't mean that it is OK. There is research that shows that certain genes lead to people being more likely to be violent murderers, but that doesn't make it right (obviously I'm not comparing gay *** to murder, I'm just saying, from a Christian perspective this type of biological argument is irrelevant). Also, the existence of genes that make one more likely to be gain may be unfair...but to a Christian, this is irrelevant. Certain genes also might make us born blind or mentally disabled or a paralytic or whatever, but that's the way of the universe. Life on earth isn't fair and God didn't intend it to be, either. But we're all children of God and if we follow God we will join him in heaven for eternity. That's what makes up for the unfairness on earth.

If he made life unfair, makes people disadvantaged. Made it so people would be seen as sinner's in their community, then he is not a nice God, and not one I would want to believe in.

As for this quote: "There are gay people born into a catholic community that either face being oppressed for their lives or being disowned by their community. Also, if it's so wrong, why did God make it possible. And if it's a choice, why are their gene mutations influencing such behaviour?" I'll repeat myself. One doesn't necessarily have to be oppressed and gay in a Catholic community. You can be a gay Catholic. You're just not supposed to have gay ***. You might call that oppression, but believe it or not celibacy isn't all that bad. In our modern, liberal perspective we worship *** and think it's the most important thing in the world, but it's really not. You're supposed to be celibate unless you're married, and that's how people usually acted in history (and when they didn't do so, it was a sin that was punished by the society, and this is how it is/has been in most cultures for most of history). Being celibate isn't a bad thing for a Christian (and of course for Catholics, is a requirement for being a priest), and it's not really considered "unfair" to have to be celibate.

The Pope also called Gay marriage an act of evil. So they're forbidden from having *** AND from expressing their love? I call that oppression. Your celibacy argument is poor. The catholic church is still trying to deny the human rights of one person due to them being gay. Even if it's "just" ***, straight people can do it, what gives the church the right to forbid it homosexually? It isn't "all that bad" their rights are still being denied, I don't see how you can defend it, I'm sure you know it's a poor argument too.

As for the God making it possible and the gene thing goes, I answered that a few paragraphs up. Life isn't fair and we were born with original sin. Part of this is sexual desire. We want to ****, but we can only do so in the proper setting. Some of us have the desire to **** members of the same ***, and some of us only have the desire to **** members of the same ***. Too bad. God never said life would be fair, but you just have to live your life the best you can and hopefully you'll go to heaven. Also, why is fairness all of the sudden such an important criterion for you? Life is unfair, and liberal society accepts this. We start off in different circumstances: the poor kid who goes to ****** schools in a poor area that doesn't have jobs where pursuing a career is not a social value will almost always do worse economically than the wealthy kid who goes to the nice school funded by high property taxes in a nice area (or his parents pay to send him to a nice school) surrounded by wealthy peers, who gets his parents to pay for tutoring sessions and his university education. Or the fact that the dishwasher that works his *** off cleaning up **** gets paid a fraction of the CEO whose job is much more pleasant in comparison. But we don't change this through policy because "life isn't fair." And then of course there's the unavoidable unfairness of life, for example, that you have bad parents compared to someone else.

God was so nice making life like this, makes me want to worship this all loving super power!!

And as I said before, the very reason you said these people were wrong was for being intolerant, yet then you are being intolerant yourself. It's hypocritical. Second, as I said before, we have to the right to believe what we want, but it seems like you don't want to respect this right. You want to eliminate religion because it is intolerant. You are calling for society to reject it. Not only is that intolerant, but it's also a total violation of the liberal principles that you believe in.

Indeed I am being hypocritical, so it's okay for extremist's to preach hate, and to threaten violence in order to get people to convert. Oh please.

It also is not "good" in the sense that you are trying to take away from people something that they find very meaningful and worthwhile, and something that generally makes them better people. Sure, they don't think that people should have *** outside of the marriage between a man and a woman, but this is a small part of their whole morality, a morality that calls for them to be good people. And so many of them are. In my experience, religious people tend to be better, nicer people than the non-religious, and happier people as well (something proven by psychological research). This is pretty obvious since they believe that if they do good they will go to heaven, which is a much more pleasant worldview than the liberal worldview of "make money, fill your own desires, and then you die." It really frustrates me that liberals (and often times these types of liberals are European) are so insistent upon getting rid of religion. At least it is some form of morality that gives people some hope for their existence on this planet.

I'm not trying to take it away, practise it in private.

As far as "Every law in the land is in fact just a punishment of the intolerant for the intolerant itself" goes, no, every law of the land is dependent upon the Constitution in both the US and the UK (in the US, this is in written form). These are based on certain liberal principles, but I don't see how this sentence fits in to any of this. No where in either of our Constitutions does it call for society to try and get rid of the viewpoints of people it doesn't agree with. It protects our freedom of speech and of conscience. Yet over and over again, you seem to want to get rid of this right. You want society to be intolerant of Christians since they are irrational (according to you) and because they believe homosexual behavior is a sin...but this is a violation of liberal principles. Sure, if the Christians don't allow gays into their restaurants, than that's against the law and they should be punished. But they're allowed to believe what they want, and any attempt to get rif of their beliefs seems to be very intolerant and illiberal on your part.

