Abortion/Heaven/Opinionated Teens

so basically there are lots of kids at my school who have really strong opinions about things. which is cool. i like that i can talk to people about my views on stuff. but it gets annoying. especially when there's a group, and the group drowns out one or two people who think differently. i know i used to do this, and now i kinda know what it feels like. this happened one time at noodles an co.

so we all went to noodles and company and for some messed up reason the topic of religion came up. and most of these people in the group are catholic schoolers, so you would think they would all believe in god? no. and then it segues into heaven. and the whole time these four loud kids are trying to tell these two kids that they are wrong. and me and a few other people are all sitting out and kinda ignoring it. but the one thing that pissed me off was the negativity, you know?

----

brief pause: my own views on heaven. though i believe in god, i think that when you die, you're dead. game over. its like being unconscious, as one friend pointed out - you cant feel anything, you just wake up a few moments later wondering what happened during the time-lapse. so he thinks being dead is like that.

----

so anyway. one kid is trying to defend heaven, the other kid has kind of given it up. so now its four on one. and the four arent telling him their beliefs, theyre actively trying to prove him wrong. and it gets on my nerves. because everyone is entitled to their own beliefs. and the four are all like "being alive for eternity? that would suck! that's not real" and in that vein. maybe i'm making the dialogue up, but that was the general tone. and then we got to the bible. and creationism.

and here it becomes about 7 against 1. i felt bad for the one guy who believed in the stories of genesis, but also me and my other friend who just had to listen to our buddies pour a whole load of shit onto this guy's beliefs. its like taking the koran and flushing it, but verbally. that kind of stuff just isnt cool.

and then the topic switches to abortion.

----
another pause here: i think abortion in many cases is okay. but i think that, generally, the woman should have the right to choose. this kinda enforces a system that mistakes can be cleared up just with a medical procedure, tho, so i'm a fence-sitter on this one.
----

so again. the kid is getting killed, and now its just terrible. and it goes on. switches to homosexuality and gay marriage, and i just tune it out. basically, teenagers are cruel. where some people have something holding them back, basicallly stopping them from trampling on other people's beliefs, the teenagers i know who know howo to think dont have that. they say what they want to say irregardless. and thats not the way to be. i could make a allegory with israel/palestine here (basically, the palestinians and the israelis are fighting over the gaza strip and that area, because palestine wants its own country.) but its really all the same, just on widely different scales. the point being:

TOLERANCE