I am a long time citizen and it troubles me when Christian bigots use their political position to push their religious agenda on everyone (remember, religion is now debunked bunch of bronze age lies).
So anyone who opposes this legislation is a Christian....? Boy that comment doesn't sound prejudice at all......you know, since the commentor never actually identified himself as a Christian.
Absolutist: There are absolutes we all must adhere to. Relativist: There are no absolutes. Absolutist: You just made an absolute statement, and therefor self contradicted yourself.
All relativists are relative relativists. They are ok with everybody believing whatever until what someone else believes infringes on what they believe.
Relativist: What is right for me is right for me, and what is right for you is right for you. Absolutist: I believe it is ok for me to steal from you. Relativist: No it isn't.
Who defines morals then? Who says what is right, and what is wrong? The government, individuals, majority, minority, etc? All of these are falible and are prone to mistakes. I cant expect the goverment to always do the right thing. There are some very intelligent and unintelligent people out there, so we can't rely on any given individual. Even the intelligent ones can make mistakes. I can't rely on someone else to do right by me. When you have a group of people (majority, minority, etc), they tend to be very dumb, regardless if they are smart individually or right collectively. So what can we rely on for morality? Who defines the standard? Left to our own devices we make stupid choices about morality regardless of how you look at it. We cannot depend on any group or individual to come up with the correct standard.
So who does that leave to define a standard? Evolution? Nay, absolutes don't happen by chance. Besides, evolution is about survival of the fittest. So by that mindset we should kill the elderly, the sick, and people with disabilities. We should take what we want. Its all about being ahead. Progress must ensue. But you may argue it is beneficial for us to show compassion or empathy towards others because it makes us more fit to survive. That would allow characteristics to persist within the species that may not necessarily be good traits for survival.
There is only one answer:
God has set the standard.
My job is not to judge others. That is not my place. I cant condem others for the things they have done, because I myself was just as condemned. It is God's job to judge. My job is to spread the word about the gospel. God has a perfect standard, and we all fall short of it. We are all destined for hell. It doesnt matter how much good you've done. Would a judge be a good judge if someone without a doubt committed murder and and he didn't sentence the criminal to prison? The criminal may argue, "but look at all the good I've done!" Many good deeds do not pay for the crime. It was still committed regardless. What are we to do then if we can't save ourselves from hell by doing good or promising to be better? God provided a way to save us from hell. He really doesn't want us to experience His wrath for eternity, but as a perfect judge he has to, unless there is a substitue. Only someone who is perfect (followed God's law perfectly) can be a suitable substitue. For if that substitue had their own transgressions, how could they pay for the transgressions of others? That substitue is the Lord Jesus Christ. The only thing you are required to do is accept and believe that He took your place for the sentence God had set forth.
That is what Christianity is ultimately about. People are going to do what they are going to do, whether the government permits it or not.
[Abolitionists] have no problem with discrimination. They had no problem with [a plantation owner] being forced out because of his personal beliefs on [slavery]. But if, say, another [person] is forced out [of the South] because they [didn't support forced servitude, Abolitionists] would be enraged. You see because they're all for free speech so long as it's speech they agree with.
Perhaps with that simple change of a few words you'll see that the issue is not with free speech, but with civil rights. The Mozilla CEO has the right to be a bigot and the right to state his bigoted views to the world, but from your comments it's clear that those that disagree with Eich's denial of civil liberties should be allowed to reply in kind. Why don't think that free speech should go both ways?
Personally, I don't use a Mozilla product but if I did I would have stopped using it as soon as I found out about the CEO's bigoted beliefs. That said, I don't think he should be fired because of those beliefs, in-and-of themselves, but, rather, fired because he's not good for Mozilla's business which means Mozilla is at fault for not learning that Eich wasn't a good fit for their revenue and profit potential which is why I agree with Andrew's Sullivan's comments on this week's The Colbert Report.
Some might argue, he is not doing his job very well.
