Homosexual marriage

[brownjenkins]

Originally Posted by hectorberlioz

For you atheistic chaps, one of your primary speed bumps is that "you shouldn't do something to someone if they don't want you to do it, that you should mind your own business." And obviously the reasoning behind this is because having those things done to you would not be fun, especially if you're a clown and the Government decides to intern you (sorry, I had to bring that back).

That's not a bad reason, but if you felt like it, you could easily waive that curtain aside and not care whether it is unpleasant or not. It may not feel good to be murdered, but maybe it does feel good to murder for some people.

You left out the rest of the reasoning: the repercussions of murduring someone. We don't do things to other people that we wouldn't like done to ourselves because we live in a society that will punish us if we do.

This is why things like rape and murder become so much more common during wartime, because there is often little chance of repercussion in a war torn area.

Originally Posted by hectorberlioz

You may say that some people only think murder is bad only because the Ten Commandments said so, but also consider why God wrote it as one of the commandments in the first place. It isn't "just because", it is precisely what we feel already: that murder is just wrong, it doesn't feel good, and for christians commiting it is hard hitting on the soul indeed.

God didn't write the ten commandments. The scholars who put together that part of those religious texts weren't stupid. They knew that to appeal to the masses their "god" had to make rules that made sense to the people. The religious texts that survived the best were the ones that made the most sense for society. In fact, many biblical stories themselves draw from earlier cultures like Sumeria, taking the best from those times and fitting it to their own.

But, the existance of some good advice in the bible, or even a lot of good advice in the bible, doesn't mean that it is all good advice.