Brendan wrote an intriguing definition of the term slut in the discussion of the previous post:
On the “what is a slut” issue, the question really isn’t about a numerical cutoff, which is why that’s generally an unfruitful way of looking at the question. A slut is someone who has an instrumental view of sexuality — that is, one who views sex in a hedonistic way for the most part. A person with this mentality towards sex will not link sex with marriage exclusively, because the view of sex is distorted and based on hedonic elements which we all know can well occur outside of marriage as well. That is, sex is about two (or more) human beings collaborating physically to bring each other sexual pleasure, and this is a “good” in and of itself as long as ‘enthusiastic consent’ is present. That is an instrumental/hedonist view of sexuality, and is the sine qua non of being a slut. That is the case whether one actually has a high n or not — lots of other factors go into one’s n, and not all of them are subject to individual control (although quite a few are). There are women with low n’s who nevertheless have a very instrumental/hedonist view of sex. Eventually, that will come out and express itself, even if it is decades later, because marital sexuality will eventually fail to hedonistically satisfy. The same holds true of men as well — men who have a hedonistic/instrumental view of sexuality are also sluts, whether they have a high n or not. The point isn’t that all of these people will “stray” sexually, if they marry — rather the point is that their relationship to sex is more hedonistic and less sacramental, and is therefore fundamentally distorted, and therefore will eventually lead to some challenges down the road. There are plenty of people who have fairly low n’s who nonetheless have a slutty view of sex, who then end up questioning their commitments later in life when they may feel they have “missed out” sexually — that is a decidedly slutty thing to say, because someone who does not have a slutty view of sex would not feel that they have “missed out” by skipping the opportunity to have instrumental/hedonistic sexual encounters and experiences when younger (or feel the interest in having them later in life) — they simply were not interested in having sex under those conditions because of their understanding of what sex actually is, and what it means (note that I am not suggesting it is always black and white in any person, and there are people who have non-slutty attitude towards sex but who may struggle with slutty thoughts about sex — that probably reflects a lot of people as well, which isn’t very surprising due to the generally sinful condition most of us find ourselves in).
So the issue isn’t really the “n” as much as it is the attitude. Note, however, that this really only works one way. That is, a higher “n” person is virtually always someone who has (or had) an instrumental/hedonistic view of sex — a slut or a (claimed to be) ex-slut. Someone who has a sacramental view of sex will generally have an “n” of zero outside marriage (but not always — some non-sluts do make a mistake due to sin, but still the number would be very low, like 1). So it generally isn’t the case that people who have higher n’s are not sluts (or were not sluts) — they were at the time. The question then becomes “are they still one”, and that has to do with their attitude towards sex and what it means to them. Conversely, a person can have a very low “n”, like DH, and still be a slut interiorly when it comes to sexuality, seeing it as instrumental and hedonistic — this just means that the person is selective in his/her hedonism. And, as I said above, and as we see in DH’s case interestingly enough, if this fundamental attitude towards sexuality remains intact, generally this will be expressed in some way at some point in life, either before one makes a “commitment” or, in some cases, after. It’s not that such persons can’t live a monogamous life — they can, if they take commitments seriously. It’s that their attitude towards sex can lead them to question the sexual aspect of their commitment more easily, and lead to regrets about it (or even earlier sexual reticence, as I note above) later as life marches on.
The logic he uses is elegant, and I would argue that he is drawing the line in accordance with biblical sexual morality (which almost no one in our current culture Christian or not ascribes to). For this reason alone it is worth serious consideration.
I disagree that this is the definition of the term slut though, because the term is fundamentally sex specific and his definition is universal. The sex specific nature of slut has not to do with the sinfulness of fornication (which is the same for men and women), but with the degree of practical risk involved with marrying such a person. The greatest asset of a marriage are the children it produces. With this in mind, no one wants to marry a partner who appears defective regarding their ability to protect this asset. The wife has the role of protecting that the children are unadulterated. The husband has the role of physically protecting both the wife and their children. As I have argued previously, the closest counterpart for men to the term slut is coward.
However, this doesn’t negate the truth in Brendan’s definition, and men who view sex according to Brendan’s definition of slut are certainly not a good risk for marriage. This is even worse if the man ranks too highly in alpha traits.
Dalrock —
From the social definition perspective, I wouldn’t disagree with the statement that it is a specifically female appellation. I was coming at it, as you’ve rightly described, from the perspective of Christian morality, which views the same activity by men and women alike as fornication. Perhaps I should have couched that as “male fornicator” and “female fornicator”. I do think, as you say, that men who have this attitude towards sex are quite bad bets for marriage, even if they are not cowards per your definition.
I like it Brendan. You wrote out what is on the back of your mind that you can’t put your finger on. A good solid foundation is being laid here.
A slut is not marriagable, nor fit for wooing.
The term slut is not a moral criticism: it is merely a factual observation of behaviour.
That behaviour is the having of sexual congress with a man outside of a committed relationship.
There are thus degrees of slutdom.
If one ceases to act like a slut one is no longer a slut.
Men cannot be sluts, as they are not the gatekeepers of sex.
Slut-walkers are not sluts, either – as they are merely attention seekers.
I think it is good as far as it goes, as a definition of the subjective aspect. But it is a mistake to leave out the objective aspect, that is, partner count. As a purely subjective thing it becomes part of an internal universe over which one has absolute power: one may have been a slut for twenty years but in an plenary act of the will one can become not-a-slut.
I don’t think that’s the way reality works. The things we have done have objective consequences, and we can’t will those consequences away. A forgiven slut is not now magically a born-again virgin: she is a forgiven slut.
The latest season of “Tough Love” has examples of the hedonistic mentality from women with radically different ‘n’.
One girl is a choice-addicted, 25-year old virgin who actually uses the term “gina tingles” during interviews. Her n=0 but her attitude is more that she’s afraid of being pumped-and-dumped and giving it up to a player than any sort of traditional view of chastity or marriage. Most of the season is spent trying to get her to at least to commit to just one guy through to the end of the show.
Another has n=???, but has never had a boyfriend. She’s extremely social, friendly, and outgoing, quickly picks an attractive, apparently greater beta airline pilot, and through the rest of the season you get a pretty good idea about how hard it’s going to be for her to make a real emotional connection with the guy. It’s very difficult to tell what this woman’s attitude towards sex will be in the future. While the relation was, surprisingly, the most successful of any on the show in the long run, it’s hard to say whether it will end in marriage or not.
Note that due to the nature of this show, there’s no focus on “manning-up” or shaming men at all. The men are presented as favorably as possible and the show is about the women’s flaws. They get a lot of mileage out of Steve Ward yelling at the girls until they cry. There’s certainly no emphasis on Christian values or slut-shaming, but it’s certainly not as suffocatingly blue pill as most mainstream entertainment. For anyone interested in seeing a window into modern female perspective that isn’t completely warped by feminism, it might be worth watching. Note that the women they choose for the show aren’t “normal” but they also aren’t ridiculously extraordinary, either. There aren’t bizarrely unusual external factors at work here, these are regular people that just happen to be notable enough to get selected for the show.
As I said in the prior comment thread, I really liked Brendan’s comment and I feel that it is a fairly accurate description of the common secular view of sex, including my own view.
Obviously, I disagree with his disapproval of that point of view. I would also note that many secular types, including me, apply the value of moderation to sex in the sense of viewing sex as just one of many other important aspects of life, and also in the sense of recognizing that the pleasurable aspects of sex should often be subordinated to other important goals (the preservation of one’s relationships being one example).
I do think that secular people are more open to the concept of divorce (though not necessarily, and I personally would be an exception to that general rule). But I don’t believe secular people are more likely to engage in an illicit affair. I think having a more practical, moderate view of sex helps to keep it in its place (or, as VR, pointed out, perhaps liberals don’t have as much of a sex drive!); the religious circles which stress modesty and temptation seem (at least from the outside) to create a hothouse atmosphere in which sexual temptation is more at the forefront of people’s minds and is given more power than perhaps it really needs to have.
Dalrock wrote:
I really, really agree with this. Of course, we need to train our children to respect what God says about sex so they can learn to have what Brendan referred to as a “sacramental” view of sexuality. Furthermore, I think parents need to help their daughters marry younger than they currently do if possible. This would solve a lot of sluttery problems right away. I’m not advocating for arranged marriages, but rather just more parental involvement, which is really fulfilling our roles to protect our children. Here is a nice example of what this could like from the blog In a Shoe, the author of which has eight daughters and three sons:
Brenden – very well written. Bravo!
Dalrock, I will have to go back and read your article on Cowards. I must have missed that one and can really see the value of comparing sluts and cowards. Just like a man will use a slut for sexual release a woman could use a coward for provisions but will not feel attracted to him just as a man will often feel revulsion when thinking of the meters of pecker that went before him.
I fully agree that there are objective consequences to being a slut — either of the interior or exterior kind. That’s why I say the key question in assessing one who actually does have a significant sexual past (if you wish to assess them at all as mates, which, again, I do not recommend (that part of the comment is in the last thread and is not replicated here)) is “are they still a slut” — but to me that isn’t simply a question of “are they still sleeping around” as much as it is a question of their fundamental attitude towards sex. Someone can have taken a reprieve from sleeping around and acquiring an ever-higher partner count while still retaining a fundamentally slutty view of sex.
To me, you have to be careful of the “secret sluts” who have low n’s, but have a slutty attitude towards sex — they may very well be just sexually selective people who have nevertheless an instrumental/hedonistic view of sex.
DH wrote:
I haven’t really noticed this to be true. It sounds like an idea you thought up and liked.
I heart Brendan generally, but… I’d propose the following very simple way of keeping all the creatures in this menagerie straight:
A slut is free, a whore costs money, and wives are the most expensive of all.
This is why, for example, Rush should have stopped at “whore” with Mz. Fluke, since the point he really wanted to make was that this was about the money and her need for it, not that she was undeserving (or something) of contraception on account of having had lots of indiscriminate casual free sex with many different men (and was thus a slut). If anything, one would tend to want someone in the latter camp to certainly be on contraceptives, rather than accumulate even more costly (to us) “souvenirs”, right? This is where Rush blew it, in confounding the terms he was trying to use.
Any woman with a count in double figures is a slut.
Simples
Ha ha, nice slam Sunshine Mary. I have no reason to like the idea of religious people committing adultery. I have nothing against religious people. I just don’t happen to think their beliefs are true.
That said, my impression was wrong. My cursory google search shows that religious beleivers who attend regular services are less likely than others to commit adultery.
But no, I didn’t just “think it up.” It was an impression I had from reading overwrought discussions on Islamic and Christian blogs about the terrible lust that could be incited if a woman shows slightly too much skin.
SSM: I’d actually say DH is onto something there – not so much with regard to the communities that really do practice modesty and fleeing from temptation, but wrt the much more common sort that pay lip service to it. There’s nothing like being in a ‘young adults’ class, being lectured on the perils of sexual sin, while being all but invited to look down a dozen blouses. They talk about restraint, but aren’t really doing much to cultivate it, and it really does have the same effect as someone telling you ‘whatever you do, don’t think about X’.
@unger —
MegaChurch (Common) — The ultimate meat market. The “niceness” of the clothing combined with the tactical presentation of curves maximizes the wandering eye tendency. The combination of classy with the lurid is the key here.
Smaller Evangelical Church with *Some* Biblical Preaching (Uncommon) — The single slut-moms don’t get the memo on where the line is drawn. They are so far out of line, it is comical and repulsive. You look once, shake your head, and then start focusing on something else.
Largish Mennonite Church with explicit dress standards but just barely hanging onto them (Ultra rare) — The covering and hair are done such that it doesn’t look like she has a covering on from certain angles. This is far less lurid than the Mega-Church… but the ones that are more brazen in their hunt for a husband display similar levels of sex appeal even with far more “modest” clothing.
(Yes. Those are AD&D wandering monster frequencies there. Heh.)
DH wrote, “That said, my impression was wrong.”
Meh. You say “impression”, I say “made it up and liked it”. It’s the same thing. Anyway, our rates of divorce and adultery are lower, but still unacceptably high.
unger, I respectfully disagree that DH meant what you said. I’m sure what you are mentioning is possible.
Great stuff, Brendan.
As far as preaching against the “perils of sexual sin,” I have not heard this taught explicitly… ever. It’s all delegated to individual parents to spell out or else it is transmitted via culture– ie, the through hints and whispers based on whatever the inner circle chooses to gossip about. Strange.
No, what Unger said, is pretty much what I was getting at. I was really thinking of a modesty survey a blog called “the Rebelution” put out a few years ago to get perspectives from young men on what clothing young women should avoid wearing. It turned into a rather hot give-and-take, in which they young men were basically describing in loving detail what glimpses of female flesh turned them on, and the young women who responded to the survey in comments obviously getting all fluttery at the idea that their bodies could possibly have that kind of effect on young men. The whole exercise was pretty much the opposite of modest, and served methinks (as an outside observer) to put s-e-x even more at the forefront of the minds of the teenagers involved. This contrasts with my own secular upbrining which simply involved someone saying, “No shorts, jeans or miniskirts when you’re going to church with your grandmother.”
OK, I clicked over and read the “Defining Sluthood” post that Dalrock wrote a while back, but it wasn’t fully helpful. It says why sluts are bad, and that sluts are female and have no male equivalent (males are, instead, cowards). But it didn’t lay out a definition for “slut” per se, which is what my original question was yesterday. A fusion of Brendan’s definition and Feminist Hater’s definition is needed.
What I’m getting at is that as Christians, we do not have consistency on this issue. CC pointed out than in many ways, PUAs at least have consistency of judgment. We don’t. We want there to be exceptions clauses, in which we can fiddle about with N or motivations or attitudes or outcomes. I can’t do anything with that message. What am I supposed to tell girls? We’re afraid to be harsh, but I think that is what is needed. Maybe I’m wrong, but female lust is a powerful motivator and our bulwark against that can’t be to proclaim some magic number of penises that a girl must not consort with in excess of if she still wants to be considered a non-slut.
My view of sex made a radical paradigm shift from “What people do for fun and entertainment” to “something that makes babies” when the guy I was “seeing” admitted to being radically pro-abortion and while I was ambivalent on the subject (at the time) the idea of having an abortion made me sick. I then realized that each act of sex had the potential to make a baby..as well as the potential of raising a child completely fatherless. Previously I had taken an “Oh, that never happens” view of accidental pregnancy…and if it did plan B was “But if it did we would just get married and live happily ever after” …so when the guy said unequivocally he would have zero ZERO to do with any spawn of our union it went a long way to what later became a radical conversion.
I imagine there are a lot of women out there who..like me at the time..are in that mental fog of “that never happens” and if it does they assume they have recourse to plan B. So they never see themselves as really being irresponsible with their fertility until that point where they have to choose between an abortion and giving birth to a bastard.
@sunshinemary — “Maybe I’m wrong, but female lust is a powerful motivator and our bulwark against that can’t be to proclaim some magic number of penises that a girl must not consort with in excess of if she still wants to be considered a non-slut.”
I’m a simple guy. The standard should be… if N > 0, then… she is a slut and is not marriage material. The most notable exception would be the case where a married woman’s husband dies. N = 1, but she’s of course not a slut.
Maybe the brainiacs can suss out something more nuanced than that… but simple people facing temptation are not in a position to do any sort of calculus with marriage market values. “Hey sister… there’s a line here… and if you cross it for any reason… your marriage value is basically zero.”
“Remove not the ancient landmark, which thy fathers have set.” Proverbs 22:28
SSM: What to tell girls? That part, anyway, is easy. GBFM will have to forgive me for quoting C.S. Lewis, but: “The truth is that wherever a man lies with a woman, there, whether they like it or not, a transcendental relation is set up between them which must be eternally enjoyed or eternally endured.” There’s a reason why 1 Cor 6:16 and Mark 10:8 use the exact same language to denote both marriage and whoring.
@DH
I also agree, but I think that only in the sense that secular people tend to be more open to new ideas in general. To the extent that modern external influences (media, feminist idealism) make people (especially women) open to divorce, I think that most Christians are about as affected as secular people. I think that Christians stigmatize divorce more, but I don’t think that affects their behavior all that much when it comes to actually making the decision.
Secular men may be more open to divorce than Christian men. But women are open to divorce in higher numbers both secular and Christian. Perhaps even higher among Christians.
Christians do not truly stigmatize divorce
I will tell my daughters that :
-virginity is a precious gift meant for your husband
-giving your body AND your heart away to more than one man will disadvantage you in being able to give your whole heart in marriage.
-should you incur a debt of sin it is much like money debt…you have to work extra hard to erase the damage done. It can be done..but it takes an enormous amount of spiritual discipline. You are better off never forming an attachment to sin than you are trying to regain your former purity of heart once it is lost.
I don’t intend to use the word “slut” because I simply don’t believe it is necessary to use crass shaming language to communicate a point.
I see the issue at least partially from a natural / supernatural position.
Essentially, humans are creatures, like most other creatures, and as such they have sex to answer a natural drive towards reproduction. However, while humans are creatures, they are not animals and cannot live by the simplistic laws of nature, which are essentially survival oriented.
Man is called to take his creaturely existence and submit it to a higher, supernatural law, fully manifest in Christ. When he submits to the laws of nature, he inevitably opens himself up to the malevolence of the supernatural law of sin and death.
I try to separate man’s natural, creaturely inclination towards sex (the mating instinct) from the decay and depravity that is sin. There is always the temptation to say that the natural human instinct towards sex is something evil in and of itself.
How does this relate to the discussion? A woman’s natural inclination towards sex, if not submitted to the law of grace becomes slave to the law of sin and death, the spiritual state of being a slut.
Someguy says:
Maybe the brainiacs can suss out something more nuanced than that… but simple people facing temptation are not in a position to do any sort of calculus with marriage market values. “Hey sister… there’s a line here… and if you cross it for any reason… your marriage value is basically zero.”
Of course, the problem with trying to stigmatize sluttiness in this way is that you will have to get an awful lot of men on board who aren’t currently on board. The reality is that women who have have had premarital sex don’t have too much of a problem getting married. And our society is so transient and so diverse that, even if one lives in a small religious community where sluttiness truly is stigmatized, it’s easy enough to move elsewhere.
A lot of non-virgin males are not remotely interested in seeming hypocritical..so they will extend more grace to a non-virgin woman than a virgin would.
SSM: One more thing: I wrote something on the matter in three comments over on SoP. As I said there, I’d be happy to be shown wrong. Otherwise, I’m forced to think that the correct n is 0, excepting widows whose n was 0 when they married – that there is no such thing as casual, consequence-free sex, even when nobody gets pregnant or catches any bugs. Sin may be forgiven; consequences generally remain – and if sex, not some expensive ceremony, makes two people ‘one flesh’, there’s no reason to think that repentance and forgiveness will dissolve the union.
We’re afraid to be harsh, but I think that is what is needed. Maybe I’m wrong, but female lust is a powerful motivator and our bulwark against that can’t be to proclaim some magic number of penises that a girl must not consort with in excess of if she still wants to be considered a non-slut.
I am very tired, but I will make a post before I go to bed (I am in England atm).
It isn’t a simple thing, and yet it is. It isn’t a number, it’s a paradigm. It’s an understanding of what sex is. That needs to be *internalized*, and not external as a “rule” about numbers or contexts. It needs to be an internal disposition that is averse to sex in other contexts. I had this growing up as a Catholic, as did my ex-wife, as does my current GF. It is something you *can* inculcate as an internal matter to persons despite the culture (I came of age in the late 70s and early 80s, when sex was flowing like wine) — but the message needs to be internalized, rather than experienced as an outside rule. The reason for that is that the culture as a whole (i.e., outside Christianity) respects people’s considered internal convictions, but does not respect or support people who follow “someone else’s rules”. So make it about an internal conviction, and make it stick on the inside — that is the best answer, I think.
OK, unger, I read your comments at SoP. What you argue is that a person is spiritually married to whomever is the first person they had sex with, even if the sexual act was an act of rape. Leaving out the rape part for now, since not that many women are ever going to experience real rape, there are still a lot of what-ifs. What if a virgin has sex with a non-virgin? Are they married? How can they be if the non-virgin is already married to their first sexual partner? What if they aren’t Christians? What if one or both then convert to Christianity later? What if they were non-virgins and got married, then converted? It’s too complicated. I agree with your definition (all n>0 = slut) but I am not sure that I agree with your conclusion (and therefore never able to marry).
Oh, interesting on the Catholicism. I mentioned the whole “Catholic schoolgirl” meme earlier and that’s part of what I was thinking of earlier when I was talking about my general (possibly false) impression that religious teachings that pound the evils of sexual temptation can have the perverse effect of actually increasing temptation. I don’t know if the “Catholic schoolgirl” rap is fair, but I have a lot of cradle Catholics in my life, and many of them report a sort of thrill in transgressing the boundaries of what the priests told them not to do. As one of my in-laws put it, “Catholics like to be naugthy.” It’s no coincidence that both Madonna and Lady Gaga both had hard core Catholic upbringings.
In contrast, a cradle secularist like me gets no special thrill out of “acting slutty,” because the concept of “sluttiness” doesn’t exist in the first place. Taboos often seem to have the perverse effect of igniting sexuality (maybe because they bring out an aroused fight-or-flight response?) so perhaps that may explain why sometimes “sluttiness” can have a special appeal for some religious people.
@Doomed Harlot
This is true, with some very important caveats.
1) Just because a promiscuous woman marries well “on paper” doesn’t mean she married as well as she could have otherwise. Significant numbers of women tell us that they aren’t able to fall in love with the kind of man who would be willing to marry them. This is generally a sign that they need more alpha than they can afford in the MMP. Being promiscuous tends to both up their taste for alpha and decrease their attractiveness to men with more alpha. I’m talking about greater betas here more than actual alphas, so the issue is the amount of alpha in the mix. This sounds like a small issue, unless you happen to be the woman in question. Then it means everything.
2) Transient social norms can also work against women. This seems impossible because to date the pendulum has only swung one way. With the current mass movement by women delaying marriage past their most marriageable years, the risk is there that they will all find themselves suddenly competing for a less than sufficient pool of marriageable men. Consider the recent housing bubble and collapse in the coastal US. Small mismatches can make very large changes in the climate of a market. If today you have 100 women competing for 105 men looking to marry, and then this switches to 100 women competing for 95 eligible men looking to marry, the market for husbands could suddenly become very cutthroat. Small advantages could become much more important today than they seemed yesterday. If eligible men (the only ones who matter) find themselves in a greater position to dictate terms in the marriage market a woman’s past will matter much more. And the women who have been chaste will be the first to remind men of what they see as their marketing advantage over their competitors.
This seems like a tall order. When God presented Eve to Adam, is this what we imagine he said to himself: “My, this is an interesting development. I must internalize this paradigm.”?
St. Paul doesn’t say to marry if you know what sex is for; he says to marry if you burn with passion. Internalizing a paradigm is bloodless–it happens without an erection, but erections are why we should marry. Even within the marriage, the idea that each other’s bodies belong to the other carries a certain amount of the idea of, “Pardon me, but I really need to use this for a bit.” You’re saying humans should have self-control, but St. Paul says get married because we don’t have self-control. So it is possible to lack self-control, and yet not sin. Marriage is the God-ordained sexual romper room.
It seems like you’re trying to separate the spirit from the flesh, instead of giving the flesh to the leadership of the spirit.
If you’re not up to it, Cane, what can I say?
SSM: Not complicated – not there, anyway. Adultery’s adultery. If a prostitute can be ‘one flesh’ with several people, so can someone whose asking price isn’t measured in coin. The word ‘adultery’ connotes a dilution or corruption of something pure, the adding of something that naturally doesn’t belong to what naturally does belong. Being one with one person is right and proper; adding more to that oneness is repeatedly forbidden in the strongest terms – so much so that in the Mosaic Law, it was a capital crime. (Which is surely a strange position for God to take, if sex is just mostly-harmless fun, with no unseen-but-nonetheless-real consequences.)
I wot not what conversion has to do with anything. Where is this ‘one flesh’ joining linked to anyone’s religious practice or lack thereof? I see several places in OT and NT where people are commanded not to marry unbelievers; I see one place in the OT (Ezra) where people who had married unbelievers who tempted them to idolatry were commanded to put them away; I see another place in the NT (1 Cor 7) where people who were married to unbelievers were encouraged not to leave their spouses; I see nowhere at all, though, where such relations are annulled, where people get mulligans.
You are fixating on definitions too much. On this thread, you have convened a convocation around the word “slut”; on the last thread it was “game” vis-à-vis “Christianity.” You are chasing your tails about precise distinctions that are ultimately irrelevant. If you want to define terms, imitate the master and establish a systematically Socratic line of inquiry. Otherwise, slash the Gordian Knot. You are participating in a circle jerk.
The connotation of a term gains currency through its repetition and context, not by a top-down Webster’s Dictionary declaration or even through consensus among authorities. Vox Day and his inane alpha/ALPHA gamma iota eta pi taxonomy is an example of this forced authoritativeness. The practice is like pushing on a string.
We know what slut is, just as we know what alpha and game and Christ mean, generally. Whether we have precise understandings of each term’s boundaries or not, there remains substantial overlap. Talk about the overlap, build on those agreed concepts, and reach a shared dialectical conclusion thereby.
Too many hairs have been split on WWJD issues. You hem and haw and fret about the definition of fornication or whether flirting with a girl constitutes “committing adultery with her in [one’s] heart.” This is why nascent Christian game cannot get off the ground. It is paranoid about jots and tittles when boldness is required. More Jesus among the money changers, less cataloging of theological subtleties.
A man of Christ in a marketplace of sluts uses game to lead them out of sin and into a properly feminine role, with an emphasis on forgiveness for wrongdoing (“Neither do I condemn you…”), a firm purpose of amendment with regard to behavior (“…go, and do not sin again.” John 8:11), and teaching the next generation of men and women how to avoid the ravages of the sexual revolution’s unchained hypergamy.
We were born into a state of emergency and war. It is no time for the customs of peace. It is time to take up the sword.
Matt
Well, the thing is Matt, we’re a group of people trying to talk to each other but we all have different meanings for some important concepts that we are trying to talk about. I understand that it seems like an academic exercise, and personally I am not that invested in defining game, but defining “slut” and what to do about said sluts is very important to me. I understand the desire to do something; I intend to use influence on the herd that is in my immediate vicinity and those that I can influence online, but I want to make sure I am clear on my message before I start proclaiming it. There has not been anything too helpful coming from the pulpit on these issues, so that is why a non-theologian housewife such as myself has to step up and do what she can.
Yes, Matthew, these kinds of discussions make my head spin. I like what both you and Brendan wrote. You are both good thinkers. But I agree that there is a certain unreality about this. I suspect that we are spinning our wheels.
This kind of discussion is not only at risk of becoming a circle jerk, but a circular firing squad. Our common cultural enemies are no doubt happy to see us waste our time.
Most men here want to learn how to have better relationships with women, generally in a Christian context. We need practical advice. More fishing, less cutting bait.
Christ was about words and action.
Actually, David, I disagree.
We are in a situation very similar to that of the early Church, or at least as close to that as we have been, as Christians, in 1500 years. This calls for an emphasis on rightness of belief and practice — orthodoxy and orthopraxy — precisely because the ambient culture is now inherently hostile to Christianity, as it was in the times of the early Church. No-one is feeding us to the lions, yet, but don’t discount that in the future if trends continue.
It is always very tempting to make everything about practicality and pragmatism, and I understand that as I myself have a pragmatic bent. But for specifically *Christian* men, this is a time for orthodoxy as much as it is for orthopraxy.
Re: Definition of Marriage
This has come up before and it needs to be set straight.
Sex does not create a marriage. Marriage was instituted before Adam and Eve had sex. Neither the church nor the law define marriage. Marriage came into existence before either. It is the exchange of vows before God that creates a marriage. (“This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh….”) God supernaturally joined them when Adam declared their unique relationship in His presence. This is why people get married to this day.
Consequently… “joining yourself” to a whore does not make you married any more than joining yourself to a farm animal does. (Also, people that do not have proper/complete/functional sex organs can get married just as well as anyone else.)
It is a very thin line to be a true Christian, but there is the Charles Stanley thinking (and I assume much more widespread) that defines Christians as people that aren’t concerned as much with how much one has or one’s achievements as one’s relation with Jesus Christ and his message.
To accept one’s shortcomings, not gloss over them and humbly seek forgiveness. To avoid pride and other traps.
So, living in such a sexualized and amoral society pretty much ensures the vast majority have major sexual skeletons in their closets. Walking free of sin is the goal, but in light of the culture as well as man’s inner nature, we should not be so quick to condemn.
What we must continue to condemn is those who try to defend or justify PRESENT and ONGOING sin.
Another problem with overthinking is that it is very compatible with a human tendency to creeping perversion. In simpler, holier times people intuited the good from the example a godly society gave. A man and woman married and were grateful for what God had given them. They did not spend a lot of time reading and thinking and analysing their sex life.
Today we have all lost our innocence. We have grown expert in the varieties of sexual sin, a buffet of acts and toys and practices and books. I suspect the Devil delights in this. He wants our minds to reflect on sluts and abortion, because it is filthiness. “Touch pitch and be defiled”.
As we age personally, and as a society, we become more perverse.
Another problem with overthinking is that it is very compatible with a human tendency to creeping perversion. In simpler, holier times people intuited the good from the example a godly society gave. A man and woman married and were grateful for what God had given them. They did not spend a lot of time reading and thinking and analysing their sex life.
Today we have all lost our innocence. We have grown expert in the varieties of sexual sin, a buffet of acts and toys and practices and books. I suspect the Devil delights in this. He wants our minds to reflect on sluts and abortion, because it is filthiness. “Touch pitch and be defiled”.
As we age personally, and as a society, we become more perverse.
I think you’re falling into that trap of overthinking.
There was no golden age. Christianity was born into an empire steeped in hedonism and perversion was well tolerated. Human society is simply coming full circle, rather than becoming progressively perverse. We simply need to revert, as Christians of all our types, to the ways and means of the early Church, and those ways and means were certainly not adverse to reflecting on the ambient sinfulness of the surrounding community — far from it.
David, I rather agree with Brendan. The Church is in chaos. No one (or hardly anyone) is preaching a right message on these issues. Our culture is falling to pieces, with unbelievable suffering for children. It’s only partially about men wanting better relations with women.
Matt writes that we are in a state of emergency and war. I agree. Unfortunately the vast majority of the people who are in our army don’t seem to realize that they are supposed to be fighting, don’t know how to use their weapons, don’t know who or what to point their weapons at, and would just rather sing some nice praise songs, hear an uplifting message, and then go out to brunch. We need some meaningful words that we can say to them in a clear, simple way to alert them to the fact that there is a fairly organized enemy about to blow their heads off and will they kindly please look up from their navels and lend a hand.
