UNMODERATED - DISCUSS AT YOUR OWN RISK!:Uptown Sports has this little ditty to say:

wprager wrote:

Bass Destruction wrote:
But you know there are some religions that do condone same sex marriage. So if a same sex couple were to get 'married' under that religion, would you then consider it a marriage or not?

Name one!

Unitarians, for one. Some others are moving towards an acceptance of happy marriage, but haven't made changes yet, including Episcopalians and Lutherans. Also, there are plenty of non-Christian religions that accept happy marriage including those of some Aboriginal communities, Buddhists, Pagans, and Wiccans.

wprager wrote:

Bass Destruction wrote:
But you know there are some religions that do condone same sex marriage. So if a same sex couple were to get 'married' under that religion, would you then consider it a marriage or not?

Name one!

Reform Judaism
The United Church of Christ
The Alliance of Baptists

The sooner religion dies out, the sooner this hatred and bigotry will. I don't know why some people believe their own religious beliefs should have power over the rights of others. I don't see why people are so threatened by the concept of homosexual marriage. How does two men or women marrying take any value away from your own marriage?

Marriage is no longer a concept owned by the church, or any religion. Which means the views of those religions should have no influence on it.

Tuk Tuk wrote:The sooner religion dies out, the sooner this hatred and bigotry will. I don't know why some people believe their own religious beliefs should have power over the rights of others. I don't see why people are so threatened by the concept of homosexual marriage. How does two men or women marrying take any value away from your own marriage?

Marriage is no longer a concept owned by the church, or any religion. Which means the views of those religions should have no influence on it.

You realize that you sound like a bigot, right there, don't you? Is corporate greed any better? Communism? Capitalism? The problem is not religion, but people. You *do* realize that, don't you? The Koran does not tell anyone to strap on a bomb and kill children, just like Christ never told his disciples to go out and kill those who refused to be converted.

wprager wrote:

Tuk Tuk wrote:The sooner religion dies out, the sooner this hatred and bigotry will. I don't know why some people believe their own religious beliefs should have power over the rights of others. I don't see why people are so threatened by the concept of homosexual marriage. How does two men or women marrying take any value away from your own marriage?

Marriage is no longer a concept owned by the church, or any religion. Which means the views of those religions should have no influence on it.

You realize that you sound like a bigot, right there, don't you? Is corporate greed any better? Communism? Capitalism? The problem is not religion, but people. You *do* realize that, don't you? The Koran does not tell anyone to strap on a bomb and kill children, just like Christ never told his disciples to go out and kill those who refused to be converted.

The opposite of religion isn't corporate greed, communism, or capitalism. The problem is the people who grow up being taught this through their religion, and then pass it on to their children, and so on. It's mainly the middle eastern religions too. Christianity, Judaism, Islam, etc. You don't see this in Hinduism, Sikhism, Buddhism, etc to my knowledge. Even the Romans and Greeks were completely accepting of homosexuality. We're farther back in terms of homosexual acceptance than people who lived more than 2000 years ago. That's what religion has done to us.

wprager wrote:

Tuk Tuk wrote:The sooner religion dies out, the sooner this hatred and bigotry will. I don't know why some people believe their own religious beliefs should have power over the rights of others. I don't see why people are so threatened by the concept of homosexual marriage. How does two men or women marrying take any value away from your own marriage?

Marriage is no longer a concept owned by the church, or any religion. Which means the views of those religions should have no influence on it.

You realize that you sound like a bigot, right there, don't you? Is corporate greed any better? Communism? Capitalism? The problem is not religion, but people. You *do* realize that, don't you? The Koran does not tell anyone to strap on a bomb and kill children, just like Christ never told his disciples to go out and kill those who refused to be converted.

The bible is pretty plain about certain things that are expected of it's followers. That's the scripture where the flaw lies, not the people. I'm talking ridiculous notions such as killing someone who works on the sabbath, selling your daughter into slavery, not being allowed to have contact with a women during menstruation etc etc.

You say the problem is people not religion. Religion is a man-made invention. It's a learned belief, and an absurdly archaic and flawed one at that. To blame people but not religion is ignoring the ridiculous notions that religion expects of it's followers.

I am with Tuk Tuk in that religion serves no purpose in today's society. It's unneccesary and quite frankly, the good outweighs the bad.

Tuk Tuk wrote:

wprager wrote:

Tuk Tuk wrote:The sooner religion dies out, the sooner this hatred and bigotry will. I don't know why some people believe their own religious beliefs should have power over the rights of others. I don't see why people are so threatened by the concept of homosexual marriage. How does two men or women marrying take any value away from your own marriage?

Marriage is no longer a concept owned by the church, or any religion. Which means the views of those religions should have no influence on it.

You realize that you sound like a bigot, right there, don't you? Is corporate greed any better? Communism? Capitalism? The problem is not religion, but people. You *do* realize that, don't you? The Koran does not tell anyone to strap on a bomb and kill children, just like Christ never told his disciples to go out and kill those who refused to be converted.

