That's a big if, isn't it. Your god hasn't been demonstrated to exist, let alone to have created marriage. Regardless, it's still a non sequitur, I'm afraid. We're asking for the state institution of marriage rights to be extended to same-sex couples, not trees, or to polygamous relationships. To suggest otherwise is a ridiculous slippery-slope argument and a strawman.

Your church is free to choose who gets married within its premises. But like it or not, it's already possible for straight couples to get married with zero church involvement in the US and where I live in the UK. That right to a secular marriage is all that anyone is asking for. Whether gods or their earthly advocates want it is irrelevant; the church is already not involved in other non-religious marriages already, so it's not within its purview to argue against its implementation for same-sex couples.

I say things like that because they are objectively true. The very concept of omnipotence and omniscience violate all kinds of physical laws. They are paradoxes; the "immovable force meeting the immovable object", but all our experience and learning tells us the universe does not work like that. Again, we might be wrong, but the more we learn, the less likely it becomes that we've missed something so vast.

We haven't missed it, chaosengine; the vast majority of people on Earth believes there is a God.

Human history is full of misery, suffering and cruelty to everything around us. One of the few bright points is our quest for knowledge, and you willfully reject that to cling to a stone age belief system that has been demonstrably proven false (geocentricity, for example) again and again.

In every important way, man hasn't learned anything and hasn't changed at all. The misery and suffering in the world increases year by year, it doesn't decrease.

Factually, it's incorrect.
Morally, it's bankrupt and consistently on the wrong side of history.

Matthew 24:35

Heaven and earth will pass away, but My words will not pass away.

One day you might wake up and realise (to paraphrase the much missed Douglas Adams) that "the garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it".

Until then, you are welcome to indulge in your fantasies, but if you insist on injecting your irrationality into debates like this, expect disagreement.

I've read most of Douglas Adams works. I grew up secular and you would probably be shocked at the level of agreement we would have had in the not too distant past. I have been set free from the bondage of slavery to sin, and have been born again into a living hope. What you know on its own profits you nothing, because without faith it is impossible to please God. Ask God to reveal Himself to you. You don't have to acknowledge it to me, but that is the only way you will ever know anything about God, is by His personal revelation to you. He is faithful to give you a revelation of your need for a Savior.

We are a known quantity on many interstellar maps if the evolutionary paradigm is true. It wouldn't take that long for a sufficiently advanced civilization to locate every planet that has life on it, especially if they could use inter-dimensional travel. They could automate everything using robotics, or by some other means unknown to us. Perhaps they could even instantly colonize those planets using sentient robots.

The point is that we are a resource to be exploited and after an estimated 15 billion years of the Universe existing, according to the secular narrative, there should be many civilizations out there capable of doing just that. That we haven't been contacted or seen any activity at all is more than curious; it is dramatic evidence that we are in fact alone in the cosmos.

I think the problem is ultimately a political one.

There are absolutely social issues in Islam (similar to every religion, but marginally more repressive), but the terrorist angle is there because of geography. Most of the adherents to Islam live in the third world and yeah, they absolutely have genuine, legitimate grievances with the west. Not because we're secular godless infidels, but because of the way we've exploited people.

And these people are exploited by their religious leaders.

Look at Northern Ireland. You had Catholics on one side and Protestants on the other, but because both were Christians, it was framed as a political struggle. If the republicans had been druids or something, then it would be recast as a religious issue.

If most Christians were living in the third world, we'd be looking at the exact same problem. The only reason Christianity is any less problematic than Islam is because it has had to live in an affluent education demographic who increasingly won't put up with it's original treatment of women, homosexuals, etc.

In poorer areas, (southern US, South America, parts of Africa) Christianity is indistinguishable from the Taliban.

Not so; the biggest increase is in the secular. One area that remains in the religious majority, however, is the poor, the lost, the desperate and the frightened. But, as education and intellect increases so, too, does the need for answers to serious questions without resorting to myths and brainwashing.

Nah, I think he's saying that there is a cultural bias towards being overly cautious on inflation. Whereas the kind of fiscal policy size needed to stimulate Greece is in excess of what politics would allow in Germany, who is effectively dictating Greece's debt terms at the moment.

I mean, right now the eurozone as a whole is risking falling into deflation because of this cautiousness, where people spend less in expectation of lower prices, the value of debts rise and you get secular stagnation a la Japan's lost decade.

I grew up exactly the opposite from your situation; I grew up in the secular world and I believed that it was the world, and that our understanding of the cosmos sufficiently explained the questions we had about life. Everything else was a wonderful mystery waiting to be discovered as we explored the worlds, inner and outer. I saw religion, and Christianity particularly, as backwards and ignorant, a sad relic of our more primitive past.

That all changed when I started to have supernatural experiences. I didn't believe in the supernatural at the time, and finding out that there was a spiritual reality blew my mind to say the least. I started exploring all of the different religions and beliefs out there, trying to make sense of it all, and basically just pieced together what I felt was different pieces of the truth from all of these differing ideas of reality.

