Most likely true, but it’s not simply the humanity of Roman Catholics that causes them to describe homosexual acts an sinful, it’s their adherence to a doctrine which, to me as a non-believer, is in no way special or inevitable or natural. These are people who have by choice dedicated their lives to institutionalized prejudice, if not discrimination.

I admit to not having listened to or read the Pope’s actual words (I don’t even know if I’d need them to be translated), but I imagine the attitude he’s saying is best is one of encouraging people to resist their homosexual temptations rather than burning them at the stake; what he’d see as helping others instead of abandoning them to evil. And as I understand it a part of Christianity is not actually judging others, leaving that instead to God. But we all know people are pretty shit at that, and will be taking the Pope’s words as an invitation to continue social, cultural, political discrimination of gay people.

I have a question for those that believe in homosexuality as natural temptation but a sin to be resisted: Are you for or against letting gay people be religious leaders? Are they just to be excluded, or is their successful restraint exactly the right thing to be looked up to? Would their appointment be seen as moral weakness and a green card to accept homosexual acts, or would it be a step towards helping other gay people to resist?

You misunderstand me. I'm not implying that people can be cured of their homosexuality and turned straight. I'm just saying that if someone is gay and wants to be a good Catholic, they can be celibate. Catholicism does love its celibates.

Or they can live a lie. All good options, am I right?

A-fucking-greed.

It's like a goddamn abortion debate.

This is the internet, the home of pedantry.

Splat, I'm going to have to take you to task here. Before I start, may I say thank you for your kind explanation of Christian dogma.

1. You've said that the Church has said that homosexuality is wrong. You've said that the Bible says it. I get all that. You still haven't addressed the base issue: Why is it supposedly wrong? And "because God says so" is not a valid answer, because supposedly God is good, not arbitrary. Give me a reason that homosexuality should be punished.

2. As has been said, you don't understand current theories of evolution very well if you're using that argument. More poignantly, I suggest you read up on the Australopithecus and Homo genera and the fossils that have been found of same. You'll find that there is definitely a progression there, though a branched one.

3. Your description of God seems to imply that God is evil. Please explain the apparent contradiction with your implicit assertion that God is good (I assume you hold that viewpoint?).

1. Did you even read what he posted? He said that true believers don't doubt the word of god because that's the only word that counts. If god says gay people are bad then they are bad, end of story. If you want to discus blind faith go open your own topic and I'll support you all the way.

Where's the line between doubting and question in innocent curiosity? The bible describes us as sheep, but I fail to recall whether we were supposed to try to follow that line of thinking or not. I have a feeling that blindly following as sheep is a bad thing, that's what animals do, and the bible thinks we should be separate from animals, then questioning why we are told to do this or that shouldn't be a bad thing. It doesn't necessarily mean you disagree. Though I'd suppose even that is a sin as far as the bible is concerned.

I do find it so very typical and convenient that the bible's legitimacy is so completely uncertain and unprovable whether it is or not. The lack of proof proving it or disproving it to true certainty means that both arguments are equal, but no true answer can ever really be found while we exist in this mortal realm, or until Jesus returns (whenever that's supposed to be). There are other things in the bible there isn't the same level of dispute about I'm sure, such as gender equality, as the bible pretty much says 'men are superior' but the law says we're supposed to be equal and dispute for that is pretty one sided as far as I can see. How different is this rather unclear reference? All it says is 'as you would with a woman'. Does that mean not at all, or just you can't think they're a woman or act the same way (since there's no likelihood of pregnancy or such, so you can't ahve sex with them with the same intent), and is lesbian sex fine then, since there isn't an equal statement saying women should not sleep with women like they would with men? The specific denotion of women in that statement also means that it can't be applicable to both genders as it is.