Stop twisting my words please, religion should have less influence. It's irrational, illogical and produces socially unacceptable viewpoints. As I said, why is it okay for someone to be a bigot that is protected by religion, and just a bigot. I see no difference between these apart from an artificial story, so why should religion be allowed to hold these views, when you are not allowed if you just think that? That is what I'm saying, I'm perfectly fine with opinions and free speech, just not religious doctrine influencing hate. I fail to see how this is something to condemn me for either.

And as far as "taking the moral high ground so society doesn't descend into chaos goes," I don't see how society will descend into chaos if it continues to be religious. We were religious for 2000 years (and of course we were religious before that until the dawn of man, just in different forms) and for those 2000 years homosexual behavior wasn't tolerated. Did it suck for gay people? I'm sure it did, but there were much more serious problems in the world. I don't think society "existed in chaos," and in the instances where it did, it was due to reasons other than Christianity (perhaps Barbarian invasions or something like that). Recently, atheism was invented and just in the past generation or two became the common belief in Europe. But I don't think you can seriously claim that if this trend is reversed there will be chaos. The US is a Christian, homophobic place, and it bothers me sometimes. But do we live in chaos? I don't think so.

I didn't say staying religious would cause us to descend into chaos, I was referring to the fact that we have to be intolerant of the intolerant, that hypocrisy must exist. Someone has to stand up and say "no, this is just wrong." They are being intolerant, but they're doing it for the right reason. A murderer was intolerant of someone's right to live, should we be tolerant of them? You're saying everyone should be able to do whatever the **** they want because they have freedom and opinions, this is why society would descend into chaos. I can't believe you can deny that either.

As far as your claim that you're "not telling them to believe in anything," I find that hard to believe. It's pretty clear throughout your posts that you want them to either abandon Christianity or to revise it so that it fits in with your own liberal parameters. You just said in the same paragraph that we have to be "intolerant of the intolerant," so yeah, I'd say you're telling them to believe in it. You've also repeatedly said that a)religion is bad for society, and b)it is irrational, and that we shouldn't have irrational beliefs, and c)that we shouldn't base society on this (you didn't say just the government, you said the society, and even if you did confine it to government, there would be a whole different argument as far as democracy goes, and I though I believe strongly in secular government, I believe more strongly in democracy). We can deduce from this, along with your comments about being intolerant of the intolerant, that you want to get rid of religion or revise it to your liking.

It is irrational. Fact. I have always said practise it in your own place, I never said I wanted to get rid of it. You're reading FAR too much into what I say and basing everything on inference rather than what I've actually put. My whole arguments before were that society's laws should be run by logic and not by blind faith in a religion. Would you prefer to live in a place where schools teach the Earth is flat, or where we logically teach what we have evidence to support? That is all I'm saying, I'm perfectly fine with religion's existence, just don't force it on me.

As far as this goes: "I believe their 2000 years of teachings are wrong, so do many others, Science continues to solve many of the mysteries posed. We're an advancing society, we no longer rely on the bible to offer an explanation of the unknown to us. Why should faith in ancient writings be taken over logic and rationality?" first of all, you again are implying that we should get rid of religion. You keep on claiming that we as a society are using science more and more, and that we should stop using religion. As I've said before, that's not your choice to make. People are allowed to believe in what they want in liberal societies.

That's a Religion vs. Science argument not a social one. I'm atheist, I'm putting forth arguments why religion doesn't need to exist. This in no way means I'm saying get rid of it, and it's starting to **** me off that you keep making me out to look like some evil dictator. I could put forth arguments why everyone should buy an Audi, doesn't mean I want everyone to get rid of a BMW does it?

Second, YOU believe their 2000 years of teaching are wrong, but they don't, and what you believe is irrelevant to what they believe. "Science continues to solve many of the mysteries posed," but again it is your personal belief that a)science and technology and religion are irreconciable, and for many Christians, they aren't, b)that science and progress matter as much as you think they do (many Christians, and I personally believe, that there is a lot more to life and to the "good" than material and technological advancement) and that we should give up religion on account of their "success," the entire universe can be explained using science.

2000 years ago the Earth had been around for 2000 years and was flat. Show me a Christian that believes that now.

My main gripe with religion is that it teaches to be unsatisfied with not knowing, some are fine with that. I am not.

Except that it can't. First of all, 95% of the universe is dark matter or energy, which we don't really understand, second, most astronomers/physicists realize that we barely understand the universe. Most Enlightenment liberals really overestimate the extent to which we understand how the universe works. Do you know which discipline out of the math and sciences has the highest rate of theism? Physics. They seem to grasp how little we know much better than the economist who thinks he can disprove the existence of God. And even on a human level, we don't know how we work. I don't think any serious thinker would claim we understand how the human mind works. As Freud said, we're just looking at the tip of the iceberg. The human mind is so complex that psychology hasn't even scratched the surface, and all it can do are deduce a few tiny "truths." Human beings are ultimately so complex that rationality fails to completely understand them (and perhaps they are ultimately irrational and the mind is a non-ending decimal), which is why we are almost always wrong about everything. I think you give far to much credence to your Gods, Rationality and Science, something I'll talk about elsewhere.