Complicating these discussions is the fact that there is so much knowledge no one can be an expert. Without any sort of single, defining standard for even the most basic of ideas about marriage and sex, Christians are each making it up as they go along. Instead of “truth” everything is now just “interpretation.” As Vox said on Alpha Game:
The only thing new about feminism and equality is that for the first time in history, a number of men bought into it and permitted it. This will be corrected, of course, by the same mechanism that all imbalances in a fallen world are eventually corrected, by disease and war.
Something has to happen to clear out of the fog and lay down some clear, unchallenged definitions and boundaries or there can be no recovery from the effects of feminism.
@Some Guy: Some questions:
1: Where, in all of scripture, is there the slightest hint that one can be ‘joined’ or become ‘one flesh’ with a farm animal, or anyone but a MOS? (Correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t the present objection to gay marriage not simply that it is wrong for gays to marry, but that it is impossible for them to marry, and that calling them married does not make it so? If that’s accurate, then the application to the current dispute should be clear.)
2: Once again, why is the exact same language used to describe the ‘one flesh’ both of marriage and whoring?
3: Where are you getting that God joined Adam and Eve when Adam said a few words? Can you point to any other place in scripture where words constitute marital union? What does Genesis 2:24 mean for your position?
4: Are you saying that there exist marriages wherein the married are not ‘one flesh’? Can you support this in light of Genesis 2:24, or point to any other place in scripture where such a state exists?
OK, Brendan, but another problem is that we are being gamed by some critics. A great way to weaken your opponents is to get them debating among themselves. Inevitably, in a group from a mixture of strains of Christianity, the discussion soon becomes heavy with scripture citations and theological logic-chopping.
Trying to define slut, for example, is breaking a butterfly upon the wheel. It also breaks the first law of “Game”, by making the discussion fem-centric. It plays to the verbal skills of obfuscation peculiar to women. I have no problem using the word slut freely and I know what I mean, which is all that matters.
I think it was Popper who quoted an earlier philosopher, “Every blockhead ever born loves to argue about words”.
There was no Golden Age but there were ages less leaden. I am old enough to remember one. I like to tell the story of reading a newspaper story on an actress who was living with a man and not planning on getting married, with a pic of the girl. That was it. That was the story. This was in about 1970.
Once we have Christians seriously meditating on sluts, we are in trouble. They should be laughed at, not analysed.
“I was coming at it, as you’ve rightly described, from the perspective of Christian morality, which views the same activity by men and women alike as fornication.”
Nope. There’s a distinction in the bible between sex with sluts/hookers/mistresses/slaves/ect and sex with unmarried women or other men’s wives. Sexual sins mentioned in the bible: Homosexuality, bestiality, Pimping, having sex with a/raping a virgin, adultery, a women pretending to be virgin before marriage and having sex with temple prostitutes. Adultery is strictly mentioned in the context of a Man having sex with another mans wife and never in the context of a man having sex with a hooker or slave girl. The only religions I know of who spend a great deal of time trying to restrict male sexuality is Islam and Protestantism. Stop feeding the male sexuality oppression system and return to real biblical roots.
@Some Guy: Another question: If saying words is what matters, surely the intent of those words matters? They aren’t, after all, magical incantations – if I say ‘I marry your sister!’ (assuming you have one), I’m pretty sure you’d agree that it doesn’t make it so. Well, then, why was Jacob’s marriage to Leah a valid marriage? Genesis 4 is unclear whether he said any words to Leah at all; it is quite clear that if he did, he did so believing that he was saying them to Rachel; he had sex with Leah believing that she was Rachel, and was most displeased that he had been deceived; you tell me how any of that makes sense if words, not sex, constitute marriage.
er, not genesis 4, genesis 29. You know the story, at any rate.
It’s true that we live in a leaden age, but it is a better approach, in my opinion, to go about defining things in a clear way, as we did in AD 0-500, than to be pragmatic now. Yes, enemies will use that against us, but they will use *anything* we do or say against us. The key issue is not our short to medium term influence as Christians, as this is going to keep waning for some time. The key is to use this time of waning to define and redefine our understandings of key points and their contemporary application from our Christian perspective so that we can emerge from this waning period with an arsenal of well-honed weapons — not short-term pragmatic approaches.
The Holy Fathers of the early Church took this approach because they had no choice. We do have a choice, but we need to make the right one, and I think they can show us what the right choice is.
The only religions I know of who spend a great deal of time trying to restrict male sexuality is Islam and Protestantism. Stop feeding the male sexuality oppression system and return to real biblical roots.
I’m not a Protestant nor a Muslim. Learn your religion better than trying to proof-text your sexual desires through the Biblical texts, and maybe you’ll have more credibility.
I think what bothers me is that we are adopting our opponents’ terms, usages and habits of thought. I wouldn’t even debate these issues. As Matthew said, we all know what a alpha is, what a slut is, and so on.
I haven’t read FSoG, but the proper response is likely to be visceral disgust, contempt and derision. Not earnest analysis of the book from the perspective of Christian wives’ sexuality, or some such seriousness. The Devil, they say, hates to be laughed at. The proper response to sluts and feminists is mockery, not pandering to their desire to be the centre of attention.
David —
For some, yes, but for many, not. There are many women who show up in Catholic and Orthodox churches dressed like they are going to a nightclub. I know that this may not happen in Canberra, but it does happen in the US. Something is missing in terms of orthodoxy and orthopraxy alike when that happens. When it happens in spades, it isn’t sufficient to mock, because you are just mocking upstream inside the Church itself.
Instead it needs to be clarified what we really believe and what we really do. We are certainly as a church collective, regardless of our affiliations (for lack of a less offensive term) not in step generally. This was also the case in the early Church. But the early Church Fathers didn’t take the view that we didn’t need to harp on right-thinking, because everyone knew what that was, so let’s just be pragmatic. Instead they harped on right-thinking and right-acting in the context of a hostile culture, and whipped that culture verbally, often.
Yes, we live in a culture that is “exposed” to Christianity. But this exposure is mostly toxic for various reasons. It isn’t an ambient Christian culture, but a culture that is either superficially Christian (perhaps Oz) or post-Christian (Europe) or mealy-mouthed pseudo-Christian (USA/NA). It needs an approach like the early Church.
Our adversaries, feminists, would like nothing better than for us to stop using the word at all, and to deny that such a concept exists. It burns them at their core, especially the Trad Con strain of feminist (which is nearly all Trad Cons). Whenever trad cons discuss this blog, the handwringing is always about the word slut. This is true even when the post they are discussing doesn’t use the word slut. It is in the frame, and it burns them up.
I’m not worried about the definition of the word slut, but Brendan’s comment has great insight separate from the word. And our acknowledging that the concept of slut exists and is shameful burns the trad con feminists in ways you wouldn’t imagine.
If you take these idiots seriously, you give them credibility, Brendan. The proper response to a tarty looking girl at church is not to start analysing her state of mind, the extent of her coverage, the history of fashion, or whatever. It is to laugh or gawk or pass a rude comment or wait until after church and ask her for her price for half an hour. Or go to another church.
There is a woman currently on this blog I won’t even engage with. “Answer a fool according to his folly”.
Fine, David. You take that approach and I will take mine. Perhaps both are needed in the end.
And our acknowledging that the concept of slut exists and is shameful burns the trad con feminists in ways you wouldn’t imagine.
And the reason is that many of them are sluts, by my definition or yours, and so it rankles. As long as they agree with conservatives on economic policy and are anti-abortion, lay off on the slut stuff — that seems to be the political quid pro quo among most politically engaged trad con feminists.
Brendan, I did like your thinking on sacramental marriage. Very much.
Half of Roissy/Chateau’s force comes from the use of, indeed revelling in, terms feminists (and most women) find far too blunt.
Adam named the woman. Adam should continue. Get women to use your terms. Good frame. Nothing amuses me more than a woman using a term for herself I have suggested to her.
I find common ground with David Collard, Matthew King, Darock and Brendan. This is a useful discussion.
Oh, interesting on the Catholicism. I mentioned the whole “Catholic schoolgirl” meme earlier and that’s part of what I was thinking of earlier when I was talking about my general (possibly false) impression that religious teachings that pound the evils of sexual temptation can have the perverse effect of actually increasing temptation. I don’t know if the “Catholic schoolgirl” rap is fair, but I have a lot of cradle Catholics in my life, and many of them report a sort of thrill in transgressing the boundaries of what the priests told them not to do. As one of my in-laws put it, “Catholics like to be naugthy.” It’s no coincidence that both Madonna and Lady Gaga both had hard core Catholic upbringings.
In contrast, a cradle secularist like me gets no special thrill out of “acting slutty,” because the concept of “sluttiness” doesn’t exist in the first place. Taboos often seem to have the perverse effect of igniting sexuality (maybe because they bring out an aroused fight-or-flight response?) so perhaps that may explain why sometimes “sluttiness” can have a special appeal for some religious people.
People who want to rebel, will rebel. Christianity is the story of the redemption of humanity from rebellion, so we expect rebellion to be present. I never felt a particular need to rebel as a Catholic man (when I was one, when I was younger). What I saw among some Catholic women was a need to rebel against Daddy’s faith and its rules in order to comport with the ideas of the broader secular culture. No doubt that was the case with Madonna and with Gaga, and is the case with the gay male Catholics who identify with them, but it wasn’t the case for many other Catholics I knew growing up. Most either (1) left for more mundane reasons than being a Gaga-esque rebel, (2) stayed and became one or another sort of regular Catholic or (3) left, like I did, for a church outside the Catholic Church (some for Gaga-esque reasons, as was often the case for Catholics joining the Episcopal Church, but most for more varied reasons having not much to so with anything like that).
“I am a bad Catholic. It is the religion of all great artists”.
(Brendan Behan, Irish writer.)
Great quote.
Some Guy: “I’m a simple guy. The standard should be… if N > 0, then… she is a slut and is not marriage material. The most notable exception would be the case where a married woman’s husband dies. N = 1, but she’s of course not a slut.”
The statistics (no, I am not going to look them up, they have been posted here, at Heartiste and elsewhere, go find them yourself) show that when the woman has a previous partner count of 0, there is around an 80% chance of staying married. This probability then drops to around 50% for n = 1, and just goes downhill from there as n increases.
While I agree with Brendan’s definition above, given the difficulty in truly determining another person’s true feelings, I think this makes Some Guy’s simple n the most objective standard and thus the safest guideline for reducing risk.
@sunshinemary: Doomed Harlot is actually spot on about the hothouse atmosphere in conservative religious settings. Its very much a case of forbidden fruit syndrome. I was in a fundamentalist asmosphere for a while, and they told us that everything would lead to fornication, there were endless measures to keep men and women from touching in any way or being alone in any capacity. All the ridiculous rules heightened the non sexual to decadently sinful.
I like the sexually incontinent descriptor.Christ did not forgive all harlots,he forgave that one harlot due to her faith in his Godhead and hence his ability to heal/forgive.
His clear instruction to her was to “go forth and sin no more”. Her salvation now contingent up her continence.
Her sin was against herself!
Black Cat, I basically agree. For a potential wife, sluts begin at N=1.
Most Western men marry sluts.
This is not a post to the readership but rather one intended for Dalrock.
You occupy an important position in the pantheon of Manosphere writers, the happily married man in the post feminist world. That position enabled you to stay off the SPLC Hate List. The reader of your blog would find an analysis of data, of statistics, that effectively indict certain aspects of hypergamy and identify risk factors that all men can use if they wish to avoid grief in choices of long term partners. You dispel myths and widely held beliefs that allow readers to make informed choices in their lives. For example, the refuting of the belief that senior divorce is rising. You showed census data and that was that. End of Myth. It was important to me particularly because I had read it was rising and was using it as another reason not to marry. Because you are “the happily married man in the post-feminist world” then a reader can see you as more impartial source and not an aggrieved divorcee with an ax to grind.
Now perhaps you need to foray into subjects like this one or the discussion yesterday about whether Christian men should or could use game in order to keep that cred of “the happily married man in a post-feminist world” and not get too far over in the hater camp with the other writers. I am not religious in the least. But I am an almost daily reader and I deeply value the work you do.
But yesterdays discussion left with me the feeling “what is all the hand wringing about here?”. We have ample evidence about the reality of hypergamy and its effect on men. A man would be an idiot not to take this knowledge into account in making life choices. Game could just as easily be used to achieve a good LTR as to pump and dump. Awareness that shit tests go on well into marriage can help a man to not fall into traps that cause the relationship to go stale. So maybe this topic is burning concern among the religious following you might have, but to the more secular reader, it seems a little obvious. So maybe from time to time you might feel the need to back away a little bit from gaining a PUA label. and this is your way to distance yourself from the rest of us.
Your primary contribution of the manosphere has been reinforcement of the notion of the cock carousel and how ignoring the fact that a woman with +10, +15 sexual partners is a statistical risk. It is good “go to” site for getting facts and viable, believable, understandable interpretations of facts. But I repeat, the real value from Dalrock is that it is a credible source for reinforcing the meme of the cock carousel. That meme has to power to cause real social change. If it was widespread that men accepted this meme and painted all women over 30 with same brush, as well as divorced women, or single mothers, and began to avoid them as valued partners in committed relationships then that could have remarkable social effects. Would a women be quick to divorce if she knew all men would avoid her like the plague? If merely being single and crossing the 30 year old boundary was the same as having a Big Scarlet Letter ‘S’ painted on her then that could that convince other younger women into keeping a lower partner count, marrying sooner, and valuing the man she marries?
Your definition of “slut” above is irrelevant to that meme. The power of the meme is in the concrete nature of it. I recalled a graph you posted that showed probabilities of a marriage lasting 10 years as a function of the number of partners. Who cares whether she was “slutting” or not? The number “N” is the thing that drives your contribution to the meme. I had seen a post from a feminists about “slutting” and she said maybe “you used up all your bonding juice or bonding hormones or some such shit”. I don’t necessarily agree with your definition in conjunction with this meme or of that definition in the way that men have been hurling it around at feminists on the internet. You loose me a little with your definition. That makes 95% of people to be sluts. And I don’t really know if any definition of slut is actually germane to the meme. “N” is the thing.
I think the hurling of the epithet “Slut” is merely and expression of anger at the meme. I don’t anyone would care if she had high partner count if she would stay committed when she commits. We would actually probably like her better if she did have some tricks in her bag. Roosh V wrote about charges that he only can get sluts and he says they are actually harder than good girls. But they are far more rewarding from a sexual basis. But he sticks to the meme, they can’t commit. The hurling of the epithet is the equivalent of throwing stones at the calculating, untrustworthy, deceitful, and hypergamistic behavior that the meme conveys onto women with high partner count and also onto women that wait and wait, rejecting and use men along through her 20s then finally grab the beta in their 30s. It is just a mean word to express anger.
I think when you enter into discussions like yesterday and today it kind of taints the objectivity of the core message. Whether or not a godly man should use game or your definition of slut has no effect on the data and its reality. I think your value is when you stay closer to that core proposition of identifying risk factors in relationships with women and in myth busting.
I guess it boils to what you see as your purpose. Are you serving a religious readership or are you serving the greater social change the manosphere hopes to incur? To me and to the secular part of the manosphere, the justification for game is hypergamy and we see it as the only 100% safe alternative and the only sane response to the reality of post-feminist women. Partially what you do fuels that justification for soft harems, plate spinning, pump and dump. But that would occur with or without you. But what you do can influence women either directly or indirectly through the choices that men make, all men, secular and religious.
Just keep that in mind.
I like this coment here to DH Dalrock
\2) Transient social norms can also work against women. This seems impossible because to date the pendulum has only swung one way. With the current mass movement by women delaying marriage past their most marriageable years, the risk is there that they will all find themselves suddenly competing for a less than sufficient pool of marriageable men. Consider the recent housing bubble and collapse in the coastal US. Small mismatches can make very large changes in the climate of a market. If today you have 100 women competing for 105 men looking to marry, and then this switches to 100 women competing for 95 eligible men looking to marry, the market for husbands could suddenly become very cutthroat. Small advantages could become much more important today than they seemed yesterday. If eligible men (the only ones who matter) find themselves in a greater position to dictate terms in the marriage market a woman’s past will matter much more. And the women who have been chaste will be the first to remind men of what they see as their marketing advantage over their competitors.
This is where the Involuntary Childless Spinterhood comes into play. Getting a large enough group of carousel riders following the 8 step program without the pay off of a child or ex husband will create a compitetion of sorts. That is why i feel it is very important for the christian faithful to be on the red pill of reality truth. It will be very important to be able to set the herd to a high chaste pleasant and pleasing as being of high status as they will be the only ones who will get the prize of a husband and child. A male pill will be a great tool to have available.
Another great comment, Mark, following the one at Rational Male:
https://rationalmale.wordpress.com/2012/08/14/flushing-the-nest/#comment-8772
As I commented just above, while I agree with Brendan’s definition, the problem lies in the verification. How can one know another person’s real feelings? How does one know that, once a slut has had a change of heart and ‘reformed,’ that she will not change her mind again later? Vox Day makes the very salient point that one should mentally add the words “Right now I feel like…” in front of any (emotion-based) statement by a woman. So how can one really know?
Game is probabilistic, not deterministic. Which means that one must play the odds, while being as ruthlessly realistic and prudent as possible. Hope for the best, but prepare for the worst. Brendan’s definition is good, because it is necessary to vet potential mates’ personal values, but when placed in a balance against Some Guy’s simple n, IMO the simple n outweighs it.
N must be taken into account. Not only is there a definite correlation, but the time domain (n prior to marriage -> fidelity after marriage) suggests strong causation as well.
Mark Minter, just a couple of quick points. I agree that the Game and hypergamy debates are pretty pointless. As I said, spinning the wheels. Game works. Women are hypergamous.
Different men want different things, and the variation is often a matter of personality, not purely religious persuasion. For example, I wanted a virgin and I expected to marry fairly young and stay married. Things are going according to plan so far. On the matter of quality of sex, I regard this as secondary to the fact of having sex in a sacramental marriage. Maybe I am naive, but I can’t imagine that one woman is very different technically from another. They are all basically the same model, and can be taught what you like.
The definition is good but how do we see the tell on the definition? how do we know? Well we just talked about that when we were discussing game. A man that knows game (female psychology) can see things a blue piller can not. A blue pill christian beta will deliberately blind himself thinking he is maintaining a christian frame of purity and niceness.
Check this out as an example. The spearhead had an article on the hurdler chick that was marketing herself as attractive and still a virgin. I think she was 27- 28. Knowing what I know she would be a shitty wife. She is already showing her ass at the olympics running mouth. She is going to end up trying to get knocked up over the next two years if she can sit still long enough for some sex with a man. Knowledge and understanding and knowing women are very childish self centered, solipsistic, no capacity to love (they do gina tingle, that is what that alpha shit is for the tingle) all motivated by hypergamy and status within the herd. The rationalization hamster and entitlement will remove all guilt and shame for any action taken in the quest for hypergamy happiness and herd status for anything from killing and unborn child, to any lie, to cuckolding a man that that loves her and divorcing him to suicide,to voting for laws of misandry to make it easier. That as discribed is a normal woman. That is the basis of game. As bad as that looks a woman can behave with christian virtrue if it is in her best interest. Not in her normal true to herself way but in her best interest way with all of the discribed attributes operating in full swing.
What you say, greyghost, is basically true, which is why a proper Christian system has women ultimately under male authority always.
“A man of Christ in a marketplace of sluts uses game to lead them out of sin and into a properly feminine role, with an emphasis on forgiveness for wrongdoing (“Neither do I condemn you…”).”
Wtf?
Isn’t that the reason why blogs like this exist? Because virtuous men have been doing exactly that and have had their lives ruined.
@Mark Minter
I more/less agree with the exception that it is an imperative of the Christian to at the very least express his personal primacy of faith.
It is important to be careful because Dalrock can write whatever he wants and I for one will keep on reading because its usually quite good and quite interesting regardless. However as to utility, defining and redefining especially game gets tedious in that it magnifies one of the biggest barriers to men coming together in advocacy for or against anything, and that is our innate tendency to intellectually peacock. We love it! If its a subject that interests us, and if we know something about it, of we will go.
Game gets to be one of this things to me that is defended a bit like feminism is. The “you don’t agree because you dont follow the right definition” thing manifests quickly in any discussion. Now that is carrying over the “slut”. This kind of defining fits the assembly of an ISO 9000 process manual and even there to me its too tedious.
I also do not see any utility in the refining of these definitions. But maybe others do, and maybe they see more value than just peacocking. I think your use of “N” is the ultimate in practicality.
I sympathize with Brendan’s definition because it relies on intrinsic traits and is therefore entirely independent of any circumstances that may inhibit them or lead to one of their various expressions. If a woman isn’t given the opportunity to slut around (as unlikely as it is in modern liberal environments), she can still be slut at heart and merits the same attitude. If she wants to save her virginity for the “alpha” male so she can get all the cookies or have hot alpha sex, she is still a slut, and will still divorce him if he is sure to lose his “alpha” status forever. I consider a slut to be someone (of either gender) who uses sex for anything other than genuine love, be it status, wealth or simply entertainment.
A plurality of definitions is not in itself a bad thing. I’m a firm believer in the idea that people’s understanding of the world is shaped by the faculties they tend to employ most often, so that some people will find it more fruitful to define personality traits from an external perspective, based on their impact in the world (as Dalrock did), whereas others strive to understand the inner workings of people and therefore define personality traits irrespective of their social context (as Brendan did).
SofV, I personally like my definition because it encompasses the Christian perspective. Marriage is for procurement of love, the grounding of faith between the man and the woman and allows the proper upbringing of the next generation of children. It’s the bedrock of Christian society.
In my mind, a slut, in a Christian sense, is a person who is having sex with a person other than the one they are married to or will be married to. People can ooh and aah as much as they like about finding a definition that fits their narrative but Christians have an obligation to put forth the strict definition. For what else is a Christian person, who is having sex outside of marriage, if not a slut?
Brendan’s definition allows those, who would obscure Christian faith, to tie us up in knots trying to define every action any person around the world can make at any possible time, rather than setting a real definition and then moving from there. Others can spend their time worrying about 7 billion definitions, I’ll just stick to one, ‘no sex before marriage’.
@Gabriella: I will tell my daughters that :
-virginity is a precious gift meant for your husband
-giving your body AND your heart away to more than one man will disadvantage you in being able to give your whole heart in marriage.
-should you incur a debt of sin it is much like money debt…you have to work extra hard to erase the damage done.
That is awesome Gabriella, respect. I will be doing the same for my daughters… while also ensuring the boys who date them are keenly aware of my potential wrath! 😉
giving your body AND your heart away to more than one man will disadvantage you in being able to give your whole heart in marriage.
This has been bothering me. The implications of this are untrue. What you do sexually with your body affects your heart one way or another.
I mean to say that emotional and physical promiscuity are damaging. It should have been AND/OR but I forgot the “OR”. So even if you don’t have sex with someone, if you are being emotionally intimate then you are making strong connections that could damage your future relationships.
Mark Minter,
Your elevation of the tone and thoughtfulness is appreciated.
“Are you serving a religious readership or are you serving the greater social change the manosphere hopes to incur?”
You are a product of, and a participant in, a culture which, across the sweep of its history, has accomplished greater social change through the means of religion*. Your education most likely took considerable pains, for reasons often well-intentioned if in retrospect mistaken, to obscure this fact. The results of that effort have not been what any had hoped for, secular or otherwise, so there is an ongoing reconsideration of that effort and the role of religion in our shared culture.
One valuable group of participants in that reconsideration are those who have carried on the traditions that produced those greater social changes in our past. Brendan seems a particularly valuable representative of that group, and not engaging him, and on his terms, out of an effort to preserve the old, failed, “separation of religion and life” secular consensus is unlikely to be conducive to the social change you seek.
* – the correlation is clear and amenable to wide consent. Personally I would color the causation differently, but this isn’t personal.
Brendan’s definition allows those, who would obscure Christian faith, to tie us up in knots trying to define every action any person around the world can make at any possible time, rather than setting a real definition and then moving from there. Others can spend their time worrying about 7 billion definitions, I’ll just stick to one, ‘no sex before marriage’.
————————————————————————————–
I agree completely. We are getting into the same territory as when women try and define “abuse”. The defining process has a goal, the goal is to recruit. To find more and more things that the word can be used to describe.
Similarly, called slut, or George, if we think its bad/wrong/immoral…..whats the point in writing a thesis on the definition? I get that in law these things must be done but in daily discourse I dont. I of course have no intent to tell anyone or suggest that anyone not do it, if some find the exercise interesting. I would hope that its realized that it is being done in that academic sense rather than masquerading as practical.
While the city burned the authorities wrestled with the true definition of arson.
@empath
I think Brendan is right about concentrating on orthodoxy and orthopraxy. However, I think the definition should be shorter; broken down for our uses. What Brendan did was define slut and hedonism (and more!) in his quote because there seems to be confusion born of hard-headedness about what not only sluts, are but hedonism, etc. We need more definitions, not longer ones.
slut: a person, particularly female, who engages in sexual hedonism, outside of marriage.
Hedonism could mean external (actual sex), or internal (impure ideas about usage of sex).
No-one is feeding us to the lions, yet, but don’t discount that in the future if trends continue. (Brendan)
I can get you a bumper sticker which goes:
So many Christians…
-So few lions!
And you can see for yourself what kind of response you get.
The typical xtian is about like the typical HS student whose head is so filled with nonsense he can’t locate Europe on a world map.
I like Brendan’s definition because I do believe the intent of our hearts matter. I also believe there is a distinction to be made between the lives of believers before and after they understood what sin is, what is sinful, and what isn’t.
However, I also agree that there is a component missing, namely that we can only judge the tree by its fruit, not the intention of the sower when the tree was planted. Only God knows our hearts and we ask a lot when we ask other people to trust that our hearts are in the right place when we sin as if it makes the sin better.
I once bought a bog of seeds that had a picture of zucchini on the front but when the harvest came up,we had yellow summer squash. Anyone who saw my garden that summer would see the harvest, not the bag of seed I used to sow.
In other words, what we do matters. There will be very few people over the course of our lives who will ever be close enough to even begin to understand the why behind the what. Therefore it behooves us (especially when we know right from wrong) to try to make the right choices to begin with, while extending compassion to those who have no idea what the right choice is at all.
And no, you don’t have to marry the sluts, so please spare me the predictable response of claiming that by compassion I mean, “Man up and marry those sluts!”
@ Gabriella
Your original comment has the implication that you can fuck while guarding your heart and that it’s less damaging. You give yourself away whether you intend to or not. A heart that is walled off will be unable to bond. This is the slut mentality and your squeamishness around the word slut is also telling. Don’t give your daughters bad advice because you refuse to resolve your own issues.
CL, Did you miss the first point that Gabby led with:
-virginity is a precious gift meant for your husband
Yeah that’s the slut mentality, LOL. I think you work overtime to read more into her words and discount what she says.
Physical and/or emotional promiscuity is damaging. That is what I said and that is what I mean.
I don’t use the word “slut” for the same reason I don’t use the word “retard”..A person is not the sum total of their disabilities, actions, or a particular quality they have. I don’t use the word “Gay man” either..I would use the word “Man who is gay”. I would say a woman behaves in a slutty way. I would not say a person is a “slut”..because that is not all they are and reducing a persons identity to one aspect of themselves is dehumanizing.
I don’t expect to win anyone over to my way of thinking. You either respect the innate dignity of individuals or you do not and nothing I can say is going to matter. This isn’t the hill I want to die on.
You can have meaningless sex but I agree that all sex effects a person on a psychological level even when it is seemingly “just physical”. Still…being emotional promiscuous is very damaging as well even if no sex is involved.
But Elspeth, what are you proposing by saying, “I also believe there is a distinction to be made between the lives of believers before and after they understood what sin is, what is sinful, and what isn’t.” if not, “man up and marry those sluts”?
If we wait for everyone to understand exactly what is sin and what isn’t, we will only be left with sluts and cads. Christianity requires the teaching of the Bible in order to forego sin and live a Godly life. What you are proposing is exactly what we have in Church now, it’s no different than providing protection to those that sin against others.
If the Church actually applied strict definitions of acts, the parents of the children in the Church would take it on themselves to teach their children right from wrong. By being wishy washy about these types of acts, the Church has indeed emboldened its congregates to go and sin.
Gabriella, if we really had innate dignity, God wouldnt have wiped out all but 8 people off the face of the earth, or destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah.
Geez, feminist hater, I thought I made myself clear that what we do matters. Still, as Christians we have a responsibility before the God who has forgiven us to offer spiritual fellowship and the benefit of the doubt to those who have come out of sin. If we don’t, then God will reject us in the self-same manner.
So no, you don’t have to marry her, but you do have to accept her as a Christian sister and not treat her according to the sins of her past unless there is clear evidence that those sins are not in the past. There is only one Judge for those of us who believe. I for one, am thankful for that.
Ah, I would agree with your case Elspeth if you but allow one little distinction to be placed in there. For the woman, or former slut, to be forgiven and allowed to take part in Christian spheres, no talk of marriage mind you, she must be entirely 100 % honest about her past. Any man she interacts with must be aware of her past, in all its glory.
Not to place judgment on her but instead to allow those men who decide to take the risk to be aware of the possible problems associated with such a woman.
Death is more dignified than sin.
Christianity is a faith made up of converts, feminist hater. Remember that. We’re all sinners saved by grace who have to be taught the right path to take.
There are people who lived their entire childhood and young adult life never knowing that fornication is a sin. What do you propose, that we reject those people and send them back out into world believing that God doesn’t love them?
For the woman, or former slut, to be forgiven and allowed to take part in Christian spheres, no talk of marriage mind you, she must be entirely 100 % honest about her past. Any man she interacts with must be aware of her past, in all its glory.
Um, no. Unless said man is attempting to court her, she does not own every man she interacts with access to her complete life’s history. And how would you determine if she’s done that?
If death is more dignified than sin, then death is more dignified than life. Your totalitiarian masochism is rather disturbing this time.
@ Elspeth and Gabriella
Not buying it. What about the implications of the rest of Gabby’s comment? Is she serious about that first statement or not? Why do you keep galloping in to defend her hiding and bad advice? How is this useful?
You can have meaningless sex but I agree that all sex effects a person on a psychological level even when it is seemingly “just physical”. Still…being emotional promiscuous is very damaging as well even if no sex is involved.
