Gay Milo doesn't believe in gay marriage. Something about him i don't trust. http://videosift.com/video/Boy-George-and-Self-Loathing-Gay-Catholic-Talk-Marriage

My $0.02:
I'm glad he got fired. He's an idiot and his company have the right to fire him.

In the case of the Catholic school teacher or any or @enochs other imaginary scenarios of people being fired for spurious reasons, no, they would be wrong.

Why? Because they are different situations. Context matters!

Bein fired for getting drunk and calling your boss an asshole? Fine!
Being fired for admitting to being an atheist? Not cool.

This really isn't that hard people. You judge each situation on its merits.

http://videosift.com/video/Catholic-School-Teacher-Fired-For-In-Vetro-Fertilization

The ONLY difference is I'm assuming that most of us on VS do not object to artificial fertilization. You'll notice that I'm making the same argument in that sift as I am now. The school has the legal right, but that it's a shitty thing to do and that it was shitty that someone ratted her out.

The only difference is who is doing the judging.

Is it still fair that the woman lost her job? If it's not fair for her to lose her job, then it's not fair for this guy to lose his job.

Again, we're not arguing legal rights. That's not in dispute.

I AM GAWWD AND I SHALL JUDGE YOU AND PUNISH YOU AS I SEE FIT!!!!

Well, I was raised Catholic and even though my parents weren't particularly devout, I absolutely believed in god up to my early teens. I even went to a Jesuit high school.

I won't pretend that I had some massively traumatic "coming out" as an atheist over the next few years, but it still had its challenges. Ireland in the 90s was still a very Catholic country.

So yeah, if she grew up in some super evangelist home, it would be very difficult. But some things are difficult and you still have to do them.

Ok, I think this got out of hand. My apologies. I wasn't talking about the abuse.

You said "Hers is that faith alone. Take it away and she would either A-shut down, or B-more likely kill herself."

My reply was specifically about "that faith". I didn't mean that she would get through the abuse with the help of friends and family, I meant she would get through leaving the church. And yes, this has happened. Thousands of people left the catholic church in Ireland after the child abuse scandals, many of them lifelong devout catholics.

I would never suggest that anyone simply "get over" that kind of abuse, but I can see how you might have misinterpreted my post, so I apologise for that.

That said, people do get help for abuse without churches. There are plenty of secular options available (counselling, support groups, etc).

As for the rest, I still maintain that my direct experience of abuse or lack thereof has no bearing on the argument. I could tell you all kinds of things, but you wouldn't even know if they were true, to say nothing of a betrayal of trust on my part.

Or would you expect rape trauma counsellors they have to be raped to help victims?

As for the black man example, again, you know nothing about what discrimination I may or may not have faced (hint: the Irish didn't have too flash a time of it for a long time). I would never be so condescending as to say that I know ANYONES life, but that doesn't mean I can't empathise with them. Even if I've never been shot by a cop, I'm damn sure it's something I wouldn't like.

I think if someone is in a particular church -- or not -- or whatever they are personally drawn to -- IT IS NONE OF MY BUSINESS TO JUDGE THEM.

If they need it, they need it. Whatever happened to them in their childhood, or whenever -- the church -- whatever church -- or non-church -- fits them.

You are an atheist, right? I don't know if you grew up in a church or not. I don't know why it is so terribly important to you to be an atheist.

But it FITS you.

It is the height of judgmental righteous behavior to look at anyone else's choice and say it is wrong.

Am I a Mormon? No. I agree with you. How this church started is the height -- or the depth -- of religious absurdity. How anyone can choose this church as an adult? How can that be.

And yet. My brother -- who has a Master's Degree in Aerospace Engineering from USC, military pilot, history buff, wide stripe of artistic urges and talents -- this guy chose the church in his early 20's. For his own reasons. Because he needed it, coming from our family of origin.

To quote Jerry Maguire -- it completed him. And like love, it is illogical and not for anyone else to judge.

You don't like religion being all judgey? I recommend you stop doing it yourself, and let people be.

Now, the Mormon church getting involved in the laws of the land? I got a big beef with that.

But as for individuals, making individual choices, for individual reasons.... I gotta say I don't see much difference between your judginess and any Catholic priest laying down "God's law" about how people are "supposed to" believe and behave.

You see that, don't you? There is no difference between your judgement and any religious person's judgment?

See, I agreed with everything you said up until that last statement (that I quoted below).

