Quote: "So you're saying this for all religions? Muslim, buddhism, christianity, jews, etc.? Wow--- so that's the problem! Matt has solved it! All religious people are brain-washed by their parents! Wow. Just... wow. So being brainwashed into a hedonistic, secular lifestyle by one's parents doesn't count?
Or all those Christian converts, who were raised atheist or through another religion--- are they brainwashed too? Rofl.
"
Yes, I am. It seems like common sense to me and I don't see how you could try to argue with it... yet another example of a FACT that's being confused as my opinion.
I'm agnostic because my mom is baptist and my dad is Roman Catholic, so to avoid confusing me they said "eh, let him discover religion on his own." I "discovered" it when I was a kid, when my aunt gave me a children's bible (you know, the bible but with pictures and dummed up for kids). From that point on, I've treated Christianity in the same way I've treated Mother Goose and other fairy tales. It's a good story with good morales but shouldn't be taken seriously. THAT is my opinion, and I don't try to force that down anyone's throats. Well, unless a Christian is trying to "convert" me, which has always ended in complete failure and on occasion I've converted THEM to being agnostic just because it was fun(ny), and that isn't too hard to do I might add... I'd be willing to go so far as to say that for every 10 devout christians on TGC, I could convert 1-3 to Agnosticism or Aetheism
When you're born, you have one or two parents or guardians. As soon as you're old enough to speak/ not poo yourself, they start teaching you about the bible. They don't teach it to you as an opinion (and that's what it is, your opinion), they teach it to you as a fact (far more haneous of a crime than anything I do). When you grow up, you don't often go about the task of identifying what in the bible is true and what isn't... you just take the bible's word for it. It is, after all, older than you are, and from an early age you're tought that going against the bible and going against god is evil and you'll go to hell for it, so most people (out of general fear) continue to believe in the bible. It works on all religions (except Buddhism, my arguement doesn't really work on them I don't think). Some kids become agnostic out of spite of their parents, and a very, very, very small portion conduct their own research, and an even smaller portion are able to identify the bible's stories as simply impossible by every law of physics and probability. The fundamentalist christians are the worst of the lot... you know, the people who think evolution is fake and dinosaurs existed 6,000 years ago (or that their bones were placed here by god to sort the real christians from the fake ones). Most of the "normal" christians have the ability to acknowledge the bible for it's actual value, but they don't, mostly out of fear.
Quote: "How is straight pride any more insulting to a gay person then gay pride would be to a straight person"
Gays have been bashed, insulted, crucified, murdered, and otherwise made out to be villains since the battle of Thermoplyae (and probably before that, too). They've been shunned by society and crammed into the corner pockets of our culture, especially in the 19th and 20th centuries. Laws have been made against them. They've dealt with oppression of every kind and until very, very recently they haven't been allowed to so much as show affection in public. And even today we see them being oppressed. Some are insulted... some are even murdered like that kid out in Michigan or wherever that was, just for being gay. Gay people should have a right to show their pride, to show that they aren't afraid of what we think of them, to show that just because they're a small minority it doesn't mean we should treat them any differently than we'd treat a straight person. When have straight people, as a group, EVER been oppressed, other than in the Bravo network's programming department of course? When have they EVER been shunned? WHAT purpose could a "straight pride" rally have other than to ridicule and insult gay people and their entire existence? I can't think of one good reason. Straight people are NOT a minority... they have absolutely no reason to declare their pride over gay people, and after the centuries of BS we've dished out on gays, we have NO RIGHT to be offended by their showings of pride. NONE. It's disgusting that someone could even think of doing something that crude, and it's even more disgusting that someone could find personal moral justification for such a crude display.
Quote: "They have the right to preach what they preach, and to march in public (in the US anyways). That is their constitutional right-- hell I know that and I'm not even an American."
I never said the law was against them, I said I don't think they should have the right to do it, and I don't. There should be a law that states that you can't form a group designed with the sole intention of bashing (or murdering) any race or creed of people. Should I be allowed to make an organization whose only goal is to murder, rape, and destroy republicans and conservatives? Should I be allowed to release propaganda and hold rallies? The KKK are a bunch of murdering racist f***heads and they should not be allowed to congregate, imo.
"In an interstellar burst, I'm back to save the universe"
