patrick.net

Dan8267 says

Again, how is religion in general and Christianity in particular not harmful to our society?

We are better off without the shackles of religion, but it's Islam that must be destroyed.

The thing I like about Christianity is that Jesus didn't kill anyone. Didn't rape anyone. Didn't rob anyone. Very very different from Mohammed.

Christians do not personally murder people who insult Jesus. Jesus definitely would not want them to. Very very different from Mohammed, again.

OK, if Christians are in control of government, they can get oppressive in limiting personal freedoms, but again, not nearly as much as Muslims.

Great quote I read somewhere I can't remember:

Islam is just like Christianity, but much, much worse.

Devout Muslims do shit like this every day of the year somewhere in the world explicitly because of Islam:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4250292/Christian-father-burned-alive-son-shot-dead.html

Devout Christians hardly ever do anything like that.

@Dan8267 think of Christianity as the cowpox inoculation against smallpox. I'd rather billions of people were Christian if it prevents them from becoming Muslim. It's just a mild fever instead of death. To wish that no one has any religion is just not realistic.

Every year, a report ranks all the countries in the world by personal happiness. Every year, nearly all of the top 20 have at least nominally Christian majorities, while nearly all of the 20 most miserable countries have Muslim majorities. People who have a choice prefer consistently to emigrate away from Muslim countries and immigrate into Christian countries. If you can cite a country that bans all religions, we can compare it to the other countries, but meanwhile it's patently obvious that Islam is the worst and Christianity is either best or least bad depending on POV.

rando says

The thing I like about Christianity is that Jesus didn't kill anyone.

But his followers most certainly killed, raped, and tortured a lot of people in his name. And even ignoring all of that, as the story above shows, Christianity still is used for some pretty shitty things in 21st century America. Not exactly useful for instilling morality.

Just because Islam is worse, doesn't mean Christianity is acceptable.

rando says

@Dan8267 think of Christianity as the cowpox inoculation against smallpox. I'd rather billions of people were Christian if it prevents them from becoming Muslim.

But does it really? Or does accepting lesser evils enable greater evils?

The Broken Window Theory is that acceptance and ignoring of smaller crimes leads to greater ones. You are hypothesizing that allowing vandals to break people's windows with impunity would be a good thing because the vandals would blow off steam and thus be less likely to engage in greater crimes. The empirical evidence shows that in fact it encourages bad behavior and criminals get bolder with time if not brought in line. The same applies for irrationality.

Think about it this way. How likely would any person be to adopt a religion if doing so were socially ostracize them? Not very. People are conformists. It's better they conform to a rational culture than an irrational one, and one irrationality enables another.

curious2 says

but meanwhile it's patently obvious that Islam is the worst

True, and rape is worse than sexual assault. But why encourage either?

LGBT is harmful to society, Christianity is not.

If you want to ban something, ban your worship of LGBT crap.

FortWayne says

Christianity is not.

Of course it is - indoctrination of children with nonsense, suspension of reason, promotion of anti-science agendas.

I'd say the LBGT religion is also nonsense being indoctrinated into children, and is anti human survival.

The further a population gets from traditional gender roles, the more likely it is to die out. It may be personal liberation, but it's also cultural and demographic suicide. Those traditional roles evolved for damn good reasons. That's what worked to bring us down to the present day, and that's what still works to keep us going as a country.

Individuals should have the choice to live as they wish, but I do not like their normalizing cultural and demographic suicide or recommending it, because it's the end of the line.

There, your midwestern Catholic indoctrination misleads you. The Roman Republic and Empire, and Greece, prospered for longer than America has even existed. Ancient Rome had same-sex marriage. Read about the Spartans, Thebans, etc. These civilizations did quite well.

If the only reason you live the way you do is because you didn't know there was any alternative, then I feel very sorry for you. Most people don't have that problem.

The argument you make in this context is very similar to the Islamic argument that all other religions must be prohibited, or at least cannot be advocated. The mullahs fear that Islam won't survive if people are allowed to decide for themselves. Since their doctrine is a hateful fraud, one might expect that to occur, but childhood indoctrination seems deeply resistant to reason.

You might equally prohibit the celibate priesthood, or bishops advocating the celibate priesthood, if you're so worried about Catholics going extinct. It would be absurd and contrary to observable fact, but it makes about as much sense as the argument you made above and elsewhere on PatNet.

