Marinus

I'm not an American, but I'm definitely left and I do laugh at the notion of religion, but if a politician does his job well I couldn't care less about his/her religion. By doing his/her job well, I also mean the politician is secular in the sense that he/she keeps his/her religious beliefs (or lack thereof) separated from his/her politics. Most politicians manage to do that. I've absolutely no clue what the religion is of anyone I voted for, btw.

This statement is particularly ignorant if you consider the fact that you're making it in a discussion with a guy who's married with another guy. You and your invisible sky daddy may not like that, but that doesn't make my marriage any less real. Besides that, same sex marriage isn't even far-fetched in a world where marriage is, among other things, defined as being between a woman and a tree. http://www.indianetzone.com/27/marriage_with_trees_plants_inanimate_objects_indian_custom.htm Carefull, your paranoid hatred for The Geyz, which is the sole reason you don't want them to marry, is showing.

Quoted from the vid: "If you don't tolerate somebody else's point of view, then you are a bigot" So I don't tolerate any POV that says that Negroes are a species of monkeys. Am I a bigot now? Bigots will always whine how people are intolerant of their bigoted opinions.

Arrogant? I would call it pathologically rude. It wouldn't even occur to me to dictate people how to life their private lives.

That isn't condescending towards (or even "disagreeing with" for that matter) DanG, and I don't see how it could ever be interpreted that way. I'm the first to admit I can be condescending at times, but I'm not condescending towards anyone I disagree with. If you try a bit harder, it shouldn't be to hard to find a post of me being condescending towards someone I disagree with.

I don't.

Hence the phrase: "many opponents of same sex marriage" Well, I'm not an American, of course, but condescending isn't the right word to describe my attitude towards my fellow Dutch who think my marriage should be disbanded because it doesn't fit their retarded religious views. It sort of boggles the mind that those people expect respect from me for those religious views. As far as I'm concerned they can stuff their views up their arse as long as they don't bother me with them. You ask if I look at myself in the mirror in a condescending way.... Well, if you can't figure that out for yourself and you really want to know: The answer is no.

It's remarkable how many opponents of same sex marriage seem to think that it's mainly about sex or sexual orientation. Of course this says more about them than about same-sex marriage.

This would be an argumentum ad hominem: you ignore my arguments (and the fact that those are different from the arguments in the paper) and instead try to refute those arguments by refuting my ability to make those arguments. Way to go, pops!

Sexism based on religious beliefs is still sexism.

One can look at the 12 steps for what they are, or one can play semantic games with them. I choose to do the first. The 1st step doesn't talk about denial, but denies an addict can quit his/her habit. later step don't talk about assistance, they talk about "a Higher Power" solving the problem for them after doing some guild tripping, because, apparently alcoholism is caused by defects in character, and not by alcohol. Yeah that's some message an Alcoholic need: "You can't help that you drink, it's not caused by alcohol and someone else is going to solve it for you" AA claims to be effective, yet fails to proof it's effective. Claims without proof can be rejected without proof. The AA implies that an alcoholic will never, ever be able to stay of booze without AA. Well, that's how I interpret "staying sober, one day at a time" and other fatalistic BS. It's rather impossible to ignore the religious aspect. Some have called AA "a religion in denial". Now I don't know about that, but it's definitely religious. They call it spiritual to not scare away people who don't like religion. It's not God I've a problem with, try again.

Me to, however, that doesn't mean breastfeeding a 3 yo is wrong. In many cultures it's not abnormal, and there's research that suggests prolonged nursing is advantageous for the child (up to 2-3 years or so)(and mother too IIRC) which in turn suggests nature intended it that way. OTOH, it's obvious that nature also intends 14 yo girls to have babies because the baby plant is usually up and running by then. Let's say I'm not the kind of guy that automatically assumes something is best or even right because it's natural.

It's rather obvious that the human species isn't divided into two completely distinct sexes. Between males and females there's an overlap and even some primitive people had more intelligent ideas about it than some Westerners. Concepts like "the third gender" and "two-spirit" are probably as old as civilization. So it's a bit odd to write off an age old idea as liberal, because you want human sexuality to be simplistic.

Yeah, it's fucking arrogant of nature to produce things like hermaphrodites to mess up you black and white view on human sexuality.

I just stated Americans are among the fattest peoples on this planet. That's not arguing but just stating facts.

"a medical condition in which excess body fat has accumulated to the extent that it may have an adverse effect on health, leading to reduced life expectancy and/or increased health problems." And there's statistics that show the US is one of the fattest nations on earth.

