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What did Jesus say? Oh yes, "Who would cast the first stone?"
You misunderstand my intentions and reasons. I pointed them out in the above response , but again, its not about casting stones or name calling, its about being a part of an exchange that I deem not to have sincere intentions regarding the discussions. You are free to contribute to his " harvest" , or whatever term he used towards gathering reactions from posters to his wild statements all you wish. I simply choose not to be a part of that and limit my time here to those with sincere intentions about what they discuss.
First of all, BOO! for not using the "quote" feature properly and instead writing your replies inside of a quote box. That makes it much harder to keep responses organized. I had to open a second window, log into a second instance of City-Data, quote your post in the original window, and use the second window to copy/paste what you wrote back into the first window. See what I mean? It's a big PITA.
I had to respond to his chopped up quotes. Trust me, it's actually simpler to copypaste.
The problem with religion is that it has always been a primary motivator to get men and women to fight wars for the wealthy and powerful. Obviously no one is going to rush off to die if the king, president, or prime minister says, "Go off and fight to make me richer!"
No argument there.
Nope ... but tell the population that their religion is under attack and boy oh boy, watch the reaction. It's like kicking open a fire ant mound. Some people become absolutely rabid at this idea even to the point of becoming irrational (like, eh, 911). The Islamic dictators have been doing this for years, telling the population that their plight is all because of Western influence and the West's attack on Islam when, in fact, their plight was due to the brutal, oppressive regime of autocratic and dictatorial imams and power-mad fundamentalists.
There either. I've seen fundie bastard crow about the threat to marriage. The threat to marriage is divorce. Gays want to HAVE marriages.
And ... it's still happening here in the good ol' USA. That's why you have fundamentalists on this board and in the meat world proclaiming to anyone willing to listen how their religion is "under attack" by atheists and secularists and how we atheists just want to destroy Christianity and burn Bibles and how we hate Christians and that we're going to put them all in death camps and how we're going to be responsible for the demise of America, the world, the Milky Way, and the universe -- including all possible parallel universes and all 11 dimensions.
Yeah, that's the fundamentalist propaganda machine in overdrive, preaching that kind of crap. Yet people still believe in it. Unfortunately, fundamentalists are almost always politically right-leaning, and the political right has always had the best propaganda apparatus.
Again, almost preaching to the choir. I belong to moderate/liberal churches. We actually for the most part, like human rights.
No. Actual religion is about control. Morality is merely the way in which people are manipulated into obedience. "Do this or God will be angry!" (cue earthquake that happens some indeterminate amount of time later) "See? I told you God will be angry, now obey!"
I'm sorry you feel that way. And believe me, I've seen it (been in a cult, been in several fundie churches). But it can also be about self-discipline. My experience with religion was growing up having people tell me that stuff that I was doing (being trans, or just in general) was sinful and wrong. Then about 2 years ago, I realized there was alot to be said for religion that taught you to love yourself.
As an atheist, it is so clear. God, or the concept of God, has ALWAYS been that which cows people into obedience. You could get a person to sleep standing on their heads and eat bat guano for breakfast if you tell him that's what God wants. And if they DON'T obey, just wait for the next available disaster or personal tragedy which will inevitably happen at some point, then say, "See? I told you so. Listen to God next time."
I'm sorry you're so cynical about religion. But frankly, the fact of the matter is, we get to pick our religion. This is what freedom of religion is, not freedom from religion, but being able to choose whether or not we wanna go, what we wanna worship, and just decide how we interpret our faith. Organized religion can be oppressive. But there is such a thing as spirituality. I guess by "religion" I actually mean "moral compass" a code of conduct that keeps you from killing random people. It doesn't have to be other-imposed, but it needs to be real.
And since there is no God to trumpet from the heavens about how our earthly rulers are getting it wrong, people will just assume that our earthly rulers (i.e. preachers, pastors, imams, rabbis, and whoever else) are 100% correct in what they say.
Yeah, I guess that's why America the Christian Nation spends more on its military than the next 20 nations combined -- and why we seem to get ourselves into a war every 10 years or so. Sorry to disappoint you but religious nations have always been the most violent and warlike. Strange, isn't it, that America, with roughly the same degree of religiosity as many Islamic nations in the Middle East ... always seems to be fighting with Muslims! Hmm .... 2+2= .... what, again?