In your soliloquy, you claim all people are less than perfect and not capable of judging, so why does the Bible say in the Book of Judges that God appointed human judges to establish justice over the people? Why didn't he just do it himself? I have a pretty good idea, but I'll let you answer that.
There is also this bit in Deuteronomy where it states that the town elders were apparently judging as well.
Quote:
If any man has a stubborn and rebellious son who will not obey his father or his mother, and when they chastise him, he will not even listen to them, then his father and mother shall seize him, and bring him out to the elders of his city at the gateway of his home town. And they shall say to the elders of his city, "This son of ours is stubborn and rebellious, he will not obey us, he is a glutton and a drunkard." Then all the men of his city shall stone him to death; so you shall remove the evil from your midst, and all Israel shall hear of it and fear.
How would one know if they were denied a position based on sexual orientation? Should we also ban companies for discriminating based on hair color, tattoos, facial piercings, looks etc.
The same way as one knows if he or she were denied a job based on race or gender, for example.
There is now strong evidence that theistic gods i.e. gods that care about human beings, that interfere in their lives, that tell you what you should do, what you should eat, on what days, who you may sleep with and in what position, gods who break the known laws of nature for their people, god who stops the motion of the sun around earth so certain people in the Bible can finish their work, god who takes "our" side in a war, a god that gives itself body so it can kill it to save the humanity are man made invention.
Religion comes to us from other human mammals who not only know there is a god, but they also know his mind what he wants us to do. And how do they know? Revelation of course, god told them something often times contradictory what he told others. And you never even seek evidence for their extraordinary claims. But revelation is useless and unreliable as a way to discover truth
Revelation can only ever be relevant to the person to whom something is revealed. As soon as that person shares and relates the revelation to someone else, it becomes a testimony at that point. And then it becomes a matter of trusting that person for the claim they are making. Also, the person to whom something is revealed should be apprehensive and wonder which is more likely that laws of nature have been bent in their favor no less, or if perhaps they are under apprehension.
Revelations are dime a dozen. Numerous people have claimed that something has been revealed to them. Even worse different people have claimed same god has revealed things that are contradictory to the things god has revealed to other people. In Christianity god reveals himself as a human, he dies on the cross, and resurrects. In Islam, Jesus is not only not the son of god, he never died on the cross and never resurrected. Believing otherwise will have you condemned to hell. In Christianity god says love your enemies, in Islam he says kill your enemies and apostates. Yes it's the same god, and yet both sides claim divine revelation for the "wisdom" they preach.
Content of revelation paints a picture of a god who is quite frankly incompetent, stupid and has morals lesser than average decent human being today. And most importantly he leaves it to chance what you will believe about him and if you will be damned to eternity.
What religion you get indoctrinated into has very little to do with its truthfulness, but everything to do with where you were born. If you were born in Saudi Arabia for example you would be a Muslim defending Islam right now. Yet both Islam and Christianity and Judaism (the three desert dogmas) all claim to posses the true and perfect words of the creator of the universe. Yet how many sleepless nights have you spent worrying that Islam could be right? And why is that?
And isn't it incredibly stupid of a supreme, intelligent, omnipotent, omnipresent being to demand belief in him without evidence? God would presumably know that people would invent scientific method as the only sure way to discover truth. Yet he leaves such important things as if you will be damned for eternity to belief without evidence leading to three desert dogmas that teach completely opposite things about him. Yahweh himself besides being stupid is rather evil god. Look how he behaves exactly as you would expect the people of that age that invented him to behave (he orders genocide of neighboring tribes that worship other gods, enslavement of women and children etc, just read random book of old testament). By the way he was never meant to be god of all, he was meant to be a god of a single tribe (otherwise a lot of stuff god says and orders makes no sense). Evolution of competing religions and the fact we have multiple religions like this is exactly what you would expect to see if religion were man made.
