At the top of your link:
Definition: Hate Crime is a criminal offense committed against a person or property which is motivated in whole or in part, by the offender’s bias against a race/national origin, religion, sexual-orientation, mental/physical disability or ethnicity
It references sexual orientation, but does not appear to offer protection for women or transgendered people.
If you remember that the stories were edited and recompiled a number of times – the Council of Nicea in 325 C.E. is a good example – you might come to the conclusion that the prejudices expressed are more indicative of those many editors, not the original protagonist of the stories.
They list several legal cases before the end credits of “God’s Not Dead” that are supposedly similar to the contrived straw-man scenario depicted in the movie. If you take half a minute to dig into them, you’ll find they’re mostly like this, cases where people wanted to discriminate based on their religious beliefs but were prevented by existing laws or university policies. Won’t someone think of our religious freedoms???
I’ve had the misfortune to be turned down by a pharmacist for trying to purchase the “Day After” birth control because it didn’t agree with his particular religious view. As he told us that providing the drug went against his religious views, the one thought I can recall having is, “Well aren’t you a righteous fucking asshole?”
On the whole, I’m down with pharmacists, but if I ever see that one again, I’ll be doing my best to guide him down a dark alley.
And as I’m forced to wonder on a regular basis, how do the idiots writing and passing these laws not understand how this equates sharia law?
Why did you only think it?
I was too stunned by his answer and stressed with the whole situation by that point. My only concern for that moment was that my little critters swimming around in my GF’s body needed to be put down STAT, and arguing with the guy didn’t seem like a helpful or productive use of my time.
That said, I wish I’d gone back to that place (a CVS, I believe) a few days later and ripped him a new one.
It’s never too late. Perhaps some BBer with a camera can stop by for a purchase sometime.
Oh they equate them all right. They are in a set, two sides of the same coin. salt and pepper, good and evil. I don’t know what kind of crazy it takes to see the world in this kind of frame, but they’ve got it.
Yep - not to mention how the church created the book itself, what they left out and what they kept, and hundreds of years of transcriptions and later translations of the thing. It would be more accurate to say that it reflects the particular time and the political powers of WHEN and by WHO it was written.
Yeah, but god is omnipotent, so all of that could have been controlled and planned by god, right? And even if you are cherry-picking verses, well are those not the verses god wanted you to pay attention to? If they weren’t, why would those be the verses that you happen to have come across?
I guess it depends on where you come down on the theological free will bebate (god as the watchmaker or god as the active participant in worldly affairs). And of course, that’s a point of theology not agreed upon.
Theology sorely misses the experimental part where the hypotheses are tested.
Theology is deliberately not testable. If you could prove it, you wouldn’t need faith. It’s all about the feels, and stuff.
Sure, but theology isn’t a science - since its truth-claims are not testable or repeatable. Nor should it be considered such.[edited to add] That doesn’t mean it can’t help us understand something about human nature, though.
If it’s not testable, how can it form arguments that could even start being considered reliable?
Then… what’s the point?
Like, the ability to spend millenia arguing about handwavy untestable or even utterly unfalsifiable claims?
I don’t think it does.
Is science the only thing that matters?
Theologians don’t just focus on (the unprovable notion of) whether god exists, who he/she is, or , but they debate interesting aspects of human nature, such as the nature of morality and ethics, and people’s relationships to each other. Historically, they’ve debated issues of power, and the proper relationship between the rulers and ruled. There was a category of political writing in the early Ottoman period where imams wrote long pieces meant to help guide the sultan to a better ruling structure. Liberation theology spoke to the role that the church and priests/nuns should play in creating a more egalitarian society. Gandhi, Bayard Rustin, and Dr. King all focused on expressing love for those who oppress you, because they too are human beings.
So, not all these discussions are directly related to the nature of god.
@pixleshifter yeah, true, but while I think it was a CVS, it may have been a Walgreens or a defunct Longs Drugs. Either way, it was in Santa Cruz, CA, and fuck that guy.
I live in Michigan. Your assessment of the Michigan House of Representatives is largely accurate.
We are entering a lame duck session in the Michigan legislature wherein a pile of term-limited asshats do their damnedest to make this state just a little worse for them having “served” in office.
That’s essentially the main reason I started questioning my faith and set me on the path to atheism. I was taught all my life that the bible was the inerrant and uncompromised word of god. When I learned about how it was put together, I was able to see that it couldn’t possibly be anything other than human invention, then I dove into research and apologetics and ended up completely atheist.