I personally find the bible and on-high pope/catholics etc. too unreliable to take seriously as a personal belief (and it's disagreement with what I feel are bog-standard theories such as evolution, despite it being 'proved' to work as far as I can see through knowledge of genes etc. that's pretty undeniable. The view of it like an object/stages rather than as a flowing process like a river likely doesn't help, since it's not really a 'thing' with an applicable label like evolution, yet it often is viewed as such). The fact that saying no to evolution from the Catholic church has changed somewhat also would seem to say that now the rest of the bible is questionable? Particularly since you should only really trust the word of God rather than the pope or what anyone else says, yet the only word of God we have, the bible, could be any amount edited from the original text.
Maybe part of the bible's point is being inspecific though. Various points can be interpereted in almost infinite ways (such as the alleged 'anti-gay' statement). Just because you interperet it differently from what the pope says (who, according to the bible, has just as much say as yourself since 'everyone is equal' apparently), how can they say you are not a Catholic and they are? Your statement is just as valid, so you're belief is just as Catholic as theirs. Just because the masses believe on way or another, that doesn't mean they are right, but it doesn't mean they're wrong either. That guy who said God told him to have nine wives or something? His belief is no less valid than anyone else's, unless he's lying on purpose obviously. Just because the masses disagree, it doesn't make his faith any less legitimate than any pope, animal or otherwise (whatever the difference is).

This thread could theoretically go on forever, just because there is no right or wrong answer to be found. There may be some changed viewpoints, but nothing else. As well as the pretty rock-solid beliefs on either side here. I don't agree with Splat, yet that doesn't make him less valid than myself, but I'm no more valid than him either.

Probably missed the boat for this
 

Splat: Four points I'd say on msn but you're not online.
1. As I've been saying for quite a while, macro evolution is just lots of micro evolution. It's all gradual.

2. This is a good start for learning about evolution, when it's not being hacked off the face of the net.

3. Add Neil Shubin's "Your Inner Fish" and Richard Dawkins' "Climbing Mount Improbable" to your reading list, as they're both very good.

4. Nice to see I'm not the only one trying to teach you biology. :fuzgrin:

Holy Yog-Sothoth, what have I missed? As for the rest of you lazy toads, step up to the plate!

This is the favourite lie of the creationists, do not be taken in so easily. All species are transitional forms between their immediate ancestral species and their immediate descendant species, if they have any. They are also always whole organisms in and of themselves. You will never accept any evidence for evolution if you hold onto erroneous notions about it.

But to hammer the point in, I will submit examples of fossil specimens representing the transition from one major group of organisms to another. Deep breath. And here we go!

Odontochelys, a transitional turtle from the Triassic. Dorsal side:


Notice the teeth in the beak, something that modern turtles lack. The back is also odd, for a turtle. The ribs are flattened, but there's no shell.

Flip it over, this is the ventral side of another specimen.


Can you see the plastron (belly armour)? Here we have a long-legged, toothed reptile with a turtle's plastron and hints in the spine and ribs of the carapace to be. It also fits in perfectly with the evidence from embryology: baby turtles always grow the plastron before the carapace. This is something only scientific theories do: it predicts what evidence we will find in the future, and here we have specimens that fit into that prediction perfectly. Powerful evidence for evolution.


Yanocodon, a primitive Mesozoic mammal. It represents transition morphology from the reptilian jaw and ear to the mammalian jaw and ear. The mammalian earbones are descended from bones still found in reptilian jaws.


There is too much background information to condense to explain this specimen, but it can be found here.


Najash rionegrina, a Cretaceous snake with legs.


This specimen supports the hypothesis that snakes are derived from a terrestrial origin, rather than a marine origin which is also debated. This is where it fits in the snake's cladistic tree:



Gogonasus andrewsae, the most recently discovered tetrapodomorph fish which has sparked the search for more fish-tetrapod intermediates in Australia.


Pectoral fin:


The fun thing about cladistic trees is that they also list transitional specimens without me having to type them all out.



Ah, good old Tiktaalik roseae, the previously discovered tetrapodomorph, found in Devonian rock in Greenland.


It has a more mobile skull/neck than a fish, and its fin-like limbs clearly presage the digits of tetrapods.


The limbs alone have had whole papers dedicated to them.


Tiktaalik was definitely not a terrestrial animal, but with its muscular, bony limbs and strong pelvic girdle it could prop itself up on the substrate, perhaps even holding itself up out of the water. Its jointed digits could extend and splay out when pressed against the ground, increasing the surface area of limb contact. You can easily imagine it inhabiting shallow swamps and rivers where other, traditional large fish could not swim.



Wikipedia entry on Transitional Fossils

I'm going to take a break from listing species there for a moment. I could not possibly list them all at any rate: I only have so many years in me.