This is muddy and full of holes. She can keep saying “your Majesty is like a stream of bat’s piss!” and then “Well I merely meant, your Majesty, that you shine out like a shaft of gold when all around is dark!” but I am not fooled. Bad advice is bad advice.
You are mistaking forgiveness and lack of consequences. No one has even remotely said that sinners, who have repented, must be sent back to the wolves.
Elspeth, what you basically saying is that a murderer or a pedophile should be allowed inside Church on the only basis that they are ‘forgiven’. I don’t buy it. It’s not as if the person should stand up in front of the congregation but the Church leaders should at least be aware of the past and inform any members of the congregation who might start interactions with said person, that are more than just an ‘hello’.
“There are people who lived their entire childhood and young adult life never knowing that fornication is a sin.” Elspeth, this is heresy! The law is written on our hearts. And somehow i can believe that you actually believe that the poor woman who never heard of sin is excused in committing it. The command in Scripture for women to keep quiet has become so clear.
Doomed Harlot: “The reality is that women who have have had premarital sex don’t have too much of a problem getting married.”
This is true of the current MMP, but doesn’t get to the problem. The issue is not whether such women can get married. The issue is whether women who have had premarital sex have the skills and character to:
(1) create a good marriage
(2) stay married to one man through the natural rough and tumble of marriage, and despite the periods of time when she doesn’t feel attracted to him
Dalrock: “Just because a promiscuous woman marries well “on paper” doesn’t mean she married as well as she could have otherwise. Significant numbers of women tell us that they aren’t able to fall in love with the kind of man who would be willing to marry them. This is generally a sign that they need more alpha than they can afford in the MMP. Being promiscuous tends to both up their taste for alpha and decrease their attractiveness to men with more alpha.”
I think this really gets to the crux of the problem for many women in the MMP. They are settling. They are marrying men they aren’t really attracted to nor in love with for various reasons that we all are familiar with.
I keep coming back to this as I work through this in my own mind. I really believe the more men she has sex with, the less able she is to bond to one man. Incorporating some of what Brendan wrote, her increasing partner count causes her to take an increasingly cynical and utilitarian view of sex. She accustoms herself to using, and being used by, others. She does so because in this SMP, she learns that using sex gets her what she wants or needs. She can use it to secure affirmation, validation, attention, resources, provisioning, commitment or even marriage. To her, sex is not an aspect of life to be reserved or enjoyed. Sex becomes an implement for use; a weapon for deployment; or a bargaining chip for negotiation. Sex becomes a problem to work on and through, not a mutually shared part of her life with her husband. Sex is a problem for her because she simply isn’t sexually attracted to her husband.
@ Elspeth “Were all sinners saved by grace……What do you propose, that we reject those people and send them back out into world believing that God doesn’t love them?”
John, Christ, and the apostles all proclaimed “repent for the Kingdom of God is at hand”
The very first sermon given was answered by Peter on how one is saved ( Note the following).
Acts 2:37-38…and said to Peter and the rest of the apostles, “Brothers, what shall we do?” And Peter said to them, “Repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit”.
Note that repentance and forgiveness is reciprocal.
Nowhere in the scriptures is salvation presented as “accept Jesus in your heart” or “raise your hand” or “make a profession of Christ”.
It is all about repentance and discipleship ( I have NO idea where the “4 steps of salvation” came from- it is unscriptural and cut/paste in attempt to proselyte people into a religion vs a relationship with Jesus.
As you mentioned “we dont reject those people” the truth is THEY HAVE REJECTED Christ and gone bac into the world on their own “if you love me, you will obey my commandments” and Paul wrote 2 Timothy 4:10 10For Demas, in love with this present world, has deserted me.
If are interested in what the scriptures says on what to do, allow me to suggest reading 1 Cor 5 and keep in mind that Christian Discipleship is the context of TORAH and Judaism and not watered down contemporary theologian excuse making western crossless Christian religion.
Either your part of the solution or part of the problem- dont be in the middle ( Rev 3:15-16)
Grace in terms salvation is a opportunity – make the best of it and show some class otherwise one will not enter the kingdom ( Gal 5:16-24)
Shalom
Truly repentant sinners are willing to bear the temporal consequences of their sins. But, not everyone needs to know the whole truth.
A murderer or pedophile in church can’t serve in any kind of leadership capacity and shouldn’t serve around kids.
A reformed slut doesn’t have to tell every man she talks to of her past. But if she starts dating, she does need to tell the men she dates of her past. And she needs to tell him specifics. He’s got a right to know what he’s inserting his penis into, and a right to know what he might eventually be asked to commit to and sign up for long-term. She needs to divulge her N, past sex practices, and STDs. If she’s done sex work, she needs to tell him that. If she’s ever posed for nude or racy photos (even the bathroom mirror/cell phone ones), she needs to tell him that (because they’ll show up on the internet). If she’s ever had an abortion or a miscarriage, she needs to tell him that. Previous marriages, pregnancies, medical history — she needs to get all of it out on the table.
If the man has any resources or even basic internet competence, he will find out. He can google her name or images. He can hire a PI to dig around in her past or surveill her. Her friends will let it slip.
Yep Deti, couldn’t agree with you more.
I don’t intend to use the word “slut” because I simply don’t believe it is necessary to use crass shaming language to communicate a point.
The crass shaming is the point, and rightly so.
@Deti – seen this in women as you mentioned.
They are emotionally “burnt toast” and frigid despite being a physically attractive person – they are spiritually, mentally, and emotionally “broken”.
What you have summed up is terrible “relationship etiquette” – it just doesn’t work.
The only solution I have found to filter them out is remain as a acquaintance, watch over time, if they are worth knowing, then friend( no romance kissing etc) , and then exclusively court (see if she has enough self control).
Time tells all.
As we age personally, and as a society, we become more perverse
Perversions have a cost, economically and otherwise. People and society think that they can afford the cost.
This is why nascent Christian game cannot get off the ground. It is paranoid about jots and tittles when boldness is required. More Jesus among the money changers, less cataloging of theological subtleties. (King A (Matthew King) )
How many sluts can dance in the head of a pinhead?
Seems to me “Christian game”, whether or not it can accomplish what the Wright Bros. did, is trying to sell naive young men who are all worked up over sex that they can have Every-Man-For-Himself DIY Patriarchy-In-A-Bubble, all through their own dedicated efforts and the mythical superpowers of “Game”. What could possibly go wrong?
Two or three years back I wandered into the Halloween costume store out of curiosity. You can get one that makes you look like the velvet painting version of Jesus, with a long-hair wig, paste-on beard, flowing gown and staff. Since we’re all spitballing here, if the Pussy Rioters (a bunch of dumb girls) can get worldwide media attention for their antics, why can’t a team of you from the virtual religious braintrust in these parts get up off your behinds and go to those Sunday Morning Night Clubs, sit prominently in the front row, and toss all the sluts out of the temple at the appropriate moment in the proceedings? Not exactly a Penis Riot, but someone will flash on a suitable name (Men Cleaning House for a Change?, Fifty Shades of White?…). Everyone else would instantly get the obvious parallels anyway. If nothing else, Jesus was a savvy opportunist.
If all that’s too much, how about some actual Take Back the Church rallies and protests? The popular conception in the non-xtian world is that people are prisoners of religion and the church, so it would be extremely novel to see people willingly trying to get in.
Two wrongs don’t make a right, but two Wrights made an airplane.
@Deti
I’m not sure that what you want women to disclose will ever happen. Also, I’m not sure it’s a good idea anyway. Just because you are romantically involved with someone doesn’t mean you have to spill your most horrible aspects of your past with them.
No woman is going to do this anyway. This is the equivalent to women telling beta men to ‘be themselves’ so they can screen them out.
This is a good thread, and I appreciate Brendan not only offering a definition but offering a clarification. One thing I ask is that whatever definition eventually filters out, it has to be simple.
Sometimes this forum reminds me of meetings that I am called to (I mean that in a good way). I find myself in a room with 5 or 8 or more people, all of them of over average intelligence who speak the same language and jargon. We use complex words that have agreed upon definitions to talk about concepts, about abstractions, about things that do not yet exist. In meetings like that, it is easy to believe in the Libertarian utopia, where everyone’s enlightened self interest unites to create a wonderful world. It all seems so simple.
Then I go back into the real world, where a man in dirty clothes shuffles up to me with a cup in one hand, and the other hand hidden where I cannot see it, and I have to make an educated guess as to whether he’s merely about to ask me for money, or attempt an armed robbery. Libertopia seems far away, and very simple things – such as whether my weight is on the leg towards this man, or on the leg away from this man – take on sudden complexity. The simple becomes complex, and the obvious becomes obscure.
This is my long winded way of asking for simplicity. When I am talking to a young married man who is a year out of the Army and enrolled in tech school to become a diesel mechanic, and he sighs a bit about his wife, I need to speak the truth to him in a way that he will easily understand. I can’t spend hours defining hypergamy, hypogamy, serial polygamy, apex fallacy, DHV, and so forth. But I need to say something more useful than “eh, wimmenz be krazy sometimes, man”.
This is a good thread, because if these complex ideas are chewed on long enough, something terse and concrete may well emerge. It’s ok to have long winded chat fests, like the feller said “I apologize for the length of this letter, if I had more time I would have written a shorter one”.
What is a slut? Why does it matter? Whe have Social Pathologists nice analysis of the large US survey data[*] for par of the “why” and Brendan’s definition as a starting point for “what”. I will echo the comment up thread that there needs to be a reasoning chain separate from religion. There are two reasons for this. The first is obvious: non-churchgoing men need to know about sluts, too. They are part of society. They are brother Betas.
The second is not so obvious, but anyone who has spent time on a typical “Christian” forum (*cough* “christianforums.net” *cought*)should understand: it is very easy for Churchian women and White Knighs to drag out selected quotes from the Bible shorn of all context and tie up a simple debate/discussion in knots in no time flat. That’s no problem for men of strong will, who are well versed in the Bible, who have the time to argue endlessly. Men like that are needed to defeminize the church. But men like that are rare. The man who works 50 hour weeks at two part time jobs, who gets his wife and children to Sunday bible study and church, who grabs that extra cup of coffee in order to stay awake in bible study – he’s not the man for that endless wrangle. He will walk away from it, rather than engage. He just doesn’t have the time, or the energy, to waste on that arguement and it is a waste.
And it is an endless wrangle, I’ve seen it. People with plenty of time on their hands, and an emotional investment in protecting sluts, can combine a handful of Bible quotes with a bunch of logical fallacies to make it just too tedious and time consuming to prove them wrong. Men in churches get this kind of stuff thrown at them all the time, and so a lot of churchgoing men are likely to tune out an assertion based purely on complex theology simply because they have had so much emotional crap dumped on them, in the name of the Bible, especially by women in leadership. Imagine if you were a plumber who was often working overtime, and Sheila Gregoire was a leader in your church teaching a class in Sunday School. It would get pretty tiresome, and just hunkering down & tuning her out would be the easiest thing to do. Someone like her is in a whole lot of churches across the US. Instructing churchgoing men on sluts in complex BIble based arguments is not likely to work.
Keeping the argument simple: science for all men, BIble for those in church. “The more different men she’s done it with, the more likely she is to cheat on you and then divorce you” and “Proverbs says a promiscuous woman is like a deep ditch and a strange woman like a narrow pit”. The diesel mechanics, both churchgoing and not, will benefit and so will their future wives and children.
[*]
(Dalrock: Please consider a permalink to that posting of his, or even work out some way to host just the posting with graph here. If we could just point to a link where Slumlord / Social Pathologists posting is, it would be useful. )
A great way to weaken your opponents is to get them debating among themselves
Reminds me of this from “Life of Brian”
I don’t use the word “slut” for the same reason I don’t use the word “retard”..A person is not the sum total of their disabilities, actions, or a particular quality they have. I don’t use the word “Gay man” either..I would use the word “Man who is gay”. I would say a woman behaves in a slutty way. I would not say a person is a “slut”..because that is not all they are and reducing a persons identity to one aspect of themselves is dehumanizing.
So you say things such as “50% of people who are American have not travelled abroad”, “The person who behaves as a President of the United States of American is named Barack Obama”, “People who behave like American athletes have played a good role in the Olympics”, “People who behave like smoking tobacco have a higher risk of lung cancer” (calling them “smokers” is reducing a person’s identity to one aspect of themselves and, therefore, is dehumanizing).
I will take it into account and, from now on, I will call you “the person who usually posts under the nickname ‘Elspeth’ and has weird arguments”, Calling you Elspeth would be dehumanizing because it is reducing you to only one aspect of your existence.
Michael S:
I’m on record as saying sluts can reform — truly reform — and have a shot at marriage. But she has to accept some realities.
1. She must bear the temporal consequence of her past. She must accept FULL responsibility for it. Her past did not “happen to” her. She made conscious, deliberate choices that created her past.
2. She must accept that she might not find a man she can be attracted to AND who is willing to marry her. Despite her best efforts and intentions, she might never get married. She must accept this possibility. She must be willing to accept what she can get. That might be a man she wouldn’t have given the time of day to a few years ago. That might be no one. She must be willing to accept this with grace, gratitude, humility and submissiveness.
That said, if she genuinely cannot be attracted to or fall in love with “what she can get”, she should not marry. She must also be willing to accept this.
3. She must accept that most of the men she tingles for won’t marry her.
4. She must lower her standards in what she wants and needs in a man.
5. She must make conscious efforts to put off and suppress her tendency to demand more alpha. (Most women will not be able to do this. Some can.)
6. She must show genuine gratitude for any man willing to date and marry her. It does not mean she has to marry him; but she must be grateful. This will cultivate humility and submissiveness.
7. She must avoid locations and venues in which she formerly met and had sex with men. In the so-called “recovery” parlance, she needs to “stay away from her old playgrounds and her old playmates”. For example, she stays out of the bars and the parties if that’s where she picked up men. Or maybe she needs to quit an addiction (alcohol, drugs, shopping). Or maybe she needs to get rid of her social media attention whoring pages.
@ farm boy
Yes, exactly! Since you posted that, this is where my “stream of bat’s piss” comment came from. A lesson in how to recover from a gaffe (or blatant mis-statement):
Ferret:
“Just because you are romantically involved with someone doesn’t mean you have to spill your most horrible aspects of your past with them.”
I disagree with this. On the contrary, a woman with a promiscuous past has an obligation to tell the good, the bad and the ugly. All of it. In graphic detail. He has a right to know.
It’s a different standard for men. Of course if he is sterile or has a past history of STDs he must disclose that. But his reciprocal disclosure obligation to her is not as broad because his past sexual history isn’t nearly as important to her as hers is to him. It’s important to him because he is the one being asked to invest his time, money and resources; and to commit and entrust those valuable commodities to her and only to her until one of them is dead. And, her job is to give him as much confidence as possible that any children they have are his.
Anonymous,
“But I need to say something more useful than “eh, wimmenz be krazy sometimes, man”.”
You’re right, that needs to be the focus.
I’ll usually just say that women are tired of feminism and want their men to be more manly – sometimes even acting like a man themselves hoping he’ll get the hint. You’ve got to stand up for yourself, don’t apologize, and lead. She’ll push back, but that’s just a way to give you an opportunity to show your manliness. Its like when you’re dating and you make a move its her opportunity to show she’s not that easy if she pushes back.
Look, its not going to be perfect, but we’ve got to push back against the crap he’s getting from the culture, and especially the crap his wife’s getting.
Deti
Truly repentant sinners are willing to bear the temporal consequences of their sins. But, not everyone needs to know the whole truth.
Instead of sluts, think of alcoholics. Someone who is an alcoholic – or as they were called in an earlier time, a chronic drunkard – who goes to church doesn’t need to tell anyone anything at first. But if he or she is honest, then communion for them better be grape juice. And if the church is one where it’s no big deal to serve wine at informal meetings in the rectory after the opera, then he or she might just need to tell the priest “I must not touch wine, please give me water or something else”. So the secret can be kept, except when it must be told, even if only to one person. I offer this because it is not as emotional as sluts – there are no “drunkwalks” demanding public acceptance of drunks, for example.
+1 on the rest of Deti’s posting. Full disclosure when appropriate – there’s two ways a man can learn about things that matter in a fiancee’s past. He can find it out from her, or he can find it out from other sources and feel that he’s been lied to. I can’t guarantee how the first way will turn out, but I’m very sure where the second way leads.
Now a mini rant. The last thing an alcoholic would need is a sermon about how it’s OK to drink, followed by Jello-shots. The last thing sluts need is a sermon about how much Jesus loves them no matter what they do, and that if teh menz would Just Man UP, teh wimmenz would be saved. Which of these two obviously absurd hypotheticals has any one ever seen in a Churchian setting, eh?
@Cl
When Gabriella needs a defender, she doesn’t look to CC, but you’re reading her wrong; probably because of your bias. In other words: you’re looking to find fault.
She said:
But you’re seeing:
Gabriella linked the two, not separated them. Her point was that the go together.
@Martian Bachelor
Wright on, and very nice landing at the end.
@Feminist Hater
This is the problem with conflating sex with marriage, as some have done above. There is scripture that whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery, but there is no scripture that says a non-virgin cannot marry. Sex is the consummation of marriage; not its foundation. Having sex outside of marriage is a case of building a house on something much more fluid than sand. It doesn’t mean you can’t later build a house on better ground.* Likewise, the desire for sex is the impetus for marriage; not the result of a successful wedding.
As Brendan said: Orthodoxy is needed.
*All caveats noted and agreed that you should pick someone who can tell the difference between marsh and rock, and sincerely desires the latter.
I don’t use the word “slut” for the same reason I don’t use the word “retard”
A slut is a slut by choice. A retard is not. I don’t use “retard” to shame,
I do so with “slut”. And it is effective.
@Anonymous Reader
The majority of American churches are so far off base in their teaching that the pastors dont want to hear the teachings of strict Christ in the light of the OT.
They are strictly concerned about “nickels and noses”, buildings, and programs.
There is point of no return and hence the “wake up call to repent” is right around the corner due to the behavior and the lack of witness / lampstand despite a church on every corner.
I have gone over this and many others with pastors (and wives) over the years and it has ended in a “ad hominem” to the nth degree on their part ( some have come back to apologize).
Remember what happend to John the Baptist, Christ, and the apostles ? There is a “religious spirit” that murders the truth – these are the bulls of Bashan.
Religious leaders dont likes to shown up by someone who knows the scripture / spiritual gift ( I dont like to argue theology or escatology – it goes nowhere – I do my best to keep ” the sword sheathed” till directed).
There is a time and place for everything – now is not the time unless directed ( Jude 1:17-23)
Btw, prayer and obedience goes a long way in the Kingdom and getting to know Jesus.
An operational definition of slut is “a female that a quality guy is unwilling to marry because of sexual past/attitudes”. Not really so good of a definition, but is one in the field and not in ideal world.
“But I need to say something more useful than “eh, wimmenz be krazy sometimes, man”.
That is why we are here, to build a useful mental model of reality. Be patient, it is a long process.
@AR and Desiderius
What is wrong with the definition I gave above?
slut: a person, particularly female, who engages in sexual hedonism, outside of marriage.
Hedonism could mean external (actual sex), or internal (impure ideas about usage of sex).
Just because you are romantically involved with someone doesn’t mean you have to spill your most horrible aspects of your past with them.
I agree with deti that yes, she should do this. It is only fair to the man but even from her perspective, if she hides things and presents herself as something she is not, she will never be loved for who she really is. She will always be insecure and wonder if he would reject her if he knew the truth, and even if the truth never came out, which it often does in the most destructive manner, it would remain a barrier to true intimacy.
Also, she deprives him of the opportunity to love her.
Another thing is this: A “reformed slut” has to come to some kind of faith; some kind of belief and trust in Someone bigger than herself.
Without faith she will fail in her efforts at reform and having a shot at marriage. This is so because the hamster, while it cannot be killed or silenced, must be subdued and controlled. The only thing that can subdue and submit a slut hamster is the external control of faith, or belief in God. She’s beyond the authority of parents. Society and even churches will not impose those controls. Other women won’t do it, and other men she’s not dating can’t do it.
Dalrock likened “sluts” to male “cowards”. I wouldn’t call a man a coward to his face..I’d tell him he acted cowardly.
In conversation about ideas I don’t bother to make sure I never used the word “slut” or “coward” but if I were talking face-to-face to someone I would not name-call. I would label their actions but not them.
As someone who has worked with the mentally-ill I am more interested in preventing suicides and offering redemption than I am in making sure no slut goes unpunished. I won’t hesitate to shame a behavior but I won’t name-call to someones face.
sunshinemary (if she can find this under the comment glut) wrote:
Definitions are important and indeed foundational. They are not mere “academic exercise[s],” I agree! Which is why you need to be more systematically “Socratic” in your pursuit of them, rather than blindly groping around as individual commenters. The Socratic dialectic found in every Platonic dialogue is expressed by the formula
Thesis + Antithesis = SYNTHESIS
The internet encourages the expression of mere antitheses, each cast out from keyboard to the void, hoping they might return partial agreement. This does not yield understanding in a dependable enough way to help the practical cause. The pragmatism is a secondary consideration — yes, I endorse many comments above in that regard. But the utility of a discussion is an important factor to consider “here as on a darkling plain / Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight, / Where ignorant armies clash by night.”
Roissy communicates better than blogs like these because he is thesis, thesis, thesis, and the insofar as he engages antitheses he does it to neutralize opposition (to the extent of censoring, if required). He intuits rightly that assertion is the essence of manliness. Manly assertion is better than the “open discussion” modus that tends to deliver a Babel of weak-willed solipsism, before collapsing into invective/bickering over minutiae as did the original builders of The Tower. But both assertion and freeform discussion are inferior to the Socratic method that yields synthesis (one-mind between interlocutors) from theses (blog posts) and antitheses (good commentary).
Matt
@Gabriella
Sluts are destroying civilization, but as of right now, with Pax Americana, cowards are not. That situation with respect to cowards might change in the future however. Also, in the olden days, men were intensely shamed by women for being cowards, for not fighting when a war came, etc. These men were considered to be unmarriageable.
@CL
Profound. That’s the Ephesians 5:26 business I was talking about. It’s just that he really need to love that garment to be willing to wash such filth off, because that is some nasty business.
I’m definitely for disclosure. A potential husband should know the whole history. If that does not disuade him, then he’s probably up to the task.
Many people commit suicide because they believe their past actions and failures define them for life. It doesn’t matter what the sin is, I strongly believe in making sure people know they can redeem themselves.
@Deti
I do agree with you and believe in exceptions to the rules.
However, that takes a incredible amount of discipline, integrity, and character of which they were previously exposed to and are currently exposed to.
Much like the story of the prodigal son.
While it is statistically possible, the statistical probability is very, very, low.
The statistically probability is further reduced by churches who teach repentance( ie slut reforming / discipleship)
Which then requires divine intervention (ie God) for her to meet the right man.
The story of David & Abigail come to mind.
I dont see American “Christian” women buying actual slut reformation/repentance.
They are going out Friday/Saturday night and showing up on Sunday and asking for forgiveness so they can go to heaven and then praying to meet “a good Christian man”.
Women dont want a ‘good Christian man’ – they want a casual church going beta who will foot the the bill for them and their kids, while they still go on “girls night out”.
It is always interesting to see how women comment on the subject of sluts. Your comment to your daughters is very modern western woman. It is hooking up smart in its flavor. You have just given them the go ahead to follow the 8 step plan. Elspath will be there to assist in getting past step 3.
The reason why as hard as these women are trying women need to be chast before marriage is due to the lack of capacity to honor a commitment. Women don’t love even the goods ones they gina tingle. Even a “loving” mothers advice to her children takes in to account the gina tingle and hypergamy. It is normal for a woman it is abnormal for a healthy society in a society immersed in femminism is natural and encouraged with laws of misandry to enhance it. Women need to be taught to be ladies. Conditioning the herd, The selfish interest of a woman has to be pure chastity and faithful marriage otherwise it ain’t happening. (conditioning the hypegamy) Even god takes a back seat to hypergamy. (see churchianity and the churches stand on any subject involving woman) When society says no rings for sluts (involuntary childless spinsterhood) Marriage becomes high status and not the cash and prizes. When the culture says no rings for sluts, and that also means no worldly repetance for sluts too, then we can be in a position to have the law say no
rings for sluts.
It used to be a time when a woman followed her feral self and went for the alpha (cad) she knew she was a slut. Now we have normed it and called it hooking up smart,waiting until you got an education, dating (fucking every body that has the tingle effect) until you find the right one. “wow isn’t interesting how women seem to find the right one at about the same life stage.” (the Wall)
christian men need to start from that frame and work it from there. Women will behave with virtue when it is in her own wicked slut selfish interest to do so. And when she does make sure you address her as a good lady. That is the best you can expect.
@Gabriella
Wrong again. People cannot redeem themselves, and they MUST disclose their past to potential mates in order to be loved. Only God’s grace can redeem, (but contrition and honesty is essential). Then you have to allow it to work through you
Your choice of words again reveals much about your beliefs. Do you fear that your husband would not love you if he really knew the truth about you? Living that way would be hell on earth and so depressing.
Definitions are important and indeed foundational. They are not mere “academic exercise[s],
—————————————————-
Can someone tell me why this is true? Can someone put this into an application test and show its utility?
Lets consider the man who does not know the definition of slut that gets extruded here via Socratic method or casting about and how he comports himself in his quest for less danger in relationship and marriage (which I thought was the point)
Then lets consider the man who does have said definition
Then lets test if their outcomes differ and why?
Its fine to state that the exercise is worthy, but please explain why? Again, if the exercise is enjoyable please continue, I have no interest in asserting that it be stopped. Not my business or concern. I do assert that if a man perceives something amiss, what he calls it based on tediously derived criteria is secondary to how he reacts to it.
It calls to mind the old one about the bus wreck……
“45 people killed, 11 seriously”
Nit picking
I’m certain Gabriella did not mean literally redeem themselves. She meant redemption is available, this is evident in context of her posts.
Its a topic for another time but the idea that people are dishonest unless they tell everything all the time is specious because its subjective and would take 2 minutes to reveal how its a matter of preference based on some vicarious need.
Im not limiting that to sexual past which is I agree good to tell.
Matt, I think I understand what you are saying, but in this case I asked a question (what is a “slut”) because I needed to know what to tell people that I’m trying to talk to about this issue. The assertions that others have then made highlight one of the problems: we say “Don’t be a slut” but we can’t explain what a slut is. I’m trying to take this message to girls in a society says either there is no such thing as a slut, or at most that a slut is a girl who has too much sex with men she doesn’t love.
You wrote:
Yes, provided what he is asserting is actually true and right. If it is not, he’s either deceived, a liar, or a fool.
@greyghost
“wow isn’t interesting how women seem to find the right one at about the same life stage.”
Substitute “try” for “seem”. Not always successful, they are.
A slut is a woman that doesn’t have the ability to tingle(love) a Beta man (christian) Game and a masculin frame is an act of aware kindness on the beta’s part to assist the woman that he has choosen to commit himself to tingle for him faithfully.
It seems Gabriella never means what she says or says what she means. If she can’t choose her words better, then what place has she in an intelligent conversation or debate? If it was a rare slip that would be one thing, but she is muddled and it shows in her constantly mis-stated words. She should listen more and talk less. She also never backs off and admits her error, but instead insists that it’s not really what she said, when it clearly is what she said.
I think it would be good for her to reflect on 1Tim 2:12.
The words people choose to use reveals much about their thoughts, beliefs and fears.
Sunshine
One more thing, Chris Brown is one of the kindest men Rihanna has ever met. Female nature
@7man
She also never backs off and admits her error, but instead insists that it’s not really what she said, when it clearly is what she said.
Maybe she is really Susan Walsh
@farm boy
Maybe she is really Susan Walsh
I wouldn’t go that far.
CC: My immediate reply to that is ‘Sure, but I note you aren’t denying that whether the house is bult on sand or rock, the house is, in fact, built.’ Might not be the best analogy.
But three questions. 1: What scriptural justification can you give for the existence of any sex that is both outside of marriage and non-adulterous? 2: What, exactly, constitutes marriage, scripturally? 3: Why did Paul bother mentioning that having sex with a prostitute will make one ‘one flesh’ with her, if in fact this union is distinct from (if often coincident with) marriage, and functionally meaningless in this case?
“A slut is free, a whore costs money, and wives are the most expensive of all”
In that case, why is being a slut morally wrong at all? It’s nothing more than giving away your posessions to the poor…
@SSM
we say “Don’t be a slut” but we can’t explain what a slut is.
Explain it in terms of the definition I laid out a few posts ago. Give it a sliding scale. Basically, as their slutitude goes up, the quality of man they could expect to bag for marriage goes down. Drive that home.
Yes Farm boy I see what you mean they try but government enforced chilimony and food stamps with some WIC on the side will do. And to be seen as a heroic single mom by the church doesn’t hurt the herd status too.
In that case, why is being a slut morally wrong at all? It’s nothing more than giving away your posessions to the poor…
There is cost to both your soul and to society
I can’t keep defending every word I say so perhaps if you think I am wrong you could do me the courtesy of ignoring my comments as just meaningless non-sense from an idiot and let the people who care to engage in dialog do so without you telling them what I really mean.
Let the fine commenters of this blog make their own conclusions. I am sure they are capable of deciding for themselves if I am subversive, or an idiot, or all of the above.
I can’t keep defending every word I say
Why not? That is the standard that guys are held to here.
@Gabriella
If you are uncertain of your words or don’t want to be heard, the simple solutions are to be silent or have somone (husband) review your words before commenting.
Instead of telling Gaby where she is wrong show her where she is right and where to go. She has just thrown up her hands now one of you smart mofo can get on that . Hint don’t try to explain some abstract shit going to sail over her head.
@Deti
I disagree with this. While I do believe that the “higher authority” trick works and subduing the hamster is specifically why 12-step programs like AA use it, I think control can be achieved for most through use of meditation and proper management of habits and environment, without any additional mysticism.
OK Greyghost, I will try to do so. Ladies, first of all, for the most part, guys on this and similar blogs are searching for the truth and are ruthlessly logical about trying to find it. They consider the big picture as well as the small, and most every angle. For many, it is a style that takes some time to get used to. For those of you that this all seems odd, give it time and effort for there will be a reward in the end.
I have yet to discover the way to communicate in such a way that it never gets interpreted as something else entirely. Since a certain percentage of people are capable of understanding my meaning despite my obviously poor writing skill I can only assume we are on some kind of similar wavelength and are therefore capable of dialoging in a mutually edifying way. People who see my words as meaning something completely different than how I intend them are not able to dialog with me in an edifying way. It just turns into a “but you said”/”no I didn’t” circular argument that gets no where.
