Going way back to the original topic at hand here, yeah those bastards should be burned at the stake for taking advantage of religion in order to win their goals of state.
Going to the current world economic state sidetrack, yeah China, India, and Japan are all strong economic contendors.
Going to the issue of gay marriage, which for some reason Kas has to shove his points straight home at this, where is Ahnk when you need him? Anyways no comment on this one.
And everything else I pretty much ignored. So Dolash, okay buddy, just stop reading every so often in order to take a migrane pill. Seth, yeah we love you too buddy. Kas, no that does not mean we will take a gay marriage. Go back to your little Christian sphere of whats right and wrong sandbox and play with your toy soldier figurines. I think that is all that I wanted to say.
Saying "marriage is between a man and a women" is a religious view, and therefore should have no bearing on marriage whatsoever. Just because some of you regard a book written thousands of years ago by nomads as your law, doesn't mean everyone else should have to follow it.
No, it's a pretty recent occurrence, and it's caused by the Right and Conservatives. Prior to all this fundie crap we had been moving forward by leaps and bounds.
Kas, social progress is above your petty "my side vs. your side". Forward implies things are changing - example: black people are now allowed to sit at the front of the bus. For America to be moving backwards, it would need to be getting closer to those days, not further from.
No. But what I said stands - moving backwards by definition implies a reversal to a previous state. Therefor, anything otherwise is moving forward. Or, at the very least, remaining at the same point.
Ah, now the argument becomes 'is (or was) America moving in the right direction?' I would say yes, for two reasons. The first is, a generation after every controversial and bitter battle for change (Race, gender, etc), what was once a hot-topic is now common knowledge. A generation passes, and what was seen as an awful thing by their forefathers is often seen as a just fine thing by the youth.
However, I would say this is more of an indicator then an actual test. It is really quite hard to divine just what it is to 'move forwards' as a society. To each group, it seems so painfully obvious that it denies explination - telling someone how to breath is incredibly hard, because you expect them to already know. The people who believe in one way have difficulty putting into exact words just why it is they do. The exception to that is highly religious people who are unafraid to tell you straight out their beliefs come directly from religion, although then they would have trouble explaining logically why they believe in them.
I'm going to spend some more time trying to compose an answer along these lines, and then get back to you.
I'm still baffled as to how we could have been moving backward instead of forward. One of the lowest points in our history was the Dark Ages. We are still crawling out of that hole, and some seem to think that backsliding towards "let religion rule us" is actually the right thing to do.
I personally have no wish to go back to a state like that, and we already have the proof that it pretty much sucks for the people who prefer to use their own brains instead of blindly following a leader.