The opposite of religion isn't corporate greed, communism, or capitalism. The problem is the people who grow up being taught this through their religion, and then pass it on to their children, and so on. It's mainly the middle eastern religions too. Christianity, Judaism, Islam, etc. You don't see this in Hinduism, Sikhism, Buddhism, etc to my knowledge. Even the Romans and Greeks were completely accepting of homosexuality. We're farther back in terms of homosexual acceptance than people who lived more than 2000 years ago. That's what religion has done to us.

Blame Abraham.

hemlock wrote:

Tuk Tuk wrote:

wprager wrote:

Tuk Tuk wrote:The sooner religion dies out, the sooner this hatred and bigotry will. I don't know why some people believe their own religious beliefs should have power over the rights of others. I don't see why people are so threatened by the concept of homosexual marriage. How does two men or women marrying take any value away from your own marriage?

Marriage is no longer a concept owned by the church, or any religion. Which means the views of those religions should have no influence on it.

You realize that you sound like a bigot, right there, don't you? Is corporate greed any better? Communism? Capitalism? The problem is not religion, but people. You *do* realize that, don't you? The Koran does not tell anyone to strap on a bomb and kill children, just like Christ never told his disciples to go out and kill those who refused to be converted.

The opposite of religion isn't corporate greed, communism, or capitalism. The problem is the people who grow up being taught this through their religion, and then pass it on to their children, and so on. It's mainly the middle eastern religions too. Christianity, Judaism, Islam, etc. You don't see this in Hinduism, Sikhism, Buddhism, etc to my knowledge. Even the Romans and Greeks were completely accepting of homosexuality. We're farther back in terms of homosexual acceptance than people who lived more than 2000 years ago. That's what religion has done to us.

Blame Abraham.

And the voices in his head

Actually Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, Sikhism, Christianity all have passages that can be interpreted to mean that homosexuality is wrong. It's funny because if one was so inclined, they could do some research into the various religions and realize quite quickly that in several cases it's not so much the concept of a man being with a man or woman with woman (although funny enough that's almost never talked about), but it's more the concept of sodomy which is deemed unacceptable.

I refuse to post my thoughts on the subject as really they have no business being discussed on a public forum (just my opinion), but I’m far from an expert on any religion, but I’ve tried to educate myself on several of them as I work regularly with people in countries who follow different faiths just as I try to learn as much about their culture and language.

In the end, they all have one thing in common. It’s all in how you interpret the passages that determine what one believes.

In a way Tuk was right in the sense that if the people of this world were of one religion then some pretty major conflicts would never have happened. Although it then begs the question whether we’d be closer to extinction if those conflicts didn’t occur than if they did.

hemlock wrote:

wprager wrote:

Bass Destruction wrote:
But you know there are some religions that do condone same sex marriage. So if a same sex couple were to get 'married' under that religion, would you then consider it a marriage or not?

Name one!

Reform Judaism
The United Church of Christ
The Alliance of Baptists

None of those are "religions". Denominations, sects and such don't count. Take all the denominations and find the common parts -- that would be closer to what the particular religion is. The parts about which they do not disagree.

Tuk Tuk wrote:

wprager wrote:

Tuk Tuk wrote:The sooner religion dies out, the sooner this hatred and bigotry will. I don't know why some people believe their own religious beliefs should have power over the rights of others. I don't see why people are so threatened by the concept of homosexual marriage. How does two men or women marrying take any value away from your own marriage?

Marriage is no longer a concept owned by the church, or any religion. Which means the views of those religions should have no influence on it.

You realize that you sound like a bigot, right there, don't you? Is corporate greed any better? Communism? Capitalism? The problem is not religion, but people. You *do* realize that, don't you? The Koran does not tell anyone to strap on a bomb and kill children, just like Christ never told his disciples to go out and kill those who refused to be converted.

The opposite of religion isn't corporate greed, communism, or capitalism. The problem is the people who grow up being taught this through their religion, and then pass it on to their children, and so on. It's mainly the middle eastern religions too. Christianity, Judaism, Islam, etc. You don't see this in Hinduism, Sikhism, Buddhism, etc to my knowledge. Even the Romans and Greeks were completely accepting of homosexuality. We're farther back in terms of homosexual acceptance than people who lived more than 2000 years ago. That's what religion has done to us.

I wasn't going for opposites at all, just alternatives.

spader wrote:

wprager wrote:

Bass Destruction wrote:
But you know there are some religions that do condone same sex marriage. So if a same sex couple were to get 'married' under that religion, would you then consider it a marriage or not?

Name one!

Unitarians, for one. Some others are moving towards an acceptance of happy marriage, but haven't made changes yet, including Episcopalians and Lutherans. Also, there are plenty of non-Christian religions that accept happy marriage including those of some Aboriginal communities, Buddhists, Pagans, and Wiccans.

