MarcusD pointed out a thread on CAF where a 34 year old divorcée and alpha widow is troubled that God hasn’t answered her prayers for a new husband she can fall head over heels in love with:
I never knew if I could “fall in love” with someone because I had never dated anyone prior to my ex husband, and I definitely wasn’t “in love” with him. After our divorce/annulment I did date one other guy (prior to my current boyfriend) who I was head over heels in love with. I would have moved to the moon with this guy. We had our issues, but I still would have been crazy excited to marry him. Granted, it didn’t work out, and he ended up completely breaking my heart… looking back I recognize that he is not who God wanted me to marry. HOWEVER, I find it interesting that I was given that relationship – despite the heartbreak, it gave me a glimpse of what it feels like to be crazy about someone, and it made me recognize that I am ABLE to experience that sort of feeling for a man.
SO. I would say if that relationship had never happened, I probably wouldn’t be as torn up about not being “in love” with my current boyfriend. But I have that as a comparison…and he also has a similar situation where he was head over heels crazy about his ex girlfriend, and so he has THAT as a comparison.
While her story is tightly packed with manosphere clichés, it is important to remember that she is a living, breathing, and hurting person. Our (collective) rejection of biblical marriage has created a sea of human misery, which is as easy to witness on Catholic Answers Forum and ChristianForums.com as it is on Yahoo Answers.
What most caught my attention in the thread however is her moment of clarity:
And yes, I know that I have trust issues with God on this matter – but I think my issues are founded in the fact that I have already failed at marriage once, am getting old – close to the point where I can’t have children, have made lots of mistakes in the past, and have seen my much more devout friends who are even older than I am still not find their spouse either, despite fervent prayer.
Even if you look on the Catholic dating sites – when you narrow the search to guys in your reasonable age range who actually follow the Church’s teachings, there are VERY few. Then find the ones of that group who you are actually attracted to? Hardly any.
So yeah…I feel sometimes like a girl in a war-stricken country where all the eligible men have literally been called away to war and there truly aren’t any left to marry. Dramatic? perhaps…but in the times we live in, our men face a secular battle against satan, and to find one who is devoted to his faith is becoming harder and harder.
Yet even when she can see the grim reality of the MMP for 30 something divorcées, she can only see the sin of men. In her mind, the reason it is so hard for a mid thirties woman to find a good husband and fall in love is something is wrong with men.
…in the times we live in, our men face a secular battle against satan
There are none so blind….
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In the past, before modernism wrecked so much havoc in the Church, women who had messed up their lives as much as this one would have been encouraged to join a convent. Therein they could have found some peace and solitude so that they could re-order their lives and hopefully restore their relationship with God. They would have been protected, isolated even, from the things which harmed them. But nowadays all we do is say a quick prayer before tossing them to the wolves yet again.
I am sorry I just do not buy into what she is saying and not just because women in their mid-thirties should would be better advised to buy a cat. She is a divorcee in her mid thirties and also a Roman Catholic. She wants to marry and have a family. There must be vast numbers of men of that faith either never married or divorced who would want exactly what she wants. Of course if she wants an alpha cad with the looks of Brad Pitt who is also Roman Catholic that may be a bit more challenging for any ordinary matchmaker.
Love the way God is treated as responsible for making her fall for the Alpha even though God does not want her to marry the dude. God is such a bastard the way he messes women around.
Step one for her, or anyone for whom their life narrative isn’t working, is to examine what she wants to be true.
This woman is indeed hurting, but it’s more important to her right now (by far) that she holds on to the narrative she constant retrofits to her life experience so that she does not have to change.
Her assumptions:
– She deeply believes in a pagan god, one to whom she prays and expects a return based on how she has narrated her happiness. Sacrifice a goat, get rain again. Pull a lever, get a cookie. These were premises of pagan religions millennia before Christ. The premise of Christianity isn’t that an awesome method has been found to get what makes you happy *based on how you currently perceive happiness*, it’s that there is a whole new Way to live—the pressure is off.
– She has bought in completely to a system that she believes OWES her what she wants, as she feels she has fulfilled her end of the bargain. “Wait, you mean I can’t have it all?!” she wails. “That’s not what the advertisements said!”
When she gets her cats, it won’t be for calm-hearted companionship, it will be so she can at least control SOMEONE’S life since she cannot control her own (as much as the system she bought into had promised).
Time to steal a quote: “Propaganda doesn’t succeed because it is manipulative, it works because people WANT it, NEED it, it gives their life a direction and meaning and guards against change.”
*
These assumptions are of course painful and damaging to anyone in need of difficult life change. She admits to many mistakes in the past—every woman is surprised when a man will semi-happily sleep with her but not commit to her. Like the average frustrated chump, she conflates sex with commitment (while the AFC conflates commitment with sex).
In the first paragraph alone:
I never knew if I could “fall in love”
to
I am ABLE to experience that sort of feeling for a man.
she refers to herself 18 times. Furthermore, her entire narrative is all about her. When others are mentioned, it is always in reference to how she is, was, or may be effected.
There’s a word for that.
Every source says it’s the man’s fault.
I would be dead after the ‘hit and run’ accident this year if people around me had listened to the most common treatment advice. Sometimes the ‘truth’ is widely published, but it’s not always the best way.
Ah – it must be so wonderful to live in “EternalVictimland” while walking down the street of “DelusionalHamster” City. God had little to do with it. God gave her the husband, that she was supposed to love. But instead of trying to work on the relationship – best done via Red Pill and Game for him and Femininity and Submission for her, she decided to leave her husband and despair about the lack of hordes of men, who she is not attracted to.
And her rebound guy likely was an Alpha or great catch with a sexual market value way above hers. If she would up her search term to men above the 50+ age range, then she might find such an exciting man – depending of course on the fact whether she is not overweight (believing that the “right” would love her with 50 pounds or more just as much).
She will write to Netflix to complain that “The Gerson Miracle” should be in the ‘comedy’ category rather than the ‘documentary’ category.
It seems she faced a Secular Battle with Satan, divorced her husband, and hence…. lost.
Perhaps the reason she cannot find a husband is because she chewed him up and spat him out!
“Everything popular is wrong.”
“She lacks the indefinable charm of weakness.”
Oscar Wilde quotes (Irish Poet, Novelist, Dramatist and Critic, 1854-1900)
I was reading the first answers to her and they seem to try to set her right: if marrying this man let’s you live your life in a way that seems right to you, marry him. Infatuation is not the goal.
I get the impression she hasn’t joined the dots properly:
Dot #1 She divorced her husband.
Dot #2 She got her heart broken.
Dot #3 God won’t do what she wants….
She should get herself a Bible and read, believe, pray and act.
I doubt she will do this, better get a cat or two.
If I posted on CAF, the advice I would give would be the worst advise that CAF has ever seen but would solve all her personal problems about finding a husband. I would say…
…go back to your ex-husband, beg him to forgive you, beg him to take you back, and if he does, start over by doing absolutely everything that he tells you to do.
Of course a post like that would get me banned immediately, but what can I say?
She foresaw no consequences to her divorcing her husband, and now she is suffering the consequences. However, she is in no way to blame for the consequences, according to her.
I may be missing something here….???? The alpha widow post divorce spinster future cat lady wrote:
“Even if you look on the Catholic dating sites – when you narrow the search to guys in your reasonable age range who actually follow the Church’s teachings, there are VERY few. Then find the ones of that group who you are actually attracted to? Hardly any.”
What is this business about “actually follow the Church’s teachings”??????? I am not RC, so I may be missing something…. But doesn’t the RC prohibit her from getting married in the church now? Wouldn’t any future marriage by adulterous? But she wants a man who follows the teachings she is planning on violating with him? How many contradictory ideas can this woman hold in her head at once? And how many angels can dance on the head of a pin?
I was reading the first answers to her and they seem to try to set her right: if marrying this man let’s you live your life in a way that seems right to you, marry him.
Yep! Double down on stupid and everything will be alright, cause it’s all about YOU girl. Follow your heart (or something).
As an aside, allow me to post this to any young man here who may be considering marriage…. If your soon-to-be wife’s grandmother is the crazy old cat lady of her hometown that is a huge red flag. I tell you this from bitter experience. Keep calm, carry on and return fire as necessary.
okra,
She is a woman. She is (by the very nature of her gender) irrational. You can not expect rational behavior of women. God doesn’t even expect that of them which is why He said to Eve “your desire shall be for your husband and he shall rule over you.” That is it. That is the last time God talked to a woman. That is because God understand what everyone here should understand that women aren’t rational nor are they moral agents. God didn’t even talk to the mother of His son, he sent Gabriel to do that!
She doesn’t need a husband when she can try to go this route:
Innocentbystanderboston,
I know she’s not rational… I just wonder if she even knows what her own church teaches. And if not, why not?
The Red Pill angels keep delivering such rich narratives for our movement, it’s almost too good to be true. She sounds like one of those, “Yes, I am a divorcee, who whored around after I dumped my first husband and had a kid, then I, yes, slept with a couple men before joining this “Christian” website…but that doesn’t mean I don’t deserve a stable, wealthy, handsome knight (preferably without kids or the baggage a woman like ME may have brought to his life)”
Poor baby, she and her fellow travelers are getting old, and haven’t locked down the NEXT guy to take care of the NEXT phase of her life, until she is ready to “move on” from that around age 40 or so. NO WONDER this poor child has “trust issues” with the LORD (Allah, swt) Himself. Surely with that kind of approach to a problem–placing it on His Holy One, ANY guy would feel like he could measure up to her standards.
Question: Are single or divorced Catholic men this stupid? And also, are there hordes of Catholic women like her? Must make for weird Church services.
Btw, the Brad Pitt guy she wants can be found at the 40 second mark. Screen Junkies nail it:
“I find it interesting that I was given that relationship”
“Given”
Its not just the narcisstic reference to herself 18 times, it is also that she doesn’t think she has to do anything.
It Will Be Given.
God helps those that help themselves.
Okrahead:
The church gave her an annulment, so she can get remarried in the catholic church. Problem solved by the church itself. Spotless again she is.
Her formula for Life Cake is:
a heaping tablespoon of ME,
a pound and half of ME,
half a cap of ME oil,
stir in some ME flour,
bake and marinate over ME for an hour,
top with smooth and creamy ME frosting.
Why don’t God and males tell me how wonderful mah cake is?
….The question is, since we get solipsism and Uber Hamstering….
….what’s the cure?
IBB – If I posted on CAF, the advice I would give would be the worst advise that CAF has ever seen but would solve all her personal problems about finding a husband. I would say…
…go back to your ex-husband,
Never fear, Under Dog is here!
http://forums.catholic.com/showthread.php?p=12303803&posted=1#post12303803
Ras,
An annulment…. I see. The last 15 years and the kid didn’t really happen. Kind of like that season of Dallas. Bobby is back and all is well. Did they make her 18 again and restore her hymen as well?
okra,
Why not? Because she doesn’t care what the church teaches. The only things she cares about is her own personal comforts, not what God wants or what her church teaches. God understands that about women, why can’t you?
Women like Elspeth and SSM are precious and few. The majority don’t give a d-mn what is written in the Holy Book because life is all about them. God understood this the moment he gave Adam and Eve Free Will and Eve went and f-cked it all up for her entire gender. They will not follow simple instructions if it is the least bit inconvienent. As God stipulated, her desire shall be for her husband (which is why she DESIRES ONE NOW) but she is NOT going to let that man “rule over her” because our society has created too many laws and benefits for women to take advantage of their lack of moral agency. That is where we are today…. which is why she can’t figure out why she can’t be happy.
“…doesn’t the RC prohibit her from getting married in the church now? Wouldn’t any future marriage by adulterous?”
She got an annulment, which means a valid marriage never existed in the eyes of the Church. There are certain conditions that must be met in order to validly marry, such as the intention to have children and consenting to the marriage without pressure (i.e., no shot gun weddings). If one of them wasn’t met, a sacramental marriage did not actually take place. If you can prove that something was wrong at the time of the marriage, she is free to marry again because technically speaking she was never married at all. Some dioceses are more strict about proof than others, but about 3/4 of couples who petition for annulment are granted one.
“Even if you look on the Catholic dating sites – when you narrow the search to guys in your reasonable age range who actually follow the Church’s teachings, there are VERY few. Then find the ones of that group who you are actually attracted to? Hardly any.”
Glad those guys are invisible to her. Those guys need a woman…not an aging divorcee spinster.
Not only did she divorce her husband, she does not see that this was wrong and unbiblical. How does she not feel convicted of this being a Catholic? Anyways, because she does not see that her prior divorce was wrong she does not believe that there would (or should) be any consequences to her decision. It is all about her, not her future husband and it is certainly not about God.
okrahead stated:
What is this business about “actually follow the Church’s teachings”??????? I am not RC, so I may be missing something…. But doesn’t the RC prohibit her from getting married in the church now? Wouldn’t any future marriage by adulterous? But she wants a man who follows the teachings she is planning on violating with him? How many contradictory ideas can this woman hold in her head at once? And how many angels can dance on the head of a pin?
So my question would be how could she expect a man of God to even want to marry her seeing as she 1) broke her first marriage vows and 2) it would be umbilical pursuant to RCC and even Protestant doctrine. Would not a Godly man make it a point to avoid this woman? I would think her only choice is an unsaved man who didn’t know any better.
Question. Do not most of the single “Christian” women in church think this exact same way?
“Would not a Godly man make it a point to avoid this woman?”
If I see ‘divorced’ or ‘single mother’…that’s an automatic do not pass go, do not collect 200 dollars.
JDG,
Cool! Thanks for that. Let me know when CAF bans (forever) your new Under Dog login.
Okay, so you can be “married” in the church, have sex, live together, have a least one child, spend more than a decade together, and find out that you’ve really been living in sin the whole time because your “bride” had some mental reservation you didn’t even know about? That sounds even worse than evangelical churchianity. Not only can she leave and take your kid(s) and her cash and prizes, you were sinning by living with her the whole time, since you really weren’t married. Oy vey.
