Yes, civilized laws and proper law enforcement is the only barrier against a wave of humans, unleashing their inner animal side on everyone, turning this world(or a country) into a wasteland where the law of the jungle is the only law.

Take note what youre comparing - religious groups and political groups -> both of which are social groups.

Not all atheists/agnostics belong to a political group, so you cant exactly compare them 1:1.

Ofcourse not all religious people take active part or are members of some church or whatever, but most religions are still very much organized and communal.

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If you ever make mistake of reading say biographies of succesful people, youll notice that people will say "succesful person A, B and C went to this same school - thus if you go to this same school, youll be succesfull too!".

-> this is ofcourse all so very wrong. Ofcourse alot of people have graduated from the same school who did NOT be succesful, might have done very bad career aswell. But the persons looking for "reasons for success" by cherry picking only the succesfull people who had graduate instead of all.

I never understood anyway why any man would oppose other men being gay. Highly illogical. If other men were gay, all the more free hetero women for me.

It is the hetero women who should hate the thought of men having fun with each others only.

Oh, I should say that the difficulty in quoting yet condensing your post fairly makes it necessary to elevate it in honour! +1 that shall be. :-)

Original sin - yep, I do agree this is not celebrating the beauty of creation; as it must be, and as well removing to an extent the responsibility for us humans to take responsibility to thrive for good beyond our lowest instincts.

Yet, a little bit teasingly to your apparent rejection of Lutheran work ethic - which I think has contributed into making Scandinavia thriving as a region; and into making the early 90's recession into a deeply brutal blow in Finland - I should like to remind that it was against indulgence (=anekauppa) that inspired Luther to post his Theses. Quite as you disapprove of charitable donations by Buddhists as divine lottery tickets. ;-)

In terms of "likelihood"; the lottery is statistically like dropping a dart into a blank piece of paper, I've been taught. As such, any individual point of impact is improbable to the point of indefinitely small chance - yet a single point in the end shall de facto be chosen. I tend to think that particularly desperate conditions tend to inspire fatalistic beliefs, where the current conditions shall be so very bad indeed, that any tipping of scales shall do.

Anyone of us shall have "real life aji" - potential to do good or bad - but somehow the question is if you enjoy one; or the other - and how you might tell them apart?

I do not mind calling it The Hand of Providence (in terms of my Lutheran upbringing) or The Threads of Destiny - but I am quite convinced most of us have a common-nonsensical ability to separate what is good or harming to our family, friends; and neighbours. I personally prefer to apply what is good, within my own limitations - but just wonder, who can earnestly rejoice on harm?

Which begs the question... is there the slightest change that somewhere in this fantastic universe, maybe galaxies away, there is a planet similar to Earth that is capable of giving birth to another Chuck Norris? And if they met, would the universe collapse? Sadly we will never know.

In the end the reason I posted this begs another question, what makes humanity special?

How do our gods of all cultures and spirits/ghosts fit in this practically endless universe with who knows what is out there.

Come, now - not quite!

Clichédly, shall the gay men be as good looking or compelling as they are dubbed to be - and often are, taking Neil Tennant of PSB, George Micheal or Marc Jacobs as examples - surely most of the hetero or bi girls will greatly enjoy them without assuming to have them.

And with gay men, women should be able to enjoy a friendship that is an devoid of ulterior motive - yet pleasing by what there is to enrich each other by the differences between men and women.

But then again, I think Telika was just being sarcastic cum playful, as clearly parental incest to a child or rape should always be reprehensible, as opposed to love or lust between consenting adults.
Pray, tell, Telika - were you being sarcastic in your comment, as I should hope?

Blame the bible. The bible says, sex is only for procreation and gay sex has no purpose other than pleasure for homosexual men. If a hetero man doesn't believe in the bible, then yes, it is extremely illogical for him to oppose other men being gay. That is like people, opposing other people wanting to be poor or unemployed. :) More $$$ or jobs for you if other people want to be poor or unemployed. It also doesn't help that Western society is based on emotion and not logic. In fact, monkeys are more logical than most people.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lbg6xoS3K3U

Oh dear, this thread is still alive after having turmed into that horror by ThoRn ?

