It doesn't hurt my feelings that you think i'm going to be tortured for eternity. Witnessing incredible things is not proof of a god. It is certainly not proof of any divinity in the teachings of jesus or the bible. Even if Jesus was born of a virgin mother, and was resurrected after his death (not for a moment do I believe he was), that still in no way proves divinity of any sort.

No, i'm not going on blind faith that there is no god. Just like i'm not going on blind faith that there are no leprechauns with pots of gold at the ends of rainbows.

Typical Christian playing the victim. Let's have a think about where the real discrimination comes from.

PS it is not discriminating to call someone an idiot.

 

I wasn't playing a victim, but Christians have been persicuted in the past. But so have many other faiths and people. If you're not going on faith, then you're going on what you consider is a fact, yet just as you like to challenge religious groups, you can't prove your fact to be true! Of course calling someone an idiot isnt discrimination but talking garbage about them the way you are is. Calling someone an idiot is highly disrespectful to senior citizens with memory loss and other problems. Please respect our elders.

 

I understand that, But there are some schools that do push the homosexual life. There have been reports of schools telling kids it is OK to try it. I understand they teach it but if you start putting ideas in their heads (and I am not in any way saying anything against the gays)

As I said I could care less what people do behind closed doors it is non of my concern. If people would leave people alone (and I mean in every way not just about this) the world would be a much better place.

 

Property rights under the law are the primary reason for homosexuals to marry. When one dies, the disposition of the body is not up to the other one if they are not married, it is up to the children or other family of the deceased one.

Denying homomarriage is a removal of the same civil rights that any heteromarriage couple has.

DS is correct. The Bible is the word of God because it says so....NO PROOF!

All the Holy Men are so because they say so....NO PROOF!

GOD as pictured commonly in the Christian faith DOES NOT EXIST.
"GOD" as the creating force of the Universe, must exist or we wouldn't be here.

Jesus saying love thy neighbor as thyself and also confirming Leviticus is an oxymoron.

I am the second coming of JESUS, because I say so!
Does that make it so? Anyone want to join my other church (not the one that I am the Pope of)?

 

well i dont think i have eaver herd of a school telling anyone to try it. so I will honestly have to take your word for it because I do balive you

but i still maintain that an education is inportent on this subject if done correctly

 

By your logic God as a creating force.... NO PROOF!

Jesus saying "love thy neighbor."....NO PROOF!

Unlike you, I don't add to or subtract from the bible to fit an agenda. Prove to me where Jesus says to ignore his father's commandments?

Or we can agree to disagree because neither of us will back down. It seems we both like to debate but I don't want this to turn into another flame war, there's enough of those on here

 

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If someone tells me that being gay is wrong, or whatever is wrong because the bible says it is, I'd usually bring up the whole shaving thing also being wrong, as well as killing women who aren't virgins when they marry, or how owning slaves is actually okay then...

Or, I'll say something like... "God is all knowing. Nothing created god as he always existed. God knows nothing created him. God is an Atheist." Fun way to get on someone's nerves

But seriously, I really don't see why gay marriage is an issue at all. It's not like it's affecting anyone but those directly involved.

 

I cannot know that no god exists. That is not the claim i make. The god of your religion however, that can be disproved by falsifying the bible, as the bible is the only source of "evidence" for the christian version of god. With regard to god as the creative force of the universe, I don't believe in such a god either, as there is no evidence to support such a claim.

The burden of proof is on you to demonstrate that god exists, not for me to prove he does not. Saying god is self-evident is wrong, I could claim that about anything, but it does not make it so.

Christians are the biggest discriminators in the world on a variety of things. Then they claim to be the ones being persecuted because science teachers don't want to teach nonsense in their science classes. And if you can't brainwash people when they are children, it makes it somewhat more difficult to get people into church when they are old enough to think independently for themselves, sane rational people have a had time believing in talking snakes and global floods.

An idiot is a derogatory word used to describe someone that is utterly foolish, or a senseless person. It has nothing to do with old people. People who take things on faith alone are utterly foolish.

 

I dropped that post on the thread and went away for a day. Now, popping in again, I see that the whole debate has veered back onto the rails of religion.

As I said in my first sentence, it does not have to be that way. The religious aspects are a red herring, rammed down society's throat by politicians and the media to polarize debate.

Because I live in Massachusetts, I have a fair number of gay married friends, and we have had frank discussions about this subject in social settings. They know my views on the subject, and while some do not agree, all understand and empathize. I know some of you will find this unbelievable, but I have gay friends, who have married gays, who oppose gay marriage and admit that they tied the knot cynically, solely for the financial and civil benefits. "Yes, we are against it, too, but it has been made legal, and it makes some things easier [such as the sharing of health care and mitigation of health care costs], so we went ahead and did it."

One poster from yesterday- I am not sure who- makes the point that marriage is hardly ever mentioned in the Bible, and that "marriage" as a social institution (i.e., as we know it today) evolved in Europe in the middle ages.

That is true, to a point. But it is easy to read too much into it.

In Biblical times, people chose mates for life. Throughout all cultures, to the extent of our sociological and anthropological knowledge, mates were chosen for life, and those pairings were overwhelmingly male/female.