Again, denominations are not religions. Pagans and Wiccans -- are you serious? Why not bring up the greeks and Romans, too. Buddhism is a philosophy than religion. Buddha was not, and never professed to be a deity. Just enlightened.

hemlock wrote:
The bible is pretty plain about certain things that are expected of it's followers. That's the scripture where the flaw lies, not the people. I'm talking ridiculous notions such as killing someone who works on the sabbath, selling your daughter into slavery, not being allowed to have contact with a women during menstruation etc etc.

You say the problem is people not religion. Religion is a man-made invention. It's a learned belief, and an absurdly archaic and flawed one at that. To blame people but not religion is ignoring the ridiculous notions that religion expects of it's followers.

I am with Tuk Tuk in that religion serves no purpose in today's society. It's unneccesary and quite frankly, the good outweighs the bad.

OMG, have you even read the Bible? Or do you just accept what's fed to you on TV?

Moses came down the mountain with 10 laws. *TEN* No-where does it say, in those 10, that you are not allowed to pick up a phone on Saturday, or even drive your car. Forget that there were no phones or cards in Moses' times. That was all interpretation by flawed man. "Keep the Sabbath Holy" somehow became "you can't cook or answer the phone on Saturdays". I'm not making this up, a good friend who was very strict Orthodox explained this to me. She had it in her contract to go home at 3:30 on Fridays in the winter, because she was not allowed to drive after sundown, when Sabbath officially began.

So we had 10 laws and man turned them into hundreds of pages of "interpretations".

wprager wrote:

spader wrote:

wprager wrote:

Bass Destruction wrote:
But you know there are some religions that do condone same sex marriage. So if a same sex couple were to get 'married' under that religion, would you then consider it a marriage or not?

Name one!

Unitarians, for one. Some others are moving towards an acceptance of happy marriage, but haven't made changes yet, including Episcopalians and Lutherans. Also, there are plenty of non-Christian religions that accept happy marriage including those of some Aboriginal communities, Buddhists, Pagans, and Wiccans.

Again, denominations are not religions. Pagans and Wiccans -- are you serious? Why not bring up the greeks and Romans, too. Buddhism is a philosophy than religion. Buddha was not, and never professed to be a deity. Just enlightened.

Sorry, I should have left Paganism and Wiccan out of the debate. I didn't realize we were only talking about the "serious" and "believable" religions.

Just to clear things up and make this process a bit simpler, why don't you tell us what counts as a religion? Denominations are out, as are fringe religions. What are we talking about here? Judaism, Islam, and Christianity? Or do the last two count as denominations of the first?

I have read the bible. I've gone through catholic schooling for 14 years now. I've also read the Qur'an, the Nevi'im and Kethuvim, The Morman Bible, and the Tripitaka.

If anyone's just accepting what's being fed to them, it's you.

wprager wrote:

Tuk Tuk wrote:

wprager wrote:

Tuk Tuk wrote:The sooner religion dies out, the sooner this hatred and bigotry will. I don't know why some people believe their own religious beliefs should have power over the rights of others. I don't see why people are so threatened by the concept of homosexual marriage. How does two men or women marrying take any value away from your own marriage?

Marriage is no longer a concept owned by the church, or any religion. Which means the views of those religions should have no influence on it.

You realize that you sound like a bigot, right there, don't you? Is corporate greed any better? Communism? Capitalism? The problem is not religion, but people. You *do* realize that, don't you? The Koran does not tell anyone to strap on a bomb and kill children, just like Christ never told his disciples to go out and kill those who refused to be converted.

The opposite of religion isn't corporate greed, communism, or capitalism. The problem is the people who grow up being taught this through their religion, and then pass it on to their children, and so on. It's mainly the middle eastern religions too. Christianity, Judaism, Islam, etc. You don't see this in Hinduism, Sikhism, Buddhism, etc to my knowledge. Even the Romans and Greeks were completely accepting of homosexuality. We're farther back in terms of homosexual acceptance than people who lived more than 2000 years ago. That's what religion has done to us.

I wasn't going for opposites at all, just alternatives.

Communism is an alternative to religion?

Tuk Tuk wrote:I have read the bible. I've gone through catholic schooling for 14 years now. I've also read the Qur'an, the Nevi'im and Kethuvim, The Morman Bible, and the Tripitaka.

If anyone's just accepting what's being fed to them, it's you.

Why would you read those if you didn't have to? They probably do make for some good fiction though.

Big Ev wrote:

Tuk Tuk wrote:I have read the bible. I've gone through catholic schooling for 14 years now. I've also read the Qur'an, the Nevi'im and Kethuvim, The Morman Bible, and the Tripitaka.

If anyone's just accepting what's being fed to them, it's you.

Why would you read those if you didn't have to? They probably do make for some good fiction though.

Not even. The plots all over the place, disjointed, characters appear and reappear out of no where, and the main character has a "holier than thou" attitude. I wouldn't recommend it.

I find the psychology of religion really interesting, I've written a few school papers on it, and been in a few debates, so I want to know as much as I could about them.