There are plenty of people on this blog whose comments seem to me to be meaningless drivel and I just completely ignore them rather than try to interpret what they mean. It would be nice if my simply showing up to a comment thread didn’t result into a huge derailment of “BUT SHE REALLY MEANS..” because that is disrespectful to the OP and not in anyway my intention in commenting.
Not everyone thinks I am capable of intelligent conversation and I accept that. I’m not here to win friends and influence people. I’d really just like to share some of my thoughts and get feedback that is based on what I intended to express and not something else entirely.
@greyghost
Gabriella is not my responsibility. Both men and women can learn but they have to listen and leave their agenda and preconceived ideas at the door. Additionally Gabriella’s choice of words reveals that she is not yet ready to be a student. I will not cater to her.
I have CL and we work out things together. Other men and women do not work things out with their spouses and then go to blogs for validation.
To my soul maybe, but to society, no, not unless I fuck the same men everyone else is fucking. If someone rides the omega cock carousel in a world where everyone is sexually free, it’s actually pretty morally right? (not talking about the Bible here, I’m not Christian and I’m only concerned with pure morality and how actions affect society) It’s kind of off topic, but I’m interested in the actual moral wrongness of sex without marriage, and why it must be always wrong. If you only hurt yourself, it’s not that wrong, IMO, especially if you help somebody in the process. I know it’s not what sluts usually do, but in theory, it can’t be that bad?
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johnnycomelately lately commented:
I will note that you deliberately excised the crucial latter half of that sentence, wherein the “Neither do I condemn you…” is balanced by the conclusion, “‘…go, and do not sin again.’ John 8:11…”.
This calls to mind Rollo Tomassi’s erroneous recapitulation of Christian forgiveness from the last thread (which compounded an even earlier error).
I cite Rollo because he articulates a decisive, widespread misunderstanding of Christianity in modern culture, he does it well, and he counts himself a “Christ follower.” He also cites John 8, a chapter which illustrates the proper understanding of forgiveness when properly interpreted. “Judge not” is better rendered as “condemn not,” which leaves room for the judgment we all must exercise in order to engage in any action. The “judge not” interpretation is custom-made for the creed of postmodern relativism into which we were all born and in which we have lost our ability to detect operating within us.
Rollo perpetrates two errors: First, he assumes the Christian not only must condemn or forgive the adulteress but that he has the ability to either condemn or forgive her. The proper Christian understanding of that episode has The Word of God interceding against the rock-throwing Pharisees, who retain the force of law behind their (righteous!) judgment. Christ came not to “overturn the law, but to fulfill it” (Mt 5:17). Indeed, St. John begins his gospel account by proclaiming, “[T]he law was given [PROPERLY] through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.” That means only the Son of God Who is God Himself can overturn the judgments of man vis-à-vis the righteously delivered Law of God.
Second, Rollo seems to think that the forgiveness of a sin effectively constitutes the promotion of that sin. This is also where johnnycomelately’s creative editing of my citation of John 8:11 comes into play. Christ pardoned the adulteress (as only he may) while rebuking the sinfulness of her past life. She is given a clean slate, but only insofar as she does not return to that way of life and “sin[s] no more.” The adulteress was not saved from her (rightful) stoning so that she may go and sin again but so that she may live sinlessly through the “grace and truth” of the One Who saved/saves her.
Rollo, and others who share this reductio ad absurdum of Christian forgiveness, compare the Redeemer’s act of forgiveness with the beta’s act of reverse-justifying a life of harlotry through “manning up” and marrying a retired slut. Our God is the Lord of Mercy, for sure, but he is also the Lord of Justice. The beta engages in mercy without justice, neither of which are ultimately his place. The slut’s hypergamous sins were not perpetrated upon her future faux-redeemer, and they are only tangentially related to their present life together; he has no business “forgiving” them any more than I can forgive Rollo for murdering JonBenet.
Indeed, the beta who ignores his born-again virgin wife’s past is actively engaged in ratifying her past choices as righteous, which imperils her soul: she must reconcile her contempt against God rather than be confirmed in her sin. This reconciliation is not effected by crocodile tears and regret. It is achieved only by closing the distance to her Redeemer completely, the only way in which the transgressions of the past may be accounted for, and after which a return to the ignorance of sin becomes impossible: “Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red like crimson, they shall become like wool.” A spiritual catastrophe occurs when a White Knight plays mini-redeemer, assuming the weakness which led him to deliberately ignore the sin constitutes “forgiveness” and reconciliation with the One Who gave his wife her life.
Rollo espouses what seems to be a quasi-Calvinist doctrine of total depravity, which indeed has its recommendations. But to do this in a secular context outside of a prevailing soteriology (as St. Augustine and the reformers did) leads to presumption and a rejection of the possibility of mercy from our Savior. In short, it is an elaborate justification for sin.
The better understanding is to acknowledge sinful behavior for what it is, seek forgiveness from God and those against which you sinned, and sin no more. At the same time, neither do we engage in scrupulosity, especially since we were born into not just a fallen world but an era in which our only means of deliverance from the fall has been mocked and rejected to the point of near universal approbation — Christian chastity is regarded as either impossible or an evil in itself, with none allowed to dissent.
We are the children of the sexual revolution where the temptation is inextricable from the culture. To become free of sin not only requires right action, but also an active rebellion against the mores of the age. This rebellion is not merely achieved by example or by keeping oneself pure and detached, floating piously above the sinners. It is achieved by dining with prostitutes and publicans, as Christ himself did. It is achieved by consciously joining the fight, using the weapons culturally available to transform the culture. One of those weapons is game and, yes, seduction.
Our opponents are in our beds and in our heads, inextricable from the environment or the self. The opposition is sexual, and we cannot possibly reach them without becoming masters of our sexuality, both its good features and bad. We all intuit that this war will be won on the sexual front with the instruments of seduction, and this is why the smartest and most far-seeing Christians are interested in the artistry of pick-up. PUAs pick up bodies; we are called lift up souls (and bodies and minds and spirits; the Christian rejects gnostic dichotomies).
I would have preferred to engage Rollo directly on his own site, but he chose to spread his theological misunderstandings here and does not seem motivated to further this discussion directly on his blog. The bottom line is, Christianity and game seem irreconcilable because of deficient understandings of one or the other subjects. Those who are expert in the field of game are rarely also expert in Christianity, and vice-versa. Rollo has forgotten more than most game-boys ever knew about women and the “feminine imperative,” but unfortunately his theological understanding is arrested at the level of adolescent catechism class, probably the last time he engaged Christology with even a fraction of his zeal for game and with all the deficiencies of the adolescent mind. Now that we are older and wiser, experienced and knowledgeable, the reconciliation of the culture to God’s wisdom is up to us, just as surely as the reconciliation of our sinful selves to God Himself is the prerogative of His Son and our Lord Jesus Christ, God made Man, Redeemer and Wonder-Counselor of creation.
Matt
Emma: Well, first of all, nobody rides the omega carousel – they wouldn’t be omegas if they had a carousel. But otherwise: what do you mean by ‘pure morality’, or ‘actual wrongness’? Where is your starting point for arguing that anything at all is moral or immoral?
I’m interested in the actual moral wrongness of sex without marriage, and why it must be always wrong. If you only hurt yourself, it’s not that wrong
There are the effects on society. If everybody did it, then civilization would collapse eventually.
empathologicalism wrote:
You unconsciously promote the sovereignty of the experimental method, the same error made by scientism wherein the proof of a thing’s truth can only be achieved through the control-and-experiment of the Scientific Method. This is a species of positivism and 20th century analytic philosophy, and not incidentally, the glaring philosophical weakness created by PUAs’ accidental dependence on the intellectual fads of our day. Without getting into the weeds of an epistemology debate, suffice it to say that our discussion of theory and practice is not strictly confined to reproducible result and possibility of falsification. We are attempting a higher-order dialectic here, which requires a higher-order epistemology than you appear prepared to accept.
I therefore cannot “tell [you] why this is true” because we are effectively using different languages. I can perhaps demonstrate its truth by noting the futility of conversations that call for an unsystematic expression of opinion about a more precise definition of a term that already has a broadly accepted connotation. In those cases I advise running with the connotation — “We know it when we see it” — because doing the work of Socratic definition is laborious and ill-suited for online communication. The overlap method suffices for your purposes here.
Matt
@unger
I think these are relevant scriptures; though surely not all
Exodus 22
There is no demand that the daughter never marry later. It’s also important to remember the context that in these times they could force the man to marry. This is a decision, or even contest between two men: the seducer and the father. The woman has no say in the matter. It would be unjust for a father or pastor to tell his flock that sluts can’t marry, without the power to force marriage.
Deuteronomy 22
Again with the idea that the restriction is placed on the man, not the woman because the woman still belongs to the daughter, and the father has done no wrong.
Leviticus 21:7
This injunction that a priest must only marry a virgin implies that non-priests may marry non-virgins.
1 Corinthians 6
I’m not a Bible scholar, but the paragraph is not not getting into sexual immorality; not punishment for past immorality. It’s a clear injunction to stop visiting actual prostitutes.
If I recall, this has something to do with priestess-prostitutes at the temple of Dionysus. He’s not talking about sexual appetites, but not joining the body of Christ to the flesh Dionysus (or any other idol; including the idol of general hedonism, even aside from Dionysus).
A woman who has confessed her sins (in this case to a prospective husband, as well as a priest/pastor/etc.) and publicly repented (she is living a different lifestyle, and not just for a few months), then she is free to marry if a man thinks she is worthy of him.
sunshinemary wrote:
My point is: you already know what you “need[] to know” in order to engage “girls in a society [that] says … there is no such thing as a slut.” In fact, given our sexual nature and the failure of the campaign of eradication, I would argue that sluttiness is close to an intuited a priori bit of knowledge as there can be in a girl. If girls still feel that intrinsic shame despite a half-century of the attempt to wean it out of them, that is good evidence that it cannot be totally annihilated within the soul. Even those slut-walkiest girls who claim to be proud of their partner count — is it true that they never experience pangs of remorse when no one is looking?
No, it is a superior method of communication yielding a greater probability of achieving truth even without your qualifications.
I do not think Roissy escapes the categories of being “deceived,” or “liar,” or “fool,” despite his general truth-telling. The foundation of his accidental truth-telling is subject to those qualifications whenever he engages in the attempt to justify his conclusions based on observation. Whenever he is merely concluding from observation or reporting what he observes, he is on much firmer ground.
But Roissy’s manly imposition of conversational boundaries is far better than the free-range logorrhea of a typical comment section. The order of the former inspires clarity whereas the chaos in the name of “free expression” of the latter inspires cacophony. And from this cacophony can one ever expect precision of definition? Not that a firm-hand always produces truth. I’m only saying it is likelier to.
And my overall point was to say: there is a third way superior to both structured discussion and freeform blabbing. And that is Socratic dialectic, which teases a single thread about a single word at a time, fielding all objections until they are each handled to the satisfaction of all honest interlocutors. This method obviously has practical drawbacks, which is why I recommend benevolent dictatorship over the combox ghettos, with the unifying principle the responsibility of one man who, if demonstrated consistently to be “deceived” or “a liar” or “a fool,” will lose his audience.
People do not read controversial thinkers because they agree with them 100%. They read the ones who have a consistent principle to promote consistently. This is why, despite my profound and irreconcilable differences with Roissy, I will comment at his site until he censors me. When that day comes, I will harbor no personal pique.
Matt
I can see 7man going into his neighbors backyard, yelling furiously at the house: “YOUR DOG IS NOT MY RESPONSIBILITY! They’re not trained to respond to my voice, and I’m not leaving until they are!”
Unger,
Perhaps Emma is referring to what I call “rational morality.” Predictable and measurable harm vs. predictable and measurable good. I’ve found over the years that it very closely parallels “Biblical” morality, except it doesn’t lend itself to the use of legalism as a means of justifying harmful behavior. It also requires the ability to think beyond the most obvious consequences while not going down the rabbit hole of pointless variables and minutiae.
Sunshinemary: I think that in order to help young girls avoid promiscuity I think you need to provide them with some sense that their chastity will be rewarded. For an outside observer it frequently seems like the slutty girls get it all…the attention, the guy, the friends..many of them seem to just glide up the corporate ladder and while everyone suspects they are sleeping their way to the top its hard to care when they are wearing such pretty clothes and living such a nice lifestyle.
And of course there is probably some interior repercussions that the observer cannot see..but that’s the point..we can’t see. Much like the bulimic only “looks” healthy while she is actually ruining her body. Because we live in a society that values appearances many people do terrible things to themselves just to have an appearance that others admire…whether it is spending themselves into debt, poisoning their body, or living a Sex and the City lifestyle. Lindsey Lohan even said she admired Samantha on SATC because of her devil-may-care attitude towards sex and said she strived to adopt the same attitude.
So clearly..these girls are influenced by what they see far more than by what they are told. We say “promiscuity has repercussions” and they say “Well I will believe my lying eyes because THAT girl has what I want!”
I think we really have to preach that innocence is empowering. Yes..I used a dirty feminist word..empowering… but it is in a roundabout way. If you think of yourself as a vessel and you think of sins as cracks in that vessel..then by keeping the vessel protected you are making it more capable of holding water. Keeping yourself pure will empower a woman to give more fully and gratefully to the man she marries..or if she doesn’t marry it will empower her to give more fully to her single/religious vocation.
Cane Caldo:
I don’t know if I should laugh or be offended.
“I think we really have to preach that innocence is empowering.”
You make a good point, Gabriella. Most 21st century women will not, absolutely cannot, bring themselves to abandon what they believe to be female “power.” And they SHOULDN’T abandon all of it. What they need to be taught is the real nature of true feminine (not feminist) power. I have previously mentioned the “power” of submission. It’s not the “bargaining” power of “if I ‘submit’ I can control him,” it’s the unshakable strength that results from true submission, from giving one’s self and one’s future wholly to another, and becoming PART of him. Innocence IS empowering because it can lead toward (not away from) embracing real femininity.
Incidentally, I appreciate your comments BECAUSE they’re peppered with “Hamsterese,” and that’s not an insult. I’ve fairly well isolated myself from blue pill women because I can’t stand them, but it’s clear that you associate with them. You speak their language and you understand *personally* not just intellectually, how they think. (I prefer to understand them from a safe distance.) It would probably be impossible for them not to continue to influence you, and it shows in your language. However, I see you as trying to be a bridge, with one foot in each world. As long as you don’t use red pill concepts to rationalize blue pill philosophy, that’s not a bad thing. And it can’t be easy trying to keep your balance.
unger,
Sure they would be omegas, just less omega, because now they have one woman who is fucking them all. It’s a big carousel for one person.
By “pure morality” (I admit a bad way to express what I wanted to say) I meant morality deduced by your reason and innate moral compass, with as little tradition/preconceptions as possible in it. One can say those things will always be there anyway, but I see value in striving for moral system that is as “scientific” as possible (meaning based on how things really are, and what is best to do from that reality). Just like science should be as scientific as possible, with as little tradition as possible in it (tradition can mean feminist upbringing, or religious upbringing). That means I don’t see something as morally wrong because Bible says so, i I find it morally wrong because, for example, it hurts people.
farm boy,
But who says everybody should do it? Nobody rides the omega cock carousel anyway. If most people are destabilizing society with their promiscuity, damage is already done, we can only make it less. I would argue omega cock carousel would make it less. Less suicides and rampage killings, no?
Matthew
Spare me.
“which requires a higher-order epistemology than you appear prepared to accept.”
No, it actually doesn’t. As much as that may seem a quote from The Argument, here it is perfectly applicable.
No, it doesn’t.
Your response is obfuscation and avoidance. It may well be why you prefer the path you do, but it is not necessary, and the scientific method is fine.
However, regardless the mode or manner, the “why” should be able to be expressed.
Never mind….you have folks gathered round hanging on your every syllable.
I think that in order to help young girls avoid promiscuity I think you need to provide them with some sense that their chastity will be rewarded.
Absolutely correct. Ask them to name those with sexy boyfriends that get married and live happily ever after. Since they probably do not have experience to do so, maybe mothers, aunts, etc. can fill in the blanks. Teach them to identify good men and to pursue them. Explain that long term happiness depends on it.
But who says everybody should do it?
But if one person does it, why should not everybody? What makes you or anyone else so special to have this right? With everybody f’ing everybody, who will raise the kids such that they can maintain the technology of civilization? Or even civilization without technology?
Riding the omega cock carousel is not a right most women want to have…
Suz- You are right that I do feel that I am not a true red-piller nor a true blue-piller. In fact, when I start blogging again (when I have time) my new blog will be called The Purple Pill.
I’m not so much trying to be “bridge” but rather just trying to solidify my own opinions since right now they are kind of slippery.
I have always wondered about this – I could be mistaken but it isnt that far off ( next generation).
Is 4:1 And seven women shall take hold of one man in that day, saying, “We will eat our own bread and wear our own clothes, only let us be called by your name; take away our reproach
We say “promiscuity has repercussions” and they say “Well I will believe my lying eyes because THAT girl has what I want!”
Do they have a man who can bring home the bacon, and do so in the long term? If they want children, then this is what they should want.
Though cash for baby mommies does short circuit this a bit. Here is a question, has anybody seen an older (45+) former welfare mother that was happy and content?
This omega cock carousel thing is about as likely as Social Security in its present form being there when I retire. Its a non sequiter
CC: Might some of the ambiguity be explained by a difference between cultural marriage and what God actually intends as marriage, though? In Matthew 19 and Mark 10, Jesus appears to draw just such a distinction with regard to divorce, and forcefully affirms the reality of marriage at the expense of the conventional view of it, using language that elsewhere is used to describe sex. This is the main thing that gives me pause.
You’re right about the context of 1 Cor 6, but in v. 16, I don’t think Paul is saying that the one-flesh-union to prostitutes only happens when Christians shtup shrine prostitutes; he’s making a general statement about the nature of sex, and saying since that’s the way sex really works, Christians must behave accordingly.
I have not seen any older (+45) educated career moms divorcees happy(kids later due to career). They have a backup rationalization hamster and wonder where are all the good men.
empathologicalism,
“However, regardless the mode or manner, the “why” should be able to be expressed.”
Yes, we are on the side challenging the received tradition now. We will have to.
“Compared with the man who has tradition on his side and needs no reasons for his actions, the free spirit is always weak, especially in his actions. For he knows too many motives and standpoints, and is therefore uncertain, awkward. By what means, then, can he be made relatively strong, so that he can at least assert himself effectively and not perish, having acted ineffectually? How does a strong spirit (esprit fort) come into being?”
Nietzsche, Human All Too Human, #230
Scripture contains answers to these questions, but was unavailable to Nietzsche due to the nature of the tradition he was challenging. We have no such disadvantage.
Omega cock carousel is not likely, but I was still curious to see if it was necessarily morally wrong.
Cane,
“@AR and Desiderius
What is wrong with the definition I gave above?”
Silence implies assent and/or disinterest.
Emma: What morality can you ‘deduce by reason’? What ‘innate moral compass’ doesn’t equate to ‘preconceptions’? And as for hurting people: exactly why is that a bad thing? Are you saying it’s categorically wrong to hurt anyone? Just some people? If so, who, and why? By reason, mind you, no preconceptions, and definitely no traditions.
And especially why. What does it matter if I hurt anyone? You won’t like it, but so what, if I can get away with it, or am willing to pay the costs of doing it? What makes that standard objective, and what gives it moral force, instead of it being just your opinion, with all the imperative force of ‘boo hurting people’?
Cane,
“A woman who has confessed her sins (in this case to a prospective husband, as well as a priest/pastor/etc.) and publicly repented (she is living a different lifestyle, and not just for a few months), then she is free to marry if a man thinks she is worthy of him.”
Yes, The full redemption offered by the gospel rightly preached, heard, and lived, is about the only bullet we have left.
It will be sufficient. Always has been.
In Christ we are a new creation. The old life is gone, the new one just begun.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2190047/My-husband-bonfire-Gucci-shoes-Gambian-lovers-worth-Mother-insists-regrets-affair-hotel-gardener.html
LOL
Omega cock carousel is not likely, but I was still curious to see if it was necessarily morally wrong.
How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?
unger,
All those questions are answered by innate moral compass and reason (obviously not reason alone), and a dose of what people grew up with. Most people’s reason and innate moral compass are not that different, and I believe we can arrive to moral rules that everyone can agree on, apart from outliers like born psychopaths. Frankly, all morals come from feelings (that can later turn into tradition, sure) and a bit of reasoning, but it works because we’re mostly all the same. Doing wrong things often feels wrong, and having them done to you also feels wrong.
But you’re right, objective morals is an impossibility, like objective beauty. It’s all in our heads. Doesn’t make it any less real or potent.
Emma: If you really believe that, then what do you want from anyone here? You’ve already got your conclusion in hand.
Just discussion.
farm boy,
“How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?”
What does it mean? Please explain.
but I see value in striving for moral system that is as “scientific” as possible (meaning based on how things really are, and what is best to do from that reality).
Emma: If you could find that scientifically based moral system, you’d be the first to do so. But a moral system does take into account the weaknesses of human beings and therefore recognizes “how things really are.”
I did a quick search and came up with this(warning: it has Catholic in the address): http://www.catholicnewsagency.com/resources/life-and-family/abstinence-and-chastity/whats-wrong-with-sex-before-marriage/
@Cane Caldo
I can see 7man going into his neighbors backyard, yelling furiously at the house: “YOUR DOG IS NOT MY RESPONSIBILITY! They’re not trained to respond to my voice, and I’m not leaving until they are!”
A while back there was a dog pooping in my backyard. href=http://curmudgeonloner.wordpress.com/2012/04/12/unfounded-accusations/#comment-3041>Your snarl is laughable.
How can anyone discuss questions of what matters and what doesn’t with someone who has determined from the outset that nothing really matters? Silly.
I love watching women try and declare themselves reinvented…..oh no what I did in the past does not matter. I’m afraid it does, men always know when a woman is a slut and only weak men marry one.
I suspect women regard promiscuous men as a catch and cannot understand why men don’t think the same about promiscuous women, well we don’t.
The only women who worry about the term slut and those who may incorrectly be though one, and those who are one.
unger,
I didn’t say nothing mattered. Lots of things matter. Perhaps asserting that objective morality doesn’t exist is the same as saying nothing matters, to you, but it isn’t so to me. Morals are very important to me, I just don’t think they are objective. I brought up beauty for analogy – I think many can agree there are beauty rules that don’t depend on culture. You can call them “objective rules of beauty that actually do exist”, even though beauty is still determined by the mind and thus not objective. People just find the same stuff beautiful. Same with morals… Both are powerful and real, and matter.
I don’t think most people can go against their morality and feel good for too long. Hurting people will leave a mark on you, unless you are a sociopath or don’t think you did anything wrong (= have a powerful rationalization hamster).
@ Emma the Emo
There have been much better attempts to defend moral relativism. You may think what is true for you may not be true for me. But truth is truth whether I believe or not so we all should look to something objective in order to form and check our beliefs. You are adrift.
Moral relativism or any other type of “relativism” is simply a self redundant argument.
The argument is ex-facie – dont waste your time.
1: Feel good how? Lots of things you’d probably frown upon feel good, at least in the short run, and many probably feel good for a lifetime.
2: You say ‘unless you are a sociopath’ and ‘have a powerful rationalization hamster’ as if those phrases mean something. On what grounds do you assert that they do – that sociopaths are not merely, shall we say, ‘statistically abnormal’, but defective, and the subjective valuations of what you call ‘rationalizers’ are less valid than your own?
7man,
Truth is truth, but that’s a realm of science, not morals. Former can be objective, never had an issue with that. I agree with you totally when you say that there is truth whether we believe in it or not.
Michael: There’s some value in showing someone the abyss. It’s up to them if they want to step back from it, of course.
How do you answer question 2, unger?
(Also, I’ll take back that “objective morals don’t exist” thing. God isn’t disproven and it’s possible they exist, it’s just not proven to me.)
“There are people who lived their entire childhood and young adult life never knowing that fornication is a sin.” Elspeth, this is heresy! The law is written on our hearts…”
It was my husband not a woman who told me this, by the way. You have also contradicted Scripture. If we do not need to be taught the law, then why is this admonition repeatedly given in the Old Testament:
You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. 6 These words, which I am commanding you today, shall be on your heart. 7 You shall teach them diligently to your sons and shall talk of them when you sit in your house and when you walk by the way and when you lie down and when you rise up. 8 You shall bind them as a sign on your hand and they shall be as [b]frontals [c]on your forehead. 9 You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates. Deut. 6,
It’s throughout the old and new testaments: teach your children, train your children; learn the word. We are born in sin and shaped in iniquity.We are not born with the innate ability to do right, nor do we automatically know what is sin and what isn’t.
I am not a heretic and neither is my husband (the most honest man I know), a liar.
Y’all enjoy the rest of your weekend.
Oooops! Messed up the html again. Sorry about that.
@ unger – I agree.
However, “relativism” is a broken logic process in thinking and I am big believer in the following Proverbs:
– Whoever loves discipline loves knowledge, but he who hates reproof is stupid.
– Do not speak in front of a fool because he despises your words.
– But fools despise wisdom and instruction
Michael Singer,
It’s not an argument, it’s a discussion. The “abyss” has been visible to me for a long time, but it’s not as scary as you might think. When faced with a hard question or strange phenomenon, first reaction should be, IMO, to investigate it, not to run away, give it undue significance or forget it’s there.
I should add a thought. What we are born with is a conscience which pricks our hearts toward the right thing to do. But if not trained, it can become seared and if not developed in righteousness, we will internalize sin as a way of life.
If we were capable of doing right in our strength, there would have been no need for Christ to come and die on our behalf.
Please stop looking for excuses to play Judge, Jury and Executioner on people (with vaginas, of course) as if you are any more righteous and less deserving of God’s judgement.
That passage in no way implies that we are not born with a working conscience. It was a command for God’s chosen people, the Jews, to write down the law, teach it to their children and surround themselves with it for their own benefit, and to the benefit of the glory of God. The knowledge of good and evil was given to all mankind since the fall of man, whether you, Elspeth, like it or not.
“I should add a thought. What we are born with is a conscience which pricks our hearts toward the right thing to do. But if not trained, it can become seared and if not developed in righteousness, we will internalize sin as a way of life.”
I agree with this. Untrained, our conscience will be there, but it will be undisciplined and “all over the place”. We’ll do what feels right, which isn’t always what is right. It’s like trying to pass medical school on talent alone and no effort.
@Elspeth
We are born in sin and shaped in iniquity. We are not born with the innate ability to do right, nor do we automatically know what is sin and what isn’t.
The truth is written on our hearts by God and men and women long for a permanent union with a person of the opposite sex. We know that fornication (no commitment fucking) is sinful because we have shame over it and hide it. (Especially women) Why do sluts carry shame if no one dares shame them and everyone defends them?
You did propose something heretical and now in defending it you are digging yourself in deeper rather than admitting you were in error. Again your comment was rash and you now have more to explain.
Also your admonition that we extend a pussy pass is pathetic.
Ah yes, the Richard Dawkins style godless morality. It makes some sense on the surface, but on a deeper level it is ultimately unsatisfying because our souls yearn for God, not some Nietzian abyss.
It’s the Opium of the Intellectuals :
“Enlightened thinking tends to be superficial thinking because its critical armory is deployed against every faith except its faith in the power of reason.”
Emma: The same way The Savage did. If the skeptical position offers no way to get back to ‘decent behavior’ by any back door, and all attempts turn out, on inspection, to be either pure dogmatism or sheer preference, then it offers no improvement at all over the traditional view, ‘religion’, or, if you insist, ‘just because’.
Naturally, I have nothing to say to the sort who isn’t even interested in getting back to ‘decent behavior’. They’re very rare, though: not many of that sort live long. Fortunately.
@7man
Oh, I see. That’s why you literally trashed the replies you dared me to make? Don’t invite the big dog over, and then complain about cleaning up.
In my defense, I thought that was your living-room. You know how it is in those trailerparks; everyone is merely shacking up, and the yards just seem to run up across the porch and right through the front door.
@Elspeth
I think you’re largely right. The law is written on the heart, and when we transgress that law, we feel the pangs there–until scar tissue develops, that is.
But man cannot see the heart to see the law written there, he can only feel those pangs. So God wrote the Law down to
So that:
Man is both animal and spirit. He needs both pain and instruction.
Cane Caldo- I have felt vague sense of guilt many times but without instruction it can easily be attributed to some other source. In my pre-Christian days I frequently assumed the source of guilt was from the sorts of issues liberals lament..like racism..classism..environmentalism… Guilt can manifest in all kinds of wacky ways. In my pre-Christian days I could have casual sex guiltlessly but cry if I forgot to recycle. You see this kind of thing all the time now..like Pro-choice vegans. Save the whales but to heck with the babies.
@Emma – I’ll extend myself for the sake of intellectual honesty or perceived lack thereof.
There are consequences for everything.
It is the most universal law of the universe that applies to physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual.
One reaps EXACTLY what they sow. It is very black and white basic idea.
Please feel free to correct me if I am wrong but “Relativism” says that the law of sowing of reaping ( ie consequences) isn’t true.
Any discussion with a adult over whether consequences simply “exist” or simply all actions, beliefs, behaviors, character, thoughts are inconsequential is a waste of time due to inability to “connect the dots” – it will be despised and quite often attacked.
Except when one doesn’t. When a child gets his brains blown out in a drive-by, he did not sow that bullet into his head. That’s a very basic red and grey-matter idea.
The problem the relativist has is not that they believe the consequences can come from an infinite number of sources, but that they don’t believe the source is infinite.
The conscience isn’t necessarily ethereal like the soul or spirit. There’s a theory that it may be biological instinct, since it promotes a cohesive society which improves the chances for species survival (as opposed to individual survival.)
I agree, CL, that we yearn for God. Seeking God, however, isn’t at all incompatible with rational morality. Having to choose one over the other is a false dichotomy for a “theist.”
““Enlightened thinking tends to be superficial thinking because its critical armory is deployed against every faith except its faith in the power of reason.” ”
Yes, why use reason at all? Why logic? Can anyone prove that logic should be used? I don’t think it’s anything anyone ever did. It’s just a postulate, that we should use logic. If not, you might as well go back to feminism. Why not? It does require logic to show that it’s harmful and rests on falseness. Even if you have a religion, you wouldn’t dismiss logic alltogether. Same way I don’t dismiss morals as incorrect and unimportant (they matter!), even if I can’t prove them to myself with anything else other than “it works”.
@ Suz
I am not arguing against rational morality, just the idea that it alone is enough.
