patrick.net

Dan8267 says

Again, how is religion in general and Christianity in particular not harmful to our society?

We are better off without the shackles of religion, but it's Islam that must be destroyed.

The thing I like about Christianity is that Jesus didn't kill anyone. Didn't rape anyone. Didn't rob anyone. Very very different from Mohammed.

Christians do not personally murder people who insult Jesus. Jesus definitely would not want them to. Very very different from Mohammed, again.

OK, if Christians are in control of government, they can get oppressive in limiting personal freedoms, but again, not nearly as much as Muslims.

Great quote I read somewhere I can't remember:

Islam is just like Christianity, but much, much worse.

Devout Muslims do shit like this every day of the year somewhere in the world explicitly because of Islam:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4250292/Christian-father-burned-alive-son-shot-dead.html

Devout Christians hardly ever do anything like that.

@Dan8267 think of Christianity as the cowpox inoculation against smallpox. I'd rather billions of people were Christian if it prevents them from becoming Muslim. It's just a mild fever instead of death. To wish that no one has any religion is just not realistic.

Every year, a report ranks all the countries in the world by personal happiness. Every year, nearly all of the top 20 have at least nominally Christian majorities, while nearly all of the 20 most miserable countries have Muslim majorities. People who have a choice prefer consistently to emigrate away from Muslim countries and immigrate into Christian countries. If you can cite a country that bans all religions, we can compare it to the other countries, but meanwhile it's patently obvious that Islam is the worst and Christianity is either best or least bad depending on POV.

rando says

The thing I like about Christianity is that Jesus didn't kill anyone.

But his followers most certainly killed, raped, and tortured a lot of people in his name. And even ignoring all of that, as the story above shows, Christianity still is used for some pretty shitty things in 21st century America. Not exactly useful for instilling morality.

Just because Islam is worse, doesn't mean Christianity is acceptable.

rando says

@Dan8267 think of Christianity as the cowpox inoculation against smallpox. I'd rather billions of people were Christian if it prevents them from becoming Muslim.

But does it really? Or does accepting lesser evils enable greater evils?

The Broken Window Theory is that acceptance and ignoring of smaller crimes leads to greater ones. You are hypothesizing that allowing vandals to break people's windows with impunity would be a good thing because the vandals would blow off steam and thus be less likely to engage in greater crimes. The empirical evidence shows that in fact it encourages bad behavior and criminals get bolder with time if not brought in line. The same applies for irrationality.

Think about it this way. How likely would any person be to adopt a religion if doing so were socially ostracize them? Not very. People are conformists. It's better they conform to a rational culture than an irrational one, and one irrationality enables another.

curious2 says

but meanwhile it's patently obvious that Islam is the worst

True, and rape is worse than sexual assault. But why encourage either?

LGBT is harmful to society, Christianity is not.

If you want to ban something, ban your worship of LGBT crap.

FortWayne says

Christianity is not.

Of course it is - indoctrination of children with nonsense, suspension of reason, promotion of anti-science agendas.

I'd say the LBGT religion is also nonsense being indoctrinated into children, and is anti human survival.

The further a population gets from traditional gender roles, the more likely it is to die out. It may be personal liberation, but it's also cultural and demographic suicide. Those traditional roles evolved for damn good reasons. That's what worked to bring us down to the present day, and that's what still works to keep us going as a country.

Individuals should have the choice to live as they wish, but I do not like their normalizing cultural and demographic suicide or recommending it, because it's the end of the line.

There, your midwestern Catholic indoctrination misleads you. The Roman Republic and Empire, and Greece, prospered for longer than America has even existed. Ancient Rome had same-sex marriage. Read about the Spartans, Thebans, etc. These civilizations did quite well.

If the only reason you live the way you do is because you didn't know there was any alternative, then I feel very sorry for you. Most people don't have that problem.

The argument you make in this context is very similar to the Islamic argument that all other religions must be prohibited, or at least cannot be advocated. The mullahs fear that Islam won't survive if people are allowed to decide for themselves. Since their doctrine is a hateful fraud, one might expect that to occur, but childhood indoctrination seems deeply resistant to reason.

You might equally prohibit the celibate priesthood, or bishops advocating the celibate priesthood, if you're so worried about Catholics going extinct. It would be absurd and contrary to observable fact, but it makes about as much sense as the argument you made above and elsewhere on PatNet.

Besides, many gay couples do have children. "There are approximately 594,000 same-sex partner households, according to the 2000 Census, and there are children living in approximately 27 percent of those households." See also, ""How same-sex couples have children". The numbers have probably increased since 2000, and even since 2014, and besides they don't even count gay single parents. There aren't nearly that many "celibate" priests having children, and yet Catholics continue to increase in number.