German court rules circumcision is 'bodily harm'
- Thread starter dirtychinchilla
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The number of non-religious offenders almost certainly outnumber the religious.....to say Atheists are more or less likely to offend is a nonsence that has no supporting evidence.
Also Homophobia is not the exclusive domain of religion, we see homophobia in all walks of life and being an Atheist doesn't mean you are not homophobic.....religion may be used to justify homophobia, yet equally it can be used to justify the opposite.
Take the Republic of China, homosexuality was until 1997 banned by the Atheist Rulers, it was still officially a mental illness until 2001 and even today there is State acceptance of oppression of homosexuality particularly against Males, the State simply ignores homophobia as it does homosexuality......this is contrary to the traditional Chinese acceptance of Homosexuality prior to the 20th Century.
Homophobia under Stalin was prevalent, with hundreds of thousands of homosexuals going to gulags and being executed, Cuba also persecuted homosexuality, going so far as to set up concentration camps and castrate those found guilty......
This is not because they were communists, or socialists or atheists...neither Lenin or Trotsky persecuted homosexuality, quite the contrary...but it was because the men in power used their political agenda to justify the persecution, and when Stalin made it seem as if Socialism supported such acts 'for the good of the State and defending the Family' then others followed...including Mao and Castro.
By blaming external sources such as Religion or Politics you are excusing the actions of the individual, and homophobia is about the internal prejudices of individual, not their external justification of those prejudices.
And that was the question I answered....remove religion and people will simply find other ways to manifest their prejudices. You could argue that without the inherent constraints built into most religious doctrine such troubles would intensify as it would be easier to justify actions without the constraints placed upon them....see Stalinism for an example.
Soldato
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Castiel you're doing it again. No one is making black and white comparisons, of course you can still be evil, homophobic, condone slavery etc etc if you're non-religious that isn't disputable.
The question is whether the effect is lowered by removing religion, not eliminated.
On homophobia, who are the only only organisations kicking up a fuss against gay marriage for example? The churches, that is not to say that there's aren't individual atheists that don't support it but it's much harder to be an atheist organisation and proclaim a position against gay marriage though because you have nothing to legitimize that position.
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Proving you wrong? I don't see the issue
The issue is proving that evil can be done without religion doesn't prove that religion doesn't cause evil.
It's a logical fallacy. For example, you could prove that anorexia exists in countries that don't have a media obsessed with how women look but that doesn't prove the media has no part to play in the numbers of people who have it in countries that do.
Can that actually be proven though? There are people brought up under religion who are taught that homosexuality is a sin, and while it may be true that many of them would be homophobic anyway, I'd bet if you took religion out of the equation that many of them wouldn't hold those homophobic views, especially in this day and age.
I don't think you can completely dismiss the role of religion when it comes to things like homophobia.
Yet it is a common thread that without religion all these things would be lessened if not removed altogether.....which is what I disagree with, hence the examples given.
Unlikely....the manifestation will simply change...in some cases it can be argued that it would be more likely as the constraints inherent in many religious doctrines would no longer counter the justifications found in scripture....so the individual would be free to invent their own justification based on their innate prejudices. In many cases these things happen despite religion, not because of them. Politics, jealousy and greed are the main culprits of persecution in the world.
True, the Church is opposed to Gay Marriage, but they are not the only organisation who are opposed to it....neither are all Churchmen oppposed to it either. In fact many congregational and free Churches have come out in support of it......not to mention relogious groups such as The Quakers and the Unitarians.
I understand what you are saying, and in some examples it can be illustrated that it is more difficult to justify a course of action, however that is also true of religion, doctrine not only supports what you are saying, it also opposes what you are saying, as the same reasons why relogion can be used to justify a negative position, it can also be used to enforce a positive position....such as the abolition of slavery and other examples......
It is dependent on the individual and their interpretation of their ideology, not on the religion or politics that ideology may be based on.
I would bet that if religion didn't exist, then those that hold homophobic views will still do so, there would simply be another manifestation to justify it.
