Shinjula

Because I dont live in the states. What we have in the UK in the way of Civil Partnerships is still not equality and thats the whole point. I dont just want the same legal rights but I want to have the same romance, I want the same deal as they get. OK sure you guys are not doing as well, but I still have to campaign for equality as we haven't got it yet.

lol, its not a mental disorder

My suggestion is, no not yet. Wait til you get the reply then decide whether or not to get upset, he may after all see that your explanation is reasonable and mark it, heres hoping.

Because more men play runescape than girls, so whilst you've got at least one openly gay man debating (i.e. me, I'm sure I've seen others about, if not on this thread then on other similar ones) as far as I've seen there hasn't been any posts from out lesbians in here. I dont tend to argue lesbian issues myself because despite us being grouped together it seems to me that we are quite disparate groups. There are, for example lesbian issues of parenthood which just dont apply to me. We just come from opposite poles and dont really meet in the middle, although there are common themes, but then those are just common themes and so I'm talking about them anyway from my perspective.

I grabbed a statistic off this site as well: http://www.earthtraces.com/godsodds.shtml The perpetuation of any theory along these lines seems insane to me. I just wanted to share these. I'm obviously not convincing you, and you are unable to convince me. I'm stepping out now, hopefully on friendly terms with you all. Thanks for all the time you dedicated. To further his point I would like to point out that the enzymes required for any functioning being to emerge would take exceedingly long times to form naturally. One of these enzymes is one that is needed for chlorophyll and it would have taken half the earths lifespan(including the years it was inhospitable) it have formed. [/hide] Your argument assumes there are no other catalysts which can do the job of making chlorophyll, which is questionable considering the apparent flexibility of the sequence of amino acids in an enzyme. It also assumes that life on earth has an absolute need for chlorophyll to make energy (via photosynthesis), yet there are bacteria (some of which lay the foundations to deep-sea hydrothermal vent ecosystems) which don't need photosynthesis to make energy. Using modern day enzymes, genes or genomes, etc, as a benchmark for what was required in early life forms is dubious at best and it's not what people in the relevant field consider the likely way life first evolved. and its also assuming theres only one planet in the universe.

Very VERY well said. Now thats a true scientific perspective.

Raven, you are also forgetting some stuff abut the rights of marriage, when two people gt together and make an investment in each other to the degree that they wish to commit to each other certain rights and resposibilities come along with that, you say that a gay relationship is an unproductive one because it creates no children but there is more to it than that. My marriage to my husband improves his ability to work, when he is sick I can tend him thus reducing the burden on the rest of society, this is of use to society. Working together we are more productive than either of us could be on our own thus benifitting society. We support each other allowing us even greater ability to contribute to society thus benefiting society. These benefits must come with a cost (which at least in my own country are met). As the one who reduces strain on society when he is ill I am given the right to access to him when he is ill i.e. hospital visitation rights. As one who contributes to his ability to earn I am given the right to a portion of those earning when he dies i.e. Inheritance rights. As one who give him greater productivity I am given rights over income i.e. joint tax rights. This is the legal side of marriage and it is senseless to deny us. Further to your other comments the origins of marriage occured so far back in prehistory that no data on it survives so speculating about the original intent is for historians to do and so far no data suggests the conclusions you have asserted. For all you know homosexual marriage was just as prevalent amongst homosexuals as heterosexual marriage was, its origin is simply the pairing of people. Marriage was also an institution as far back as Sumerian times predating christianity by more than six thousand years so any argument based on your religeon isnt valid. (And in sumerian culture homosexuality was venerated as sacred so it is more than likely that homosexual marriage existed way way way before anything you are talking about occured) I do much prefer the argument from love but your heart seems closed to that idea, but really love is the most important thing, however since you are so closed to it, pragmatism it is, and the arguments from pragmatism are just as reliably behind gay marriage as those from love are.

No, I'm definitely not stating its a fact, theres obviously genetics to consider and a whole bunch of other stuff, just trying to illustrate what I meant about 'grown up'

I do tend to consider most of my life as a delusion, but as an artist what matters is, is the delusion beautiful, well crafted and a joy for those around me? My life is a sculpture. And as someone once said "Is there in beauty, no truth?"