Just so you know, I do Physics at college, and want to study it further at University, so your clever little "They seem to grasp how little we know much better than the economist who thinks he can disprove the existence of God." remark is stupid. And you think I don't comprehend the size of the universe? I know that current estimates show that there are 500 billion galaxies in the universe alone, and we haven't even ventured past our own solar system. There are roughly 300 billion stars per galaxy (given estimates on our galaxy and others we can see.) So there are 1.5*10^19 possible orbital systems where other life can exist. Given a conservative estimate of 4 stars per planet, there's 6*10^19 possibilities for other life to exist. This other life is most likely to have other religions too, you know? The chances of one of our religions to be correct is slim, very slim. I also know that there are theists within Physics and Science. I also know that the majority aren't. Just because a theist exists in Science proves nothing. I accept that there may be a "greater being", most scientist's do. Hawking did until very recently. But a mythological book? Most see past that. Most Physicists that are theist adhere to its principles rather than its teachings on creation. If you want to casually throw insulting remarks in, then I can't be bothered arguing.

I frankly can't be bothered to reply to the rest now, you're repeating yourself over and over again. I don't believe in getting rid of religion, I accept people may believe in what they like, I accept we all have freedom. I do not accept religion imposing itself on society, telling us what to behave like. I'm atheist, I don't believe I should be forced to live by religious principles. That is all I have said, the rest is my typical atheistic statements against God, which most atheist's do as well. I don't see why you are trying so hard to make it seem like because I said them, I'm non-liberal and taking away people's rights.

 

[curtis290]

This is getting quite long, so I'll give you a quick summary of what's about to follow. If you don't have time to respond to the rest of this, I guess just respond to this...something is better than no response at all, considering how long I spent writing this (as you can imagine, a very long time).

There are a few currents of thought going on here. First, there is the question of what extent to which religious people are allowed to believe in, practice, and preach their religious values in our society, and whether or not preaching that homosexuality is a sin, or stating this viewpoint as is what happened in the homosexuality thread, is/should be legal in our society. Second, there is the question of whether or not religion is fundamentally "bad." You think it is, I disagree. Not only do I think such a sweeping judgement is impossible, I think if it were possible, it would certainly come down to values and not be a matter of empiricism. Third, there is the question of whether or not societies/governments should be based on Enlightenment principles, particularly liberalism and secularism. I like some of these values, but I value democracy more and I believe that we shouldn't make the sweeping generalization that all societies/governments mustbase themselves on these principles, I think it is up to them, and there is nothing inherently wrong with a society/government based on religious principles (though you think there is). Again, this is a value judgement, not an objective, rational statement, which you think it is. You said that this was religion vs. Science, and you seem believe that liberalism and secularism (which come from the Enlightenment and believe themselves to be incredibly rational and scientific) are logically/empirically/scientifically correct principles of government.

Intelligence isn't a measure of rationality and logic. Just because they choose to have faith in it because they're intelligent, in no way means it is a logical decision. By definition belief in religion is an illogical thing. As I said many times a few pages back, why does society deem Santa Clause an irrational thing to believe in, and not God? When both of these have the EXACT same proof supporting them. If Santa is irrational and stupid, so is God, by society's standards. You have faith that your religion is correct, and you don't in Santa. Nothing more, nothing less.

First of all, I want to point out that I meant to say that "belief in religion is not extremely irrational because there are many intelligent people that believe in it and justify it well," not rational as I said. It was a typo, although it looks like you understood what I meant and that it was a typo.

Anyway, I didn't say it was the logical decision or the correct one, I said it was a logical decision. There are a number of highly intelligent, logical people I've spoken to who believe in Christianity for one reason or another. They have the logic to back it up and do quite a good job of doing so. Even the ones that do so more on 'faith' have a logic behind it. They believe that since the connection they feel to God is so real, it is logical to believe that it is true. I'm not saying they're right, that it is the most logical decision or that even more than a few smart people would take such a route of logic, I'm just disagreeing with you that it was not a logical decision.

Indeed I do think it's a crock of ****. And since I do, and since many others do, why should we be forced to live in society that adheres to religious principles that we don't. As I say, if you were a gay man living in a society that was still controlled by religion, you'd be miserable. And for what reason? The UK isn't like this any more, we moved on. But it's still a fact that there are Islamic states that forbid it, the deep south in America is vehemently against it. These are all due to religious influences. That is why we should be basing the laws of the land on logic and not some **** blind faith. If we have logical laws, they were created to logically take care of everyone. If religion influences everything, they are designed to only cater to the believer's. Why should the atheist's out there, those who are people that religion condemns; be forced to live in society controlled by something they don't freakin' believe in, and something that has no evidence to support a belief in? It's nonsense.

You and I aren't forced to live in a society that adheres to religious principles, so it's a moot point, we're not here to argue about the criminalization of homosexuality in other countries or having religion forced upon us. We grew up in secular societies and don't have to deal with this, and since it's what we're accustomed to, of course it would seem horrible from our perspective. Some Islamic countries continue to live in countries that follow these ideas ideas, and it should be up to the people, not to us, to make these decisions, in my opinion. This is because I ultimately believe in democratic values more than liberal values. And I don't believe we should label their values as objectively "wrong," and in many places in your writing you claim that it is objectively wrong for society or government to hold these values.

