Get Rid of All Religion?

Off Topic Politics & World Issues
501

[quote]zecarlo wrote:

[quote]SexMachine wrote:

[quote]zecarlo wrote:

[quote]SexMachine wrote:

[quote]SexMachine wrote:

[quote]zecarlo wrote:

[quote]SexMachine wrote:

When Rome wanted to divine the future they traveled to Delphi to consult the oracle as they had no auspices of their own. [/quote]
That isn’t true. [/quote]
Yes it is. In the early days they used Etruscan augurs and afterwards augurs from Greece. I’m using my phone now but will provide evidence tomorrow.[/quote]

The Roman equivalent of an augur. Confusing as they are usually referred to as augurs or auspices: Haruspex - Wikipedia [/quote]

Augur and auspice are not interchangeable and cannot be confused with one another. An auspice is what an augur interprets. Romans could become augurs. A Roman would not travel to Greece to find an augur since they already had them there. A Roman might go to Greece to consult an oracle. An oracle is not an augur.
[/quote]

You’re missing the point. In the early days of the Republic Etruscan priests made predictions to the Romans. The Etruscan Gods are older than the Roman just as are the Greek Gods. Later there was a significant Greek population in Rome who were useful at watching birds fly east or west and detecting abnormalities in sheep offal(particularly the liver.) The Roman priests were political appointees and vestal virgins who did not perform these ceremonies with few exceptions like when they were to decide on an architectural plan. I will try to find sources for this. As you can imagine it is a laborious and time consuming task.[/quote]
I suggest you don’t waste your time trying to teach an Italian about his own history. [/quote]

I always laugh when I hear Italians claim Roman descent. Let me give you a lesson sonny based on 20 years of study. If you are from Sicily you likely have Carthaginian blood, ancient Greek blood(not modern Slavic Greek blood) and very likely jewish blood. When Vespasian and his son Titus besieged jerusalem from 66-70AD they took hundreds of thousands of slaves to Italy. They were used to build the Coliseum and the riches of the second temple described in the bible were used to fund it. Later they were settled as peasants in Sicily and to a lesser extent Calabria.

If you are from the central peninsular you likely have Aequi, Volsci, Samnite, Campanian, Lucanian, Apulian, Celtic and possibly Carthaginian blood.

If you are from the north you have Germanic and Baltic blood.

Gradualy over the third and fourth century Rome was turned into a ghost town as barbarians invaded and the people were no longer able to defend it as Gibbon explained Marius gave citizenship to any foreigner willing to join the legions and the old values of honour, character and bravery, and religion had long since vanished. The remaining nobles fled to Constantinople and to a lesser extent the Seleucid provinces, in particular Egypt.

I have spent the last twenty years studying Livy, Plutarch, Tacitus, Gibbon, Caesar’s commentaries, the Augustine Chronicles and more modern writers like Theodore Dodge, Clausewitz, Jomini, Sir Gavin de Beer etc.

Another misconception that has lasted thousands of years is that Hannibal recruited Celts/Gauls for his army in Spain and across the Alps. The Celts came West from the Danube in the second century and subdued the native Ligurians who were then forced to migrate to northern Italy and the Alps between France and Italy and along the Riviera to Genoa. These were the men Hannibal recruited into his army, not the Celts. If you are from this region you likely have pre-Indo-European blood and are closely related to the Basques.

I hope this has been enlightening for you. Your country is in such dire straights. 30% on old age pension alone! Good grief you’re in trouble my ‘Roman’ friend.

502

PS An Augury is an omen and an Augur is one who reads it. Generally only Roman architects practiced Augur prior to planning a building. It was generally performed by Etruscans, sometimes expat Greeks and on important occasions at Delphi. Scipio Africanus performed an Augur prior to Zama predicting success but this was not the norm. Please refrain from contradicting me void of alternative explanation my ‘Roman’ friend.

