Homosexual marriage

[hectorberlioz]

Originally Posted by Insidious Rex

What?! Tell me how you arent a Hindu. Or a lion tamer. Or a duck…

Well, I don't follow hindu religion, I've never seen a lion except on televsion, though I can often be Duck-ish.
But really Rex, you have argued against a god in the evolution debate threads, and generally shown yourself to be atheistical.
Now I'm not saying that all atheists want to destroy the world or anything, so if you're afraid of being categorized like that, I can understand.
And of course, there are plenty of specific differences between certain atheists and so on...

No, what christians do is want everyone to live by their rules even to the point of trying to force it on them at times. That’s one of the flaws of Christianity. It uses circular logic that requires imposition on the universe in order for it to maintain its consistency. I didn’t make any rules. Im simply talking about equal rights. This is a constitutional issue.

*sigh* Well that just blows my boat out of the water! Here I was trying to argue about where you got your morals etc, and it turns out this is a case of district and country

Heres what yer missing: Im not interested in doing anything for a higher purpose. I choose not to do things like kill and rape and pillage (and discriminate against gays) because I wouldn’t want someone killing or raping or pillaging (or unfairly discriminating against) me or my loved ones.

Thats exactly what I've been pointing out; and I don't know why you've objected to my observances (admittedly, some of them were directed to BJenkins).

And if I allow that killing or raping or pillaging (or discrimination) theres more of a chance that those things could at some point turn around on me. So call it selfish rational if you like. That would certainly pop your “absolute morals� balloon now wouldn’t it.

No, it just proves what I've said already. But I don't believe that raping is bad only if I have a daughter and don't want her raped, thought that isn't a bad reason. But I know you would feel just as bad about someone being raped even if you didn't have a daughter. There must be more to it.

See Hector you always have to look for a reason why we do what we do and not simply assume it must be god magic because its not right there on the surface.

And you always assume that we see everything with God-Magicked colored glasses.

Here's the problem I see with your side sometimes: a thing is "bad" because it hurts, though a lot of things that hurt may actually be good, like getting a medical shot.

You can try. But chances are “being evil� is hard to do among our species with regular success so youll end up either incarcerated or outcast or dead.

But IF the world had gone in the other direction, what would you say? If doing evil stuff had turned out to be the norm, raping for instance, we could still be alive, we wouldn't necessarily have died out from evil acts.
Sodom or Gamorrah were not bad cities at first I'm sure, but evil things became the norm there.

What I'm saying is that evil is not necessarily supressed only because good exists, though that is the reason it is defeated.

And not only does that really hamper your ability to spread your genes (and produce more actively evil offspring)

You're being sarcastic about that last bit, or else you'd lose all those arguments where you said that just becauce a Muslim baby was born into a violent family, that he wouldn't turn out evil

but others see what happened to you and realize that kind of behavior generally doesn’t work

Only if the people who can put you in jail believe the same way, again, for you the principle hangs on the fact that a collective WE punishes the badness, but let me slip this in: if there was no collective WE to punish the bad, would it still be bad? If the roles were reversed, would it be the "right" thing to punish someone who had done good just because people didn't like it-(or were just jealous of someone so righteous)???

and actually could cause great harm or suffering for them and that in turn is instilled into our culture which over time makes doing those things seem… well… bad… And bingo you’ve got your god given morals, get em while theyre hot…

Originally Posted by Gwaimir Windgem

Also, don't forget Byzantium.

Yes please don't

Originally Posted by The Gaffer

Just to chime in with bj here, as I think this is an important misconception which I have seen repeated numerous times in discussions with American religious people (not so much from the UK).

It seems as if you are saying that "God give us value/morals/etc. If there is no God, then there are no values/morals/etc."

I hope you can see how that in no way accords with a secular viewpoint!

No, the point isn't whether secularists still believe in good or evil or not, it's whether they are just accepting them just because "thats the way we're going", or something else. And if they do, WHY and HOW they believe in them.