All of these types of Marriage are approved of in the Bible. But Jess tells me the polygany is spelled wrong, that should be polygamy. Anywho, with such a wonderful image as this (I can't remember were I found it!) it's no wonder that Christians want to preserve the 'traditional' marriage. So I guess we now get to choose which kind of marriage we want cause freewill and all that!
Sorry to all the gay people, as you can see traditional marriage is far to perfect to allow you to be happy and because god says it should be so. He's so loving!
I just read this, Pastor Mike wants a list of all Atheists. Nice, compare Atheists to the KKK yet he's the one trying to marginalize people. After that what's next? Camps for our own protection? If we're lucky maybe we'll get some reservations, that's worked so well in the past.
Best!
Brett
YAY FOR THE BIBLE!! LET'S ALL MINDLESSLY FOLLOW THESE ARCHAIC TEACHINGS AND NOT ALLOW SAME-SEX MARRIAGE!! YAAAAAAY!!!!
ReplyDeleteLOL!
ReplyDeleteWhy Brett...it's all so sudden...:o
ReplyDeleteOkay, I want to get married on a beach, with a Boba Fett minister. I see fishnet stockings, high heels, Tuxedo jacket...who knows, you might even dress up.
(Oh wait, gay marriage is out of the question. Wait, does that count if both sides are straight?)
@ Fatboy
Completely agree. Nothing to add.
If PM wants an Atheist list, then should there not also be a Christian list too? Or a Muslim list, Agnostic list, Jewish list, Scientology list etc etc
And if there were a Muslim list, would that be the go-to list for any terrorist organisation, or suspected terrorist attack?
What about an African American list? Would that be the go to list for any burglaries, murders, muggings, etc?
And if it was, what would be the likelihood that said crimes would probably have been committed by people on the so-called Christian list?
When Dubya brought in the patriot act, we got treated to detritus and idiotic plans like this one, which normally would be laughed at, and scorned. Yet in this present time, with Michelle Bachmann and Sarah Palin, and the Tea party on the political scene, such a list could happen. And innocent people would be haranged, harrassed and pushed out of certain activities by the so-called 'Christians'. Seclusion from others is a horrible thought, and worse if it actually comes to pass.
That said, a list of Trolls ie people who get miffed at the mere mention of a change, reference, archery, Green Arrow (;))etc would be useful. :)
Btw, Atheists being portrayed as Nazi's or the KKK is nothing knew. Just look at that terrible film Ben Stein made in 2008, Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed.
It juxtaposes footage of the Atheists with footage of the Nazi's. Don't worry, it's not a very good documentary/ film at ALL.
Marriage between one man and one woman is relatively new, but even newer is marrying for romantic love.
ReplyDeleteThere's actually a theory that romantic love was invented by Dante, who had this life-long crush on a woman named Beatrice, who died when they were quite young.
I don't know if I buy it, but the arranged marriages in Hindu and other societies used to be the norm.
It was really about trading women off for some better property or possibly forming more connections with more powerful people.
One must not forget that in the Bible, pedophilia was perfectly okay, even commanded in some instances.
One must not forget that in the Bible, pedophilia was perfectly okay, even commanded in some instances.
ReplyDeleteUgh...Again I say why do people make me have to DEFEND the bible?
I think your confusing pedophilia which is specifically a sexual attraction to prepubescent girls usually 12 years or younger,with biblical commands to take young virginal girls as spoils of war and for other reasons,which isn't necessarily pedophilia.
I'm pretty sure the bible for all it's atrocities never specifically mentions sex with prepubescent 12 year or younger girls.
IMO the Bible pretty plainly says homosexuality is wrong. So within the context of religion and heaven/hell yes I believe homosexuality is wrong. This does not mean we become fascists and deny people the choice to live the way they choose to live. It's their choice not mine. If we as a society determine they should be allowed to be legally recognized I'm fine with that too. The only thing I would not be fine with is forcing churches to marry homosexuals but I don't think anyone serious advocates that.