@ Emma
Are you implying I have advocated abandoning reason altogether? If so that’s just too silly for words.
So where does that leave room for your earlier subjectivism?
7man (sic),
“You did propose something heretical and now in defending it you are digging yourself in deeper rather than admitting you were in error. Again your comment was rash and you now have more to explain.”
Back off. Her interpretation is entirely consistent with a Calvinist reading of scripture. Given the undeniably fallen nature of the current SMP, such a reading could be powerfully evangelical.
In terms of enlightened thinking, religion, and logic.
No other race has made more contributions to the world than the Jews whether it be in law, science, religion, or morality or has had a more profound affect on history.
None.
I am going to suggest that current Western Christianity is a absolute farce and illogical.
Real Christian Disciples are sound in logic, ethics, and character and have changed the faces of civilization ( Christianity brought mighty Rome to it knees).
I haven no idea where the divorce of logic, science, and God came into existence but I will take a guess with and say man centered religion vs God centered revelation of His person and nature.
In review of current science discoveries – evolution is a joke and intelligent design is readily and well received with the recent discovery of the expanding universe.
@ Cane – I am going to suggest out of context.
CL,
Yep, it’s totally how it looked like. What did you really mean? But it’s a valid question in any case. Can anyone prove logic should be used? Or that one type of morals is objectively better than the other… I don’t know how to prove either of those. God as answer is unsatisfactory to me because then I have to worry about proving God the same way. I just choose to take morals and logic for granted (the former I also develop with reason and learning, it does work, I’m a much better person than just 2 years ago). They work better than the opposite, for most people. To question “Why logic? Why morals?”, can I just answer “I don’t know yet”? But while finding out, I will keep them as they are.
Keeping yourself pure will empower a woman to give more fully and gratefully to the man she marries
Good selling point to the young ladies. Unfortunately, they may laugh in your face.
Purity is how it used to be. Maybe it will be again. The world will have to get worse first though.
@Desiderius
The historical Desiderius was Catholic.
If only there were a Logos to explain all this; how logic itself is inexplicable, yet utterly pervasive. It’s almost as if the Source of reason Itself is emanating through the universe from beyond; permeating everything; so much so that there is no escape even for those who cannot explain it, or even try.
@Gabriella
The problem is so large with the young ladies that any approach that has any hope of being effective needs both a carrot and a stick. You emphasizes the carrot, I emphasize the stick. I emphasize the stick because it is not emphasized enough in society, so somebody has to do it.
@ Emma
I came to my faith through logic and reason – in the end, it was the only thing that made sense to me. If you are interested in exploring such things, I would suggest you read “I Don’t Have Enough Faith to be an Atheist” by Norman Geisler and Frank Turek.
It’s nonsensical to speak of ‘proving logic’. If you’re really skeptical about logic, there is no point in discussing anything at all.
Re morals: So far as moral traditions go, they are not very different. Nothing like the radical differences you imagine. The same principles run through them all, and they differ in emphasis and consistency. Insofar as you’re capable of identifying consistency and inconsistency, then, you can actually go quite a long ways towards identifying better and worse.
Re God: You will never be able to prove God through deduction, for the simple reason that it’s nonsensical to derive the source of everything. That said, if you look at things from the other end, it isn’t especially difficult to gather that there is something beyond the material world, something that gives structure and purpose to things, something rational that causes our minds. And, of course, if you aren’t a moral subjectivist after all, what use is it to speak of things being right or wrong if there is no ultimate judgment – and thus, a judge?
hah, as far as books go, the best little introduction to such things I’ve come across is Ed Feser’s ‘The Last Superstition’.
CL,
Hmm, it has mixed reviews… But might be good, thanks.
unger,
Actually I didn’t talk about radical differences, I said most people are all the same. So we would be in agreement here.
As for ultimate judgement, what people do is just kind of judge other people and say that morals should apply to them all. They just assert that most common, most “rational” morals are the ones to use because they work the best and just do it. Sometimes they use faith/the ultimate judge to justify it (they say that the ultimate judge agrees with them), sometimes they just postulate it should be so. End result is pretty similar.
Techinically, I don’t doubt logic, I just say there is no proof we should use it to deduce truth, we just do it. Philosophers have been wondering about that question, it’s not a joke.
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The fact that a philosopher, even one with a tenured professorship, wonders about something is no good reason to think that he has good reason to wonder about it, or that it isn’t a joke if he does.
You missed what I meant when I spoke of judgment. I was pointing out that, if there is no final judgment of right and wrong, talk of morality is nonsense. The unfortunate fact of the matter is that, assuming that this world and this life is all there is, crime often pays very well, and doing good often pays poorly, and the universe does not care a whit either way. If you insist there is no further appeal but to the facts as we see them now – which means, as differing individuals see them differently now – then you’re going to be stuck in the ultimately meaningless subjectivism you keep trying to find a non-theistic way out of.
Proof? No. But which is more reasonable: that meaningless nature has furnished you with something that claims, completely in error, to be a moral sense, or that you have something in you that perceives – dimly, no doubt, but not wholly in error – that there are depths of meaning and purpose in the world, that you are meant to do right and not wrong, and that something cares very seriously which you do? If you really think the former, on what grounds can you trust any other faculty of perception or reasoning to point you towards truth?
Judgement has somehow become a bad word in todays media and society.
The ability to discern, discriminate, or choose is a wonderful gift and what separates man from animals.
When judgement is removed from a society – it is to the harm of the innocent, weaker, and children and leads eventually to their demise. There are plenty of history lessons that prove that.
MIchael Singer:
“if there is no final judgment of right and wrong, talk of morality is nonsense.”
I disagree. There are real life consequences to every action, some obvious, some subtle. There is simple justice. Sure it can fail, because life’s not fair, but consequences and justice do exist, fairly predictably, independent of God. Final judgement is pointless to those who don’t believe in it; it doesn’t motivate them in the least, yet so many of them act morally due to the consequences they can predict.
I think that in order to help young girls avoid promiscuity I think you need to provide them with some sense that their chastity will be rewarded.
Gaby
That was outstanding and shows an attempt at incorporating female nature into the action taken. The rest of the debate over the nuances of scriptures and meanings of comments will lead to no where. But you are on track there. Make sure she sees plenty of spinster cat ladies and understand what being a slut really means . young girls need to know once they ride the cock carousel they will never be a wife ever. And call it that even to a 15 year old. Never sugar coat reality.
7man
I can’t believe you would think I would ever ask man to supplicate to a chick on a mens blog. I must come off as a pussy or something.
Greyghost, you just come off as honest. You see red pill thoughts from women who are trying to overcome our lifelong indoctrination, you grab our hands, and you pull us forward. Most of us here want to follow, even as we trip over our own feet.
Justice on Earth is simply common grace from God.
@Suz – I agree with you.
Allow me to add a slightly different take on consequences.
They are very polar – positive or negative, unavoidable, affect more people, and far more reaching than can even be imagined (It is mind boggling).
Imo, another name for God is “Consequences” – the fool says there is no consequences.
@greyghost – The consequences are even more far reaching “than she will never be a wife”. She will be unable to develop “real” relationships with men as well as other women.
The ability to have and maintain real intimate relationships is not based on a glandular urge / sexual connection.
@greyghost
7man
I can’t believe you would think I would ever ask man to supplicate to a chick on a mens blog. I must come off as a pussy or something.
My comment was directed at Elspeth. I see you engaging in debate but not supplicating.
Micheal Singer
When you tell a girl she is pretty all of the time she becomes insatiable. It robs them of a any conection to reality. Knowing female nature they really don’t have an intellectual capacity to appreciate. what ends up happening is they start the quest for happiness (hypergamy). Through various means it starts off as attention whoring and social status games in elemetary school and through high school. It leads to the 8 step program as Dalrock has laid out. And it ends with as Sunshine as shown us with the spinster blogs. A woman can see that and can not put 2 and 2 together. I show you a picture of a 19 year old woman. With ass and titties that make man say god damn thats fine. With a brite energetic personallity that has guys always giving her attention. now that same women 20 years later is at a fertility clinic trying to get pregnant. A woman cannot put that together. The feral femminised women we have today damn sure can’t. Christian men need to learn that about women. (that was the whole point of christian game. It had nothing to do with christian men getting all the pussing or tingling some clueless bitch christian mans wife into sucking his dick sunday morning befor church.) With knowledge and understanding of female nature (game) christian men will stop the debate of scripture and just tell women what to think and what they need to do. Women do not take to kindly to responsibility it is explain with the study of female nature(game). So why have a debate of theory with a woman on scripture,ever notice how god never had female preachers. Only stupid ass supplicating femminised christian men under the guise of increasing the size of the church to spread the word do that shit. You don’t ask a woman what she thinks about shit you just tell her and have faith she just needs to have faith in you that is what leadership and submission is. When women make there own choices (the Vote) you get, the 8 steps of life program with all of the crap that comes with it, and a western society rife with misandry the emasculates the very men that civilization is counting on to keep it afloat. A little long an off topic but I can give an example on the conversation I will have in the future with my daughters on sex and pregnancy. (oldest is 11 so hopefully i have time …10 to 15 years LOL)
Suz: That was my remark, not Michael’s.
The appeal to worldly consequences simply doesn’t work.
What, for instance, would you say to Genghis Khan about ‘consequences’? He was wealthy beyond the dreams of avarice. He lived high and died at a very respectable old age. He got more tail than a toilet seat, and spread his genes so widely his line will probably last as long as humanity itself lasts. His ‘reason’ told him he could conquer half the world – and he was right, too. He was despised, but that very plainly did not cause him any grief. His values were gold, women, and power, and he got what he wanted in spades. You allowed, in your response, that bad consequences don’t always follow things we’d like to consider bad, and are content that they generally do: but exceptions like this are what you should be focusing on, not the general fact that most people who try to conquer the world fail. Why? Because we’re looking at this from the view that there is no further court of judgment. If you suppose that this life really is all there is, why should you not take the biggest risks possible, at whatever expense to others – in fact, trying to externalize every cost you can, since the quickest way to get something is to take it from someone else who already has it – and either live large or die? The payoff schedule, if you care to think of it in such terms, changes rather radically in favor of extreme vice. The best that can happen is you’ll live large and then die; the worst that can happen is that you’ll die, just like everyone else, just the same as you’re going to anyway. If there is no final judgment, the question is one of gambling.
I’m sure you’ve read ‘Brave New World’. If not, do, and immediately after, read C.S. Lewis’ ‘The Abolition of Man’. But assuming you have: what would you say to the World Controller in the penultimate chapter of BNW (linked above somewhere), or to one of CSL’s ‘conditioners’ in the final chapter of AoM? Consequences, after all, can be mitigated. Medical science permits vices today that, a century ago, would have meant swift and certain death. Applied psychology – soon to be aided by pharmacology, no doubt – can make people believe slavery is liberty, and black is white. And physics and chemistry – the application of pieces of metal and high explosives, if you will – can solve many other problems. The ‘consequences’ you speak of are technical problems, and they have technical solutions. If there is no final judgment, the question is one of engineering.
Gambling or engineering – but not morality. If consequences begin and end with this world, you may be limited by your inherited prejudices, (which are, ex hypothesi, nonsense on stilts) – but reason is firmly on the side of what we’d like to call evil. This shouldn’t surprise anyone: it is, after all, a fallen world.
@greyghost – When a women who is brought up and told she is pretty all her life it simply ruins her personality (there are exceptions) as you mentioned.
I have rarely discussed scriptures with since the majority of women since they are completely and willfully stupid and have given their spiritual proxy to their pastor. This is the problem and no amount of game will work – they still think they can have girls night out in Vegas or do coke. When I have talked with these “pastors” they didnt know if Pauls commandments were true and accused Paul of being a legalist. As a rule, I dont like to argue theology.
Either a person is living it or they are not- actions, dress, speech speak louder than words.
Actions and words have consequences whether one believes in God or not.
-To suggest that nth degree of sexual partners has no emotional, mental, physical, medical, financial consequences is absolutely ridiculous.
-To suggest that “game” can be used to tame the “feral femminised entitled woman” is absolutely ridiculous.
Telling a woman what to do or even using “game” is useless when whoredom is justified by cheap grace, media, society, legal system, and her friends.
Allow me to suggest, a feral femminised entitled woman as you described is damaged goods and simply not marriage material.
The outside is looks great but the mind, character, and emotional is non workable and counter productive to marriage and family.
Not all young men “jump” when they see a “hot” 20 year old.
I didn’t back in my twenties (wife was my first) and I dont now. I am pretty darn careful who I get involved with and dont play games.
Any woman who plays “games” immediately disqualifies herself. I dont waste my time, energy, resources, status, and attention on sub-par.
Not every country is morally and spiritually corrupt as the United States / UK / Europe.
IMO, a mans best options is look for better breeding / upbringing from families who have character, morals, integrity outside the USA ( I wont date/court American Christian women with the exception of 2-3 generation Mormon, Jewish, or Jewish Christian like myself).
Mormons despite the Anti-Semetic Joseph Smith theology, the ones that I personally know are very chaste,modest, educated, know the scriptures, and live according to consequences.
@Unger
Genghis Khan had a wretched family life. Why do think he spent so much time on the battle field and lost his last battle and most crucial battle at Khalakhaljid Sands ?
Allow me to suggest the only thing in life that is of any worth is relationships.
To live large as you suggested means to personal autonomy or “your happiness at the expense of others”.
The “technical solutions” you suggested have names:
welfare, abortion, war, genocide, disease, terrorism to name a few…..
I dont see “engineering or social solutions” unless there is a change in morality.
For there to be a change in morality – people wont change unless pain is inflicted (Machiavelli).
Btw, what do you think the original gospel message that John, Christ, and the apostles taught ?
Repentance and coming of the Monarchy of God to earth (due to the messy affairs).
Timely topic, Dalrock. All the work you’ve done on your blog along with others too numerous to mention is paying off some dividends. Here’s an article listing two datapoints to consider: the trampire T-shirt and Will Ferrell’s mocking of K-Stewart as trampire.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-2190427/Kristen-Stewart-cheating-scandal-gets-T-shirt-treatment-new-Trampire-tops.html
Enjoy!!
Unger,
(Sorry about the misplaced quote.)
“If you suppose that this life really is all there is, why should you not take the biggest risks possible, at whatever expense to others – in fact, trying to externalize every cost you can, since the quickest way to get something is to take it from someone else who already has it – and either live large or die?”
Why? Because of one’s progeny. If you want your children to survive, you don’t eat the chicken whose eggs feed them, unless you are CERTAIN of your ability to acquire more chickens. If you don’t care about your children’s survival (you’re a sociopath) you use up and thoroughly enjoy the resources they need.
It’s in the workings of the conscience.
Is the conscience a “spark of divinity,” is it entirely biological, or is it both? From a purely rational standpoint, the answer doesn’t matter, since the physical results of its influence are the same – species survival. It is the products of the conscience: compassion, guilt, a sense of justice/fairness, that keeps the population surviving. Even xenophobia may be a “sub-function” of the conscience, because it’s natural for us to favor our own “tribe” (with our own DNA) over outsiders. They get our compassion and mercy *if we have any to spare AFTER we ensure the survival of our own.* Also there is variation in individuals’ perceptions of the size of their tribes. A sociopath’s tribe is one person – nobody else’s survival is important to him. Christ’s tribe is quite a bit bigger; he sacrificed his own “survival” for his children’s future.
Morality exists universally; we’re all born with the capacity for it, whether we believe in God or not (and religion can enhance it or corrupt it.) Whether one believes that morality is a connection to God, or a result of evolution in a world with no God, matters only to the individual. Everyone has it, regardless of its source.
The only thing about rational morality that’s relative, is our ability to accurately predict results. The same actually applies to religious morality; we have FAITH in the results, but there is no proof. (Which is fine IMO; there’s no need for faith if one has absolute proof.)
Game is not to tame a feral woman. Game is to tame a supplicating man. Game allows a man not to supplicate guilt free. Women in a natural state are feral sluts that can rationalize any behavior. Now with that acceptance and understanding of women, create a situation where that personality will appear virtuous. It a hard concept but once under stood the church rules. and isn’t ruled by PC.
BTW you are not going to on the surface look very christian like to your fellow man. But that is the essence of faith.
Dalrock I think in going to down load the Gilligan’s Island series.
Not all men jump as you say to the hot babe but enough do to give the feral slut the idea being a feral slut is girl power and independance. Maybe I am not a good writer but you are not seeing what I’m explaining. You said it yourself woman are willfully stupid that is normal. That is normal and is OK. Because women have always been like that. Ever notice how a woman under any curcumstance can blame men. Reguardless of how crazy and illogical because it is natural and normal. The whole concept of removing women from the pedistal in the manosphere is founded on that thought. When a woman can sense a man can see that in her she tingles and will spend the rest of her life trying to please that man. As soon as she is “empowered” she loses the tingle and moves on (hypergamy) and some player with neg game gets to fuck the hell outta that pussy so the beta chump gets to pay for it. Or a christian man with have a loyal and faithful wife . Think about it again with and open mind and then ask your self about being willfully dumb. (The “game” is the full awareness of the complete and unchanging nature of women ) You don’t actually game a woman you game yourself.
@greyghost
That is good insight. Game is an internal thing for a man. Then he is not react and his woman can storm and rant and he is not swayed, yet he still can love her. Once he learns to manage himself, most women (especially a good wife) will respond favorably.
When you tell a girl she is pretty all of the time she becomes insatiable. It robs them of a any conection to reality. Knowing female nature they really don’t have an intellectual capacity to appreciate.
Elsewhere in the human world, power is not given to an individual until they understand the whole system, what is going on from top to bottom. Not so with girls. It used to be different. Now we see the results.
Once he learns to manage himself, most women (especially a good wife) will respond favorably.
Perhaps this is a significant portion of the definition of a marriagable female, that they respond favorably to such.
@greyghost &7man – Maybe a generational thing but what is being referred to as “game” is “not reacting when his woman can storm and rant and he is not swayed” is a not “game” nor desirable.
When a women storms and rants – you are screwed – she is not “your woman”.
“Your” women should be more worried about the man getting upset.
Not reacting vs reacting correctly.
If a woman is storming and ranting much like a child.
With that being said – go away from me till you come down and we can talk like 2 rational adults. I used to spank my ex wife and GF’s for intolerable behavior and for some odd reason they like it. Now I dont play daddy for misbehavior at my age- they are simply dismissed.
Btw, “not reacting” is a Hollyweird movie gig and gives “pure license” for poor behavior that will digress over time.
The generational term for “game” regarding my generation and background- honesty, integrity, truthfulness, kindness, education, chaste, cleanliness, keeping ones word, discipline, and physical shape.
Btw, I am not dismissing women as hypergamous or feral. However, men can break promises and engage in extramarital affairs and have been. However, it now cost men more and women come up $$$ ahead.
Btw, I know a couple a few smart and have courted one smart women.
They made no excuses for irrational feminine behavior and kept themselves in-check. Granted this is not the norm here in the USA but allow me to suggest what we have here in the USA is the “bottom of the barrel” despite education.
If a woman can’t keep her feral /hypergamy in self check (parenting / religion / culture plays a big part) then no matter what “game” is played – she and who she is involved with is a casualty except they just dont know it yet.
The persons relationship to sex is decided by the relationship they have with themselves.
The relationship they have with themselves was created in them by the relationship others have with themselves.
Change what was created by others and you change the persons relationship to self.
Change the relationship to self and you change the relationship to sex.
Game is to tame a supplicating man.
Not so much “tame”, more “untame”. Perhaps “allow men to be men”.
If a woman is storming and ranting much like a child.. With that being said – go away from me till you come down and we can talk like 2 rational adults.
This is the best approach. All men should follow it.
Yeah; those Christian martyrs were idiots. Don’t even get me started on soldiers; at least those Christian martyrs were obviously nuts and so rightfully killed–for all our sakes.. I’m glad they’re dead with no progeny. It’s the rational conclusion, after all, no matter if there’s a divine spark, or not.
@ Michael Singer
Not reacting vs reacting correctly.
A real man acts but is not easily swayed by a woman’s emotionality. The person that reacts is catering to the farme of the other. A man can love her totally but not react to her storms. Every woman storms sometimes. Empathy is not the same as taking on her emotions or getting angry.
One more thing to add before going to work. a womans access to god is through her husband. I’m sure to be corrected if wrong but take what i’m am saying and hold it up to various obsevations. First off men were created by god and women were created from man as a helper. A woman that is with a man that knows her nature will tingle. It is a miracle from god knowing female nature. because she will do what it takes to please that man. She gives all she has to offer her sexuallity a woman in tingle is pleasant and thoughtful a confident woman is selfish and cruel.
That brings us to the alpha man. I’ve thought about this for a long time and have come to the conclusion that the alpha male is actually a defective male in a sense. he is a man that is missing a natural empathy he cant pedistalize women. women will go into tingle around that. Thugs are easy they are criminals and you can’t be a criminal with empathy. They get the tingle too. http://heartiste.wordpress.com/2011/10/12/wrapped-around-his-finger/ is how it looks. the manosphere has a mem that it is from the provider and protecter instinct. But i read a comment from a guy on a christian blog about an alpha with a harem of women was compleyely useless. he wa s a navy seal and had combat experience and new this alpha could do anything theese mmen have done yet he has a harem. What that says to me it is something the lord made.
Chistian men need to have women tingle for them. The easiest way is to stop pedistalizing them. No matter how succesful a woman becomes an old spinster is with out inner peace. but a woman that has submit will enjoy a peace that comes when her sexuallity is gone.
I need to work on it more to better put it together. but that is something I thought about commenting with you all here. I’ve been getting bits and pieces here and there “women don’t love they gina tingle, A woman enjoys the love of christ when her husband loves christ. ” That may explain the madness of feminism.
not easily swayed by a woman’s emotionality
Men ideally are about logic. That is why they should be in charge.
“Yeah; those Christian martyrs were idiots…”
That’s not a rational conclusion at all, Cane, and it’s not a conclusion I implied. They sacrificed themselves so their “tribe” would survive and thrive; Christ did the same thing. Whether or not they, as individuals, had biological children is immaterial. Countless childless men throughout history have devoted themselves (up to and including giving their lives) to the survival of the tribe. For God, for gold, for food, for land, for defense; survival of the smaller tribe bodes well for survival of the larger tribe, whether the larger tribe includes all humanity and God too, or is restricted to a more limited “in group.”
Mike
If a woman can’t keep her feral /hypergamy in self check (parenting / religion / culture plays a big part) then no matter what “game” is played – she and who she is involved with is a casualty except they just dont know it yet.
Think about what you have said here. She is not going to keep it in check. but she can lead a christian life and die in peace. Leadership is a mutha fucka aint it. Let go
Btw, I am not dismissing women as hypergamous or feral. However, men can break promises and engage in extramarital affairs and have been. However, it now cost men more and women come up $$$ ahead.
Don’t make the mistake of comparing a defective man with a normal woman. This is the kind of thing that brings out the moral relative crap. feminist have done this to make the christian church churchianity which is pretty much where you are speaking from now..
* a clarification:
“Whether or not they, as individuals, had biological children is immaterial.”
It is immaterial to their inborn morality. No doubt most of them hoped to survive and return home and increase the tribe whose future they were attempting to secure. I think it’s fair to assert that having children to protect, doesn’t make a person more “moral.”
I see where Suz is coming from. Survival of the fittest isn’t about the individual but the species. On a grand scale we are wired to sacrifice ourselves for our progeny. Other animals do it too. They mate and then die. We have self-preservation instincts but the biological imperative trumps it.
So our “conscience” ..is Natural Law and is reflected in our biomechanics. It might not be the source but they are certainly linked.
Oxytocin actually makes us more tribal. Its called the “love” hormone but it is actually a hormone that makes us more prejudice. The stronger attachments we feel towards our own kind the more protective we are and the more fiercely we will defend our own kind against outsiders.
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=the-prejudice-hormone
Christ made the whole world our tribe because in Christ there is “neither Greek nor Jew”..and we must evangelize those who do not claim Christ. Our sense of wanting to defend ourselves against outsiders is directed towards the Devil and his minions rather than to outside tribes. “Put on the whole armor of God”… we are called to spiritual warfare.
Suz: An appeal to progeny seems especially out of place, given that the snippet you quoted was in the context of the example of someone who’s the ancestor of one out of every two hundred of us. Theft works. Cannibalism works. Rape works. Lots of species get by perfectly well with them. Our species seems to be no exception – and, in fact, a great deal of the high civilization we’ve enjoyed has come only through some men, screaming in protest and pain, being consumed by others as ‘resources’, spare parts, pieces of meat. Most of it in the name of Our Chilluns’ Future – and to hell with the future of the disposables and their children. Where is your morality now?
It gets worse. Let’s say that we have indeed evolved a certain instinct to behave a certain way for the sake of our chilluns’ future, an instinct that most of us share. Let us leave aside the problem that For The Chilluns can be used to justify every imaginable atrocity, and is usually the very first excuse made for them. We have this instinct; very well. Apparently, we’ve also evolved the ability to ignore that instinct. What reason can you offer why anyone shouldn’t? The instinct to preserve The Chilluns is not the only instinct we have; our instincts are at war; we have the capability to suppress certain instincts and follow others; what rational grounds have you for preferring this instinct over the rest? Especially in light of the fact that our chilluns, too, are doomed to die no matter what we do, and that science offers not the slightest hope that, a few billion years hence, there will be anything left to mourn our passing or theirs? What does it matter?
Probably worth reading CSL’s answer to your objection, too.
Again, I’m not saying that this is really the way things are; I’m just saying – mostly for Emma’s benefit, but possibly for yours as well – that it really is true that if God is dead, everything is permitted. There is no reasoning back to any ‘natural morality’ that isn’t, like the rest of nature, red in tooth and claw.
@Suz
LOL!
@Gabriella
This is not a topic you want to invest a lot of time trying to figure out. Suz says she’s a Christian who doesn’t believe scripture. You can read all about it at CMD-N.org. She knows she’s rational because she says is, and she’ll say it all day long no matter what anyone else says.
Think about it this way, Gabriella: You’re trying to figure out the person who figured out God. No damn scripture had to tell her. Even I’m not up to that.
“You missed what I meant when I spoke of judgment. I was pointing out that, if there is no final judgment of right and wrong, talk of morality is nonsense. The unfortunate fact of the matter is that, assuming that this world and this life is all there is, crime often pays very well, and doing good often pays poorly, and the universe does not care a whit either way. If you insist there is no further appeal but to the facts as we see them now – which means, as differing individuals see them differently now – then you’re going to be stuck in the ultimately meaningless subjectivism you keep trying to find a non-theistic way out of.”
I have no non-theistic way out, but that doesn’t mean I will just fill that hole with God – it feels like a copout to me (no offense). And I can’t assume God wants me to have the morals of the Bible (it might be the work of Satan), maybe he wants me to be like the minority.. I just choose to use both logic and good morals because there is nothing else availible. They are a postulate, kinda grounded in “it works better than everything else for everyone’s happiness”. You’re doing it too, just differently.
I admit that God can be useful, to help some people from falling into the abyss and thinking that “everything is permitted and we should just do whatever we want now”, and actually doing it (I think most still wouldn’t). I remember one guy told me if God didn’t exist, he would kill and rape. For the sake of people like him, keep up the good work.
@Emma the Emo
Maybe your “no God” want you to ride the cock carousel too. Your god appears to be similar to a rationalizaton hamster.
7man,
It’s not an impossibility. Nothing says it’s impossible, like the existence of God. But I can’t know these things and won’t assume anything.
Emma is engaging in mental masturbation.
Yes, I’m engaging in what Descartes, Bacon and Pascal all engaged in, thank you. Originally I just asked if omega cock carousel was really morally wrong, and didn’t mean for the conversation to devolve into ethics discussion, but it seems everyone continued it in by absense also, so don’t blame me.
Why is it a copout? You already know perfectly well why God cannot be deduced, in the manner of examining parts of a whole. You have at least one good reason to infer God, which turns out on examination to be no more unreasonable than your belief in your mind’s capability to discern truth. If I were in your position, then, I would have only the slightest interest in disproofs of God, and would consider them interesting only as mental exercises in fallacy-spotting; I would have a great deal more interest in arguments that we can know something about God (Aquinas’ Five Ways would be a good start); I would have the most interest of all in the question of whether any purported revelations might really have happened as a matter of historical fact. It surely makes little sense to call theism, and especially any particular variant of it, a copout, without more to go on than you presently have.
7man, CL: I wonder if you would have said the same thing to C.S. Lewis when he was about where Emma is now? You should be thankful for what you know you can believe; I’m pretty sure St. Paul very strongly warned us not to be smug about it.
It feels like a copout because it has a history of being used in phenomena that later were explained more reasonably. Happens so often it seems the go-to answer for everything we don’t understand. Not knowing really sucks, but in that case, “I don’t know” is the right answer. That’s what I meant.
@ unger
It’s not smug, it’s a statement of truth. Do you think I haven’t been there? Comparing anyone here to C.S.Lewis is a bit much though, and I’d say that yes, a lot of philosophy IS mental masturbation. Some of them even end up killing themselves. Great path that is!
The fact that Emma gets uppity and defensive shows she’s not here to learn or she’s not ready to accept truth. She should go read the books that were recommended, smoke another bowl, and think about it some more.
Originally I just asked if omega cock carousel was really morally wrong
It was a stupid question. If it existed, then yes, it is morally wrong. But you don’t want solid moral answers, you want to waffle around – and has us waffle around – in order to come up with some pretentious alternative to the Truth that justifies your cock-hopping. You reject anything that doesn’t fit your fuzzy morality and apparently unger expects Christians to go along with this for the sake of being “nice”. No. Nice will get you killed.
CL,
I was having a great discussion with unger and others until you got aggressive. You got personal. Why?
Also, you seem to be engaging in “first insult them, then use their absolutely normal reaction to insults as a way to prove they are here to do something mean and negative”. Don’t you think it’s a bit dishonest?
As for nice getting you killed, there is the opposite side of this coin. Being an asshole needlessly will get you killed. For those who recommended books and gave me things to think about, thank you. I think I will leave before this turns into a needless quarrel.
Emma: I can respect that in most cases. Most supposed miracles – things supposedly far out of our ordinary experiences – really turn out, on further investigation, to be normal after all. Not all, I think – but most. I don’t think it applies here at all, though. We are interested in knowing if there is ‘something behind’ the facts of nature, something like a mind, something with purposes (and thus something that made all other things for purposes – which would get us back in the ballpark of the original question). No examination of the material world, no knowledge of mere causes and effects, no matter how thorough, will answer that question either way. But in the one place we could possibly get such an answer – namely, our own minds, our own constitutions – we do indeed find evidence of such purpose, and thus, indirectly, a purposer. If we doubt the evidence, we cannot, save by sheer prejudice, go on believing we have good reason to believe anything else.