Second, you assume that liberal government is based on "logic," and that the governments of Muslim countries are based on irrational dogma, but ultimately liberalism is an ideology and a dogma. Liberalism certainly champions rationality and claims to be purely rational, but ultimately it is a philosophy based on its own values and assumptions. Sharia law is rationally based on the legal codes laid out by the Quran and Islamic scholars, and western law is rationally based on the legal codes laid out by liberal thinkers based on Enlightenment liberal philosophy. You can't rationally prove that the values and ideas of Hobbes, Locke, Kant, etc. are "correct." It is perfectly rational for some people to believe that their society should be governed by the same principles that it has for generations, and it is rational to not believe in the liberal dichotomy of public vs. private. Do I agree with this? No. But I don't think people that believe in it are inherently irrational or ignorant. These are normative value judgements, not objective right vs. objective wrong as you have portrayed it.

I never denied it didn't do this, you're still going to be ****** when there's nothing there when you die.

Nope, you'll be dead and have no consciousness, so you won't be able to be ******. But if you went through life thinking that you would go to the afterlife if you were a good, moral person, I think it would go a long way towards making you happy. Research seems to prove this.

This is what I've been saying. Religion issues control over people's lives with no evidence at all. Plus the chances that Christianity is actually correct is so, so tiny, it isn't worth your life being controlled in this way pointlessly.

There are an infinite amount of religions that existed before, exist now and will be thought of in the future. We can't prove or disprove any, so the chance of you picking the right religion to believe in is 1/infinity, which is zero. It's good to know that there are people who have been killed, who are currently seen as sinner's by their community, disowned and forced to live away from their home, over a 1/infinity chance. This isn't about fundamental ideals of liberalism or not, it's the fact that people are forced to live being unhappy due to their culture for no reason. And this isn't about the US or UK, it's about how we lived in the past, how Islamic states are now, and even the influence it has in our country's today. I'm perfectly fine with someone practising their religion in their own time, in private. I am not fine with it exerting force on other people's lives when they don't even believe in it.

In this society, religion doesn't control peoples' lives because they have religious choice. In other societies, this doesn't exist to a certain extent, but in many of these places they ultimately believe that religious institutions and customs should control society, and that without these institutions and customs, society descends into chaos. They look at the liberalism and consumerism of our countries and are disgusted by the lack of morality. It's a question of values, and in their countries, it's their choice to make, not ours. I don't believe in making them believe in liberalism, either by military force or by pressuring them to implement neoliberal economic principles, and I don't believe that their values are objectively "wrong" since they aren't based on the Enlightenment and liberalism. As for the claim that it "isn't worth your life being controlled in this way pointlessly," again this is your opinion and not theirs. Most of the world is religious and wouldn't have it any other way. And people who are religious are happier and live longer. So don't make this value judgement for them in the name of objectivity.

You claim that it isn't about the fundamentals of liberalism, but it is, this ultimately comes down to a question of values (and not rationality, as you are trying to claim). You believe in liberal government and believe that it is rationally, objectively the best form of government and superior to government that uses religious principles. Again, this is something that can't be proven, since it is a normative value judgement. You also believe that other people inherently must desire it as well. You assume that people are forced into religion when this is not the case in many places. Afghanistan and Iraq use sharia law despite the fact that we occupy these countries and abhor these practices (and went into the Middle East to begin to get rid of them, among other reasons). This is because the people desire it, they do not want a secular, liberal government, they don't buy into the liberal distinction of the public vs. private sphere, and they believe that society should be governed by traditional cultural practices. Not that crazy or radical when you think about it since this is what most people in history have desired, and the idea of secularism and atheism are new, and in the countries where these principles were adopted it took a long time: even though the US has been a secular government since the Revolution (not entirely, of course, since many churches were supported by state taxes for a while), society was still run in many ways by traditional cultural practices and it was a long time before the ideals of secularism became a huge part of the culture. We still don't even allow gay marriage, for example.

There are terrorist's influenced by Islam too, should we be tolerant of that too? Have extremist's not been arrested for preaching hate?

Since when was I arguing for the acceptance of terrorism? As far as free speech goes, it depends on the particular country...in some places, the advocation of terrorism is allowed because of their free speech, in others, speech that inspires violent behavior is not necessarily protected by free speech. In the US, I believe, blatantly inciting violent behavior or terrorism is not protected by the First Amendment. I'm not sure where I stand as far as that goes, but we're definitely not talking about that, we're talking about whether or not people are able to state their religious principles. That is definitely protected by the First Amendment, people are definitely allowed to say that homosexuality is a sin. They are simply expressing their religious views, and they are not being violent or calling for violence. Now if a preacher encouraged his congregation to kill gays, then no, it wouldn't be protected by the First Amendment. But that's definitely not the issue at hand.

If he made life unfair, makes people disadvantaged. Made it so people would be seen as sinner's in their community, then he is not a nice God, and not one I would want to believe in.