Besides, many gay couples do have children. "There are approximately 594,000 same-sex partner households, according to the 2000 Census, and there are children living in approximately 27 percent of those households." See also, ""How same-sex couples have children". The numbers have probably increased since 2000, and even since 2014, and besides they don't even count gay single parents. There aren't nearly that many "celibate" priests having children, and yet Catholics continue to increase in number.

FortWayne says

LGBT is harmful to society, Christianity is not.

Christianity is harmful to society, LGBT is not.

See how easy it is to make unsupported assertions? We could do this all day.

If you eat your own shit, you will get superpowers.

Jumping naked off a cliff is the fastest way to get to Hong Kong.

George Washington didn't fight in the revolutionary war. Genghis Kong did.

Life's so much easier when you don't have to provide evidence for you statements and you can even ignore thousands of years of historical evidence that contradict your statements.

rando says

LBGT religion is...is anti human survival...cultural and demographic suicide...normalizing cultural and demographic suicide or recommending it, because it's the end of the line.

@Patrick, I decided to read further about this topic, since you seem to keep coming back to it with extremely adamant false claims.

I'm not sure what "LBGT religion" would be, unless you're referring to the Vatican insisting on the celibate clergy, which has tended to draw closeted homosexuals plus all too many pederasts. In any event, it has never caused demographic "suicide" of Catholics or Catholic culture.

If you're referring to the the normalization of same-sex marriage, then the facts disprove your claim. I noted already above some historical examples that thrived longer than the USA has even existed. Among current examples, Mexico has had legal marriage for same-sex couples since 2005, but the birth rate and population growth rate remain strongly positive. Mexico did have an even higher birth rate 50 years ago, and it's been coming down steadily since contraception and lower infant mortality arrived, but that trend neither accelerated nor decelerated in the decade since legalizing (or "normalizing") same-sex couples. In contrast, Russia has never had same-sex marriage, and their birth rate was too low for more than 20 years to sustain their population. If anything, the evidence suggests that legally recognizing ("normalizing") same-sex marriage promotes health and survival rates. See, e.g., "Same-sex marriage laws reduce doctor visits and health care costs for gay men". I'll add more evidence below due to the comment length limit.

As I noted above, many gay couples do have children.

Also, legalization of same-sex marriage is "linked to fewer youth suicide attempts:

But in states that did not legalize same-sex marriage, there was no change."

Presumably, more of those LGB high school students will live long enough to have children of their own. The evidence shows that recognizing ("normalizing") same-sex marriage reduces the suicide rate, which is the opposite of what you keep claiming. Data from Massachusetts showed a 10% reduction in total medical spending among gay men, due to better health, even if they did not personally get married.

In general, you can't promote overall demographic health by stigmatizing (or "abnormalizing") people. There is no reason to believe that hurting some people would help others, unless you imagine that you need to make a cautionary example of those people, lest everyone do the same thing.

That leads me back to feeling sorry for FortWhine, who seems really to feel constrained into a life he hates. As for you, I think you have difficulty understanding that different people want different things. You could shout yourself hoarse telling Rin to go gay, but it won't change him. He has probably wanted what he wants since around age 10, and you could have been shouting at him all these years, to no effect. Any theory that fails to account for different people wanting different things is false.

I'll close with an example. Neil Patrick harris is married, and the couple have two children. If "normalizing" that family looks like demographic suicide to you, then you are suffering from "theory induced blindness," and a backfire effect, so further comments from me would be a waste of time, causing you to dig in rather than open your eyes. I'll end with a photo:

Guys, if you are going to discuss homosexuality, can you at least stick to more interesting, practical topics, like:
- how often do men shave their arses
- in what position do they do it
- does it hurt to take it up the arse
- what do they do to avoid getting their dick stink of shit

curious2 says

Neil Patrick harris is married, and the couple have two children.

Which one gave birth? This is pretend, and everyone knows the difference. It's like the alchemists of old, trying to convert lead into gold, but after all their incantations and vo-de-o-do, all they had was lead, the union is sterile. The gold standard is and always will be the male and female marriage regardless of how many courts declare otherwise. The West is killing itself, probably won't last as long as the Roman empire.

