Attention: Worth the long read! this is important!
Retard: "Religion informs values, people vote based on their values. In a democracy religion is the law through the will of the people."
Me: "values are not dependent on religion, you do not need a magic book to tell you not to be a cruel asshole, or do you? such a proposition is worrying, for your sake."
Retard: "I didn't say that you need religion to inform values, I said that it does inform peoples values. It's amoral."
Me: "wrong, the values of the people writing the books contained within religious texts inform the values of those willing to read it, if you want to believe god told paul, james, and the other prophets to write down said values are irrelevant.
so, in conclusion, the difference between "you do not need religion to inform values" and "it does inform people's values" is so minuscule, it might as well not even exist at all"
Retard: "You're making an awful lot of assumptions about what I believe. The distinction is this, where values come from is arbitrary, you don't need a religion to form a value system, but the fact that some people do get their values from religion is indisputable. So it's a chain of cause and effect, people have values, in a democracy those values are interpreted into law, therefore the law comes from those values regardless of where they came from or the morality of those values. Now unless you want to take away the rights of a large section of the nation, religion will inform the law through the voters."
Me: "the modern laws of america are based off of those written in the magna carta of the British, which in and of itself is based off of those written in Rome, from which they where adopted during the renaissance, the Romans believed in varying adaptations of the greek gods. the bible was inconsequential to the writing of the basic fundamental laws of the united states, the laws of the united states are based off of logic and statistics rather than pure values, as those that are written in most religious texts, and while the values may or may not have been inspired by religion, religion was not taken into account when said laws where written, revised, and revised again."
Retard: " Irrelevant, people use religion to inform their votes today. I don't care if it's moral, or if it's the history of the documents, I just care about what people actually do. There is no objective basis for morality, so I personally suspend judgment on whether or not it's a good or bad thing."
Me: "objective morality is rooted in the first Sumerian laws the,Code of Ur-Nammu. written on tablets of clay using reeds and sticks. these laws are known by all and are universally agreed apon by all civilizations and people, they make up the basis for what morality in and of itself is today. the thought that people would allow outside sources such as the bible to influence their decision making during legislation of law is problematic at best, disconcerting at worst."
i continue with yet another message,
"the fact that people use the bible in legislation is the very reason this post exists in the first place, it is not a sensible place to base your votes off of."