Fucking minors seems to be a typical pastimes for conservatives. Take the ever popular marriage between a child and an adult, that's usually seen in theocratic hellholes like Saudi Arabia and Utah. I more or less agree with this, but the use of drugs (even serious drugs like alcohol) usually doesn't lead to problems. Besides, what to do about fast-food? That's probably worse for society then any drug known to man. make that illegal too?

You read the part were I said that there's big differences between the approach of the chapters, eh? While my outlook is more negative than yours there's still room for nuance. I think the system has a large potential for abuse, I can easily see why some people call it a religious sect, but ultimately it's of course the people who interpret the method used. This is a bit more than admitting you've a problem, it's admitting you've a problem you can't fix yourself. It has to be fixed by someone/something else. This is not an encouragement at all. It's almost setting someone up for failure to stay sober, by starting off with a potential self-fulfilling prophecy. That's true, but only (claiming to have) experience with being an alcoholic and a desire to quit drinking isn't enough, of course. This has great potential to become a disaster. I think there's a consensus that drug addiction and mental issues are often closely related. The theory is that people with metal problems use drugs to medicate their selves. When you treat the mental issues, there's a better chance at recovery from addiction. It's of course not the only source that claims AA doesn't work, and it looks solid enough to me. As for the conflicting reports: I have admitted to that, but in the end it doesn't look good for AA. We've a method that. -Is based on the concept of faith healing -Is non-scientific and worse, deals in outright nonsense -Doesn't change to incorporate new scientific insights -has potential for abuse -It's unknown if it even works. That's enough for me to discard it. There's still a controversy weather acupuncture works or not, and AA is as far as I'm considered in the same category. It might have a placebo-effect, but without proof that it works I discard it as a serious treatment (actually it's of course no treatment, but an almost fail-safe miracle cure. Or so they say)

No one made that claim. The fact that you have to ask this question pretty much proves that you're not really suited to teach us anything about self-defence. What about fleeing, alerting other people, going to a public place with lots of people, calling 911 etc. etc. etc. Violence is a way to protect yourself, but not the only way.

This is utter nonsense. We more or less decriminalized drugs and legalized prostitution but there's no movement (other than the Catholic Church of course) that promotes the rape of kids. In contrary even, the subject of paedophilia is such a taboo that a conversation about it that doesn't involve severe torture of paedophiles is hardly possible. You might also want to look at the statistics on teen pregnancies. IIRC our teens are ten times less likely to become pregnant. Also our liberalism isn't caused by desensitisation and depravity, but by pragmatism and the believe that people should be free to make their own choices.

Actually I was positive about AA until I looked into it after a internet discussion (could have been on SC, btw, but I'm not sure.) I can tell you I was genuinely shocked by what I found out. I understand there's a big difference between different chapters, from genuine self-help/support groups to a form of organized religion, but in it's worst form AA is nothing less than a religious cult, including all the fun cult stuff like sexual abuse (colloquially called 13 stepping) and brainwashing. The methods used are peculiar then. What, exactly is encouraging about: "We admitted we were powerless over alcohol—that our lives had become unmanageable."? I quit smoking 7 months ago, and thinking like that would be the most efficient way to get me to light another cig. I've no problem with teaching from experience, but a sponsor should have some qualifications other than a desire to stay sober. It doesn't really matter if you're someone who really wants to help people or a head-case or a convicted sexual predator beside that. Any treatment that's not a "one solution for all" treatment. For example: someone might recover from alcoholism if his bipolar disorder is treated This is a very extensive site about AA which claims it. Other then that we're kept in the dark about the "great" results by the organization, and the controversy whether it works or not is still continuing. If there were obvious results, that wouldn't be the case. http://www.orange-papers.org/ The site is a bit too negative about AA, I think, but still an interesting read.

For starters most of Europe's population I would say. About Mr. Larkin: The last thing Europe needs is the next American cowboy telling us how violence solves everything, so good riddance.

You claim God advises you what to do, and if you slavishly follow that advise you're nothing but a puppet. So I wondered if you ever disobeyed god to be more human. From what I know AA has a success rate that's about the same as no treatment at all, which is actually a surprisingly good result if you take into account that the "program" is unqualified drunks treating other drunks. All AA does is keeping addicts away from better treatments the "surrendering to God" and spreading lies/nonsense about addiction, including the lie that AA is a very successful way to quit drinking.

Is this some variation on the theme "We don't understand everything, therefore God exists"?

I don't think atheists doubt their atheism a lot. After all most atheists came to their position by rational thinking. When relis whine about atheist arrogance, they're really whining about the confidence atheists have in their stance towards God. Besides, atheists have usually literally nothing to loose religion wise. Religious folks OTOH have to reconcile talking snakes, world wide floods and water-walking Jews with reality.