It was then that I started to come to the realization that there is a God. He opened my eyes to see the ways He was, and always had been, shaping my life. He showed me His personal love, for me. I began to follow Him and He led me, after showing me many different things, to the bible. He confirmed it to me as His book and confirmed to me that Jesus is the Savior of the world. I never would have come to that conclusion on my own in a million years. Even when I knew there was a God, the last thing I thought was that He was the God of Christianity.

I went through a similar process to you; I had to integrate an entirely different way of seeing the world, and let go of the artifices that had been constructed in me since a young age. God set me free to be myself, the person He created me to be. He has made me into a new person, and I experience His love, help and guidance every single day of my life.

I'm sorry you were indoctrinated as a child. You never experienced the truth of John 3:3. That's why it all seems like a sham to you fed by ignorant people who were themselves indoctrinated. The Holy Spirit has to make you a new person, and that never happened to you. It is actually the best thing that could have happened because if you had stayed the way you were, you would have died thinking you were saved when you weren't. Now, you know you aren't a Christian which opens the door much wider for God to do an amazing thing in your life. I just want you to know that He loves you. Ask Him to reveal Himself to you. God bless.

did you just advocate indoctrination and brainwashing of children?
trading religious doctrine for secular doctrine?
while one may be more attractive to you than the other..it is STILL:brainwashing and indoctrination!

how about we step away from those practices and instead actually teach children how to utilize information in a positive fashion.give them the techniques to analyze,criticize and formulate their own conclusions?

you know...
the ability to be a free thinker.
how about that?
can we do that?
i think thats a much better idea.

/drops mic
*christ on a stick..brainwashing kids..........cant be serious.....

@newtboy
i agree with you but consider a few things:
1.for the first time bob is actually engaging and revealing where his perspective originates.(which came as no shock,to anyone).now we can disagree on his position but understanding how he got to that position gives an opportunity to disseminate the particulars.

this is a good thing.

2.while bob's breakdown of the political spectrum is extremely,overly simplified and his understanding of socialism vs corporatism is staggeringly..wrong..it begs the question ..why does bob have it so wrong?

which he answers by where he gets the majority of his information.i dont necessarily blame bob for this but rather the institutions and media outlets he gives authority.

bob is not the exception but rather the rule.people tend to congregate and gravitate towards those who speak in the language they,themselves,can relate to.this is why FOX is so successful and why every other 24 hr news channel has tried to copy their success.

FOX appeals to the emotional rather than the rational.they pound a message for entire news cycles with little or no actual analysis of very complicated issues.there IS actual news hidden in there but it gets drowned out by the screaming apologists who just seek to perpetuate their own agenda and/or popularity.the hyper-partisanship alone is reason enough to never watch FOX.

most americans do not have the time to do a research paper every night,and the majority never made it past 9th grade civics.so they tune in to 5 minute soundbites that appeal to their own emotionally triggered prejudices.presented by vapid pretty people who are the exact opposite of a journalist.

they ALL do it.every 24hr news channel does it,FOX just does it better.

3.the fact that bob frequents a predominantly secular-left site should be an indicator that he is not as partisan as he appears in many of his comments.he comes here to see what the "lefties" find important and their take on current events.

the problem always arises when people assume that if given all the information,everybody will all come to same conclusion.

which is untrue.

but to come to a rational and reasonable conclusion we must have the information ...all of it...we may still disagree in the end but at least the discussion is founded on even ground and not polluted by propaganda and politics.

the hyper partisanship has got to stop.it only serves those who wish to divide and conquer.

4.the tea party in the beginning was pretty amazing and,ironically,had a very similar message that occupy wall street had.remember what was going on when the tea partiers first exploded on the scene?

the wall street bailout.

now they were eventually co-opted by the very power structure that they originally protested against..ironical..but if you look at the history of mass movements the powered elite were using an old playbook in that regard.

ugh..you got me writing a damn lecture newt!

let me just conclude that i am glad bob is engaging on much more personal level and i hope he continues.
will bob and i still disagree? most likely

I feel the same way Bill Nye does; I don't think they should teach Darwinian evolution to children. It is especially damaging to children to adopt the belief that they are a random accident with no purpose or meaning to their lives rather than a special creation of God, made in His image, and created to fulfill the destiny He planned for them.

Bill seems to think that those who believe in God are simply too weak to accept the idea that we are all glorified apes living on a random mudball, but that isn't true for me or the other Christians I have met. People believe that God exists because an honest conviction, not because they are intimated by the philosophical blackhole that a belief in strict naturalism ultimately leads to. I was a true believer in the secular creation narrative before I came to know that God exists. I was resigned, as some of you are, to die an ultimately meaningless death. I changed my mind because of the evidence revealed to me, not because I was scared about my future.

I think having a conversation about evolution versus creation can be fruitful. As a former lifelong agnostic who has experienced it, I can testify of the brainwashing that goes on the other side of the fence. It starts out early in childhood books and cartoons, then through public education, television, science fiction and movies. You're raised all of your life to believe the secular creation narrative, and your friends and family who believe as you do reinforce this belief. You are self-deceived into thinking your information filter is very large and sophisticated when it is very small and full of personal bias.

