danielsangeo

"Wouldn't that mean taking control away from the church though?" Not really.

I don't feel comfortable with the church controlling me and my government like that.

I, personally, don't understand why there can't be two definitions of the word "marriage". Many English words have more than two definitions, why not "marriage"? You can have the religious marriage and you can have legal marriage. And, if it's what they want, the twain shall not meet. A legal marriage does not have to be done in a church and a religious marriage does not have to be recognized by the state. It's not like a specific religion OWNS the term and tells the government what it can and cannot do. "Throw the book at him" could mean two different things. In one context, the phrase could mean that you want to incarcerate the person. In another context, the phrase the could mean that you will be tossing a book at someone for them to read. Two different meanings, same phrase. A fork could either be a split in a road...or an eating utensil. We can have different definitions for words. And "marriage" is not strictly religious and has been around since even before Christianity. I mean, I'm a straight male and I would never get married to another guy, but that doesn't mean others can't.

I like instrumental types of rock (no singers or very little singing).

Atheism is the lack of belief in deities. It isn't a science. It also isn't a philosophy. It's not anything. It's the lack of something. Let's get back to those monkeys, though.

I think both should be taught in school, and we as sentient beings should be allowed to choose for ourselves what to believe and respect each other's philosophies. I think the big problem with teaching "both" is that it's not just two options ("God" and "Evolution"). There are literally thousands, if not millions of "alternative theories" of creation and how we came to be and if we taught ALL of them, it'd take the rest of our natural lives to scratch the surface. Case in point: The Flying Spaghetti Monster. I don't believe that school should be teaching these kinds of philosophies as science because, well, it's not science. Science should remain in science class and you can put philosophy in the philosophy class.

I think what the fable is trying to say is that the Earth wasn't really created for us but we grew into the planet's environment. Again, if you believe that God did it, I applaud you. However, it isn't science and should not be taught as such in schools. Do you agree? Oh, by the way, I don't believe in coincidences either.

Do you mind if I just ask you a question? And bear with me, please; I don't mean to insult or anything like that. Let's take this fable (stolen from Douglas Adams, RIP): A puddle of water becomes sentient. It looks around itself and remarks to itself, "My, what a splendid hole I'm in. Look at the contours of that hole. It fits my body perfectly. That little piece that I have jutting out of me on the right side fits snugly into that depression over there. How serendipitous! It's like this hole was created perfectly...just for me. I mean, the chances of any other hole fitting my contours so perfectly must be truly astronomical. It couldn't have happened by chance that a hole would be this perfect for my body." Do you understand the meaning behind this little fable?

If that's your belief, that's groovy. I see nothing wrong with it.

I never said that. If you wish to believe in God, more power to you. I just see no evidence for it. But, do you find it a bit odd, the claim that billions of galaxies with billions of stars each would be created for a species of animal that only existed on a rock flying around one of those rather ordinary stars for a very short time?

"Meaning", to me, is something we create for ourselves. I don't see a necessity for the universe to have meaning and it's extreme egoism and arrogance to suggest that the entirety of the universe was created just for human beings.

No one is claiming that "monkeys...turned into humans".

Indulge me. Define "capitalism" in your own words. Don't say "Look in a dictionary" or "Google it" or something similar to that. Provide a definition for "capitalism" in your own words because I don't think it means what you think it means.

So, there's a reason for everything. To be annoying and disgusting to you. There. Paradox.

Wait, WHAT?!

I disagree. I am one of those "human ingenuity and technological advancements will find a solution" type people. Yes, the scope of this is gargantuan, but it's not insurmountable. Remember, just 125 years ago, we had absolutely NO infrastructure for gasoline-powered vehicles anywhere on the planet. The first gasoline filling station was in Germany in 1888 as a side business for a pharmacy and it wasn't until 1907 that the first gas station was built in the United States. As gasoline-powered vehicles became more popular, more gas stations popped up until they dotted the globe. Once an alternative power source (or cocktail of sources) becomes popular, we'll see these kinds of filling stations popping up...or even buying a solar panel (for example) from your local Wal-Mart. I'm waiting for something like Mr. Fusion, personally, to turn garbage into energy. It can be done! The infrastructure is not there currently for alternative sources of power because the problems of peak oil have not quite hit the local pocketbooks... yet. Once this does, you'll see clamoring for these new power sources and then gas stations will give way to hydrogen stations or solar panel battery drop-off stations or Mr. Fusions popping up in the local Target or whatever. Humans have an incredible ability to adapt. It's not faith; it's knowledge of the past and applications of lessons learned from the past for the future. Hogwash. Where did you come up with something like that?