@innocentbystanderboston
There’s Rebecca (Genesis 25:23). Huldah claims that God spoke to her (2 Kings 22), and I don’t see anything in the biblical account of Huldah that makes me doubt that claim.
And if you think God didn’t talk to women in the New Testament, then you must be an Arian. Between the Holy Spirit and Christ, a number of women heard from God there.
This in no way negates men’s spiritual headship over their wives or over the Church.
enrique432 says:
September 1, 2014 at 3:53 pm
Gary Lane epitomizes the ‘alpha’ hollywood ‘good guy’. In the words of a fictitious and infamous Heron:
“Magua understand white man is a dog to his women.”
Cool! Thanks for that. Let me know when CAF bans (forever) your new Under Dog login.
Actually Under Dog is not new to CAF. He just doesn’t post there very often, but when he does the fembots get there feathers all ruffled.
Yep, it’s not that most men are invisible to her, or that her past relationships have driven her expectations too high and she’s unwilling to lower them as her own MMV has fallen. No, it’s that Satan is making men suck and be unworthy of her.
“Under Dog, are you paying attention?
Apparently not, because the Original Poster says she RECEIVED A DECLARATION OF NULLITY, I.E., SHE WAS NEVER MARRIED IN THE EYES OF THE CHURCH AND THEREFORE NEVER HAD A HUSBAND.
I know I’m shouting. I don’t care. Sue me. Sometimes you need to shout to get people’s attention. ”
Well now since that is cleared up I guess the fact she is 34 and has a history of leaving men is magically gone too.
Question. Do not most of the single “Christian” women in church think this exact same way?
Sadly in most US churches (but not all) I think the answer is yes.
Of course there are. But as she herself says: “Then find the ones of that group who [sic] you are actually attracted to? Hardly any.” She’s not willing to settle for a man who doesn’t make her tingle like the alpha she’s still pining for did. And maybe she shouldn’t, since there’s a good chance she’d make the guy miserable. But yes, there are plenty of men, even men whose MMV is at least as high as hers, but she’s not interested in them. And as Dalrock says, the takeaway is that she finds a way to blame that on them, rather than on her own past experience and past and present choices.
These kind of women have made me love Hamlet since converting to Catholicism.
I can say “Get thee to a nunnery”
With complete seriousness, think it would be the healthiest choice, mourn for them, and laugh on the inside at the irony of it all. I can do so all at the same time.
Not the best gift of my faith, but amusing nonetheless
JDG,
Good comment, Under Dog!
An annulment is a formal decree by the Catholic Church that a valid sacramental marriage was not created when the two putative spouses exchanged vows. In 1954 there were around 300 marriage annulments in the entire world. Now there are thousands of annulments granted every year, mostly in the United States.
A lot of the blame must rest on the Church itself since there’s been an almost total collapse of Catholic education and discipline for the last fifty years. It’d be one thing if people knew the traditional teachings on marriage and turned their backs on them. Most Catholics have no idea what their own Church teaches about much of anything.
I think the nunnery would be the best path for those damaged women. At this point in their lives, Jesus would probably be the only man that could provide the things they need.
@Cail Corishev
I tend to agree. I don’t see her being happy and I think it is very unlikely she would be willing to fulfill the role of biblical wife if not head over heels in love. My advice would be to cut this man loose and see if her secret multimillionaire hunky handyman appears. If not, she’s been “unmarried” (with the paperwork to prove it, wink wink) for 90% of her fertile years. She shouldn’t rush now to find a husband.
No, in Catholic theology you can’t be sinning if you don’t know about it. A spouse who knowingly marries invalidly is sinning all along, but one who goes into it with good faith is fine. Of course, as we’ve discussed here many times, the annulment process is often abused today; but if you play by the rules in good faith and accept the results, you’ve done all you can do.
Also, say a person knowingly marries under false pretenses or in a way that violates Church doctrine, so the marriage is invalid. He’s sinning from that moment until he fixes it, and if he dies in that state, he’s likely to go to Hell. However, if at some later date he truly repents, makes a good Confession, does his penance, and either has the marriage annulled or makes it right, he’s clean again. Forgiveness is always possible for a repentant Christian, right?
Anybody still wonder why Satan picked Eve as his target of choice?
Earl – Jesus would probably be the only man that could provide the things they need.
I think Under Dog might like to use this (slightly modified of course).
Mulier,
I’ll have to take a look at that. Thanks for that.
Welp, I am not arian. His Son, our Savior came to fulfill God’s word and talked to everyone and anyone who would listen. I’m quite certain (as are you) that many of those people who listened were women. When Christ spoke, he was not speaking directly to women the way God the Father spoke directly to women when He spoke to Eve. A little bit different, don’t you think?
That goes without saying. There is no verse in the New Testiment that contradicts Genesis 3:16.
@Opus
The problem is she has waited to pick last and her own MMV has taken a nosedive. It isn’t just that she has Brad Pitt tastes on a spinster’s budget (although this is likely true). Other women already married the best prospects. Of the remainder, the few single men interested in marriage her age or 5 years older who are anywhere near attractive can choose never married women 5 years younger than her. She is stuck with the men with no options. What kind of Catholic man marries a 34 year old divorcée to start a family? This is what she is looking for, and the answer is a man who can’t do better.
One other thought. This is purely speculation but it strikes me as unlikely that her alpha bad boy coming right after her divorce is just a coincidence. I couldn’t prove it, but I suspect she dumped husband #1 for the alpha bad boy and when that didn’t pan out she settled for her current boring loyal dude.
What kind of Catholic man marries a 34 year old divorcée to start a family? This is what she is looking for, and the answer is a man who can’t do better.
My answer is “A short sighted and foolish man.”
@IBB
I can think of lots of direct statements by Jesus to individual women, like:
“Martha, Martha…”
“Woman, behold your son”
“Do not touch me”
Or the conversation with the Samaritan woman.
Ok course Mulier. But if I have to explain to you the difference between Genesis 3:16 and…
…then you and I are never going to see eye to eye on this.
What is this business about “actually follow the Church’s teachings”??????? I am not RC, so I may be missing something…. But doesn’t the RC prohibit her from getting married in the church now?
No, she had her marriage anulled. She is free to marry in the Catholic Church. That’s the point of her post, really.
Okay, so you can be “married” in the church, have sex, live together, have a least one child, spend more than a decade together, and find out that you’ve really been living in sin the whole time because your “bride” had some mental reservation you didn’t even know about? That sounds even worse than evangelical churchianity. Not only can she leave and take your kid(s) and her cash and prizes, you were sinning by living with her the whole time, since you really weren’t married. Oy vey.
Yes, per the theology involved. I am not Catholic, I am Orthodox (as I think you are as well?) but I grew up Catholic and was Catholic until received by the Orthodox Church about 15 years ago. The Catholic sacramental theology on marriage requires perfect consent and intent on the part of both spouses in order for the sacrament to have validly occurred. If there are defects in consent (based on a lack of understanding of the requirements of a Catholic marriage, or based on feeling pressured to marry and so on), then the marriage can be declared to have always been a sacramental nullity from the beginning. The de facto marriage is not doubted, but the sacramental marriage never occurred, that is what the decree of annulment is saying — so the spouses are free to (re)marry in the Catholic Church — again, because they are not considered to have been previously married in the eyes of the Church.
Yeah, what is WRONG with all these men that they aren’t interested in dating or marrying the anti-feminine harpies that we call “women” today who have already exploded one marriage and don’t believe even conceptually in obedience or the marriage debt? And why are these layabout men not going to the effeminate, handholding, feelings-based liturgical fiesta we call the Mass?
Some of those conversations might appear trivial to you, but I’d be wary of dismissing anything that appears in the Scriptures. Some of these passages (or others that I could have listed) are obviously generalizable beyond the immediate situation and have been read as such by commentators. And the conversation about living water with the Samaritan woman is theologically rich.
Anyway, you made the broad brush point that God never directly speaks to women again after Eve, and that’s not sustainable.
I care only because of your argument about moral agency. Don’t get me wrong: before the Judgment Seat I fully plan to point out that IBB claimed I couldn’t help myself. But maybe I should have a back-up plan of repentance, fear, and trembling just in case?
The problem is she has waited to pick last and her own MMV has taken a nosedive. It isn’t just that she has Brad Pitt tastes on a spinster’s budget (although this is likely true). Other women already married the best prospects. Of the remainder, the few single men interested in marriage her age or 5 years older who are anywhere near attractive can choose never married women 5 years younger than her. She is stuck with the men with no options. What kind of Catholic man marries a 34 year old divorcée to start a family? This is what she is looking for, and the answer is a man who can’t do better.
Yes. As a divorced person, even with an anulment, this is an obvious risk factor that the “better” guys in her age range won’t want to mess with. People need to realize that. It doesn’t mean “there is no-one for me”, but it does mean, as the priest told her, that Mr Big is probably out of the picture at this point. Of course, as pragmatic as that advice was, I agree with you that given her description of herself, for her to marry a man that she wasn’t head over heels with would be a disaster for everyone involved, because she has gone “all in” on the idea of this being the core of what marriage is about (well in line with the broader culture). Any action on her part would be a conscious settling, which in her self-described frame of mind, could lead to disaster again.
One other thought. This is purely speculation but it strikes me as unlikely that her alpha bad boy coming right after her divorce is just a coincidence. I couldn’t prove it, but I suspect she dumped husband #1 for the alpha bad boy and when that didn’t pan out she settled for her current boring loyal dude.
I had the same thought. My speculation is that the high tingles factor for first post-marriage BF was likely what set her down the final path to divorce (this is a very common path — woman in boring marriage with man she isn’t really attracted to finds a man she is very attracted to who responds to her, and so she leaves husband).
“I think Under Dog might like to use this (slightly modified of course)”
Be my guest.
Under Dog is doing excellent work — the proof of that being the groundswell of white knights posting nonsense on behalf of their princess.
I don’t feel the slightest bit of sorrow for this hurting woman. She was blessed with youthful beauty and just as eve fucke away the garden of Eden this woman rejected a man that made a commitment to marriage to her of all people. Any pain and suffering she feels needs to be felt and shown to all for what it is. Her prayers where answered and she told God to go fuck himself simple as that. Man’s battle with satan is her. Never forget she was loved and a man made marriage vows to her.
Truth. She walked out on the only man ever to love and respect her. She subsequently gave the respect due him to some dude who laughed in her face after banging her a few times.
Some people were born to serve as a warning to others. This is one such. She is a walking, breathing billboard advertising what not to do.
Boxer
Another possibility is that her first post-divorce fling seemed alpha in comparison to the husband she’d grown utterly bored with. I’ve seen divorcees hook up with pretty ordinary guys and be excited about them, presumably for the novelty factor — he wasn’t her husband, therefore he was awesome. Then when it falls apart they stay nostalgic for that post-divorce excitement.
But whether that guy really was Mr. Alpha or only seems that way in her memories, yeah, she’s in trouble as long as she hangs onto that goal of Just As Exciting As That Guy.
Soceity and women themselves have put themselves all on a collective and at the same time individual pedastal… they are taught that they are never wrong, never accountable – head strong and stubborn. What they want, need, feel – always comes first. Dare you not be the alpha, perfect, read her mind, worship male – or you’ll be left for another in no time flat. They spend more time thinking about the ‘greener’ grass on the ‘other side’, filled and fluffed to the gills with valuable ‘info’ and ‘support’ womenwide, through mags and tv shows and talk shows etc… telling women over and over that they are worth it (or more – i.e. princesses).. always. that the man has to treat you special. even the women who see it for what it is, courtship and romance and NOT a constant to any relationship – are victim to all of soceities narcassism of how women need to be ‘pedalstallized’… they can’t even help it, even the good, or better ones.. pampered like we pamper our children, never accountable for any actions.. spend half their lives imagining and fanticizing instead of actually living it. Hence, the eternal ‘mescontentes’ factor.
I am glad that _some_ women have woken up and realized their eternal ‘victimhood’.
Unfortunately, the quoted in this article isn’t one of those. Pathetic.
No woman should.have to marry an unattractive man! Might as well expect her to give herself.over to ISIS!
Maybe she should go to Scotland and see if she can travel back in time (I just heard about this “Outlander” show. Ech.).
I saw Anna Kornikova playing tennis on TV, and for the first time in my life I realized that I am ABLE to feel truly intense lust!
SO. I prayed that God would send me a wife who is just as hot as Anna, but he hasn’t! Why is God being so mean?
Dear Commenters,
I have a rather extraordinary family situation, and this board has many wise commenters, so I would like to seek your advice. I am posting my problem anonymously, and with Dalrock’s permission, would not like to remain anonymous from my normal handle here.
This is a story that is going to shock many of you, but it is also very interesting for those who like to give advice in such complex matters.
Begin :
My sister married a couple of years ago. The guy seemed smart and otherwise normal, and comes from a very impressive and successful family.
I have only met with my brother-in-law at the wedding and once after the wedding on an extended vacation. Here is the problem :
My new brother-in-law (BIL) has been very rude to me since just about the 3rd day he had ever met me (which was during their wedding). He finds it necessary to boss me around over the most trivial, needless things, even if I am doing something very important. Even if I say ‘later’ or ‘not now’, he still will have none of it. He has done this about 8-9 times in the grand total of 10 days I have spent in his presence since he married my sister. I emphasize that these are situations where a normal person would say nothing, or otherwise at least make a polite request of the other person.
Clearly, it is not the tasks that he cares about, but the power trip. It seems to be very important to him to talk to me as though I am an 11-year-old boy who needs to be scolded, and he has been doing this since just about the 3rd day since he has ever met me.
Now get this, which will knock your socks off.