503

[quote]kamui wrote:

[quote]
And they all did it in different ways. Or did the Greeks spend their weekends in a way that would have pleased Winthrop?[/quote]

The greeks never allowed gay marriage. And how people spend their weekends has nothing to do with our topic. [/quote]

I neither claimed nor implied that they did. I was responding to this, which you wrote:

“Oh, i don’t decide what is socially useful and not.
Societies and centuries did it.”

My point being that societies and centuries has defined every imaginable private and social act in every imaginable way.

[quote]

Maybe, maybe not.
But your opinion would be the same if this particular society and century was not looking to include homosexual matrinomy among the things that are socially useful.

You can’t invoke the majority when it suits you and disregard it when it doesn’t. [/quote]

I’m not invoking the majority; you are. You are invoking a majority of long-dead people and civilizations, and you are ascribing to their beliefs and proclivities a superiority, relative to our own, that is not justified. Understanding history and asking it to lock you in a cage are two very different things.

Marriage is a human institution. It is what we say that it is. The question is whether gay marriage will benefit or harm our society. Given the social and economic advantages of monogamy, I think it clear that the former is the answer.

504

Ah, kamui you are one of the smartest guys here. Ever thought what would happen to the traditional fabric of our society if faggotry was made the norm? Ever think what it would and is doing to kids’ heads? Ever thought of the moral consequences, the slippery slope of transgender, polyamorous marriage with adoption rights and so on?

505

[quote]SexMachine wrote:
Ah, kamui you are one of the smartest guys here. Ever thought what would happen to the traditional fabric of our society if faggotry was made the norm? Ever think what it would and is doing to kids’ heads? Ever thought of the moral consequences, the slippery slope of transgender, polyamorous marriage with adoption rights and so on?
[/quote]

See kamui, this is the absence of decency you were talking about. This is from the moral backbone of our country apparently, a religious man attempting to tell a non religious guy like me or smh that we aren’t smart enough to have figured out what “faggotry” would lead to.

Stopping “faggotry” would keep people from making changes that make sense for gay people.

Even more strange considering he just posted this to pittbull:

[quote]SexMachine wrote:
Please don’t offer anymore of your sexual advice. My sex life is in no need of your assistance sonny.[/quote]

Apparently he doesn’t need sexual advice but has no problem giving it out. Take your own advice “sonny.”

506

http://www.pe.com/local-news/riverside-county/lake-elsinore/lake-elsinore-headlines-index/20140306-lake-elsinore-controversial-roadside-cross-removed-but-more-appear.ece

507

[quote]SexMachine wrote:
Ever thought what would happen to the traditional fabric of our society if faggotry was made the norm?
[/quote]

These words don’t signify anything.

What would it mean to “make ‘faggotry’ the norm?” Legalize gay marriage? This won’t change the simple fact that the vast majority of human beings will be guided by the biological imperative to find and mate with a same-species member of the opposite sex. Is any poster here really so tentatively straight that he thinks that, had he grown up a few houses down from a gay married couple, he might have a dick in his mouth right now?

But, anyway, what exactly do you think would happen to “the traditional fabric of our society”–whatever that is–“if faggotry was made the norm?” I live in a gay-marriage state; what tangible consequences are there? Which ones can I expect in the future?

508

[quote]H factor wrote:

See kamui, this is the absence of decency you were talking about. This is from the moral backbone of our country apparently, a religious man attempting to tell a non religious guy like me or smh that we aren’t smart enough to have figured out what “faggotry” would lead to.

[/quote]

Then why on earth advocate it?

[quote]
Stopping “faggotry” would keep people from making changes that make sense for gay people.

[quote]

And by the same token stopping pedophilia or serial killing would make changes that make sense for psychopaths. We couldn’t possibly have a society with a social contract, norms, mores and family values could we?

Well you see I don’t feel the need to sodomise people and Pitttbulll asked the question about my screen name so I felt perhaps he was offering to suck my dick to pay for his next vaporiser hit.

