Problem is if people choose to not, they get ostracized and cast out for not. Religious people want their beliefs respected but refuse to respect those of others in the same way. It's hypocritical.

I'm not gonna tell you you can't be religious if you wanna be, only to respect others choices not to be and not try and force your lifestyle onto them when they don't want it. Really don't think that's too much to ask is it?

and so is all the junk food we eat too. A lot of people complain about costs, but yet refuse to change their habits to accomodate it. It will cost you a LOT more if you try and serve both masters than if you focused on one or the other. So to a degree all the talk about cost is a bit of a copout and basically is saying you don't wanna change. It comes down to priorities in that way, do you wanna eat healthy or not you know?

Also coconut oil, that's even healthier, and it's better to heat than olive oil since it has a higher smoke point and isn't damaged by the process as olive oil (which is best used unheated for that reason) and others are.

That isn't what I meant......I didn't mean physically. ALL our bodies will die, everyone knows that. What I meant is this God is supposed to be loving, and yet he allows people to ETERNALLY perish, KNOWING it's not what they want, and being able to stop it. It doesn't fit what a loving being does.

To love means doing anything you can to save a person, not just letting them die as a punishment for bad behavior. Regardless of what the person may have done, you don't do that if you love them. I mean any person who could sit there and WATCH someone die being able to stop it, would be held accountable in part for their death, and yet we accept this of God? Why? Why do expect more out of ourselves than we do of God? It makes no sense at all.

Here's the problem though, if you are EXPECTED to do one thing over or another with a consequence for not doing it or doing it depending on what it is, then you are effectively made robotic whether you realize it or not, because you are not free to question what you are told. You have no choice but to believe if you want to live. So in that sense, this God does want yes men and robots because to go against it means to die.

I've said it before and I'll say it again, you CANNOT have free will if there is a threat attached to your action or inaction. That is blackmailing one to get what they want. Are you TECHNICALLY choosing one path or another? Sure. But are you doing it on your own? No you're not, you can't do it if you are being told in effect "do this or die", doesn't work now, never will work and it doesn't matter how much you try to make it so. It is illogical. You either are totally free to choose one path or another or you're not, there's no inbetween.

Beyond that, this God supposedly knows what we do before we do it anyway, so how are we freely choosing anything at all if it's set in stone before we ever do it???

The idea of free will just does not work under these conditions.

Then it's clear you really don't have much faith in your own parenting if you need to make others responsible for the raising of your own. If you raised them right, what others do would not be of a concern, much less any threat.

And I disagree too, I think stigmatizing an action as compared to educating about it, both good sides and bad, makes the action much more desirable. You don't want someone to do something? TALK TO THEM, don't just preach. That will go much farther and you are much more likely to gain their respect.

I find it sad I need to be explaining this to you when you're the parent in this situation.......

He's loving and yet he actively ALLOWS people to perish under his watch being able to prevent it but choosing not to on a whim? Yeah ok........

This is the other problem with religion, and in this case the Bible, and it goes along with the infallibility thing spoken of earlier. You CANNOT challenge it! If people ever try, it's always twisted by believers as our own failure to understand the thing like above, it's never ever ever that MAYBE what we are being told is wrong or incorrect.

Now how are you supposed to have an objective debate about the validity of something when whenever one comes up with an argument that is the response? You can't do it, the whole thing is rigged to make you look bad unless you agree with them. That is a biased system looking to support itself, not the actual truth.

What exactly are religious people afraid of? If the Bible is right as they say, if what they believe is right, then certainly the facts will prove it right? So what is the need to place the blame always on the questioner instead of the thing being questioned? Afraid of being wrong?

I think that's what it comes down to to me, they don't wanna be wrong so they shift the focus on the one making the argument instead, or even try to make excuses for the bad behavior done by their God or in the name of their God.

Catholics even have a term for this, they call it apologetics, which is basically another form of saying apology. If something is good and right it need not be apologized for. That a religion would feel the need to have a term that basically means just that, trying to justify their behavior somehow, says a lot about it.

So yeah bottom line is, you cannot have an honest discussion about this if every single time someone challenges it, you make the issue about them and not about what they are trying to argue against. You want truth? Then you'll follow it wherever it leads, even if it means you were wrong. Anything else just indicates you wanna cling to what you believe no matter what evidence is shown otherwise.

I hate to break it to you, but kids are ALWAYS going to be exposed to things that may be undesirable or not good for them. That's called LIFE, that's called REALITY. That's where you come in as a parent, you are there to help them from making bad decisions, take some responsibility instead of relying on everyone else to do it for you.

