Atheism "rights & wrongs"?

[Losty]

I would suggest that you not be terribly concerned with adjusting your views on issues of importance, due to the becoming an atheist. 

The belief that being an atheist somehow means gaining insight and wisdom into matters of the human condition is an illusion.
Atheists believe all sorts of garbage and bullshit...they just happen to do so godlessly.

This is very true, but when you leave a religion you lose so many things that are morally wrong just because they're sins and they're sins just because the bible says so. It can be very confusing at first. Trying to figure out what things are actually wrong and what things don't make sense to be considered wrong outside of the religious context.

[Excited Penguin]

I don't think it should ONLY be about procreation although I think most procreation occurs this way. If humanity were to loose this ability I think it could mean the end of our species eventually........also, the more I think about it, I've been using LGBT throughout this whole post, but I don't think B objects to sex with the opposite gender so for most of this thread I think I'm mainly talking about LGT.

(In that case I think you need to remove the T as well, sans operations transpeople are generally physically capable of producing offspring if they're willing to have sex with people who have opposite reproductive organs)

So...do you think that by considering homosexuality morally acceptable you would be somehow dooming all of mankind to eventually become homosexual? Or do you think increased homosexuality would cause human beings to evolve into a species that cannot reproduce?

I just don't understand the connection between we need to reproduce in order to survive a a species and homosexuality is morally wrong....
What does one have to do with the other?

Just one last thing, why do we need to go on as a species anyways?

Um, I don't know, because we can't go on as a set of chairs?

[Excited Penguin]

I would suggest that you not be terribly concerned with adjusting your views on issues of importance, due to the becoming an atheist. 

The belief that being an atheist somehow means gaining insight and wisdom into matters of the human condition is an illusion.
Atheists believe all sorts of garbage and bullshit...they just happen to do so godlessly.

That's not necessarily true. My own experience is I became much more interested in science, became more open to information in general and my whole worldview transformed into something much more complex around the time I made the godless jump for myself. It can be pretty liberating to find out as a teenager that the whole world believes in bullshit and you're one of the ones who figured it out.

[The Grand Nudger]

Or do you think increased homosexuality would cause human beings to evolve into a species that cannot reproduce?

This one wouldn't matter much...since some schmuck accepting homosexuality, morally, won't actually make any extra homosexuals.    We're either doomed or we aren't on that count, as a proposition, and our acceptance doesn't factor into that equation.  

[Athene]

---

I would suggest that you not be terribly concerned with adjusting your views on issues of importance, due to the becoming an atheist. 

The belief that being an atheist somehow means gaining insight and wisdom into matters of the human condition is an illusion.
Atheists believe all sorts of garbage and bullshit...they just happen to do so godlessly.

---

This is very true, but when you leave a religion you lose so many things that are morally wrong just because they're sins and they're sins just because the bible says so. It can be very confusing at first. Trying to figure out what things are actually wrong and what things don't make sense to be considered wrong outside of the religious context.

Sure.
But people will still hang on to the garbage they want to, because it suits them...at least in my observation.
Where there's a will, there's a way.

[I_am_not_mafia]

one last part on this if i may, LGB I understand, T I don't understand as much (and i'm not sure the proper PC term), I know I've heard about in the wild LGB animals, but if i understand correctly T means you identify as a different gender than the one you were born with. Is it possible LGB are born that way but T is not? (i think i'm asking about nature vs. nurture?) & that T got lumped in with LGB, I don't understand fully how that works and how/if hermaphrodites are associated with this and that's why this occurs? These are questions that are probably off limits normally but you guys make this feel like a safe place to ask questions like that so there it is. (oh also are there examples of T in the animal kingdom that you guys know of?)

Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgendered

There is no choice in either of them. It all comes down to how the brain is wired up.  But there is a difference between being transgendered and homosexual or bisexual. The former is concerned with gender identity whereas the others are sexualities. Being transgendered means that you identify as a gender that does not match that of your body, the others are who you are sexually attracted to. This corresponds to different parts of the brain. There are physical differences between typically male and typically female brains and there is now plenty of evidence that transgendered people do actually have brains that physically match with the gender that they identity as.

