Gay Marriage

[LemmingofGlory]

I feel (apparently, along with Duckula) that there are some things which are wrong.

Unfortunately, "just plain wrong" is not a particularly convincing argument. As Pete said, realize why you think something is wrong under the assumptions you've made. Your assumptions (or axioms) and further reasoning lead to why you take a particular position, and that makes for a much more convincing argument (unless your axioms are embarrassingly inconsistent).

And sometimes you can't reach a conclusion given your chosen set of axioms. (A bit of colloquial Gödel here, eh?) See my post in this thread entitled "All about incest" for an example. Incest is something I have an inclination against, but I feel my axioms are too weak (or limited) to rationally conclude that.

...but that still doesn't make it right from my point of view, which is where I judge others from.

That your judgement comes from your point of view is obvious. What's not obvious is why you hold that point of view. Thus, it matters what axioms you assume (and, perhaps, why) to come to your conclusions.

To feel that you can only judge people based on what general society determines as right and wrong is to have no opinions of your own, just everyone else's. If everyone suddenly subscribed to this, there would be no change on anything, ever.

I believe Pete's comments on this matter were more to make clear the influence of society in how one thinks, not to imply independent thinking is totally impossible.

That's not what she was referring to and you know it. You're just playing semantics here. That has no real effect on anyone.

Pete's example provides illustration of two of his previous points.

(1) The 7-day-week illustrates an inobvious religious influence, which gets back to knowing why you make certain assumptions and how they lead to your conclusions. Suppose someone concludes that Christmas being a federal holiday is acceptable but a "Thou shalt have no God before me" law is not. Why? Well, let's look at what was assumed to get there.

(2) "Get all that organized religion out of government" is excessively general. The extent to which "all" applies is unknown except to the speaker.

In short, it makes a good soapbox, but more specificity is necessary. And, as I'm ending this post, it seems Ducky has provided more specificity. *gets popcorn to watch round 2*

-Lemmy