Apparently he doesn’t need sexual advice but has no problem giving it out. Take your own advice “sonny.” [/quote]

I have made abundantly clear what my advice is and I can assure you I take it. I’m not an LGBTIQ whatever the fuck. I just like attractive intelligent women with strong character. Weird I know. Maybe there should be laws enacted against me. I have to marry a man or someone on hormone replacement with their penis removed. Does that sound reasonable?

BTW Pat has his own opinions. Don’t try to link them with mine. I have a puritan streak from gosh knows where for one thing. But I respect all human life and wish NO ONE HARM with the exception of murders and child molesters. Don’t know why I feel the need to explain myself to you. Maybe so you can refrain from retaliatory responses.

509

[quote]IamMarqaos wrote:

[quote]killerDIRK wrote:
It is because they ARE religious that they are intolerant of me !

So F-em, let them have their little fantasies to keep them going…[/quote]

You mean to tell me that Atheists aren’t intolerant of you? I was born in a country that claims to be among the most tolerant in the world, the Netherlands, and have traveled extensively in Europe, you know, the bastion of tolerance, and I can tell you with a 100% certainty that intolerance towards you and how you identify has very little to do with religion (because very few over there are religious or even believe).

This aversion and cruelty towards a person like you manifests across the board.

The religious and non-religious, the believer and atheist are uncomfortable because they simply do not understand, at all, what you are going through.

For the religious it might be easy to say; “well the Bible/Koran etc says…” and be done with it but that’s actually a kindness compared to what I have heard Atheist describe someone in your position.

I think it absolutely sucks and I feel for you and I have a good friend who suffers similarly but to blame religion and give non-believers a free pass is not right. As a matter of fact, more religious people have reached out to my friend than any other. Her own family disowned her yet a small Hope Church accepted her just the way she identifies. Don’t try to change her, convince her of anything other than that Jesus loves her and will accept her the way she is.

Your experience is obviously different but you cannot paint the world with your brush.

I wish you all the best. Truly.

[/quote]

thanks for the kind words. You are correct. It is not just religion that has been oppresive. Yet, it Is those that are more fundementaly religious who try to shove their believes down my throat that I abhor.

I consider and am considered a very tolerant person due to my situation, so I (being an atheist) do not condemn a person for believing what they do or who they are…they just are.

It is those that get up in my face about it.
I have walked more than a mile in womens shoes and it is not easy.
Yet you do and will not see me getting into someelses business unless it directly effects my quality of life…

510

[quote]smh_23 wrote:

These words don’t signify anything.

[/quote] I’m sure Edmund Burke would disagree. As would the Emperor Augustus who became increasingly conservative with his age. He exiled Pliny to the Black Sea for writing a Karma Sutra style book for the Roman gentry. He even exiled his own granddaughter for promiscuity. He personally witnessed the moral decline as Rome became an agrarian based republic to an empire. Thucydides personally witnessed the same moral decline resulting from 30 years of war with Sparta and the change in society from an agrarian based republic to mercenary state.

The norm? Good grief the human race would die out in a generation. But I see what you’re getting at with the repetition of the word and the quotation marks. I committed a thought crime didn’t I? I should be hung with piano wire with a sign around my neck professing my lack of political correctness.

We’ve been through this a thousand times. A gay man can marry any consenting adult woman he chooses. If he doesn’t like women it’s not the state’s role to cater for his…ah…‘normal’ urges.

I would say it would be more likely, I’d avoid them and if anything did enter my mouth I’d bite it off. Is that any help?

[quote]
But, anyway, what exactly do you think would happen to “the traditional fabric of our society”–whatever that is–“if faggotry was made the norm?” I live in a gay-marriage state; what tangible consequences are there? Which ones can I expect in the future?[/quote]

LGBTQIwhatthefuck agitators attending preschools, funded by the government and teaching your three year old how to insert baseball sized anal beads up his rectum. And I’m SURE it wouldn’t be a government payroll profession that attracts sexual deviants of different sorts.

Read Edmund Burke if you’re really interested.