It can be very difficult to appreciate this if you are not transgendered yourself because your body matches up your own gender identity so it's never an issue. People treat you as you rather than as something that you are not.  Even for transgendered people it can take a long while to figure out what is wrong with them. So any attempts to explain it will be rough at best.

But take prejudice for example. It's harmful to the recipient because they are treated as something that they are not and whatever they do, whoever they try to be, they are still treated by everyone else according to a stereotype. So for example a black man in America might be seen as a thug or a woman might be seen as weak and less competent regardless of who they really are. A male to female transgendered person would be treated as male and wouldn't be allowed to be themselves. But unlike prejudice it actually goes much deeper than this, because the transgendered person themselves hate those aspects of their own body. So in that regard it's actually similar to Body integrity identity disorder. Think how horrified your wife would be if she suddenly started growing a bushy beard. Or if you started growing very large breasts. You would both try to rectify the problem physically.

People who are transgendered have the highest suicide rate of all.

http://www.vocativ.com/culture/lgbt/tran...r-suicide/

According to surveys, 4.6 percent of the overall U.S. population has self-reported a suicide attempt, with that number climbing to between 10 and 20 percent for lesbian, gay or bisexual respondents. By comparison, 41 percent of trans or gender non-conforming people surveyed have attempted suicide.

It's difficult to measure whether animals have a different gender identity because they can't speak to us and their brains are not as developed as those of humans. But we do know that they can be gender non-confirming in a multitude of ways including their genitalia and sexual attraction. Transgenderism is just another naturally occurring way that a person can be born as non gender conforming.

[robvalue]

Or do you think increased homosexuality would cause human beings to evolve into a species that cannot reproduce?

This one wouldn't matter much...since some schmuck accepting homosexuality, morally, won't actually make any extra homosexuals.    We're either doomed or we aren't on that count, as a proposition, and our acceptance doesn't factor into that equation.  

Right. It's been noted that homosexuality occurs at roughly a fixed percentage. So whether you are nice and kind to homosexuals, or go wipe them all out in a rampage, you'll still get roughly the same proportion in the next generation.

If you're worried about homosexuals killing everyone else and then refusing to reproduce, then such a "threat" is present from any subset of people.

All these dodgy arguments "against" homosexuality are just ways of trying to justify being shitty to them.

[I_am_not_mafia]

That took awhile to reply to everyone so far, sorry for the delay, I REALLY appreciate everyone being respectful and thoughtful in your responses, I did want to add one other thing however.....I'm especially ashamed of how I used to view atheists prior to becoming an atheist, and how hateful my speech towards them must have sounded, when it was actually just ignorance. I suspect if there are any LGBT that are reading this that are offended by something I said, Please accept the possibility that I just have not fully understood your point of view, and post a reply to help educate me, I may have even put words in your mouth or attributed a position to you that is incorrect. Please reply and correct me if i did.

Absolutely no problem. We're all ignorant about a lot of things. What matters is that we recognise when we don't know something and want to learn more. There's a whole lifetime of indoctrination that you need to sort through, assumptions that you don't even know that you have made and emotional associations formed since you were young. We're all subject to that to a lesser or greater degree and it takes a concerted and sustained effort to become a free-thinker that never really ends.

[Minimalist]

Sounds to me that you led your political inclinations determine your religious beliefs and Christ was not truly central to your life.

Makes him much smarter than you.

I also don't understand how christianity/republicans/the right got all intertwined with Guns

Oh, that's easy.

[Losty]

(In that case I think you need to remove the T as well, sans operations transpeople are generally physically capable of producing offspring if they're willing to have sex with people who have opposite reproductive organs)

So...do you think that by considering homosexuality morally acceptable you would be somehow dooming all of mankind to eventually become homosexual? Or do you think increased homosexuality would cause human beings to evolve into a species that cannot reproduce?

I just don't understand the connection between we need to reproduce in order to survive a a species and homosexuality is morally wrong....
What does one have to do with the other?

Just one last thing, why do we need to go on as a species anyways?

Um, I don't know, because we can't go on as a set of chairs?

And if we were to go extinct that would be bad how?