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themadhatter114

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Everything posted by themadhatter114

  1. No. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Well, at least you have your scapegoat for all the world's problems. I guess that makes religion a tool for even the non-religious.
  2. Discrimination did exist at the time it was written, yes. I'm suggesting that it would be easier to get rid of that discrimination in the present day if those writings were not still exerting an influence over millions of believers. Our society and culture have made considerable progress, yet still these ghosts of the past haunt us. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> But do you really think that there aren't a certain percentage of people (60% or so) that regardless of religion are going to discriminate against anyone that's different from the norm? And I honestly think that people simply use those scriptures to reinforce their belief that it's abnormal and disgusting. Maybe it is the other way around, but I don't really think so.
  3. If someone simply wrote down that homosexuality was a sin, don't you think there was a motivation for that? Either, A. God told him to write that., or B. Discrimination was already present. Do you honestly think that millions of people wouldn't simply hate on gays for being 'different' and 'unnatural' regardless of religious beliefs (as they do now)?
  4. Of course there is a distinct lack of choice in every Christian you know, there's probably not much choice in your own beliefs, either, and saying that they only lack choice because of indoctrination is pretty much my point. People are either indoctrinated or they experience something that leads to a belief. Same with you. Have you really chosen not to believe in God, or do you simply not believe? Could you choose right now to start believing in God? People need religion still to reassure them that there's more to life than all they'll touch and all they'll see. And do you really think that science is powerful enough to explain everything? Science hasn't explained the origins of life on earth, science hasn't explained what caused the Big Bang, etc., etc. People still experience thousands of things that haven't been and likely won't ever be explained by science. If you believe that intelligent life manifested itself from primitive bacteria, that's a leap of faith. If you believe that the Big Bang was simply a spontaneous action with no cause, that's a leap of faith. No smaller a leap of faith than believing in God, or several gods, or whatever. And blaming religion for anything is silly. Religion is a tool. It's rarely a cause, and more likely an excuse. You think only Christians pick on gays? As a kid I played 'smear the queer' and made fun of girly boys and called people f*gs long before I ever read the Bible or paid attention in church. And gay-bashing was a lot more popular among that atheist crowd than among the Christians.
  5. How about leaving the religious institution to the particular religion and have an equal secular institution for everyone else, allowing it to be special for those who want it to be special? Saying religion is stupid is just as ridiculous as saying homosexuality is stupid. People can choose to believe in God just as well as they can choose to be gay. Ah, the tolerance is refreshing.
  6. Well, that is unfortunate. Perhaps a mod will edit it for me.
  7. That would work...if I could find the 'edit' button.
  8. The way I read his words was that certain races/religions/orientations determine how good of a parent they will be. All other things being equal, a child is better off with a mother and father. All other things being equal, a child is better off with parents of the same ethnicity Well, when reading that race, religion, and orientation should be considerations because they certainly are factors that determine how good of a parent someone will be, I didn't really see the link to the next two sentences. Yeah, all other things equal, it's probably best to put a child with parents of the same ethnicity. It looked like you were claiming that "race, religion, and orientation are factors of how good a parent someone will be." In other words, it looked like you were making a claim that the quality of someone as a parent is affected, at least in some way, by that person's race, religion, and sexual orientation. In other words, when I read your post it sounded like you were claiming that, all other things being equal, you could determine the quality of someone as a parent by their race/religion/sexual orientation. I don't disagree that, if everything else is equal, matching people together homogeneously would probably be best. But that's not what I took from your post. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Sorry for the confusion. I meant that for a given child, they would be factors, but not as some blanket "+10 points for being white, +50 points for being a Christian, etc." way. And I don't mean to imply things like "gays make bad parents," simply that mother/father is more conducive to a healthy parenting environment. And that's a personal bias, that I feel is reasonable, and I don't think it should be mandated. I just think that adoption agencies should be protected from litigation if they happened to have a similar policy.
  9. What? In what ways does race determine how good of a parent someone will be? In what ways does religion determine how good of a parent someone will be? In what ways does sexual orientation determine how good of a parent someone will be? And since they apparently do, which race, religion, and orientation is best suited for parenting, and why? <{POST_SNAPBACK}> I guess you were in such a hurry to retort that you didn't read the next two sentences.
