Draw up a list of perversions caused by religion:

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No LKL didn't miss it, her response was against the position of "willing submission" becuase that denotes a patriarchial system, which comes from a society which have those values at that time, so different than our current values, thus, her objection to it is valid, as she can say that the "willing" submission is not much different than forced submission. "as long as she lays down herself rather than being forced there?"


The time when that was written, had different moral and societal standards than today's western standards, especially relating the equality of the sexes, because that verse implies that issue.


The issue as I understand is about wether that undermines the modern standards about the equality of both genders, the question is why husbands have the benefit here more than the wives do, if you didn't notice this, your submission argument is pretty much critisized by modern standards, especially, feminism which obviously one that would criticize that aspect, in any case, it looks evident that the husband has an authoritative benefit over the wife, so, it really doesn't matter what is the "scriptural" meaning of submission, as that looks like a poor justification against the criticism.

... and there is the gross misunderstanding.

My father was the kind of tyrant the feminists would find disgusting, and I used to be like him and I would agree with them. However, and as I think Philologos or someone has mentioned, "as Christ is head of the church" does not include any kind of "authoritative benefit" over anyone.

Actually it does, Christ is the head of the church as the man is the head at home (and this is what feminists dislike), the problem is not wether that is what it means or not, which actually it does, but rather, wether that is God's natural plan, or......... maybe, a third option you would reject: Pauls' own opinion of God's natural plan, if you don't want to blame God

I was addressing 91's comments. I mocked yours for a second when I said "Wow, teen male boys getting turned on by women. That's terrible. ".

It does not matter my sex ed comment did not address your comments so far. Because your comments were utter bull.

You mentioned Pavlovian stimuli, news flash: We are not dogs waiting for a bell to ring. More so, sex making you ejaculate is basically hard wired, so no Pavlovian stimuli is ever necessary to make it work. There is no reason to have anything chemically-reinforced as in anything, because your catastrophic view of the end result of teens looking at porn are so completely far from the realm of reality that they make me cry.

Now you mention "decade long" teachings. Did you know that the distance between being 11 years old and 13 years old (suitable for sexual education even for moderate Christians) is two years? So in fact, indoctrination would happen right about the same time they begin to get the risk of watching porn.

Then you mention "Empathy", if you for real believe that porn removes empathy, you are just crazy. You know what porn is? Nakid people having sex. It is not of a good taste, but it does not summon satan. A kid looking at a boob will not re-spawn Hitler. Sex ed is necessary at young ages to make sure they don't actually believe the world or anything is anything like porn. That is, that they need to know how to use a condom. That women deserve actual respect, that sex is not the final objective, etc, etc . The work to fix the effects of porn is actually a dose of reality. Because although porn has negative effects, they are more of the kind of spreading myths and things that are non-sense. Rather than your conspiracy theory about they turning kids into zombies.

And besides, there is absolutely nothing you can do to prevent teens from looking at porn. I repeat, the only reason it worked in the past was definitely not the power of the Church, but the fact it was actually hard to find it. Nowadays it is difficult not to find porn (and the for-women porn is thankfully also growing). And influence of a church or feminism or any other radical cure is not going to work. So my guess is, instead of getting pipe dreams about 'fixing' a problem. Let's embrace the problem, see it as a chance to improve sex ed and invest efforts in it rather than in wishing the times of old in which 11 years old had issues imagining how a boob looks like would come back.

So, when I was replying 91, I was replying 91. Because for some reason his remarks seemed more insightful and worth arguing with than yours. Now that you forced me to address you, I am very mad.

Vex, your description of porn as 'Nekid people having sex,' which 'does not summon satan,' makes me think well of you in that you probably aren't partaking in the more vicious type. A lot of porn is extremely degrading and objectifying of women, and portrays women as enjoying types of sex that are both psychologically and physically uncomfortable, to say the least, for the woman. I suspect it is that type to which both 91 and ValentineWiggin are referring.

Last edited by LKL on 02 Jun 2011, 3:00 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Please show me where and/or how.

If you don't understand how 'being the head' is 'being in authority,' there's not much we can do to demonstrate that to you.

Ah, there you go (again) with all that spin!

Apart from the hyperbole of feminists, it is you (or whoever) who cannot demonstration the allegation being made! For in fact, "as Christ is head of the church" does not include "authoritative benefit"!

Ok? I mean, does hard-core pornography exist? Sure.... likely including all sorts of weird fetish stuff. But... "porn" includes a lot of softcore stuff, which isn't as extreme, even that could involve nothing more than just a woman who happens to be stripping or naked. I mean, the worst thing about a lot of materials with pornographic elements is really that women are presented in a "dumb" manner that appeals to sexual fantasies.