That can be why people have an adverse reaction when evolution is called into question. To them it is reality and if you were to remove that cornerstone their idea of the way the world is would come tumbling down with it. If someone doesn't understand their need for Jesus, it is a hard thing to consider accepting.

@poolcleaner

Hi poolcleaner,

Thank you for sharing where you're coming from with me, I appreciate it. My story is a lot different than yours. I grew up in a home without any religion and God was not discussed, for or against. By default, I was agnostic towards the idea. I did not believe in anything supernatural; I probably would have fit in here fairly well for the most part. I was extremely liberal on many different topics and that seems to be the norm, here.

What changed is that I started to have supernatural experiences and things started happening to me which you couldn't explain away by mere chance. On that basis I started to explore the possibilities, fell into the new age for awhile, and then God reached down one day and pulled out a Christian out of that mess. That's the super short condensed version of what happened.

Even when I became a Christian, I still held to all of the secular views that I did before. It's only when I started to investigate the scientific evidence for these things that I changed my mind. I would still believe those things to this day if it wasn't for the evidence and where it pointed. I will get back to you on this; I'd like some time to come up with some good information for you. God bless!

Please enlighten me as to your credentials as a paleontologist. I assume you must have some, given that you feel qualified that your expertise is such as to dismiss millions of man hours of experimental results that support the theory of evolution.

In fact, you should really publish your findings in a peer-reviewed journal. If they are correct (and not, as I suspect, complete bollocks), it will be a revelation! There's almost certainly a Nobel prize in it for you.

If I have to be an expert to dismiss the evidence, why don't you also have to be an expert to accept the evidence? Are you not then at this time simply parroting things to me that you don't really understand, not being a paleontologist yourself?

Sweet. You've accepted the evidence for evolution. "Macroevolution" is just lots of "microevolution". Why are we discussing this?

Why do you have macro and micro evolution in quotations? Do you realize they are scientific terms?:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macroevolution

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microevolution

They aren't actually the same thing; one has scientific evidence to back it up, the other does not. It does not logically follow that because microevolution takes place, macroevolution also must take place. It is the secular creation story which presupposes it, but isn't supported by the evidence.

You've abandoned science at this point. I could equally say that speciation is caused by invisible pink unicorns or the Flying Spaghetti Monster (praise his noodly appendages), but none of it is testable and therefore, it's non-scientific.

Besides, the existing theory explains everything pretty well.

You could say that, but why should it be taken seriously? The flying spaghetti monster, or the flying teapot, have no explanatory power. There are good reasons, philosophically and otherwise, to believe an all powerful being created this Universe. The idea of whether the Universe was designed is not a ridiculous question, and I think it is pretty odd that anyone would rule that explanation out apriori.

That is quite simply untrue. It is lies, falsehood, fiction, fabrication, myth, deceit, distortion and misinformation. In short, it's bullshit.

There is no credible evidence for a young earth. Zero, zip, nada.

Again, have you ever studied the subject? If you have, what evidences have you looked at?

Hi Fihh,

I don't know anything about this woman or her youtube channel, but I think her essential point is that these things are printed in textbooks as absolute fact without any proof beyond weak, circumstantial evidence. As a former evolutionist and true believer in the secular creation story, I was absolutely floored to find out the evidence isn't there for how life began (or how it supposedly evolved into what it is today).

And this is the point I would make, that you do have faith in this narrative. There isn't any proof for abiogenesis and you really have to believe that life came from non living sources, such as rocks and water. When you examine the complexity of what would need to happen to even have the minimal number of amino acids be generated, let alone be functional together, you are faced with odds greater than the number of electrons in the Universe, making the event, if it did happen, a bonified miracle.

It's not really necessary to disprove the theory of darwinian evolution, however, if the time isn't available for what they claim to have happened, to happen:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OYpkbCgSNtU

From my viewpoint, I have not seen a 'concerted campaign to deny your participation', but I have seen your comments disputed nearly every time. That's not the same thing by far.
As you noted, being a 'Christian voice' on a mostly 'secular' site is going to get you confrontation and disputes, some of them might be over the top. Please consider how an atheist posting anti-religious propaganda daily on a purely religious site might be treated, it would be FAR worse than you are treated here, they would likely be banned on day one. You on the other hand, are still 'welcome' here (if not by everyone) and have not been banned or hobbled that I know of.
Many find your 'preaching' insulting, which is why you get the replies you get. You know you are spreading unwanted proselytizing in a place it won't get much support, indeed in a place where it's unwanted by most. That is your right, I suppose, but because you do it knowingly, I feel little sympathy for you and the disputes you find yourself in, you put yourself there intentionally. No whining about it.

All that said, and as much as I disagree with your viewpoint, I would not like to see you banned or leave. It would be nice if you would show a less one dimensional personality and comment on non-religious topics in a non-religious way, but to each his own. I'll just say that you are incredibly unlikely to convince anyone here, especially by the methods you use, but you are free to try. We can always hit 'ignore' if we are bothered.