ReplyDeleteAs someone who got his first bachelors in Political Science though I'm going to call bollocks to those who say that homosexuals have a right to legally recognized marraige. Heterosexuals do not even have a right to legal marraige. Congress/States could repeal the legal recognition of ALL marraige tomorrow if they chose to do so. Like it or not sexual orientation is NOT a protected class under the Constitution and I would vehemently oppose any court trying to conjure that up out of thin air. If you want to make a Constitutional amendment adding that in (which was done for race/age/etc...) I would actually likely support this measure but we shouldn't just pretend that it already exists for the sake of expediency.
Sign me up, Pastor Mike. Atheist and damn proud of it.
ReplyDeleteTheORKINMan,
ReplyDeleteI disagree, and while homosexual might not be a class to some it IS a biological truth. How can you deny other their right to life, liberty AND the pursuit of happiness. This also make some less equal, like Atheists and now Muslims. And I know this is a purely intelectual argument, by saying they can't be married it's automatically puts them in a class.
If there is nothing for ANY marriage in the constitution why is this one ruled out? Unless you're speaking specifically of State laws, then yeah, a whole bunch of Christian love is out there.
That's my biggest problem, the WHOLE argument against gay marriage is religious based. And then this would be a separation of church and state issue.
Brian,
I believe I'm already on the wiki list of American Atheists.
Best!
Brett
What I meant by "class" is that it is not a category by which the Constitution awards special protection such as race, age, religion, political affiliation, etc... The Constitution lays out specific "classes" which cannot be discriminated against when crafting Federal and State law. Sexual orientation is not one of those protected qualifiers.
ReplyDeleteYou have (and homosexuals have as well) an absolutely right to religious marraige. This does not mean you have a right to have the government give your marraige a legal status/recognition. The government is within it's right to get out of the marraige game altogether tomorrow if it chose to do so. What rules this one out is that state laws say marraige is between a man and a woman. Some states have already started changing their laws to legally recognize gay marraige but as of now it's a state by state issue thanks to the 9th amendment (any powers not expressly given to the Federal government are reserved to the states). Bear in mind no Federal law has ever been made prohibiting same sex marraige either. All of those laws are state laws.
TheORKINMan,
ReplyDeleteI do think that needs to be amended. And not just for the gays, there are lots of people of indeterminate sex born that way, I believe it's like 1 in 100. Something should be in there to protect their rights. Not something people talk about or even know about.
See, you're equating marriage in the US to being religious. Mine isn't, got married at the court house. All marriages should be government ones, it is a contract. If you have to have a judge Ok the divorce it's a legal matter. If the Churches don't want to do gay marriages that's OK, no one's forcing them to.
It's still illegal for the states to take rights aways from some people, yet it happens all the time.
The wording of your 1st comment made it seem like yes it is in the constitution that gays can't be married. It might have been my eyesight going bad again. Getting old is not much fun.
Best!
Brett
That is a funny picture! Shows how important it is to actually read the Bible before criticizing it. Remember one man and one woman is God's ideal for marriage, because of sin you find all sorts of distortions to the ideal. Because some act was practiced in the OT and appears in the Bible means only it is a historical fact and part of the culture surrounding the Israelites; you would actually have to read the book to understand if God ordained it or not. The Levirate covenant with a dead brother's wife to provide him an offspring may be the only one on the list with actual merit, but again you would have to read the Bible and understand God's specific covenant to the tribes of Israel.
ReplyDeleteSteve
Maybe he should put out a version where what god wants is in bold and what man does is in italics. Cause you know, the picking and choosing that the religious do.
ReplyDeleteI've tried Steve, I've tried... so boring...
Best,
Brett
I do have to give you credit Brett for every few years trying to read the book. I would suggest maybe a study guide or starting with the gospels. Remember the Bible has many different types of writings.
ReplyDeleteAlso the Christian who reads the Bible with the help of the Holy Spirit actually can prosper and understand what God is saying. A non-believer usually gets frustrated because they are reading a love letter not addressed to them.
Steve
Thanks Steve!
ReplyDeleteIf your 'love letter' isn't ment for me than I don't have to try and read it again! Also that would mean it's 'morals' don't apply to me!
Party time!
I feel like a great weight has been lifted, a weight of oppression!
Best,
Brett
Just for the record, no, the bible does not condemn homosexuality.
ReplyDeleteThe word 'abomination' which is what the bible uses to describe homosexuality, and I say describe, not denounce, is a word that has mutated into meaning something far more sinister.
