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High schools should start recommending to students that they need to consider psychology as a career choice. There will be a lot of demand for therapists since the depression and suicide stats are going to keep going up as a result. No God = no hope. Funny, guess where the stats are high? Netherlands and France, same places that promote atheism and SSM.
You need to demonstrate causality, Jeff. You can't merely take two random sets of statistics, plonk them together, and expect anyone to simply accept that one causes the other.
Go look up the information on post hoc fallacies because you just committed one.
Oh yeah, and LOL! because you're wrong.
France ranks 26th in the world for highest suicide rate; the Netherlands ranks 53rd, lower than the "Christian" United States.
In fact, nearly ALL of the secular/atheist nations have lower suicide rates than "Christian America."
Britain, New Zealand, Sweden, Norway, Belgium, Netherlands, Denmark, China, etc. etc. The only secular nation with higher suicide rates than America is Japan. The rest of the nations with high suicide rates are those unstable, war-torn, and impoverished Eastern European nations in the Balkans - and a few African nations being torn apart by war and holocaust conditions. Japan's suicide rate doesn't come from a lack of faith but by the way its education system is handled - pass a test or forever be limited to low-end jobs. Those who fail often take a swan dive off a building or go into Aokigahara Forest, known as the "Suicide Forest," to hang themselves, take poison, or whatever.
I'm still waiting for you to explain why STDs are a valid reason to deny gays the right to marry. Almost 300 posts later and my question still hasn't been answered.
To play devils avocado on this, he has actually answered it. It was just that the answer was fantastically unsubstantiated.
His answer is that SSM would promote the "Gay Lifestyle" and lead to an actual increase in the quantity of anal sex in the world, and hence a proportional increase in STD.
That. Is. Literally. His. Answer.
Of course as I said this answer is massively unsubstantiated.
1) He gives no evidence that such an increase would occur. It just will because.... well I am sure he has another secret "100 proofs".
2) He appears to give no thought to the fact that homosexuals are already engaging in sex. No argument there to think SSM will cause an increase in it. It is already happening.
3) The promotion of marriage is the promotion of the ideal of fidelity. Yet he shows no expectation, no matter how small, that this would therefore result in a reduction of promiscuity and sex. Because in his world homosexuals are not even capable of the type of commitment we are.
4) He seems to think, also without substance, that promotion of the "Gay Lifestyle" will cause more people to actually turn gay. Yet not once has he ever shown that people get "turned gay" later in life.
So yea, his position is SSM will cause an increase in not just anal sex, but the number of people identifying as gay.... hence an increase in STDs.... hence an increase in the pressure on his Tax Dollar in the Health System.
All, as I said, fantastical nonsense he has merely invented without a modicum of an iota of substantiation.
The least religious people I've encountered almost always come off as bitter, sarcastic, rude and just plain mean. Even more revealing, they feel the need to form their own churches which shows that they have a void in life. Some try to fill that void with money or a career, but it never satisfies. Only faith in Christ does. If atheists were so happy with life why do they spend all day online attacking Christians? And almost always selectively Christians.
Lie.
Because that's not how the real world works. Unless you hand everyone you meet a questionnaire about their religiosity. Sure, perhaps a few people you know well have told you what they believe, but for the most part, there's no way you can know the religious views of the majority of people you encounter.
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Originally Posted by jeffbase40
Having no hope in life will cause depression in anyone.
Hope for what? Eternal servitude to a needy, immature, egotistical supreme being while being locked in a heaven that wasn't even designed with me in mind? We don't need religion to have hope, Jeff. I can still hope for something to exist beyond the veil without having to hope for an eternity on my knees praising god and singing hymns.
Quote:
Originally Posted by jeffbase40
It's easy to say life outside of religion is great until life throws you a big nasty curveball. Do you think the Boston bomber victims are loving life? Knowing they will never walk again?
Hello! Remember me? The person who lives every single day in pain, the person who can barely walk to the kitchen or the bathroom? I spent all day yesterday hooked up to machines that virtually electrocuted me half to death. What fun that was.
So let's not go down the "life throws you a curveball" road because, here I am, one of the biggest atheists on this board, and you don't see me running for the nearest church. I do just fine without bowing to someone else's imagination, thanks.
Quote:
Originally Posted by jeffbase40
That the only thing in their future is never walking and then one day not existing?
What's the point of being able to walk if you spend your time in heaven kneeling to a god?
Quote:
Originally Posted by jeffbase40
If you think the only thing in your future is more days of intense physical pain, I can understand why they would resort to suicide. It's very sad.
LOL! Do you really think that everyone who commits suicide are atheists? Man, you need to get out more.
Yea that perfectly explains why you feel the need to come here and make anger fuel disparaging comments about the Bible and our faith! I don't believe Zeus exists. But I never wasted a second arguing with Zeus followers or desperately trying to find contradictions in Greek mythology texts. Atheists waste hours and hours of their time trying to tear down a faith where the central message is one of love, hope and forgiveness.
That's only because 70% or more of Americans aren't Zeus worshipers. If you belonged to a tiny minority that is loathed, mistrusted, misrepresented, disparaged, and accused of heinous things by preachers and people on national television (especially on Fox News) you'd be singing a different tune. If Zeus worship was the dominant religion and Christians represented only 5% of the total population - and you found that Zeus worshipers were often turning their pagan beliefs into national law while monopolizing the airwaves to insult you, you wouldn't be sitting here saying what you're saying.