You personally believe that, most people don't though. The real world sucks because of original sin. The believers get eternal happiness in the end though, so it's pretty good, actually. Much less depressing of a worldview than atheism, where nothing really matters and in the end you die, ending your existence and consciousness. I'd say that's one reason that I don't think it's bad for people to be religious, at least it gives them hope.

The Pope also called Gay marriage an act of evil. So they're forbidden from having *** AND from expressing their love? I call that oppression. Your celibacy argument is poor. The catholic church is still trying to deny the human rights of one person due to them being gay. Even if it's "just" ***, straight people can do it, what gives the church the right to forbid it homosexually? It isn't "all that bad" their rights are still being denied, I don't see how you can defend it, I'm sure you know it's a poor argument too.

But for Catholics, it's not oppression, because we're all subject to the same morals and practices: marriage is for a man and woman, and *** is only to exist within a marriage. For the people who have more homosexual desires, this is tough, but you're supposed to get through it through prayer and self-control. If you do your best, God will probably let you into heaven. That certainly doesn't mean that you can't sin or never have *** if you want to go to heaven, because God forgives you, but the Catholic would say that you have to do your best and repent for your moral behavior. If you do so (do your best to remain celibate, or marry a woman), than you get to go to heaven. I'd say heaven is a pretty good trade-off for celibacy. I wish life were that good. Also, since when is having *** a "human right?" We live in a liberal society that protects this kind of freedom (and since I was raised in this society, I wouldn't want it any other way, although for a variety of reasons I won't get in to sometimes I think I would have been better off in a culture that wasn't like this, e.g. before the 1960's, where pre-marital *** was legal but condemned by society), and Catholics/Christians aren't calling for an end to liberalism. They aren't trying to make homosexuality illegal, they aren't trying to "forbid" it as you claim. They are simply stating their viewpoint on the position, and since I believe in free speech, I will defend their right to do so. Since you are very much a liberal, you should do the same.

God was so nice making life like this, makes me want to worship this all loving super power!!

See my answer in the paragraph before my last paragraph.

Indeed I am being hypocritical, so it's okay for extremist's to preach hate, and to threaten violence in order to get people to convert. Oh please.

It depends on what you define as "hate," but most of the time, you are allowed to express hatred. It's part of free speech. I hate the New York Yankees, the LA Lakers, one guy I went to high school with, Mario Balotelli (think he's a complete tool), Glenn Beck, a lot of parts of the Republican Party, and morcillo (don't know the word in English, but it's more or less coagulated pig's blood). I'm allowed to say this because of free speech. Now, as far as "threatening violence in order to get people to convert" goes, who was doing that here? Who does that in the US and UK? I'm pretty sure that's illegal in these countries. I obviously wasn't advocating for it. Even in strict Muslim countries this would be a violation of Sharia law, since the Quran explicitly states on so many occasions that Muslims are supposed to respect the "people of the book."

I'm not trying to take it away, practise it in private.

They are practicing in private, all they are doing is simply stating what they believe in, which is perfectly reasonable and protected by free speech in our countries. Since you are a liberal, you should believe in this. Yet it doesn't seem that you do, since you want us to be "intolerant of intolerance." Also, even doing more than practicing religion in private is protected by the First Amendment in the US. I'm not sure about what the law is in Britain (though I bet it's the same as it is in the US), but in the US, proselytizing is perfectly legal. It's annoying sometimes, but not really that much of an inconvience, you just tell them to go away. Do you not believe this is protected by freedom of speech and freedom of religion? And this is certainly a step farther than what the people in the thread were doing, they were merely stating what they believed in.

Stop twisting my words please, religion should have less influence. It's irrational, illogical and produces socially unacceptable viewpoints. As I said, why is it okay for someone to be a bigot that is protected by religion, and just a bigot. I see no difference between these apart from an artificial story, so why should religion be allowed to hold these views, when you are not allowed if you just think that? That is what I'm saying, I'm perfectly fine with opinions and free speech, just not religious doctrine influencing hate. I fail to see how this is something to condemn me for either.

Except religion doesn't have much influence in the legal systems of our countries, since they are secular (although of course they do in many indirect ways, since ultimately liberalism and secularism are products of western culture that was Christian for most of its history), and I wasn't calling for getting rid of secularism in the US and UK. As far as your second sentences goes, that is your opinion, and it is irrelevant, since our legal systems protect their right to have and express these beliefs. As far as it being "socially unacceptable," well that's by your standards. Go down to a Christian area in the US and it is socially acceptable. What is socially acceptable depends on the culture/society/community/whatever in question.

As for why is it OK for someone to be a bigot and protected by religion, it's OK for a few reasons. First of all, to clear things up, they aren't necessarily "bigots" since they don't hate gays (of course some do, but that's very anti-Christian behavior), they just think homosexuality is a sin. Second, it is OK because they have the right in our countries to hold and express these beliefs. Third, it's OK because I have sympathy for them. If their Bible/Church tells them homosexuality is a sin, and this is what they believe in, I don't blame them for it or think they're bad people. Fourth, it depends on the culture, because in many societies these viewpoints are considered 'OK.' Ultimately it depends on what 'OK' is...I know a lot of people who are bigots who aren't necessarily bad people, they just believe in the ideology of their time period. Our founding fathers were racists and had slaves...does that mean they were bad people? Not necessarily, they just believed in the ideology of the time period. And of course it assumes that 'OK' is rational and objective, which it clearly isn't, it's a normative value judgement.