Yes, there have been variations. The Bible oft-mentions polygamy. But I will turn that right back on the poster's argument. He mentions that formal marriage in the Renaissance (sanctioned by the Holy Roman Empire) tended to be used by the upper classes and nobility to secure the flow of heritable wealth. Well, most Biblical references to polygamy were confined to the upper classes of the times: the "nobility" of the desert cultures, i.e., the men who held the most lands and owned the largest herds.

The lower classes- the common people- chose mates (or more often had their mates chosen for them through parental arrangement), bound themselves for life, and made babies until making babies killed them.

Funny thing... marriage is hardly ever mentioned in the Bible. But there are lots of other things that are hardly ever mentioned in the Bible:

The Antichrist (never mentioned specifically);

the rights of animals (never even implied - animals are for eating, period);

human obligations to preserving the environment (never even implied - the world is bequeathed by God for humans to use, period);

hell (yes, there is a Sheol in the Old Testament, but it does not contain demons and everlasting fire);

heaven (almost exclusively a New Testament concept, and in any event not a place where people in antiquity expected to go when they died);

homosexual unions.

The Bible was written for a different time, when people lived on a flat world that was about 9,000 years old. People lived until around 75 or so if they survived childhood, but survival to adulthood was rare. Daughters were married off as soon as they hit menarche, and they started making little fieldhands soon thereafter. Men and women made babies until the women died, and the men took wives serially, just as it has been done in every agrarian society for which there is a record. Just as it was done in Colonial America, in fact. Read Nathaniel Hawthorne!

Neither authors of the Bible, nor Nathaniel Hawthorne, ever wrote stories about gay or lesbian couples who tied the knot, whatever that meant, purely for the joy of their love. There was no gay marriage in that sense. It would have had no meaning. Society would have been capable of neither tolerating it nor even understanding its point, because it would have had no point. None whatsoever.

The lack of literature concerning gay unions in antiquity does not mean that it was condoned or not prohibited. It means that the concept was inconceivable.

That gay marriage is not prohibited or proscribed in the U.S. Constitution does not mean that the Founding Fathers would have condoned it today. What it means is that gay marriage is an 'i' that they could not possibly have imagined they ever would have had to 'dot.' Gay marriage, in the 1700's, is a concept that people would never have imagined. There would have been no point.

There was no point then, and there is no point today. Apart from hubris, which regrettably has become contemporary society's primary preoccupation.

 

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Jerry636 - I would never flame you for anything you post or for any of your beliefs. And you are as right about my thesis as NO PROOF as I am about yours. PEACE MY BROTHER (in the human sense, not the religious sense!)

 

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Nor would I you! It is vital to respect one another's beliefs. I am glad that we both do and can turn your post back to its original heading. It is unconstitutional to keep gay men and women from marrying. People tend to worry about everyone else's business these days. What's the point? It doesn't directly affect them! Live and let live!


@DS. It is neither up to me to prove that God exists, nor up to you to prove that he doesn't! We both have our beliefs and neither of us will change, so there is no point in us bickering with one another over it. Let's agree to disagree and leave it at that so that we can enjoy the forum.

 

Throughout human history their have been one thing consistant, the human body. Be free from human suffering or to suffer. Anti-christ means lies and decption and pain and suffering. Christ means truth and free from pain and suffering. So when we read and listen to people it is obvious who is causing the pain and suffering. Who is fighting for freedom?

 

do you actually balive what you say?

 

So I am suffering because of my lack of beliefs, what about all those cancer sufferers who are christian.

We suffer aches and pains because we have hurt ourselves, we suffer from other diseases and conditions because of a faulty gene or exposure to an outside agent.

Neither christ, nor anti christ has any say in it because he does not exist.

 

no no its all because you don't balive in god just you. your lack of faith is killing us all

 

IT Is suck

 

Oh my. See, I'm not protesting, this is a discussion. It started with an open letter to those who oppose gay marriage. I thought I would express my opinion.
The reason a marriage should be between a man and a woman is cause that's what it was designed for from the beginning. There's a good reason why no one ever tried to use a boat for a balloon; it wasn't designed for that. Bad analogy perhaps, but the point is, marriage wasn't contemplated as a commitment for just anyone, but for one man and one woman. And why the heck would gays want to invade that space? I mean, most gays I know look down on us heterosexuals as........primitive. Heathens even. Make up your own civil thing for crying out loud.

I'm not tainted by the gay couple living next door; in fact, I like them. We play poker about once a month, drink beer and sneer at whatever has us upset at the moment. We talked before about gay marriage, in fact we've gotten into quite spirited discussions about it. At the end of the night, while we counted our winnings, we agreed; they can do almost everything my wife and I can do as a result of our marriage, it just involves more steps and attention to detail. And they said if they ever do get married, they want me to be the "maid of honor" and my wife to be "best woman". That's a joke. But, they did ask if we'd attend their wedding and we said sure, provided it's open bar.

And like I said, if somehow gay marriage eventually is allowed, I am not going to get my undies all in a wad over it. I just don't think it makes much sense. Make up your own institution.