“The whole secret of mysticism is this: that man can understand everything by the help of what he does not understand. The morbid logician seeks to make everything lucid, and succeeds in making everything mysterious. The mystic allows one thing to be mysterious, and everything else becomes lucid.”
Or, if you like:
“You take the blue pill – the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill – you stay in Wonderland and I show you how deep the rabbit-hole goes.”
CL: Yes, being nice will get one killed. This is not the worst thing that can happen. “On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero.” And at any rate, we have something of an example to follow in that: the man who had only to say the word, and legions of angels would have slaughtered his enemies, instead went meekly with his executioners. Our salvation is what you might call – and what at least some of the people at the Crucifixion did call – a distinct lack of Game.
You can jeer the enemies of Christ all you like on the Last Day. Until then, it’s better to give them something to think about.
Cane,
“Suz says she’s a Christian who doesn’t believe scripture.” Um, no. I don’t believe that scripture is God’s holy word; I believe it’s mans’ closest approximation of God’s word. You imply that I dismiss it outright. Why would you conflate the two in an attempt to discredit my Christianity? You learned that tactic from the feminists, didn’t you?
Additionally, I’m the person who is absolutely certain she HASN’T figured out God, and is OK with that fact. You can’t seem to grasp that, can you? What I have figured out is that 2+2=4, even while you seem intent on turning the equation into calculus.
Unger,
Let’s “flip the script.”
***Let’s say that we have indeed CHOSEN a certain BELIEF SYSTEM – THAT IT IS RIGHT to behave a certain way for the sake of our GOD, a(n) BELIEF SYSTEM that most of us share. Let us leave aside the problem that For GOD can be used to justify every imaginable atrocity, and is usually the very first excuse made for them. We have this BELIEF SYSTEM; very well. Apparently, we’ve also evolved the ability to ignore that BELIEF SYSTEM. What reason can you offer why anyone shouldn’t? The BELIEF SYSTEM to preserve GOD is not the only BELIEF SYSTEM. we have; our BELIEFS are at war; we have the capability to suppress certain BELIEF SYSTEMS and follow others; what rational grounds have you for preferring this BELIEF SYSTEM over the rest?***
Does that “school of thought” work any better? If a person’s conscience OR his devotion to God is strong, he will strive to do more measurable good than measurable harm, for humanity/God /God’s Creation. If his conscience or his devotion to God is weak, he will do whatever suits him, using any convenient rationalization. Ironically, in the real world, the final outcome is not within his control either way (although it’s usually predictable.) Rational Morality and Religious Morality are parallel, but they are likely not dependent upon each other. It’s possible that they are one and the same, but neuroscience is beginning to find evidence that the conscience (or lack of it) may well be a function of the physical brain.
” ….that it really is true that if God is dead, everything is permitted. There is no reasoning back to any ‘natural morality’ that isn’t, like the rest of nature, red in tooth and claw.”
I’m so glad you said that. Here’s an ugly truth that a lot of believers prefer not to see: God or no God, everything IS permitted, because there’s nothing that somebody, somewhere can’t get away with – in His name or for any other reason. Apathetic and depraved people collude to make it worse. It is up to US to collectively keep ourselves and each other in line. And IMMV within the church and without. My point about rational/natural morality is that it IS like the rest of nature, “red in tooth and claw,” but not entirely at random. Religious morality is pretty bloody and raw too. {{In fact, there are those who argue that religious morality is far more more capricious and arbitrary than nature, since it often condemns those who do no measurable harm. (Rather similarly to irrational ideologies such as feminism and communism.) I might agree, simply due to the principle that religious morality doesn’t answer to natural laws, but oddly enough, in most faiths around the world, religious morality very closely mirrors rational morality. Almost universally, it MAKES RATIONAL SENSE. Probably not a coincidence.}}
God and our faith in Him do not protect us from the harm wrought by nature or by human nature; He/it comforts us, inspires us, and gives us hope. Faith is a path THROUGH the “redness” of life on earth, if we choose that path. Rational morality follows essentially the same path through the wilderness. Incidentally, I’m not trying to claim that the two types of morality have exactly the same spiritual/emotional value. I believe in God and I believe that my faith enriches my spirit in ways that can’t be measured. It probably enhances what I contribute to the world, but I can’t prove it. Who was it that wished to have enough faith to be an atheist? I sure don’t have that kind of faith. I need what I believe God gives me.
If Scripture is not the inspired word of God, then what good is it? Then the Word has lied in saying that it is inspired, and the whole cause of Christ, the kingdom of God itself is a fraud.
Unger, this is beautiful:
“We are interested in knowing if there is ‘something behind’ the facts of nature, something like a mind, something with purposes (and thus something that made all other things for purposes…”
The problem with religious dogma (in this regard) is that all too often it wants to promote something *instead of* the facts of nature, not merely behind them. It presumes to understand the nature of that “something.”
Alpha Mission,
Technically, it could be. It’s up to the faithful to believe in God, even in the absence of texts.
(…Although I personally believe it was inspired by God. It is after all, pretty consistent, for a collection of stories passed down for many years before being put together.)
CL doesn’t jeer. She is blunt. Most confuse gradualism with tolerance.
Suz: You missed the point. I wasn’t arguing that there are no real grounds for preferring one instinct to another, or otherwise for ‘decent behavior’; I was pointing out that if you remove God from the picture, you also remove what grounds do exist. (And by that, I mean God and truth, not anyone’s particular conceptions of God or truth. An analogy: logic and reasoning vs. anyone’s particular ideas about logic or anyone’s particular reasoning: someone with a wrong idea of logic may reason badly, but without logic, there is no reasoning at all.)
Posted before, but who cares? Your talk of neuroscience demands a relink:
The preservation of the species? But why should the species be preserved? One of the questions before them is whether this feeling for posterity (they know well how it is produced) shall be continued or not. However far they go back, or down, they can find no ground to stand on. Every motive they try to act on becomes at once petitio. It is not that they are bad men. They are not men at all. Stepping outside the Tao, they have stepped into the void. Nor are their subjects necessarily unhappy men. They are not men at all: they are artefacts. Man’s final conquest has proved to be the abolition of Man.
Yet the Conditioners will act. When I said just now that all motives fail them, I should have said all motives except one. All motives that claim any validity other than that of their felt emotional weight at a given moment have failed them. Everything except the sic volo, sic jubeo has been explained away. But what never claimed objectivity cannot be destroyed by subjectivism. The impulse to scratch when I itch or to pull to pieces when I am inquisitive is immune from the solvent which is fatal to my justice, or honour, or care for posterity. When all that says ‘It is good’ has been debunked, what says ‘I want’ remains. It cannot be exploded or `seen through’ because it never had any pretentions. The Conditioners, therefore, must come to be motivated simply by their own pleasure. I am not here speaking of the corrupting influence of power nor expressing the fear that under it our Conditioners will degenerate. The very words corrupt and degenerate imply a doctrine of value and are therefore meaningless in this context. My point is that those who stand outside all judgements of value cannot have any ground for preferring one of their own impulses to another except the emotional strength of that impulse.
@greyghost
Leave Chris Brown alone. As Rihanna herself admitted (prior to the feminist reframe), he wouldn’t have punched her in the face if she hadn’t started beating him in the head with her stiletto heels as he was driving down the highway. Context, in this case, is key. There’s a world of difference between actions taken under duress and actions taken in times of peace.
Unger,
Is he saying that the urge to continue the species is an emotion? Isn’t everything, including the need to believe in God? And aren’t brain chemicals responsible for our emotions?
In the end, if there is no God and it’s all cold, mechanical biology, doesn’t the proof of “goodness” show in the results of how we respond to our instincts? Isn’t survival the main goal of every species? Or are you saying there is no “good” or “bad” in the workings of biology (if we go extinct, we go extinct – oh well) therefore, the judgement of “good” and “bad” is relative (merely emotion) without God? What if our “spirit” is just another biologically inspired emotion? Aren’t the (worldly) results the same, and why shouldn’t they be judged as “good” or “bad” if we succeed in continuing to exist? (Leaving the subjective quality of existence completely out of it.)
@Suz
Because between the two, dismissing it outright is the smarter choice, and I was giving you the benefit of the doubt.
“No good deed…”
You misunderstand my tactic. I didn’t attack you, I attacked your ideas. Plus I spared Gabriella a headache, and probably an undeserved thread-lashing from our resident po-pos.
Feminists do the opposite: they attack the man to kill the idea. I hope you can see how I couldn’t possibly have been engaged in that.
By the way: Did you ever read Mere Christianity, as you said you would?
@ greyghost “Think about what you have said here. She is not going to keep it in check. but she can lead a christian life and die in peace. ”
This is a self refuting statement. How can a woman lead a Christian life and not keep it check and die in peace ? Have you read the apostle Pauls writings ? Specifically Gal 5:13-24 & Rom 8:12-13.
Btw, allow me reframe a misunderstanding – either a man or woman can cheat. It is unacceptable and selfish. And yes women are hypergamous and feral as men can be adulterous – if left unchecked.
A woman can get emotional all she wants – it comes with the territory and can be quite entertaining at times.
But rant/rave/abusive because she wants “toasted ice” or unwarranted anger or creating a situation to shift the blame – unacceptable, intolerable, and dismissed ASAP.
Any guy who puts up with bad behavior is done.
Any husband who is afraid of his wife getting angry is done.
The goal is not to become involved with woman who has this as SOP. If a man does – he missed this behavior along the way of courting / dating and more than likely was operating on a glandular urge.
Despite what is portrayed as “the norm” in the media and American culture – THIS IS UNACCEPTABLE behavior.
I dont mind a bit of being challenged along the way as I spot it pretty quick but how this is done and to what level separates the spoiled rotten feminized slut vs someone worth getting to know.
American men are used to overeducated, loud, entitled, “feminized” American sluts.
Despite of how they look – a feminized American slut is a gold plated turd.
Regardless of the gold plating – it is still a turd and nothing will change that – nothing.
I bring this up for a reason – Feminine women are actually enjoyable, fun, hard working, helpful, empathic, and smart.
It just so happens that this type of women is a rare sighting on the continent of North America.
ALL of the women I know of this type were not raised in the USA.
Quite often people have higher expectations for other than they do for themselves – that is the feminist cry of “where are all the good men” as well as ” man up and marry a slut” which is anathema to a chaste/moral man.
Allow me to suggest, there are “exceptional” women and men however, they are quite rare here in the states and it takes one to know one.
Btw, I do believe in second chances for slut reformation.
I spent a number of years in organ transplantation and is quite wonderful to see good outcomes and restoration ( it is always at a very high price).
However, second chances are for people who recognize they made a mistake and are doing their best to have a good outcome ( the organ that gave life came with a cost of a donor).
Quite often a person has to lose something in order to ascertain the value.
Thereafter, they will work hard to keep it and less likely to lose it again – the road back was very hard.
Some people have rationalization hamsters that never come to that realization and feel/act they are “entitled”.
Outcomes and consequences are quite predictable – one reaps exactly what they sow.
Good read…
Here’s an article that touches on the same subject:
http://uncabob.blogspot.com/2012/08/narcissism-and-sexual-promiscuity.html
“Morality exists universally; we’re all born with the capacity for it, whether we believe in God or not (and religion can enhance it or corrupt it.) Whether one believes that morality is a connection to God, or a result of evolution in a world with no God, matters only to the individual. Everyone has it, regardless of its source.”
Morality
We cannot kindle when we will
The fire which in the heart resides;
The spirit bloweth and is still,
In mystery our soul abides.
But tasks in hours of insight will’d
Can be through hours of gloom fulfill’d.
With aching hands and bleeding feet
We dig and heap, lay stone on stone;
We bear the burden and the heat
Of the long day, and wish ’twere done.
Not till the hours of light return,
All we have built do we discern.
Then, when the clouds are off the soul,
When thou dost bask in Nature’s eye,
Ask, how she view’d thy self-control,
Thy struggling, task’d morality–
Nature, whose free, light, cheerful air,
Oft made thee, in thy gloom, despair.
And she, whose censure thou dost dread,
Whose eye thou wast afraid to seek,
See, on her face a glow is spread,
A strong emotion on her cheek!
“Ah, child!” she cries, “that strife divine,
Whence was it, for it is not mine?
“There is no effort on my brow–
I do not strive, I do not weep;
I rush with the swift spheres and glow
In joy, and when I will, I sleep.
Yet that severe, that earnest air,
I saw, I felt it once–but where?
“I knew not yet the gauge of time,
Nor wore the manacles of space;
I felt it in some other clime,
I saw it in some other place.
‘Twas when the heavenly house I trod,
And lay upon the breast of God.”
Matthew Arnold
Cane:
“You misunderstand my tactic. I didn’t attack you, I attacked your ideas.”
Where did I claim you were attacking me instead of my ideas? I said you were conflating two different ideas (in order to blur the difference between them.) In a mocking tone, no less, as a means of discrediting them. Seems to me ideologues of every stripe do that quite regularly.
And no, I haven’t read a book in ages. I’ve spent much of the last 7 months pretending to be a dutiful Christian wife, sorting, packing and cleaning my husband’s workshop, barn and storage unit, (not to mention the whole house) while he worked in another state. And smiling about it so as not to add to his stress. I’ve been a little busy. “Mere Christianity” is still on my to-do list.
That said, why the hesitation to address my ideas directly? My “theology” is really very simple: I believe God exists, and I believe his divinity makes him too great for us to comprehend. I believe in Christ’s divinity and that he died for our salvation. I believe the Bible was written by people who were inspired by God, yet limited in their ability to express what the did understand of him. On second thought, don’t bother to address my ideas directly; we’ve already had this conversation, and we disagree on many specifics. I’m not your “type” of Christian, and you’re not mine. We are, however, both Christians who endeavor to honor God. Judge me if you will, but you’re not in a position to condemn me or mock me (nor I, you) because both of our positions are conditional; they rely on faith, not fact. “My God’s better than your God,” is a child’s game, and has little or nothing to do with morality.
And this is hardly what the OP was about.
The threads on this blog have been excellent lately.
I’m late to this conversation… but “slut” is used in this area (manosphere) as more a state on mental being than absolute.
#1. yes it a double standard…and so what? Woman react differently to sex than men.
#2. The phenomina being editified is a woman who had enough partners ealy, enough over-all, and for long enough that she is less than capable of holding down monogomy.
#3. She may cheat, she may divorce… regardless.. a trigger has been switched that no longer allows her to be capable of a life long marriage…or happy in one.
#4. No bonding power left…thats the point.. It happens and its rather pervasive after the sexual revolution.. (their must be some empirical reseach in this area)
@JoeBlough – that is a excellent article.
The male version of a slut is a cad. In other words, an Alpha. A good “Alpha” has always been considered a chivalrous man – and chivalry was originally based on the better warrior virtues. The bad “Alpha” is a cad and they generally ruin their lives.
People have been thinking about these things for several hundred years. Since so many people today don’t understand history they’ve fallen for the concepts of Alpha, Beta, etc. Strictly speaking they don’t exist. After all the map (words) is not the terrain (reality).
Suz: ‘responsible for’…two little words with two very big consequences, which I do not think anyone is capable of considering, accepting open-eyed, and remaining religious at all, to say nothing of Christian.
If brain chemistry is ‘responsible for’ thought – more precisely, if thought is reducible wholly to physical phenomena in the brain – then, first of all, all notions of free will, moral responsibility, etc., etc., go out the window. Physical phenomena behave lawfully. Chemicals do not have the choice of reacting or not reacting; their behaviors are determined by ‘the laws of physics’; they do what they cannot help but do. But this means that, on the determinist theory, you do what you cannot help but do. The laws of physics determine, inexorably, through chains of cause and effect stretching back to the beginning of time, that you and I should disagree; that Emma should ask an odd question; that Sandra Fluke should be a slut; etc., etc.
[Y]ou may say, if you like, that the bold determinist speculator is free to disbelieve in the reality of the will. But it is a much more massive and important fact that he is not free to raise, to curse, to thank, to justify, to urge, to punish, to resist temptations, to incite mobs, to make New Year resolutions, to pardon sinners, to rebuke tyrants, or even to say “thank you” for the mustard.
In passing from this subject I may note that there is a queer fallacy to the effect that materialistic fatalism is in some way favourable to mercy, to the abolition of cruel punishments or punishments of any kind. This is startlingly the reverse of the truth. It is quite tenable that the doctrine of necessity makes no difference at all; that it leaves the flogger flogging and the kind friend exhorting as before. But obviously if it stops either of them it stops the kind exhortation. That the sins are inevitable does not prevent punishment; if it prevents anything it prevents persuasion. Determinism is quite as likely to lead to cruelty as it is certain to lead to cowardice. Determinism is not inconsistent with the cruel treatment of criminals. What it is (perhaps) inconsistent with is the generous treatment of criminals; with any appeal to their better feelings or encouragement in their moral struggle. The determinist does not believe in appealing to the will, but he does believe in changing the environment. He must not say to the sinner, “Go and sin no more,” because the sinner cannot help it. But he can put him in boiling oil; for boiling oil is an environment. Considered as a figure, therefore, the materialist has the fantastic outline of the figure of the madman. Both take up a position at once unanswerable and intolerable.
And second, and even more critically, the act of reasoning itself loses its reason. If your thoughts are determined wholly by physical causes, what room is left for insight, for believing something because it is true? If your beliefs are wholly determined by non-rational physical causes, inanimate objects behaving as inanimate objects do, then any relation they have to truth is purely coincidental. You believe what you do because you cannot help it; the man who believes that poverty could be ended if only the Fed would deposit a trillion dollars into everyone’s bank accounts believes what he does because he cannot help it; the man who (erroneously) believes he is Napoleon believes what he does because he cannot help it: all were determined at the beginning of time.
To be caused is not to be proved. Wishful thinkings, prejudices, and the delusions of madness, are all caused, but they are ungrounded. Indeed to be caused is so different from being proved that we behave in disputation as if they were mutually exclusive. The mere existence of causes for a belief is popularly treated as raising a presumption that it is groundless, and the most popular way of discrediting a person’s opinions is to explain them causally–‘You say that because (Cause and Effect) you are a capitalist, or a hypochondriac, or a mere man, or only a woman’. The implication is that if causes fully account for a belief, then, since causes work inevitably, the belief would have had to arise whether it had grounds or not. We need not, it is felt, consider grounds for something which can be fully explained without them.
But even if grounds do exist, what exactly have they got to do with the actual occurrence of the belief as a psychological event? If it is an event it must be caused. It must in fact be simply one link in a causal chain which stretches back to the beginning and forward to the end of time. How could such a trifle as lack of logical grounds prevent the belief’s occurrence or how could the existence of grounds promote it?
Required reading: ch. 2, ‘The Maniac’, in G.K. Chesterton’s ‘Orthodoxy’; ch. 3, ‘The Cardinal Difficulty of Naturalism’, in C.S. Lewis’ ‘Miracles’ – from which I took the two quotations, respectively.
And if you really like this sort of thing, find copies of Ed Feser’s ‘Philosophy of Mind’ and Victor Reppert’s ‘C.S. Lewis’ Dangerous Idea’.
> Wright on, and very nice landing at the end. (Cane Caldo)
Thanks. It’s always nice to see at least one good score when you think you’ve stuck the landing.
_______
“A slut is free, a whore costs money, and wives are the most expensive of all” (moi)
> In that case, why is being a slut morally wrong at all? (Emma the Emo)
Here in Slutopia, it isn’t anymore. That’s the point. Women now live under the Barbie Mantra: Girls Can Do Anything!!!
If the worst a slut has to put up with is being subjected a “slut shaming” by people who don’t approve, that doesn’t really even rise to the level of a parking ticket: “Yes, your honor, in lieu of the $25 fine I agree to be parking shamed as a sixth degree scofflaw by my fellow citizens for letting that meter lapse when I lost track of the time or was such a dolt I didn’t think ahead to be sure I had the proper change on me…”
All that’s really left of the concept of the slut is the shaming. But at some point, slut shaming no longer constitutes shaming, and instead becomes giving them attention, and, thus, is egging (negging?) them on. Or, as the Onion spoofed, women are now empowered by everything women do [ text story | audio report ].
Apologies for being way behind the thread.
MaMu1977
That is right she attacked him and he kicked her ass as he should have. She also respects him for it. Heartiste also has a post about.
nobody rides the omega carousel – they wouldn’t be omegas if they had a carousel. (Unger)
For your enlightenment I would direct you to Lionel Tiger’s book The Decline of Males, where there’s a section titled “I Find I Do a Lot of Losers”. Basically, the inventor of the term male bonding overhears a conversation between two women at an NYC patio cafe… and you can piece together the rest.
Tiger was onto something important and widespread enough that much supporting evidence from many different areas can be found for the idea; the book has been out fifteen years and I’ve certainly accumulated plenty. All the many complaints about “men” in this society tell you an awful lot of liberated women are going out of their way to pick losers, abusers, jerks, ne’er-do-wells, and their general ilk. Hypergamy? Pffft! Under the new paradigm, women are a punishment to men for being bad.
This gets directly at one of the (many) reasons why I contend Game *is* Feminism: they both start from the flawed premise that the male is fundamentally inadequate as is, and thus needs to “improve” himself to be acceptable to that make-believe lofty and unattainable (but desirable) creature, woman. It doesn’t matter whether it’s the armchair alphas of Game/PUA or the dweebs at the Good Mangina Project of feminism, they’ve both got it exactly backwards.
That was interesting, Unger, and it makes sense with regard to reason and free will. If all thought, including reason and complex abstract thought, are “chemical,” it would have to be a very subtle and sophisticated phenomenon. While I was referring to emotions/urges when I said, “Isn’t everything?” (poor choice of words, I know) I am intrigued by the idea that brain chemistry might be complex enough to “cause” that level of mental flexibility, such as the ability to overcome urges using reason. That would compatible with the theory that the consciences is a biological adaptation.
On the other hand, I’ve been told by an economist, an expert salesman and a fairly successful mediator, that *every* decision is an emotional decision. It’s a matter of prioritizing emotions. I’m not sure I believe it, but I rather enjoy trying to test the theory.
Martian Bachelor:
“…flawed premise that the male is fundamentally inadequate as is, and thus needs to “improve” himself to be acceptable to that make-believe lofty and unattainable (but desirable) creature, woman…)
I think feminist society is what has made men “inadequate,” as opposed to them being fundamentally inadequate. Society has spent 50 years or more pummeling the masculinity out of men. In past eras, men didn’t need Game because they were raised to be masculine. Men don’t need to Improve themselves as much as they need to reclaim their masculinity. And of course women prefer masculine men – we were designed to. Learning to become more masculine (by choice, a couple of decades later than men used to) isn’t catering to women. It’s not done to please women, it’s done to rein women in and re-civilize us – to make us acceptable to masculine men.
Sure, the onus is ultimately on the male. That’s because males were designed to lead. Fortunately you have the option to take or leave it, to lead something more worthwhile than modern women.
Addressing this:
If you speak in a traditional Christian light, the definitions really are easy. The standard is clearly set and there shouldn’t really be any problems in understanding it. No sex unless it’s with your spouse you wedded in the sight of God is about as clear cut as you can get. People can come into following Christ with prior sexual partners, but the standard is clear there too. It’s the same given any situation. What anyone has the grace to accept in a marriage partner is another matter entirely (and it’s a question for me to struggle with given my past), but the standard set by God should produce no confusion.
The problem comes because the Christian entities do not uphold it. Moral relativism (“what is right for you isn’t right for me, what the Bible says is not absolute”) is the default attitude with most people you need to reach with the “no sex” message, and the culture has crept into the church so it’s not clearly taught, and more importantly not clearly enforced.
There’s just no backbone in Churchianity regarding this issue at all.
In men’s case it’s entirely possible to have an instrumental view of sexuality and then later switch entirely to a sacramental one. St. Augustine is an obvious example.
May I commend, if you have not read it, Bob Martin’s above link to his own blog where he has a very good article about Sluts, indeed just what I had been intending to say myself – though perhaps less colourfully – for in my experience too, sluts (and I am happy to add to them, per Brendan’s definition, women who prick-tease) are women who lack empathy for men and are only interested in their own physical satisfaction. They are, always, if you look carefully, women who have major personality defects, but whether it is the defect that causes the slutting or the slutting that creates the poor personality I cannot decide. As good Christians you should all be praying for sluts. 😉
Ema the Emo, is, as the saying has it, too clever by half. What she asks is wrong with being a slut – well, to some extent Bob Martin answers that: Slutdom is not particularily good for men, children or families and indeed my own initial comment – three down from the top – sees Slut as a morally neutral term. But what about the woman herself?
These are the problems for promiscuous women:
1. The danger of falling in love with the man in question. Sluts are human, but slutting immediately tells the man that the woman is only drive-by material.
2. The danger of health problems. The more partners you have the more you are likely to pick up an STD, and by reason of their self-centeredness sluts are less likely to expect the man to use a condom. Sluts are thrill seekers after all.
3. Every time a slut sleeps with a stranger she knows (somewhere inside) that the only reason he does so is because she is easy. This is not good for self esteem so that, see 4
4. To build your sense of self-worth up again, you need to sleep with a few more men whose passion will convince you of your desirability; and so on.
5. Sex creates children and there is therefore the risk of pregnancy and thus the risk of abortion.
6. Sluts tend to be exhibitionistic, so, especially these days, the chance is that sooner or later you will be filmed. If, as a slut, you are otherwise pretending chastity this might be very embarrassing. Indeed a reputation for being a slut will alter instantly how men treat and approach you.
7. As the slut is only interested in herself and her satisfaction she will soon discover that most of the men she sleeps with are unsatisfactory, for they are using her too – and one night stands are never good sex – and so the slut will turn (if she has the money) to men who she will pay for the privilege. She may believe, that their protestations of love are true, even though she also knows that is part of what she is paying them for (boy-friend experience), but she also knows that next week it will be a different woman and if the man is a foreigner called Marco or Fernando as is probably the case, the thing he really wants, but which he never mentions is a Green Card. If he gets it, then sooner rather than later he will leave her. As she is probably much older than him and as he is sexually desirable anyway – given his occupation, she will live under perpetual fear of being dumped.
Suz, just to play the Devil’s Advocate, if men have had the masculinity pummeled out of them, can one say that it is by definition a social construct in that case? I am not sure. I can think of a few possibilities:
1) Sufficient socialisation will overcome inherent masculinity.
2) Masculinity was only ever due to socialisation.
3) Some men remain masculine, perhaps because they have more inherent masculinity or they are less capable of being socialised (somewhat sociopathic?).
4) Men’s masculinity is only expressed in limited areas (sport?)
5) Men are still masculine in their heads but not in public (are men consuming a lot of porn or fantasising about male dominance?)
Incidentally, because I am on Australian time, and also because I sometimes lose my Internet connection, I may have lost track of some comments. So I may not be ignoring a reply to one of my comments. I may simply not have seen it.
On the previous thread I seemed to cause some displeasure, for what I wrote was seen as in some way anti-american. I protested this to little effect, but I would like to show that the concerns and attitudes over here really are in some ways rather different to those on your side of the pond. Last Friday I visited my local public house, where I met a friend – His background is I suppose what you would call Upper-Middle. He was schooled at a private fee-paying school [what we call public school] was briefly an Architecture student at University, has never had any religious education – which is why he could probably not if given pencil and paper complete so much as one sentence as to why he is not a believer, and has been married twice (as well as living first with another woman for a year) and on all occasions to good looking petite women – but there is nothing caddish about him, or dominant or pushy – on the contrary he is absurdly modest and taciturn; the pub was largely empty – it being a balmy evening most patrons were out in the garden – so we had the pub more or less to ourselves. After a while we could not but over-hear a man at the bar talking to the – as it transpired – twenty year old bar maid.
This was how our conversation went:
Friend: He is a big guy
Opus: Over twice my size
F: I think he is Scottish
O: No that’s Australian
F: He is far too big for her [she was petite]
O: He should leave her in peace
F: She would not put up with that outside work
O: She has no choice but to listen to it
F: But he is wasting his time – she is not interested
O: And he is too big for her
F: And too old [he was mid-thirties]
O: He is trying to show dominance – but is just boring her
F: He just offered to drive her 100 miles to a concert
O: But he has only just met her. That is so Beta
F: What is Beta?
O: Pussy-begging. I thought he was being very Alpha till then
F: What is alpha?
Then the lady from The Salvation Army entered the bar to sell The War Cry.
F: Here comes your friend
O: Yeah she likes me, which makes you jealous
F: But I am the one who always gives her money
O: She wants you to read her paper so that you will learn about Jesus and become a Christian
F: You never buy her paper, but she is all over you
O: She is not fanciable
F: And you are so rude to her
O: I just say what ever comes into my head – I can’t help it.
F: She loves it.
SA Lady came and sat down. Friend gave her 20p. I offered her a drink, but after a while she left. My friend and I talked further.
O: I have been annoying the americans on-line
F: About what?
O: Sluts
F: Why are they interested in sluts?
O:They’re not, they like chastity
F: How old are they?
O: Can’t say, vaguely middle aged I suppose
F: So why are they interested in chastity? Do they have daughters?
O: Some might but it’s not that
F: Is it about Promise Keepers [my friend listens to BBC Radio 4!]
O: No not that either. They don’t approve of sex outside marriage
F: What other sort is there hahaha.
O: I know you started young
F: Fifteen
O: I was sixteen
F: I like sleeping [all night] with a woman
O: You’re the marrying type
F: So why are the Americans concerned about Chastity?
At this point I was stuck as I was not sure how I could explain Glenn Stanton, Christianity and Hypergamy in a short sentence; so my friend continued:-
F: I don’t think I have ever slept with a virgin
O: Me neither
F: If you limited yourself to virgins you’d rule out 99% of women
O: And then you could never be certain who were the 1%
F: They wouldn’t be any good in bed either
O: Inexperienced women are a pain
F: Experienced women are better lovers
O: No wonder you are happily married
F: If a woman is keen she laughs at your jokes and makes it easy
O: You were a teenage actor on the telly. It was easy for you.
F: You can always tell what a women is like
O: Because they will be unable to resist telling you
F: You can always tell a slut, but it would be somehow tactless to ask
O: One never asks of a woman’s past. One surmises it from her behaviour
F: Discussing sexual detail is so – tasteless
and so it went on, including me being charming to the bar-maid when I bought some drinks – to contrast myself to the big Australian who at some point departed, presumably licking his wounds to try his luck again with some other bar-maid in another Bar – but negging her when she attempted to take away our unfinished drinks.