I happen to be one of the world’s higher-returning hedge fund managers. I was managing my sister’s account free of any fees, and I turned her $300,000 into $1M in three years. I effectively more-than-tripled her money, earning her $700,000, without really asking for anything in return. I was doing this because she is my only sister. It didn’t cost me anything other than logging in and doing the trades. Yet, this is a one-in-a-million privilege. How many of you know of anyone who did this for his sibling.
But now, given how rude my BIL is to me, I really don’t feel inclined to be making them rich anymore. I mean let me put it this way :
i) It would be wrong for him to boss around anyone over trivial things, rather than make polite requests if he wants them to do something.
ii) It is even more wrong to treat your wife’s brother that way, given you are starting off a relationship with him.
iii) It is beyond ultra-stupid to be this rude to someone who has been making you rich, without asking for anything in return. However, I got the distinct impression that he didn’t like me making money for them. I can only guess why, but let me describe a bit about his background, for some clues :
Now, a bit of background about about my brother-in-law.
1a) His father, who is MUCH more likeable in personality, happens to be a very well-known CEO. He is highly successful, yet his son, my brother-in-law, is still in a lower-middle management job at a corporation at age 40. This, despite his parents putting him in the best schools, leading to him getting into the best grad schools, etc. I know of no one who has underperformed his own father’s career success by such a margin. He has an MBA from one of the very topmost schools, all his family friends are CEO/multi-millionaire families, etc. Yet, his own accomplishments are vastly lower than the strata he was born into. And it is not like he is an unambitious happy-go-lucky; he really wants to demonstrate success, and is stressed out about his inability to do so.
1b) My brother-in-law has two sisters. They are both very polite themselves, and are married to guys who, suffice it to say, those two guys (my BIL’s two BILs) have greatly outperformed my BIL in career success (see point 1) above), and, like me, are new entrants to his life who are also far more accomplished than him. I suspect he is also rude to them in the same way he is rude to me, which I did witness one instance of, but I haven’t met them enough times to confirm how much of this treatment they also receive. There is some contentiousness in the relationship between him and his two BILs, that is for sure.
Funny how all these much more successful people are far more polite and humble.
Don’t get me wrong : My brother-in-law has a high IQ and a lot of knowledge. He just happens to have a very rude, bossy, power-trippy personality that is likely to make people regret favors they did for him. I have no idea how he behaves at work, but almost every man connected to him is much more successful than him. It is also conspicuous that he is not in an executive position in one of his family-friend’s companies, which is often how scions of that strata get plumb jobs. It is possible that they just don’t see him as fit for an executive appointment in their companies.
I don’t think his family are aware that I have been making this much money for them (although my parents certainly know about it).
2) My BIL gets stressed out over trivial things (the same trivial things he bosses others around over). This is all the more ironic given his life is very easy (my sister makes 4x what he does, plus the money I made for them, means the pressure to provide for his kids is not even on him. This is not even counting that his parents are rich). Despite how easy his life is relative to almost any other man, he is always so stressed out that he has psoraisis, which is an unsightly skin disease, caused by stress. His stress might be due to having to suppress his personality in the workplace (sort of like trying to recork a popped champagne bottle).
3) Now, I want to be very clear that my sister and BIL themselves have a decent marriage, so that is not the issue here. They now have a wonderful 1-year old, and another kid is on the way. My sister is one of the few women who won’t resent a husband who makes less than a quarter of what she does (although his parents are about three zeroes richer than mine/hers, so she might be looking at it that way, rather than the disparity in their day-job paychecks).
4) As to why my sister, a woman who is pretty, earns $500K/yr, and is blessedly free of most ‘feminist’ dogma, married such an ordinary person, I should point out i) Everyone else in his family is very nice and impressive, ii) My BIL does, in fact, treat HER well, iii) His family’s aforementioned wealth and contacts, and iv) My BIL’s personality is similar to my/her father’s in many ways, so she, like many women, sees anyone similar to her father as normal, good or bad (in this case, bad).
5) That being said, there was one instance when my sister apologized to me for her husband behavior, and a separate instance when one of his parents also apologized to me. That’s right. In just 10 days of total time with him, he has been rude 8-9, leading to two people also apologizing for his behavior (although he has never apologized himself, and may not even be aware that others are doing damage control for him). I got the impression that his parents are quite accustomed to having to apologize for their son’s rudeness towards others.
So, what do I do?
1) I am not sure that discussing it with my BIL directly would be productive, as his lack of self-awareness and empathy is so astonishing that I don’t think he is capable of constructive discussion. I have a much better rapport with his father, in fact. I could similarly talk to his two BILs, who might be recipients of some of the same treatment. But that is a step not to be taken lightly.
2) He has really made me not want to manage their money anymore (and it is possible HE doesn’t want me to do it either). Even if I charge them fees (like any other hedge fund manager would), my heart is no longer into it. He has fully made me regret having made them the money, and I feel aggravated each time I log into their account (a feeling I NEVER had until I met the BIL in the recent vacation and his pattern of bossy rudeness became clear). I feel like a swindled, betrayed pushover.
3) My sister, as a woman, has a tendency to have no objective moral compass. She will usually side with whoever she ranks higher on her primate-brain social hierarchy, and against whoever ranks lower. She also, like most women, takes a status-quo-must-be-preserved-at-all-costs approach to anything that might rock the boat, up to and including rationalizing massive injustice. There are occasionally exceptions to this behavior (see above), but those are few and far between.
She ranks me low (I always received much more severe punishments than her for the same infraction in our childhood, so she has been trained to think that is the normal way to treat me), so there is no way she will even admit that I have been wronged (even though her husband is also rude to other people). Her rationalization hamster in such matters is super-active in these matters, and will say anything to justify why I should make her so much money even while her husband has never been rude at all.
It is absurd that I should be treated this way, even if I wasn’t making them so much money. Yet, it is all but impossible that they can introspect fairly about this. They would effectively treat me the way a leftist would treat a Republican – holding them to a double standard without any restraint. Thus, there is no way I can stop managing their money without them reframing it as ME being a villain.
What do I do? The BIL is also someone I am ‘stuck’ with, and he has created this situation. But, I might risk permanently severing my relationship with my only sibling if I even bring this up with them. Then again, she benefits from me vastly, vastly more than I have ever benefited from her. She herself is not rude to me, but she certainly is willing to excuse her husband in his rudeness toward me, and his personality is such that any chance for a power trip is to not be missed. That combo creates this problematic situation.
Yet, I could certainly triple their money again if I want to, turning their $1M into $3M. So I am on the brink of deciding whether to proceed with this, or not.
Should I stop making them money, and tell them why? Should I demand improvement in his behavior? Should I talk to his father, with whom a far more productive discussion is likely? Should I compare notes with his two BILs, who might be recipients of similar treatment, or is that petty and passive-aggressive? It is a tough call….I have already started to hate myself for backing down just to ‘keep the peace’…
This situation is one of the biggest examples of :
a) taking someone for granted and biting the hand that enriches you can happen when introspection and empathy are utterly lacking
b) how extremely poor social IQ can be a source of self-sabotage that nullifies immense advantages
c) inability to handle stress can manifest in antisocial behaviors
d) how some people will mistreat and abuse another IF they feel they can get away with it, or even worse, if it is ‘sanctioned’.
e) perhaps this behavior is just how insecurity gets channeled out in the form of pathetic little power trips, no matter what he may lose by indulging in such behavior.
It is a case worthy of an academic paper.
I am eagerly seeking feedback and advice on this rather incredible dilemma. I fully expect the advice to vary considerably, given the complexity of the situation.
End.
“Granted, it didn’t work out, and he ended up completely breaking my heart… looking back I recognize that he is not who God wanted me to marry. HOWEVER, I find it interesting that I was given that relationship – despite the heartbreak”
Hamster says: That high value, high status, attractive man she dated broke up with her because he didn’t want to wait until marriage to have sex. HOWEVER, she deserves to receive, from on high, an equally high value man who wants to give her a lifetime of devotion.
Now men know how God feels… always blamed for everything gone wrong. 😉
Just do a light reading on her previous posts. She literally divorced and was granted an annulment from her husband because she “never loved him.” And was highly offended by his taste in movies (?) I’m not sure cats would be holy enough for her. They are creatures of the Devil you know.
Such a woman would be welcome in my fellowship, and would be called to Christian discipleship, community, and evidence of regeneration. Since she already has a husband, she would be exhorted to pray for his reconciliation to her.
If he chooses not to reconcile with her, she can live a life of contentment as a “single” woman – God has plenty of ways women can serve him. Anna prayed and fasted for over half a century. Wouldn’t it be great if women like the author in question could understand the kind of Christian life they could be living, instead of bemoaning the fact they can’t find a man?
I don’t feel the slightest bit of sorrow for this hurting woman.
I do, even though people like this can really make me angry. Even though she deserves all the pain she has caused herself (we all do), I still hope that she, and others like her, will get a clue and stop doing the idiotic things they’re doing. I hate to see people suffer (I guess I’m just an old softy), and I wish they could see the world outside of me, myself, and I. I would like this not just for they’re own sakes, but also for the sakes of those close to them that inevitably get hurt in the fallout.
No, she had her marriage anulled. She is free to marry in the Catholic Church. That’s the point of her post, really.
I’m not sure some days if CAF means “Catholic Answers Forums” or “Catholic Annulment Factory”.
Under Dog has been dubbed a troll for the 2nd time in his blogging career.
John –
Catholicism Amplifying Feminism.
s/b Catholics Amplifying Feminism.
But I guess the old question applies here as well, “What is a Catholic?”
Is feminism in line with genuine Catholic teaching?
Can it be accurately said that these proponents of feminism and easy annulment are indeed Catholics?
@JDG: Can it be accurately said that these proponents of feminism and easy annulment are indeed Catholics?
Sure. That just means that they’re bad Catholics.
There’s a bumper sticker that reads “You CAN’T be Catholic and pro-choice!” I like to joke that, technically, you can indeed be a pro-choice Catholic just like you can be a Catholic who goes to hell.
The sad thing is this is supposedly one of the ‘good ones’ that men are meant to sift through the trash to find. Married reasonably early and religious to boot.
But there it is in black and white, ” God graciously sent me some alpha cock so that I could experience true tingles.”
Five minutes of alpha…..
Dear Under Dog/JDG:
A few tips for the incipient tellers of painful truths on Catholic Answers…
1. Don’t get drawn into arguing with Xanthippe, Lady Blue Eyes or any of the other Jezebel feminists in residence. They don’t ever come up with salient points and they’ll try to sidetrack you and waste your time.
2. Don’t mention Dalrock nor any other blog by name. If you want to drive traffic here or elsewhere, be very general and tell people to do google searches for strings of words. I was banned the second time partly for that. At the time it was mentioned in their forum rules (they had a link spam rule, and it fell under that, which is fair enough — I’m sure they still have that excuse to ban someone).
3. Be very careful questioning any aspect of Catholic theology. I was banned the first time for exactly what you’re doing, though I was a bit more sarcastic. Keep it low key and don’t overtly mock or criticize the annulment process.
As a (secular) Mormon, coming from the self appointed chosen people who supposedly care so much about the family (isn’t it about time?), and the same people who divorce each other with shocking regularity, I get that Catholics are flawed and will divorce. The thing is, they should accept this annulment shit for what it is: Divorce. They seem to gloss over it as though it is somehow no problem, since the priest (or whoever) gives them the blessing to “un-marry” retroactively. I love all my Catholic brothers here, and don’t want to be disrespectful, but it’s total bullshit. Annulment is divorce. That’s what it is. Call it by its name, and then maybe you can see the problem with it.
Regards, Boxer
“I saw Anna Kornikova playing tennis on TV, and for the first time in my life I realized that I am ABLE to feel truly intense lust! SO. I prayed that God would send me a wife who is just as hot as Anna, but he hasn’t! Why is God being so mean?”
Best post yet. GWADFT’s is a close second; we need to stop bearing false witness against God.
And yeah, narcissism among Western women is way out of control. It has consequences, as people like Jennifer Lawrence and Kate Upton are finding out the hard way.
“”Ras,
An annulment…. I see. The last 15 years and the kid didn’t really happen. Kind of like that season of Dallas. Bobby is back and all is well. Did they make her 18 again and restore her hymen as well?””
Perfect – This is what I do not understand about annulment. I don’t see these women being restored spiritually or biologically. So the church states that the marriage never happened…whatever. She is not restored and she is not marriage material, especially for the upstanding single, rich, gorgeous and Godly man she thinks she deserves. The sad thing is no one, the Catholic forum, her church and certainly not her peers are willing to even counsel her on this fact.
As someone confirmed, her behavior and belief that she is somehow entitled to a husband is only part of the problem. The church, the congregation, and of course other women encourages this attitude. It’s the Jenny Erickson effect. I have told several women they don’t deserve the perfect man they are looking for. Oh my do they get pissed.
Another weak person (woman) who complains and blames men/God for not handing to her on a plate what she wants in life. Sitting passively, looking sad, sounding pathetic, singing “why not me me me me meee” in an effort to get more sympathy from all and sundry.
It’s a good thing that 90% of men are invisible to her. This is a starving wolf trying to pass itself off as a sheep.
I worked with a woman off and on for some years. Also, our sons were in BSA together at times.
She divorced her first husband, and married another man who agreed to adopt her kids by the first husband. Hee, hee. He got to pay child support after she dumped his rear end, too.
Then, she told me she prayed to God to send her an ordained minister. I somehow was able to retain my lunch.
She got him.
So, any church you know which needs a minister who is married to a twice divorced woman?
I never found hard statistics, but noticed over the years that when a man married a woman with kids, and adopted them, he seemed to always get cast out into the darkness and paid child support.
God was never present with this woman. I laugh at her statement that God sent her minister. She knew that only a beta chump minister would even consider marrying that woman.
I’m sorry but God would have to violate so much of His word to legitimize that cunts actions. I get pissed because these women are like a cancer spreading through our society, organizations, workplaces and yes churches.