All metaphysical claims and especially all physical claims made by religion were proved to be wrong. And would you expect it any other way really? Religion was our first approximation of cosmology, medicine etc. But like all first approximations it proved to be completely wrong. Jesus casts out demons to heal people, he heals lepers instead of healing leprosy, no germs ever mentioned in the Bible (naturally no germ theory of disease either).
But now we know better. We know how solar systems are formed, we know how planets are formed, we know how life evolves, we even know how a universe can come from nothing. We really don't need god to kick off any of these things any more. Besides positing an intelligent god capable of creating universes, god that always existed, or that spontaneously came into being is assuming a lot more than assuming the same about the universe itself i.e. dumb matter. Occam's razor cuts him out of existence as superfluous assumption that does not explain anything.
And besides, look at the absurdity of belief themselves: we are all supposed to believe that god impregnated his virgin mother in order that he could die on the cross for what he condemned the humanity to and so he could make himself forgive the transgressions he invented, performed by the beings created in his own image. And his followers are required to eat his flesh, soul and divinity in a form of a cookie which magically turns into him after a few incantations. All that so that we could join him one day in a celestial North Korea, praising the dear leader incessantly,
So, in light of that saying silly things like god sets the standard is really saying let's not use the very thing that makes us human, our reason to decide what is right and what is wrong, but let's rely on superstitions of our bronze age ancestors one chromosome away from chimpanzee and uses their judgement as what is right and wrong.
You see morals are just codified behavior and customs expressed in language. Morals like language are also products of our wills and minds and therefore also a technology. We can decide slavery is not a good idea (despite endorsement from Yahweh). We can decide that fairly applied laws, rather than nepotistic favoritism, is a good idea. We can outlaw certain punishments with treaties. We can encourage accountability with the invention of writing. We can consciously expand our circle of empathy. These are all inventions, products of our minds, as much as lightbulbs and telegraphs are. People who insist on absolute biblical morality are really insisting on using bronze age technology absolutely.
And besides god's morals are not absolute either. God in the old testament orders killing of innocent people time and time again. Explicit general prescriptions are given by god in what circumstances it is OK to kill people. God in the new testament says it is not OK to kill at all. So god changed his mind, therefore moral teaching on murder is relative. Just one example.
So, the only way the religious can claim their morals are absolute is to define absolute to mean "what ever we believe now".
And yet the first bash comes from you against Christians with this label of "basher."
He's got ya there. The person who yells "I'm tolerant" is often the least. Bashing Christians is no worse or better than bashing gays.
Gays shouldn't be discriminated against. Period. I don't worry about gay pastors because they'll never be hired- it would be an awful hire for the church boards to make so they won't make it. It literally doesn't have to be about intolerance as much as the best qualified. I'm not qualified to be a hooters waitress. I'm ok with that.
Now as far as transgender... I'm with Apple ][- that's a mental condition. Just be gay. Only hermaphrodites should be able to "change" gender and not be labeled a loony.
Private companies should be able to discriminate against anyone, just like individuals should. If people don't want to do business with them, so be it. What happened to freedom of association you tyrants? If a gay-run company doesn't want to do business with conservative Christians, more power to them. It's amazing to see how many people go along with fascism as long as it has a "liberal" "progressive" or "gay" face. Shame on you bastards.
What else would you expect from a bunch of racist and intolerant liberals?
Are all Conservatives hypocritical idiots? Should businesses have the right to make decisions that are in the best interest of their business or not? If the Mozilla CEO was at hobby lobby, he would still be there. However, if you make a product designed to appeal to a younger demographic, you might not want to publicly espouse an unpopular view amongst that same demographic. Geez, I thought conservatives understood this and thought the companies should be able to protect their image by making certain their employees don't make controversial statements. If I'm the CEO of Pepsi and start talking about aliens and lizard people, should that be a 1st amendment issue or should Pepsi protect their brand? Maybe the Mozilla ex CEO should go work at a company where his views don't hurt the company, like a religiously affiliated organization? It's not a first amendment or tolerance issue. It's business.
Some might argue, he is not doing his job very well.