Try walking in someone else's shoes for awhile before saying something like that.
I don't need convincing. If nothing else, your responses have only served to strengthen my faith and prove the Bible. Good job on that.
"You will be hated by everyone because of me, but the one who stands firm to the end will be saved."
Matthew 10:22
Sure, you go right on believing that you're better than everyone else. It almost always comes out in the end if you push long enough. It's one of the pillars of fundamentalism - this belief that YOU will be saved and everyone else will be tortured (yay!) for all eternity (woot!).
It's one of the things that makes fundamentalism so loathsome to many people - even other Christians.
When fundamentalists run out of steam and can no longer argue down Christianity's detractors, fundamentalists always go running to that verse, thinking "Muahahaha, they'll get their 'just reward' in the end! Muahahahaha!"
It makes me sometimes hope that we all end up standing in front of Shiva to be judged ... just to see the fundamentalists get taken down a couple of pegs. But nah, wishing that would make me no better than the fundamentalists. So I don't. Not really.
Homosexuality is a sexual sin. The Bible says we are to flee from sexually immorality. I wouldn't give a thumbs up and say nothing if I had a neighbor who engaged in necrophilia in public view either.
Hello! Remember me? The person who lives every single day in pain, the person who can barely walk to the kitchen or the bathroom? I spent all day yesterday hooked up to machines that virtually electrocuted me half to death. What fun that was.
So let's not go down the "life throws you a curveball" road because, here I am, one of the biggest atheists on this board, and you don't see me running for the nearest church. I do just fine without bowing to someone else's imagination, thanks.
<snip>
Shirina, you are not the only regular member of the Religion & Spirituality forums that has experienced life changing health issues. I've come to know of several that have been through life threatening illnesses and injuries, and some that live with chronic pain (perhaps like you do). Some have let it be known in the forums, but some have chosen to keep that information private. Like you, there are others here that have daily pain and serious health issues that are not religious. I don't think any of them are seriously depressed or suicidal either.
Great, then atheists should have no problem conducting a friendly mockery free respectful discussion even though we disagree, right?
Have you ever sat down and actually thought about why it is you seem to generate mockery and disrespect? Something other than, "You hate Christians!" or "You hate God!"?
What you fail to understand is that quite a few of your religious beliefs are quite repugnant to the average person; keep in mind that fundamentalism is not the "average" belief system. Fundamentalism is a very squeaky, albeit rather small, wheel. When you display a tenacious belief in ideas and concepts that can make a billy goat puke (thanks, Rambo), you're going to get a lot of crap thrown your way.
You're allowed to have whatever belief you want, but you can't expect everyone - or anyone - to respect it.
Last edited by Shirina; 05-13-2015 at 06:53 AM..
Reason: My original post showed me an ancient prophecy that posts with typos would be deleted. Wow, it was right!
Shirina, you are not the only regular member of the Religion & Spirituality forums that has experienced life changing health issues. I've come to know of several that have been through life threatening illnesses and injuries, and some that live with chronic pain (perhaps like you do). Some have let it be known in the forums, but some have chosen to keep that information private. Like you, there are others here that have daily pain and serious health issues that are not religious. I don't think any of them are seriously depressed or suicidal either.
Yep, exactly. There are a lot of us out there who are atheists - some quite militant - who have been thrown some pretty severe curveballs (as Jeff refers to health issues).
For some, those very same issues were what caused a loss of faith to begin with. Not all of us are Job; we simply cannot believe in a God who would watch with either malicious glee or stoic apathy as we suffer day after day. One may as well worship her own torturer.
3) The promotion of marriage is the promotion of the ideal of fidelity. Yet he shows no expectation, no matter how small, that this would therefore result in a reduction of promiscuity and sex. Because in his world homosexuals are not even capable of the type of commitment we are.
I can verify that this meme was strongly pushed when I was an evangelical. In particular, oddly, for gay men. In fact as an adolescent I though of homosexuality entirely in terms of gay men for all practical purposes. At some level I knew there were lesbians (distant news reports occasionally made it to the midwest from the hinterlands of San Francisco), but they never got any attention. What I heard from multiple sources was that gay men are 100% about furtive sexual encounters in public bathrooms and freeway rest areas because all they care about is their next "hit". It was depicted in the most degrading, hopeless and furtive terms imaginable. They were all degenerate "Moldy Marvins" to us. From there it was a short distance to accusing them or "recruiting" hapless young people, as if they had a magic button to activate some latent "gay-ness" in otherwise unsullied youth, by simply groping their ankle under a bathroom stall partition and saying something salacious.
In truth, that such a silly fear could exist in their minds, is all the proof I need that 90% of this rhetoric came from closeted gay Christian fundamentalist men, fighting mightily against such fantasies created by their own minds.
No one ever stopped to think that there was way more to the sex lives of gay men than what we were choosing to focus on. Or that to the extent this caricature was true of gay men, that it might have a systemic cause in the very gay-hostile environment that we were fostering. Just as today it's NEVER assumed that SSM would discourage promiscuity and encourage devotion and loyalty. Because after all these people are ee-vee-ill and therefore incapable of virtuous behavior; why there's nothing there to even work with!! Unlike Christians, who, should they ever stray sexually from the approved, are simply guilty of a lapse and need forgiveness and encouragement. Unless, that is, the WAY they stray is into homosexuality, at which point if it were legal, they'd be burned at the stake.
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