On Mon, Sep 1, 2014 at 11:47 PM, Dalrock wrote:
> Anonymous age 72 commented: “I worked with a woman off and on for some > years. Also, our sons were in BSA together at times. She divorced her first > husband, and married another man who agreed to adopt her kids by the first > husband. Hee, hee. He got to pay child support after she du” >
The woman in the posting actually had all the elements for a successful marriage with this man she moved to be near. Millions of successful, long-term marriages had less going for them than this couple.
Well, she is lacking brains. That might change the results.
I think that guy should teach the young men’s group. He’ll be great with the man-up speeches.
Dalrock:
“One other thought. This is purely speculation but it strikes me as unlikely that her alpha bad boy coming right after her divorce is just a coincidence. I couldn’t prove it, but I suspect she dumped husband #1 for the alpha bad boy and when that didn’t pan out she settled for her current boring loyal dude.”
Women almost always monkey branch. They don’t ditch unless they have (or think they have) another man lined up (or they are already involved with.
girlwithadragonflytattoo says:
“Now men know how God feels… always blamed for everything gone wrong. ”
God created women so men would know how he feels not just in being blamed but in all the other ways too.
Timber St. James:
“When she gets her cats, it won’t be for calm-hearted companionship, it will be so she can at least control SOMEONE’S life since she cannot control her own…”
I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but if her ambition is control over *cats*, and we’re playing the odds here…. “Hmm, devout Roman Catholic single Brad Pitt who wants you, you say? Let’s look through that online dating site one more time…”
After our divorce/annulment I did date one other guy (prior to my current boyfriend) who I was head over heels in love with. I would have moved to the moon with this guy. We had our issues, but I still would have been crazy excited to marry him. Granted, it didn’t work out, and he ended up completely breaking my heart… looking back I recognize that he is not who God wanted me to marry. HOWEVER, I find it interesting that I was given that relationship – despite the heartbreak, it gave me a glimpse of what it feels like to be crazy about someone, and it made me recognize that I am ABLE to experience that sort of feeling for a man.
She was having sex with this guy. She is an alpha widow. God would have not given her a man to fornicate with. Right?
And yes, I know that I have trust issues with God on this matter – but I think my issues are founded in the fact that I have already failed at marriage once, am getting old – close to the point where I can’t have children, have made lots of mistakes in the past, and have seen my much more devout friends who are even older than I am still not find their spouse either, despite fervent prayer.
More premarital sex.
She still expects that Godly man though.
On Mon, Sep 1, 2014 at 11:58 PM, Dalrock wrote:
> Ra’s al Ghul commented: “Dalrock: “One other thought. This is purely > speculation but it strikes me as unlikely that her alpha bad boy coming > right after her divorce is just a coincidence. I couldn’t prove it, but I > suspect she dumped husband #1 for the alpha bad boy and when” >
Conundrum,
There is no conundrum here.
This man who bosses YOU around married your sister, not you. The next time your Brother-in-law bosses you around about anything, tell him to go to hell. You are not married to him, you don’t have to listen to him. End of story.
I went through the same thing with my sister-in-law. She seemed to think that she had the athority to tell me to do something (anything) and when she yelled at me, I yelled right back and told her to go to hell. She started crying and left my house and everyone got upset with me and when her father said something to me I said to him “what I didn’t marry her, I am NOT going to listen to her or put up with any of her shenanigans.” That was more than ten years ago and she has not raised her voice to me since.
There is no problem here. You have no problem. Just the next time he “bosses you” (I’m not even sure I know what that means) tell him to screw.
Mulier,
Well, that is up to you Mulier. See how far that gets you. 🙂
innocentbyboston,
In a basic sense, you are correct. But the issue is more complicated.
Do I stop making them so much money in their account? I was doing this for my sister out of the goodness of my heart, and expected nothing in return. Now HE has made me not want to do it, and feel like a sucker, a pushover, for having done them this favor. I guess the reaction my sister has (who I have not talked to about this yet) will decide whether they will continue to benefit from my services.
Also, they are both the type of people who are experts at reframing any objection by me into ME being the villain. I know there are good ways to handle this, but this is the only sibling I have. Then again, I have the power here….
I should add that for years before my sister ever married, I had the dream that her husband would be sort of like the brother I never had. To be let down this heavily is pretty sad, as his behavior undershoots the entire range of what I thought the relationship between him and me would fall within.
No it isn’t. It is simple. This person is not your boss, has no authority to boss you around. If he does it one more time, boss him right back, tell him to go to hell. Done. You don’t have to put up with this type of behavior.
I can’t tell you what to do here. That is up to you. You decide. You just don’t have to yelled at by your brother-in-law.
I mean you decide how you want to be treated. If you feel you are being treated unfairly, you know what to do. You don’t have to put up with this type of verbal crap, seriously. Just tell him to screw. If your sister can’t deal with that, that is on her.
@Okrahead
Thanks for the advice about the grandma. I appreciate it.
Also, she said on the forum that she got a decree of nullity (meaning per Catholic doctrine, the sacrament of Marriage never happened between her and her “ex-husband”). As other Catholics here and elsewhere in the manosphere have attested, the U.S. leads the Church worldwide in annulments. Also, given what I’ve read in previous posts at Dalrock’s regarding CAF, I am somewhat skeptical that she did get said annulment. She may very well have, though
@Enrique
I’m single and am not that stupid. However, I may be an anomaly. Honestly can’t speak if there are hordes of Catholic women like her.
@okrahead
The kid did happen. That must make it awkward for him/her though.
” Some dioceses are more strict about proof than others, but about 3/4 of couples who petition for annulment are granted one.”
That needs to change. “Of course, as we’ve discussed here many times, the annulment process is often abused today” That is the reason why.
@Beefy
What you said about Church teaching is spot on. How many Catholics know that per Canon Law (see 1250 and 1251 for meat) that they can eat meat on Fridays IF they have another form of penance?
@Conundrum
Keep making them money. They’re family. Confront your BIL in private the next time he is overtly rude to you. Be frank. Hold nothing back. If he makes a genuine apology, great! If he tells you to sod off, you made an effort.
@JDG
I personally don’t believe feminism is in line with genuine Catholic teaching. Nonetheless, to paraphrase a blogger who no longer blogs, feminism is in the air we breathe. Ergo, we can only avoid its taint to an extent.
@Boxer
Annulment isn’t divorce. Having said that, one of the serious problems is that most Catholics who get them today treat it AS IF IT WERE DIVORCE. As Cail said, it’s been abused.
Conundrum says:
September 1, 2014 at 8:10 pm
> Should I stop making them money, and tell them why? Should I demand improvement in his behavior? Should I talk to his father, with whom a far more productive discussion is likely? Should I compare notes with his two BILs, who might be recipients of similar treatment, or is that petty and passive-aggressive? It is a tough call….I have already started to hate myself for backing down just to ‘keep the peace’…
******
My response is what I’d do with the situation you’ve described, so I’ll speak in the first person as if this were my life.
1) I would stop making money for my sister and her husband in the manner being done. I would tell my sister I have to give up her account to another fund manager, who will be choosing the investments and will be charging standard company fees. I wouldn’t explain why, even if she asked. No faux answers about a conflict of interest, or having new duties and now don’t have time… If she asks why, my answer would be “I can’t answer that. I can’t talk about any internal conditions or policies. I’m sorry it has to be this way but from now on it has to be this way. You’re free to seek out another firm altogether if you wish.”
2) I’d say nothing to BIL’s father. He obviously knows what his son is made of, and if he hasn’t been able to change him by now, it will never happen. Ditto on the other two BILs, there’s nothing they can do to change another human being’s personality. Nothing you or anyone can do. BIL has to wake himself up on his own timetable.
3) My sister isn’t going to starve to death, she’ll always have a nice life with or without my help. She’ll get over the change quickly once it’s accepted as the new normal.
4) The father-in-law will know exactly what happened and why I did this. And he will find out how much I’ve made for them once I withhold my services. He won’t hold a grudge, it will probably be the opposite. He’ll never say anything directly to me about this.
5) My sister will go to my parents and complain, to get me back on side. Mom will be lobbying hardest in her favour… “you owe it to family” blah-blah. I will say nothing to my parents about the behaviour of the BIL and the real reason this is happening. I will answer them the same as my sister, “I can’t talk about any internal conditions or policies. I’m sorry it has to be this way but from now on it has to be this way.” If they persist, I’d say, “You’re out of line. Your opinion has no place in my office. My career comes before you or sis. Unless you feel like supporting me in the same manner I support myself, this topic is closed to discussion.” Puts the onus on them to be responsible for the outcome if I continue to account for my sister. They have no idea what “internal policies” I’m talking about, have no idea if internal rules have changed, have no idea why I’d be concerned for losing my job. Let their hamsters fill in the blanks.
Boxer – Under Dog only makes an appearance every now and then, and that out of pity for the completely misguided folks over there in that cesspool of heresy. To be honest I can’t stand reading what those Jezebels write, and the white knights don’t give any inspiration either. I’m still shocked over the official banning of MarcusD for being critical of feminism.
Back on topic, our RC divorcee suffers from the same disease as Conundrum’s brother-in-law.
A Visitor says:
September 2, 2014 at 12:06 am
Annulment isn’t divorce. Having said that, one of the serious problems is that most Catholics who get them today treat it AS IF IT WERE DIVORCE. As Cail said, it’s been abused.
Unless I misunderstood, she actually referred to it as a divorce in one of her comments.
I’m almost disappointed that no one has mentioned this as an unanswerable rebuttal to this woman’s (and the RCC’s) contention that the RCC’s annulment paper has made her “whole” again (e.g., as deserving of a faithful Christian husband as before her first :marriage”):
“Why don’t we have a gynecologist take a look and see if your hymen has grown back?”
Conundrum,
Obviously you ought to pray about this situation. Obviously. And telling the guy to, “Go to Hell” is the wrong answer. Matthew 5:44 says, “But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you;…”
See also Romans 12 and Proverbs 25, which both instruct us that returning good for evil is like “heaping coals of fire on their heads.”
That doesn’t mean that you have to submit to his whims, though. You are NOT under his authority, nor are you under obligation to let him pretend that you are. If I were in your circumstances, I would not go around to other relatives, as that is just backbiting – which is forbidden in multiple places in scripture. But…
… the next time he bosses you around, I would look him in the eyes and CALMLY say, “I am not under your authority,” and just ignore whatever he told you to do. If he doesn’t take the hint, the next time you might say something like, “I have made you rich by using my God-given talents to triple your wife’s money, and I am happy to continue to do so, but I will not take orders from you.” Then walk away. If he tries to stop you with anything other than an apology, you simply say, “This is not a negotiation. If you insist on speaking to me like a superior to a subordinate, then we will not speak at all. I would prefer that we have a good relationship, but that is up to you. Let me know what kind of relationship you wish to have with me, and whether you wish for me to continue managing your accounts.”
Then leave.
Quick signoff –
I officially retired from internet commentary recently. Having once taken a break, and then returned, I feel it is finally time to close up shop. Work, recreation, and pursuing new areas in life, plus an opportunity to travel, and I need to clear up some space in the lifestyle for these new things.
I’ll always be grateful to Dalrock for the years of excellent reading he has provided.
Thanks, all, and remember:
NO RINGS FOR SLUTS! ™
-lol, couldn’t resist…
Conundrum, In my view, you need to “AMOG” this guy. Since you don’t want to be impolite, I suggest you yank his chain in a joking and smirking way, so he realizes he can’t tell you what to do.
Perhaps, next time he bosses you around, stand up ramrod straight and give him a military salute, and shout out “Jawohl Mein Fuhrer!” Then goose-step away a few times before laughing out loud. Keep it funny and light, so he realizes he looks like a jerk with his behavior.
JDG says:
September 1, 2014 at 4:02 pm
Great work Under Dog!
You shone some much needed light into the CAF darkness.
It reminds me of when I was a kid looking for frogs, we would lift up large rocks, and hiding in the undisturbed darkness was a range of darkness-dependant-bugs and sometimes frogs. Well the bugs would run like hell in all directions to escape the light. Im sure if those bugs could talk they would yell like the poster PolarGuy. Around here he is called a ‘white knight’, but I like to think of them as bugs running away from the light, yelling as they go.
I understand that the dummy thinks he has a chance with the OP but his attitude makes him more insect than man.
Off the deep end: http://diversitychronicle.wordpress.com/2014/07/29/presbyterian-church-u-s-a-votes-that-jesus-christ-may-have-been-gay-and-transgendered/
This is a classic example of Cognitive Dissonance: As their marital market value falls, these women have higher and higher expectations, not lower and realistic ones.
In her case, as she was married, she has only herself to blame.
I have a woman acquaintance who told me “I need to find a man to settle with. I mean, I don’t have a lot of time to have children”
“How old are you?” I asked.
“Thirty five.” she said.
“I’m sorry, but what have you been doing for the last – fifteen years?”
This woman is an actuary by trade, yet could not see her life in terms of market value.
By the way Dalrock: I was holidaying in Hawaii last week. Beautiful place, but American women have to be amongst the worst in the world. Most are overweight. A huge number have bad scrawled tattoos. There is the ugly spectre of the fat wife with two children and the poor thin browbeaten husband – “the most disrespectful thing a wife can do to a husband”, as one of your readers said.
I got to watch two sitcoms – “Mom” with Anna Faris and American Dad. The former is deeply anti-Christian, and the second just filth: the men are portrayed as stupid oafs who need constant correction by the women and the children in their midst, while the women and gays are portrayed as achievers.I was disgusted.
When I got back on the plane to go to Australia, I noticed another thing: Australian women are just as disgusting as their American counterparts with dyed hair, exposed flesh and tattoos, slutty clothing, the works.