Sorry youve misunderstood what i meant, i didnt mean you were taught to be an atheist, i meant, as youve grown in your life you have had different experiences, different choices to make and different things have become important to you, this has created many pathways in your brain which make up your decision making set, different life is different decision making set, something which seems entirely reasonable to you isnt considered reasonable to someone else there cant be a right or wrong to this as its impossible to do repeatable experiments on this - we cant take you and, say, Saruman (a quite commited christian from my observations) rewind your lives and you in his life and he in yours to see if you turn out as a christian and him an atheist. When theres nice scientific evidence thats great and it makes it a lot easier to make judgements on something, but when something is outside the realms of science or when science cannot answer a question yet, such as "What caused the universe to come into existance?", arguing that its probably a certain way simply because of a feeling in your head seems like its a road to no where. Now of course its worth mentioning that for any individual science is always beyond arms reach except in some very small cases - we cant be an expert in every field and we are unlikely to end up an expert in any field at all, we can have very little idea about whats really going on all we can do is choose to either believe or disbelieve in any one of a million so called experts in the various fields, and on what basis of judgement can we really in all honesty do that? One way I tend to use is simply to not trust those who are rude to me, but even then theres problems, just cos someone is a nasty person, doesnt mean they havent got it right, or I could not trust the answers which dont make sense, but then I've no information about whether the universe it self makes sense. The choice I've made is to try as much as I can to completely ignore everybody elses perceptions of the universe and just make up as interesting a story to my life as I go along, I live in a universe with a supreme being, one of love and compassion but not infinite power magic is real and ancient beings roam the earth in the guise of humans, feel free to join me in your own made up universe.

But dont you get that it only seems more reasonable to you because thats the way youve grown up? We each of us have a sense in our heads of what 'feels right' and just as christians are using that sense to guide them in what they believe you are using it to guide you to your 'belief'. Even if virtual particles have been proven to exist they can never be shown to be behind the cause of the big bang because of the problems with singularities, at the point of a true singularity all physical laws will break down. Even if it can be shown that a pair of virtual particles were present at the big bang theres just no way to show a god (of any sort) didnt create them (after all its as good a method for creating a universe as any, probably better than some). Isnt the true scientific mind one which says "I cannot know what happened here so I will not judge"? Why not maintain an open mind about what the cause of the big bang is? I'm not suggesting for a moment that you accept a god created the universe. I'm suggesting that you accept that you dont know what happened and neither does anyone else. It's the only logical course of action in the situation.

Its not a theory, its factual that subatomic particles can appear from absolutely nothing. Not its not, its a theory, and sure its an interesting one too, and theres some good maths behind it, but as of yet there hasn't been any evidence which categorically shows it happening, for example, hawking radiation, which is one of the main ways scientists expect it to be found (particle and anti particle appearing at the event horizon of a black hole and one of the pair is suckied into the hole). The Casmir Effect is good evidence of 'virtual particles' but just because its makes sense if the particles exist, doesnt really mean that it proves that the particles exist. Think of it this way, there arent any predictions one can use virtual particles for which have been found to be true, they have merely been used to explain things we have seen before but dont understand how they can work. [This at least is what the internet seems to have offered me up when I double checked on information about virtual particles]

The difference being, there is proof that the universe happened by accident. The big bang has been proven, what came or happened before it is wild speculation. Either way what created our universe came out of nowhere, whether you believe in it being an all-powerful being or a series of different materials exploding and joining together. One just holds a bit more proof than the other. Thats not at all true, the big bang theory has plenty of evidence behind it and dont get me wrong I'm not at all refuting it, but it says nothing about the cause, there are some theories about possible causes, but none of them are in any sense proven. The Big Bang theory extrapolates back to a point of singularity, it makes no claims about what happened at that singularity or what caused it.

I'm actually more interested in debating about Christianity than Creationism, its a much wider field and it is worthy of serious discussion and debate. I personally would argue strongly that Creationism isn't a science and certainly wouldn't subscribe to the "Teach the Controversy" especially in schools (unless its part of comparative religion), but its still a reasonable subject for a debate forum, and although it *IS* a subject which generates mostly "Yes it is", "Nah its not" responses, there are still areas of both Christianity and Creationism which aren't just the boring bits that get repeated again and again, these are the areas I'm interested in debating, in the past I've debated topics such as bible inerrancy from the point of a mathematician and godels incompleteness theroem, and the ignorance of the positive homosexual role models in the bible such as Jonathan and David and i'm sure there are many more interesting topics in religion still to discuss.

Ah I see, so your taking out your frustrations on other people, well i suppose it fits in with your earlier statment that you're an [wagon]. Well I'm glad you've vindicated my description of you as a troll, still I've had enough of talking to you.

Yes, thats what I'm finding generally unacceptable, I would be reacting worse if you were implying it of all christians, but even insulting an individual for being an individual is still completely derailing the debate as well as weakening the position of atheists. Most Atheists as it is are having a hard enough time convincing Theists that we are aware, conscious and moral people without this sort of thing. Yes I understand that you may have been debating Saru many times before, and dont actually get anything out of it, but that doesnt mean that everyone else is like that. I do get stuff out of debate because I listen and take in their arguments. I'm not as interested in proving someone wrong like you are, I'm interested in learning. As far as I was aware that was what the point of this whole thing was. And if you really are just insulting him out of habit can I please ask you to consider moving along, insulting people and getting angry raises your blood pressure and is bad for you, if its not serving any purpose, why do it?