You win the Ray Comfort award for mind-blowing ignorance. Ray Comfort, notorious potatoes-for-brains, recently wrote on his blog:

Darwin theorized that mankind (both male and female) evolved alongside each other over millions of years, both reproducing after their own kind before the ability to physically have sex evolved. They did this through "asexuality" ("without sexual desire or activity or lacking any apparent sex or sex organs"). Each of them split in half ("Asexual organisms reproduce by fission (splitting in half)."

This unbelievable mockery of human intelligence is one of many on his site, which I will not subject you to here. I couldn't help but spy the striking similarity between what you and he said, but I am sure you did not mean what Comfy was on about.

Ours is more complex and less complex than many other species. You will find That the evolution of reproductive strategies and reproductive systems have left their mark through the tree of life too. Such as the mammalian vagina, for which I have the merry benefit of an evolutionary article.



I feel I must also reach everyone here about the impact of retroviruses on evolution. Retroviruses reverse-transcribe their RNA into DNA and implant it into the genome of the infected cell, and if it is a germ cell (one that produces the gametes), it could be inherited by the offspring. And so they are. These are called Endogenous Retroviruses (ERVs) and the chance of the same strain of virus infecting exactly the same position in the genome more than once is significantly large enough to be confidently ruled out. These have clearly been passed down to us all from our common ancestors. Actually, some are suspected of involvement in certain auto-immune diseases, included multiple sclerosis- we are suffering from diseases that our ancestors contracted.

However, when we look at the great apes, we see that they share many of the same ERVs in exactly the same positions. Chimpanzees and bonobos share the most with us, followed by gorillas, the orangutans, other apes, monkeys etc, reflecting the same evolutionary relationship predicted by other aspects of the theory of evolution. There is no way to reasonably explain this phenomenon without common ancestry.

During pregnancy in viviparous mammals, ERVs are activated and produced in large numbers during the implantation of the embryo. They act as immunodepressors, protecting the embryo from its mother's immune system. Other viral proteins produces in this way fuse and cause the formation of the placental syncytium, preventing cells from migrating between the mother and embryo (a standard epithelium will not suffice, since some white blood cells are able to pass between epithelial cells. The ERV is similar to HIV, and functions in almost exactly the same way: it suppresses the immune system, causes cells to fuse with infected ones instead of infecting them individually etc. It appears that an ancient virus infected the ancestors of viviparous mammals, and the assimilation and subsequent employment of the virus' genes allowed for the evolution of viviparous reproduction, giving animals a way to gestate an organism inside themselves safe from the mother's immune system, whereas before an egg was required.


En garde. :pirate:

I didn't read the majority of that. I'll just keep in mind that you are most likely right. Again.

Let me be the first to say: VAGINA!

Uhm... burn?

And, er, about the homosexuals?

HOLY BATFISH!

One side is trying to convert the other side! Who didn't see that coming! DEAR BATFISH!

Also BM you know WAY TO FREAKIN MUCH! Or is ctrl+c ctrl+v your best friend?

If Splat says that you need to find more transitional forms (specifically the ones between alreday mentioned transitional forms and other relations of theirs) then I owe you all a drink.

Except Havoc. He scares me.

Number 504, you have been added to the list, my son.

I imagine Bullet Magnet's voice as Corey Burton's Megatron.

<3

Hmm. It seems the accepted amount of thread drift has decreased since I've been away. Can't be stuffed making my own thread.

Mostly agreed, but in some cases not all beliefs are equal - such as obvious facts.

I read most of that. I didn't need selling, but if I had, you would have sold me.

Well excuse me for trying to inject some rational thought into the minds of the 3 billion plus lunatics on the planet.

let me be the first to say.

The pope claims that being gay is immoral... as apposed to god sending people into hell forever... this does not give me the immpresion of a loving god.

shaman

...

But, by definition, what God does is moral and correct. He wouldn't be God otherwise. And, further, anyone who goes to hell deserved it, otherwise He woulsn't be Just.

To put it another way, God isn't nice. He doesn't do what you want. He does what is the right thing to do, on a universal scale.

Assuming he exists.

True, but Shaman's post was working on the assumption of an existant God so I just followed on.

Trust me I support what you're trying to do, but your re-inventing the wheel for about the tenth billionth time. This debate has been going on ever since the creation of the internet and it will keep going until the earth blows up.

