Why do people think not discussing these things is the 'responsible' way to deal with it? We're adults. We're allowed to disagree. What's it going to do, split the community irrevocably apart and create war lines between the religious and the non-religious? I'll be happy to have Forever on my team next game, the kid has teh elos.
I ended up being just as strident in the Chemical Weapons thread with Forever and went at him pretty hard about Romanias history as a client state of various Empires and we had a pretty good discussion. The world didn't end. The thread never got locked.
You don't want to hear a frank discussion of ideas you can not read this thread. If you aren't discussing religion and politics, frankly you're not discussing anything of any importance to the world. So go talk about Star Wars or Ben Afleck as Bat Man, I wont stop you.
ForeverI told you to go jump off a bridge because I know a lot of mentally ill people, mostly depression and anxiety disorders. They are some of the most lovely people ever, and the idea that they are being punished for Sin is just awful. But I've also known a few Schizophrenics, who can be incredibly credulous when it comes to believing religious dogma. Sometimes it's Hinduism, or pre-christian Paganism, sometimes it's Christianity. These people hallucinate everything from alien abduction to the CIA tracking them to them being the reincarnation of Jesus Christ. These notions about mental illness lend credibility to their delusions. Do you know how bad that is? How destructive that is? For people to tell them 'All your paranoid delusions are real!'. Or to tell a depressed person 'You are being punished because you're a bad person'. Wow.
Anyway, I specifically said I don't care if these miracles are real. Because I've looked into them (Shroud or Turin etc), and the Church does not allow any scientific scrutiny or investigation of them. They rely entirely on your credulity, they are not subject to rigorous investigation. Same with Astrology and spirit healing (Whether it comes from a western or eastern tradition, Christian or not!).
If these miracles are real, and that is how the Church uses it's magical super powers, then they're arseholes. Because that's a really useless way to use magical powers. Go cure AIDS. If I had supernatural powers I'd cure AIDS.
Because your idea about AIDS in Africa is totally wrong. There are children getting this disease. There are women who have only slept with one man getting this disease, when he cheats. These are dogs? You are the one to sit in judgement of an entire society wracked by a disease because a few individuals had more sex than you're comfortable with?
And why are you so uncomfortable withe sex? Do you like sex? Have you had sex? Why is sex wrong? What's wrong about it? Really, where is the amorality in sex? The only amorality in sex comes from sexual abuse, which is rampant in the church.
There is amorality in those things that cause pain, suffering, corruption, misery, poverty. Sex causes pleasure and babies. Nothing wrong there.