would you really say racism has been tackled(sorry to open up a whole new can of worms)(i hate racism by the way) i would just say a lot of people have taken their racism into the closet
This is exactly my point. Thanks to political correctness and "being intolerant of intolerance," people shove their prejudiced views under the carpet and pretend they don't have them when they really do. I would way rather prefer people to be open and honest. Racism and prejudice are much more dangerous when they are not in the open. The very type of dialogue we are engaging in right now is also much more useful when people are honest about their beliefs, and we are discouraging honesty.
Because if we are tolerant with the intolerant then society is never going to advance?
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. But this belongs in the "Do you believe in God?" thread. It's a shame the debates in there never got to the condemning of homosexuality, would have been interesting.
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.
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. I won't dislike a person for being religious, and discriminate against them for being religious.
We're not truly free, we never will. Get used to it.
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.
Er, since when did he say anything about not accepting people with religious beliefs? We, unlike you, are tolerant and think that anyone can be allowed to believe what they like and won't judge them for it.
This is categorically not a free country. Ever heard of laws?
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,
Read my post at the top of the page. I called the concept of religion dictating lives based on nothing ridiculous. I have nothing wrong with people practising religion, it's their choice.
Why should the atheistic homosexual be discriminated against by the heterosexual catholic? What gives religion the right to dictate how a person lives their life, when religion is a choice, not law.
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.