Dan8267 says

Again, how is religion in general and Christianity in particular not harmful to our society?

What the fuck does someone not wanting to watch a propaganda video have to do with religion?

What did God ever do to you Dan to make you so bitter?

FP says

FortWayne says

Christianity is not.

Of course it is - indoctrination of children with nonsense, suspension of reason, promotion of anti-science agendas.

Amen

Dan8267 says

But his followers most certainly killed, raped, and tortured a lot of people in his name. And even ignoring all of that, as the story above shows, Christianity still is used for some pretty shitty things in 21st century America. Not exactly useful for instilling morality.

So if people use religion as an excuse to do whatever they want, you blame the religion, not the people!?

I'm gonna go fuck up some shelves in a 7/11 in the name of iPhones. Guess you'll have to throw yours away, huh Dan?

FP says

Of course it is - indoctrination of children with nonsense, suspension of reason, promotion of anti-science agendas.

Where is any of that in the Bible? Ohh, you're just talking out of your ass...

NuttBoxer says

Where is any of that in the Bible?

Not everything is in the Bible. Try reading something else.

NuttBoxer says

FP says

Of course it is - indoctrination of children with nonsense, suspension of reason, promotion of anti-science agendas.

Where is any of that in the Bible? Ohh, you're just talking out of your ass...

Creation, flat earth, sun revolving around the earth. All that nonsense comes from religion.

Strategist says

flat earth, sun revolving around the earth. All that nonsense comes from religion.

There's nowhere in the Bible any mention of either one of those. Those are beliefs of man.

Creation is definitely in the Bible though. Are you a programmer? If you are and you've ever worked on anything remotely complex, tell me how well it would function if you just mixed the code around in different methods, models, libraries, etc, then blasted it all into your Prod environment? When you look at the amount of inter-relationship, complexity that exists in the countless interactions of this world, to believe in anything but intelligent design is absurd.

NuttBoxer says

When you look at the amount of inter-relationship, complexity that exists in the countless interactions of this world, to believe in anything but intelligent design is absurd

I kept an open mind until I took my second semester of Biochemistry. At that point, with the level of detail in the smallest units of life expanding like a hall of mirrors, I threw in the towel and admitted that this couldn't possibly be random. The machinery of cells is quite complex, has many moving parts, and each organelle must work perfectly for life to continue. The chemical processes are assisted by folded proteins in the 50k-100k protein range, which are called "enzymes," without which the cell also couldn't function. The chance of life arising by accident is so remote as to be a statistical impossibility. It would be far more likely for a Ferrari to be created by an explosion in an auto parts factory.
That's SCIENCE, and it's the dirty secret of most life science professors. Most believe secretly in intelligent design. Nothing else makes sense!

rando says

I'd say the LBGT religion is also nonsense being indoctrinated into children, and is anti human survival.

The further a population gets from traditional gender roles, the more likely it is to die out. It may be personal liberation, but it's also cultural and demographic suicide. Those traditional roles evolved for damn good reasons. That's what worked to bring us down to the present day, and that's what still works to keep us going as a country.

Individuals should have the choice to live as they wish, but I do not want them normalizing cultural and demographic suicide or recommending it, because it's the end of the line.

That seems ridiculously small-minded. Humans already can clone and make babies from skin cells if they really wanted to. The universe is so vast and complex that quibbling over same sex relationships will seem comical in maybe as little as 100 years.... Let alone 1000 years when we are traveling to new galaxies and meeting species you never dreamed of. If you think Doogie Howser having children with another man is anti-human survival you sound laughable in the grand scheme of the universe.

Go watch some old Star Trek episodes and tell me what normal is.

Dan8267 has such a totalitarian streak. He wants to ban free speech, and he wants to ban religion.

By the way, Dan. If you ban Christianity, I bet it will become really popular. Boys will become bad. Chicks will dig it. Etc, etc.

P N Dr Lo R says

Which one gave birth?

Neither of them, which puts them in the same circumstance as the many opposite sex couples that rely on surrogacy.

