Chambers wrote:
> Personally, I don't think the government should have anything to do with 
> marriage.

No, this wouldn't be right. If I'm hurt and unconscious, someone has to make 
a decision about what to do. If I die without a will, someone has to make a 
decision about who gets the money. There are bunches and bunches of 
situations where your family is the "default" in cases where you can't make 
the choice yourself.

People in my family get to drive my cars without paying different insurance. 
  I pay different taxes because I'm married, and my wife can collect my 
savings and other government benefits when necessary. This sort of thing 
*also* goes on all the time, even though arguably that could be a private 
agreement. And even when it's a private matter, the religious raise hell 
when a private corporation decides to (for example) insure gay couples even 
when they're not required to by law.

As soon as you say "you have all the rights, we just won't *call* it 
marriage", then you're opening up to discrimination, including lawsuits 
where a law says "married couples" and it gets enforced as "but not civil 
unions."  "Separate but equal" has been shown to be a bad idea, and I'm 
really kind of surprised that so many blacks here voted for it less than a 
generation after it was applied to *them*.

> Its an entirely religious matter, and the Civil authorities 
> should keep their hands off it.

I disagree. I think most of the people who aren't allowed to marry would be 
happy to actually have all the rights and privileges of a religious marriage 
without the religion.

> Then, if gay people wanted to get married, all they would have to do 
> would be to find a church that allows them to.

And I would bet that the first thing that would happen is the religious 
types would try to get that religion somehow declared improper.

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   Insanity is a small city on the western
   border of the State of Mind.

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Chambers wrote:
> Then have a quick-n-easy "Next of Kin" specification.  Anything not 
> covered by a will is left to your next of kin and, if they don't claim 
> it, then it goes to the State.

Yeah. We call that "marriage", dude. :-)

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   Insanity is a small city on the western
   border of the State of Mind.

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andrel wrote:
> Probably me. I keep hearing stories about various religions being 
> illegal and followers having been prosecuted for convening. It is hard 
> to judge from here, and probably they were indeed trying to overthrow 
> the government.

Apparently, religion is often used as a front. It's quite fine (or so I hear 
from those living there) to practice Falong Gong or whatever it's called, as 
long as you don't say "because you don't recognize our practice, we want to 
overthrow you."  Yet around San Diego, people pass out brochures about all 
the abuses perpetrated against proponents of falong gong.

Of course, it's not like the chinese government never lies or propagandizes. 
But from what I saw when I'm there, most people seem pretty happy with the 
government, and it's the individual abuses that get blown out of proportion 
here.  Not unlike 98% of the cops in the USA are nice and polite and such, 
and it's the 2% who beat the crap out of handcuffed suspects that makes the 
news.

They don't have as much freedom. The government officials are still trying 
to keep the country stable and prosperous. But from everything I hear, 
they're actually working quite hard to keep the majority of chinese citizens 
happy and healthy and prosperous. (Unlike, say, what I hear about Zimbabwe 
and such.) The government just tries to keep people from disrupting the 
government and throwing the whole country back into hundreds or warring 
territories.

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   Insanity is a small city on the western
   border of the State of Mind.

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Warp wrote:
>   But that's petitio principii: They start with the *false* assumption that
> christianity or the bible teaches that God stops believers from divorcing
> each other. There is no such promise anywhere in the bible, nor is it the
> teaching of any mainstrean christian church.

Now, stop and ask yourself how do you know that? Isn't there anything in the 
bible that can be interpreted as "God oversees marriage"?

The video isn't attacking the bible. It's attacking the interpretation of 
the bible that includes "God has something to do with the appropriateness of 
any given marriage". If you don't believe that, you're not the target 
audience. It's not a straw man. It's just an argument you're not making.

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   Insanity is a small city on the western
   border of the State of Mind.

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On 5-7-2009 22:45, Darren New wrote:
> andrel wrote:
>> Wasn't that one tested a couple of years ago?
> 
> Yes. Often, actually.
> 
>> With surprising results? 
> 
> Only surprising to the faithful.
> 
>> Anyone can find that reference?
> 
> Feel free. I certainly never saw it.

What I remember is something like this: divide a group of patients into 
3. One group you let recover on their own. One you let pray for but 
don't tell and one that knows that they are prayed for.
IIRC One of the groups that was prayed for did significantly worse*. I 
don't remember exactly which one, I think the group that knew.