I didn't say staying religious would cause us to descend into chaos, I was referring to the fact that we have to be intolerant of the intolerant, that hypocrisy must exist. Someone has to stand up and say "no, this is just wrong." They are being intolerant, but they're doing it for the right reason. A murderer was intolerant of someone's right to live, should we be tolerant of them? You're saying everyone should be able to do whatever the **** they want because they have freedom and opinions, this is why society would descend into chaos. I can't believe you can deny that either.

Well you said if we weren't intolerant of the intolerant, society would descend into chaos. Since the Catholic Church has its position on homosexuality and probably won't change it, at least for a long time (the textual evidence for it as well as the tradition is too strong, and it takes a long, long time for the Catholic Church to move, make changes, and get things done, since it's a 2000 year old institution), most Protestants probably won't change their mind either, and I doubt Muslims would either (won't comment on the Hindus since I don't know anything about their religion), Confucians won't allow it (although this religion/culture/whatever you want to call it is dying out)...you're basically calling for us to be intolerant of religions and their viewpoints, which is something I don't agree with.

Also, this along with much of what you have said implies that if society is influenced by religion it will descend into chaos (you seem to be very against the idea of religion influencing society). Society was inseparable from religion for most of history, and secularism and atheism are recent concepts (the only time and place atheism has been prevalent is in western Europe since they 60's or so), so I don't think influence from religion will cause society to descend into chaos. For example, the US, although it has a secular government, has a very religious society, and it is not "intolerant of the intolerant" since many people believe that homosexuality is a sin, and in many regions this belief is perfectly acceptable. Do I like this? No. But I don't think our society lives in chaos because it is less liberal and more religious than Britain's.

Also, your murderer argument is a very poor example. A murderer violates someone's right to live, which is illegal in our countries since our legal system has the idea of the right to life. Believing in Christianity and that homosexuality is a sin and stating your beliefs is not a violation of anyone's rights, and it is protected by the freedoms of religion and conscious. I never said anywhere that "should be able to do whatever the **** they want because they have freedom and opinions, this is why society would descend into chaos." I'm not calling for an end to law, I'm just arguing that we should follow the laws in our own countries, and in our countries, Christians' right to believe that homosexuality is a sin and to state this belief is protected by our laws. In the case of other countries, I believe they should be able to decide their own legality and not have western, liberal, secular values forced upon them, or declare that their own customs and values are objectively "wrong, and that our liberal, secular, Enlightenment values are objectively "right."

It is irrational. Fact. I have always said practise it in your own place, I never said I wanted to get rid of it. You're reading FAR too much into what I say and basing everything on inference rather than what I've actually put. My whole arguments before were that society's laws should be run by logic and not by blind faith in a religion. Would you prefer to live in a place where schools teach the Earth is flat, or where we logically teach what we have evidence to support? That is all I'm saying, I'm perfectly fine with religion's existence, just don't force it on me.

It may be irrational for you, but many people don't believe they are being irrational. You have said "practice it in your own place," but our law does more than that. You can practice religion in public, you can express your views, you can even proselytize. This is protected by our legal systems, and I support their right to do so. As for you never saying you want to get rid of it, you've basically been saying this all over more or less. You've said that religion is irrational and illogical and that society shouldn't be based on these principles (not just government, in many cases you said society), which by implication means that people shouldn't be religious...sure, they could be religious in their own time, but part of being religious is being part of a religious society that shares your beliefs. Such a society will be influenced by religion. Also, I don't believe that society or society's laws (as you claim in the quote above) necessarily shouldn't be influenced by religion. This is a question of values, of course (not rationality, which you seem to believe it is), and I value democracy over secularism and liberalism. I don't think people should be forced into liberalism, or that we should look down upon them for not having a secular society.

Additionally, your entire tract of thought has been more or less that "religion is bad." I'm not claiming that you are trying to make atheism forcible by law, but I am disagreeing with you that they should only be allowed to hold their beliefs "in private": they should be allowed to worship in public, express their viewpoints in public, and proselytize in public (in this sense, they sort of can force it on you, but obviously not by force, which would be illegal, and anyways, no one was forcing their beliefs on you in any of these threads, they simply stated their beliefs, something that many people found offensive). The US protects these rights and our political and legal philosophies do as well. I also disagree with your idea that religion is "bad," I'm not sure if it's good or bad and I doubt we can make such a sweeping claim, but instinctively, at this point in my life I'm quicker to say it's good than bad. Of course this is a question of values, not empiricism.

And as far as teaching science in schools, our governments are secular and don't teach religion or creationism, and since we have those values, I'm not disagreeing with this. If people want to go to religious schooling though, they're more than welcome to, and if a society desires its government funded schools to be religious (as is the case in some countries), they can make that decision. I personally might not want to go to such a school (although it may not be such a bad thing, I went to Catholic school as an atheist), but I don't believe in making these objective statements that such an idea is wrong.