In your soliloquy, you claim all people are less than perfect and not capable of judging, so why does the Bible say in the Book of Judges that God appointed human judges to establish justice over the people? Why didn't he just do it himself? I have a pretty good idea, but I'll let you answer that.
There is also this bit in Deuteronomy where it states that the town elders were apparently judging as well.
Can I PLEASE cut this off at the pass? Let's not use scripture in this thread. It's useless in convincing non Christians. It's useless in unconvincing Christians. Completely useless
Comments
So anyone who opposes this legislation is a Christian....? Boy that comment doesn't sound prejudice at all......you know, since the commentor never actually identified himself as a Christian.
Can we just not have threads like this?
Sure- tell Tim Cook to behave less like Sheryl Sandberg and more like Steve Jobs. What's next - a book?
Relativist: There are no absolutes.
Absolutist: You just made an absolute statement, and therefor self contradicted yourself.
All relativists are relative relativists. They are ok with everybody believing whatever until what someone else believes infringes on what they believe.
Relativist: What is right for me is right for me, and what is right for you is right for you.
Absolutist: I believe it is ok for me to steal from you.
Relativist: No it isn't.
Who defines morals then? Who says what is right, and what is wrong? The government, individuals, majority, minority, etc? All of these are falible and are prone to mistakes. I cant expect the goverment to always do the right thing. There are some very intelligent and unintelligent people out there, so we can't rely on any given individual. Even the intelligent ones can make mistakes. I can't rely on someone else to do right by me. When you have a group of people (majority, minority, etc), they tend to be very dumb, regardless if they are smart individually or right collectively. So what can we rely on for morality? Who defines the standard? Left to our own devices we make stupid choices about morality regardless of how you look at it. We cannot depend on any group or individual to come up with the correct standard.
So who does that leave to define a standard? Evolution? Nay, absolutes don't happen by chance. Besides, evolution is about survival of the fittest. So by that mindset we should kill the elderly, the sick, and people with disabilities. We should take what we want. Its all about being ahead. Progress must ensue. But you may argue it is beneficial for us to show compassion or empathy towards others because it makes us more fit to survive. That would allow characteristics to persist within the species that may not necessarily be good traits for survival.
There is only one answer:
God has set the standard.
My job is not to judge others. That is not my place. I cant condem others for the things they have done, because I myself was just as condemned. It is God's job to judge. My job is to spread the word about the gospel. God has a perfect standard, and we all fall short of it. We are all destined for hell. It doesnt matter how much good you've done. Would a judge be a good judge if someone without a doubt committed murder and and he didn't sentence the criminal to prison? The criminal may argue, "but look at all the good I've done!" Many good deeds do not pay for the crime. It was still committed regardless. What are we to do then if we can't save ourselves from hell by doing good or promising to be better? God provided a way to save us from hell. He really doesn't want us to experience His wrath for eternity, but as a perfect judge he has to, unless there is a substitue. Only someone who is perfect (followed God's law perfectly) can be a suitable substitue. For if that substitue had their own transgressions, how could they pay for the transgressions of others? That substitue is the Lord Jesus Christ. The only thing you are required to do is accept and believe that He took your place for the sentence God had set forth.
That is what Christianity is ultimately about. People are going to do what they are going to do, whether the government permits it or not.
Perhaps with that simple change of a few words you'll see that the issue is not with free speech, but with civil rights. The Mozilla CEO has the right to be a bigot and the right to state his bigoted views to the world, but from your comments it's clear that those that disagree with Eich's denial of civil liberties should be allowed to reply in kind. Why don't think that free speech should go both ways?
Personally, I don't use a Mozilla product but if I did I would have stopped using it as soon as I found out about the CEO's bigoted beliefs. That said, I don't think he should be fired because of those beliefs, in-and-of themselves, but, rather, fired because he's not good for Mozilla's business which means Mozilla is at fault for not learning that Eich wasn't a good fit for their revenue and profit potential which is why I agree with Andrew's Sullivan's comments on this week's The Colbert Report.