I kinda gave up on my little crusade because big religions won't be exterminated within my lifetime (or that of my children) anyway, so why bother. If someone proves me wrong on that then I shall march at the front of the protest holding the flag.

I recently came across Orson Scott Card's Intergalactic Medicine Show, and since I'm a nerd, I read it. It had an intresting short story in it called To Know All Things That Are In The Earth, where the rapture finally comes and people are all taken away like it says in the bible. Except that the people taken away weren't necesarily good Christians. Along with some Christians, they were Hindus, Jews, Baptists, and even some Scientologists (in one part it mentions Tom Cruise was taken away whilst in the middle of a filming). Good people, bad people, old people, young people, rich people, and poor people were taken in a way that seemed random. And the idea about this is very intresting, stated by one character: "Maybe the gap between Human intelligence and God's mind is still too large. Just because the selection process seemed random to us dosen't mean it dosen't follows a pattern that we can't understand."

The point I'm trying to make here is related to Nate saying that God does the right thing on the universal scale. We may not understand why it's not right to give me a million dollars since I was nice guy for a full year, or give the truly-fucked country of Africa peace, or letting scientists find the cure for AIDs, or other noble things that will benefit people and make life better. But in God's divine sight, where he can literally see the Big Picture, the reason it hasn't happened yet is because it would eventually be the wrong thing to do for some factor or another. Perhaps curing AIDs now means some terrible dictator will live and oppress humanity when he otherwise would have died in childbirth. Or perhaps my million dollars will end up in the hands of Cuban drug lords somehow or another. God is literally playing Universal Chess, and he sees so far ahead that he is willing to possibly sacrifice all his pawns to get the win in the end. So if bad things happen here and there (like a Holocaust, or a epidemic that makes us all slavering ghouls craving human flesh), won't it be worth it if the end is that Holy Grail: Rightness?

So basically, the perception I'm seeing here is that in God's view, the end justifies the means. While that necessarily isn't a bad thing, it makes me think: Where's the end? Or are we just the 1st or 2nd pawn in the game? How far away is that end of Rightness?

While I could probably go on about this all day, it's sort of late and I have to get up early tommorow (which by the way never happens during school breaks like I'm having right now). Plus, this is seriously undermining my image of being agnostic, since I'm at least making this assuming God is real.

Nah, agnostics can pretty much say whatever the fuck they want, as long as they shrug afterwards.

I think saying that the ends justify the means is the wrong way to think about it, because until the Rapture comes, there is no "ends" to be justified. It's just an ongoing series of events unfolding. Of course, in comes the idea of free will; i.e. God isn't actually in control, we are. So things are in such a shitty state because of us.

So and so forth

I'd say god would have given up on us a long time ago, think about it. He created everything, we fucked everything up like you wouldn't believe, god flooded the entire goddamned planet to start over and before we know it we fuck things up AGAIN. We start killing each other over faith, we killed god's SON for crying out loud! After that I'd certainly be going "Well fuck this, this ain't worth my time any more." and move over to some other edge of the universe to create Earth 2.0 and keep a tighter leash on things there.

But in his absence we have thrived and in another 1000 years god will wish he dealt with us back in the day because by then we will have discovered interstellar travel and will find Earth 2.0 and FUCK THAT UP TOO!! HAHA!

But it's possible you only think we fucked up his plans. Perhaps his inneffableness is exactly what we're doing.

Or maybe he doesn't have a plan, and he just likes to watch us mortals go about our daily business.

Edit: And by daily business, I mean human stupidity.

Or maybe there is no god and life is exactly as meaningful as it feels like. You live. You die.

Thats a very charming way of looking at things.

I MIGHT GO AND CRY NOW :fuzmad:

Trust Oanst to cut to the heart of thing.

here come the athiests

Don't you mean 'Here come the gaytheists'?

Eeeeeeythiests.

Well, I never give up. It is only on those who hang on 15 minutes after all seems lost, that hope begins to dawn, and all that.

Imagine if the Bible advocated homosexuality.

Sorry Splat.

i think i would enjoy reading the bible if it had an "about the author" section

To my darling Candy. All characters portrayed within this book are fictitious and any resemblance to persons living or dead is purely coincidental.

Red Dwarf ftw.