Oh, and as far as reading in to what you said goes, you have to be more specific as to where I have done that. At times I may be arguing with what your arguments mean by implication, and that's something that people do to demonstrate the fallacies of their logic. One has to do this though when the other person is unclear. I think at several points you were a bit unclear as to what exactly you were arguing. For example, what you meant by "being intolerant of intolerance" was never very clear, and one could go wild with the implications of such a statement.

That's a Religion vs. Science argument not a social one. I'm atheist, I'm putting forth arguments why religion doesn't need to exist. This in no way means I'm saying get rid of it, and it's starting to **** me off that you keep making me out to look like some evil dictator. I could put forth arguments why everyone should buy an Audi, doesn't mean I want everyone to get rid of a BMW does it?

Already answered this more or less, I'm not claiming you're calling for laws that force people to be atheist, but you seem to not want people to express their views in public, and you're whole "intolerance of intolerance" seems to call for us as a society to get rid of religion. You have claimed many times that religion is inherently "bad" and that government and society shouldn't base their principles on it, and this is more or less what I'm disagreeing with. I don't think religion is inherently bad (or that we can make such a sweeing claim), and I don't think we can objectively claim that society shouldn't be based on religious principles, since it is a value judgement. Our societies are secular and I believe in secularism, so I'm glad they are the way they are, but I don't think this is a question of rationality or objectivity, it's a question of values. I personally value democracy over liberalism/secularism, but that too is a question of values. You value liberalism and secularism very, very much, which I'm fine with, but it's when you claim that this is rational and not a question of values, and that all societies should be founded upon these values, that I disagree with you.

And it isn't a Religion vs. Science argument, it is a social one. This debate started in the homosexuality in sports thread, and I'm not trying to prove/disprove the existence of God. The fact that you perceive this as a Religion vs. Science argument shows your very problem. You think the questions of whether or not religion is "good," whether or not countries/societies should adopt the liberal, secular values of the Enlightenment, are questions of Science and Rationality. But they aren't. These are normative value questions. Liberals such as yourself, because their philosophy is straight out of the Enlightenment, have an incredible amount of faith in rationality and in the rationality and objective truth of their own philosophy. But of course their own philosophy is based on certain philosophical assumptions that are founded upon inherent value decisions, as are everyone's. It's not that I'm claiming that you're "wrong" or necessarily that I even disagree with you in your values, because I do too believe (somewhat, not dogmatically) in the Enlightenment and liberalism, and I'm a pretty big fan of secularism, but I'm not trying to pass this off as objectively correct or inherently rational, and I'm not making claims that all societies should follow my values. Also, I believe in democracy or popular sovereignty more or less, at least more than liberalism, so that's another reason I have disagreed with your notion that all countries should be secular and liberal.

2000 years ago the Earth had been around for 2000 years and was flat. Show me a Christian that believes that now.

My main gripe with religion is that it teaches to be unsatisfied with not knowing, some are fine with that. I am not.

As for the first part, I'm not exactly sure what it's an argument for. Most Christians don't reject science or rationality, they just believe in its limits and that it doesn't entirely explain the world (and it doesn't, any prudent scientist would tell you how much they don't know), and they also believe in God and their religion. They think some things may be explained by science (such as the earth being round). They don't think everything is though. But it's a bit off topic, since it's not like I'm trying to prove religion or anything.

As for the second part, that's fine with me, why does it bother you so much than that other people are religious? You seem to be pretty annoyed that people don't place as much faith in rationality and science as you do. Also, you have done more than claim it's just your gripe, you have made sweeping claims about society and that it shouldn't have religious values, and that religion is somehow objectively "bad" in many ways.

Just so you know, I do Physics at college, and want to study it further at University, so your clever little "They seem to grasp how little we know much better than the economist who thinks he can disprove the existence of God." remark is stupid. And you think I don't comprehend the size of the universe? I know that current estimates show that there are 500 billion galaxies in the universe alone, and we haven't even ventured past our own solar system. There are roughly 300 billion stars per galaxy (given estimates on our galaxy and others we can see.) So there are 1.5*10^19 possible orbital systems where other life can exist. Given a conservative estimate of 4 stars per planet, there's 6*10^19 possibilities for other life to exist. This other life is most likely to have other religions too, you know? The chances of one of our religions to be correct is slim, very slim. I also know that there are theists within Physics and Science. I also know that the majority aren't. Just because a theist exists in Science proves nothing. I accept that there may be a "greater being", most scientist's do. Hawking did until very recently. But a mythological book? Most see past that. Most Physicists that are theist adhere to its principles rather than its teachings on creation. If you want to casually throw insulting remarks in, then I can't be bothered arguing.

