Start a new thread. No more general science threads
I'm tired of you telling me how to live my life.
Start a new thread. No more general science threads
u2popmofo said:I'm tired of you telling me how to live my life.
I'm tired of you telling me how to live my life.
It's your life. It's now or never. You're not going to live forever. You just wanna live while you're alive
Any you can be somewhat proud that they decided being really nice to everybody was a good quality to promote while they were at it.
jeevey said:Polite, maybe, which is different from genuine kindness.
"35 years of prayer couldn't get rid of my homosexuality. My name is Steve and I am an Ex Mormon." - YouTube
jeevey said:Why would I expect that? Or why would I assume that second thing? What a funny bunch of things to say.
Your post in general was a "funny thing" to say too, so what do you expect? Most Christians think homosexuality is wrong because of the Bible, the same as they thought slavery was justified, religious genocides were acceptable, gender inequality wasn't bad, and a wide variety of other things that (hopefully) most have now have moved past. Every religion, not just Christianity, has to pick and choose which aspects they still believe or practice if they believe in an ancient holy book. It's one of the fundamental criticisms from non-believers, the obvious hypocrisies and contradictions of using an ancient text full of things "believers" don't actually believe any more is incredibly frustrating.
That said, to imply that many of these people aren't "kind" for practicing their beliefs is insulting. My family, countless friends, and majority of people I work with or see day to day are all "unkind" because their religion has indoctrinated them to believe homosexuality is a sin? Certainly the church's response to homosexuality has been an antiquated mess for decades, let alone the more recent years. Looking from the outside in, it's flat out offensive. Truth be told, for a huge percentage of younger Mormons, even looking from the inside in, it's a very offensive stance.
The church is headed by extremely old men who live, and grew up, inside a Mormon bubble. You can essentially take all the bigotries and prejudices you'd expect of most 70 year olds in the US, and then imagine as if they were raised 30 or 40 years before they actually were, and that's the level of "behind the times" the LDS church's leaders mindsets are in. They're not "unkind", evil people going out of their way to hurt homosexuals. They're just incredibly out of touch old people who they themselves were indoctrinated to believe they were called by God to lead, and thus think their opinions in turn must be God's opinions. Luckily, you can tell they're starting to learn that their mentality has been behind the times based on a lot of policies and responses the LDS church has made over the last year regarding homosexuality. They still have a very long ways to go to, but positive things are luckily happening.
Most devout Christians are really, really good people. That certainly includes most Mormons as well. Wonderful people actually. They have some arcane teachings that require (or justify) bigotry and general ignorance in certain instances. And they have their share of hypocrites just as much as any other walk of life. But mostly they are just good people. We don't have enough good people in this world.
I particularly like Mormons. They do a lot in their communities that I've seen.
Although I am not religious and probably never will be (again) and haven't been in 20 years, as I grow older, I move further away from the youthful skeptic that just loathes religion and into someone that actually sees an incredible lot of good it can do. If we could only move more of them away from homophobia and anti-science positions, more people would be able to see it.
My point was that being polite in a nice PR kind of way is different from practicing genuine kindness, which involves caring about the quality of a person's existence- which the fellow in the link did not experience. It's not Mormon-specific, and it applies to most conservative religion. In my experience, religious conservatism is so anxious about being wrong, or preventing themselves or others from doing wrong, or helpfully telling others what they can do to avoid being wrong, that they are pretty limited in their ability to see and care for others simply as they are. The prescriptive attitude is fundamentally unkind, because it is disrespectful- it doesn't trust that others have the same ability to discover truth. That doesn't mean that religious people are bad people, it means that their ability to practice love towards others is seriously limited by their dogma.
Jive, your tendency to read new meanings into comments and determination to believe the worst about my intents are... remarkable.
Guys, can I just love Jesus and think many of the earmarks of evangelical Christianity are idiotic and non-Christian in principle? Because I think that's about where I am right now. I love Christianity and try my best to follow the teachings themselves but man people can't read or something.
Most atheists are really, really good people (and don't have the arcane teachings to cloud their good nature)
I don't believe anybody's all that good.
Of course you don't. This is more or less drilled in to every Christians head from birth.
Of course you don't. This is more or less drilled in to every Christians head from birth. Are you saying, if not for Jesus, you'd be a bad person? That's a frightening proposition. I'm a good person because I care about the well being and happiness of people around me. I don't need old literature to help me there.