Who will take on Obama in 2012?

Look, we know where this is going. You believe because you have faith, I don't because I don't. That's why facts and scientific theory work better for me.


Well, if he's basing it on religious dogma, I'd argue that he's been told what to believe. Whereas I was allowed to make up my own mind.

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With you not making an argument no matter how many times I ask you to?

Oh, heavens no. Believing because you have faith is circular. That's like saying you believe because you believe. I believe because I think that's where the preponderance of evidence lies.

I'm pretty sure you've made this false dichotomy between science and religion before. But not only is there no mutual exclusivity between the two, but there can't be, by definition. Suggesting that science is the antithesis of religion shows a pretty thorough misunderstanding of both science and religion.

Except for the part where he makes up his own mind whether or not to subscribe to the dogma.

Oh, please. You have to show me the evidence.

It's true that I'm playing the odds here. Most people who believe are brought up in or with the faith, therefore, it's not really a choice.

However, he's still thinking as he's told whether he chose his religion or not. For the most part, faith and religion comes down to when, where and to whom you're born.

It describes a large number of Republicans. It describes Rick Santorum who was the choice of social conservatives as the presidential nominee. And they shape the Republican agenda, to the point it was recently reported Romney had to drop an openly gay advisor on foreign policy. And this stuff about bigotry is motivated by irrational fear instead of religious conviction is bogus. The Taliban terrorized women in the streets because of religious conviction. Religious sincerity doesn't get you off the hook for being a hatemonger. That is what a bigot is, a hatemonger. And if you get your hate because of the way you read your bible instead of just from your gut, you're still a hatemonger.

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The existence or non-existence of God is really not something that can be proven, or disproven, by evidence. Therefore, I don't really understand the certainty on the part of people like yourself that there is no God. I, and 85-90% of Americans believe that there is a God. You believe that is a figment of our imaginations. Because this cannot be proven or disproven, it's really not a legitimate topic of conversation, and there is no reason for you to be so dogmatic about something that we just don't know about either way.

As for the larger issue of gay marriage, here are my thoughts on that:

While I understand the passion this issue generates, I just don't believe that large-scale social change should be imposed on society by the courts. The best way to change people's views on these issues is for them to meet and get to know gay people in their own community. It's for people all across America to reach out in love, kindness, and friendship, and for us all to realize that gay people are no different than anyone else. They all want to be loved and accepted for who they are. I personally don't support gay marriage, but I do support gay people, and I think that we should all treat them with respect and dignity. The imposition of large-scale social change by courts does not work. Roe v. Wade was decided almost 40 years ago, and half of our society still vehemently disagrees with it. You can't change people's hearts by writing a court opinion. All it does is sow discord and division. The day may come when people all across this nation rise up to support gay people's right to marry, but that day is not today, and I don't think that day will come any more quickly because a few smart people in a robe tell us all that it should.

I think that when fundamental rights are infringed upon by the masses, the court should intervene to stop that, but I don't believe that the law should be used as a focal point to change people's morals and values and what they deem to be acceptable and not in society. In CA, gays and lesbians have exactly the same fundamental legal rights as any any other couple. The only difference is that they call their union a marriage, but if they choose to engage in a domestic partnership, their rights are exactly the same. From a legal standpoint, and that is the role of a court, in my judgment, their rights are protected. It is not, in my judgment, the role of a court to force the society to accept a gay union as having the same moral equivalency as a marriage between a man and a woman. That is the primary purpose of this movement in CA, where I am from.

I don't think the society at large is going to be any more willing to confer moral legitimacy on same sex unions by reading a court opinion about it. That struggle involves a lot more than changing the minds of a few unelected judges. It involves changing the minds of many in our society whose religion and values tell them that gay unions are simply not the same as a marriage. None of that will change by use of the courts.

The role of the court is to protect people's constitutionally guaranteed rights. If all of your rights, other than the name, on the state level, are protected and conferred upon your union, it is not the court's place to step in and seek to change a definition of marriage that has been in place for thousands of years when no rights are being infringed. If the people down the line seek to redefine marriage because they have gotten to know gays and lesbians, and they realize that their hopes and dreams and aspirations are exactly the same as everyone else, and they feel at that time that it is right to confer upon them the same moral legitimacy as any other union, they have the right to do so under our Constitution. The proper place for these conversations is at the kitchen table, not a court room. If the people seek to change the law, the legislature is capable of doing that. It's not the court's role. Attempting to change people's beliefs and values through the courts is not going to work. Forcing people to accept something they do not believe in will sow hatred and resentment, not understanding and empathy. Imposing such things on a society will effect exactly the wrong kind of change, and do very little to foster love and acceptance of gay people and their unions. Doing so will only sow discord and division, and make it even more unlikely that their unions will ever be accepted.