I dunno, I mean, the only time I remember seeing hard core porn was in a mixed gender group for the purposes of laughing at the ridiculousness of it.

This is as much a symptom of political ideology as it is of religious doctrine. How many "Strict Constructionists" rubbish more than a century of jurisprudence as "judicial activism?"



Is this unique to religion? How much scholarship has been suppressed by corporations who seek to control innovation that threatens their commercial interests?



Are secular cultures immune from such? How well have atheistic societies upheld individual dignity? How morally progressive was Stalin? Mao? Pol Pot?



Cultural corruption? Who are you to say what is culturally corrupt? Is Bach's B minor Mass culturally corrupt? What of Handel's Messiah? I am no believer, but I believe that our culture would be raped if sculpture like David, and architecture like La Sainte Chapelle were to be ripped from our collective history.

Ignore contemporary Christian music, if you like. (I certainly do) But don't pretend that our artistic, musical, literary and architectural heritage can be divorced from the religious beliefs that inspired it.



Celibacy is imposed by a relatively small number of religious beliefs, upon a relatively small number of people. Let us not confuse the Roman Catholic fetish for clerical celibacy with an overarching imposition of celibacy on all adherents.

Judaism not only eschews celibacy, but in fact sets out that G-d's first commandment to creation was, "Be fruitful and multiply."



Again, utter nonsense. Every political structure imposes hierarchies. Is the Queen position in her realms a "necessary" hierarchy that can be distinguished from the spiritual leadership of the Archbishop of Canterbury over the Anglican Communion? (Which is vastly less effective than the Queen's temporal leadership over the Commonwealth realms.)



Again, you tar religion with something that exists independent of religion. See point 3.



Okay, here I will concede you a half point. Many, many religions impose revealed teaching upon their adherents. But, you only get half a point, because many, many religions encourage adherents to arrive at their own understanding of the divine, of scripture and of their relationship with other people. The faults of dogmatic denominations (e.g. Roman Catholicism or Chaba Lubavitch) cannot be laid at the feet of those denominations that encourage original and creative thinking (e.g. the United Chuch of Canada or Reform Judaism)



This really isn't much of a different point from dogmatism, and the same response applies.



Again, you seem to be ascribing the sins of a subset of religious belief to the entire corpus. All I see is an ongoing attempt to attack the symptom (religion) rather than the disease (tribalism).

Religion is a framework within which we separate "People like us," from, "Outsiders." We demonize outsiders and we find ways to reinforce the bulwarks of our prejudices. But religion is not the only way in which we seek to differentiate "Us" from "Them." Look around you. How many of us engage in the practice of damning Conservatives or Liberals for their dangerous, ill-informed, oppressive approach to public policy? How many of us uncritically condemn NTs for their myriad sins?

To my way of thinking there is absolutely nothing wrong with religious faith, and living your life by the standards imposed by your faith. The damage only comes when you seek to impose those standards on people who don't share your faith. And I use precisely the same standard when it comes to any other belief, be it political, philosophical or ethical.

Hold a mirror up to yourself. How many of the sins that you ascribe to religion have you yourself committed when you attack religions and their followers?

Problem: Strict constructionism is a legal theoretic position, not an epistemological position. Scriptural literalism is an epistemological position. A strict constructionist can say "The world would be better if the Constitution said X", but he also says "The only proper way to attain X, is through using existing constitutional structures". I have to admit that I think strict constructionism is wrong, but I don't think it commits a person to brain-death.


Is uniqueness a requirement for something to be a perversion caused by a group? (The answer is no) I mean, all you did was just cite a complaint against corporations.


Note: I said "stagnation". While none of those states were good, they weren't stagnant, but rather upheld a Marxian dogma as part of their intellectual structure. Even further, the problems of those groups are very explicable by the revolutionary nature, and dictatorial structure of those societies. As such, the comparison isn't that meaningful, as Stalin's massive executions were very much driven by Stalin's paranoiac personality.(Not an atheism trait, but something very wrong and particular to Stalin) The Christian crusaders in the US though, do not have this justification.


I wasn't ignoring it. I was focusing on it when I wrote that out.


Would it matter? Celibacy is caused by religion. It is caused by a number of particular religions, one of which having large social importance.


Actually, most conservative varieties of Judeo-Christian religions have some notion of celibacy. "Be fruitful and multiply" only refers to making children(and even then usually has large restrictions), and celibacy refers to sex. Catholics strongly uphold that notion, and they do so by pushing against all non-procreative sex. That's not a good thing if sexual activity is in part a social bonding event.


I never said the Queen WAS a necessary hierarchy. This argument, like many others, is a complete failure to even function as an argument. It makes no sense.


