Quote:
Two sides of the same coin... and that coin is belief in something you can't know.
I love this. Belief is a strange thing. Believing in something has absolutely no effect on that thing. Having belief in God does not make him pop into existence, and not believing in him doesn't make him disappear.
If you really want to annoy an athiest, tell them that it requires the same amount of faith to disbelieve in God as it does to believe in him.
I grew up in the church, and listened to a lot of demonification of homosexuals. Which was unfortunate, since I am one. Their vitriol over the subject is based on/caused by the mistranslation and misinterpretation of some very vague parts of the Bible. Part of the problem was that some terms in the Bible are lost, and nobody knows what certain words actually mean. One of them translates literally to "man bed", and whilst they know the word is made up of those 2 words, they have no idea of what they're referring to in context.
To give an example, if you had no clue whatsoever what the word "ladykiller" referred to, you'd try to split it up. It's made up of 2 words, lady and killer. We can then suggest that it may refer to a female murderer, or perhaps a murderer of either sex who only murders women. It's doubtful that you would guess that it meant a very attractive man who was sexually irresistable to women.
Earlier in our history, the bible forbade masturbation, and used this "manbed" word to back up that claim. However, as time went on, it became a rather unpopular command, and let's face it, everyone sat in the church, the minister included, was guilty of that particular sin, so the infallible word of God got a last minute edit, and the word we don't understand was retranslated to forbid homosexuality instead.
I've often thought that at the core of the homohatred was that old root of all evil, money. Heterosexual members of the congregation set down roots, they marry, they have children, and a new generation of financial contributors is born. As my minister often told us, every church is only 1 generation away from extinction. Homosexuals don't generally have children, and therefore aren't good for business.
But I think deep down, as with all things, we humans fear and attack anything we don't understand, anything that might threaten our comfy status quo. From a religious perspective, whether that religion is God based or atheism based, anything that that refutes your belief is a danger.