I really like your username :) Quarks unite!

I dunno. I can’t abide those unsavory charm quarks. And don’t get me started on those damned mesons! 🙂

Baryons>mesons

It's not the right place to discuss religion. It often starts pointless arguments. Just let people believe what they want to believe! edit: to clarify, I meant that we should not talk about this online because it is such a controversial topic

I agree with letting people believe what they want, but every religious person I know has been content to try and shove their beliefs onto anyone at every opportunity. In the US we have legislation based in Christian religious ideals that affect hundreds of millions of people. I'm fine with people believing what they want, but pretty sick of having Christianity shoved into my face at every turn.

That is because, contrary to popular opinion, religion is not about faith and belief, but entirely about power and control. You can - and quite often do - find faith without religion or religion without faith.

I pass Jehovah’s witnesses on the sidewalk next to the hospital every day for months now. They’re always polite, often say hi to my dog, and offer a kind smile to anyone who passes by. They also won’t let their children get blood transfusions, and support anti-progressive legislation. Sure, they can believe whatever they want, but those beliefs lead them to cause real harm.

100%. Grew up this way and my gmaw still is and always talks about my bff who killed himself because his parents disowned him for being gay as "well he deserved it". If she only knew about her favorite granddaughter (in enby and pan but can never tell her).

I’m sorry for you. You deserve people around you who unconditionally love you and your lifestyle as what makes you happy even if they don’t understand or particularly believe it’s the right thing.

If certain people could just believe what they want to believe without trying to force everyone else to believe it too, there wouldn't be a problem.

After much discrimination for eons, the LGBTQ community is finally demanding the same rights as everyone else. When they whispered softly and stayed in their closets the powers that be, our righteous right and those moral philosophers who think it’s perfectly ok to dictate THEIR ideology, didn’t hear them at all. I’m 65 and I’ve had religion shoved in my face at every turn. Up to and including the more recent fraction that ignores the Constitution by forcing their dogma into law. LBGTQ have never been so intrusive.

I think the fact that it's controversial is precisely the reason why it should be discussed online

that is true

Have you read the bible cover to cover? It's a horror show. It was also the first step to me dropping all belief in a deity. Any deity that could condone or encourage half that book didn't deserve worship. So i read up on a variety of other religions around the world. Most of the good stuff overlapped, but each seemed to be horrible in their own unique way. But there was zero evidence that any of the deities existed.

It's sad how some people ruin others' idea of Christianity because they don't live like Christ did or are extremists. Also, the bible isn't a horror show, lol. It's a book depicting the most extraordinary love story ever. I may get hate for this, but I think you're just looking at the parts where God was just, but you only see the fearful parts.

Time to step down from your high horse. All religions, several thousand now, are cults. They have the same agendas which mostly revolve around money, manipulation and power. Oh but I know, Not yours of course. Yours religion is the real one. 🙄

i loved your Ted Talk! Thanks for explaining!!

I appreciate a lot of what you're saying here, but people can have faith in bad/extreme ideas too.

i guess

As an atheist I very much agree! I wouldn't call it faith, I have no faith. Except perhaps a faith in humanity? "All we have is each other", but it is obvious to me that support and kindness and respect are the only way to live

THANK YOU MY MOM NEEDS TO UNDERSTAND THIS

They hang onto that one passage in Leviticus mostly. Your very right too, these passages are not condemning homosexuality, if you read in more depth, (and you have obviously done some reading-good for you), the people of that time had no idea of what we see now, scientifically. They were more concerned with procreation then, wasting a man’s seed (they didn’t promote fornication with any gender that a man’s seed was “wasted”). Perversions, incest, sexual diseases were more concerning that two men together. They Biblical passages are interpreted by man and usually they have an agenda. Keep up the knowledge search. You’re doing great. That’s coming from a 65 year old lifelong atheist.

You left off the rest of the definition, including: "a relatively small group of people having religious beliefs or practices regarded by others as strange or sinister."

I say organized religion because of all the harm religious leaders have caused historically and currently. They caused wars and the Crusades because they wanted gold and other items. They caused people to starve from tithes they did not need. Currently there are evangelicals that do the same thing and convince people to send them more money than they can afford and even tell them it is only enough if it causes them to suffer. That is not even counting the suicide cults, more personal abuses, or neverending holyland battles.

And again it's the people making those decisions not "the religion". The priest at a local church with a congregation of a couple hundred people wasn't the one organising crusades. And they probably weren't trying to tithe people to the point they were going to starve. Religion is like politics, the people at the grass roots levels probably often genuinely want to help but in order to get higher up they want power and wealth and they're driven more by ego than a desire to help. All the examples you list are greedy, horrible people driven by their own desires and actually not following the central tenets of the churches they claim to represent.

You are right. Was he a good Catholic? Naaaa, I doubt he believed any of it, but he, like many powerful people throughout history, used it to “control the masses”. Take note though, Hitler, Stalin nor Mao were waging religious wars. I’m a history buff, and an atheist, trust and believe that you don’t want me to start listing the atrocities, genocides, the sheer millions of humans slaughters, races and cultures obliterated in the name of God. The ongoing Crusades, the Inquisitions, witch hunts, trials, torture, rapes and killing of innocent children. Entire cities taken to ground and the slaughter of every man, women, child, child in utero, animals, crops burnt. Told you not to get me started.

Hitler wasn't an atheist.

@Ross. That is actually a good point. And this is a Christian writing this.

no, we disagree with them because the nutjobs are loud, and in my case, trying to take away my healthcare and ability to use public bathrooms.

No, not a few nutjobs, Christopher - many. Many, many, MANY nutjobs.

@Tamra But isn't it unfair to group the nutjobs with the non-nutjobs?