shakran

Nice try, but this one's gonna fail. In the first place, you mentioned the most important part of my counter argument already. Science is honest, religion is not. If there's an error or an inaccuracy that science discovers, that fact is made known. Religion simply chalks it off as "god's plan" or some other such nonsense.

Then there's the small fact that while it's true that bleeding-edge science often finds that its theories are inaccurate, that doesn't change the established scientific dogma. What I mean by that is, whether exotic theoretical physics concepts like string theory or multiple parallel universes are or are not true, the established science (for example, the theory of gravity) will in all likelihood not change. If scientists conclude that string theory, for example, is not a valid theory, we will not suddenly float away from the planet.

Additionally science is peer-reviewed. That is, there's automatic error checking and continuing discovery built in to science. Science by definition questions itself constantly. By contrast, the bible is the bible, there's nothing to back it up, and we're simply expected to believe it because it says we should. I see a significant difference between science and the bible here, don't you?

Fourth, again using the theory of gravity, we are not simply told that gravity exists and we must believe in it because some guy we never met (Newton) SAID it's true. We are provided with mountains of concrete evidence of its existance. We fall, things drop, we don't fly off the planet, etc. We have absolutely no concrete evidence of god, Jesus's divinity, or any other religious idea. None. At all. All we've got is this book that swears it's telling the truth.

Now, given the choice between well established scientific theories which have a lot of evidence to back them up, or a book that swears it's telling the truth, which will you pick? I'll give you something to chew on before you answer: there's also a book out there that swears it's telling the truth, and describes alien autopsies performed at Area 51. There's another book out there that swears it's telling the truth that says Bigfoot roams North America throwing rocks at innocent hikers. And there's yet another book that swears it's telling the truth that says black people are genetically predisposed to be less intelligent than white people.




Exactly my point. The bible is a bunch of claims made by men who 1) didn't have any secondary source to confirm what they were saying (who was up there with Moses on Mt. Sinai? Correct, nobody) and 2) stood to gain quite a bit if they could convince people that a wrathful god wanted the masses to listen to them (hey guys, God just gave me a bunch of rules and he sent ME down to tell you about them, and if you don't listen up he'll set you on fire forever).

Of course there's nothing wrong with that. Where we have the problem is when we start using the bible to justify whatever we want to do, despite the fact that we have no evidence to back the bible up. You mentioned my journalism career - one tenet of journalism is that you never go to press with only one source. Watergate could have been written in the first couple of weeks, except that the Washington Post needed more than just one guy telling them the president was a crook. By the same token, using one source and only one source to justify things like making discriminatory laws (no gay marriage), etc, is irresponsible. Examine the bible all you want, but don't expect everyone to believe what you say about it just because the bible says it's real.


And who can offer not one shred of physical evidence to back this up.

Or perhaps the pope speaks on behalf of himself and his organization and is able to change dogma because people BELIEVE he speaks on behalf of an all powerful being who can torture them forever if they piss him off.

Well yes, to me too, but the trouble is that we don't exactly have fireside chats with God now do we, and so it's rather difficult to decide what exactly god is, if he is anything at all.

What this all boils down to is that, barring solid evidence that god exists and is our master and wants us to do certain things, we should not impose those beliefs on others. If Falwell wants to avoid gay relationships, there's nothing whatsoever wrong with that. That's his personal choice.

If he wants to impose his anti-gay morality on gay couples who are not in any way harming Falwell, we have a problem. Obviously the gay couple do not believe that what they want to do is wrong, and since God has been so oddly silent these past two millenia, it is not possible for any person to say whether Falwell is right, or the gay couple is right, as far as whether homosexuality is wrong or not. Therefore, to attempt to use your personal religion to force someone else to behave the way your morals dictate that you behave is an indefensible action. In short, if it's not hurting anyone else, people should be able to do it without having to worry about some jackass using a 2,000 year old unproven book to stop them.