Then what appeared to be a mother and daughter went to the bar.
F: I think they are Slavs or gypsies
O: No that’s Spanish they’re speaking
F: You can have the mother
O: Oh thanks – you’re not much of a wing-man
F: What’s a wing-man?
Feelings are the ultimate arbiter of morality!
That is gonna make MY day a whole lot easier!
Be safe,and confident in the idea that what’s left of “The Law” will give a pass on your feeling driven behaviors.
MB wrote:
You know, I kind of agree with you, and I’m back in forth in my own mind about whether Game is theologically appropriate for Christians. The thing is, there are just so many examples of real-life situations where is seems like Game, or something akin to Game, would just be so very helpful. On my blog we’ve just been discussing such an example of a young couple I know where the man is so very beta and the wife doesn’t respect him, even though she is trying very hard to do so. This young man has gotten the idea from Ephesians 5 that he has to love his wife by doing lots of sweet, romantic things for her. like bringing her flowers all the time. As a result, their sex life is now a scheduled, once-a-week thing (which is an improvement over the once-every-other-month thing they had been doing). The poor girl isn’t meaning to be willfully rebellious, but she also has the idea that if he does more of this “loving” stuff, things will get better. She refers to their weekly sex night as “cookie time”. Could there be a more disrespectful term? Yet they both want to to do right. Don’t you think a smidgen of Game would sort them out in a hurry?
By this definition, at some point in our lives we are all sluts.
Even the most virtuous man and chaste woman, must, at some stage of their attraction for each other, become aroused by their potential mate (prior to marriage) and ‘think’ about, visualize or otherwise fantasize about what sex with that person would be like. Any guy rubbing one out to the imaginings of what sex would be like with his future wife is a hedonistic slut.
It’s at this point that Christians like to split semantic hairs about what constitutes “lust” in an effort avoid the part Jesus mentions about being condemned for just looking at a woman with lust in your eye / heart. As I wrote in a prior thread, I feel this was meant to illustrate how lost humanity (and men in particular) is without Jesus as savior, but it still doesn’t sit well with a lot of Christians (most grey area of life don’t) that just ‘thinking’ about a sin, not the act, is enough to be condemned of that sin.
I know more Christian chumps than I care to recount who’ll go to very pained (and often conspicuously obvious) efforts to avoid walking by the magazine stand in the grocery store so as not to cast their eyes upon the cover of the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Edition, for fear that they’d be tempted to thoughts of lustful (hedonistic) intercourse with Kate Upton. Yet these are the same guys who’ll talk about how hot their (sanctified) sex lives will be once they marry their ‘Righteous Babe’ ONEitis. And that’s the crux of the issue, at some point, whether intentional or not that righteous guy (and girl) had to ‘think’ about what it would be like to tap that ass. Natural attraction, natural arousal IS hedonistic, it has to be in order for any future relationship (ordained or otherwise) to take place.
I should also add that this definition of ‘slut’ is precisely how contemporary, feminized christian women rationalize and legitimize wife-initiated divorce in a Biblical context. It’s the Fireproof plan (christianized Eat, Pray, Love); he watched porn? There was lust in his heart, that’s tantamount to sexual infidelity and therefore (Jesus said) a legitimate divorceable offense. Thus does the Christian niche adopt the worldly template. It’s thought-crime, and it’s a psychological schema that christian men are all too willing to internalize for themselves before they even get married.
Visited a different church… a typical uber-organized evangelical one.
The sermon was not horrible, I guess, but my ears perked up when the pastor said that there’s not a problem of understanding, but a problem of obedience. He then rattled off several things that we (presumably) all know not to do but do anyway. He did this in full huck-a-buck mode. The items were… (1) if you have marriage problems, then you *know* you need counseling… (2) if you suffer temptation when the computer’s on (ie, dirty pictures/movies) shut it off… (3) married people don’t be alone with people of the opposite sex that aren’t your spouse… and (4) tithe… give that money to the church… if you don’t you’re robbing God!
Let’s see… with #1 they’ll give you advice that will destroy your wife’s attraction for you. This will lead directly to #2 for the husband and #3 for the wife. However… #3 would still be the husband’s fault I’m sure. Oh yeah… sign me up to help pay for this! (I find it particularly tiresome that the heavy shaming language only comes out when they want you to give them money….)
(Yep… it only took your preacher two minutes to spell out that his church fully endorses the Fireproof school of marriage implosion. I didn’t even need to ask my usual “tough questions.”)
Note that if these clowns did get hold of some sort of Christianized game to peddle, it would still end up being about following your wife’s heart. Skits would be performed to make illustrate how the husbands can’t get it right even after being “discipled” on this…. The horror… the horror…!
I would go further, Rollo.
Not a single christian would get married if they didn’t feel lust, weren’t sluts as Brendan wants to conflate it.
Paul advised christains to not get married unless they “burned” for the other sex and this provided an outlet for it.
Nor does this provide a viable solution for christain men looking for a mate, for if there is anyone out there that can play the “sex is sacred. I’m not that kind of person” card, its women.
You are absolutely correct, this is just a flavor of feminism, draped is christainity, that an older man can toss around to make younger men feel bad.
Suz
And of course women prefer masculine men – we were designed to. Learning to become more masculine (by choice, a couple of decades later than men used to) isn’t catering to women. It’s not done to please women, it’s done to rein women in and re-civilize us – to make us acceptable to masculine men.
Sure, the onus is ultimately on the male. That’s because males were designed to lead. Fortunately you have the option to take or leave it, to lead something more worthwhile than modern women.
You seem to be paying attention and trying to find real answers. You are on the right path. Also if you have a son he is very fortunate to have you as his mother in these times. The christian men here are in reality churchian.
Rollo,
“And that’s the crux of the issue, at some point, whether intentional or not that righteous guy (and girl) had to ‘think’ about what it would be like to tap that ass. Natural attraction, natural arousal IS hedonistic, it has to be in order for any future relationship (ordained or otherwise) to take place.”
To claim that natural attraction and arousal are hedonistic is to claim that they find their natural fulfillment in pleasure. This is a deadly error that does not even seem to make sense, and it illustrates why it’s so vitally necessary for us to submit ourselves to a teaching authority greater than that of our own web-spinning reason.
No, Rollo, attraction and arousal find their natural fulfillment in loving marital union and the generation of life. All thanks be to God for the pleasure, but it isn’t the goal of attraction; you might as well say that the goal of hunger is the pleasure of eating.
There’s a critical difference between a desire moved by personal love, ushered by reason to fulfill itself in a lawful context, and an ungoverned fit of gripping, squeezing, and mutually-masturbating body parts. Ideal types, perhaps, but Brendan’s insight holds.
David,
Your list illustrates what results from *attempting* to make masculinity a social construct; feminism tries to brainwash men into repressing it. It still exists in every man, but they are trained to treat it like flatulence – “Don’t let it out in ‘civilized’ company.”
Boys are no longer taught the subtle intricacies of masculine behavior, because masculine behavior is no longer considered appropriate or civilized. Game merely teaches men what their fathers (or any other males) weren’t allowed to teach them. Once men learn the mechanics of it, they can internalize it and use it as they see fit.
Dare I suggest that a young man discovering Game is analogous to a boy learning to light his farts? Have you ever witnessed (or experienced) that particular giddy, liberating delight?
Opus,
Excellent point regarding Emma’s question. Sluthood has many consequences that aren’t immediately obvious.
Greyghost,
Thank you for your kind words. For myself I’m very comfortable with my faith and how it guides me; I engage in these discussions so I can try to figure out how and what to teach my son. For example, I don’t believe that the Bible is God’s holy word, but I don’t want to pressure him into the same belief. (Frankly Christianity would be simpler for him if he believes the opposite.) I raised him in the church, and his closest childhood friends were deeply devout, but he seems to have the heart of both a skeptic and an evangelist. For a while during his teens, he considered himself an atheist, although I suspect he meant “agnostic.” I want him to choose his own path, and I want him to understand that he can still be a Christian without swallowing the various adulterations of morality preached by most Christians. And of course at the age of 20, deep theological thought is hardly a priority to him. My goal is to keep every door open for him – to show him that morality can be both rational *and* Christian. I would hate to see LC reject Christ due to the warped morality of His followers.
@Rollo
…just ‘thinking’ about a sin, not the act, is enough to be condemned of that sin.
You are confusing “thinking” and “consenting”. Consenting to sin in your mind is sin, even if you can’t manage to actually accomplish the sin in the real world. This is called “formal cooperation with evil”.
Sleeping with your neighbor’s wife might cross your mind: see, it just happened, try not to think of an elephant. But you can’t sin without choosing to sin. When you choose, in your mind, that you actually would sleep with her, that is a sin, even if you never actually have the opportunity.
I personally think that is really straightforward to understand, not semantic hairsplitting. I’ve explained it to young children without any problem in comprehension.
I see, so I can think about robbing a bank, but until I start plotting it out in my head it’s not really theft? And as long as I masturbate to imaginings of the girl I’d like to be my wife on our wedding night It’s all good? The problem is that I kind of have to plot out how I’m going to get to that point in order to get married, and that requires some mutual fantasization between me and the girl(s) who I think God might have set aside for me in our preordained sex life.
There’s far more to a sexual response that would end up in marriage than just a fleeting thought brought on by a passing happenstance.
That’s going to require some consent. You see this is exactly the rationalization gymnastics I get from most christians. Why worry about passing by the SI Swimsuit Edition? I’ll just think about banging Kate Upton, but not give myself “consent” to make mental plans to bang her – made all the more easier in the knowledge that I don’t have a chance in hell of even meeting her.
I don’t buy the separation of ‘thinking’ and ‘consenting’, and I certainly don’t see the delineation anywhere from a scriptural perspective. What bothers christians is the proposition that holy matrimony can only be realized through the ‘sin’ of sexual thoughts and the arousal for our mates before marriage. Essentially the most ideal of marriages imaginable are by necessity the result of the thought-crime of premarital sex with our spouses. Original sin anyone?
Zippycatholic, I have thought about this a lot and reached a similar conclusion on what Christ meant. “Lusting after” implies actually wishing to have sex with. Noticing that a woman is attractive is not lustful if you form no desire to sleep with her illicitly. If you can marry, and find a woman attractive and wish to marry her and sleep with her licitly, that is OK too.
Of course noticing a woman is attractive can become lusting very easily, so caution is needed, but it would be possible to notice without lust. There is a difference between thinking one’s neighbour’s wife is pretty as opposed to forming a decision to try to sleep with her or wishing you could, which is probably what Christ meant by committing adultery in your heart.
Rollo, masturbation is an illicit act.
If you imagine sleeping with a girl once you marry, that is not planning an illicit act.
@Rollo
No, actual plans are not necessary, merely consent. Are you denying a difference between thought and consent? Because as I mentioned, even small children seem to understand it, which is why your dismissal of the distinction puzzled me.
Also, masturbation is always morally wrong no matter what thoughts accompany the act.
Preach it Rollo. I brought this same issue up with a pastor friend of mine about how no one in that church would have gotten married without first the sin of lust at some point. Its absolutely true, and the only way to avoid this paradoxical situation is celibate hermitage, or an artfully executed arranged marriage (they would have to not see each other at all until they were already married, assuming that both are attractive enough to stir feelings of sexual desire in the other.) Assuming that neither of these is acceptable, people are going to sin in lusting after their future spouse, period.
@Rollo
Also, consenting in your mind to sexual relations with a woman on condition that she first becomes your wife isn’t sinful. I agree that conditional consent is present in that sort of thought, but it is not consent to an immoral act, because sex with a woman after she has become your wife is not immoral.
Rollo, think of sin less as a specific action and more as a state of being. We humans are sinful creatures. Prayer, fasting, almsgiving, etc can all lead to overcoming of the passions and therby reduce one’s sinfulness. We all have our abilities. Ideally we would all live together as brothers and sisters, contemplating the next world, and would have no time to imagine banging each other. As it is, the vast majority of us will fall short of that. Marriage is an allowance for our nature. Most of us want to screw. Marriage gives us a way to do it enshrined as a sacrament of the Church. It can be a different path to salvation than the path of a monastic. A husband and wife can find Theosis along with their children in a natural family just as a monk or nun can in the community of the monastery or in the seclusion of the hermit. Men and women being forced to live alone without a partner, against their will, is one of the more heinous sins of our demonic society. Feminism suckles on the tit of satan.
There is no sin in fantasizing in your mind about purchasing a bicycle and riding it. Having that fantasy isn’t the same as consenting in your mind to stealing the bicycle.
One does have to be careful about such fantasizing, of course, because consenting in your mind to stealing the bicycle is sinful, even if you don’t come up with a specific plan let alone carry it out. So you want to avoid the near occasion of sin, and too much fantasizing can become a near occasion of sin.
reminds me of “Kool hand Luke” “you got yo mind right boy?’
@ Opus
“Women who lack empathy for men and are only interested in their own physical satisfaction.”
They’re narcissists. They can read men (and this applies to narcissistic men reading women) very well. They know what to say and can be very charming. The most popular sites that deal with narcissistic women manipulating men are run by women – think Dr.Helen and Shrink4men. I find that significant.
Sooner or later all of us run into these kind of people.
Opus,
The ethos you describe between you and your friend is the same ethos of 95% of the people with any power in this (American) society, and has been the ethos of ruling classes throughout the ages. We had something better here for a good long run. We’ve lost it,
The commenters on this blog are part of a small dissident subculture from a wide variety of backgrounds trying to determine if it is recoverable, and how that might happen.
Rollo’s partial understanding of Matthew 5:28 torn from context and doctrinal insight produces just the sort of pseudowisdom one would expect from such a process.
We are all sinners, born into concupiscence, and it is nigh impossible not to indulge our own destruction. But this discounts the factor of God’s grace, that equally impossible gift of mercy he bestows on us worms. There’s the rub, bub.
For once we unite our will to that gift, we might become friends of God rather than mere servants. Jesus Christ restored the fortunes of Adam, who once walked with God in his garden “in the cool of the evening breeze.” Christ told his apostles on the eve of his Passion,
The scrupulosity implied by Rollo’s interpretation is not just contrary to man’s nature and therefore God’s purpose (“What father among you, if his son asks for a fish, will instead of a fish give him a serpent; or if he asks for an egg, will give him a scorpion?”); it is a demonic counsel of despair. It is the devil’s advice that prompted Eve to crack the foundations of creation. Yes, we “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,” but he did not perversely make us machines unable to avoid damnation. He made us to share in his life “and abundantly.” Rollo not only doubts God’s mercy, he pronounces it impossible. This is nothing but the enemy’s whisper.
Divided from communion and from our Creator, indeed, we are the devil’s plaything. “Sin” means “to scatter,” and “re-ligiere” or “religion” means to bind again. Absent God’s grace we have no chance. But we have power in and through Christ. Those who underestimate or reject that power are consigned to despair by definition. Rollo claims that the power of sin only highlights the glory of a life in Christ all the more, but in the next breath he lays the foundation to reject that life as unapproachable by fallen men. This sounds like an early heresy, perhaps Semipelagianism.
Has he not heard the Good News? “Be not afraid; for behold, I bring you good news of a great joy which will come to all the people; for to you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the LORD.” Alleluia, alleluia!
If even the zenith of human artistic excellence, but an infinitesimal fraction of the choirs of angels, cannot soften one’s heart to hear the wonder of the Good News, one is disposed aesthetically against the significance of its proclamation. Behold, he makes the entire world new, for us, blessed to live Anno Domini. O Felix Culpa! What happy sin! which has gained for us so great a Redeemer! So that we might “go, and sin no more.”
Matt
Rollo said:
It’s at this point that Christians like to split semantic hairs about what constitutes “lust” in an effort avoid the part Jesus mentions about being condemned for just looking at a woman with lust in your eye / heart.
Rollo, this is a translation problem. The same Greek word, gune, can be translated as wife or woman. The translators decide which word to use. If translated as [i]another’s[/i] wife instead of [i]a[/i] woman then the verse (Matthew 5:28) fits the rest of scripture and makes sense.
Rollo:
“What bothers christians is the proposition that holy matrimony can only be realized through the ‘sin’ of sexual thoughts and the arousal for our mates before marriage. Essentially the most ideal of marriages imaginable are by necessity the result of the thought-crime of premarital sex with our spouses. Original sin anyone?”
Let’s say you are right. I think you mostly are (though I’m guessing that in plenty of arranged marriages throughout history there were some naive women who hadn’t gone there!) The answer is that, when you become aware of this sin and fear God’s judgment, you simply confess this and are absolved by Christ’s blood. You run from the sin to Christ’s pardon and power.
This is the Christian life. All of our designs, desires, thoughts, words and deeds are tainted by the fatal infection of original sin. We aren’t completely free and healed until the Second Coming.
Yes, this is a hard message. Because of the “curved in nature” of all human desire, the Pet Shop Boys were right: everything we want is a sin. And God hates all of this sin – even as for those who in terror flee to Him in trust, He sees them through His Christ-glasses. 70 x 7, remember? He is the Friend of sinners and this we never stop being this side of the grave.
So why am I here at this site? This gets back to some of the stuff Brendan originally said.
Game principles can correspond to God’s Law. Insofar as they do, they do not empower us to live – which only the Holy Spirit can do – but only inform us as to what we should be and do.
The Christian uses game principles, to, figuratively speaking, to “tie up his wife”, i.e. disciplining her out of love. The pick-up artist uses game principles, to, figuratively speaking, to “tie up a woman” that they may be drawn, quartered, and consumed afterwards. It’s all for the sake of the belly.
This seems extreme, but in sum, it is nothing but. The most “successful” pick-up artists are not only the most socially powerful and best-looking, but are those who are among the best of observing reality – that they may bend it to their advantage. These men also know that while a woman, may, years later, cherish her “5 minutes of alpha”, they also are ruined and sullied by this experience. They are, really, childish fools. For no matter what they do, they will certainly be less of a wife and mother because of it – their lives have been degraded and they have been pulled apart. Their future husbands will have to live with their sins and its effects. No matter – being unworthy as they are, these women deserve their fate. Their future beta husbands – chumps – do as well. Masculine strength and charisma is god.
So yes, Roissy, for one, is teaching like a demon. His brilliant writing sometimes make him seem as an angel of light, but Satan is charismatic as well.
Of course, the discarded woman who still chases after the one who conquered her is a fool. That said, this does not mean that men, cannot cooperate with charismatic pick-up artists in order to attain practical goals. But what might those goals be? And even if good goals can be found, those who cooperate with them must not cease to call their sin “sin” – even more reasonable men such as Athol Kay, who advises men, as an absolutely final option, divorce their wives if they do not, for example, lose enough weight or meet the man’s expectations for regular sexual activity.
This said, of course she should submit to her husband. But we, like God, are to have forebearance. 70 x 7. Chumps are only those who give up the fight and lose faith that God will help them – whether in this life, or the next.
So, the grace of God is even for men like Roissy – or perhaps you… But how?
As Martin Luther says, “Christ comes to us, or we are brought to him” . Therefore, even the one who is His adversary and enemy – i.e. the one whose experience tells him that deep down he is not a God-lover but rather a God-hater – may yet cling and cleave to God in frantic and desperate trust. First one trusts and is filled with God’s love – and only then does one loves in return (of course, also by His grace alone). This “pigpen” repentance – again born not of love, but rather real fear – is nonetheless real repentance. For he is no longer the kind of apathetic, lazy, and wicked man who, feigning the fear of God in his heart (“there is no fear of God before their eyes” ) seeks to outwit and outmaneuver the one he calls the “hard man” (Luke 19) – thinking Him vulnerable to his own powers of manipulation – but rather recognizes the strength of the Strong Man. He is the person who now gives in to the Hound of Heaven after He has been violently hurled down and been told that he is indeed a sinner, and that in doing this or that he has certainly sinned… but also that He has a Savior from sin, death, and the devil who had held him fast. All feigned repentance, ever-aware of God’s claim on one’s life, yet confidently seeking to betray Him and His assessment at the first opportunity, dissipates as the God-hater no longer fights, but rather fully recognizes and confesses the truth in the innermost part of his shattered self. And this is literally a damned good thing – for Jesus Christ is only the friend of sinners – those who know themselves to be righteous need not apply.
So yeah, I have no problem calling the pre-marriage desire for my future wife sin. Nor do I have an issue thinking that I still sin sometimes within marriage in some of my selfish “lovemaking”. What of it? When confronted with this reality, I call sin “sin”, grace, “grace”, and to go on to better know the God who loves even sinners like me.
I’m a confessional Lutheran by the way. Those who are like me and take their faith seriously will pretty much tell you the same thing about sin, grace, and the ongoing struggle. Christ is indeed for the failing Christian – for the whole of life. We need His blood and righteousness not just at the beginning, but the whole way through.
Beautiful post Brendan.
Anonymous_Guy, come out from your anonymity. Your observations are excellent.
Don’t flatter his pretensions. Evil is banal. Roissy, and all other writers and thinkers of talent, draw their strength from the truth, and the truth is of God. I find his doth-protest-too-much denials of God amusing in their desperation and exaggerated language, not “demon[ic]” in the least. He is like the kids who walked around my high school with upside-down crucifixes, thinking themselves rebellious, when in fact their dependency on Christian iconography was inadvertently advertising the source of true power.
His “brilliant” writing is, in a sense, literally “brilliant”: as in, it is a product of The Light of the world. In my college years, I too was preoccupied by the cleverness of Pilate’s Quid est veritas? question more than I was by Christ’s apparently non-responsive answer — which was no verbal reply but rather a silent presence, a man himself testifying by himself to “the Way, the Truth, and the Life” in himself. The pseudo-profundity of Pilate gives way to the real depths of Christ as we mature past kindergarten catechism, the arrested-development syndrome whereby we all learned to treat Christ as an ultimate straw man against which we might confirm unexamined prejudices, rather than as the lens through which we “come to know the truth,” and the Truth through which we are “set free” (John 8:32).
Roissy’s talent is caught up in this jetty, a typically postmodern condition, and so he will never travel far from the shore of his narrow expertise. Not until he lets go and lets God. But like most PUA nihilists he has sophisticated, reflexive defenses against even detecting what anchors him in one place, much less finding the intellectual method that would positively liberate him from ideas which keep him under unconscious restraint.
Matt
@Anonymous _Guy
There have been teaching that have crept into the church that have devastated and perversed the writings of the NT.
For some odd reason it “sin” or “known bad behavior” has become acceptable or as “long we are in the world- we have to sin or continue in “known bad behavior or “We aren’t completely free and healed until the Second Coming” – Please Show Chapter & Verse…..
What I see is quite the opposite….
Titus 2:11
11For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation for all people, 12training us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives “in the present age”
Romans 8:12-13
12So then, brothers, we are debtors, not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh. 13For if you live according to the flesh you will die, but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live.
Romans 6:14
14For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace (favor)
Gal 5:16
16But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh.
The rewards are simply are simply the consequences of living the over coming life ( Rev 2 & 3).
Salvation ( freedom from sin) is seen ( here are couple).
1 Peter 4:11Since therefore Christ suffered in the flesh, arm yourselves with the same way of thinking, for “whoever has suffered in the flesh has ceased from sin”
– whoever has suffered in the flesh has ceased from sin” ( this is here and now if one learns from it- its called “consequences”.)
Rev 12:10
“Now the salvation and the power and the kingdom of our God and the authority of his Christ have come, for the accuser of our brothers has been thrown down, who accuses them day and night before our God. And they have conquered him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony, for they loved not their lives even unto death.
Curent evangelical Christian doctrine of “saved by grace”, “rapture”, “removal of sin when one dies or second coming” REMOVES the here and now “guts” of Christian discipleship and has wrecked the nation due the moral light of the church is hypocrisy and turned it into a money grubbing religion despite a church on every corner.
Where is the witness of a changed life ( 2 Cor 3) ?
Feminism started in the church by not following the commandment and teachings of Christ and the apostles.
If any church / called out/ saints/ holy ones who actually did what the 1st century church did – it would be labeled as male chavenistic heretics.
Remember the first church was primarily “JEWISH” and male directed in family and synagoge.
I’ll stop the ranting….
Shalom…
Opus, (and others)
About the omega cock carousel, I’ll explain it for anyone interested (if you’re not interested, don’t read any further). I view it as one way to clean up/minimize the mess created by the alpha cock carousel. Supposedly the latter creates all these rejected men, who sometimes go Sodini and sometimes just become extremely unproductive or suicidal. If someone “takes care of them”, you’d feel less scared going to work or any other public place, and they might even stop being omega (esp. if you keep one instead of carouselling). It’s a different type of carousel, and it todays world I view the alpha c.c. as harmful for men, families and children, and omega c.c. as good.
Of course, slutdom is not as easy as it sounds (didn’t work for me despite willingness, stuck to the first incel man who since then got less beta). Yours points are true, but when you replace alpha with omega, they are somewhat different.
1. Chances are, it’s the guy who’ll fall in love in this case, because no one ever likes him, then suddenly a slut comes along and does it. If the woman in question has many of these, broken hearts can happen, In worst case for her, she might get a stalker.
2. Omegas are often virgins or men with a very low number, so risk of STDs is minimal. In any case you can ask them to get tested, before turning FWB.
3. There is always this risk of being disrespected, but I’d say with omegas/lesser betas it’s less, if you pick the really needy ones (and avoid those who think Megan Fox is ugly because she has pointy elbows). These are the guys Roissy’s Beta of the Month posts are made about. They seem to tolerate a surprising amount of slutdom and shitty behavior too (although you should never do the latter)
5. True, there is always a chance, but with the best contraceptives it would take 100-1000 years on average to get pregnant, if you don’t forget to take them and don’t use meds incapacitating their effect.
6. True also, but you know omegas and betas. They marry porn stars and strippers.
This is something I might do if I end up old and alone (not likely, but who knows). Most women want sampling first, then monogamy for life. I will do it the opposite if it comes to that. In youth, there are lots of monogamy options, while in old age, there are tons of young guys who’re horny enough to fuck an old cougar, but won’t have a LTR with her, while options for LTR are hard to find, as men die earlier.
I think it might even work for some regular sluts, too desesitized by ONS with alphas to feel much and broken beyond repair. I wonder if it’s like having a porn addiction – at a certain point you need stronger and stronger stimuli. But this is where sexually repulsive losery betas/omegas come in. If sex with them feels humiliating and like taking a beating, you might like it.
Matt,
Thanks. I am here: http://infanttheology.wordpress.com/
You seem to know the PUA psychology pretty well. I appreciate your insightful words. Some are broken with gentle words, but for others the lesson includes being “violently hurled down”.
Michael Singer,
No need to rant. Yes, there really is a new creation in any who are Christ’s. We do grow in grace and make progress in the Christian life. First, like Adam, we are given the innocence of a child. Then, as was intended for Adam, we shall have it as a man. That said, we remain sinners till Kingdom Come – some of us more so than others, but all of us always needing the blood and righteousness of Christ. If we say we have no sin we deceive ourselves….
I’d say more, but that is just rehashing the Reformation. You can find all kinds of posts on that at my site.
Anonymous_Guy,
I love this:
“So yeah, I have no problem calling the pre-marriage desire for my future wife sin. Nor do I have an issue thinking that I still sin sometimes within marriage in some of my selfish “lovemaking”. What of it? When confronted with this reality, I call sin “sin”, grace, “grace”, and to go on to better know the God who loves even sinners like me.”
Technically we ALL sin, every day, around the clock; God loves us anyway,and he has the capacity to forgive sins we can’t even imagine. We can’t expect his forgiveness and we can’t “earn” it, we can only ask for it. While it is impossible to “Go and sin no more,” my response is to do as little harm and as much good as I can, *out of gratitude for the grace I can never earn.* In essence my goal is to give more than I take; it’s a paltry tribute compared to divine grace, but it’s all I have.
Suz,
That’s right. We are forgiven around the clock. The danger comes in when we no longer declare (i.e. “confess”) something to be sin that God calls sin. In any case, its all free as you say.
God forgives and begins to transform sluts and cowards. He’ll take them all.
But first comes fear.
Emma,
Interesting points about the “omega cock carousel.” There used to be one actually. It was ridden by prostitutes and low-status women, who would starve if they didn’t offer themselves to low status men. Feminism took away the need for low status women to depend on low status men. Of course instinctively women still need men emotionally and sexually, but now low status women can afford to ignore low status men, and think they’re entitled to higher status men. Creating a modern version of an omega cock carousel, would merely accommodate and reinforce the feminist ideals which broke down the original one in the first place. If we were to eliminate the entitlements that allow low status women to ignore low status men, the problem would mostly solve itself. It would also reduce the number of men whose status is currently dropping like a rock, due to the cost of those entitlements.
Michael,
“For some odd reason it “sin” or “known bad behavior” has become acceptable or as “long we are in the world- we have to sin or continue in “known bad behavior or “We aren’t completely free and healed until the Second Coming””
This is known as antinomianism. Literally lawlessness.
“Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil. For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled. Whosoever therefore shall break one of these least commandments, and shall teach men so, he shall be called the least in the kingdom of heaven: but whosoever shall do and teach them, the same shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven.
For I say unto you, That except your righteousness shall exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, ye shall in no case enter into the kingdom of heaven.”
Matthew 5:17-20
It all starts with the idea that the Old Testament God is mean and judgmental but the New Testament God we know in Christ is nice and accepting. The love is unconditional, but the relationship isn’t going anywhere if you’re not willing to invest yourself in it.
Suz wrote:
It is the furthest thing from “impossible” with God’s grace. Sin requires us to unite our will with evil. It is never not a choice. We by definition cannot be forced to sin.
“I know how to be abased, and I know how to abound; in any and all circumstances I have learned the secret of facing plenty and hunger, abundance and want. I can do all things in him who strengthens me.” (Philippians 4:12-13)
Matt
“We by definition cannot be forced to sin.”
Of course we can’t. We also can’t prevent ourselves from ever sinning again. Or have you met someone who who has become sinless?
Wow….This is rather enlightening.
Christ came to change “what we are” (deliverance from sin) not “where we are”.
Fellowship w/God and paradise was lost in a perfect setting and God present.
Why would God say ” Go and sin no more” unless He meant it ?
According to your premise. – that would be asking a small child to do calculus which is impossible.
When He said ” Go and sin no more” means DONT go out and do what you know is wrong.
When you find yourself doing something wrong – repent, ask for forgiveness, make restitution, and don’t do it again.
Btw, there are plenty examples of God calling people perfect or righteous ( Abraham, Job, and Johns parents to name a few).