All organized religions brutally and mindlessly suppress individual freedom. But lately the target de jour seems to be Islam. People like Sam Harris got off track when they forgot that the real target is the dismantling of all organized religion and focused almost exclusively on denouncing Islam--usually with obnoxious overgeneralizations and a complete lack of understanding how diverse Islam actually is.

And that's the major problem with the whole argument Dawkins and Maher are proposing (i.e. that you can't criticize Islam anymore). You can't criticise Christianity or Judaism or any other major religion without hugely overgeneralizing, either. Instead you need to target specific denominations within specific communities and how they practice the religion.

For example, are you upset about how "Christianity" has helped spread AIDS or protected pedophiles? Well then really you're really looking to criticize the Catholic church and it's stance on contraception and handling illegal activities within the church, not Christianity as a whole.

Upset with how gay people are viewed? Again, you're probably not looking to criticize the Lutherans, Presbyterians, and many other Christian denominations who have reformed in recent times to be accepting of LGBT members and clergy. It's not a Christianity problem so much as it is a problem of how specific people in specific places for specific cultural reasons interpret the texts of their religion.

Basically, I don't think it is a problem if people want to criticize how Islam is practiced in a specific context (say, for example, the use of female genital mutilation in some subsets of Islam in Africa). But I do think it is a problem when the speaker is simply set on demonizing the religion as whole rather than making a rational argument, for example overgeneralizing female gential mutilation (which actually pre-dates Islam and was incorporated into it later after Islam's rise of influence in the region) as an example of why Islam is evil.

Certainly people have the legal right to make such an argument (in the U.S. at least). However, I'm guessing most universities don't want to come across as looking in support of such ill-structured arguments that are more akin to tabloid magazine hit pieces than an actual intellectual argument which is grounded in facts and reason.

All that said, I have no inside information about the real administrative reasons why certain speakers have been declined/uninvited at specific college campuses.

Yeah, they do.

And funnily enough, no, I'm not tolerant of your homophobic, racist nonsense.

In case you missed it, the fucking Supreme Court told you to get over it. For fucks sake, Ireland (previous winner of the "most catholic place on the planet" 70 years running) legalised gay marriage.

So yeah, the game is over, your team lost (in fact, they got utterly spanked). You're just the spoilt kids throwing a temper tantrum on the field while the rest of the civilised world has gone to the bar.

Eventually, it'll start to rain, and (like you did with slavery and women's rights) you'll come to the bar and feel embarrassed that you made such a dick out of yourselves in the first place. Luckily for you, by that time, we'll be drunk and in a good mood, so we'll forgive you.

Three things I have to say, @bobknight33:
1. You're complaining about christianity being attacked. Ok, fine, I'll tell you something: I am tired of your religious beliefs invading my life like an middle eastern dictator a small, oily country. Oh, I have it good, I'm a straight, white middle-european man, I'm fine so far. Others are not. They're tired as well.
I can go on a meth-bender, marry one of the Kardashians in Vegas and annul the whole affair in less than a week. If I win the lottery, I can post on Craigslist and get myself a nice gold-digging whore who'll sign a certificate that makes us husband and wife if I'm willing to trade lackluster blowjobs for money. Best part, it ain 't prostitution if you're married, legally worldwide. Heck, I can even become an abusive piece of shit as long as I can beat her well enough so she won't complain to others.
Because marriage is sanctimonious.
If I was gay and would like to marry the guy of my dreams that I've been with for 20 years, that isn't possible. Because the book doesn't approve.
If my sister got raped, you people would force her to birth the child of her rapist. Her concerns don't matter, life is a holy gift from god. Care to explain to me the position of the catholic church (you know, those christians that make up the majority of christianity) on slavery during centuries slavery? How holy was life in all those european colonies back in the day with all these missionaries teaching the good book? What exactly was their statement as an organisation when millions or people were murdered during the third Reich?
All that silence but when it comes to abortion, you people show up with guns and show the value of this great gift by murdering doctors. Fuck my sisters concerns, right? It just rape, walk it off.
I'm well of, I could join the club as a full member anytime. As long as I'm not calling the cops on the pedophile priests and the self-loathing faggots can stand on their pulpits and tell little children they're broken. I could be among you.
But I have a conscience. I can't buy all that talk about love and forgiveness and ignore all that hatred and cruelty that is in the very basis of your beliefs, that wretched, old bible of yours.
I have to look that man in the mirror in the eyes.
The only way you can impose all that crap on me anymore if through the government. I believe your faith has as much place in there than Tom Cruise's. None.
The Prodigy said it best and I think the people who lived at the time the bible was written would agree: Invaders must die.
Your religion invades my rights as a human being.