A few things here. First of all, as for the science part, I wasn't claiming you didn't understand the size of the universe, nor that physicists didn't. That's only a small part of the universe and how it works. Most of the universe is comprised of dark matter or energy, which we don't even begin to understand. I was simply making the claim that no one understands how the universe works, and physicists know this better than anyone, which is why more of them are theists than any of the disciplines in math or science. Taking this into account, believing in God isn't as ridiculous as your claim. Not sure what the drake equation has to do with any of this, and if life exists elsewhere, than a lot of it should, right, because the size of the universe? If so, why haven't they visited us? Of course this is entirely relevant to our discussion. Sure you've studied physics in high school, and may plan on doing so in college, but if the leading physicists in the world claim to know very little of how the universe works, I doubt you do. So to get offended at something like this is quite an overreaction. And it's not a "stupid" remark either, since it's a remark that physicists/astronomers would agree with.

As for the next part, when I referred to the economist not knowing the nature of the universe, I wasn't even referring to you. I was just referring to the fact that people in the social sciences, especially economists, are very atheistic and seem to believe that they know how the universe works, when they really don't. I do find it amusing that you immediately assumed when I said "economist" I was referring to you...an economist would be someone who is paid for his economic analysis in some way or another...aren't you like 18 and a student? Also, not sure how this is even an insult, either calling you an economist or saying that you don't know how the universe works. If the leading physicists don't know how the universe works, I don't mind telling a high schooler who has taken one physics class in his life that he doesn't know how it works. And I don't think anything I've said is insulting, definitely not as insulting/belittling as some of the remarks you have made about religion...not that I mind or feel insulted (though I'm sure some religious people would). I'm not chastising you for it, it's the internet for one thing, but don't accuse me of being insulting. TBH I think you're being insecure.

I frankly can't be bothered to reply to the rest now, you're repeating yourself over and over again. I don't believe in getting rid of religion, I accept people may believe in what they like, I accept we all have freedom. I do not accept religion imposing itself on society, telling us what to behave like. I'm atheist, I don't believe I should be forced to live by religious principles. That is all I have said, the rest is my typical atheistic statements against God, which most atheist's do as well. I don't see why you are trying so hard to make it seem like because I said them, I'm non-liberal and taking away people's rights.

Well yeah, that's because my argument is usually the same to many of your posts. We're generally repeating the same thing, you have your liberal values and I have my own, and that's what this comes down to. Over and over again you make claims about religion, liberalism, and secularism that are value judgements and not objective truths, but you seem to claim that they are. You also make claims of how Christians are allowed to express their religion, which I think fundamentally violate our principles and are legal systems, which is more of an objective question on which I think you are incorrect.

Again, I'm not claiming you're claiming you want to force people to be atheist, but you certainly seem to believe it is inherently "bad" and you want to discourage it. You also want to confine it to the private sphere as much as possible, which I believe violates our liberal principles and as well as legality (you are allowed to be religious in public in our countries). You also seem to think that secularism is an inherently "good" principle that everyone should base their societies and governments on, which is a value judgement, not an objective truth as you seem to think it is.

As far as religion "imposing itself on society, telling us what to behave like," that's what religion has to do. If it didn't, it would be meaningless. People desire to have a set of values and moral principles that they must follow, that their community follows. This is a human need, and it's why people cling to religion despite all of the scientific evidence/education that tells us it is a crock of ****. If religion didn't tell us what to behave like, it would have no purpose. All religions offer us a moral code, they tell us what to behave like. This is what religions do, it is close to the very heart of religion. Because we believe in the freedom of religion and speech, religious people are allowed to voice their beliefs. They are allowed to tell us what their religion tells them, what its rules are, how it believes individuals and societies should act.

Are they allowed to force these beliefs on us? Make laws based on these beliefs? Not in our countries, and no one in the homosexuality thread was doing so, neither do most Christians in our countries. In my country, many of them want our government to be influenced by Christianity, but it's something that's relatively harmless since ultimately such decisions are left to the courts, who are secular and liberal. You claimed that you didn't want to have these beliefs "forced on you," and they aren't and can't be in our countries. The only thing that happened in the thread was that people stated their beliefs, which offended the PC crowd, who don't like to hear dissenting opinions (yet they claim to be tolerant). In other countries, religions do impose on the people and tell them how to act in a much stronger way since their legal systems are based on these religions. But that's up to them, not us, ultimately, and it's a value judgement. You can't objectively claim that secularism is "correct" and that they should adopt these principles.

As for you being anti-liberal, many of your statements have seemed anti-liberal. "Intolerance of the intolerant" seemed very anti-liberal, as was you telling us that we shouldn't accept the viewpoints of Christians who thought homosexual behavior was a sin, especially since tolerance (what you were claiming to uphold) is very much a liberal value...these beliefs and their expression (verbal and written) are protected by liberal rights. You also claimed that religion should be "kept in private" and that the religious "shouldn't be allowed to preach hate" (I'm assuming you categorized preaching that homosexuality is a sin as preaching hate), and since you were making these claims in response to people in the other thread simply stating their view that homosexual behaviors were a sin according to their religions, it sounds like you don't want people to be able to make these claims in public. That sounds pretty illbiberal to me.

 

[GodCubed]

My scrollbar has disappeared thanks to this page. oO)

 

[ajt09]

My scrollbar has disappeared thanks to this page. oO)

When I found this was still going on, nearly floored me oO) lol

 

[GodCubed]

When I found this was still going on, nearly floored me oO) lol

From what I can gather, they agree, too.