So she is a middle aged divorcee whose given her best to other men, one of whom she is still in lust with. She has a deep entitlement mentality thinking that GOD owes her a husband because you know she is just so totally fabulous and moreover he better be every bit the dominant, gina tingling creator that her last f**k buddy was or by gum she’s going to have trust issues with the almighty. Gee, the only thing that would make this woman a better choice would be a an out of wedlock kid or two plus herpes.
Her post is the most completely delusional things I have seen in a long time. That 36 year old man should move on NOW and never look back. I am sure he can do better than a used up divorced alpha widow’d whore who admits at the start that she is a divorce + alimony + child support check waiting to happen.
She completely confuses “love” with lust without any knowledge of doing this and approaching GOD and demanding someone to be in lust with. Even if the perfect man showed up and made her wet down there those feelings would fade with time as any crush does and then it will be this guy vs. her memories of captain alpha she slept with before she met this new guy. And when she becomes disenchanted it will be ALL HIS FAULT AND GOD WHY ARE YOU DOING THIS TO SWEET INNOCENT ME!!! I pray this woman never finds a husband for the man’s sake. She is horribly deluded, extremely prideful, completely unaware of her own massive short comings, and has no concept of how much of a piece of garbage (marriage wise) she has made herself into. Her belief in her own self worth is absolutely warped and skewed to the extreme – she doesn’t deserve a fat, balding, 50ish garbage collector alcoholic who beats his women. THAT would be too good her.
She is a liar. First she says she was not asked out on even one date after her divorce/annulment, then she says that she dated one guy after her divorce/annulment and was head-over-heels in love with him. Both of these statements cannot be true, unless “dating” that one guy is code for “We hooked up and had sex”.
Part of the problem is that church marriage is tied together with civil marriage (like most churches, the Catholic Church won’t marry you without a marriage license in the US), so annulment gets tied together with divorce. The Church won’t even start annulment proceedings until you’ve gotten a civil divorce, because to do otherwise would create the obvious problem of people being unmarried in the eyes of the Church yet still bound together legally. But requiring divorce first makes annulment seem like just an “extra” step of divorce that Catholics have to do — just one of those odd quirks of being Catholic, like having that smudge on your forehead all day on Ash Wednesday.
Annnulment is supposed to be for situations where people got married and then discovered that they were first cousins, or there was a literal shotgun wedding, or the bride ran away screaming and joined a convent when she first saw her new husband’s block and tackle on the wedding night. Extreme, obvious cases like that. But in practice, thanks to terrible catechesis and Cafeteria Catholicism, it’s usually more like this:
Two people, maybe both Catholic, maybe not, get married without really paying too much attention to the Church’s rules on the matter. After several years and perhaps a couple of kids, she gets bored and divorces him. A few years later, the Catholic one of the pair meets someone else and wants to get married. In many cases, this person has drifted away from the Church in the meantime (if it’s the man, he might have been ostracized at his parish after his wife divorced him), and may have married again civilly or in some other church, and may even have children in this new marriage.
Now the guy’s getting older and wants to be a responsible father and start bringing his family to church, and he knows there might be some issues with that, so he talks to his pastor. He finds out that, as far as the Church is concerned, he’s still married to his first wife, living in sin and having bastard children with another woman. He can’t receive the sacraments in this state of ongoing sin, so he would have to move out and stop living as man and wife (having sex) with his civil wife — not something a good father is going to want to do to his children. BUT, if he can get an annulment, why, then everything can be fixed. His new marriage can be blessed in the Church and they can be a good Catholic family. He can still be a father to the kids from the annulled marriage — to the extent that their mother allows anyway.
So you’re sitting on the annulment tribunal when this case comes across your desk. You know that if you deny it, this guy will either A) blow up his current family, probably abandoning his children in the long run, or B) leave the Church and continue living in sin. Weighing the requirements of Justice and Mercy against each other, what do you do? Well, they do deny about 1/3 of them, and that doesn’t count the ones that never apply because the pastor can’t even come up with any grounds to put on the application to make it worth the expense. But most of the time, they try really, really hard to find grounds to approve it, because it seems like (and probably is) the merciful thing to do, and Mercy greatly outranks Justice in our era. And because the original couple didn’t know the rules or didn’t pay much attention to them, it’s usually possible to come up with a technicality.
“I for one do NOT welcome people who come to this forum to essentially drive their own pet viewpoints, which are invalid in the eyes of the Catholic Church.
Under Dog, stop trying to hijack this thread. Neither the Catholic Church nor the posters here accept your point, which is that OP remains married to her first husband — particularly since that point is factually false.”
Translation: Catholic church = that poster
She is divorced/annulled and 34. However that doesn’t negate the Bible passages he was presenting.
The truth hurts.
@Conundrum —
The underlying issue here is that neither he nor, more importantly, your sister, respect you. That needs to be changed. It’s as much about your sister, who is your blood link to the BIL, as it is about the BIL himself.
I would recommend speaking to them both, explaining that you will no longer be treated this way by them, and that if it continues, you will stop managing their assets as a result. I wouldn’t be mean, or aggrieved, and certainly not angry or heated, but simply very matter of fact. Family or no, managing their money is doing them a favor, and only a fool does favors for people who are openly dissing him.
Part of the problem is that church marriage is tied together with civil marriage (like most churches, the Catholic Church won’t marry you without a marriage license in the US), so annulment gets tied together with divorce. The Church won’t even start annulment proceedings until you’ve gotten a civil divorce, because to do otherwise would create the obvious problem of people being unmarried in the eyes of the Church yet still bound together legally. But requiring divorce first makes annulment seem like just an “extra” step of divorce that Catholics have to do — just one of those odd quirks of being Catholic, like having that smudge on your forehead all day on Ash Wednesday.
It’s true. That’s why it’s not inaccurate to refer to someone like her as divorced and annulled. She is divorced civilly, while in the eyes of the church the marriage was a nullity from the sacramental perspective. This accurately reflects the situation, because even though there was no sacramental marriage, there was a civil one, and that civil marriage was divorced.
Annnulment is supposed to be for situations where people got married and then discovered that they were first cousins, or there was a literal shotgun wedding, or the bride ran away screaming and joined a convent when she first saw her new husband’s block and tackle on the wedding night. Extreme, obvious cases like that. But in practice, thanks to terrible catechesis and Cafeteria Catholicism, it’s usually more like this:
My understanding is that most of the annulments granted in the US are done on the basis of some defect in the consent of one or both of the spouses at the time of the marriage. Someone didn’t understand Catholic teaching about marriage properly — e.g., believed they could get divorced under certain circumstances (gee, wonder why anyone would believe that?), believed that they were permitted to artificially contracept, believed that they could avoid having children altogether, and so on. The idea is that if the parties were not fully aware of everything they were getting into in a Catholic marriage, they didn’t consent to enter a Catholic marriage properly, and therefore, because they didn’t validly consent, there was no sacrament.
This makes “technical legal” sense, if viewed from the perspective of a lawyer. The problem with it, though, is that it would appear that this could easily be remedied if the Church cared to do so — that is, the Catholics have a quite robust (on paper) pre-marital preparation process already called “Pre-Cana” –> something which involves numerous meetings with a priest, discussion of Catholic teaching in group settings, compatibility tests (at least this is what I had back in the mid 90s) and so on. As I recall, the effort was made to make sure that people who were being prepared knew what the Church’s teaching about marriage was. However, what is lacking is some kind of evidentiary process at this stage (sorry to be lawyerly about it, but an annullment is a legal proceeding in the Church) which would preserve the evidence that the parties in fact *did* understand what the teaching was, and therefore defeat an effort by one or both of them several years later to claim otherwise. This would be easy peasy for the Church to do — God only knows that the Catholic Church keeps fairly meticulous records (you learn this when you get your kids initiated, if not otherwise), and they could easily add another piece of paper that would serve to de facto cut down on the main source of annullments.
My guess as to why this is not done? The pastoral problem you mention. The concern is that if they close the door too firmly, the ability of the tribunals to act pastorally in situations like the one you mention would be made more difficult, and ultimately they want to retain that degree of pastoral flexibility to deal with situations like the one you mention. Again, though, the problem is that there are many, many other marriages which are not like that situation but which are being annulled all the time on the basis of a purported defect in consent — which seems like a big price to pay in order to preserve flexibility to deal with the kinds of situations you describe there. Of course, Cardinal Kasper and some of the other Germans would like to deal with those kinds of situations differently, in permitting divorced and non-annulled Catholics to receive the sacraments, but I doubt that will go anywhere in the Church.
Note that while I certainly am critical of the Catholic approach to these issues, the Orthodox approach, in my view, is not really any better. Different Orthodox “jurisdictions” handle it differently in terms of process, ranging from “ecclesiastical divorces” (try to get your heads around *that* one .. courtesy of the Greek Orthodox) to the bishop granting the right to remarry in his sole discretion (most of the Slav churches have some variant of this). De facto, it isn’t hard to get remarried in the Orthodox Church once, although the service for a second marriage is different (yes, there is a specifically different service for it). They won’t marry you a third time. But de facto, it isn’t much different in practice for Orthodox who wish to divorce and remarry, although some bishops or tribunals may impose a waiting period or some type of penance or temporary excommunication (refraining from communion) before permitting remarriage. Basically no-one has a backbone on the divorce issue, no matter where you look.
Perfect – This is what I do not understand about annulment. I don’t see these women being restored spiritually or biologically. So the church states that the marriage never happened…whatever. She is not restored and she is not marriage material, especially for the upstanding single, rich, gorgeous and Godly man she thinks she deserves. The sad thing is no one, the Catholic forum, her church and certainly not her peers are willing to even counsel her on this fact.
As someone confirmed, her behavior and belief that she is somehow entitled to a husband is only part of the problem. The church, the congregation, and of course other women encourages this attitude. It’s the Jenny Erickson effect. I have told several women they don’t deserve the perfect man they are looking for. Oh my do they get pissed.
This is a cultural issue that unfortunately arises from the ideology of annullments. The problem is a conflation of the Church’s sacramental marriage with the actual de facto “worldly” marriage. Someone who has a decree of nullity was not, in fact, ever married sacramentally so they are free to marry (again) in the Church. But … of course even though there was no *sacramental* marriage, there certainly was a civil marriage, followed by a civil divorce. This “matters” in the sense of the impact on the individuals, their lives, their baggage, their subsequent candidacy as a spouse and so on, because the civil marriage and civil divorce actually happened, and so they have actual impacts on the individuals concerned, regardless of whether the marriage was sacramental or not. In other words, just because one was never sacramentally married in the eyes of the Church does not mean that the real civil marriage one had, as well its breakdown and divorce, and all of the baggage coming from that, *also* never happened — it all surely did happen. There is, however, an unfortunate “cultural” tendency among some Catholics to pretend that a decree of nullity means that the person was never really married, and so that therefore they don’t have the same baggage as a “generic divorced person” does, because it’s all wiped away. That’s nonsense. All the decree of nullity does is affirm that there was no sacramental marriage. It doesn’t wipe away the factual reality of the civil marriage and divorce that took place, and all of the personal baggage that come from that. Again, this is a kind of cultural issue among some (not all) Catholics which arises from a misunderstanding of what an annullment actually is, and what it isn’t.
Novaseeker, well said. I like your idea of being more legalistic about the pre-marriage process. I could see a form listing the Church’s requirements on marriage, with a place for them to sign each item saying that they consent to it, with nice big lettering and a signature space at the bottom where they agree that they’ve given up their right to argue non-consent forever.
It’s still possible you could get someone who lied about it, and the other spouse could apply for an annulment, but the bar would be set higher. You’d have to find some evidence of that, not just, “Well, yeah, we took those classes, but we didn’t really pay that much attention; we were in love, man!”
In short, the Church has an annulment problem because she has a marriage problem; and because Catholics currently live way too much “of the world” rather than only “in the world,” so they absorb the general society’s attitude that divorce is okay — or as Dalrock has shown, a positive good. The Church teaches that divorce doesn’t exist, while marrying people whose lives are inundated with it.
It’s like if you fed your whole family nothing but high-carb junk food, and then every few years had to get them liposuction because they kept getting so fat. The obvious solution would be to change their diet, but that would require that you reeducate them and monitor them closely, and it would cause pain and suffering in the meantime. Plus, it would be mean to tell someone he can’t have his favorite foods anymore.
Also, the people in charge, for the most part, are still very liberal/feminist, so they wouldn’t want to do anything that would keep a woman from getting away from a Bad Man and starting a new life, any more than their Protestant or secular counterparts would. As you mentioned with Kaspar, if anything, they’d like to loosen things up further. That won’t change for another decade or so when enough of them have died off to break their power.
@Novaseeker
I think this is it, and I would argue that beneath the surface this is closely tied to the equally widespread discomfort with headship.
On a related note, you have pointed out that something like 80% of the world’s RCC annulments occur in the US, with only a very small percentage of Catholics living in the US. The Archdiocese of Boston explains that this isn’t proof that the US has too many annulments granted, but that the rest of the world has too few. From Misconceptions About Declarations of Nullity (emphasis mine):
The Archdiocese of Boston explains that this isn’t proof that the US has too many annulments granted, but that the rest of the world has too few:
It’s just crazy isn’t it?
Instead of talking about what a godawful scandal it is that so many Catholics are so poorly catechized by the Church and so poorly prepared for marriage that they manage to enter it without understanding and consenting to what they are actually doing, instead the focus is on vindicating “rights” and “justice”.
Justice for whom? For the people who had their heads up their asses when they got married? For the kids who now come from a broken home?
Such brazenness.
@ Conundrum,
This is an easy fix that you are complicating too much.
You have a difficult client. And you are not getting compensated for the aggrivation of dealing with the arrogant idiot.
Tell Sis that your firm is forcing you to charge fees on the account and those may be “very high”. Make sure the fees are enough for you to tolerate BIL at family functions. One of two things will happen. 1) They pay and you can feel better about dealing with BIL since your wallet is fatter 2) They will take their money elsewhere in which case you will no feel bad making them anymore rich AND would not feel bad if you boss the BIL back.