You haven't proven that this is independent of religion. You've shown that it can exist without religion, but that's not the same as independence. Independence would mean that the correlation is 0. This is a much much harder claim to make, as your examples do nothing in proving your case in that a LOT of the details are explicable by other variables, which is really a BAD thing. In fact, you really want to hold as many variables as possible constant, which your examples do the exact OPPOSITE of doing.


Your half a point is all I need for the whole point.


Does the distinction even matter? I don't believe your distinction is that powerful, but it is not illegitimate to attack the symptoms of a disease. Cold medicines usually don't make colds go away, they just "attack" symptoms of the cold.


..... I usually don't engage in any of that either. Are you expecting me to accept this as reasonable?


Except that there is nothing you've said or done to promote your way of thinking.

Even further, it's plain wrong with plenty of counter-examples, which include LOTS of family issues, and community issues, which your overly individualistic view has forgotten. As well, I have no idea what "impose those standards" means in a situation where one party views evolution as an imposition of a standard. Their view is wrong, but evolution is certainly the disrupting factor in how they want to live, but it is the correct teaching, and we would be committing a large disservice to people to fail to educate them simply because their religious dogmas would be hurt by it.


um.... ok? This isn't really a meaningful argument to me. I don't think I've committed any of the sins at all. I mean, a good number of the sins, are things I literally just consider sins, and only apply to religion in a specific case. (Not all of them, mind you, but a good number)

Human sacrifices.

But the legal-theoretic [sic] position has its origin in epistemology. How many strict constructionists pretend that their reading of the constitutition is meant to provide insight into the intention of its drafters? When an argument begins, "what the Founders intended was..." then statutory interpretation has taken a back seat to revealed truth.



But since the something appears not only in a religious context but also in a corporate-commercial context, that raises the question of whether either of them is the cause of that thing, or whether the cause lies at a more fundamental level.

After all, the title of this thread is, "Draw up a list of perversions caused by religion" [emphasis mine], not "Draw up a list of perversions that exist within some religions."



These states were the quintessence of stagnation. These leaders whipped their citizens into a frenzy of completely unproductive activity, setting their countries backward, destroying progress that (in the cases of the USSR and the PRC) the revolutions had already achieved.

Again, when a phenomenon appears independently of religion, your argument that religion cause that phenomenon must be supported by evidence that the phenomenon migrated into the areligious environment through, for example, copying or continued use.



Which does not speak to the vast complex of visual art, literature and music that found its origin in religious themes.



On the contrary, there are numerous celibates who maintain that state for reasons other than religion. Their numbers may be smaller than the Roman Catholic clergy, but their numbers are still sufficient to demonstrate alternative causation.



You seem to be conflating celibacy and chastity. Furthermore, you are again committing the error of ascribing the teaching of one religious denomination and damning the entire complex of religious belief with it.

Now, teachings on sexual morality are probably universal to bona fide religious traditions. But is this bad thing, in se? Teaching that homosexuality is sinful is, in my view, harmful. But teaching that sex should be approached carefully, with love and respect for ones' partners (plural) is not. And there are religions that teach the latter rather than the former.



The topic of the discussion is "perversions caused by religion."
You claimed that hierarchies were such a perversion.
I demonstrated that hierarchies exist outside of a religious context.

Disproof by exception. q.e.d.



I don't need to prove independence. All I have to do is disprove causation. When hierarchical repression exists without a religious cause, then you cannot claim that religion causes hierarchical repression. All that you can claim is that hierarchical repression exists within some religions.



Actually, you don't, because you have not made the case that includes those religions that do not demonstrate dogmatism. Since they exist, they serve to contradict your claim of causation.



Most assuredly the distinction matters, because when you take a cold medicine, you know that all you are doing is abating the symptoms, you are not labouring under the misapprehension that the medicine is dealing with the virus.

But when you attach religion as the cause of all of these ills, you fail to realize that these ills exist in circumstances where religion is not involved. This suggests that these ills have their cause in something other than religion--and by focussing on blaming religion, we fail to understand that there is something else in human nature at work here that should be the proper focus of our attention.



Of course I am not--I am expecting you to recognize that unreasonable behaviour exists across the spectrum of human activity, and that your focus on religion is misplaced.



The imposition of standards is quite simple: we accept, as a civil society, that is is malum in se to inflict harm on others (with some narrow exceptions). Therefore we criminalize it. Now some religious traditions (but not all) would have us believe that abortion is wrong, and they would seek to criminalize it, as well. Others believe that divorce is wrong, and that it should not be available as a civil law remedy. An adherent to these traditions can freely choose not to have an abortion and not to divorce, but to use the law to impose that standard on the rest of us is a misuse of law (in my view).

As for the latter example, suddenly you claim to know what is best for people? That seems to me to be duplicating the epistemological dogmatism of the religious leaders you condemn.