511

[quote]killerDIRK wrote:
[

It is those that get up in my face about it.
I have walked more than a mile in womens shoes and it is not easy.

[/quote]

Ah…Oh-kay. Maybe if you didn’t wear women’s clothes people wouldn’t get ‘in your face’. But that’s part of the thrill of it isn’t it? An angry hetrosexual man! Who knows what he might do? He might pin you to the ground and give it to you up the you know where!

512

[quote]SexMachine wrote:

I have made abundantly clear what my advice is and I can assure you I take it. I’m not an LGBTIQ whatever the fuck. I just like attractive intelligent women with strong character. Weird I know. Maybe there should be laws enacted against me. I have to marry a man or someone on hormone replacement with their penis removed. Does that sound reasonable?

BTW Pat has his own opinions. Don’t try to link them with mine. I have a puritan streak from gosh knows where for one thing. But I respect all human life and wish NO ONE HARM with the exception of murders and child molesters. Don’t know why I feel the need to explain myself to you. Maybe so you can refrain from retaliatory responses.[/quote]

Wow, what is wrong with you? First off you come into a fairly civil debate between a few people with shit like faggotry then go off on a bizarre rant that no one is talking about in terms of needing laws enacted against people like you.

You follow this up by bringing up Pat for some reason when I quoted your words and no one elses. You don’t have the need to explain yourself to me nor am I really interested in your view on “faggotry.”

513

[quote]SexMachine wrote:

LGBTQIwhatthefuck agitators attending preschools, funded by the government and teaching your three year old how to insert baseball sized anal beads up his rectum. And I’m SURE it wouldn’t be a government payroll profession that attracts sexual deviants of different sorts.[/quote]

This is a very rational fear. I’m sure we have a huge amount of three year olds having this happen in states that allow gay marriage.

Look at you lose your mind in this debate for absolutely no reason at all. You stepped into what a few people were talking about and thought it would be a nice time for some hate filled insanity.*

*Oh wait you said you only wish bad things on murderers and rapists you just choose to toss out words like faggotry and paint scenarios where little kids have items up their rectums if we allow same sex marriage to happen.

Well I’ve just lost all interest in this debate. Thanks for playing kamui and Sloth, but we’ve brought out the lunatics.

514

Sexmachine, you’re choice of language basically amounts to screaming in the face of the people you’re trying to convince. But, if you’re purpose isn’t to convince…Well, why even bother?

515

[quote]SexMachine wrote:

[quote]smh_23 wrote:

These words don’t signify anything.

[/quote] I’m sure Edmund Burke would disagree. As would the Emperor Augustus who became increasingly conservative with his age. He exiled Pliny to the Black Sea for writing a Karma Sutra style book for the Roman gentry. He even exiled his own granddaughter for promiscuity. He personally witnessed the moral decline as Rome became an agrarian based republic to an empire. Thucydides personally witnessed the same moral decline resulting from 30 years of war with Sparta and the change in society from an agrarian based republic to mercenary state.

The norm? Good grief the human race would die out in a generation. But I see what you’re getting at with the repetition of the word and the quotation marks. I committed a thought crime didn’t I? I should be hung with piano wire with a sign around my neck professing my lack of political correctness.

We’ve been through this a thousand times. A gay man can marry any consenting adult woman he chooses. If he doesn’t like women it’s not the state’s role to cater for his…ah…‘normal’ urges.

I would say it would be more likely, I’d avoid them and if anything did enter my mouth I’d bite it off. Is that any help?

[quote]
But, anyway, what exactly do you think would happen to “the traditional fabric of our society”–whatever that is–“if faggotry was made the norm?” I live in a gay-marriage state; what tangible consequences are there? Which ones can I expect in the future?[/quote]

LGBTQIwhatthefuck agitators attending preschools, funded by the government and teaching your three year old how to insert baseball sized anal beads up his rectum. And I’m SURE it wouldn’t be a government payroll profession that attracts sexual deviants of different sorts.