* this being regular research probably a cutoff value for P of .05 was 
used. It is a well know fact that using this method one in twenty 
results is wrong. ;)

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Warp wrote:
> Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
>> """
>> Just because the same word, "slave", is used, doesn't automatically mean the 
>> situations were comparable.
>> """
>> OK, so you're of the feeling that slavery *can* be good and moral.
> 
>   Assuming you understand what "slavery" means in the bible. It has little
> to do with the slavery that happened eg. in the US in the past.

OK. To me, slavery means "you work for this person, or whoever he tells you 
to work for, and you have no choice and you may not leave."  Note the Bible 
also describes the way in which a slave owner owns the wife the slave 
marries, as well as the children.

Me? I'll take that as universally unacceptable.

>> Now, how 
>> about the genocide, rape and pillage attacks, and murder of thousands of 
>> innocent babies?  :-)
> 
>   How about death penalty in the US? Is it good and moral?

That logical fallacy is called "et tu."  The morality of the US laws don't 
have anything to do with whether killing every first born son in Egypt was 
good or bad. How could it?

>   I don't know your stance on that subject (and you don't have to answer),
> but moral codes are different for different people.

Hence, you're not the person the video is addressed to. Your God isn't the 
one it's saying doesn't exist. You're worshiping some other God, one whose 
morality isn't applicable to everyone in the world by definition.

> If God indeed created us, then he basically
> owns us, and can do whatever he wants with us.

I reject that premise.

Alternately, I accept it *IF* and *ONLY*IF* you leave it up to actual God to 
be doing the whatever. If, on the other hand, you feel it's your job to 
enforce God's will because God owns us, then you are evil and immoral. :-)

>   Also, just because God has the right to do whatever he pleases, that
> doesn't mean *we* also have the right, without his express permission.

Ah, here, you see, we're sliding into evil.

"God created both me and you."  OK, who cares.
"God therefore owns both me and you and can do whatever he wants."
    OK, who cares.
"God has given me express permission to murder you."
    OK, suddenly we're in trouble here.

Yet that's pretty much how the argument goes whenever religious rules get 
enforced. If it actually was *GOD* punishing gay people or abortion doctors 
or whatever, I don't think you'd actually *have* too many atheists about.

>   The "murder of innocent babies" might sound horrible to you, but consider
> these two completely hypothetical situations (assuming God did indeed exist):
> 
>   1) These babies are born to a depraved society where they may be raised
> to hate, rape and kill people. (Usually when the bible tells about the
> eradication of some people, it gives an indication of *why*.)
> 
>   2) These babies go to heaven before seeing or learning anything bad, and
> are happy everafter.
> 
>   Maybe from your point of view situation #1 is preferable, but it might be
> plausible that God considers situation #2 even more preferable, or at least
> not that bad of an alternative.

OK, so your take is that the murder of innocent babies is sometimes good and 
righteous.  That's fine, but it's not a stance many people would take.

You're of the "it must be good, because God approves."  Unfortunately, taken 
to extremes, that turns into "it's Ok for me to do that, because God approves."

>   And no, this still doesn't give anybody permission to murder anybody.

Would you murder someone, if God told you to?  Sadly, there are enough 
people here who do just that that we actually have to pass laws about it 
specifically.

> No person can be the judge of who deserves to live.

Sure we can. Doctors and judges do it all the time, as do politicians and 
soldiers.

>   Do you have any estimate of how much of humanity's history has been lost
> forever? Written history is very fragile and gets destroyed very easily
> (by accidents, by deterioration and by vandalism).

There are *tons* of records from the same time period. Inventories from 
stores, lists of party guests, real estate records, bank records, etc. If 
you're interested, you should take a bit of a look around at resources and 
find one of those that discusses the situation.

We have *lots* of records of Jesus' time.

>   It's not completely implausible that only few records have survived.

It's not implausible. It's just not the case that only a few records have 
survived.

>   I don't want to badmouth the Catholic church here, but suffice to say
> that I don't agree with them, nor consider their intepretations of the
> bible completely correct.

Sure. But that doesn't make the argument a straw man. It just means you 
already agree with the conclusion of the argument because you already 
rejected the premise. The argument wouldn't be a straw man if addressed to 
one of the outraged church members hiring armed guards to protect bread.

>   It doesn't make any sense when it's presented as an argument that God is
> imaginary (rather than that some christians are crazy).