If ALL Christians or people bought up in religious households were homophobes I would agree with you, but they are not, therefore is logical to assume the prejudice is inherent in the individual......I am not saying that the prejudice is not reinforced by their religion (or politics/ideology/philosophy) only that even if removed something else will replace it.....
By simply blaming religion (or other external influences), you are to some extent abrogating the individuals responsibility for their own actions.
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The logical fallacy is saying that religion is the root cause of evil.....when it is man who is the cause, religion is simply another tool he uses to justify his actions in the way he interprets it to apply to his prejudices.
In many ways religion mirrors human nature (which it would, it is a human construct) and so we may as well blame human nature for evil deeds (or the prevalence of them) as blame other factors. For me religion is a tool that people use, you may as well blame the existance of the gun for a murder, when it is likely that the murder would simply have been committed using a different weapon if the gun had never existed.
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Because getting a bath is that hard?
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Why don't you get your arse cheeks stitched together so that crud doesn't accumulate there too, or remove your fingers because of how bad they'll smell when you inevitably dig out your arse crack because it's itchy from not washing for a week.
Soldato
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Reading this thread whilst listening to 'Somebody That I Used To Know' by Goyte, the lyrics "But you didn't have to cut me off, make out like it never happened and that we were nothing" will never seem the same again, all I can think of is my old foreskin sitting in a surgical bin somewhere singing to me 
Soldato
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Simplistic argument, one guy I know who had it done bathed and showered everyday but he still had the problem with 'cheese'. Me on other hand have never seen the stuff in my life either before or after the OP.
I just think it affects some people more than others.
Reading this thread whilst listening to 'Somebody That I Used To Know' by Goyte, the lyrics "But you didn't have to cut me off, make out like it never happened and that we were nothing" will never seem the same again, all I can think of is my old foreskin sitting in a surgical bin somewhere singing to me
Thanks for that...now every time I listen to that song I will flinch just a little......
And how do you address the problem for women?
Soldato
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What problem? I wasn't backing up the argument that people should get circumcised purely because it means they can clean less, just simply pointing out an example where someone who did have a good cleaning regime still got circumcised because for him personally regular bathing wasn't enough.
I'm not sure about that... By that reasoning, people who are brought up to believe in a God would believe in a God anyway, even if it wasn't taught to them. While that might be true for some, I doubt that you can apply it to everyone who believes in a God, so I don't think you can apply the same logic to homophobia.
As you know, not every Christian household follows the teachings of the Catholic church to the letter, so would it not be more likely that the reason for not all Christian households being homophobic is because they reject that part of the religion's/church's teachings? And in the same vein, other households WILL follow the teachings to the letter, thus causing homophobia that may not be there otherwise?
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That's easy, cut off their boobs, no boobs, no milk, ergo, no cheese...
Again this is down to the individual and how the express and inform their own faith and/or worldview.....equally with homophobia, it is not the religion, but the expression of it by the individual, if someone is homophobic, whether they are religious or not is immaterial as the prejudice will manifest in one way or another, if they are not homophobic then they will not manifest that prejudice, it is likely that if they are religious they will interpret commonly held homophobic scripture differently as their interpretation is largely based on those prejudices, either negative or positive.
There is a common misconception that the Church promotes homophobia, it doesn't, quite the contrary....also not supporting Gay Marriage doesn't make someone homophobic either as that would be largely down to why they oppose Gay Marriage. (I support Gay Marriage, but only as Equal Marriage not retaining the current civil partnership policy).
I do not think that religion causes homophobia, I think it may reinforce homophobia in those who would tend toward that kind of prejudice anyway, but that is all. I feel that culture and society is more influencial on the prejudices of the individual than religion, particularly in modern Western Society.
We only have to look at some societies such as China that traditionally had an acceptance of homosexuality, but due to cultural and political change homophobia has manifested itself, firstly by State enforcement and now as State indifference to prejudice. It simply replaced one justification for prejudice with another......and those Chinese predicated toward prejudice accept it and manifest that prejudice as homophobia (as an acceptable prejudice) while those who would not, do not......we see the same in the West currently with regard Islamophobia....it is arguably acceptable to be prejudicial toward Muslims therefore those who would gravitate toward such actions do, those that would not, do not.
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