That article links all sorts of things to homosexuality that are based in fiction and/or correlation (and not causation). Things like promiscuity and unprotected sex.
Yes... being promiscuous and having unprotected sex increases your risk of contracting STDs.
No... being gay does not increase your chance of being promiscuous.
Yes... anal sex is more dangerous than other forms of sexual activity.
No... anal sex is not strictly a homosexual act. Nor do homosexuals engage solely in anal sex.
A lot of this could be attributed to the fact that we do not teach homosexual behavior in sex ed classes. And/or we teach "abstinence only" education (another wonderful example of religious influence spreading ignorance) rather than teaching actual safe sex practices.
It also does a nice trick of spouting off homosexual statistics without pairing them with comparable heterosexual statistics as a control. I wouldn't be at all surprised if there were a comparable level of promiscuity and infidelity among heterosexual couples.
Also...
nothing I read in that article suggests it's "unnatural" as you paraphrased. The only definition for "unnatural" is meaning "does not exist in nature". Since there are many cases of it clearly existing in nature, it is clearly natural by the only definition of the word.
Though this is a tangent point that I don't care about... so I will even concede that engaging in unsafe homosexual activity will pose a greater risk than engaging in unsafe heterosexual activity.
Even conceding that... what does that have to do with whether or not they should be allowed to marry? All that tells me is we should increase education on the subject to encourage people to be safer about sex.
But talk about a tangent point.
For all you know, the carbon dating thing is messed up. |
No, it actually isn't. But I'll give you a chance to explain why you think it is. Please do.
From that article:
"So if you're newly diagnosed with HIV, and you don't have health insurance, what can you do?
You get married. BOOM. Medical benefits."
That's not speaking out against gay marriage... it's speaking out against marriage in general. Since all the same arguments that article makes against gay marriage apply equally well to heterosexual marriage.
The other articles you linked are similar, and all seem to say the same things in different ways, so I'll stop there.
cppprogrammer wrote: |
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Edit: How do you know carbon dating is correct? Were you there or do you know of anybody who was? I can answer this question: No |
For starters, carbon dating can only date back to ~50,000 years or so, at which point all of the C14 would have decayed. Dating older artifacts typically involves Radiometric dating:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiometric_dating
Secondly... the principles behind these practices are observable. We can visually observe C14 and radioactive decay over time. It's been witnessed and measured by several independent parties. So the logic behind it is sound.
From there it's just extrapolating the technique, which is generally not difficult to do.
So yeah.... carbon/radiometric/etc dating methods are for reals. They didn't just make that stuff up. The burden of proof has been met.
htirwin wrote: |
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The difference, is that there was never a claim that it was true; this is the common misconception, that modern cosmology is a bunch of statements of fact. |
Exactly. The key word here is "theory". Theories are theories, they are not facts. They are possible explanations, but are unproven.
This was kind of my original point. Science tries to explain but accepts that it might be wrong and is constantly trying to correct itself. Conversely, religiosity speaks in absolute truths and claims to be infallible.
When you claim to have the "one true" answer to any question.. even when that answer is incorrect... then people not only stop looking for the answer, but they actively refuse to entertain other possible answers. That's what I mean by perpetuating ignorance.
cppprogrammer wrote: |
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Many people prayed for him and he was heeled. I think that is enough proof right there. |
Fortunately, science has a much stricter burden of proof. A one time correlation is not enough for science to accept something as proven. The effect has to be reliably repeatable.. and anybody must be able to independently reproduce and observe the phenomenon and obtain the same results.
What about all the times you prayed for something and your prayers didn't come true? Do you just not count those times? In science, those would be examples of how the results could not be repeated, and therefore the claim would be rejected.
With that in mind... knowing that science has a much stricter burden of proof than faith... that things have to really be proven with a high standard of evidence before they are entertained.... why are you so hesitant to accept scientific findings like evolution? They adhere to a stricter standard of evidence, so they exceed or at least meet the same burden of proof you place on your religious beliefs.
I submit the reason why is because you're ignorant about evolution. That you really don't know just how much evidence there is to support it (which is actually quite a lot). That you choose not to (or refuse to) educate yourself on the subject because you are content in your ignorance.
This willful ignorance is exactly what I have been talking about for the last 8 or so pages of this thread. Religiosity imposes this mentality on people which drives them to deprive themselves of education. That discourages them from asking questions and seeking broader understandings. And in extreme cases even forbids them from accepting things which have been long proven to be true.
I don't trust atheist claims any more than I trust religious claims.
Anyone claiming to know something as fact which cannot possibly be proven is merely filling in the gaps of the unknown with their opinion/religious doctrine.
My goal is to get people to stop doing that. To get them to accept that sometimes, the right answer is "I don't know", and that the right course of action is to
find out for yourself rather than accept an arbitrary explanation at face value.
Ignorance isn't a bad thing as long as you are aware of it. It's when you think you aren't ignorant is when it gets you in trouble.
On a side note... Did we ever clear up the contradiction in Genesis that cire mentioned?