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Two years ago, my son Will, then a college freshman, told my wife, Jane, and me that he is gay. He said he’d known for some time, and that his sexual orientation wasn’t something he chose; it was simply a part of who he is. Jane and I were proud of him for his honesty and courage. We were surprised to learn he is gay but knew he was still the same person he’d always been. The only difference was that now we had a more complete picture of the son we love. […] Knowing that my son is gay prompted me to consider the issue from another perspective: that of a dad who wants all three of his kids to lead happy, meaningful lives with the people they love, a blessing Jane and I have shared for 26 years.

Republican Senator embraces gay marriage after his son comes out.

Read his full explanation.

(via think-progress)

Bravo 👍

Would You Know Atheist Discrimination If You Saw It?

atheism-news:

psycologytoday

Discrimination against nonbelievers in America is so overt and widespread that most of us are completely desensitized to it.

If you’re a rational American –religious or nonreligious – you probably roll your eyes when you hear fundamentalist preachers and right-wing politicians rant in the name of God whenever a major tragedy occurs. But do you stop to consider that their comments directly disparage nonbelievers? If these preachers and politicians directly attacked Hindus, Jews, or Muslims the way they attack atheists-humanists, they would be quickly called out for their hateful prejudice. So why should their anti-secular venom be tolerated?

This phenomenon was highly visible this week. Within hours of the Connecticut school massacre, men of God were eager to explain the travesty, and those explanations consistently attributed the violence to American secularity. Former presidential aspirant Mike Huckabee, for example, proclaimed that the shooting rampage was the natural result of our having “systematically removed God from our schools.”

Imagine if Huckabee had publicly suggested that the rejection of Jesus, rather than the more general God, was the reason for the Connecticut school violence. In little time, he would be sharply criticized for even indirectly suggesting that Hindus, Jews, and Muslims were somehow responsible for the rampage. Yet when the circle is drawn to exclude only atheists and humanists, the prejudice is seen as acceptable. (Huckabee was widely criticized for insensitivity, but not for prejudice toward nonbelievers.)

It was written by my little sister

Why do we need religion and secularism in our lives?

We have got two belief systems in our lives. One is scientific and another one is a faith belief system. There are a lot of arguments about which of them we do not need. In this essay I am going to write about my point of view and prove it by giving reasons.

This topic was rather difficult for me, that is why I wanted to know the opinions of people, who have got different belief systems. I decided to make an interview of a religious person from a mosque and my foreign secular teacher. Furthermore, I was interested in my friends’ points of view, so I made a questionnaire for them, which was not similar to the interview. I can honestly say that the answers impressed me and I could discover something new about my friends.

I took a particular interest in the attitude of a religious person to a secular person, therefore I asked them about compassion. I had supposed that probably, religious people think that they are a bit more sympathetic than secular people and the most interesting thing is that I was right. However, there is something that is even more surprising: new research from the University of California, Berkeley, suggests that the highly religious are less motivated by compassion when helping a stranger than are non-believers.[1] Honestly, the fact that a believer thought that he was in the higher moral position than non-believer disappointed me and it made me think about morality and religion. Some people think that there is no morality without religion, but in my opinion morality does not depend on it. Religion is supposed to support morality, though there are also immoral religious people. For example, a sharp rise of religion in Russia in 90’s of XX century did not lead to the decrease of immorality and crime.[2]

Then I asked a question about the life after death, because it is one of the most interesting secrets of life. Certainly, I was sure that the religious interviewee believed in the second life, that is why I did not expect a great answer from him, but I expected that even a secular person believes in that and I was not right. My secular interviewee answered that he could not believe in the life after death because there is no evidence for it. However, the believer’s answer was not as simple as I expected. Obviously, he agreed with that statement, but he made a really good comparison. He said that when we were in the womb of our mothers we did not even expect that there was another life, it seemed that our world was that womb, but it turned around that we have got another life, this life. The same thing with this world, there can be another world, which is much bigger than this one and I think, this statement sounds impressive.

Next question supposed to be related to the science, so I asked them about the role of religion in scientific inventions. It is rather surprising that both of my interviewees had same opinions, they decided that religion and scientific inventions are interrelated.

Then I wanted to know what they envisage about future state of the world, because it is interesting for me to know what will change in the future and I frequently think about it. I really liked the differences between their answers. Religious man was sure that in the future religion will play the main role in our lives, so I expected, that secular person will support position of scientific belief system. Nevertheless, he said that nothing will change, in any time there will be a struggle between religion and secularism, sometimes religion will be main, but sometimes secularism will have the main role and, as for me, it is a great answer.

I called the last question ‘special question’, because I asked it my friends too. I wanted to know if parents should let their children choose religion. All answers, including my friends’ answers, were very similar to each other. Everybody thought that parents should just give their children some information about religion and let them make a decision by themselves. Only my foreign secular teacher said that it is almost impossible to give them a right to decide which belief system to make basic because every action in our lives, such us wedding and having baby, depends on the belief system and I was really thankful for such great answer.[3] [4]

The next part of my survey was really engrossing, because I could discover my friend’s opinions. The first thing I noticed is that the majority of my friends support religion and more than half of them claim, that religion helped them to reach a lot. When I asked them about what affected their choices, almost all of them said that their decisions depended only on themselves and for me it was an unexpected answer. The funny thing is that approximately half of them do not have any opinion about life after death and the statement that everybody was born with some purpose. Another half support both opinions and only three people do not agree with my friends. However, there was a question for which almost all of them had the same answer, they all agreed with the statement that sick people should rely on science, but still be religious and actually, I agree with them. Nevertheless, their opinions about two last questions were divided, some of my friends think that the morality of person does depend on the belief system, others do not and also half of them wants religion to be main in the future, another half supports both belief systems. Thus, I could see their opinions and decide something new for me. [5]

The survey helped me to have some idea about religion, but I still needed to answer my main question, so I started to think about serious things such as politics and economics. I know, one of humanity’s features is a desire to have a power and politics is a way which helps them in that. Furthermore, I also know that a religion supposed to be against politics, but I think that sometimes religion helps powerful people to control others, because there are things which religion does not allow people to do, so they do not break rules. Moreover, even if a lot of years ago religion was against being rich, now it supports working hard and helps economics’ growth. That is why we need religion. However if all people were religious, different religions would try to become major and it could lead to disbalance. Also as we know religion was always against science, but it is obvious that we need science to have some knowledge about the world and develop, so this opinion supports secularism.

Finally, I am happy that I chose this topic, because it is one of those topics, which make people think a lot. Therefore, I suppose, that in the future I will still think about the answer for this question. However, now I understand, that the world needs to keep in balance religion and secularism.


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