Even on an individual basis, even the slightest whisper about violating the 2nd Amendment will incur the wrath of right-wing Christians from coast to coast, border to border. The right to bear arms is the most important right that we have -- or so many Christians seem to imply. Obviously, the 1st Amendment isn't all that important unless they're the ones getting censored. If it's all about "turning the other cheek," why are there enough guns in America to arm every man, woman, and child in the country? And those are just the registered ones!
The FACTS are against you, bulmabriefs. It is what it is.
You're not speaking facts, you're talking vitriol and personal opinion. Facts are sources, proofs, stuff like that.
It's easy to loathe someone ELSE's religion, isn't it? You do realize, of course, that all of this blather about virgins and paradise and great things happening to those who martyr themselves is just a bunch of bunk, right? And I don't mean that because I think all religions are bunk. No, I mean none of that is in the Qu'ran. Just like wearing those awful burqas is not in the Qu'ran. In fact, the Qu'ran is more liberal about female modesty than the Bible.
Essentially, the implication is that if women dressed as westerners do, they are basically offering themselves up for rape. Don't speak about something you know nothing about.
Oh, and btw, someone mentioned slavery earlier. I didn't wanna mention this but...
I'm not here to defend Islam, but I did want to point out how this is a prime example of how religion is used to control. Those suicide bombers, those terrorists, are being manipulated from cradle to grave to believe that they're making Allah happy by slaughtering innocent civilians indiscriminately. You won't see a person like Osama bin Laden putting on a bomb and blowing himself up. Of course not ... religion is being used by the power-elite to control both the masses and, more importantly, another generation of fanatics willing to martyr themselves for their God.
Thanks for making my point for me!
There is control groups in religion. Yet religion can also edify. Ask the average Wiccan, Taoist, or Buddhist if they feel oppressed. Some religion can be very self-motivated, and can make people truly happy. This is how religion should be. Just not how it always is.
That's ridiculous. Do you see scientists protesting the fact that we're all still alive? "Why haven't you people nuked yourselves yet? Dammit, we scientists invented nukes because we were hoping all along that you'd be too dumb not to use them! And yet, here we still are. Alive."
You don't have to be overt to convince people to have abortions. To convince people that that we are flooding the land, and are a plague on the Earth, etc, etc, etc. All you have to do is have a few people preach some pseudoscience about how in 50 years, population will hit 50 billion and we'll starve.
No we won't.
We are currently at like 7 billion. A large portion of this is either young children or the elderly.
Elderly people are even sometimes on life support, skewing this result.
As for young people, the countries with the highest birth rate are also the countries with the worst survival rate (undeveloped parts of Africa, for instance). This also skews the result, as these people may not survive to adulthood, using few of Earth's resources.
What is an actual issue is the rate of pollution per person (I'm definitely guilty of it too, we burn some stuff cuz gardening).
What is also true is gross mismanagement of agriculture. Cattle could be fed hay or grass, and we could feed several nations on the corn this country produces. Instead, the bulk of it winds up as: cattle feed, High Fructose Corn Syrup (running out of uses, I guess without doing the obvious and exporting), ethanol (which, btw, is actually more wasteful because fuel is used to transport, and it produces ethanol at only 2:1 versus about 14:1 for kelp), trans fat, and vegetable oil. This is just one crop. Don't get me started on how much water Al Gore mentioned it take to raise iceberg lettuce.
And that IS what you just said regardless of what you may have MEANT to say.
In any case, it's pretty plain to every working-class person who is sick in America that enough Christians in THIS country do not think every life is sacred. In fact, how sacred your life is in America seems to depend mostly on how much money you have. Otherwise, we'd have universal, socialized health care like every other country worth talking about. Yet strange, isn't it, how America is SO Christian yet you'll hear every right-wing Christian who wears his religion on his sleeve fight tooth and nail to make sure we DON'T have universal health care. That way, the 101,000 Americans who die every year due to crappy access to quality health care can just curl up and die. (Babies still in the womb are exempt from this policy and any amount of taxpayer money can be used to help a woman give birth -- with such funding to be cut-off the moment a doctor hears the baby's birth cry.)