Anyway, I don't know what you mean. I was asking him to explicit his opposition of "rape, homosexuality, incest" to "morality", in order to complete the picture (after sexism and racism). I guess the question had been a bit too straightforward.

ThoRn is not a very nice human.

I do find it nice when there is a lively discussion, actually. Though I find it somewhat unfortunate that OP has eliminated the first post essentially, as it somewhat cheapens the subsequent discussion to my mind.

I was assuming you disapproved of homosexuality being cited with rape and incest (first=normal; rest = criminal). And per your response, I indeed think you do? Sorry if I posted my comment in a way that seemed intolerant or aggressive.

And I should hope we can always turn it back into reasonable and nice discussion, really! I shall happily be there with ya. :-)

"My hand hurts!"
"Prove it!"
"I broke my pinky!"
"Prove it!"
"Here's a picture."
"How do I know that's really your hand? Prove it!"
"Here's a picture of me with my hand waving at you while holding a sign with your username."
"That's probably your friend. You can't prove it's really you!"
"But-"
"And the broken pinky looks like it could be faked."
"You can tell that?"
"Yes."
"From a picture?"
"I know many things. I'm also a skilled ninja, a hacker... and Chuck Norris."
"You are not!"
"You can't disprove it!"

It's the internet. You can't prove anything... well, aside from who can rave the longest and last until the end of the thread.

It's like playing a game of pong where both players have infinite lives. Who's gonna walk away first? Are both players even gonna try or is that guy on the left just gonna frantically wave his paddle up and down while righty skillfully bats away every ball? Well and then other people join in too, and there's multiple paddles on the right now, and a few more on the left, and maybe even one or two at the top and bottom. The only way anyone wins is when they all choose to walk away.

Online religious debate threads never go well.
But listen, you know what it all boils down to? Respect.

If everyone would just have respect for each other then the world would be a better place. It's not a religious person's place to judge an Atheist, and it's not an Atheist's place to judge their religion. And it's not the Agnostic's place to stand in the middle, pointing at both of you saying, "You're both neither right nor wrong, because you can't prove that the other person doesn't exist (or does exist) in this version of the space-time continuum!"

Personally, I'm a Christian, but an Agnostic would most likely win most of these debates, if not all. By replying every time with "Prove it!".

But, oh, is not ThoRn really a poppet for allowing his or her reasoning to be so easily followed! :-D

I thought it might be rather hard at 26 tabs, but... following a trail of below viewing threshold it was fine - which I personally disapprove of to an extent: if one is really obnoxious, I think a reply fair n' square should do.

The first post on tab 13 was somehow recycling the "gambler's" argument by Blaise Pascale - a French mathematician who came up with Roulette while trying to invent a mechanism of Perpetual Motion.

Blaise Pascal argued the following: shall one believe in (Christian) God in vain, it is merely a wasted effort of believing with zero return - but: shall one believe in God, and be right - the return is indefinitely great (= eternal salvation).

So, lose nothing, or gain everything!

I do understand what Blaise Pascal desires - but as apostle Paul also said: the Faith is not granted to Every Man (uskoa ei ole kaikille suotu). Yet, either way, one can behave well, faithful or less so.

Edit: getting the italics right. Plus simplifying. Plus adding the original ref.

Respect - hopefully, but often not - what makes humans compassionate creatures, also make them conservative and narrow minded, is our intrinsic cooperative spirit that is based on cohesion. (Ref: Tomansello: Why We Cooperate)

But I do think: Jesus was a very revolutionary spirit, who failed in the cohesive bit - but inspired what ultimately became humanist spirit realized in the enlightenment; and the industrial revolution. Not least thanks to Calvin whom I think was quite instrumental to it.

I find it, as such, more important how we are inspired to behave when such compassion and conviction can be found to be our foundation - I cannot personally believe, yet shall I be wrong: I cannot believe either that God shall hate anything It has created.

I'd rather see a world were Bruce Lee didn't die at such a young age and would put Chuck Norris in his place.