Abomination, traditionally, means 'against tradition' like eating fish on a friday if one is Catholic, or eating Pork/ bacon/ ham if one is Jewish. Or in this case, falling in love with someone of the same gender. Also, in the same page where it talks about homosexuality, the bible considers eating shellfish as an 'abomination'.
What he bible does condemn is the rape of men. Going back to the days of the bible, when soldiers would defeat the opposing army, it was not uncommon for them to rape the defeated soldier. It was not just the case of defeating them, they wanted to embarrass them.
That is what the bible condemns, not homsexuality.
And again, I just want to disprove the common notion that the bible hates gay people.
It does not.
Belief what you want to believe about whether there is or is not a deity, because that is up to the individual. I just don't want people to keep propagating a negative message that does not exist.
Also the Christian who reads the Bible with the help of the Holy Spirit actually can prosper and understand what God is saying. A non-believer usually gets frustrated because they are reading a love letter not addressed to them.
ReplyDeleteBWAAHAHAHAHAHAHA! Ok that's out of my system...BWAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA...HAHA!
OK seriously now it's really out.
Translation: A Christian reading the bible with the belief that one his gods mystical avatars is giving them divine understanding of the text can read into and make said text mean anything they want it to mean.
A non believer usually gets frustrated because he understands that the texts are in actuality part historical text,part mythology and legend and part guidelines on how to properly live in the culture of the time,all wrapped up,shaken not stirred and served up as a very tasty,but ultimately unfulfilling literary cocktail while believers treat it like its 1900 vintage Bordeaux
*shrugs* Personally I think C.S. Lewis was onto something when it comes to objectivists and hardcore atheists:
ReplyDelete""Aslan," said Lucy through her tears, "could you -- will you -- do something for these poor Dwarfs?"
"Dearest," said Aslan, "I will show you both what I can, and what I cannot do. ... You see," said Aslan. "They will not let us help them. They have chosen cunning instead of belief. Their prison is only in their own minds, yet they are in that prison; and so afraid of being taken in that they cannot be taken out.""
Basically they are so wrapped up in rationality and observable fact they become absolutely incapable of making a leap of faith in regards to anything (or at least what they would view as a leap of faith). I'm not even strictly speaking in regards to religion. Most of the greatest scientists we have ever known made these leaps of faith and make massive discoveries because they did while tons of very smart scientists who were certainly capable of making these discoveries did not.
TheORKINMan,
ReplyDeleteUm, which scientists would those be? Because all the scientists I know of don't make leaps of faith, they make observations and use that, they don't makes leaps, they make decisions based on what they see and learn, there are not leaps.
Why is this lack of faith so upsetting to the religious? WHy should I believe in something that has no evidence that supports it? Why? People having feelings about things isn't what I would call compelling enough to get me to toss away all the knowledge that I've learned just so I can feel good. Life is hard, mean and difficult, some people might need the crutch of religion but I'm not one of them.
Best!
Brett
It dosn't upset me. It's just certainly not the way I want to be. I can give you a few great examples where leaps of faith have progressed human history, science, etc... Christopher Columbus for one. He made a huge leap of faith that he and his crew wouldn't die out in the middle of no where looking for a route that may not have even existed as far as he knew. Korfman discovered the city of Troy when most "show me or it didn't happen" types would have laughed in his face and dismissed the city as the fanciful writings of mythology with no basis in fact. In the realm of science you have things happening ALL OF THE TIME especially in cosmology. Theories that end up being proven correct are postulated based on scant to no evidence quite frequently. Among these are Hawking radiation and solar wind(and virtually everything relating to quantum mechanics). Being an absolutist who is unwilling to believe in anything except what is smack in front of your face is a debilitating and unneccesary self constraint IMO
ReplyDeleteIt has nothing to do with having to be smack in front of your face.It's about what can be proven.
ReplyDeleteI believe in lots of things I can't see such as black holes for instance.
Black holes are virtually invisible(as I'm sure most people know)but you can see the effect they have on matter and that effect can traced to its point of origin.
If you can't see something and it has no effect on anything in it's surroundings then it effectively doesn't exist.
Columbus took a leap of faith but there were powerful motivating factors like greed,power and position.He certainly didn't do it in the name of science.