You are talking about Republicans (which is a wide group), not necessarily Christians. But you wouldn't be the first to accuse Christians of hypocrisy, and be right. There are in fact liberal Christians, and moderate ones.
Uh ... explain to me, please, why the secular, quasi-socialist nations are kicking America's butt in just about every category? Oh sure, we still have the strongest military and the best colleges, but in every other category, the secular nations win hands down. America doesn't even rank in the top 10 anymore. Not even in the "standard of living" category.
And yet ... you talk about industrialization and polluting yet who is it, again, who gets SO upset about climate change and any initiative or government regulation to curb pollution? Oh right ... it's those dratted right-wing Christians again. Damn, and just when you probably thought there's no way they could be blamed for pollution!! Ahh, but yes, they're still the ones in denial over climate change and absolutely REFUSE to accept the fact that we ARE destroying the planet. Hell, it was actually made a CRIME to talk about climate change in North Carolina's outer banks region. They were afraid it might scare away the tourists.
Again, Republicans. Denial of climate change when it is so obvious shooting industrial chemicals in the air is not a good idea. Birth control can be blamed on many Democrats (but mentioning the A-word is an instant threat lock, so we're not going there)
Wow, really? REALLY?
Have you ever owned a horse, bulmabriefs? Do you have ANY idea how much work is entailed when maintaining a horse? A car can just sit in the driveway -- rain or shine, cold, hot, snow, sleet, or hail. And you don't need a stable and a big patch of pasture. With cars, they only need fuel when you drive it, unlike a horse that needs fed constantly whether you ride it or not. And we won't even get into the cost of things like saddles, bridles, tack and harness, shoeing, regular physical exams, etc. etc.
As a matter of fact, our neighbor has a horse. They're like large goofy pets. A car cannot just sit in the driveway. It has to be driven, or the oil clogs. And my car, a 1995 Buick LeSaber seems hell-bent on making noises like it's going to fail in some way, causing huge expenses. I think I'd have less headache having a live animal that ate basically the same oatmeal I do. And some of that is excess crap (you can certainly ride bareback, and in the age of horses, the average person could tell when the horse needed rest/care and it was cheaper because everyone knew about horses).
I've never owned a horse myself but I dated someone who did ... and that horse was so much damn work that I felt like I was dating the horse (I think I saw more of it than I did him). I did get to ride a few times, though ... which brings me to another point. You need some very specialized knowledge to keep a horse healthy and learning to ride is actually more difficult than learning to drive. A car does only what you tell it to do, but a horse has its own will and can do what IT wants to do even when you want it to do something different.
Plus, I live in Amish country. And there are piles of horse crap EVERYWHERE along the road. You practically have to ride the center line to avoid hitting one of those manure piles and having your tires spray it up into your car's wheel well. Nothing like the stink of drying manure and your car smelling like a horse stall.
Here we can agree, though I'd take a plastic heart if it kept me alive. I'm not going to die for some "back to nature" cause. As for suburban sprawl, well, that's part of the overpopulation problem. Sure we could stop sprawling, but then we'd all have to live in these massive high-rise apartments, each of us living on top of each other with no lawn or green areas we can call our own. Having to share green spaces with strangers kind of stinks -- especially if the other people are being obnoxious.
However, I personally think cellphones and iPads are wrecking the human condition. I actually feel sorry for kids growing up today because the only memories they'll have of their youth is texting, Facebooking, and Tweeting. Very little seems to occur in the real world. I feel as if I dodged a bullet by being a part of the very last generation that actually ran around outside, did physical things, kept physically fit, and wow, actually hung out with friends face-to-face and in the real world!
You obviously haven't lived alone in a small town. Being able to Facebook people from your old towns is a lifeline. Yes, there are paradoxically socially-inept social networkers. But it is also a boon for a culture that has cut itself off in too many other ways.
Now, between this constant need to be "plugged in" and overblown fears of "stranger danger" (thanks, media, for destroying childhoods), people "socialize" by logging in instead of going out.
