New iPhone App Wants to Turn Gays into Heterosexuals. Wait, What?

Dogs eat from a bowl and get treated by a vet. I’m not for christianity, but saying ‘dogs can be gay, ergo being gay is natural’ doesn’t make sense at all. Dogs as for any animal can be in a degree unnatural, we just happen to sit at the end of the spectrum.

That being said, i find some of the “Christian” comments truely shocking. It’s so surreal to hear such closeminded and intolerant people talk. It’s like you said. Like banging a wall, a really thick wall.

Stephen,

Wow, paragraphs man; punctuation!

It gets really difficult reading huge blocks of text. I skim and speed read easily when I can make out punctuation and the beginnings of sentences, ie new thoughts. I’m not trying to sound rude, but if you really want people to read what you write, you have to give it to them in a format they can easily read.

In all honesty, I completely skipped your first long post earlier and didn’t go back to read it until later. And you do have a lot of really great thoughts, so please don’t take offense. But please do limit run on sentences and incorporate paragraphs and capital letters.

I think I would actually prefer freedom of expression over speech, because it sounds like they have restrictions on oppressive language and behavior. However, it gets tricky and complicated when it comes to authoritarian control. Plus, sometimes you have to fight with what tools you have, and being able to lean on the freedom of speech has benefited me in fighting for homeless rights and economic equality.

At any rate, tolerance is the key. With enough consideration, compassion, and courage and with great diligence and patience, we can create a world of equality for all.

For me, relinquishing the religion and the belief in god that I was brought up with was just the first step into realizing that there were far more important things in the world than worrying about some alleged afterlife. Like the fact that people are sick and dying all over the world from war, poverty, and environmental degradation.

Until every person on earth has appropriate access to food medicine and a bed, including a proper and well rounded education with a global outlook toward the future, then there is no freedom; there is no equality.

If you want some fun light reading on some of the other things I do believe in, look up An Anarchist FAQ online. Its on over a dozen different websites. A different world is possible, a better world for us all.

A world with iPhones for everyone!

That was great! I just watched the whole speech. Smart guy.

BC,

I do not think that all Christians hate gay people and are closed minded – but the most outspoken ones that you hear from most of the time seem to be. Perhaps that is an issue tolerant, understanding Christians should take up with them. What amazes me, though, is how many Christians, who profess a belief in Jesus, disregard his teachings so carelessly and behave in ways that the historical Jesus would be ashamed of. It is as if just claiming they are believers in Christ gives them free reign to treat everyone else like assholes.

“How closed minded is it to think that nothing is possible or nothing exists beyond what your imperfect physical senses can detect? You can’t see it or you can’t touch it, so it must not exist.” – Going with that reasoning, what justification do you have for blatantly believing in something that none of your senses can detect and there is absolutely no evidence for? Just because I do not believe in existence beyond this mortal coil, doesn’t mean that I can’t accept the possibility thereof.

In truth, if all energy is neither created nor destroyed, then perhaps whatever our individual essence is, soul or what have you, will transfer into some other state of energy or existence. That said, I doubt it is some cloud filled paradise up in the sky and I do not think our individuality would continue beyond this life, even if there was some form of existence beyond it.

But you said, “Or is it possible that billions of people on this planet (meaning people of any religion) might know something you don’t.” I ask you to define knowledge as referred to here. I would submit that it is not that they know something I do not, but that they believe something I do not and mistake that for knowledge.

Towards your comments on disregarding an eternity I do not believe in, were there a god that resembles that sort of deity commonly found in the judeo-christian religions, who is vengeful and conceited, who would have people jump through all of these invisible religious hoops, without letting people really know what those hoops are, and then cast you into eternal damnation because you missed one, regardless of how much of a good life one may have lived, I would not follow that god just on principle alone.

In short, even if there was a god, I would not believe god. How can there be a system of true goodness without also justice? The Theodicy Question still stands – how can god be all powerful and all loving and yet there be so much suffering in the world. If I ever did meet that god, then she or he would have a lot of explaining to do.

Pascal’s Wager doesn’t concern me and all arguments for the existence of god are inherently fallacious. Towards that end, for me, it just does not make any sense for there to be a causal entity outside of a causal loop. If everything we know and experience in life has a beginning and an end, then how do people suddenly make the jump to believing that there can be something with no beginning and no end? That is crazy.