If one is going to quote 1 John – keep it in context:
If we say we have fellowship with him while we walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth.
7But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin.
8If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.
9If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
10If we say we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us.
Notice the following:
“forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” – thats right – forgive and cleanse. Remember when John say Christ – “behold the lamb of God that “takes away” the sin of the world (note “takes away”).
I suggest reading exactly what the new covenant is. It is more than forgiveness ( the old did that), it forgives, removes, the guilt, and the compulsion. That is life in the Spirit or “overcoming”.
NOWHERE IN THE SCRIPTURE – does it say while we are in the world we are forced to sin.
If so, please name chapter & verse.
Deliverance from sin is “salvation” and is very much a life long process and is much easier than you think with prayer and the help of the Holy Spirit.
The reason I bring this up in this thread – feral and hypergamy or unsurping a husbands authority is antinomianism and if A woman professes to be a “Christian” she might want to read and obey the scriptures – mental ascent counts for nothing – Its all about ones behavior in light of what they know.
In addition, Gods love / salvation is NOT unconditional – if so name chapter & verse please.
Allow me to suggest Gods love / salvation it is VERY conditional and reciprocal – consider what happened to the Jewish people when they disobeyed God and the recent holocaust.
Gods love is very great toward those who obey HIm and His wrath is equally as fearful when disobeyed.
If interested, very simple search of the word “if” and “therefore”.
If one loves Jesus, they will obey His commandments and not make excuses. If they dont obey His commandments – then one will not inherit the Kingdom of God despite profession, baptism, or theology.
There is NOT A SINGLE VERSE that “Grace” trumps, minimize, detract, alter, lessen, or does away with the stern commandments of Christ and the apostles or the law of sowing / reaping.
If so, please provide.
Shalom,
Mike
Suz,
It’s what I think is “doing the best out of a bad situation”. Of course it’s better to get rid of feminist laws, like affirmative action, payments to single moms, criminalization of buying of sex, and similar things. Then some women wouldn’t be paid for nothing and go to those lower status men. In the meanwhile, OCC can be of use for reasons I already stated.
Mike:
“If one loves Jesus, they will obey His commandments and not make excuses.”
He will certainly try. But he will stumble over his ignorance, or his temptation, or his anger, and he will sin again. And if he loves Jesus, he will again confess and repent and ask forgiveness, and rededicate himself to sinning no more. And this cycle will continue throughout his life, as he grows ever closer to Jesus. Not one of us is finished sinning as long as we are breathing.
Emma, it would essentially be prostitution; women will NOT sleep with or marry low status men, without rewards. (And if the SHTF, staying alive and being kept safe, will be adequate reward.)
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Luther was not an antinomian. Nor are confessional Lutherans. Nor am I.
What Suz said. I uphold the law, even as I am no longer under its curse.
That said, I can understand why you would think it. As have I:
http://infanttheology.wordpress.com/2011/01/10/we-are-all-antinomians-now-except-the-babies-part-v-of-v/
@ Suz – LOL…. “Not one of us is finished sinning as long as we are breathing.”
Its always a good idea to have “chapter & verse” ?????????
Here are a couple that are in direct contradiction to your statement.
Rom 8:13 For if you live according to the flesh you will die, but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live.
Gal 5:16But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh.
Btw, if your right hand causes you to sin – cut it off. Better to enter into “life” maimed.
But according to “grace” – Jesus really didnt mean what He said.
Revelation of John 19:8
8it was granted her to clothe herself with fine linen, bright and pure”— for the fine linen is the righteous deeds of the saints. ( Note “granted” and “granted her to clothe herself”)
Rev 3
4Yet you have still a few names in Sardis, people who have not soiled their garments, and they will walk with me in white,” for they are worthy.”
5The one who conquers will be clothed thus in white garments, and I will never blot his name out of the book of life ( Note- “for they are worthy”)
And here is great one !!!
2 Tim
7I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith.
8Henceforth there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, will award to me on that Day, and not only to me but also to all who have loved his appearing. ( Note – I have finished the race)
Question of the day…. Did Paul teach a “dejure” righteousness or “defacto” righteousness ?
(Here is a little hint – 20:35-36, Rev 20:3-4 take a hard look at this one)
Micheal,
Scripture or no scripture, are you seriously implying that humans can become “perfect,” as in: Never sin again? I’m talking about the real world here, a place that would be much better off if more people would see it realistically, and include the Bible IN IT. It seems to me that the only way a Christian can come close to never sinning again, is to never “get his hands dirty” by ministering to us lesser beings. The ideals in the verses you quote are well suited to a monastery on a mountaintop.
Real-world Christianity is not “‘dejure’ righteousness or ‘defacto’ righteousness,” it is striving to become MORE righteous every day, knowing that you will trip over obstacles, and preparing yourself to face those obstacles. I’m not impressed by preachers with clean hands, because all they do is preach and hide behind grace.
@Suz. Go back to your church and demand a refund. Stay in the scriptures.
Any idea why Jews and Mormons laugh at evangelical Christians ? They dont know scriptures regarding holiness nor righteousness.
What does the scripture say ???
He told Abraham to walk before Him and be perfect (Gen 17:1). Job was perfect (Job 1:1), John the Baptist parents were righteous and blameless ( Luke 1:6). Christ told us to be perfect as our Father in heaven is perfect (Matt 5:48).
With that being said – maybe… just maybe your idea vs what Gods is after is incorrect.
Real disciple is a transition of dejure righteousness to defacto righteousness.
If there is defacto no sin in the Kingdom of God ( Gal 5:19-20) then when and how does the removal of sin occur ???? The bride is without spot or wrinkle (Eph 5:27).
Death accomplishes nothing (show chapter & verse if you can) and is a enemy (1 cor 15:26)
God is after defacto righteous behavior and salvation is freedom from sin (Righteousness leads to eternal life).
Go back and read 1 Peter 4 ( ….he who suffers in the flesh, ceases from sin) there are plenty of other verses in the OT & NT that support this.
The reason I bring this up – the church has a “sin rationalization hamster” spawned the “feminized rationalization hamster”
God actually adds feeds this this…
2 Thess 2 ..and with all wicked deception for those who are perishing, because they refused to love the truth and so be saved. “Therefore God sends them a strong delusion”, so that they may believe what is false,in order that all may be condemned who did not believe the truth but had pleasure in unrighteousness.
God holds out His hand and satisfies every living thing.
Careful what you ask for, you just might get it.
Shalom
Location is dependent upon condition.
Btw, salvation/deliverance from sin is process ( it is not deliverance from a location to a location but a moral, spiritual, and eventually physical transformation).
Note how and when salvation comes and by whom and whom is thrown down (Rev 12)
10 “Now the salvation” and the power and the kingdom of our God and the authority of his Christ have come, for the “accuser of our brothers has been thrown down”, who accuses them day and night before our God.
11″And they” have conquered him by the “blood of the Lamb” and by the “word of their testimony”, for they “loved not their lives even unto death”.
@Suz. “So I’m talking about the real world here, a place that would be much better off if more people would see it realistically, and include the Bible IN IT. It seems to me that the only way a Christian can come close to never sinning again, is to never “get his hands dirty” by ministering to us lesser beings. The ideals in the verses you quote are well suited to a monastery on a mountaintop”
No offense but you do not know the conditions of which the scriptures were written nor the new covenant of God writing the Torah on our hearts and minds (Heb 8).The result is a transformation (2 Cor 3)
Christ was crucified. Take a look at Pauls life – he was a jailbird and took on everybody ( he was right and EVERBODY else was wrong).
The NT church was under Roman persecution and THRIVED. What destroyed it was the acceptance into Roman culture and resulted in to paganism and much what we have today.
The OT prophets and the disciples were killed with the exception of John (exiled).
Take a look at Heb 11and specifically vs. 35 “but others were tortured, not having accepted deliverance, so that they might experience a “superior resurrection”.
A slut can be reformed ( consider the Apostle Paul who was the “chiefest of sinners” ) but is takes a all-out dedication /repentance- sloppy seconds doesn’t cut it with Jesus.
God is only going to take you as seriously as you take Him – the law of reaping and sowing never changes.
Micheal, are you under the impression I’m offering excuses for my failures, past and future?
I’m not. I’m also not deluded enough to think I’m done failing, no matter how hard I try to be “perfect.”
Can you name some “perfect” people from the past 2000 years? No? Not even one? Didn’t think so. You can continue to dwell on the inspirational concept of human sinlessness, or you can get your hands dirty by trying to do something useful about sin.
Kindly stop widening the gulf between scripture and reality. The Bible is not “other;” it is not separate from the Real World. It is not to be worshiped like an idol and lorded above the weak, the ignorant, and the struggling, it is to be given to them so that they can live by it to the best of the abilities God gave them. Their “best” might not be good enough for you, but through Christ, God forgives them anyway.
“If we say we have no sin, the truth is not in us.” (1 John 1:8)
What is a just man and how does he act ?
“For a just man shall fall seven times and shall rise again: but the wicked shall fall down into evil.” (Proverbs 20:16)
@ Suz “Can you name some “perfect” people from the past 2000 years?”
Yes I can – 10 or so come to mind immediately that are in the NT scriptures.
If the OT scripture CLEARLY shows there were “perfect men’ or righteous men pre Torah ( Job, Enoch, and Abraham), and post Torah (Moses, Elijah and John the Baptists parents to name a few). Then there are in the new vastly superior New Covenant (actual forgiveness though blood of Christ vs. animals, removal of guilt, Gift of Holy Spirit).
I have a couple of rules when dealing with American Christians:
– I dont argue theology
– I dont throw pearls before swine
– I dont mash people with scriptures when they havent provided a single scripture in OT/NT much like you have done and provide “church tradition” much like you have done (ie “but through Christ, God forgives them anyway”. Again – please show chapter and verse. Otherwise your argument is ex-facie and unscriptural as it moves to a ad-hominems.
Here are three simple questions that IMHO have started the “original rationalization hamster”
If you can – come up with scriptures for the following questions.
1. What does Christian salvation mean ?
2. When / how does actual moral deliverance occur (dont confuse this with the 1 Cor 15 – that is the external change)
3. Are there any scriptures that say ” grace” replaces, trumps, minimize, detract, alter, lessen, or does away with the stern commandments of Christ and the apostles or the universal law of sowing / reaping ?
Btw, God hasnt changed He still ask the same – do righteously, be merciful, and walk humbly with God.
To rely on dejure righteous vs. de-facto is “religion” that has stoned and killed the prophets as well as murdered the Christ.
@ Graham. Levitical law as well as the New covenant allows for unknown trespasses. Once a trespass has be discovered – they are to offer a sacrifice and not do it again. The new covenant is exactly the same but has a additional features and benefits such has removal of guilt, enablement to overcome through the Holy Spirit, intercession of Christ, and the actual removal.
Forgiveness and removal is only accomplished through de-facto “repentance” & water baptism ( Acts 2:37 & Acts 3:19)
In addition, one is judged (either good or bad) on what they know ( Rom 2).
Here ya go ( Btw, this concept corresponds with the writings of 1 John, James, Jude, James, Peter, and all of Pauls).
Here are a couple of verses out of Hebrews who are were the “most advanced” disciples of Christ to date outside of the apostles on the “original rationalization hamster” of bad behavior which has negative consequences in this life and the one to come.
Heb 10:26-27
For “if we go on sinning deliberately” after receiving the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins,but a fearful expectation of judgment, and a fury of fire that will consume the adversaries. (once we become aware of sin – we are to knock it off)
Hebrews 6:4-8
4For it is impossible to restore again to repentance those who have once been enlightened, who have tasted the heavenly gift, and have shared in the Holy Spirit, and have tasted the goodness of the word of God and the powers of the age to come, if they then fall away, since they are crucifying once again the Son of God to their own harm and holding him up to contempt.
7For land that has drunk the rain that often falls on it, and produces a crop useful to those for whose sake it is cultivated, receives a blessing from God.
8But if it bears thorns and thistles, it is worthless and near to being cursed, and its end is to be burned. ( there is a point of no return and one reaps exactly what they sow. Btw, does this sound like the parable of the sower ?)
So much for once saved – always saved / eternal security.
Oh please, Michael.
I don’t debate legalistic minutiae, and your opinion of my credibility is of no consequence to me. Your preoccupation with proofs is reminiscent of the pharisees; didn’t they believe that their slavish devotion to “the laws” made them righteous? I make a point of NOT quoting chapter and verse for precisely that reason. Call it the Crayola version, but last time I checked, salvation was available to us simple folk. Feel free to dig up a few verses to contradict me, but I won’t be reading them. You just go ahead and continue to look down your nose at Christians who don’t meet your meticulous and convoluted standards. You have plenty of company. Enjoy your virtual monastery; I prefer hands-on “ministry” which is one of the reasons I avoid church.
You know one of the reasons I love Dalrock’s blog? Because it shows Christian principles to be accessible and applicable in the lives of the unwashed masses. If I’m not mistaken, Christ himself did something along those lines.
Legalistic… Interesting choice of words.
Does that mean cerimonial religion, fiscal donations, or a decent behavior ?
Since I am Jewish, I would like to hear your take on this being that you are “prefer hands on ministry”.
Most American Christians think that “grace” is replacement for “decent behavior” or you admitted yourself. In addition, most Christians dont know the scriptures let alone read it or
I am not questioning your credibility.
I questioned where in the scriptures do at least have prima facie for what was stated and non was produced. What was produced was ad hominem ( that means no reply can be given and attack the other person- thats exactly what happened to Christ, prophets, and apostles).
This is exactly what happens when people dont have scripture and they justify their behaviors.
If you havent figured it out – the burden of proof is on what you wrote.
Btw, Christ principles was to speak in parables so people would not understand and tell people to eat His flesh and drink His blood so they would INTENTIONALLY leave Him. Btw, He also came to bring a sword and not peace.
The teachings of Christ and the apostles are a “sellers market” and not a “buyers” – they mean exactly what they say and are very black and white.
To second guess them or to think Jesus didnt mean what He said is foolish and delusional.
@Michael Singer: I suggest Luke 18:19 for your reading pleasure.
“Most American Christians think that “grace” is replacement for “decent behavior” or you admitted yourself.”
No, I did not. Please don’t put words in my mouth.
I’m not going to argue semantics with you. I’m not going to pull out my handy-dandy Bible reference to look up each verse I can find to “prove” the most basic tenets of Christianity. I’m also not going to ruminate pointlessly on the concept of human sinlessness or perfection, because I have yet to meet a person to whom it might apply, and I frankly don’t expect to. This is not a doctoral dissertation, it’s a couple of statements of the obvious.
Michael Singer,
“So much for once saved – always saved / eternal security.”
A different frame might help. Just to note, Confessional Lutherans don’t believe in eternal security as Calvinists do. A person who is really a Christian can lose their faith through faith-destroying and doubt-inducing sin.
That will be my last comment here. I know this thread was not really about these topics.
@alpha measure luke 18:20 and heb 11:6 and acts 10:4 and acts 10:35 ?
1 Cor 15:34 Awake up righteously, and sin not; for some have no knowledge of God: I speak this to move you to shame
Simple question of how does one master or overcome sin ????
The commandements of Christ are stern – if your right hand cause you to sin – cut it off. Not make excuses, not continue in it…. remember “go and sin no more less a worse thing come upon you” ?
Gen 4:6 But if you refuse to do what is right, then watch out! Sin is crouching at the door, eager to control you. But you must subdue it and be its master.”
Gal 5:16 6 But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh.
Rom 8:13 For if you live according to the flesh you will die, but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live.
God doesnt make excuses for continuing in “known sin” – the blood is to forgive and cleanse and the Holy Spirit is given to lead a actual righteous life.
To excuse for known sin and for to not to overcome sin through the New Covenant is to ALLOW hypergamy, feral, and frivolous divorce.
This is not discipleship nor Christianity.
Suz asked:
My grandmother? I guess? And a thousand other people I have met but into whose soul I have never probed?
The entire communion of canonized saints. “In my Father’s house are many rooms; if it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you?”
But of course, these may be regarded as guesses (except insofar as one acknowledges the church’s teaching authority in the Holy Spirit, which I do in the fullest). I personally cannot know the status of anyone’s soul, ever. Way, way above my pay grade.
And yes, Suz, you are correct by disposition. We must never judge ourselves sinless! St. Paul had it right:
But you are not speaking personally, you are speaking theoretically and categorically. You are effectively saying that sin itself is greater than God’s mercy, that our Lord Jesus Christ did not triumph over all enemies. Perfection is certainly within our grasp — when, and only when, we consciously unite ourselves to the One Who Saves.
Yours is the vice of scrupulosity, or a heresy of more-than-Total-Depravity. If we indeed thought it impossible to become sinless, we would never unite ourselves to the grace that promises though our “sins be as scarlet, shall be as white as snow; though they are red like crimson, they shall become like wool.” That carries the certainty of a syllogism: we by definition cannot consciously pursue that which we have consciously determined impossible. Those who step off a cliff believe it possible for them to fly; those who do not believe it possible cannot step off the cliff with an expectation of soaring. If we cannot imagine the possibility of the immaculate, we will never strive for sinlessness. What would be the point?
I know it is not your intent, but you are effectively denying the victory of Christ by his Cross and Resurrection. He was the firstfruits. We are to follow in perfection.
The golden mean lies between presumption and scrupulosity. Or, I acknowledge myself to be chief among sinners, just as I acknowledge myself perfectible through my acceptance of God’s grace.
So we who strive for perfection do not imagine ourselves already perfect or that we are necessarily “done failing.” But to say it is impossible for anyone to be done failing? That sours the virtue of humility into obsessive-compulsion and ultimately, the sin of despair.
Matt
@ Matt “I AM THE FOREMOST OF SINNERS. ”
Context…context…context..
1 Tim 1:13 “Even though I was once a blasphemer and a persecutor and a violent man, I was shown mercy because I acted in ignorance and unbelief.”
Did Paul continue as blasphemer, persecutor, or a violent man ?
It’s said a great preacher studies well two books – the scripture and the lives of his congregation. A key element of the power of that scripture (and the secret to its remarkable staying power) is its ability to speak to different generations in different ways as those lives change. Struggling under the heel of oppression? The sovereignty of God is there to buck you up. Things going so well that one’s brother is forgotten? Man’s capacity, and thus responsibility, is not shortchanged either.
The Holy Spirit speaks through Amos as well as Paul.
Proof-texting apart from that context can shed more heat than light, and it seems to me that suz has a better feel for what the lives of those around us are listening for than either Michael or King A. What I see is a lot of cheap grace within the church, with a lot of people afraid to come to terms with our own sin in a misguided quest to lead perfect lives, or at least lives that appear perfect, especially to ourselves. Those outside, all too familiar with their own imperfection, shy away from fellowship with those who either appear perfect or unfamiliar with their own imperfection.
The doctrine of Sanctification advocated by Michael and King doesn’t seem the best fit for such times, where the perfect is so often the enemy of the good.
@ Desiderius. I be a little more clear since begging the question was obviously missed.
God requires perfect obedience.
That is what is meant to be “perfect”. It is called “perfect for the day”.
The scripture calls for “overcoming” – The rewards are to the “overcomers” – Christ will only dwell in those that are obedient. That is the new covenant – “Christ in you” and the writings of Paul were as he was being transformed till Christ was being formed in him as he was being crucified to the world.
This was done during the reign of the morally corrupt Roman Empire and not in a cave /monastery as Sue suggested.
To think otherwise is to make a excuse for sin and one will not overcome as they will be overcome by sin and therefore reap destruction. To think otherwise is to dismiss the the John, Christ, and the commandments of the apostles.
You are simply confusing attacking a argument vs. attacking a person ( ad hominem ) that is exactly what was done to the the prophets, Christ, and the apostles.
The first Christian church was composed of Jews who knew that God requires actual righteous. The idea of de-facto righteousness and transformation has been excused by current evangelical doctrine in favor of “grace”. This is anti-scriptural and “Anti-Christ”.
The Law of the Spirit of Life is far more strict than the OT Torah. It requires internal / external righteousness.
One is under the law of sin & death or the Law of the Spirit of Life.
Christians have no idea of the severity/ wrath of God – no idea. Consider the Jewish holocaust- this happened to Gods chosen people. God means exactly what He says -one reaps exactly what they so – nothing changes that.
Btw, God hasnt changed a bit – do righteously, be merciful, and walk humbly with God.
To rely on dejure righteous vs. de-facto is “religion” that has stoned and killed the prophets as well as murdered the Christ.
A question that was posted early and was passed over by means of willful ignorance:
– Are there any scriptures that say ” grace” replaces, trumps, minimize, detract, alter, lessens, or does away with the stern commandments of Christ and the apostles or the universal law of sowing / reaping ?
Michael:
” Are there any scriptures that say ” grace” replaces, trumps, minimize, detract, alter, lessens, or does away with the stern commandments of Christ and the apostles or the universal law of sowing / reaping ?”
None that I’m aware of. Who in this discussion said otherwise? Your questions is a straw man.
Desiderious reached the root of what I’m trying to say, better that I yet have:
” what the lives of those around us are listening for.”
Your Biblical esoterica enriches your faith, and you’re in good company, but it alienates good, moral Christians who want to serve God in a Christian community. Frankly, it’s cliquish. You are pondering angels dancing on the head of a pin, while ordinary Christians are struggling to get through the day. They aren’t striving for perfection, they’re looking for practical guidance.
A man whose tire blows out on the highway, doesn’t need a glossy catalog of high tech new tires, nor does he need a lecture on the physics of rubber, steel and air pressure. He needs a jack and a spare tire. You are offering a lecture, and the Churchians are merely offering a free ride home. Who is offering him the tools he needs to accomplish his day-to-day tasks? For one, Dalrock is; he’s applying real Christian principles to real-life situations.
This is not about “willful ignorance” on my part. Like most ordinary Christians, I’m not a theologian. It doesn’t matter why, whether it’s constraints on my time or limits on my intellectual capacity. *I* am confident that it doesn’t make me a “lesser” Christian, but most modern Christians are taught to have less confidence in their intelligence – they’re not encouraged to make moral judgments without prior approval from the “official” party. They are told what to think. They’re generally left with two choices: Follow the herd even if it doesn’t make sense, or climb the long, steep steps to the ivory tower of “deep thought” Christianity. From a “boots on the ground” perspective, your clique comes across as intellectual snobs. The Churcianity clique could be seen as the “jocks” – Go Team! (even if we have to cheat to win.)
Is it any wonder so many moral people who believe in God and Christ, walk away from the “practice” of Christianity?
suz,
“Like most ordinary Christians, I’m not a theologian.”
No, you are. The Reformation was fought for this.
God became Man in Christ that we might better know Him.
Know then thyself, presume not God to scan;
The proper study of Mankind is Man.
Plac’d on this isthmus of a middle state,
A being darkly wise, and rudely great:
With too much knowledge for the Sceptic side,
With too much weakness for the Stoic’s pride,
He hangs between; in doubt to act, or rest,
In doubt to deem himself a God, or Beast;
In doubt his Mind or Body to prefer,
Born but to die, and reas’ning but to err;
Alike in ignorance, his reason such,
Whether he thinks too little, or too much:
Chaos of Thought and Passion, all confus’d;
Still by himself abus’d, or disabus’d;
Created half to rise, and half to fall;
Great lord of all things, yet a prey to all;
Sole judge of Truth, in endless Error hurl’d:
The glory, jest, and riddle of the world!
@Is it any wonder so many moral people who believe in God and Christ, walk away from the “practice” of Christianity?
I dont understand your statement- that makes no sense.
People are made defacto moral by following the practices of Christ and having a relationship with Him.
When a minister of the Gospel tells you, you will have a better life if you receive Christ, ask him what he means by a “better life.” Does he include martyrdom?
Is statement too difficult to understand ???
In order to be a Christian, a disciple of Christ, one must forsake everything in this life, take up our cross, and follow Jesus as a dedicated soldier follows his commander in chief.
Is statement too difficult to understand or would you prefer to be deluded ?
People walk away( run ) from God ” Because of the increase of wickedness, the love of most will grow cold,” Matt 24.
I have found their are few cross carrying disciples that DAILY pray, read, meditate in the scriptures, take all decisions to Jesus, practice holiness, memorize scriptures, meet with fervent believers, and overcome sin as it is presented.
Christians forget discipleship is entrenched in Judaism – its a way of life and Jesus is always there – one has to search to find Him.
If what I wrote is at the deep end of the pool – then allow you havent sought out truth.
Btw, being Jewish – I have no use for theologians ( Detrich Bohnhoeffer is a exception).
Here are some scriptural one liners
– Jesus will take you are seriously as you take Him
– There is a vast chasm between inviting a person to Jesus vs inviting them to church. Inviting a person to Jesus is show in one’s behavior
– The more acquainted we become with the objective God, instead of the subjective god of our desires, the better equipped we are to handle pain, disappointment, and trouble.
Btw, actually following the teachings of Christ can a “slut” become a new creation and enter the Kingdom of God.
Shalom
Michael:
“I have found their are few cross carrying disciples that DAILY pray, read, meditate in the scriptures, take all decisions to Jesus, practice holiness, memorize scriptures, meet with fervent believers, and overcome sin as it is presented.”
Precisely, and we don’t apologize for it, at least not to our self-appointed human “betters”. And we don’t believe we’re going to Hell for it. You’re part of a very small club, Michael, and I will not denigrate that club, but most Christians don’t feel welcome there, be they Churchian or independent. The independent types, myself included, don’t feel welcome in the Churchian club either, and we’re left out in the cold. We want to serve God without idolizing Churchianity OR Biblical scholarship. So we have walked away from the Christian “community.” However, many of us still want community without becoming enslaved to institutions. We aren’t “Liberal Christians;” that’s just another ideological club. We are simply moral Christians who don’t want anything man-made to stand between us and God.
We are right beside the “intellectual” club, believing in and serving the same God, and doing a fairly decent job of it; we just don’t believe that their way of serving is the only right way. If you can’t see us, or don’t understand us, perhaps your vision is being obscured by the pretty clouds in which your head seems to reside.
” …then allow you havent sought out truth.”
And there it is.
No sir, I have not sought out “truth” as YOU describe it, and in spite of this, I’m not a lower form of Christian. Nice try with the multiple shaming tactics, but I’m not taking the bait.
Desiderius says:
“God became Man in Christ that we might better know Him.”
I say, “Absolutely.”
“Knowing Him” can be accomplished without analyzing what thousands of people have said about him for the last two thousand years.
God didn’t give everybody access to a religious education. He did give everybody free will, reason and a conscience. Those are pretty good tools to use in His service.
@Suz – “perhaps your vision is being obscured by the pretty clouds in which your head seems to reside.”
Col 3 If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth.
Btw, Thank you for the report card 🙂
If one actually does what Jesus says by seeking His will and Kingdom defacto righteousness first by DAILY pray, read, meditate in the scriptures, take all decisions to Jesus, practice holiness, memorize scriptures, meet with fervent believers, and overcome sin as it is presented ( all scriptural) then one will develop a actual relationship with Jesus and even though one gets a flat tire – it will become a enjoyable and bearable experience because Jesus is present.
Btw, last time I checked – what is mentioned is called “salvation” and is scripturally based.
> … She refers to their weekly sex night as “cookie time”. Could
> there be a more disrespectful term? Yet they both want to to
> do right. Don’t you think a smidgen of Game would sort them
> out in a hurry? (sunshinemary)
You do realize you’re asking a bachelor for marital advice, don’t you? (for crying out loud)
This is a good example of what Game Rot does to people’s brains, seemingly forcing them to open their mouths without thinking what they’re saying. Just like Feminism does all the time. Like Meth, too, I suppose. Just a smidgen more and all will be well…
Suz,
“‘Knowing Him” can be accomplished without analyzing what thousands of people have said about him for the last two thousand years.”
Can’t hurt. Some pretty good folks in that group. Don’t have to be an expert to gain some insight.
“God didn’t give everybody access to a religious education. He did give everybody free will, reason and a conscience. Those are pretty good tools to use in His service.”
I’ve found Christian community to be a pretty good tool too. Lots of different ones out there. Holding myself apart was suboptimal.
“Some pretty good folks in that group”
Here’s one..
Desiderius,
”Holding myself apart was suboptimal.”
I agree completely; that\’s why I came back. Off topic (but not really) I just left Indiana after living there for 18 years. My primary observation about the \”culture\” of that state was, \”What Indiana needs is to get out of Indiana for a while and take a peek at how the rest of the world functions – then come back to Indiana.\” It doesn\’t need to abandon its culture, but everything good about it would blossom and thrive if it would recognize the useful aspects of other ways of thinking. (Incidentally, I think the Hoosier Brain Drain validates this – too many of the smart ones who get out, don\’t bother to return.)
Christianity needs the same approach in order to grow – to reach more of God\’s children. It needs to use ALL of its tools, but it has become an extremely insular, rigid AND POLITICAL community. I decided to return and combat that rigidity from the inside, rather than pitching the whole thing. Neither the pious and condemning, nor the laid-back and forgiving, gets to monopolize Christianity.
Suz,
I came back to Ohio after being away for 20 years.
Same boat.
I think the Babe Drain is worse than the Brain Drain though. The sort of Greater Beta who builds communities is being screened out pretty hard by our big insitituitons. His female equivalent often has the opposite experience. At least that was true ten years ago.
As a whole generation of young people is now being systematically screened out, maybe their experiences will come into closer contact.
suz,
“everything good about it would blossom and thrive if it would recognize the useful aspects of other ways of thinking”
To the extent this is true, it is likely born of a defensiveness that comes from lacking understanding of, and thus confidence in, our own.
I’ve been reading McLynn’s biography of Marcus Aurelius, and it describes how the Empire dominated the Germanic tribes for centuries in ways that didn’t require (expensive) wars. They would identify the future leaders of the tribes, bring them to Rome for an education, which largely consisted of wowing them with the ways of Rome and denigrating the (more egalitarian) ways of the tribes, then send them back to the tribes to sow dissension in the ranks.
It is assumed by older generations that the non-egalitarian* (this, at heart, is what the overthrow of monogamy is about, in addition to population control – this is why it is pushed hardest at the top) is safely “other” (other ways of thinking, as you put it). That is no longer the case.
* – egalitarian in the traditional American sense of all men being created equal, equality before the law, etc…
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/relationships/9525534/Youve-slept-with-how-many-people.html
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The definition completely leaves out the psychological effects that slutting has on a person. Even if they no longer have an ‘instrumental’ view of sex, they are impacted on multiple levels by physically/emotionally bonding and detaching continuously.
Also, with high N count, there are usually also issues around manipulation, power and deception which are generally considered detrimental in the field of Motherhood.
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