Except that you're not going to convince crazy Christians that their 
interpretations are mistaken. You have to go with "OK, assume everything you 
believe is true. Here's the reasonable consequence. Do you really want to 
believe that consequence? If not, can you rationally explain why not?"

In my experience, the answer is "Yes, that's all true. Yes that's a 
reasonable consequence. No I don't want to believe it. Therefore, it's not a 
reasonable consequence."  Which is why I tend not to have that sort of 
argument any more.


-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   Insanity is a small city on the western
   border of the State of Mind.

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andrel wrote:
> IIRC One of the groups that was prayed for did significantly worse*. I 
> don't remember exactly which one, I think the group that knew.

Oh, yes. By "surprising", I thought you meant the prayer actually helped, 
which would be surprising to those doing the experiment.

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   Insanity is a small city on the western
   border of the State of Mind.

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Warp wrote:
> Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
>> If the muslims here were rioting and murdering in the name of Islam here, 
>> I'm sure there would be videos of ten things intelligent muslims need to 
>> address, too. :-)
> 
>   I don't think so. Muslims are rioting in Europe, yet it's forbidden to
> say anything bad about them.

That's why I said "here."   Of course, there are some things out there that 
talk about the evils of islam, calling it a pedophiliac religion and such. 
But since it isn't the muslims *here* attacking the atheists where it's 
still fortunately legal to criticize such attacks, you see fewer videos 
about it.

> In Finland, for example, you can literally
> get jailed if you made such a video about islam. There have been concrete
> cases. 

Why is that? Some bizarre reading of "human rights" or something?

 > (Christianity, on the other hand, is completely free to be bashed.)

I find it hard to understand how to reconcile that, except maybe the way 
that it's common to consider a white person being passed over in favor of a 
black person "affirmative action" but the reverse being "discrimination."

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   Insanity is a small city on the western
   border of the State of Mind.

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andrel wrote:
> Like you I noticed that devout christians sometimes change a lot when 
> they study theology. Often the 'God' becomes more abstract and/or their 
> believe becomes more personal or gnostic. That is not strange, but it 
> may result in a gap with the 'lay-man'. I don't have a problem with 
> that, but it may appear hypocritical in certain circumstances.
> As long as we take one another's religion serious and don't try to make 
> fun of what differs from what we believe, there should not be a problem. 
> This video fails pathetically in that respect.

Sigh.. Ok.. So, you want people to take seriously religions that smear 
their gods so thin that their "order/church" becomes little more than a 
title, since their god has been reduced to quantum interference 
patterns? I can certainly tolerate such people a lot more, but taking it 
seriously... And no one that is "serious" about the truth of their faith 
is going to take those people as anything other than just what they are, 
agnostics/atheists who still insist on holding on to some vague belief 
in magic beans.

Fact is, the lay-man doesn't have a problem with such people, other than 
their unfortunate tendency, when confronted with a problem, to circle 
the wagons "around" the Indians (i.e., more radical and literalist 
believers), in order to defend themselves against the settlers...

But, you are right in a sense, its "precisely" why the truly lost ones 
claim everyone "other" than them is a non-believer. Because, its true, 
in a sense. They are the only ones "holding on" to the idea that Thor 
causes thunder, Poseidon didn't like the street festivals in New 
Orleans, Ares is going to show up in 2012 bringing conquest, famine and 
death with him (yeah, the white one is conquest, which is why he has a 
Roman helmet and spear) and Ahriman still plans to plunge the world into 
unending chaos, if Ahura Mazda wasn't around to being universal order 
(even if they now insist on calling the later ones Satan and Jesus).

Like I said, there are no "deeper" issues. Anything internally tends to 
be nitpicking over trivia, and anything they "claim" are huge issues 
when talking to the outside world are the same silly BS Dawkins, et al, 
point out are their only, and failed, arguments.

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void main () {

     if version = "Vista" {
       call slow_by_half();
       call DRM_everything();
     }
     call functional_code();
   }
   else
     call crash_windows();
}

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On 6-7-2009 0:09, Darren New wrote:
> andrel wrote:
>> IIRC One of the groups that was prayed for did significantly worse*. I 
>> don't remember exactly which one, I think the group that knew.
> 
> Oh, yes. By "surprising", I thought you meant the prayer actually 
> helped, which would be surprising to those doing the experiment.
> 
Any change would be surprising to the non-believer. This has the 
advantage that everybody is just as astonished.

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