2. Did he rise?
Nope, little, brown Jewish got killed. End of facts, begin of story. I don't trust the testimony of men (and I said this before) who consider a walkman witchcraft. People at that time could be convinced that they farted because they swallowed an angry spirit that wants to escape.
You book did a terrible job of explaining how the world came to be (we're golems that had so much incest that they inbred mankind), makes up the worst disastermovies (everything turns to Waterworld but we have a boat with a pair of every animal in existence [imagine all those different kinds of ants alone] and then incest till population is back up) and turns mushroomtrips/mental illness in supposedly accurate future predictions (you know it's the end of the world because none of the riders is called "Incest").
The only reason people buy into the mythology and the extended universe (where's that bible chapter about Satan ruling the Sarlac Pit and Santa being canon again? ) is because for centuries children were taught it at a young age. And then you told them not to question it as heretics get the stake. Ashes yes but not the quick Buffy way.
Don't get me wrong, I like that Jesus fellow and I'm willing to believe his basic message but let's be honest. If J.K. Rowling was born 2000 years earlier, we'd pray to Harry Potter and wear lightning shaped jewelery around our neck. You guys got big because the Roman empire made you relevant. That's it.

3. What's up with '53'? Is that the christian answer to '42'?

OMFG... really bob... really... It's people like you that made me ashamed of being a Christian when I was a Christian. Completely believing anything they are told or read from someone with supposed authority without actual critical thought of the original source themselves.

I've hear that Jefferson never meant to exclude religion from politics and believed and repeated it myself for years. Then you know what I did? I actually read the letter that Jefferson wrote. I could have my son, who's going into 6th grade read it and he'd tell you the same thing I'm about to tell you. It's about keeping religion from unduly influencing politics. Especially when you read it in context with the letter that the church sent him that he was responding to, and it becomes more apparent if you read his drafts which were much more to the point.

Yes the phrase "wall of separation" does come from the letter and not the Constitution, but the 1st Amendment includes an establishment clause that prevents the government from favoring one religion over the others. Remember the pilgrims came here to escape a Christian nation that favored one form of Christianity over all others. Admittedly they were more about the fact they couldn't persecute others the way they thought they God wanted them to, but it was the government's church that prevented them from doing so. You can't even be King or Queen of England unless you belong to the Church of England, and if you were Catholic at some point in your past, you are disqualified, even to this day. Yeah, the Church of England no longer has as much influence over the laws as it did when the pilgrims and other early settlers escaped England to come here,

And if the only reason Christians are good is because of fear of punishment or hope for reward, then they are horrible people. Millions of people are good because they are good people without their faith dictating to them to be so. Most people of other faiths are good without the racist brutal Abramic God of the Bible. Most atheists are good without any god. Most pagans are good with their various gods. This insane all morality comes from God alone didn't make sense even when I was at my most evangelical, Fox News watching/defending mode. There were too many people in the world who's good without God and even in those days the concept that somebody would be good only because the Bible tells them so, or they are afraid of God's wrath if they don't is backwards. And as I read the Bible more and more, it became apparent that the far rights obsession with people's sin over love was misplaced (though the far right's sickening defense of Dugger shows a great deal of hypocrisy since if Dugger was on the Left, they'd be all about his sin rather than showing any sort of love, it's when others sin differently than they do they get upset, like at the gays). It was reading the Bible that moved me to the left as the clear Christian way, since the right defends and loves the people Jesus condemned and shames the people that Jesus defended and told us to love and help. It eventually got to the point I couldn't hold onto faith when over half the Christians of this Nation just blindly follow what they are told in church and on Fox News over the truth that Jesus and the Bible was teaching and thinking they were doing the Christian thing at the same time. I then began to do a critical analysts further and eventually became an atheist, because they are all equally bad/good. There is nothing new or original in the Abramic faiths that wasn't there before or since either in the same region or elsewhere... all those other elsewhere's where Jehovah somehow couldn't make himself known, as if he was just a figment of one small regional tribe or worse a racist jerk not worthy of following.