It is developing even if it doesn't implant. To say otherwise is to ignore basic biology. "I have two children and one on the way" not "Three children". "I have two children and a fetus" doesn't have to support my stance. Fetuses are "children on the way". I am a member of Primates but I don't often refer to myself as a "great Ape" (hominid). That doesn't mean that I'm not. An embryo/fetus are humans-to-be. They aren't human beings. Two cells aren't human beings, yet it is a "developing human" just as a ten year old is developing into a twenty year old. To use conception as your arbitrary line for the creation of a human being, that means that hundreds of millions of families have had deaths in the family and not even know it. Because implantation only serves to feed the developing human from the woman's body. If you've ever heard of "test tube babies" (in vitro fertilization), you'd know that an unfertilized egg is removed from the woman, and letting sperm enter the egg in a solution outside the body. Then the egg begins to develop into a human OUTSIDE the human. The "developing human" is then transferred to the woman so it can gain nutrients. Before it's transplanted back into the woman's body, it is a "human being" according do your logic. IVF sometimes results in many "developing humans" where their development is halted via freezing (cryopreservation). If a fetus dies before birth, it isn't reported as a "death of a child". It is reported as a "stillbirth". To use your logic, there are going to be many more "deaths of babies" than ever reported for abortion. Just research how many "developing humans" die before birth. The number is staggering. tl;dr: As soon as it's fertilized and the ovum begins to divide, it is a developing human. The "developing human" will subdivide many times before implantation. To suggest otherwise is to profess ignorance of basic reproductive biology.

A "developing human" is not a human. Let's take this tack: If I have all the pieces to a car, I can't drive it down the road; it is a potential car. If I start assembling the pieces, it's a developing car, but it's still not a car. At some point in the assembly, the preponderance of the pieces becomes a rudimentary car that I could possibly drive down the road, but with trouble. As I put more and more pieces together, the rudimentary car becomes more car-like until all the pieces are together and I have a car. I feel the same with a "developing human". Sperm and egg are the pieces (you can't have a car without the parts and you can't have a baby without the sperm and egg). At fertilization, you have a "unique life" that is beginning to develop. It is several more days that this "developing human" floats down the tube to the uterus until implantation. If the "developing human" doesn't implant, it is evacuated and....dies. The morning-after pill kills the developing human. This is not premeditated murder? Not legally, but morally? And if the "developing human" doesn't implant through no fault of the woman? Is that a death in the family? How would she even know? Just evacuated onto a pad or something and then thrown in the trash or down the toilet. Does that sound okay? To me, just as there's a point in the assembly of a car (I don't like the analogy because it's extremely crude but I think it works), you will have a working car. There's a point in pregnancy that you have a viable fetus. However, until birth, you don't have a baby. It's why a woman that is five months pregnant and two other children does not say "I have three children" but "I have two children and one on the way". A pregnant woman cannot ride by herself in an HOV lane. A baby born at 12:00:01AM on January 1, 2011 cannot claim the baby as a dependent on her 2010 taxes. Babies are not conferred these rights until birth. This idea of "without interference, the embryo will become a baby so, therefore, is a baby" is the same as saying, "without interference, a baby will become an adult, therefore, a baby is an adult" or "without interference, a sperm will join with an egg and will become a baby, so therefore, sperm and eggs are half babies". There is a lot that has to happen before birth before the sperm/egg, embryo or fetus becomes a baby...just as there is a lot that has to happen before a baby becomes an adult.

I was taking a citizenship test (back when they were still giving them!) in middle school. While taking the test, I looked out the classroom window and saw a metal/silver sphere off in the distance just sitting above the treetops. It wasn't moving at all. I had never been in that classroom before because they had set special rooms aside for this test so I never viewed the view from that side of the building. Anyway, I figured it was a water tower or something so I continued through the test (aced it, by the way! ) and didn't think much more about the sphere...until the end of the testing period (two hours). I looked back outside to the sphere and....IT WAS GONE. I don't know if it was just a windless day and it was an advertising balloon that was brought down while I wasn't looking or what, but I'm not willing, until further evidence comes, to believe it was an alien spaceship or something.

It is. I'll wait for a response to the rest of my post prior to responding further.

Yeah, you said that already. It's still wrong. Those are all stages of a living human being, the difference being what moral rights a person has at each of those stages. I argue that a person's basic right to live exists from the moment the person itself does. Your child = adult response and your adult = corpse response don't contradict that idea at all. Wait, so, the "right to life" is different from "moral rights"? Left to their own devices, a fertilized egg (a "baby"?) will, the majority of the time, never even implant and are evacuated soon afterwards. Does that mean that this is a death in the family? How about if the woman takes the "morning after" pill and doesn't allow it to implant? Is she a murderer? Also, contraception. The sperm can't reach the egg. Without that kind of interference, one of those sperm will fertilize the egg and create a "baby"....so contraception is now murder. As are nocturnal emissions and periods. This is the logic I see here. Or the lack of it.

Well, if a fetus is a baby, a child is an adult.

"This is utterly illogical. A living being cannot be compared to a dead one." A potential human being cannot be compared with an actual human being. But, let's set that aside for a moment. Children are human beings, right? Adults are human beings, correct? Without interference, a child will eventually become an adult, yes? Therefore, having sex with a child is the same thing as having sex with an adult. Pedophilia is legalized! Because children are adults. Right?

"I have your brain scanned and permanently backed up in case something terrible happens to you... which it's just about to. Don't believe me? Here. I'll put you on. [Hello!] That's you! That's how dumb you sound! You've been wrong about every single thing you've ever done, including this thing. You're not smart. You're not a scientist. You're not a doctor. You're not even a full-time employee. Where did your life go so wrong?"

Exactly. Also, if we don't interfere, a child will grow up to be an adult. Therefore, all children are adults.