So it's okay for you to get the cheap way out and hurt the economy, but when a gay person wants to, suddenly it's bad. Smells like a Holocaust in the making, except this time it's with gays. no, in no way is it ok to cheap out of the economy, just that its technicly not a marrage, so they shouldnt get benefits. What on earth makes you think just because you are christian that gives you the right to dictate what a marriage is? Marriage was around a lot longer than christianity, marriage is not exclusively a christian ceremony, marriages exist in *ALL* religeons, including those that embrace homosexuality. As for it technically not being a marriage therefore they shouldnt get the benefits, have you actually consider what the benefits are and the implications of not having them? Tell me how you think you might feel if you knew you wouldnt be informed if the person you loved was in an accident or killed? Tell me how you think you might feel if the most important person in your life was in an accident and in hospital and you were not allowed to be at their side? Tell me how you think you might feel if after an accident like that and not being allowed to be by their side as they died you were then thrown out of your own home the next month while you were still grieving because it was there name on the lease. And how would you feel if you knew that your house would be given away to your spouses abusive parent who threw them out at the age of 16 to live on the streets simply because they were the closest blood relative? Tell me how would you feel?

Making a recommendation is hardly being a forum police, but as to stepping up sure. I'm quite happy to be someone who steps up in order to help keep a debate focused and on track, and in a debate like this, especially in a debate like this sarcasm is really a stupid thing to do, its already a touchy subject liable to spring up into flame war. Reb may have deconstructed argument in the past in this thread and others, but that certain isnt what he's been doing over the last couple of pages, calling people ignorant and [developmentally delayed]ed is not deconstructing their arguments with facts and it is the point where he has gone just a little bit too far. As for the right to tell people what to do, sure I dont, I do however have the right to suggest, which is precisely what I did. This topic may be a waste of space to you, but to me it is interesting, perhaps thats because I'm here for more than just getting jollies by shouting at christian that theyre wrong and stupid. I'm here to find out about Christians and how their belief system works rather than simply pointing my finger at them and laughing. Sure I dont agree with christianity, but i *will* respect any person who respects me. I dont really have a lot of problem with reb, what I dislike is when people get into flaming wars in the middle of a topic I'm getting something out of

Which is why I'd like to debate other things. Look I'm really not intersted in arguing with you over the nature of arguments, thats a whole other meta conversation which no one here is particularly interested in. Stick to the topic, learn, open your mind and stop trolling. I will not respond to you further, its just wasting forum space. To anyone else, Id recommend completely ignoring any further comment Reb makes - he's bound to make several more attempts to derail the debate, if we ignore him for a few pages he'll either go away or he wont, if we're ignoring him either way it doesn't have to make any difference to us. Social exclusion is by far the easiest way of dealing with people like him - its a bit of a shame but I'd suggest he leaves us little option if we do actually want a debate and exchange of ideas.

OK Sure your an [wagon] not an idiot, now quit it please, some of us would like an actual debate and you are not contributing at all. Yey, inspiration keep it up. I had a thought last night related to this, a lot of these debates do consist of the atheist side of the debate criticising the Christian side of the debate saying how impossible the belief set, I wondered whether it might be a worthwhile thing to turn the debate the other way round and debate the things Christianity brings you that are (at least from your perspective) missing from atheism. That way the Atheists (I'm not really an Atheist, but I've generally taken the opposite side in the debate to you) such as my self can be on the defensive side of the debate. Its not that I do believe that things are missing which Christianity could provide, but I think its definately a worthwhile thing to check - who know what we may have missed?

Rebdragon - it doesnt matter if youve told him once or a million times, that sort of argressive insulting debating tactic is an appalling lack of respect. Calling someone an idiot just because they dont agree with you just shows you yourself to be an idiot. If you cant convince someone with logical argument, theres no point in getting angry with him. Apart from anything else a true scientific mind will always admit there are limits to an individuals knowledge and we can *ALL* be wrong. For all you know you may still be wrong and him right - sure I can't see any possible way in which he is correct, but that dont mean he aint. Its absolutely perfectly within the bounds of probability that both he and you are both wrong, all it would require is a malevolent deity running the universe. Watchword : RESPECT

I think at that point your looking for the various string theories, String Theory, Brane Theory (or M-Theory) and Supersymmetry. However (no offence religious peeps) at that point we really arent talking science, any more than creationism is science since none of it is testable with current tech.

Are you thinking of perhaps quarks? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quark

Are you thinking of perhaps quarks? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quark

You might want to consider rephrasing that to say "Evolution and the big bang are really the only parts *christians* feel the need to debate *in online forums* I think youll find that debate goes on in actual science all the time and in all areas.