Are you really that unconfident in your parenting skills that someone else's decisions could effect your kids that much? Cause that's what it sounds like to me.

And who exactly defines sin to begin with? "sin" is a bit of a relative term in the first place, without direct harm. What's right for one may not be for another and vice versa we are all different.

So yeah number one, you want to protect your kids from bad things? Do your job as a parent so they make good choices, stop trying make everyone else responsible for it. And two realize that just cause something is new to you, doesn't make it bad. Open your mind to new ideas......some things are just different. Not bad, not wrong, just different.

Not necessarily true, for example people who work in porn movies do it legally at least in certain areas, but they are still treated as 2nd class citizens simply because of their career choices. It's the same thing for gay people. You may not wanna make their behavior illegal, but supporting unnecessary judgment on them isn't much better.

so you want adults to be free to do what they want, but at the same time want it to be ok to effectively ostracize them if they go against YOUR personal morality........you can't have it both ways here. Pick a side.

Really? You're gonna try that argument, really? That's so entirely different it's not even funny! In that case I am threatened because I KNOW that if others keep accepting things like you describe above, they will come for me next, they always do I don't care how you wanna argue it, history proves it time and time again if you actually educated yourself. That's how I'm threatened, because once enough people consent to unlawful things it makes everyone else targets to be forced to give in to the same. Your choices in that case VERY MUCH do impact what happens to me because of the precedence it sets, it does not just effect you, it creates a snowball effect to where everyone else is effected as well.

To try and compare that to allowing two people to privately marry one another is just ridiculous. It's not the same thing whatsoever. One has a ripple effect on everyone, the other just plainly does not. Last I checked your own marriages or rights to be together aren't gonna be taken away because we allow someone else the same.

As for cultural norms and boundaries, quite frankly I don't care about that, just because we've done things one way for a certain period of time doesn't mean we can't be wrong or in need of change. Used to be that the cultural norm was to view blacks as inferior to whites, and the boundary placing the two races separate from each other. Should that not have changed?

Tradition and what is actually good for people, don't always go together. When it comes to individual rights against that, the individual should win every time.

How are they threatened because two men or two women can marry? Tell me how. They'll still have the same right to marry as they do now, they aren't going anywhere anytime soon. Letting others do the same doesn't mean they're not protected, they always have been and will be.

The religious right ring a bell?

Except one day you won't have your liberties anymore! The more we keep allowing more and more encroachments on them the less we have. We are slowly killing ourselves and we don't even know we're doing it. If we don't fight for them now, one day they will all be gone and so will we be.

One has to draw a line at some point if they care the least bit about their rights, to not is to consent to giving them over. We need to stop consenting.

If you cannot marry the person you actually love, you don't have a true choice. I don't care how you wanna try and twist it, the only ones that have a choice are those that fit in the narrow definition of it. Anyone who fits outside that is left out.

And the doctor argument does not apply here, because in that case EVERYONE can take and pass the test to get a license, race doesn't matter, gender doesn't matter, etc. But with marriage it is limited by the genders involved if not even by the number of people involved in the case of poly relationships. If there are limitations in such a way, there is discrimination against the people who the rules cast out, whether you like it or not.

The thing with that is simply this, if a person truly knows the laws, or knows their common law rights which we ALL have, they can do just that. The only authority any law really has is that which we give to it. If we don't consent to the law, it doesn't apply to us. Most however don't know this and so they are made to do things they don't want to do, not realizing they can avoid that if they know how.

So there is an equal application......IF you know what your rights are. If you don't.......well then you lose out basically, hence the discrepancy you speak of here. Ignorance of the law is no excuse. You have to know what you can do in order to do it.

Personal feelings are irrelevant as it pertains to individual rights, they will win out every time. Unless something is affecting you SPECIFICALLY and your ability to live freely and do as you wish to do, you cannot take away someone elses' ability to live as they choose to. You may not like it, you may disagree with it, but you have no right to dictate or tell them they can't do something strictly based on that.

which by the by some do NOT......but not withstanding that.....it cannot be truly for ALL if the ability to do it is dependent on a certain criteria, that is that it MUST be to the opposite sex to be valid. That just doesn't work, that discriminates against people who either choose not to marry their opposite (ie are bi), or who based on their biological attractions could not do it. If it's truly supposed to be for ALL than you cannot limit it based on a preference. It's not for all if you are doing so, only those it suits.