[People] Doug TenNapel, creator of Earthworm Jim, discusses how to handle disagreement.

I do understand where he's coming from. Religious belief is a strong force within life, especially in baptist circles.

That's not understanding his perspective. That's your explanation for why he has the perspective. Dismissing the perspective offhand because "well, that's how religious people think" isn't bringing you any closer to understanding it.

Not all opinions are created equal. Some have their basis in reasoned philosophical arguments, some in scientific evidence, others in nothing at all.

Marriage as an institution has absolutely no reasoned philosophical arguments or scientific evidence in support of it either. It's a name people gave to a legal contract. Determining who should and shouldn't be able to get married will never have any more objective backing than determining who should get tax breaks in general. It's not that kind of debate.

I can respect opinions I disagree with, but only if they have strong backing. For example, Libertarianism. I'm against it, but I very much understand where libertarians are coming from. Some of them, at least.

If I were to tell you that your opinion on Libertarianism doesn't seem to have the sufficient understanding to be "strongly-backed", would you be upset that I do not "respect" your opinion? Because Libertarianism is not an opinion. It's a political ideology, which is set of prioritized ideals that inform a larger set of opinions. You can't be "against" libertarian. You do not prioritize libertarian ideals and do not subscribe to the ideology that arises from them.

TenNapel's opinions are based on his religion only. No soild philosophical ground work, no scientific argumentation, no meaningful statistics, nope, only The Bible, which itself is backed by absolutely nothing.

You don't know that. You're only aware that his faith informs his opinions them. You have no way of knowing whether there is more he is considering when discerning said opinion. You're opinion on what TenNapel's opinion is solely based off of, however, is ironically backed by absolutely nothing.

Especially since this isn't about some petty personal taste, such as a favourite color or ice cream flavor.

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