Cal, do you have any children? Also, are you homosexual? Some of your statements make me think perhaps you are, seriously.

curious2 says

Neither of them

It neither invalidates male/female marriage nor validates gay marriage--it still takes a female to produce a child whether surrogate or not. That a person of today would pretend such an argument makes sense shows an abysmal ignorance. A man and woman 79 and 89, as my mother's widowed sister was when she married widower J. D. Tidwell in 1966, would produce no children, but their marriage recognized and honored the correct and traditional version of marraige in a way that two of the same sex can't.

Strategist says

flat earth, sun revolving around the earth.

That's the world people of 2,000-4,000 years ago believed they lived in. They believed the earth was supported with four columns at each corner, with a gloomy, dark space below and a dome overhead with a watery firmament above that, a three-story universe. Those people were no different from us in their spiritual lives and that's why the same Ten Commandments that were given to them apply equally to us--the first four having to do with our relationship to God, the remaining six to our relationship with each other. Replacing God with man, covetousness, envy, murder, lying, adultry are endemic to the human condition and involve the spiritual realm.

People today invest their entire lives in satisfying physical sensation through interaction with the physical world: sex, pursuit of things, drugs, ambition, pleasure and starve their spiritual selves. It's absolutely certain that the senses are going to atrophy with time and circumstances and ultimately death, but spiritual wealth, if cultivated and sought out, can never be touched or sullied.

NuttBoxer says

Strategist says

flat earth, sun revolving around the earth. All that nonsense comes from religion.

There's nowhere in the Bible any mention of either one of those. Those are beliefs of man.

Creation is definitely in the Bible though. Are you a programmer? If you are and you've ever worked on anything remotely complex, tell me how well it would function if you just mixed the code around in different methods, models, libraries, etc, then blasted it all into your Prod environment? When you look at the amount of inter-relationship, complexity that exists in the countless interactions of this world, to believe in anything but intelligent design is absurd.

Check this out. You will find it very interesting.

Richard Dawkins Vs Creationist (FULL DEBATE) - YouTube
Video for richard dawkins youtubeâ–¶ 58:37
www.youtube.com/embed/6qnOIhLZTpg
Jan 15, 2014 - Uploaded by Noam Chomsky Videos
Richard Dawkins Interviews Creationist Wendy Wright (FULL) - Duration: 56:36. rationalstabs 168,463 views ...

Some idiotic statements about evolution in this thread.

It's evolution by natural selection. The natural selection part is critical and it is not a random process.

Whoever likes watching LGBT videos - can knock himself out. But nobody shall be forced to watch them, religion or not.

P N Dr Lo R says

validates gay marriage

Cal, seriously, some of your statements make me think you have no children and perhaps you are homosexual. @Rin seems to have noticed the same about you, though I don't presume to speak for him. Your church has taught you to condemn others, including especially the gay couples who went out and got married and had children. You could have done the same, even in your time; your marriage would not have been legally recognized, but others proceeded even without that recognition. Your comments provide a poweful argument against religion, or at least against your particular church, because it has misled you to judge and condemn successful people instead of attending to the problems in your own life. It is very sad that you chose to constrict yourself all these years, imagining yourself morally inferior on the basis of a totally fictional standard. You're probably too old to start a new life now, but I hope you won't end up like this French closet case did: never married, no kids, shot himself on the altar at Notre Dame Cathedral. Even if it's too late for you to make something of your own life, at least you should be happy for younger people having a chance to do better; otherwise, you sound old and bitter, which is a sadly common combination.

BoomAndBustCycle says

quibbling over same sex relationships will seem comical in maybe as little as 100 years

@BoomAndBustCycle I don't think there will be any western culture in 100 years if we continue on the current path.

There will only be Islam, which will murder any remaining gays.

P N Dr Lo R says

Which one gave birth? This is pretend, and everyone knows the difference. It's like the alchemists of old, trying to convert lead into gold, but after all their incantations and vo-de-o-do, all they had was lead, the union is sterile. The gold standard is and always will be the male and female marriage regardless of how many courts declare otherwise. The West is killing itself, probably won't last as long as the Roman empire.

This is a stupid and harmful worldview. As a society, we should be strongly encouraging and enabling homosexual couples to adopt children because it is in the children's best interests. You propose a false dichotomy in which homosexual married couples compete with heterosexual married couples on adopting the rare child that has no guardians. This is utter nonsense that is completely rebuked by reality.

