Fanatical disbelief doesn't make it so.

Or able to produce something from nothing.

Not all that long ago we all of us believed being left handed was a matter of choice and not God given difference.

If I were to start a church or religious movement it would have to be based on science, and no that's not Scientology, based on aliens coming here and creating man?

Or a powerful being more powerful than we are who we can use?

Real science i.e. would inform us the odds are far less for a whirlwind whipping through a junkyard and creating a fully functional flyable 747; than sheer chance and serendipity creating a vastly more complex human being!

Fanatical disbelief being the scourge of our times and a place that recognises that something from nothing is what created our universe and everything in it; even if that means ignoring the scientific evidence that tells us this just isn't so!

And neither is choice in anyone's sexual orientation.

Time for this rubbish to stop along with the unexamined life or beliefs.

By all means let us have a plebiscite but at the next election, which will get the job done for far less money!

Those who genuinely believe the people should decide, should have absolutely no problem with that or just not discriminating against folks unfortunate enough to be born different. disbelief proves nothing! Rhrosty.

A precise and well argued put down of the head in the sand deeply puritannical double minded sex and body negative sophistries that MIS-inform the advocates of back to the past "traditional" religiosity.

Lord Acton is of course famous for his dictum re how power always corrupts, and absolute power will always corrupt absolutely.

Apparently this prince (or is it ponce) of the "universal" church and the propaganda hacks that infest the benighted Acton Institute are incapable of seeing the dark irony of their situation.

The "catholic" church is of course the West's original intrinsically totalitarian institution. Part of its inherently totalitarian mission statement is that it is the ONLY source of Truth in the world, and its bogus claim on the "souls" of ALL of humankind, and that it has a "great commission" supposedly given by "Jesus" to convert all nations to the "one true faith/way"

By some accounts it is (collectively) the worlds third largest property owner, with prime real estate in most cities on the planet. It also runs the world's largest "privately" owned propaganda machine, the tentacles of which reach into almost every town and village on the planet. It is also a very powerful behind-the-scenes player in amoral global capitalism.

Via the bogus "authority" of its absurdly pretentious "magisterium" it also claims at its "laws" are superior to and always trump what they dismiss as merely man-made secular law.
Right-wing "catholics" even use supposedly binding international treaties to circumvent the secular laws of some/many states, and thus to give the "catholic" church special privileges to over-ride or trump secular laws.
See:
http://www.concordatwatch.eu Anyone for inherently corrupt self-serving institutional power!

This gambit re the "eternally binding authority" of "God's" law as described in the Bible is also now frequently used by protestant fundamentalists in the USA in their war against the secular state.

Individual lay Catholics and clergy have always been found across the political spectrum. Pell is deeply conservative; the new pope sounds sometimes like a mouthpiece for green left weekly. There are right-wing catholic politicians in Australia and the USA, but also a long tradition of catholic union involvements and workers’ rights. In South America, the Catholic Church has sometimes cozied up to brutal right-wing dictators, while left-wing liberation theologians spouted neo-Marxism and joined revolutions.

This should not be surprising; it does after all call itself a “catholic” church.

My concern is that the church (and not just the Catholics) hasn’t realised that we’re no longer living in the middle ages. It does not have any institutional authority to dictate to civil society about the laws it should pass. If it wants to participate in social policy debate – and it has that right – it must do so on the same terms of evidence and reason used by everyone else. If it relies on “God says so”, no one will listen: even its own members, if the outcome of the Irish referendum on gay marriage is any guide.

So, you are an "ethicist", are you, Peter? Well, I can understand your hostility to the Roman catholic church, because what we obviously have here, are two competing absolutist philosophies fighting it out for dominance.

In one corner, we have the Catholic totalitarians, who's concept of right and wrong was handed down to them by some mythical God. They are in a poor position to claim infallibility, as much of their ideology has clearly passed it's used by date.

In the other corner, we have the Human Rights totalitarians, who's ideology is at least more up to date. But the Human Rights totalitarians have an ideology which is no less contradictory and absolutist, than Catholicism, and like all astrology predictions and holy writ, is written in terms that it can mean whatever an "ethicist" wants it to mean.

Human rights are contradictory, and human rights can conflict with each other. You can't advocate Freedom of Religion, and then tell religious people that they can not behave in the way that their God commanded. You can't advocate Freedom of Speech, and then say that you must not "offend, insult or humiliate" any group of non white, non Christian people. White Christians are fair game.

And just to show how non discriminatory our "human rights" organisations are, the UN staffs them with such luminaries of human rights as Saudi Arabia, Yemen, and Libya. It is enough to make even the more absurd tenets of Catholicism positively logical.

Look Peter, most people in the western world are tolerant of homosexuals. Tolerance does not equate to approval. We will not accept that homosexual unions are "marriage". And the more you try to push it, the more that normal people become less tolerant of homosexuals. Forget using human rights because that is a joke. Most people know that human rights is always contrary to the productive and law abiding people of this world. Human rights is about protecting criminals, terrorists, illegal immigrants, and homosexuals. And every non human rights argument that you could advocate could equally apply to incestuous couples.

Peter must be an archer of some strength because he has no difficulty in drawing the long bow.