Psychologically, it all stems from a vast insecurity about death and the fear that accompanies the thought of being no more. In the early years of human history, as a means to explain the natural forces of earth, gods were created in order to help make sense of the many things people did not understand. “Why is there lightning?” Well it must be because Zeus is angry again. As foolish as modern theists view polytheism is the same way I view all of theism.

What’s funny is that every religion is actually right about every other religion – that they are wrong. They are just also wrong about their own.

So it has nothing to do with something beyond my level of understanding, but that it is beyond reason. Religion has at its core been a way to control the masses throughout history. But I accept the fact that everyone has a right to believe whatever they want, regardless of how nonsensical it may seem to me. This also includes a belief that people should be free to live out their lives how they best see fit, including following their own natural homosexual desires which they were born with.

I agree with the words of the Buddha, “Believe nothing, no matter where you read it or who has said it, not even if I have said it, unless it agrees with your own reason and your own common sense.” My complaint of the majority of organized religion is that very few people seem to have any kind of mental involvement with the things they say they believe. They merely believe them because that is how they were raised or because that is what the preacher says they should believe in, so why question it? Einstein said, “Question everything.” Most people do not like to question their beliefs, who knows, they may find some flaws in there and have to think for themselves.

As to “perfecting an inherently imperfect world,” perfection is a myth – nothing is ever going to be perfect. Humans will always have their problems. I am not a utopianist, but I heartily believe there is a vastly better way in which to structure society that can give everyone a more fulfilling and higher quality of life. The more egalitarian and generally free a society, the less crime there is, the higher the level of general happiness, etc.

The religious in this world seem to not care very much about war, poverty, or the environment as compared to the afterlife. In other words, in my experience, most Christians are more concerned with the afterlife than they are with what happens in this life. This is because they are taught that the afterlife is what is more important – what happens in this life doesn’t really matter because you have a better one waiting for you. It is this sort of thought that the Roman Catholic Church struggled so hard to instill in people through such concepts as the meek inheriting the earth. “Stay meek, stay poor, you’ll be repaid for that after this life.”

This is not to say that all Christians or other religious folk don’t care about poverty and warfare, but most people don’t really care that much, certainly not enough to change their way of life. Its just like there are good police/military personnel out there doing it for more or less noble reasons, but their primary function is just to protect and serve the status quo and the state-capitalist infrastructure rather than protecting and serving the most vulnerable and needy in our society. Look at what is happening in Libya and has been happening all over that region. They are there not to protect the people but to protect the leaders and their power from the people.

At any rate, moving on to your question about economic equality. What I was referring to was moreover about opposing discrimination based on socio-economic status in the defense of the hungry and homeless being free to use and receive meals in public parks.

What I was referring to was an instance where I used the First Amendment and Freedom of Speech et al in my personal life. About 6 months after starting a Food Not Bombs chapter in West Palm Beach, the city passed a law making it an arrestable offense to distribute food in public parks. We continued to share meals and fought the ordinance, even to the point of me debating the mayor on CNN Headline News. Eventually we won the legal battle and the city repealed the ordinance and paid our lawyers $100,000 for legal fees.

Economic equality, though, is really about the 18th century concept of leveling – making it to where no one had vastly more money and access to resources than they could use in a hundred lifetimes while others out there suffer from not having enough to even live one lifetime. I know I am in the minority, but that has never bothered me. I got used to that when I became an atheist. To be exact, I am what you can call a libertarian-socialist or anarchist-communist. All inequality in the world, at its very root, stems from economic inequality. So the goal of having all of earth’s resources equally accessible to all of the world’s population without depleting any of those resources is the goal.

For instance, and to bring this topic back around to the website we are on, after having my iPhone for a week, I felt like everyone in the world should have an iPhone. Now whether it is an iPhone or some other smartphone, it does not matter. But to have everyone have access to the internet and virtually unlimited knowledge in their hand or pocket wherever they go, that would be amazing and could really increase the level of what humanity could achieve.

I know this has been long (my apologies to Sebastian), so I won’t go on much more. But I would like to be open to further dialogue if you would like, so if you would like to continue this conversation privately, feel free to get in touch with me through my myspace. Here are also a few links that can elaborate on some of the views I hold if any one is interested (probably not, though…). Kropotkin’s Conquest of Bread I think says it best:

“Wait, You Guys Are ANARCHISTS?”
what is anarchism

Anarchist FAQ

Conquest of Bread