In reality there are plenty of children who are wards of the state, and not nearly enough people willing to adopt them. Every one of those children would be better off adopted by a gay couple than as a ward of the state. ...unless you believe in big government and the nanny state, P N Dr Lo R, you socialist. Allowing homosexual couples to adopt children is the free market solution, and allowing homosexual couples to compete with heterosexual for parenthood would be a good thing anyway.

[stupid comment limit]

And as for the gold standard, that's a load of crap. There are unique challenges that homosexual couples face, providing only one gender parents. However, this disadvantage is easily mitigated or eliminated by having opposite gender friends or family help like aunts and uncles. Far more common, it will be the case where there are advantages to the child being adopted by homosexuals because of unrelated factors like household income, mental stability, devotion, etc. At least half the time, the homosexual male couples will have better finances because men go into higher paying professions. So typically a child will be better off with two fathers than with a father and a mother. Yes, money matters far more than sexual orientation or even access to opposing sex parents, especially if you have an opposing sex aunt/uncle.

rando says

Islam

is probably the biggest hazard to western culture apart from nuclear war, which Islam might cause now that Pakistan has 100 nuclear weapons and Turkey could steal another 100 from America's tiny base there. I think it would take longer than 100 years though. On present trend, France will have a Muslim majority by then, but America won't unless we start importing much larger numbers of Muslims. I had hoped the Trump administration might publish a new Executive Order on that topic today, one that will survive judicial review.

NuttBoxer says

So if people use religion as an excuse to do whatever they want, you blame the religion, not the people!?

This is a false argument. It is not merely the case that bad people use religion as an excuse. That statement is based on the false assumption that religion does not influence people's behavior and worldviews. If that were the case, religion would have no sway over people. Clearly religion heavily influences many people. One needs only to look towards the Middle East for a plethora of examples.

It is a fact that religion influences people to do very evil things. Islam in the Middle East absolutely encourages terrorism, violence, tribalism, and oppression. Yes, those things would still exist without religion, but religion increases those evils by many orders of magnitude. The Middle East would be a hell of a lot safer, productive, and pleasant if Islam did not exist. Even more so if Judaism and Christianity also did not exist. And even more so if no other religion took their places.

American Christianity today is less destructive but only because it has a weaker hold over people and a hold over fewer people. Nonetheless, every single evil in American history has been heavily amplified if not outright caused by Christianity including slavery and genocide and the consequences of both those things that persist into today. As such to assert that Christianity does not directly cause people to do evil things, even today, is an outright lie.

There is no upside to irrationality and delusion. Nor should the irrational or delusional be respected.

NuttBoxer says

I'm gonna go fuck up some shelves in a 7/11 in the name of iPhones. Guess you'll have to throw yours away, huh Dan?

I would never use an iPhone or any Apple product. And I would consider that suggestion an ad hominem.

I've actually shifted to Apple products, because I trust Apple on privacy much more than I trust Google.

Dan8267 says

There is no upside to irrationality and delusion.

Religion appears to correlate positively with birthrates, so in that sense it is adaptive. With advancing technology and longer lives, lower birth rates become sustainable, but it's like a trapeze act: if you want to switch from a religious culture to a scientific culture, you have to ensure the technology is good enough to sustain the lower birth rate.

Dan8267 says

Nor should the irrational or delusional be respected.

I agree with that, but "most people are hallucinating most of the time." Nearly every advance in science has resulted from disproving the delusions that preceded it, including those held by seemingly rational scientists. We end up having to tolerate the delusions that are either harmless or do some good, though that should not spill over into respecting a dangerously totalitarian fraud.

justme says

Dan8267 has such a totalitarian streak. He wants to ban free speech, and he wants to ban religion.

You are in direct contradiction with yourself. Free speech and religion are mutually exclusive. Case example, boy arrested for showing disrespect to Christian god.

I will always favor free speech over religion. Furthermore, we never had freedom of religion in America. We have a few state approved religions and religious practices. Any time there is a conflict of interest between the state and religion, the state wins. People argue that using tax payer money for abortions violates their religious beliefs. Well, so does using money for war. So does the draft and the selective service. So does strip searches and body cavity searches. So does anti-drug usage laws. We NEVER had any kind of real freedom of religion in this country. We've only had state approved privileges for select religions and religious practices.