Um ... the government, perhaps? What you're suggesting here is that religion be used as a way to coax obedience from the masses concerning the environment -- which, of course, only proves one of my initial points (again).
Yes, and we should really trust our governments.
Supposedly, I have been put under Affordable Care Act. Ummm, before, this act started, I had Blue Cross Blue Shield PPO coverage under my parents, and it covered 10% of all costs, up to 50% for stuff like seeing a shrink and being health-minded about general stuff. Now I have higher cost insurance, covering 0% until I pay it, and the last mental health visit I had was full-price. Ditto for dental work. How can you call this affordable? I'm at poverty level, and not able to afford insurance but forced to pay it.
If it was more part of the Christian religion, rather than mainly for Wiccans, we would have solved our pollution problems by now. As it is, Big Business pays government to keep their nose out.
Instead of the government creating laws for practical and pragmatic reasons, you want the environment to become a "moral" issue, one regulated by the church instead of the government. No thanks. No atheist and no secularist wants anything to be regulated by the church. Not when it comes to our laws.
The church doesn't "regulate" anything, nor does it pass any laws. The government does. The environment is a moral issue, not a legal one. For that matter our government wants to set carbon emissions limits on private citizens. I want people to do the right thing of their own free will before it comes to stuff like that.
Despite specious arguments, you've still been better to talk to than Matador. Thank you.
I'm sorry you feel that way. And believe me, I've seen it (been in a cult, been in several fundie churches). But it can also be about self-discipline. My experience with religion was growing up having people tell me that stuff that I was doing (being trans, or just in general) was sinful and wrong. Then about 2 years ago, I realized there was alot to be said for religion that taught you to love yourself.
I have very little issue with liberal Christianity because, as you say, you like human rights. Plus, they're not out there trying to conquer the world, push religious laws through congress, or protesting funerals. Nor are they hopping mad about other people's supposed sins.
I do think it is very important to know how to love one's self without becoming arrogant -- but too many Christian denominations consider that as "prideful." Instead, many Christian belief systems center around humans being pond scum and deserving of death merely for being human, but wait! You're only worth something because God loves you! Without God, you're nothing!
I've said many times that the mainstream Christian doctrine is EXACTLY the same relationship with God that a battered wife has with her abusive husband.
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Originally Posted by bulmabriefs144
I'm sorry you're so cynical about religion. But frankly, the fact of the matter is, we get to pick our religion. This is what freedom of religion is, not freedom from religion, but being able to choose whether or not we wanna go, what we wanna worship, and just decide how we interpret our faith. Organized religion can be oppressive. But there is such a thing as spirituality. I guess by "religion" I actually mean "moral compass" a code of conduct that keeps you from killing random people. It doesn't have to be other-imposed, but it needs to be real.
I wasn't too cynical about religion until the gay rights issue became headline news. I personally witnessed what the hatred can do to same-sex couples. And I was a victim of gay hate merely for having a female roommate while in college.
And let's face it: A lot of people never get the chance to actually pick their religion. That's why America is 80% Christian. Kids are frequently force-fed specific religious doctrines before they're out of diapers. By the time they're capable of making a decision about religion, they've been hopelessly brainwashed.
Yet I do agree that, in regards to the government, we are free to pick our religion. However, you cannot have freedom OF religion without having freedom FROM religion. Picking your own religion is predicated upon being able to NOT pick the religions you don't like. That is having freedom FROM religion. Without it, someone could come along and FORCE you to obey the tenets of their faith rather than your own. This is a big reason why I supported gay rights ... conservative Christianity was essentially forcing their religion onto the whole of society.
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Originally Posted by bulmabriefs144
You're not speaking facts, you're talking vitriol and personal opinion. Facts are sources, proofs, stuff like that.
Are you suggesting that Christian America hasn't been fighting radical Islam for the past 15 years? I'm pretty sure the global war on terrorism wasn't in my imagination. Trust me, what I've said is very factual. I just don't post a lot of links anymore because it never seemed to do any good. No offense, of course, but believing in a religion already demonstrates a denial of reality so I doubt a link is going to shake any apples loose from the tree. But ... just for kicks ...