Just remember make the fees HIGH… you have already put up with a lot. No need in making continued family/business easy for them.
Novaseeker says, “only a fool does favors for people who are openly dissing him.”
However, Romans 5:8 says, “But God commends his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.”
I’m going to go ahead and say that Jesus was NOT a fool. In fact, I’ll even toss out this bit of scripture from Matthew 5:22b, “… but whosoever shall say, Thou fool, shall be in danger of hell fire.” As Christians we are to emulate Christ (it’s right there in the name). I would be careful about referring to Jesus as “a fool” because He did favors (to the point of laying down his Life) for people who were “dissing” Him.
@ Cunundrum – just as Catholics – like the divorced alpha-widow this thread is about – ought to go to scripture for their answers and stop looking once they find them – so should you. Like most issues, this one isn’t all that complicated if you want to follow the clear teachings of the Bible. The words of Jesus Himself from the Sermon on the Mount give you the unambiguous answer you’re looking for:
_________________________________________________
Some of the stuff you’ll see here is no less heretical that the crap you’ll find on CAF, and some people here will tell you to lash out in “righteous anger.” Not so, as shown above. That may be the “natural” reaction, but Isaiah 55:8 reminds us that, “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, says the LORD.” Which pairs nicely with Proverbs 14:12 and 16:25: “There is a way which seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death.”
_________________________________________________
As with most things, knowing the right thing is easy – although doing it may require you to trust God rather than your carnal nature. We all struggle with that every day, though.
@Cail Corishev
It strikes me as a case of swearing by the altar instead of the
goldgift on the altar, or a sort of sacramental crossing of the fingers.I’m not Roman Catholic so I’m on the outside looking in. But on the annulment issue, a couple of things strike me.
It seems that in every RC marriage, one of the parties is Catholic, of course. And almost all the time, one of the parties was raised Catholic and brought up in the faith (otherwise it seems that marriage in the RC church wouldn’t be happening or all that important to the participants). First communion, baptism, catechism, in many cases parochial school, the whole nine. And then, almost all the time, it’s the lifelong Catholic who wants the post-civil divorce annulment.
It just cannot be said in good faith that a lifelong Catholic, raised in the faith and catechized from birth through high school, doesn’t know the RC positions on marriage, divorce, birth contrl, family, etc.
Second, as Nova says, there has to be evidence to support the lack of knowledge or defect in consent to an RC marriage and all that entails. Well, it would seem that the evidence to support an annulment is something like this:
“My name is Annie Annulmentseeker and I hereby swear/affirm/testify under oath on pain of penalty of perjury that I have been a member in good standing of the Roman Catholic Church. I was first communioned at 7 and baptized at 12. I am a member of ___________ Parish and have been for the last 25 years, since I was baptized at age 12. I hereby swear and testify that at the time of my marriage to Billy Beta and at all times before, I did not understand that I could not end my marriage through divorce. I did not understand that the RC Church prohibits all forms of artificial birth control. Had I known and understood these things, I would not have entered into a marriage to Mr. Beta in the RC Church.”
Well it seems to me that pretty good evidence against this is Annie’s lifelong RC membership. Her testimony of lack of knowledge is simply not credible. Here’s someone who’s been a lifelong RC member, who claims she didn’t know anything about Church teachings on these things? That’s ridiculous.
Okay… back to the topic. This chick is a mess, and it’s hard to know where to begin unpacking it. Her first problem is that she’s Catholic, but that’s a thread for another day, but since we’re talking about her marriage prospects, and some Catholics have good marriages, I’ll skip past that part.
1) She is already married, as Under Dog pointed out, and much to the chagrin of the CAF harpies and white knights. I find it telling that they responded with, “she got an annulment, so she’s not married in the eyes of the church.” It’s important to understand that when Catholics say “the church” they mean the Roman Catholic organization based in the Vatican – NOT the Bride of Christ. And, as Under Dog reiterated, being annulled in the eyes of some guys in pointy hats is not the same as being annulled in the eyes of God.
2) She’s an alpha widow. She dumped her husband for what she claims are “good” reasons, and she says she married him out of fear – whatever that means… so God used the nice bishop to give her a do-over. However… divorced women are risky. Alpha widows are also risky. Divorced alpha widows? She must be joking.
3) She thinks God is driving this entire process. She thinks God allowed her to “dump the chump” she was married to. Then that He put that “yummy” guy in her path after she betrayed her vows so she could experience “real”… something. From her description of the relationship I’d guess the feeling is lust. But… he broke her heart (makes me suspect the guy was a player, which means she probably slept with him – she doesn’t say, naturally). Then God jumped through all sorts of hoops so that she could get the kind of guy she was asking for (a good Catholic guy who seems willing to at least entertain the idea of wifing her up). And after all that, she’s mad at God because “Steady Catholic Eddie” doesn’t ring her chimes like “Macho Sinner Sam” did. I thought Catholics said the Lord’s Prayer all the time… “lead us not into temptation.” Whatever led her to the courthouse to get her divorce, then the next guy’s bed, then into the arms of the current guy – I suspect it was not God.
4) She’s old. She wants to have kids, but at 34, her prime years of fertility (and youthful appearance) are already behind her, and what she retains is fading rapidly.
That will do for now – maybe more later.
@Conundrum,
First, you don’t have to put up with any abuse from your brother-in-law. Grow a spine and tell him to knock it off. He’s bossing you around and you’re doing nothing to stop it, so in effect you’re telling him that it’s OK. It isn’t. The fact that you’re letting him boss you around only diminishes his already low opinion of you. He doesn’t respect you and you’re giving him no reason why he should. Standing up to him will likely earn you more respect in his eyes than being weak.
Second, I’d tell him and your sister that professional constraints no longer allow you time to manage their account. Tell them to transfer their account to someone else and no longer be a party to their finances. From your OP, their combined income is well north of $500K a year. They should be able to afford their own financial manager and do well on their own.
Third, I hope what you say about how he treats your sister is true but suspect it isn’t. It’s quite likely he’s treating her poorly in private. He sounds like someone who resents the success of others and his poor social skills are one of the many things that’s holding him back.
Fourth, as a minor nit, when you said: “Despite how easy his life is relative to almost any other man, he is always so stressed out that he has psoraisis, which is an unsightly skin disease, caused by stress.”
Psoraisis is an auto-immune disease where a person’s immune system attacks the body. It isn’t caused by stress but stress can make it worse. I know because I’ve had it for years. There is no cure but there are a range of topical treatments that can temporarily make it better. For very severe cases, there are UV light treatments but still no cure. Compared to other auto-immune diseases like ALS and MS, psoraisis is minor. Psoraisis can increase the chances of other problems like psoriatic arthritus.
She’s a trollop, a disgusting whore masquerading as a devote Churchian. Only be serious about virgins, the rest need to join nunneries.
https://time.com/3222422/vatican-catholic-church-nuns-nunquisition/
Would someone please think of the nuns!
From the catholic forum site:
“The instructions of Our Lord come to us through the Church. I’ll follow that Authority over someone who can’t spell ‘Protestant’ correctly. The Church says Sydney28 was never married.”
….. I want what he smoking…..
Boxer says:
September 1, 2014 at 10:24 pm
You are absolutely correct. Annulments are de facto divorces as practiced by the modern day Catholic Church in the U.S. As others have noted, there are legitimate instances where a declaration of nullity can be dispensed, but the U.S. church simply uses the annulment as a pastoral tool to make people feel better about themselves.
I’d bet a considerable sum of money that well-meaning Catholic friends in this case encouraged this woman to nuke what was probably a salvageable marriage, knowing that an easy annulment was awaiting her.
Now look where she is.
The Church can say she was never married…however that still doesn’t absolve two things.
1) She’s 34
2) She has a history of breaking vows and/or leaving men, and pining for men in potentially sinful relationships
These are the things working against her in getting married and raising a family. Not how the Catholic church sees her marital status.
@Deti
Small point: Roman Catholic babies are baptised when just a few weeks old – otherwise they might end up in Limbo with all those pagan Philosophers. They then learn their catechisms off by heart; first Confession, first Communion and then Confirmation in that order, all by about the age of nine – so perhaps they just forgot that God does not like Divorce or The Pill or Abortion or any sort of sex outside of Marriage. Everyone knows not to marry their first cousin or their Mother and that Marriage must be consummated (per Vaginum) – after, though not before, as that does not count, the wedding.
It is curious is it not that if women hate the evil Patriarchy – and nothing is more patriarchal than The Roman Catholic Church – that nevertheless, women, who are otherwise so disobedient of its strictures should seek Church approval before re-marrying.
I must say – and I once represented a woman who sought an annulment from The Church, even though she had happily divorced rather than merely sought an annulment in the Family Court – that the ease with which annulments are apparently now granted by the Catholics makes a mockery of the Sacrament of Marriage (as they see it) as well as acting as an insult to men, for I assume as with the civil law the main applicants are of the female sex.
Family Courts grant few annulments.
@conundrum….
have him check out beinhealth.com website (if he’s a believer of sorts). They have identified the spiritual roots to disease (decades) and have a huge track record of giving folks tools to heal themselves of maladies…..
spiritual root of psoriasis: Psoriasis: Spirits of: self-bitterness, self-rejection, self-hatred, self pity and guilt; lack of self-esteem; conflict with identity; fear of abandonment.
Sounds like could fit your BIL. Anyway – I would suggest delving deeply in their teachings (all biblical) and sort some things out…..
I talked with a guy in my diocese where one of the jobs he does is determining if a marriage is to be annulled. He told me that he does everything he can in his power during the investigative process to keep the marriage together and that is the goal. Then he submits his findings to the Archbishop.
Not sure if it is like that elsewhere…but he made it sound like getting an annulment wasn’t such a slam dunk case. Perhaps many people are just deciding to not marry in the church these days or are forced into it because of circumstances (like a pregnancy) that there never was a Godly marriage to begin with.
Conundrum:
From my own experience, never ever do work for family or friends that is not trivial in nature because they will take it for granted and blame you for anything that goes wrong. It is lose lose. And you will resent it more every day.
In fact, your ambivalence tells me that you really shouldn’t be handling it anymore, you cannot trust your subconscious not to sabotage her.
Don’t start charging them. Tell them you have too much work to handle it and suggest some individuals to handle it for them. Do not back down, get out. If they argue, the best way to handle it is be obtuse, repeat that you are too busy and shake your head. That’s it. Do not explain further, do not argue, do not address their arguments either, simple reiterate that you can’t do it. Do not weasel or back down.
Be the villain. That’s part of being a man
If you are being mistreated, I suggest leaving. Don’t say anything but leave. It is the simplest and most effective way of handling things.
But you still have to ask yourself…”What was the reasoning behind a woman who claims to be Catholic going and marrying a guy outside the church?”
People make mistakes but that type of mistake deserves investigation and her complete cooperation when a guy questions her about her annulment.
All an annulment is that the marriage didn’t exist in the eyes of the church. A relationship however still did exist.
Cail Corishev says:
September 2, 2014 at 6:15 am
I see what she meant now. Cail thank you for explaining that.
Earl Translation: Catholic church = that poster
Yep, that’s how I understood him.
Her marriage status churchwise or legalwise shouldn’t be the topic of discussion anyway.
Her age and her pining for men or leaving men is what needs that bright light of truth shined upon.
The white knights can’t rationalize those things…they’ve already shown they will rationalize what the church says about her marriage status.
Novaseeker – Basically no-one has a backbone on the divorce issue, no matter where you look.
Even the church fathers weren’t completely in alignment on this issue, but they did have backbone. None that I read about were even close to what is commonly practiced today.
sonofdeathswriter says:
September 2, 2014 at 9:45 am
From the catholic forum site:
“The instructions of Our Lord come to us through the Church. I’ll follow that Authority over someone who can’t spell ‘Protestant’ correctly. The Church says Sydney28 was never married.”
I don’t recall Under Dog even using the word “Protestant” on that thread. Maybe from an old post somewhere, and PolarGuy keeps records of dissenters.
Okay, I see it now. It was misspelled in the information box for Under dog.
@Earl
This is strange given the fact that the RCC requires that the couple first divorce before considering the question of annulment.
When I was single I dated three Catholic girls. One was – I think – the real deal. The other two were a pair of sisters who didn’t adhere to the “no fornication” parts of Scripture. (I did not have sex with either one – although in both cases the offer was on the table… and the bed… and the floor… and the dresser…).
The one I got most serious with was a 20-year-old widow (she had been married to my college room-mate for less than a month when he was killed in an accident). As far as I knew she had never been with anyone but him, and he was dead. If I had to say that any one single event provided the tipping point for our break-up, it would be that I told her I would not marry a Catholic. Frankly, I’m not sure why she thought it was a big deal – she had had sex with her husband before they were married, she tried VERY hard to have sex with me, she did not attend mass or participate in any of the other RCC “sacraments” with any regularity, and she only wanted one child (“One little girl that I can spoil!” – Yikes). In other words, she was a typical American Catholic girl – she considered herself to be a Catholic because her family was nominally Catholic. Yet the pull of Rome is vast, and despite the fact that she hinted at marriage, when I told her that she would have to give up the label (she had already given up most of the practices), she balked. I imagine that if I had been willing to marry her she would not have demanded my conversion as a condition (which would have been a deal-breaker for me, of course).
I suppose that would have given her and some “bishop” enough reason to annul it later. She was pretty hot, but I thank God that I dodged that bullet.
I have to say: In all my time in college, then grad school, then dating as a mid-20s bachelor, I never once met a Catholic girl or woman who explicitly said she would remain a virgin until her wedding. Never once. Every unmarried American Catholic girl I ever met above age 16 was sexually active or desperately wanted to be. (The easiest girls to move from meeting to sex were Catholic.) Every American Catholic girl I ever met above age 18 had no moral qualms whatsoever about premarital sex or about using artificial birth control. Most who were sexually active were on the pill. Those who weren’t, used condoms or diaphragms (Norplant was just becoming available then). As for Catholic men: same thing. Never once met an unmarried Catholic man who took seriously Church teachings on sexual morality or contraception.
