There is no god

[OldKingCole]

Inspired by another thread … I was surprised by the level of atheism professed … as I always though I was in a tiny, tiny minority.
would be interested to see the MN response.

IABU - there is a god
IANBU - there is no god

I think to be perfectly honest you do not understand what you either have read or are reading.
I will point out however the Bible is a rigorous academically written book, the OT-NT cross-reference themselves 304,000 times.
Basically, you wrote all that paragraph to disguise your attempted slur at the end. Bigot.🤔🙄😂

What’s the view of churches on IVF and surrogacy?

@PrincessConstance
Then I personally speculated the population of the planet would be under threat with a small or significant shift towards same-sex relationships.

How could this happen?

Aliens? I mean, it's so far off the wall that the building isn't even in sight.

I do understand exactly what I read and I what I wrote and I used academic examinations of the bible by religious organisations to educate myself on this.

Additionally the bits on translations of the bible are written by experts in ancient languages and by people of faith.

Many Christians believe we are no longer under the rules of the old testament due to Jesus

Jesus did not condemn homosexuality

Jesus did not tell us to multiply by procreation but through new followers

And I didn't write it to disguise the slur at rhe end. I made no attempt to 'disguise' my opinion. Which is if you ignore the old testament rules when you want to, and only follow them when it suits you, that is not correct.

And I wrote all that stuff as part of a conversation that has been going through the thread. If you don't want to engage with it that's fine, but if you just want to act like I am stupid because I am using the bible as a source for why being gay is not a terrible thing then that's on you.

No only had their not been persecution of celibate people, the Catholic Church actively encourages it amoungest their priesthood

And in fact, Ironically given the posters insistence that homosexuality is bad because gay people 'aren't having babies - most schools of Christian thought that are against homosexuality advocate for gay people to be celibate. So it makes no difference whatsoever to the overall numbers of babies. In fact lesbians having sperm donors is better for population numbers than gay people being celibate.

so the whole argument of homosexuality is bad because we are supposed to have children is ridiculous unless you are advocating for forcing gay people to have intercourse with people of the opposite sex. And I don't believe any of the mainstream strands of Christianity is advocating for that

Yeah I know ( roughly) how it works too. Just saying many atheists, liberartarians etc conclude from this that free will , rights and altruism are just meaningless terms.

However , I believe you and I are having autonomous thoughts.

Are you actually going on about why is bad to be gay and then calling someone else a bigot?

Atheists are constantly telling religious people that they have no right to get offended, even with very nasty things being said. And yet you’re complaining that Atheists are being disrespected.

Why is ok to insult religious people but Atheists must not be disrespected?

I think you need better sources.
Then you'll have all the information you need.
Because at the moment you incorrect in your assertions.

Why is ok to insult religious people but Atheists must not be disrespected?

Neither is OK. I have friends across the spectrum of all faiths and none, and we all respect each other.

But on a societal level we see faith being used as a tool of oppression, whether that is the Christian persecution of gay people, Muslim persecution of their own when they lose their faith, Buddhist persecution of Muslims in Myanmar. I would also include persecution of the religious by the Communist Party in China and the persecution of any dissidents in North Korea under the Kim family cult of personality. When people get together in a group and believe the same things, the results aren't usually benign - it's mob rule. This isn't something that can be prevented, but it can be mitigated by having laws that are secular and drafted for the good of all members of society and without reference to any deity or their writings. It isn't coincidence that prohibitions against rape, murder, theft, violence etc. occur in all societies irrespective of faith - they're practical. We should build on that.

I mean my source is the bible, so....

The church of england, Quakers, the Episcopalian Church, some of the Anglican Church of new Zealand and the Anglican Church of Australia agree with same sex marriage (in some cases only for non clergy). The church of Wales (my local church) is also okay with it and the two ministers who were at the church I went to as a child were in fact a lesbian couple.

Additionally several baptist, lutheran and mennonite churches allow same sex marriage. Along with some Presbyterian, pentecostal, Catholic (not roman catholic) and united reform churches that allow same sex marriage.

So whilst you may firmly believe that you are right and that I am wrong. There are plenty of forms of Christianity that support my view as well, so its not like I am an ignorant person like you are trying to make me out to be.

Little else has caused such conflict in the world as monotheism.