As for my talk of the 2nd Amendment ... have you ever discussed gun rights with a conservative? Nothing but nothing gets them more fired up than the idea of the government taking away their guns. They were so bamboozled by right-wing propaganda that there was actually an ammo shortage due to big ammo shopping sprees when Obama was elected -- because they were convinced that socialist Muslim Obama was going to take their guns. What's worse is that they fell for it AGAIN the second time he was elected.
Why do you think that, despite children being massacred in their classrooms and people being gunned down outside theaters and Sikhs being shot simply for looking foreign and people shooting up military bases, we STILL have no comprehensive gun laws in this nation or even a national registry. Yeah, it's because the evil big bad government is out to get their guns. And with the NRA widely represented in congress, you can bet that, no matter how many people are butchered in places once regarded as safe, no effort will be made to curb gun violence in this country.
Some of these yahoos sit on forums and share their drooling fantasies of how they're going to shoot to kill anyone who breaks into their house. They actually WANT someone to break in just so they can use their gun to murder someone legally. It's a sick, sick culture, bulmabriefs. But I'll have to end it here lest I stray too far into the political realm.
All I can say is that NOTHING I said in that paragraph was merely opinion.
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Originally Posted by bulmabriefs144
Essentially, the implication is that if women dressed as westerners do, they are basically offering themselves up for rape. Don't speak about something you know nothing about.
Uh, that's not the implication of those verses. You're reaching wildly to suggest that if a woman doesn't follow the strictest Islamic dress code, they are asking to be raped. As for knowing nothing about it *chuckle* I lived in a Muslim nation for a year. MOST Muslims not living in one of the oppressed Islamic nations stop at the verse that says women should guard their private parts. Yeah, don't run around naked. Otherwise, anything goes, thus Muslim women wear what we wear.
And this is one of the reasons why I've come to be cynical about religion. It tries to govern your every move, dictate every choice so that even hairstyles and your dressing habits are dictated from the pulpit. That's part of cult-like behavior -- to remove personal choice and self-expression and instead put everyone in a religious uniform. ESPECIALLY women who always have the strictest dress codes.
And there's nothing I like better than strolling into a conservative church with my hair down and wild. Just to scoff at these ridiculous rules about women always having to cover their heads.
Religion comes with too many nitpicking rules and women catch the brunt of them.
But hey, like I said before, I'm not here to defend Islam. I'm not particularly fond of that religion, either, though I understand that, just like with Christianity, there are good and bad folks.
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Originally Posted by bulmabriefs144
There is control groups in religion. Yet religion can also edify. Ask the average Wiccan, Taoist, or Buddhist if they feel oppressed. Some religion can be very self-motivated, and can make people truly happy. This is how religion should be. Just not how it always is.
Wiccans, Taoists, and Buddhists don't worship an all-powerful creator-god that handed them a fat book filled with ridiculous stories and over 600 rules, most of them having to do with sex. And if you don't obey, there's a nice big lake of fire waiting for you on the other side.
The problem with the three Abrahamic religions is that they teach you to put God first. That means your fellow human beings come at a very distant second. This very concept is what enables normally good people to commit heinous acts of brutality if they feel their god desires it. The god is always more important than the people and THAT is (and has been) a recipe for disaster.
Plus, I personally believe that no REAL god would ever demand such a thing.
Quote:
Originally Posted by bulmabriefs144
You don't have to be overt to convince people to have abortions. To convince people that that we are flooding the land, and are a plague on the Earth, etc, etc, etc. All you have to do is have a few people preach some pseudoscience about how in 50 years, population will hit 50 billion and we'll starve.
I'm not one to say that we are some kind of virus or a plague upon the earth. That's crazy talk from ultra-leftist eco-terrorists.
However, fully a third of the world's population struggle with food supplies, clean water, disease, and medical care. I fail to see why we should continue having increasing amounts of children so that food and water becomes a problem everywhere. And it WILL happen. It's simple math. I like to defuse the bomb BEFORE it goes off. Waiting for a potential problem to become a REAL problem is folly at best, stupidity at worst.
The primary reason why there are starving people in Africa is that they breed more children than the land can support. That's the very definition of overpopulation.
