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.

FortWayne says

LGBT is harmful to society, Christianity is not.

Christianity is harmful to society, LGBT is not.

See how easy it is to make unsupported assertions? We could do this all day.

If you eat your own shit, you will get superpowers.

Jumping naked off a cliff is the fastest way to get to Hong Kong.

George Washington didn't fight in the revolutionary war. Genghis Kong did.

Life's so much easier when you don't have to provide evidence for you statements and you can even ignore thousands of years of historical evidence that contradict your statements.

rando says

LBGT religion is...is anti human survival...cultural and demographic suicide...normalizing cultural and demographic suicide or recommending it, because it's the end of the line.

@Patrick, I decided to read further about this topic, since you seem to keep coming back to it with extremely adamant false claims.

I'm not sure what "LBGT religion" would be, unless you're referring to the Vatican insisting on the celibate clergy, which has tended to draw closeted homosexuals plus all too many pederasts. In any event, it has never caused demographic "suicide" of Catholics or Catholic culture.

If you're referring to the the normalization of same-sex marriage, then the facts disprove your claim. I noted already above some historical examples that thrived longer than the USA has even existed. Among current examples, Mexico has had legal marriage for same-sex couples since 2005, but the birth rate and population growth rate remain strongly positive. Mexico did have an even higher birth rate 50 years ago, and it's been coming down steadily since contraception and lower infant mortality arrived, but that trend neither accelerated nor decelerated in the decade since legalizing (or "normalizing") same-sex couples. In contrast, Russia has never had same-sex marriage, and their birth rate was too low for more than 20 years to sustain their population. If anything, the evidence suggests that legally recognizing ("normalizing") same-sex marriage promotes health and survival rates. See, e.g., "Same-sex marriage laws reduce doctor visits and health care costs for gay men". I'll add more evidence below due to the comment length limit.

As I noted above, many gay couples do have children.

Also, legalization of same-sex marriage is "linked to fewer youth suicide attempts:

But in states that did not legalize same-sex marriage, there was no change."

Presumably, more of those LGB high school students will live long enough to have children of their own. The evidence shows that recognizing ("normalizing") same-sex marriage reduces the suicide rate, which is the opposite of what you keep claiming. Data from Massachusetts showed a 10% reduction in total medical spending among gay men, due to better health, even if they did not personally get married.

In general, you can't promote overall demographic health by stigmatizing (or "abnormalizing") people. There is no reason to believe that hurting some people would help others, unless you imagine that you need to make a cautionary example of those people, lest everyone do the same thing.

That leads me back to feeling sorry for FortWhine, who seems really to feel constrained into a life he hates. As for you, I think you have difficulty understanding that different people want different things. You could shout yourself hoarse telling Rin to go gay, but it won't change him. He has probably wanted what he wants since around age 10, and you could have been shouting at him all these years, to no effect. Any theory that fails to account for different people wanting different things is false.

I'll close with an example. Neil Patrick harris is married, and the couple have two children. If "normalizing" that family looks like demographic suicide to you, then you are suffering from "theory induced blindness," and a backfire effect, so further comments from me would be a waste of time, causing you to dig in rather than open your eyes. I'll end with a photo:

Guys, if you are going to discuss homosexuality, can you at least stick to more interesting, practical topics, like:
- how often do men shave their arses
- in what position do they do it
- does it hurt to take it up the arse
- what do they do to avoid getting their dick stink of shit

curious2 says

Neil Patrick harris is married, and the couple have two children.

Which one gave birth? This is pretend, and everyone knows the difference. It's like the alchemists of old, trying to convert lead into gold, but after all their incantations and vo-de-o-do, all they had was lead, the union is sterile. The gold standard is and always will be the male and female marriage regardless of how many courts declare otherwise. The West is killing itself, probably won't last as long as the Roman empire.