Yoda, if you want to move all of these gay marriage posts to its own thread, you are welcome to do so, if others feel that they no longer would like to participate in this discussion in this thread.

For Yoda, I know I shouldn't ask you who are you voting for in the election, but, do you a prefence at the moment?

He is voting for Obama.

Cheers will, though things can appen at the polling booth, I'm just saying

Irish so cant vote but im a left pink liberal so I would be voting for Barack O' Bama. Far from perfect though.

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Gladly. But whenever I start to do this your only response seems to be "Yeah, but SCIENCE!" And if you've somehow convinced yourself that this is even close to an argument, then we've got to take a machete to that thicket of confusion before we can even have the argument you're already trying to run right on by. Because right now it's the equivalent of saying you believe in rain instead of marmalade.

You'd also need to define "evidence." Because I'll wager your definition is circular.

Man, that's some pretty busted logic. It's a choice if they choose to abandon what they were taught, but not if they don't? What if they're raised by atheists and become atheists? Is that not a choice? What if they're raised religious and hate their parents, which taints that religious belief and causes them to become atheists? What if they're raised atheist but surrounded by religious friends? Please, game out the equations here so I can mark down which decisions are choices and which are not.

So, if I told you to think like an atheist, and you do, are you thinking like you're told? Have I robbed you of your choice? Or is it only if it happens when you're young? Is there a cutoff? What about reinforcing believe?

I find it hard to accept that you believe in "facts and scientific theory" when you abandon this kind of rigorous thinking the moment we start talking about religious people. There's a difference between believing in the scientific process, and just not liking religion and thinking you can use science as a club to beat it up with.

The latest speculation is Romney will not select Marco Rubio as VP because he wants someone a little safer, too many things in his background could create controversy and distract from his message, "it's the economy, stupid."

And Romney's strong denunciation of reports of an action committee bringing up Obama's association with Pastor Wright again show what happens when candidates do that, that plan was dropped like it was radioactive. It would have been a stupid thing to do anyway at this point. He has been president for four years and you are going to try to convince voters now Obama hates whites?

The Mississippi state lawmaker who cited a Bible passage on Facebook calling for gay men to be "put to death" has taken to the social networking site again to refuse to apologize for the remark.

Rep. Andy Gipson (R-Braxton) went on Facebook Friday to say that although he has been receiving emails and calls from around the country about his citation of Leviticus 20:13, as well as Romans 1:26-28, in a May 10 Facebook post on President Barack Obama's endorsement of gay marriage, he will not say he's sorry. The emails have come in response to a petition calling on the lawmaker to issue an apology and to meet with LGBT groups in Mississippi.

"To be clear, I want the world to know that I do not, cannot, and will not apologize for the inspired truth of God's Word. It is one thing that will never 'change,'" Gipson wrote. "Anyone who knows me knows I also believe that all people are created in God's image, and that all people are loved by God, so much so that He gave us the truth of His Word which convicts us of the reality and guilt of our sin, and He gave us His Son Jesus who paid the full penalty for all our sins, by His grace through our faith in Him as we repent of our sin. John 3:16. It is this message that I preach every Sunday. I sincerely pray God will reach someone through this message."

Gipson is a Baptist minister and a business lawyer when not serving in the Legislature. He notes in his official state biography that his family are "of the Christian faith, and are affiliated with the Southern Baptist Convention."

The passage from Leviticus that Gipson first cited reads: "If a man has sexual relations with a man as one does with a woman, both of them have done what is detestable. They are to be put to death; their blood will be on their own heads."

On Facebook at least, Gipson has received overwhelming support for his original comments and his refusal to apologize. Eighty-three people have "liked" his post, and he's received dozens of supportive comments, including praise for supporting God and sticking to his original message.

"I stand with you my friend. ... GOD is in control ... no place for Gays," Ted W. Cole wrote.

I find it interesting right now that I'm teaching about the Renaissance and how the humanists of the time were rejecting what the church had been telling them for a 1,000 years. The first 500 of those years are actually called the "Dark Ages."

The Renaissance was the birth of science, a rebirth of art, theatre! Interesting what happened in the world when many starting questioning the dogma they had been exposed to for so long....when people desire to do their own thinking, look what happens?!!