Read Edmund Burke if you’re really interested.[/quote]

There is a whole lot of nothing here. To take one of many, many examples, why would you think that Augustus’ finickiness would stand as evidence of anything at all here? Does it matter to anyone that a Roman emperor got pissed about an erotic book? Should we be exiling authors of erotic fiction? Does Burke’s opinion on anything have intrinsic value by virtue of its being his?

To take another example, I can’t tell if your doomsday scenario involving anal beads–which, by the way, betrays what could be misinterpreted as some or another kind of fascination, given the lurid amount of detail with which it was presented–is made entirely in jest, or if it’s at least partly a reflection of your actual fears. If the latter, then you could do with far, far less melodrama. Gay marriage is legal in my state; I grew up with gay people living all around me. And yet, I just had sex with a woman, and no men tried to rape me, and I was never taught, in school, about the appurtenances of homosexual sex.

People who honestly believe that homosexuality has the power to corrupt our society must further believe that it has some power of persuasion over the heterosexual. Which means that they are probably a little further on the old Kinsey Scale than they’d like to admit.

But about that word. “Faggot.” You think you should be free to use it. I agree. But I’m going to put it in quotes because I don’t use it. Just like I don’t use the word “kike.” You seem to be pretty preoccupied, of late, with your religion and possibly Jewish ancestry. Surely you can connect the dots of that analogy.

516

[quote]SexMachine wrote:

[quote]zecarlo wrote:

[quote]SexMachine wrote:

[quote]zecarlo wrote:

[quote]SexMachine wrote:

[quote]SexMachine wrote:

[quote]zecarlo wrote:

[quote]SexMachine wrote:

When Rome wanted to divine the future they traveled to Delphi to consult the oracle as they had no auspices of their own. [/quote]
That isn’t true. [/quote]
Yes it is. In the early days they used Etruscan augurs and afterwards augurs from Greece. I’m using my phone now but will provide evidence tomorrow.[/quote]

The Roman equivalent of an augur. Confusing as they are usually referred to as augurs or auspices: Haruspex - Wikipedia [/quote]

Augur and auspice are not interchangeable and cannot be confused with one another. An auspice is what an augur interprets. Romans could become augurs. A Roman would not travel to Greece to find an augur since they already had them there. A Roman might go to Greece to consult an oracle. An oracle is not an augur.
[/quote]

You’re missing the point. In the early days of the Republic Etruscan priests made predictions to the Romans. The Etruscan Gods are older than the Roman just as are the Greek Gods. Later there was a significant Greek population in Rome who were useful at watching birds fly east or west and detecting abnormalities in sheep offal(particularly the liver.) The Roman priests were political appointees and vestal virgins who did not perform these ceremonies with few exceptions like when they were to decide on an architectural plan. I will try to find sources for this. As you can imagine it is a laborious and time consuming task.[/quote]
I suggest you don’t waste your time trying to teach an Italian about his own history. [/quote]

I always laugh when I hear Italians claim Roman descent. Let me give you a lesson sonny based on 20 years of study. If you are from Sicily you likely have Carthaginian blood, ancient Greek blood(not modern Slavic Greek blood) and very likely jewish blood. When Vespasian and his son Titus besieged jerusalem from 66-70AD they took hundreds of thousands of slaves to Italy. They were used to build the Coliseum and the riches of the second temple described in the bible were used to fund it. Later they were settled as peasants in Sicily and to a lesser extent Calabria.

If you are from the central peninsular you likely have Aequi, Volsci, Samnite, Campanian, Lucanian, Apulian, Celtic and possibly Carthaginian blood.

If you are from the north you have Germanic and Baltic blood.

Gradualy over the third and fourth century Rome was turned into a ghost town as barbarians invaded and the people were no longer able to defend it as Gibbon explained Marius gave citizenship to any foreigner willing to join the legions and the old values of honour, character and bravery, and religion had long since vanished. The remaining nobles fled to Constantinople and to a lesser extent the Seleucid provinces, in particular Egypt.

