:: Odd things? Who are you to call other people's religions odd.Stuart Gort. Your free to call me odd if you please. I'm just not so sentitive that I have go into a tizzy if someone does.
:: i have nothing but respect for the Catholic Chruch and other, similar progressive minded religions. (Jesus was a communist after all.)
And Marx was a priest, I guess.
:: But your narrow interpretation of Christianity seems to sanction capitalism, anti-homosexuality, and similar atrocities 9judging by what you post). Don't tell other people about strange religions.
Actually, what is quite narrow and shallow is wrenching one or two scriptural references out of context to support one's ideology. If you care to provide those biblical references which you feel support your viewpoint then please do. But the deck becomes stacked against me here. If I proceed to refute your assertions biblically, McSpotlight gets testy and hints at censorship. So you win. Make ridiculous claims that Jesus was a communist and have fun doing it. I'll respond to your scriptural references if at the end of every one of your posts McSpotlight says it's OK for me to answer in kind.
Kevin said: "In short, eating meat is not wrong."
I said "That wasn't your viewpoint a while ago but thanks for that. It's all I ever wanted to hear you say 100 posts back."
:: Why did you want him to say it? So that you can feel justified after eating meat?
I'm so far from feeling guilty about eating meat Nikhil. That was lame.
:: So that you don't have to face up to the fact that you are harming a sentient being?
That's giving chickens a little too much credit, I think. Did you know turkeys can drown by looking up in a rainstorm? Nature made them too stupid to keep water out of their beaks.
:: What makes what 'you want to hear" so important? I want to hear you say that homosexuality is OK. But I know you don't have an inclination to. that's OK, you have the right to your own opinion. What's wrong with allowing Kevin teh same right?
Kevin said meat eating was immoral a while ago. I disagree with that and cite nearly every historical and contemporaneous culture as proof that morality can not be raised as a reason to be vegan. Every other reason to be vegan other than the morality claim leaves the subject a personal choice and offers no moral judgment of meat eaters. I'm offended that a small faction of idealists should make a moral judgment of what can be considered normal dietary practice when history, simple observation, the animal kingdom, and the lack of prohibition in the vast majority of world religions all serve to condone meat eating.
I said, "Plenty of historical and contemporaneous cultures had to exist almost soley on meat."
:: Utter nonsense. Any culture surviving mostly on meat would immediately go extinct due to nutritional deficiencies, mainly a severe carbohydrate deficit. Your brain can't burn protein, it needs sugar.
Every North American native tribe existed almost soley on dried meats in the winter months. They had to. Were they immoral too? Are you going to go on record and suggest that every hunting and gathering tribe of antiquity was immoral also? That would be utter nonsense.
::Only one culture in the world, the Inuits of the Arctic, survived mainly off non-vegetarian sources, and they relied on FISH, not meat; eating fish is both healthier, environmentally more sound, and morally more acceptable than eating meat. (E.g. many hindus and Buddhists sanction eating fish but not mammalian meat).
I guess chickens are sentient and fish aren't, eh Nikhil?
:: Stuy, are you even aware that chimpanzees and monkeys have been observed to use medicinal plants and herbs to cure disease? Are you aware that myriad life forms have been far better at colonizing hostile environments than we have (e.g. tardigrades)? The two examples you used to suggest human superiority fall flat on their face, because in both fields you ahve animals doing exactly teh same thing- sometimes better.
Niky, if you wish to be thick about this be my guest but I'm not buying any of this. If you wish to compare a monkey rubbing leaves on himself (biological adaptation) to the cognitive prowess of those who cured polio your argument is lost anyway. Which mechanical science did the tardigrade apply to his problem to solve it? Of course man is superior to animals - by any reasonable definition of the word.
:: A while back you said "define superiority or stop using it." Not being a despotic capitalist, I won't use words like that. But may I make a humble plea that you define superiority so that Kevin and I know what the hell you're talking about?
Read a dictionary. That's what I do because I like it when words actually mean the same thing from day to day. You guys probably have your own.
More on homosexuality,
:: Well, I thank God that my religion prohibits neither. Hindus believe in tolerance, Stu. So did Jesus, incidentally, but some people seem to have forgotten that..... Everything i claim is divinely inspired can also be defended on rational grounds, without reference to God.
So talk about this god. It sounds like it's you.
:: This is as it should be, because my God is a rational God. Where's teh rational grounds for opposing homosexuality? And please, no references to natural law. That's been dead a long time.
Not because you wish it so Nik. So far, nobody here has reconciled animals eating meat and animals attempting sex with their same sex.
You guys (and Karen) can't have it both ways. If it is not immoral
for humans to have sex with their same sex, it is neither immoral for them to eat meat unless you can find better arguments than the example of the animal kingdom.
:: Salvation lies in the fact that I cannot attain to heaven or God. Jesus is God coming here to fix this problem for me. This love is not exclusive to me Kevin.
:: I did (smoke marijuana) every day for many years of my early adulthood.
:: Good for you. Why'd you stop?
Good for me? How old are you boy?
:: Why is smoking weed morally wrong? I've got news fro you Stu, the Hindu religion says that alcohol is wrong but marijuana is OK. Guess what? I don't drink but i do smoke weed (very) occasionally. what are you going to do about it?
Nothing. But smoke enough of it and teach it to your children and my children will rule over yours.
:: better to have your motivation sapped than to start a business and screw the poor. Better to have it sapped than to go off and bomb peasants in Viet Nam. better to be sueless to society than to serve a twisted society that exists by for and of the rich. We need more stoned hippies and fewer capitalists and warmongers. Society would be a lot better off if we all took a long collective drag.
Oh brother!
:: This argument's been dead for three decades, Stu. Give it up. Marijuana is not physically adictoive nor very harmful. more peopel die from etaing dried fruits (sulfite allergeis) than from smoking weed.
Actually, my friends have been dead for two decades. I wonder what their parents would think of you.
:: The ideology of teh left is based on the same moral principles taht underly every great religion.
Equality: Steal from the productive and redistribute to the unproductive.
Nonviolence: Be a sitting duck for the next depraved tyrant.
Human brotherhood: Be responsible for people you do not know and will never meet.
Freedom: Unless you wish to own a gun, eat meat, run a business, talk about Jesus in school, smoke cigarettes...
Love: Same sex, of course.
Stuart Gort