  10. Are there a lot of statistics about gay parents? What is there to back up your claims about gay parents? Is there anything other than anecdotal evidence saying their kids are more open-minded? I would expect that it creates more victims (real and professional) than civil rights leaders. And people who face discrimination often don't sympathize with the similar struggles of others who've faced the same sort of thing. I don't think not getting knocked up randomly necessarily means people are better prepared for parenting. Not that that's even really an issue since people with unwanted pregnancies aren't typical candidates seeking adoption. And as I've said, they should have opportunities to adopt children, but straight couples should have an advantage.
  11. I agree with that, but there are many government run programs for adoption as well, and I don't think they should discriminate. They should seek the best parents, regardless of race, religion, or orientation. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Yeah, they should seek the best parents, but race, religion, and orientation should be considerations because they certainly are factors that determine how good of a parent someone will be. I don't believe in restrictions but I'm all for giving preference. All other things being equal, a child is better off with a mother and father. All other things being equal, a child is better off with parents of the same ethnicity. Hell, I'd be wary of fundamentalist Christians if I were operating a government-run orphanage. I just think that sort of thing should be taken into consideration, along with everything else, but shouldn't be set in stone.
  12. I certainly wouldn't mind that. Alright, I was just pointing out that there was perhaps some unwarranted hostility. I was talking about a minority group of Christians. Hence, the word 'some' and not 'many' or 'most of'. That's all well and good as long as that was intended. Frequently, though, people will throw out the word 'some' so that they can cast guilt by association. I certainly agree that some who profess themselves as Christians are huge ****. Of course maybe I overreacted, and if so I apologize. I also meant to stress the point that having an opinion on a matter doesn't mean one cares about it. I don't like gay marriage. I don't like abortion. I don't like a lot of things. But as far as I'm concerned people can marry and **** and have abortions and even kill their children and it really doesn't upset me a whole lot. I have a lot of opinions but not a lot of concerns. I always thought 'love thy neighbor' doesn't mean that you could feel free to hate the guy two doors down the street. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> But it doesn't mean that you should interject yourself into the affairs of your neighbors and try to force them to get along. I'm all for peace in my own life and getting along with everyone, but I couldn't care less about whether or not all the people in the world love each other. Perhaps I misunderstood your reference to world peace.
  13. True, but race isn't really the crux of my argument. Non carcasian isn't the only minority. Should muslims have equal adoption rights? Is it fair to give the child to a family that will force it to pray 5x a day to a brick? Obviously not. Minorities aren't ideal candidates imho... it just makes life unnecessarily harder for the child. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> I wasn't really simply talking about race, either, though I may not have conveyed that well enough. I was quoting more in support of your stance than against it. I think that a Christian-run orphanage should give preference to other Christians, and I think that couples that have a background with fringe organizations (not necessarily Muslims, though, unless they are in a radical church) should be getting children from orphanages, but that's just my preference, though I would prefer it be left up to the individual orphanage.
  14. Did you ever stop to think that might actually be a good idea? You might as well raise the bar on adoption standards as high as possible until you start running out of candidates. The rights of the adopters don't come into play when it comes to adoption, it's all about the child. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Minorities shouldn't be adopting white children, really. And white parents shouldn't be adopting minorities, generally. I mean, they should be allowed to adopt children of a different ethnicity, but parents of the same ethnicity should be given preference. This is, of course, in an orphanage setting, and assuming there are children of multiple ethnicities to choose from. I mean, people should typically gravitate to children of their own ethnicity unless they're 'rescuing' a child from a poverty stricken nation or something. And adoption agencies should encourage this, but without completely restricting people.
  15. You are on a gaming forum. Try some of the forums of the Christian Coalition if you wanted to pick a fight. Besides, our Chrisitan crowd hasn't showed up yet. I am still eagerly awaiting a flame war to break out. It's funny though how some Christians' minds are so transfixed on this single topic when there are thousands of laws in the Bible concerning poverty, helping the sick and elderly, promoting peace and forgiveness among nations, etc. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> It looked more like an observation to me. You're the one apparently trying to start a flame war. And the key word above is SOME Christians. Not many Christians that I know care a lot about the topic. They may have an opinion, but that doesn't mean they're transfixed on it. And most Christians I know are concerned with povery, the sick and elderly, and promoting forgiveness. I've never known the Bible to be real big on world peace, however.