It is God's job to judge.
Some might argue, he is not doing his job very well.
In your soliloquy, you claim all people are less than perfect and not capable of judging, so why does the Bible say in the Book of Judges that God appointed human judges to establish justice over the people? Why didn't he just do it himself? I have a pretty good idea, but I'll let you answer that.
There is also this bit in Deuteronomy where it states that the town elders were apparently judging as well.
How would one know if they were denied a position based on sexual orientation? Should we also ban companies for discriminating based on hair color, tattoos, facial piercings, looks etc.
The same way as one knows if he or she were denied a job based on race or gender, for example.
Employment law -- look into it.
LOL
They are choices. Nothing more.
The greatest deception of recent times is that homosexuality is like being caucasian, hispanic, asian, etc.
It's a complete fallacy.
It's a lifestyle choice.
Not immutable. Not by birth.
So you choose to be heterosexual?
Sad to see so much homophobia and transphobia on AI.
Sad to see so much homophobia and transphobia on AI.
But, sadly, not surprising.
God has set the standard.
There is now strong evidence that theistic gods i.e. gods that care about human beings, that interfere in their lives, that tell you what you should do, what you should eat, on what days, who you may sleep with and in what position, gods who break the known laws of nature for their people, god who stops the motion of the sun around earth so certain people in the Bible can finish their work, god who takes "our" side in a war, a god that gives itself body so it can kill it to save the humanity are man made invention.
Religion comes to us from other human mammals who not only know there is a god, but they also know his mind what he wants us to do. And how do they know? Revelation of course, god told them something often times contradictory what he told others. And you never even seek evidence for their extraordinary claims. But revelation is useless and unreliable as a way to discover truth
Revelation can only ever be relevant to the person to whom something is revealed. As soon as that person shares and relates the revelation to someone else, it becomes a testimony at that point. And then it becomes a matter of trusting that person for the claim they are making. Also, the person to whom something is revealed should be apprehensive and wonder which is more likely that laws of nature have been bent in their favor no less, or if perhaps they are under apprehension.
Revelations are dime a dozen. Numerous people have claimed that something has been revealed to them. Even worse different people have claimed same god has revealed things that are contradictory to the things god has revealed to other people. In Christianity god reveals himself as a human, he dies on the cross, and resurrects. In Islam, Jesus is not only not the son of god, he never died on the cross and never resurrected. Believing otherwise will have you condemned to hell. In Christianity god says love your enemies, in Islam he says kill your enemies and apostates. Yes it's the same god, and yet both sides claim divine revelation for the "wisdom" they preach.
Content of revelation paints a picture of a god who is quite frankly incompetent, stupid and has morals lesser than average decent human being today. And most importantly he leaves it to chance what you will believe about him and if you will be damned to eternity.
What religion you get indoctrinated into has very little to do with its truthfulness, but everything to do with where you were born. If you were born in Saudi Arabia for example you would be a Muslim defending Islam right now. Yet both Islam and Christianity and Judaism (the three desert dogmas) all claim to posses the true and perfect words of the creator of the universe. Yet how many sleepless nights have you spent worrying that Islam could be right? And why is that?
And isn't it incredibly stupid of a supreme, intelligent, omnipotent, omnipresent being to demand belief in him without evidence? God would presumably know that people would invent scientific method as the only sure way to discover truth. Yet he leaves such important things as if you will be damned for eternity to belief without evidence leading to three desert dogmas that teach completely opposite things about him. Yahweh himself besides being stupid is rather evil god. Look how he behaves exactly as you would expect the people of that age that invented him to behave (he orders genocide of neighboring tribes that worship other gods, enslavement of women and children etc, just read random book of old testament). By the way he was never meant to be god of all, he was meant to be a god of a single tribe (otherwise a lot of stuff god says and orders makes no sense). Evolution of competing religions and the fact we have multiple religions like this is exactly what you would expect to see if religion were man made.