The Aristotelean idea of an absolute idea/spirit, and Hegel's coopting of this idea as the Absolute, seems to me far more compelling than that of an omnipotent, judgmental god. I've been following in fascination some of the philosophical discussion between the pluralists and the what seems to have been the last remnants of idealism around a century ago. That later splintered into mid-twentieth century existentialism, and seems to me to reflect the major angst of those particular ages.

The nature, even the existence of reality, always seemed to be a cross-over of a priori ideas in philosophy and the physical sciences. It's interesting that these two different disciplines only separated out relatively recently.

We are all made from the same material: the small, insignificant particles of dust everything in the universe is made from, even the stars. How our spiritual component fits into this - and I do like to believe we have one in some form - we'll never know. And I don't know why, but I take a certain amount of comfort from the idea of never knowing.

Some questions and problems, even humans are not intelligent enough to answer or fix. To me, that seems to restore things to their proper proportion.

Having written the above, I remember a quote from an academic article that I once read that's stuck with me for years. The writer muses as to why there is a pornography of death as well as sex, concluding that 'perhaps the essence of the "obscene" is that we are nothing but bodies'.

However materialistic a view of the human subject you happen to have, it's an idea that humans, throughout the history of our species, have generally shied from, and have gone to one hell of a lot of effort - beautiful buildings, writings, and later mechanisms of control and oppression - to disavow and deny.

‘I will point out however the Bible is a rigorous academically written book’

ok. The bible condones slavery, sexual and otherwise, states that a man should have sex with his dead brothers wife, bans the eating of fat, says letting your hair become ‘unkempt’ is punishable by death, bans having sex with a woman during her period,
states that a woman is ( literally by about 20 Shekels ) worth less than a man, says an unmarried woman whom is raped must marry her rapist, condones cannibalism,
says you shouldn’t wear 2 types of materials woven together, or eat seafood that doesn’t have fins…

I mean, I could go on but you get my point. There’s nothing rigorously academic about the bible. Nothing.

and if you’re going to take it literally when it comes to the ‘condemnation’ of ‘homosexuals’ - although as mentioned before these condemnations are a modern invention and not in ANY versions of the bible beyond 100 years or so ago, and definitely subject to dodgy translations for cultural reasons - then why not literally when it comes to everything else?

‘If you "just knew" I would mention HIV, you were obviously already aware of how badly this incurable disease affects gay male populations (much more so that the general population):’

Your bigotry is skewing your statistics. HIV affects more heterosexual people than gay people, according to WHO, and out of the almost 40 million people living with HIV almost half are women, and 2 million are children.

@ValK your points about heterosexual marriage vs homosexual marriage are hilarious.

• Re sexual compatibility - your point assumes that sex = PIV. Even heterosexual couples tend to do things more and other than this. The majority of women do not achieve sexual pleasure just from PIV sex, so other options are required.
• Exclusive and lifelong relationships are not the sole preserve of complementary opposites. Gay relationships can last in the same way straight ones can. Straight couples divorce all the time.
• Gay couples have children. Sometimes that takes a donor and a syringe, sometimes it takes IVF. Funnily enough those things are sometimes also necessary for straight couples.
• Gay relationships are as old as mankind. It is only since the advent of abrahamic faiths that they've become a major issue.

Lastly, marriage is a social and economic construct, not a religious one, or at least not exclusively. In many countries, the law recognises this: in my native Netherlands, you are not married unless you have a civil marriage. It is this that records you as being married, not the religious ceremony if you have one. You may disagree with all of this, of course. But if it comes to it, I will take to the streets to ensure that my children and I do not end up living in a dystopian Christian theocracy.

Oh, and do you advocate making homosexuality illegal again in the UK, and putting people who engage in consensual gay sex in jail? Just a question.

Aren't you the person who 'knew' gay people are promiscuous even in a long term relationship? I'm mean if that'd not asserting a falsehood (something I also disproved with statistics which you ignored along with the statistics that show, for example, HIV is more common in women than gay men in some countries)

So I think unless you can confirm you have spoken to every gay person and confirmed their sexual habits they you 'knowingly people are more promiscuous is in fact a lie.

@Herroyal Dear old Val's statements about HIV also do not take into account that while technically 'imcurable', people with HIV are now able to live normal lives of a duration not significantly different from that of those who do not live with HIV.

Many things are incurable and have a huge impact on people's lives far worse than HIV, but we do not single out the people who have them for illegality. It's pretty clear why HIV is singled out by Christians.

You do know that there are other countries besides the UK, and that the statistics are very different there, don't you?

Women in Ethiopia are 1.6 times more likely to have HIV than men