  16. I agree with taks that the government should get out of the marriage business. Gays should be able to do what they want, but I don't think churches should be condoning or performing homosexual 'unions' (several Protestant churches are pretty liberal in this regard these days). People who live together should all have equal status as far as tax breaks, but as soon as you have the government making some exception for gay marriages, then you'll have people asking questions like, "Why can't two brothers get married?" and so on. So instead of making exceptions and creating more controversy they should just take a pragmatic approach that stays out of people's sex lives. As for adoption, I think it should be up to the adoption agency and therefore up to the people who give the children up for adoption. Suing a Catholic adoption agency for restricting access to gay couples is ****ing ridiculous and all it accomplished was getting them to stop offering adoption services at all and that serves absolutely no one. I also absolutely think that in general heterosexual couples should be given preference over homosexual couples when it comes to adoption, but I don't think it should be the only factor and certainly not the biggest factor.
  17. What new games are going to come out for X-Box that people are going to want to play on their 360? Here's a tip: if you want to play it on the 360, buy it for the 360 and not for the original X-Box. Here's another tip: don't sell your old system if you want to play new X-box games that for some reason aren't also being developed for the 360.
  18. That happened to me once, too. But when they disappeared all I had to do to get them back was go to the party selection screen.
  19. If you don't like it...you shouldn't. The real question is why would you bother coming into a thread with people that are interested in the game just to comment how you felt it was a mediocre game. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> What's really nice about Steam is that if you find some of your old cd keys, you can reinstall your old Valve games. I found my old Counter-Strike CD from a platinum collection that I won several years ago. When I input the CD key, it recognized that I had the entire platinum collection, and downloaded all of the original Half-Life games onto my PC (even some that weren't at the time included in my platinum pack, like Blue Shift, because it wasn't out yet). And now it's all linked to my Steam account so I can play them all without CDs and as far as I know I can play them on different computers if I want to use my steam account on my wife's laptop.
  20. You can't resell your boxed copy much more easily than you can resell your digital copy. You can't transfer it out of your Steam account, regardless, so anyone would still have to buy the game from Valve in order to have a validated copy.
  21. You could get one of those temporary credit cards that are useless to steal the numbers for. Or your credit card company may let you use a fake number online to link to your account just once. I personally don't worry too much about buying things online, but IF security is your reason, there are options.
  22. I would never buy another game if I didn't even have the option of reselling them. If that were the case, you wouldn't be able to rent games at Blockbuster, you wouldn't be able to let friends borrow games, you couldn't sample games to ensure that you want to buy them, and you'd have no recourse once you paid for a game and found out that you didn't like it. The only option would be to swap systems with someone who wanted all your games. And what in the hell do you do if your system overheats and you have to get a new one? Buy all your games again? The only amount of copy protection that I will tolerate is restriction to one machine at a time, allowing users to transfer their CDs as long as they won't play the game anymore. Why should a publisher or developer have the right to screw me if I don't like a game of theirs that I bought, or if I'm done with it? You don't often see people sell a game just after release if they liked it, and as others have pointed out, they're likely to pour that money into more games.
  23. I believe that Valve is getting 50% of the revenue from Garry's Mod, in exchange for Garry's full access to the Source Engine.
  24. From what I read Garry wasn't going to update it anymore, but then Valve offered him a deal plus gave him access to the entire Source Engine code for free. It seems to me that now he can do more stuff to his mod, and he and Valve can make some money from it, and those who don't want to pay for it should be satisfied to keep the final free release because if not for the arrangement with Valve, that likely would've been the final release, period.
  25. I don't see how it's at all less risky. Even if you replace publisher funds, you still need to replace the other functions of the publisher. You don't have the name recognition that a publisher provides. What are consumers going to feel is more recognizable, "Laid Back Games' SPACE GAME!" or "Atari presents SPACE GAME developed by Laid Back Games"? Not to mention the marketing that they need to produce because they can no longer rely on the publisher for this. Or the fact that an independent investor probably knows even less about gaming than a typical game publisher, and would probably want more in return for the investment and perhaps place even tighter restrictions on it because he doesn't understand the process.
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