The ONLY way to stretch out our population problem is to completely discard our entire economic model and come up with a new one that doesn't require people to hold a job and collect a paycheck. Our technology as it stands now would allow 5% of the population to furnish the remaining 95% with everything we would need or want. And, as technology diminishes the number of jobs while our population grows, what do you think is going to happen? Yeah ... our welfare programs are already at max capacity because jobs that pay a livable wage are scarce even here in the States.
It's not just about starvation, it's about quality of life. Money is the greatest obstacle humanity faces and it will cripple us in the end. Mark my words.
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Originally Posted by bulmabriefs144
You are talking about Republicans (which is a wide group), not necessarily Christians. But you wouldn't be the first to accuse Christians of hypocrisy, and be right. There are in fact liberal Christians, and moderate ones.
Republicans are basically Christian by default given that believing in God is part of their overall ideology. Christianity is part and parcel of being a good, patriotic, red-blooded 'Merican. Unfortunately, the "love thy neighbor" and "help the poor" part of Christianity got lost somewhere on the way to the bank.
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Originally Posted by bulmabriefs144
Birth control can be blamed on many Democrats (but mentioning the A-word is an instant threat lock, so we're not going there)
You only "blame" someone for bad things. Birth control is not a bad thing. Ergo, Democrats can't be "blamed" for it. They can be credited for it, but not blamed.
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Originally Posted by bulmabriefs144
As a matter of fact, our neighbor has a horse. They're like large goofy pets. A car cannot just sit in the driveway. It has to be driven, or the oil clogs.
True, but seriously, how often do you leave a car sit so long that oil clogs, tires dry-rot, and condensation gets into the gas tank? Unless you can walk to everywhere you need to be in which case ... why would you have a car to begin with?
As soon as a horse can gallop for a thousand miles at 75mph ... and as soon as a horse comes equipped with air conditioning in the summer, heat in the winter, a cup holder, and a kickass stereo system, I'll consider switching to horse-powered transportation.
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Originally Posted by bulmabriefs144
You obviously haven't lived alone in a small town. Being able to Facebook people from your old towns is a lifeline. Yes, there are paradoxically socially-inept social networkers. But it is also a boon for a culture that has cut itself off in too many other ways.
Uh, actually I live in a remote town on the edge of a national forest ... population roughly 400. So I know all about small town life. I'm not totally against technology or socializing via the internet (I'm here, after all, right?) but every time I see kids older than 12, they're staring into an iPad or smart phone. Even when kids are together, they ALL are staring at their OWN electronic devices. I remember standing outside while in grad school and watching four girls together walking together in a group -- and every single one of them was talking on a cellphone. LOL! To hell with the people standing right there, live and in person. Whoever is on the other end of a phone is far more important!
My point is that today the technology is over-used. I'm not saying get rid of it. But this silly need to be "plugged in" at all times so that you can post every banal, uninteresting detail about your daily life is going WAY overboard. Every day I watch this fat 15 year-old girl wander down the hill past my house so she can use public Wi-Fi. I don't think I've ever seen her WITH someone.
Yet I video-conference every couple of weeks with my friends in North Carolina so I know it can be a blessing, too. Moderation. It's all about moderation.
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Originally Posted by bulmabriefs144
Supposedly, I have been put under Affordable Care Act. Ummm, before, this act started, I had Blue Cross Blue Shield PPO coverage under my parents, and it covered 10% of all costs, up to 50% for stuff like seeing a shrink and being health-minded about general stuff. Now I have higher cost insurance, covering 0% until I pay it, and the last mental health visit I had was full-price. Ditto for dental work. How can you call this affordable? I'm at poverty level, and not able to afford insurance but forced to pay it.
The Affordable Car Act was a compromise. It is NOT socialized medicine. You still have to go through an insurance provider -- and insurance is the biggest racket since bootlegging whisky during Prohibition. In fact, you still have to pay deductibles and other crap out of your own pocket.
I can't ramble on about the ACA for too long as that will get the thread locked. Let's just say that if the liberal Democrats had our way, there would be no more insurance and receiving health care would be as simple as walking into any doctor's office and checking in with the receptionist.