Searching for a "lost" city takes faith but I wouldn't call it a leap.
It's far more reasonable to assume that a "fictional"city might exist than gods,goddesses and mythical monsters.
Anyway my point being that these are not very good examples of leaps of faith for science.
Who cares what the motivating factor is? What difference does that make?
ReplyDeleteAnd hell the damn scientific method is based on leaps of faith :P You don't make a hypothesis AFTER testing something do you? You come up with what you believe to be the case, then test and accept/reject the hypothesis based on evidence gathered after the fact. However crafting the hypothesis in the first place very often requires jumping gaps of logic because no evidence yet exists.
Sorry ORKINMan, that's not exactly how it works. They see something or are curious about something they just don't make whatever they want up for the hypothesis. They see something they try to think of how or why that happened. They just don't assume its zebras when they hear hoofbeats. Yeah they might make a larger leap than normal but they actually research it to see if it's true.
ReplyDeleteFaith basically doesn't bother to see if it's true it just accepts its story, game over. Even after evidence is presented to show its not true they will reject the evidence to keep their faith! This is considered a virtue by the faithful and willful ignorance by the people who've actually bothered to look into things.
Do you see why we don't think faith is a virtue?
Best,
Brett
You are confusing faith with blind faith ;P At least to me they are two seperate things.
ReplyDeleteI certainly see why you don't see faith as a virtue. It most definitely has negative aspects. But I can certainly see faith as a positive even from an evolutionary standpoint as "belief" allows humans to make many of the cognitive leaps that other high intelligence animals cannot.
Ah, religion IS blind faith.
ReplyDeleteBlind faith is bad, makes people do bad things. WHy would that be an advantage?
I'm probably willing to concede religion is blind faith. However an abstract concept in and of itself is rarely "bad". What makes it bad is the tenants or the people you place your blind faith in. I really doubt there are many, if any people that regardless of their religion or lack of religion would consider the person/character of Jesus to be a bad person to emulate as far as one's character. Blind faith in Jim Jones or Pat Robertson however can be very very bad. But IMO it's not any worse then the cult of personality surrounding say Chairman Mao. People are going to be hypnotized by bad human beings regardless of the existance of religion.
ReplyDeleteI really doubt there are many, if any people that regardless of their religion or lack of religion would consider the person/character of Jesus to be a bad person to emulate as far as one's character.
ReplyDeleteAhh well...Eternal damnation in Hell wasn't a recognized concept in Judaism.That little nugget of win came with the whole Jesus thing.
So is the person who said he's going to torture you for eternity for simply not believing what he says a good and moral person?
I'll leave that up to the individual to decide.
And motivation makes all the difference in the world.I don't consider it a real leap of faith when it's really a case of damn the consequences because the possibility of reward and power is too great to be ignored.
Sorry I was running out the door! I ment bad as in falling off a ladder bad, not evil bad. It leaves you open for manipulation like the Branch Davidians, or the Waco people. Blind faith is what can make a seemingly intelligent person want kill, or die to be reborn on a comet.
ReplyDeleteOh, yeah people will fall under the 'spell' of a charismatic leader, the problem is what that leader might make them do. Blindly fallowing anyone is a bad idea to me.
Art was ent off today ORKINMan, sorry got stung by a bee on Saturday and I'm now slightly allergic to them, not can't breathe bad but incredibly painful bad, felt like I got hit with a bat.
Best!
Brett
Did you see that fricken wasp on Pharyngula they found on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi?
ReplyDeleteTHAT was a BEAST.I think that thing is made up of parts from every nightmare I've ever had.
I did,
ReplyDeleteWe get these here:
http://www.bugman123.com/Bugs/TarantulaHawk-large.jpg
Jess killed one last night. We also get a bluish one that slightly smaller.
Best!
Brett
I can appreciate them for being an amazing and complex creature but they still creep the shit out of me.Spiders as well.
ReplyDeleteI don't really like how this always turns into an aetheism vs religion thing when it really should be 'reasonably persons' vs 'fucktards'. There's plenty of christians who have no problem with homosexuality and don't believe its a sin or anything.
ReplyDeleteUnfortunately the fucktards have quite a monopoly on calling themselves the voice of the entire religion.
atheism*
ReplyDelete