Quote Originally Posted by Strike For The South View Post
I protest your postulation

I said it incorperated those things colored by a christian lens

THIS IS WHY NO ONE LOVES YOU, STOP PUTTING WORDS IN MY MOUTH


I'm sooooory!

Quote Originally Posted by Andres View Post
One of the principles of our western legal systems is equal treatment or, put "negative", non discrimination.

If there exists a certain legal framework for couples to chose for if they decide to go live together, then that legal framework should be accessible for all couples, gay or straight. Even if that legal framework is called "mariage". If you're going to exclude certain couples, e.g. gay couples, then you are discriminating. A discrimination which is based on nothing else but sexual orientation. It's up to those opposing gay marriage to give convincing arguments as to why gays should not be allowed to marry. But I, for one, fail to see what can justify such discrimination. The arguments against gay mariage are usually religiously inspired, sometims people refer to history, culture, tradition, which is all utterly irrelevant. Of course, that's valid for the legal framework, the mariage for the law.
I'm sorry, I just don't buy this. You are arguing that couples are discriminated against, but that's surely bizare because the law doesn't recnise "couples" at all, what it recognises is sexual couplings, and it allows all individuals to engage in those couplings on exactly the same basis. There may be valid arguments for allowing Gay marriage but the discrimination argument doesn't really hold water - it includes far to many nebulous concepts, indeed didn't the ECHR recently determine that not allowing a Gay couple to marry was not discrimination?

Why does the atheist have to provide concrete evidence. The atheist doesn't claim the existence of a supreme being, he merely says he doesn't believe in it. It's the believer who says there exists a God who carries the burden of proof. I never understood atheists who try their best to prove there is no God; why would you have to do that?

Agnosticism is not the "logical conclusion", it's just a euphemism for not being able to make up your mind Either God exists or he doesn't. And you believe or you don't. The agnosticist is a coward who's too afraid to have faith and too afraid to accept all the consequences of atheism, namely that there won't be an afterlife.
I have always felt that atheists are trying to convince themselves by converting others to their views.

Quote Originally Posted by Lemur View Post
Seems a little harsh on our brother and sister agnostics. Allow me to step in for them:

Is it so "cowardly" to assert that questions of supreme beings (or lack thereof) are unknowable? Is not the assertion that you know the existence (or absence) of an unimaginably powerful and vast intelligence that does (or does not) guide the universe a bit hubristic? Is the admission of "I don't know" truly the cowardly act, or is the assertion of ultimate truth sans evidence a form of insanity?
That depends - I'm both an agnostic and an Christian. I believe my uncertainty is a reflection of my own human frailty, not evidence that God might not exist.