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To: hunter112

Really, I'd like to know what you believe. You have offered a critique of the Christian religious viewpoint and now I would like to offer a critique of your own beliefs.


209 posted on 01/15/2007 10:47:17 AM PST by crghill
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To: crghill
Really, I'd like to know what you believe. You have offered a critique of the Christian religious viewpoint and now I would like to offer a critique of your own beliefs.

I've critiqued specifically Catholic teachings on sexuality. Some forms of Christianity are similar to them, many are not. I really don't have a problem with people from mainline Protestant churches who are live and let live as far as sexuality goes.

I believe that human progress is made from approaching the world in a scientific way, using reason. It was science that defied the religious notion that the Earth was the center of the universe, and eventually, people of Western religious backgrounds have come to accept that the Earth is not the center.

Science has assumptions, theories, and even 'constants', but they are all subject to change if enough evidence is presented to the contrary. Yes, it can be tough to demote Pluto from being labeled a planet, but I believe that science accepts the fact that knowledge will change as we learn more ways to discover things about our universe. Religion tries to set things "the way they will be" for all time. Change is accomplished by schism, rather than by reason. People fall away from the old dogma, and drift over to the new one, and that's how religion changes slowly over time, in a glacial fashion.

It made sense to avoid pork and shellfish in the desert climates of the Middle East of millenia ago, and it made sense to have rules that were designed to provide that the main purpose of sex was to produce offspring to work in an agricultural society. It made sense, in a sort of way, for men to keep women's sexuality penned up, in order to help assure the support of children.

Today, we have refrigeration, microscopes to find bacteria in food, DNA tests to establish paternity, and effective means of conception control to separate sexual behavior from baby-making. We have ways to do great evil, as well, such as the means of cloning human embryos, or aborting preborn human beings. Not everything science has given us is wonderful, but societies have a legitimate right to limit the extremes of technology, however, individuals have rights within that to reject or accept the technologies.

237 posted on 01/15/2007 11:31:04 AM PST by hunter112
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