(August 28, 2014 at 2:09 am)rexbeccarox Wrote: I've forgotten how awful religion really can be, and the extent people will go to honor it. As much as I've had beef with my parents over the years, I can't imagine my sexual orientation causing them to actually disown me because of an ancient text and a bunch of woo.I know lots of parents who would, mine included. They aren't bad people per se, they simply hold such a specific-yet-shallow view about certain subjects that they aren't prepared to deal with a situation like that. And that is indeed what is so harmful about religion-- some people will take actions that will pain them terribly, for the sake of staying true to their religious beliefs. What could make a parent reject his/her own child outright? The sincere belief that it's what god wants.
Think about how terrible that is.
"Well, evolution is a theory. It is also a fact. And facts and theories are different things, not rungs in a hierarchy of increasing certainty. Facts are the world's data. Theories are structures of ideas that explain and interpret facts. Facts don't go away when scientists debate rival theories to explain them. Einstein's theory of gravitation replaced Newton's in this century, but apples didn't suspend themselves in midair, pending the outcome. And humans evolved from ape- like ancestors whether they did so by Darwin's proposed mechanism or by some other yet to be discovered."
-Stephen Jay Gould
-Stephen Jay Gould