Anyhow, the best way to maintain Christianity is to keep it out of politics. Because what happens if you set things up to let religion influence politics and the Muslims gain power? Then you'll be crying how religion shouldn't influence politics. Or perhaps not that extreme, perhaps some form of Christianity that other Christian's don't agree with gains power and influence? Perhaps the Morman's or the Catholics or the Jehovah Witness? At what point does religious influence stop? When laws are passed that any church that doesn't practice or allow the speaking in tongues is outlawed? The 1st Amendment is designed to keep religion out of politics in order to protect religion.

Let's break that last sentience out again. The 1st Amendment's establishment clause is designed to keep religion out of politics in order to protect religion. The whole point is to keep one form of one faith from dominating all other forms of the same or other faiths. It protects those other forms Christianity and other faiths.

Finally there is no war on Christianity. I admitted that long before my fall from faith. I was there with it all, with how it was targeted, but the reality is there is no war on Christianity here... all that's happening is specific forms of Christianity are loosing their influence on other Christians and society as a whole, and they are very vocal about how it's persecution, because like the pilgrims, they are no longer allowed to persecute others the way they want to. Maybe if the people screaming about how Christianity is being persecuted while they try to deny equal rights to others because they sin differently than us, would actually show the love of Christ and behave the way He actually would have in modern society rather than trying to show how Christian they are, then perhaps Christianity wouldn't be losing the numbers they are. I know I, and many other atheists, likely wouldn't have had at crisis of faith if it wasn't for the far right. I never would have explored the logical and theological problems with Christianity and the Abramic faiths... I'd probably eventually found a more Quaker, left leaning (most the Quaker "Friends" related churches in this area are the far evangelical right Fox News types) type church that seems to be more in line with the Bible and teachings of Jesus, but the far right pushed me into a far more critical mode than I would likely ever have gone to on my own. So keep it up those on the far right, you are the ones destroying and making a war on Christianity. You push more and more people away, and more and more people stop seeing any difference between the far right and radical Islam.

The issue for you is not "change", but that society would "capitulate" for "such an insignificant demographic group" of "less than 4% of the population", correct?

You cited this Gallup poll (http://www.gallup.com/poll/182837/estimated-780-000-americans-sex-marriages.aspx?utm_source=SAME_SEX_RELATIONS&utm_medium=topic&utm_campaign=tiles) of how many Americans were in same sex marriages.

Another Gallup poll shows the historical trend of religious self-identification in America from 1948 to 2014: http://www.gallup.com/poll/1690/religion.aspx

In 1948, the proportion of respondents who self-identify as either Protestant, Roman Catholic, or Jewish, is 95%. ~5% said "None" or didn't answer (less than 0.5% said "Other").

In following years, they tracked more detailed responses and grouped some as "Christian (nonspecific)" and Mormon, and changed the Roman Catholic grouping to just Catholic.

In 2014, those who specified a religion (which is everyone except those who said their religion was "None" or didn't answer) represented 80%.

The full statistics are in that link -- these two years are endpoints in the polls, but not outliers.

Thus, over 66 years Americans who identified as religious (not all of whom follow the Bible, but most do so I'll be generous to you) lost 15 percentage points. That's a rate of 0.227272 percentage points per year.

If Americans keep leaving religion behind at this same rate, in 2348 all religious people will represent less than 4% of the population.

Then we get to trample your rights, right Bob?

"Why should any society capitulate for such an insignificant demographic group?

Gays make up less then 4% of population. "

We are talking about letting two people marry each other, in what way exactly is this capitulation?

The gun fondling nutters in the NRA make up about 1% of the population. Personally, I think their obsession with guns is rather perverse and more than a little creepy. Why cant we just take away their right to bear arms? They are just 1%! why should they have the same rights as other people?

Mormons are like less than 4% too, Take away their freedom of religion! No need to give them the same rights as catholics?

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.

It's a joke. I found it funny, hence the upvote. Kinda like when someone says "does the pope shit in the woods?", they aren't actually suggesting that the pope defecates in arboreal settings.

...And they aren't necessarily anti-catholic bigots or "haters". If Bill Maher wants to say something negative about Islam, trends in Islamic populations, or faith in general ... he'll come right out and say it straight. I think if your goal is a "gotcha" moment of Maher showing his "true colors", you could easily pick one of his more serious comments on Islam, instead of something as silly, trivial, and clearly joke-oriented as this...

And that's why I like the guy.