I am sure there were such men and women. I suspect they’re quite rare, though, and have been for a long time.
I offer this not as criticism but as mere observation.
deti,
As much as I criticize the RCC, I have to say that girls who go to Protestant churches aren’t much better than girls who go to Catholic churches when it comes to saving their virginity until marriage, although they don’t tend to be as overtly slutty. I’m pretty sure that every single girl in the church where I grew up either was sexually active, or at least had no strong objection to becoming so. I don’t know about the guys, but I suspect it was similar. The only one that I know was voluntarily celibate in my church was me. When I returned to that church for a time years later, there was one young man in his 20’s who I am sure was saving it, but he’s the only one I would put money on.
I understand the risks of trying to extrapolate from a small sample size, but my personal anecdotal experience matches yours. Although few of the Protestant girls I dated were virgins; had I been so inclined, the easiest for me to bed – by far – would have been the two Catholic sisters I mentioned up-thread.
Having said that, once I got my commission and the military started sending me to different places, I attended a variety of churches and met some girls (and guys) that seemed to be serious about their chastity. I eventually married one. Like you, I imagine they were in the minority.
I am sure there were such men and women. I suspect they’re quite rare, though, and have been for a long time.
Certainly. What there is are a small faithful remnant who abides by the Church, and a large mass of people who are Catholic because they were raised Catholic, but who don’t follow many of the teachings of the Church, especially those on sexuality. It’s well known, for example, that most American married Catholic couples artificially contracept, knowing full well that this is a serious sin in the eyes of the Church. It typifies the attitude on many issues, I remember from growing up ad being Catholic until around age 30. Orthodoxy, again, isn’t any better here and follows a similar pattern of the faithful remnant and then the people who are culturally Orthodox and don’t follow all of the teachings or practices of the Church.
I have to say, I have never been a Protestant, but to be honest it seems like most Protestants (and not just mainline ones) follow the predominant cultural sexual mores — again, other than for a smallish faithful/moral remnant.
Aherm!
Guity as charged…
A few people have asked why it is that a supposedly ‘devout’ Catholic woman does not seem to know the laws of the Catholic Church…
Um…given the breadth of information I have received from this thread alone, may I confess (yes, mea culpas all round) that though I myself am what one would call a ‘cradle catholic’, I didn’t know half the stuff (for example, about annulments) that some distinguished commenters have taken the time to explain.
Thank you so much, especially Novaseeker and Cail. And (I am afraid) Remo is also justified in his righteous anger.
I attended a pre-Cana class just before my wedding last year (as did my husband) but neither of us knew this much detail about annulments (not that we would want to know!) but the point I am trying to make is that it IS indeed possible to be brought up catholic all one’s life and not know The Church’s teaching *in full*. Of course one would hope that one knows the basics…
For sure, I feel bad about this lack, as I am sure others do.
It was a good point to make.
Yes, one of the criticisms of The Catholic Church is that as catholics, we ‘graduate’ too early. I for example had my First Holy Communion aged seven, and was confirmed a year later.
Looking back, this was way too young. I am happy to see that my nephews and nieces are getting confirmed aged fourteen and over. This makes more sense to me.
Not trying to make excuses for me and my generation of catholics – I do think that whatever one learns in catechism classes should just be ‘the first step’, and then you’re on your own after that, and should build up on your catholic knowledge yourself as an adult…wherever you can find such information – for example on Dalrock’s blog! 😉
Feministhater,
You want the women who are not virgins to join the NUNNERY?
God is alpha and he wants the best, not the rejects of men! 🙂
Just teasing – I think I get your point…
I don’t know where the talk of a kid came in. I checked the original post and did not find any mention of a child.
If that were the case, that a child was created, would that have disallowed the annulment?
If it would not have disallowed it, and the marriage never existed due to the annulment, would this woman’s actions then consigned that child to purgatory as being a child conceived out of wedlock?
If that was the case, what does god have to say about the nature of an activity that involuntarily consigns someone to purgatory or hell after the fact without volition on the consignee’s part?
I would hope that since they are devout RC’s that there was no child from the first marriage, and that no mother would do that to a child.
Then I remember AWALT.
“I have to say, I have never been a Protestant, but to be honest it seems like most Protestants (and not just mainline ones) follow the predominant cultural sexual mores — again, other than for a smallish faithful/moral remnant.”
Correct as usual. The difference between the Catholics and Protestants on this score is that Prots are more hypocritical about it. Catholics have premarital sex and use birth control. They know it’s wrong but they do it anyway and don’t get too terribly conflicted about it.
Sarcasm alert:
We prots are very proud of our sexual “morality” and use it as a bludgeon to judge everyone else. Prots are also the typical Evangelical American Princesses that Bskillet used to write about. Oh so sanctimonious and precious and lily white – until Harley McBadboy and F*ckbuddy Rockbanddrummer show up, that is. Prot girls slut around too, but work hard to conceal it from everyone else to put on their veneer of respectability. And they do this with varying degrees of knowledge of their parents and their church elders. A few know; most are none the wiser and are utterly clueless about the raging whores and disease-ridden sluts sitting in their pews week after week.
Poster could hire a husband http://www.husbandinc.biz/
@ Deti
When I was growing up, at the church my family attended there was a small, core group of guys who were fairly serious about their faith. I was one of them. There was a 4-6 year age spread between us, but we were all friends to some degree or another. A couple of men in that group are married now, and think that there was a good chance they married as virgins. As for those of us in the group who aren’t married, I don’t think any of us have fallen into sin. But we were, and are, the exception. I don’t think anyone else in our church, the other young men and women, actually followed what the Church teaches.
I should note that the married guys married women from outside that church.
Truth is, with only a few rare exceptions, if you want to find actual, devout Catholics who live their faith you will have to go to a Traditional parish (church), as in one that says the Latin Mass. Only in communities like that are you apt to find the faith actually practiced. As Novaseeker explained, most are culturally Catholic- only a small faithful remnant actually remains. Although it should be pointed out that the remnant is certainly out-breeding the Cafeteria Catholics.
Also, I wanted to echo Spacetraveler. Right now the Catholic Church does an awful job actually teaching doctrine and practices of the faith. Almost everything I know about the faith now is what I have learned on my own, through my own initiative. Unless a parish (church) has a really great pastor, most are on their own in this regard. Again, things might be different at a Traditional parish.
At what point does “fervent prayer” hinder genuine personal insight and honesty?
This woman’s problem is a personal one she believes is a spiritual one. And that’s really the root of most intergender issues in the church, it’s a much easier solution to believe it’s not ‘God’s plan’ than to look in the mirror. She can blame men’s lack of adhering to ‘God’s plan’ or even her own bum luck that His plan doesn’t include her having kids or being 80 on the porch drinking lemonade with the husband of her youth, but she wont see her own participation in what’s resulted in her hurting.
Why hasn’t God delivered the husband she is praying for?
I think the answer is “I sent you a rowboat, as speedboat, and a helicopter. What more did you want?”
If that were the case, that a child was created, would that have disallowed the annulment?
No.
If it would not have disallowed it, and the marriage never existed due to the annulment, would this woman’s actions then consigned that child to purgatory as being a child conceived out of wedlock?
No, Catholic canon law deals with this issue specifically by saying that children born into a putative marriage, which is later declared to be null, are legitimate and therefore not considered to have been born out of wedlock — Canon 1137: “The children conceived or born of a valid or putative marriage are legitimate.” Marriages entered into in the Church are presumed to be valid unless proven otherwise. A putative marriage refers to the period from the time the marriage was entered into until the time that a decree of nullity is issued.
So, in summary, a decree of nullity says there was no sacramental marriage from the beginning, but the marriage was still a “putative” marriage before the decree of nullity, so the actions taken during that time are considered for these purposes to have been actions taken during a marriage, rather than “out of wedlock”.
The qualms I have mostly with the sexual sins (and this was after reading St. John Bosco’s vision of hell)…is that they are connected to the worst sins of pride and disobedience.
They aren’t the most deadly necessarily…but they are certainly the gateway sins to pride and disobedience. Those by far are the deadliest and ugliest. And in John Bosco’s vision the sins of impurity, pride, and disobedience were tied together.
And that is why women shouldn’t dabble in sexual sins far much more than men and shouldn’t be given birth control to make that reality easier. Men shouldn’t either but men can also have a prodigal son moment when they realize fornicating, being arrogant, and being a disgrace to their father leaves them starving in a foreign land. I’m not sure women have that kind of self-awareness.
@ conumdrum
I have not read all the responses to your question, but at least disagree with the first responses you obtained. Since you are in a christian blog, hereis imho a christian answer.
1. What should i do the next time he bosses you around? Obey willingly with joy. If somebody asks for your cape, give him your garment also, walk one mile, give him two and so on. Since he is as well a work of mercy to teach to the one who does not know, you will have to find a way to explain to him how to behave. I do not know the details of your case, but I would say something the next time he bosses you around, while you are alone with him so he does not loose face in front of your sister something like ” it is customary as well to add a please to a request for help”. It is important that you are not ironic or challenging him, since you are actually doing the thing he asked from you.
2. Should i continue making money for him? Answer, yes, with joy. Bless your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.
I could write more, but i am busy and you probably get the point.
Now we are getting close to it, the Sphere’ cliches notwithstanding. Men do this too with the lord will send me a wife and yet he is still an AFC and drops the ball with women, refusing to change himself and justifying his “nice guy” ego. Its no different here. She made a string of bad decisions that lie not with her spirituality or faith but in chasing her gina tingles and her innate hypergamy. Her attitude is one of entitlement. She is but the typical example of most churched women. As previously stated in varying ways, no one will tell her what her problem is. Not the church and certainly not the white knights. She will likely not read this thread, so she will continue on towards eventual unhappiness.
The best we can do is avoid women like this and although untactful spread the word that such behavior is unacceptable.
@conundrum
Wrote your name wrongly. Please read my previous answer.
Get thee to a nunnery! is becoming a less of an option….
Religious Sisters, 1965: 179,954
Religious Sisters, 2014: 49,883
http://cara.georgetown.edu/caraservices/requestedchurchstats.html
I’m not Catholic so I don’t know much about this, but could this whole easy-to-obtain annulment business be related to the decline of nuns? (In addition to a plethora of other factors related to Feminism.)
That’s a 72% decline since 1965.
Thanks, all. The advice has varied a lot, but it seems that Novaseeker, modsgamer, Ra’s al Ghul, and others have given me good ideas of what I should do.
In case it wasn’t clear from my original comment, my sister is 6-months pregnant at the moment (they also have a 17-month-old first child), so if I bring this up now, and decide to discontinue generating money for them, I will certainly be framed as the villain.
They have plenty of money of their own, as I mentioned, but the timing will surely be used to frame me as the villain, even if my BIL should be the one facing the consequences of his own actions.
Also, they can’t go elsewhere to get these returns. No other Hedge Fund manager with these returns takes clients that small (and I only did because she was my sis, AND I wasn’t charging her fees. The whole thing was my mother’s idea). If I terminate the arrangement, they have no other place to go for such returns.
@ Deti and Lynn
Something that occurred to me is that the “Purity culture” was and is less influential in Catholic circles than it was and is in Protestant circles. Perhaps those Catholic girls who were so willing to “give it up” (as compared to Protestant girls) were that way because they never received the kinds of lessons about sex being bad that most Protestant girls received. Both types of women are equally sensual, but the Protestant women were/are simply more repressed about it all.
Conundrum, it’s sounds to me like your BIL is trying to find a chicken lower on the peck order than him. That would be YOU. Based on what you said about your sister’s attitude towards you he’s probably picked up the social cues to decide to use you to get off the bottom rung. Worldly advice would be to AMOG him, to assert yourself in the hierarchy, to let him know who is boss. Jesus was asked who would be the greatest in the kingdom of Heaven. Are you a believer?
deti – Correct as usual. The difference between the Catholics and Protestants on this score is that Prots are more hypocritical about it. Catholics have premarital sex and use birth control. They know it’s wrong but they do it anyway and don’t get too terribly conflicted about it.
Did I misunderstand you or do I misunderstand the meaning of hypocrisy?
There is also this, discontinuing managing their fund might be precisely what your BIL wants. You could very likely be embarrassing him, and making him feel emasculated. Your description of him makes me suspect that he is highly status minded and to have a lower status (as he perceives) individual outperforming him is bound to be causing a lot of cognitive dissonance. You are demonstrating power in one way and not in another (as far as he can tell). It may be a kindness to cut them loose, for him and their marriage.
God is the ultimate patriarch. If you reject patriarchy, you also reject God.
Everyone assumes this lady had sex with the ex-boyfriend. Who knows but it does not substantially change the picture so no need to assume worst of a stranger (even if given our culture that is highly probable).
The problem is mostly that she is delusional about life and expectations about love. I think if she is not head over heels for her current interest she should set him loose with the understanding she is not likely to do better. Feeling deep infatuation fades anyway so not great basis for decision making and probably a bad one for marriage especially when approaching the wall. If she wants to be married she may not get all she wants, but expecting God to fix it is so narcissistic and first world. God is not going to make everything all right in this life. Sometimes we do our best and thins just don’t work out. It’s life. She will have greater chance of success/tolerate suffering better by accepting the pool of men interested in a 34 yo divorcee is smaller and different than the pool she faced when younger.
I’m not Catholic so I don’t know much about this, but could this whole easy-to-obtain annulment business be related to the decline of nuns? (In addition to a plethora of other factors related to Feminism.)
Not directly, I think.