I was reading the thread and I thought of this....

I find it interesting that some people call it the Dark Ages instead of the Middle Ages, which follows the more common habit of using historical terms in value-neutral ways.

Anyway, any attempt to sum up a 500-year period in a single word, sentence, or thought is going to be more than a little reductionist, and this is no exception. As much as people like to pretend that there was some sudden cultural explosion during the Renaissance, the reality is not as conveniently demarcated. The "Dark" Ages saw things like the invention of algebra, the creation of the first Universities, the literature of the Byzantine empire, and some of the most stunningly beautiful and ornate architecture that the world has ever seen.

Examples like this may not fit neatly into any preexisting beliefs or boxes, but it's my experience that reality usually doesn't.

Dogma, indeed, can be a very dangerous thing. But that's true of any type of dogma: both the kind that would have people accept religious claims on authority alone, and the kind that would propagate an overly simple historical narrative with pejorative labels.

Also, it's worth pointing out that, in modern usage, a "dark age" denotes several things, including a lack of available historical records. In that context, "dark" is about visibility.

What history was preserved was largely preserved in monasteries, by the way. So you can thank those backwards dogmatic old monks for it. And for preserving Latin, too. One shudders to think of the knowledge and history that would've been lost if not for them.

Of course. But we all know those that hold knowledge, hold the power (over the people, that is.)



Ooops, sorry, didn't see your first post... the "Dark" ages is the first 500 years -- probably from 500 to 1000 roughly.

And you're right about architecture, algebra, etc.... but I think you caught my point.

I can't believe what happened with Corey Booker the other day. The idea that the Obama campaign would put someone on "Meet the Press" as a surrogate without first checking that he agreed with and would competently communicate the campaign's core theme and message is shocking to me. Whoever did that should be fired immediately.

I think this whole controversy over Mitt Romney's business record is pretty crazy. Mitt Romney made his "business experience" the centerpiece of his campaign for President. He was Governor of Massachusetts for 4 years too, which is a lot more relevant to being President of the United States, but he almost never talks about that. His whole campaign boils down to "I'm a business person. I spent 25 years in the private sector. I created jobs. I know how the economy works. Obama is a lightweight on the economy. I know how to turn this economy around. If you elect me, I'll fix things." The idea that the Romney campaign would balk at this "business experience" being examined and scrutinized, as they are now doing, is ludicrous.

As voters we should take a hard look at what this "business experience" actually consisted of, and question his record of "creating jobs" to determine if the rhetoric matches reality. That's not "character assassination." It's just common sense. If you're going to make your whole campaign about ill-defined and ambiguous "private sector" experience and how you created tens of thousands of jobs, you should be ready to defend your own record when a close examination of it leads to a strong body of evidence that you made most of your money by downsizing companies, firing people, and reselling the companies for profit.

That's not to say that Mitt Romney is a horrible human being for having done that. I personally find it unseemly that the Obama administration is now running ads of people who had benefits cut and jobs outsourced, because these kinds of things are par for the course in business, and Mitt Romney's job was to make companies profitable, not to create jobs as he is now claiming. At the same time, I do think it's relevant to point out that this "business experience" is not exactly analogous to running a nation. This is something that I don't understand, and which my conservatives friends cannot really answer. Mitt Romney knows how to turn around failing companies and make money for his investors. How exactly does that translate to running an entire nation, and what value does that experience have in helping us to emerge from an economic crisis? The roles don't seem even remotely analogous, yet the narrative is that Romney is the man for the job. Why? What has he actually done to give us that confidence, and how does that experience make him uniquely qualified to run our nation? Government isn't a business. In government, you have to work together to accomplish goals. In business, you can unilaterally decide what you want to do and implement it. In government, your ability to persuade and advocate your ideas is as important as the quality of the ideas themselves. In business, your primary charge is to be profitable. In government, profit is not your primary responsibility. What is the "experience" in business that should give me confidence that Romney understands the difference in these roles, and why should Romney's experience in the private sector give me confidence that he could do a better job that our current President in running our nation?

"For every dollar Mitt Romney's Bain Capital invested in Ampad, it received $20 back in profit—a 2,000 percent return—even though the company went bankrupt.
For every dollar Ampad's creditors were owed its when the company bankrupt, they received two-tenths of a cent, $0.002—a 0.002 percent return.
In all, Bain made $100 million on its $5 million investment. Creditors were paid $330,000 of the $170 million they were owed."