I mean, considering I've seen it claimed that intolerance is a purely human characteristic and that religion is never a factor.

So odd.

Percentage-wise, 500% more people in the general population don't support LGBTQ rights than among atheists. That says something about intolerance, I think. Maybe there is a difference in levels of intolerance between average people, including religious people, and atheists, who appear to be much more tolerant, percentage-wise, than the rest.

It seems pretty clear.

I would never say though that believing in such a book might cause a few literalists to be at least marginally less favorable to homosexuals. Because people generally don't believe what they read anyway.

the book doesn't say that God recommends stoning homosexuals. The book says that God commands it.

Also the stones were not real stones, they were sofa cushions.

NOOOOOOOOoooooooooo.....!

The Spanish Inquisition only used metaphorical and humorous tortures.

So yeah, something isn’t adding up here. Where is the decider when you need him most?

I'm just taking about statistics here. We have some pretty clear ones to look at, both supplied by fellow DUers and members of this group. But they don't correlate those data with trump supporters. the numbers are similar, but there may not be a correlation. Or there may. We just don't know for sure.

Maybe we could get Pew Research to do a survey to measure those things. That would be interesting.

to analyze polling data from that country. To answer that we question, we'd need to know at least the following
- How the poll was conducted.
-What's a statistically valid sample for a diverse country of 1.4 billion people?
- Which of the many ethnic groups in China were included?
- Were they polled on their religious beliefs?
- If they were polled on religious beliefs, could they answer honestly?
- What was China's historical attitude towards homosexuality prior to contact with Western missionaries?
- How did those attitudes change in response to rapid social change in China starting from 1850 to the present?

These are all questions that any one of us can easily answer for the United States, so how about we confine our analysis to the country we are best qualified to study?

I will accept that this is your suggestion.

And we are in the United States talking on a US political website, so I would assume that when talking about religion "in general" most people here are talking about the dominant religion in the US, Christianity.

If you are familiar enough with Chinese religion and politics to offer some insight from that part of the world, that could be interesting. But you don't seem very familiar with China: you don't know any of the languages spoken there, don't know the history, don't seem to appreciate the ancient or modern non-theistic religions there, probably don't know exactly where the Silk Roads ran or why that might matter again, have no apparent awareness of the significance of Central Asia in world history and haven't displayed any knowledge of Marxist-Leninist-Maoist thought. Without that level of knowledge of this complex region, it's very hard to say what exactly China is an example of.

On the other hand, if you want to know what American atheists think, there are a few on this site you could talk to. That might give you more insight into atheism than guessing about a part of the world that is still rarely visited by Westerners and dangerous for reporters to work in.

But that does not necessarily translate into insight into atheists in general.

into something other than Chinese politics. I sense a pattern here.

can we make broad assumptions about human behavior?

If there is one thing obvious about human behavior it's that we DON'T all act the same way. You assume it all the time in your arguments, yet it's a manifestly incorrect statement. So, no, we CANNOT make broad assumptions about human behavior, nor can you assume that other people will agree with you on that.

We are all motivated by the same needs.

We might speak different languages, or have a different form of government, but we are all humans and we react as humans.

"we are all humans and we react as humans," which might as well say,
"we are all vertebrates and we react as vertebrates."

Which makes humans no different from fish. And in a lot of ways we are like fish, but in a lot of ways we are not. You repeatedly ignore the differences, therefore you affirm the consequent that we are all the same.

Glub, glub.

of actions, behaviors, and emotions, even when faced with identical situations. We are not all alike, nor do we behave as if we were. We are not bees nor ants. Each of us has a unique personality and other attributes.

You, sir, are much different from me, as you are from every other person in this group. I cannot predict your reactions to stimuli, nor can you predict mine.

if any Government puts people in concentration camps for the crime of being Muslim theists, I will call that Government intolerant.

And if any Government puts people in prison for not being theists, I will call that Government in tolerant.

Nor this thread, which I started. It's irrelevant to both. Good day, sir!

And yet overall, religious humans are more intolerant than non-religious humans.

Strange.

You never responded here:
https://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1218&pid=309509

So, never mind...

Or so it goes...

Countless times I heard people in church say that gay people were going to hell. When you're taught that the Bible is the word of God and when you hear often enough that gay people are evil and God hates them, you start to believe it. Then, when you grow up and finally realize that all those people who said those things were ignorant and didn't know what they were talking about, you have some antipathy toward people who believe those things. I realize that we have freedom of religion, and I believe in freedom of religion, but it seems wrong to me to allow people to teach such things to children. If there is a God(s) and if (s)he or it is fundamentally good, it seems to me that he wouldn't approve of telling gay children that they're evil and going to hell. Telling children such things is what it evil.

If you believe that the God of the Bible is real, then that question remains to be answered: Is God good? Naturally, his worshipers say yes, but they are extremely biased and their judgment in this matter shouldn't be trusted. So, we can look at the source material most Christians use, the Bible. That is also very biased, since it was written and translated by worshipers, but it's what we have. The Bible stories generally don't portray God as good, not at all. For example, the Bible quite clearly supports the idea that gay children are evil and going to hell.

A lot of it is taken by many to be literal, historical fact, but I think that most of it is allegorical or metaphorical. Paul says this in one of his letters, as a matter of fact, but most fundagelical Christians either aren't aware of it or they don't understand what Paul means. I'm not a Christian, although I do think that some of the teachings of Jesus are worth following. I'm sort of a Hindu in a lot of ways. If there is one God, why can't there be more? Never understood why there could only be one. No one ever explained that sufficiently to me.

I get what you're saying about God not being good, especially as portrayed in the Bible. If there's more than one God, I'm sure at least some of them are bad. I don't expect Gods to be perfect. But if I only believed in one God, I would expect her to be at least mostly good. Why should you worship something that isn't even as good as most humans?

to jump to the conclusion that it must be at least mostly good. If there is one god, it's just as likely to be mostly evil. If a god exists and it's evil, I wouldn't worship it, even if I had good reason to believe it's real.

The idea that much of the Bible is metaphorical and allegorical is interesting, and it may even be true, but we always come back to the same question: How does one determine which parts to take literally, and which parts are fiction? We never seem to get a straight answer to that.

not, and most gays don't care whatever you accept us or not. It's what we believe in (ourselves), regardless of what ever anyone else feels. It always had to be that way before, for the fear was out there, everywhere, back then. You only dealt with other gay people and that was it. Nobody else, no family, no work companions, etc., nobody. That's why they have a saying 'in the closet'. There are still loads of gays 'in the closet' and always will be.

A lot of us grew up amid the constant spew of hate. You couldn't even say the word 'gay' in public almost, so being accepted or not by the rest of 'society' is kind of a moot point to gays/LBBTQ, don't get me wrong about being accepted, it is nice but not needed, after all, we did live in the 'desert' for 40 years before coming out (without the risk of literally being attacked or bashed, which is still a possibility today in some areas).