There have been several polls taken regarding our health care system (which ranks 37th in the world by the World Health Organization, dead last in the "advanced industrialized nation" category. Our poor ranking is largely due to lousy access). One of the poll questions was something akin to, "If you are diagnosed with a life-threatening or long-term illness, what would be your immediate thought?"
Do you know what the number one answer was? How much it was going to cost, how it might affect their families, will they have to sell their home, will their kids be able to attend a good college ... and that kind of nonsense. No, not whether or not they're going to die, not whether the treatment would hurt, not the future of their quality of life or any NORMAL worry a person with such a diagnosis would have. Instead, Americans get to fret over finances even before they can worry about themselves OR the illness.
The ACA was a bandaid and nothing more. That's why you're getting screwed. My advice is to try and get on Medicaid if you can. Hopefully you live in a NON-GOP state that expanded its Medicaid coverage for people with poverty-level incomes.
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Originally Posted by bulmabriefs144
The church doesn't "regulate" anything, nor does it pass any laws. The government does.
Yes, but the church and religion can influence the government strongly enough to get it to pass religious laws. It's happened many times before ... from the aforementioned Prohibition to state constitutional bans of same-sex marriage. When atheists succeed in reversing these religiously inspired laws, we are perceived as "attacking Christianity" and hating Christians. It gets so wearisome.
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Originally Posted by bulmabriefs144
I want people to do the right thing of their own free will before it comes to stuff like that.
Yes, but you know they won't. Greed in America is considered a virtue, not a vice -- and certainly not one of the dreaded Seven Deadly Sins. Even a good many Christians actually believe that the number and quality of your possessions is the way to measure a man's success.
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Originally Posted by bulmabriefs144
Despite specious arguments, you've still been better to talk to than Matador. Thank you.
You misunderstand my intentions and reasons. I pointed them out in the above response , but again, its not about casting stones or name calling, its about being a part of an exchange that I deem not to have sincere intentions regarding the discussions. You are free to contribute to his " harvest" , or whatever term he used towards gathering reactions from posters to his wild statements all you wish. I simply choose not to be a part of that and limit my time here to those with sincere intentions about what they discuss.
Fair enough. Comment withdrawn. I'm actually in your camp.
You misunderstand my intentions and reasons. I pointed them out in the above response , but again, its not about casting stones or name calling, its about being a part of an exchange that I deem not to have sincere intentions regarding the discussions. You are free to contribute to his " harvest" , or whatever term he used towards gathering reactions from posters to his wild statements all you wish. I simply choose not to be a part of that and limit my time here to those with sincere intentions about what they discuss.
Oh...com'on man.
This is just some strangers on a Web board, trading back and forth.
In case you didnt notice...many of the posts are little one sentence snarky, sniping, retorts.
A huge percentage contain terms like delusional, idiot, moron, buffoon, ignorant, fool, prejudiced, and many other various hybrid and creative insults. Mocking and criticizing is STANDARD...and many are worded in such a way to be as annoying as possible without crossing the line with regards to moderation. Many infractions are levied and suspensions occur.
Something tells me...if you agreed with my opinion, you'd have no problem with how I stated it.
Don't take this board so serious...it's just a few dozen strangers on the Internet, discussing a subject that is well know as a subject you aren't supposed to broach in "polite company". Which, I freely admit, is a big part of my attraction to it.
And, no matter what...I love ya.
Oh...com'on man.
This is just some strangers on a Web board, trading back and forth.
In case you didnt notice...many of the posts are little one sentence snarky, sniping, retorts.
A huge percentage contain terms like delusional, idiot, moron, buffoon, ignorant, fool, prejudiced, and many other various hybrid and creative insults. Mocking and criticizing is STANDARD...and many are worded in such a way to be as annoying as possible without crossing the line with regards to moderation. Many infractions are levied and suspensions occur.
Something tells me...if you agreed with my opinion, you'd have no problem with how I stated it.
Don't take this board so serious...it's just a few dozen strangers on the Internet, discussing a subject that is well know as a subject you aren't supposed to broach in "polite company". Which, I freely admit, is a big part of my attraction to it.
And, no matter what...I love ya.
LOL! Yeah ...what you said.
I just got back from a 7 day ban haha!
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Key difference between Science and religion