All metaphysical claims and especially all physical claims made by religion were proved to be wrong. And would you expect it any other way really? Religion was our first approximation of cosmology, medicine etc. But like all first approximations it proved to be completely wrong. Jesus casts out demons to heal people, he heals lepers instead of healing leprosy, no germs ever mentioned in the Bible (naturally no germ theory of disease either).
But now we know better. We know how solar systems are formed, we know how planets are formed, we know how life evolves, we even know how a universe can come from nothing. We really don't need god to kick off any of these things any more. Besides positing an intelligent god capable of creating universes, god that always existed, or that spontaneously came into being is assuming a lot more than assuming the same about the universe itself i.e. dumb matter. Occam's razor cuts him out of existence as superfluous assumption that does not explain anything.
And besides, look at the absurdity of belief themselves: we are all supposed to believe that god impregnated his virgin mother in order that he could die on the cross for what he condemned the humanity to and so he could make himself forgive the transgressions he invented, performed by the beings created in his own image. And his followers are required to eat his flesh, soul and divinity in a form of a cookie which magically turns into him after a few incantations. All that so that we could join him one day in a celestial North Korea, praising the dear leader incessantly,
So, in light of that saying silly things like god sets the standard is really saying let's not use the very thing that makes us human, our reason to decide what is right and what is wrong, but let's rely on superstitions of our bronze age ancestors one chromosome away from chimpanzee and uses their judgement as what is right and wrong.
You see morals are just codified behavior and customs expressed in language. Morals like language are also products of our wills and minds and therefore also a technology. We can decide slavery is not a good idea (despite endorsement from Yahweh). We can decide that fairly applied laws, rather than nepotistic favoritism, is a good idea. We can outlaw certain punishments with treaties. We can encourage accountability with the invention of writing. We can consciously expand our circle of empathy. These are all inventions, products of our minds, as much as lightbulbs and telegraphs are. People who insist on absolute biblical morality are really insisting on using bronze age technology absolutely.
And besides god's morals are not absolute either. God in the old testament orders killing of innocent people time and time again. Explicit general prescriptions are given by god in what circumstances it is OK to kill people. God in the new testament says it is not OK to kill at all. So god changed his mind, therefore moral teaching on murder is relative. Just one example.
So, the only way the religious can claim their morals are absolute is to define absolute to mean "what ever we believe now".
I wonder if this would have helped the guy from Mozilla. He was discriminated against
Of for the love of ...
Ah, well. These threads are always good for one thing: Helping me expand my ignore list.
He's got ya there. The person who yells "I'm tolerant" is often the least. Bashing Christians is no worse or better than bashing gays.
Gays shouldn't be discriminated against. Period. I don't worry about gay pastors because they'll never be hired- it would be an awful hire for the church boards to make so they won't make it. It literally doesn't have to be about intolerance as much as the best qualified. I'm not qualified to be a hooters waitress. I'm ok with that.
Now as far as transgender... I'm with Apple ][- that's a mental condition. Just be gay. Only hermaphrodites should be able to "change" gender and not be labeled a loony.
Couldn't one say the same about Christians in China?
I don't disagree with you, but that's a poor argument.
Are all Conservatives hypocritical idiots? Should businesses have the right to make decisions that are in the best interest of their business or not? If the Mozilla CEO was at hobby lobby, he would still be there. However, if you make a product designed to appeal to a younger demographic, you might not want to publicly espouse an unpopular view amongst that same demographic. Geez, I thought conservatives understood this and thought the companies should be able to protect their image by making certain their employees don't make controversial statements. If I'm the CEO of Pepsi and start talking about aliens and lizard people, should that be a 1st amendment issue or should Pepsi protect their brand? Maybe the Mozilla ex CEO should go work at a company where his views don't hurt the company, like a religiously affiliated organization? It's not a first amendment or tolerance issue. It's business.
Can I PLEASE cut this off at the pass? Let's not use scripture in this thread. It's useless in convincing non Christians. It's useless in unconvincing Christians. Completely useless
Please please please please please.