It should be a meaningful argument to you. If you fail to see how your own conduct is just as wrong as the religions that you seek to condemn, then perhaps you are less self-aware than I took you for.

Take the plank out of your own eye, AG.

My.

I clap hand to mouth in admiration. Loooo. I frankly gave up on this after a few rounds disclosed it was just for fun and not for reason.

But the "pretend" part, is merely a failure of human beings. The legal theoretic position is that the original intent of the law is normative, therefore we need to enforce the original intent. This usually entails efforts to arrive at the original intent. Whether the latter efforts succeed or not does not strictly entail the failing of the strict constructionist premise.

Even further, strict constructionism is in part a theory of the goals of statutory interpretation... so.... I don't see your point. I mostly see "I dislike strict constructionism"


No it doesn't. That question is not entailed by that mere fact, as after all, both forms could share a common flaw, which would not exonerate either. And other possibilities continue on, many of which not even requiring a lick of sense.


Not in terms of culture. The cultural effects are still strongly felt in these nations. They may have had poor ECONOMIC or SOCIAL systems, but the culture promoted very strongly challenged that which came before it.


Except it really doesn't. In fact, your counter depends on an error. For religion to cause X, doesn't entail that religion causes all instances of X, only that religion causes some instances of X. If I stated guns cause people to die, I don't mean guns cause every single death, instead I mean something more related to guns causing some deaths. Your interpretation is obtuse and unnatural, and I am in no way beholden to it


No, as a lot of this is historical.


Except it's not to the contrary, and it doesn't "demonstrate alternative causation" at all. It demonstrates that celibacy has other causes, but these do not apply to Catholic clergy anyway. I mean, your methodology is silly and just *crap*.


Eh. chastity is temporary celibacy.

Don't see this as a flaw. These religions are religions, in this, anything they cause as religions, could in some form or fashion be attributed to "religion". I mean, at this point, you want to pick at semantics, when I am not overly concerned with that.


Except that lots of religious traditions do condemn homosexuality, and that sexual restrictions are usually above and beyond "love and respect" and have more to do with ritualistic impressions.


I don't know what your problem is, but your interpretation is so utterly flawed that it's ridiculous. If I created a post called "Draw up a list of perversions caused by drugs" and someone wrote "Crime" would they be wrong because of the counter-example of jaywalking?? No, and the reasoning you used is so utterly ridiculous that I can't take it seriously. I don't know what promotes this kind of absurd reasoning, except perhaps motivated thinking. Crime can be(and I'd say it is) a perversion caused by drugs, but NOT EVERY CRIME IS CAUSED BY DRUGS. I don't know how people somehow get this concept confused, I think that the topic must make some people stupider, or perhaps it attracts them.


But.... if there is a correlation, then causation may actually be taking place.

When X occurs without Y, all I can say is that Y doesn't cause EVERY CASE of X, not that Y doesn't cause X. The concept is simple. Your failure is absurd and disgusting.


Except they don't. You seem to have problems with either the application of language or with logic here.


Ok? I really don't care, because the only concerns we have about the virus are the symptoms anyway. I could have a bajillion cold viruses inside of me, but so long as my health doesn't suffer, all the more power tom.


Except I don't make any sort of error like this. You use a messed up interpretation of what I write, you argue as if it is required, and you miss the entire point. I don't have much reason to persist with this. You're in error. You're obviously in error, if only by my clear statements of authorial intent. There is nothing more I really have to say.


Except you haven't shown that. You're now conflating "Y doesn't cause ALL cases of X" with "Y doesn't cause ANY case of X". Once again, this is obviously ridiculous. Complex causation isn't a new idea.


You completely ignored my point. Harm is too complex to really criminalize all instances. You can't criminalize all instances of discrimination. You can't force white Timmy's family to invite black Jimmy to Timmy's birthday party. You can't require that Bob and Sue treat their child as ideal parents might, or get them to not say hurtful things about their son's homosexuality or their daughter's weight issues. This set of harms exists. It is real. People are hurt by this and remember these hurts, but they are not anything one can legislate away, but the idea that they can be ignored is so... rigid-minded that it's not even reasonable.


Except.... its not. At all. In any form or fashion. Truth is not "epistemological dogmatism", and the belief that people ought to be given the truth isn't really the height of dogmatism.


Bad arguments shouldn't be meaningful. I am not lacking self-awareness, but rather, you are. Nothing you have said even remotely resembles a good argument. You somehow don't get this. I mean, if either of us lack self-awareness, I'd suspect it's you, not me, and I've generally suspected a lack from you.

I don't have a plank, sorry.

Except the argument made, at least in the form it is made, is actually just abominable. I mean, if the positive case were made that religion actually resulted in NO variance in behavior upon suggested lines, then that's actually a powerful case against my position, otherwise it's utter crap.