I have spent the last twenty years studying Livy, Plutarch, Tacitus, Gibbon, Caesar’s commentaries, the Augustine Chronicles and more modern writers like Theodore Dodge, Clausewitz, Jomini, Sir Gavin de Beer etc.

Another misconception that has lasted thousands of years is that Hannibal recruited Celts/Gauls for his army in Spain and across the Alps. The Celts came West from the Danube in the second century and subdued the native Ligurians who were then forced to migrate to northern Italy and the Alps between France and Italy and along the Riviera to Genoa. These were the men Hannibal recruited into his army, not the Celts. If you are from this region you likely have pre-Indo-European blood and are closely related to the Basques.

I hope this has been enlightening for you. Your country is in such dire straights. 30% on old age pension alone! Good grief you’re in trouble my ‘Roman’ friend.[/quote]
Did I say I was Roman?

Why do you say that in the 3rd and 4th centuries Rome was a ghost town, it was not, and then mention Marius who lived over 400 years prior? You are also mistaken about Marius’ reforms.

And there is no such thing as Carthaginian blood.

517

[quote]SexMachine wrote:
PS An Augury is an omen and an Augur is one who reads it. Generally only Roman architects practiced Augur prior to planning a building. It was generally performed by Etruscans, sometimes expat Greeks and on important occasions at Delphi. Scipio Africanus performed an Augur prior to Zama predicting success but this was not the norm. Please refrain from contradicting me void of alternative explanation my ‘Roman’ friend.[/quote]
Provide sources because you have already proven you don’t know as much as you claim.

518

[quote]zecarlo wrote:

Why do you say that in the 3rd and 4th centuries Rome was a ghost town, it was not. [/quote]

You are correct, Zecarlo. Though it was in decline, Rome was nothing remotely close to a ghost town in the 3rd and 4th centuries.

In fact, it was the most populous city in the world throughout the entire 3rd century, and it almost certainly remained so throughout most, if not all, of the 4th. Its population declined sharply over the next few hundred years, and it was most certainly a ghost town throughout the early and high middle ages, but it was very much a bustling city during the span of time in question.

519

[quote]zecarlo wrote:

Did I say I was a NAMBLA member? I have nothing against them.

Now why do you say that in the 3rd and 4th centuries Rome was a ghost town, it was not, and then mention Marius who lived over 400 years prior? You are also mistaken about Marius’ reforms.

And there is no such thing as Carthaginian blood. [/quote]

520

[quote]zecarlo wrote:
Did I say I was Roman?

[quote]

You told me you know more about your country than I do(meaning ancient Rome, not modern Italy)

The Roman empire did not disappear overnight. It is generally agreed that the third and fourth centuries were the main years of decline. Gibbons extends it to the fifth. It’s not that no one lived there, it’s that its wealth had been ransacked by barbarian invasions, the people could no longer protect the place or raise legions, the architecture and pagan temples had fallen into disrepute and the nobility had fled to Constantinople and Egypt.

I don’t recall mentioning Marius’ reforms. However granting the right to serve in the legions to landless peasants was not a reform that added to the quality of the legions. His real disservice was as plebeian tribune frustrating the rights of the optimates to control the outcomes of elections. Also whilst on extended campaign unscrupulous members of the equestrian order took possession of the legionaries’ land using it to build large scale agricultural estates destroying the agrarian nature of Roman life. These things along with the Gracian agrarian reforms helped lead to the decline and fall of Rome.

[quote]
And there is no such thing as Carthaginian blood. [/quote]

Depends what you mean and it’s a silly thing to say as it’s a common expression. Carthage was of course one of the successful ‘colonies’ of the Phoenician city of Tyre. Tyre was established around 2700BC and the Phoenicians were likely already seafarers when they arrived(probably from the Red Sea.)

As Carthage and dozens of other Phoenician ‘settlements’ had sprung up across the Mediterranean as far as Spain it would seem silly to call the Carthaginians who fought Rome twice and developed settlements in Sicily ‘Phoenicians.’