The convents began to decline in the 70s when they started to become untraditional — the sisters dropped their habits (clothing for nuns) for secular clothes, moved out of the convents and into apartments, and began living like secular people in many ways — and many of them came under the sway of feminism, full stop. The ones who didn’t like this left the orders — my mother had a close friend who did this, because she saw no difference between living outside the order and living how the nuns were then living. That kind of thing repeated itself a lot, and the number of nuns severely plummeted.
The underlying factors were similar but not the same. The annulments situation is, in my opinion, something that is a direct response to the chaos created by the sexual revolution, and how the Catholic Church is trying to deal with that pastorally (not the best way, in my view, but I think that’s what it is). The situation with the nuns happened more or less directly in the chaos of the wake of Vatican II, when, in the years from late 60s through the 70s and into the 80s, basically almost every single aspect of the life of the Catholic Church was radically changed to become much more “in step” with contemporary life. The timing could not have possibly been worse for this, coinciding as it did with two major social revolutions that were taking place in contemporary life at the time: the second wave of feminism, and the sexual revolution. It was a time of great confusion in the Church, and everything was turned upside down. Vocations across the board crashed — not just nuns, but religious brothers and priests, too.
The situation has recovered somewhat, and there are smaller orders now that are gaining some traction and are very traditional. At the same time, there are older nuns remaining in some of the oldline orders who are very, very feminist, and the Vatican under Benedict started to crack down a bit on them.
None of that is really that closely related to what the tribunals are doing, however. The thinking isn’t “better give her an annulment because she can’t go to the convent”, but rather “how do we keep these people in the Church somehow, despite this mess that has happened in their lives which will likely not be undone?”.
@Conundrum
Perhaps this isn’t a perfect parallel, but it’s working for me. I’ve loaned money to both of my brothers and to a good friend, at the end of the day, relatively trivial amounts. I still expect that I will get paid back from two of them. Eventually.
What I’ve learned from this is that I will never again loan money casually. If I ever loan money in the future, it will involve a contract nearly as comprehensive as you’d get borrowing from the bank.
I think unless you’ve been burned, it’s very easy to do business with family on a much more casual basis than you would with strangers and then when(if) things go sideways, there aren’t clear guidelines on how to handle the situation.
So, it seems that the best solution is to shift their account to another manager with as little explanation as possible.
Then, regarding the treatment by your BIL, unless you would put up with that kind of treatment by a random stranger, there is really no reason to put up with it from him either. When I was first divorced, I remember arguing and fighting with my ex until one day I realized that I didn’t have to any more. Now, if she calls me up wanting to criticize me about something. I ask if she’s got something useful to discuss, because if all she wants is to tell me how much she doesn’t like what I’ve done, then I’m hanging up on her. It didn’t take more than a handful of hang ups before she realized that I was no longer going to put up with behavior that I did before.
Move the account, and treat the BIL just like you would a co-worker who tried to order you around.
I’ve seen several references to divorced women being encouraged to take up the life of a nun. It is my understanding that divorced Catholics can not pursue a life of holy orders (e.g., nun or priest) unless they have also received a declaration of nullity.
@Conundrum, those other two points certainly add to the conundrum, eh?
There is the option, which is to do nothing about the account, but to very emphatically tell the BIL in no uncertain terms the next time he tries to order you around that he is out of line.
You said that their account basically piggy-backs on your day to day work and unless you make a conscious effort to look at their account, you’ve no need to notice.
This sort of reminds me of having offered to help someone move, when that day arrives and you really don’t want to help them, as a man, you go anyway even though there are a hundred other things you’d rather be doing.
If you truly can’t continue to manage their money because of the internal conflict doing so generates, then be up front with them about why they’re going to have to take their money elsewhere, understanding that the consequences might not be pleasant.
With the epidemic of bad catechesis, one could validly argue (no pun intended) that a majority of marriages in the RCC are indeed invalid since many husbands and wives do not understand the covenantal nature of marriage or that fact that it is for life.
@ hurting
A woman can still go to a convent without being a nun. Many orders allow, or used to allow, lay members. And their going to a convent need not be for life- just as long as is necessary for them to turn their life around.
@Conundrum
They have plenty of money of their own, as I mentioned, but the timing will surely be used to frame me as the villain, even if my BIL should be the one facing the consequences of his own actions.
You don’t have to specifically say that you’re no longer managing their money for free because of your brother-in-law’s boorish behavior. Just tell them that you no longer have the time to do it for them. You don’t have to give them any other reason. They’re adults (even if they don’t act like them) who make a good living. Let them take care of their own financial interests. It really shouldn’t be your concern, especially after you got them off to such a good start. It would be different if they were destitute but they’re not. Back in the 1970s, I sometimes saw the following bumpersticker on vans that read, “Gas, grass or ass: nobody rides for free.” Quit letting them ride you for free. You’re a financial professional. If they want your services, they should pay for them.
Handle his behavior towards you as a separate issue on a case by case basis. When he gives you crap, call him on it immediately. You don’t have to take that from him. For that matter, do the same to your sister. She doesn’t respect you because you’ve never given her reason to do so. What you’re doing isn’t going to win her love or respect. Change your passive behavior towards how they treat you.
Spacetraveller says:
September 2, 2014 at 12:04 pm
Persons who grew up Catholic in the USA following Vatican II are pretty poorly catechized in many respects, especially regarding some of the more ‘old school’ church teachings (e.g., marital debt).
That being said, almost every parish conducts not only a short pre-Cana session, but requires prosepctive spouses to approach the Church six months before their planned wedding. In the course of that time, they are to receive tutelage from a parish priest regarding the sacrament. It defies credulity that reasonable adults could claim ignorance.
It bears repeating hear that the overwhelming majority of US annulments are granted on the basis of defective consent, and that this often refers to an inability to consent as opposed to mere ignorance of the Church’s teaching. The US tribunals would have you believe that this major defect of person can and is isolated to the part of the being that relates to being married (e.g., that otherwise reasonable, rational and sane people who can hold down jobs and raise children, etc., were not capable of understanding the requirements of marriage) despite the quite specific counsel from Popes JPII and BXVI that the type of incapacity to consent would be truly debilitating and not likely to be so compartmentalized.
@Novaseeker
Thanks for the synopsis. My takeaway is Feminism corrodes or destroys everything it touches.
Deti, I’m sure, can answer with his own opinion. But the idea of sexuality is put in very much hypocrisy in any feminist-influenced faith (Prots and Catholics are both influenced by it so I won’t get into the denominational war on this one). The hypocrisy in most feminist-influenced circles involve the difference between how men and women are dealt with. Porn is okay for women, but evil for men. It’s okay if a woman gets taken with Harley McBadboy and takes a spin on the Carousel, but if a man gets taken with Hettie Hotstuff and complies with her desire for sex he’s an absolute villain for deceiving the poor girl into sin. It’s okay for a woman to commit adultery in marriage (and the poor girl got pushed into it by that evil man!), but if a man does it, he’s the complete scum of the earth. Same goes for filing for a frivorce.
Of course, the Catholic position over birth control is legendary for hypocrisy, as it came out in the birth control fuss the Catholics put up. From what I read, something like 90-95% of practicing Catholics use birth control. Pointing out this commonality made their objection abjectly absurd.
Churchian entities are seething with hypocrisy. All of them.
Or to TL;DR that, standards for thee but not for me. That is the purest definition of hypocrisy.
Someone posted a link to the website Diversity Chronicle. From their disclaimer page:
The original content on this blog is largely satirical.
JDG:
Many Catholics have premarital sex and use birth control. They know it’s wrong and against church teachings, but they do it anyway.
The point I was trying to make was that Catholics who do this don’t really try to hide or justify it. I don’t believe for a minute that most Catholics having premarital sex or using artificial birth control don’t know this contravenes traditional sexual morality and Catholic teachings.
Protestants, on the other hand, do the same things, but lie about it and conceal it and try to justify it. This is why you have evangelical American princesses who private sluttery is an open secret in most churches, but these same women are able to present themselves publicly as paragons of female virtue and goodness. This is why you have American Churchian protestant wives who demand that their past sexual conduct never be called out for the sin that it is. This is why you have an entire false theology that has sprung up to justify and normalize female sexual sin and to demonize and pathologize male sexual sin.
Another thing here is that Catholics seem to actually have a better handle on the truth of male and female natures. They seem to understand that men want sex; that women seek high status men, and that sex is going to happen. They aren’t as concerned, I think, with outward appearances as affecting their quality of life, as protestants are.
Prots, at least the prots I have grown up with and around and interact with mostly, are positively obsessed with outward appearances and with what others will think of them. Prots also have a tenuous handle at best on the truth of human nature. The prots I’ve known believe that “God’s will” can and will override human nature on a regular basis. To prots, “human nature” is sinful, lustful, bad and unnatural. It’s “Wrong” for a woman to be attracted to a badboy. It’s “wrong” for a man to be attracted to a slender, fit woman with a pretty face, big breasts, firm butt and long legs. On the other hand, Catholics seem more willing to accept human nature as part of life.
donalgraeme,
I suspect you’re right about that. Theoretically, both Protestant and Catholic girls (and boys) should be getting strong messages against premarital sex. That happens in Protestant churches still (I can’t speak for the Catholics: I’ve never been one – and I was expelled from a Catholic kindergarten for heresy because I wouldn’t do one of those pagan ceremonies the Catholics adopted when Rome still ran the world).
But Catholic girls have a reputation that Protestant girls just don’t have. The phrase “Catholic School Girl” conjures up sluts in pleated skirts sneaking around behind the backs of the nuns. Frank Zappa even has a song about them:
Anyway, I’m not sure that Deti is right about Protestant girls being more hypocritical, because it may be that they just try a little harder. Despite the actual doctrine of the RCC, most Catholics I know act as if they believe in what we Protestants call the “Doctrine of Eternal Security.” In other words, they act as if, since they were baptized as infants, that they will go to Heaven no matter what they do (after a stint in Purgatory). Except for Calvinists, most Protestant denominations don’t preach that doctrine.
Anyway, back to my miniscule personal sample – none of the Protestant girls I ever dated tried to initiate PiV with me. Two of the three Catholic girls I dated did: straight-up offers of sex: right here, right now. I have received other such offers and/or signals, but only from women who were not religious at all looking for a hook-up with a relative stranger. That’s not to say that I couldn’t have bedded some of my Protestant girlfriends – I’m fairly certain I could have bedded some of them… but that although the Protestant girls might give it up if asked the right way, the Catholic girls were the ones who were sexually aggressive. The Protestant girls’ “default setting” was NO or perhaps MAYBE, while the Catholic girls’ “default setting” was YES!
YMMV
YMMV indeed. I find the answer to be YES on both counts. At least my experience and what others tell me say this.
I have just had a look (my first) at this particular CAF thread. I love it: Sydney 28 was married but bailed and throughout the thread consistently acknowledges that she was married and is now divorced. Underdog cuts through the crap and goes straight to Biblical authority 1 Cor Ch7 v10 and 11. It could not be clearer. This sends the Catholics into a tizzy – they merely say that there was an annulment (even though Sydney refers to herself as being divorced). Undeterred, Underdog reminds Sydney that she made a vow to God and refers then to Acts 5:29 and Proverbs 3:5.
Can we deduce from the secrecy of Sydney and the fact that she says she entered into the marriage from fear what the ground of the annulment might have been? As she seems to feel the same lack of attraction to her boyfriend as she did to her (non) husband are we looking at some form of lack of consummation – especially when we learn how hot she was for the alpha who left her and that she is so far childless.
Sydney is indeed looking for the Catholic equivalent of Brad Pitt (the unattractive men are under Satan’s sway – she says). The truth is that she seems to be on the verge of marrying her present boyfriend for exactly the same reason she married her annulled husband – fear – and should she do so I would predict another annulment and for the same reason. There are and must be loads of men of Catholic persuasion, perhaps divorced and perhaps with children who are desperate to marry. She says she wants marriage but she is treating her on/off boy friend as a celibate boyfriend. I get the feeling though she would never admit it that it is not marriage that she seeks but permanent indecision (she is only thirty-four for Heaven’s sake) and complaint.
When it comes to the Catholic church and birth control…everything about it and its effects are addressed in Humanae Vitae.
The church itself addresses birth control as a grave sin. It doesn’t matter if 0% or 90-95% of practicing Catholics do it…it is still a grave sin in the eyes of the church. If a Catholic couple willingly uses it they assume all the risks involved taking it.
Maybe someone can explain why birth control is a sin pursuant to the Catholic church.
Contraception is a willing attempt to block the procreative part of the sexual act…and indirectly weakens the union part of it too. Basically it is rebelling against what God designed the sexual function for.
From Humanae Vitae
“Union and Procreation
12. This particular doctrine, often expounded by the magisterium of the Church, is based on the inseparable connection, established by God, which man on his own initiative may not break, between the unitive significance and the procreative significance which are both inherent to the marriage act.
The reason is that the fundamental nature of the marriage act, while uniting husband and wife in the closest intimacy, also renders them capable of generating new life—and this as a result of laws written into the actual nature of man and of woman. And if each of these essential qualities, the unitive and the procreative, is preserved, the use of marriage fully retains its sense of true mutual love and its ordination to the supreme responsibility of parenthood to which man is called. We believe that our contemporaries are particularly capable of seeing that this teaching is in harmony with human reason.”
Does the Catholic Church view non-invasive birth control techniques –tracking menstrual cycles on a calendar, “pulling out,” non-vaginal sex, etc.– to be sinful as well? (Let’s assume I’m talking about marital sex.) Or is it just barrier and hormonal methods that are sinful?
@Deti: It just cannot be said in good faith that a lifelong Catholic, raised in the faith and catechized from birth through high school, doesn’t know the RC positions on marriage, divorce, birth contrl, family, etc.
You’d be surprised. I’ve known Catholics who made it through 18 years worth of Catholic education who had no idea that they were bound under pain of sin to attend Mass every Sunday and Holy Day of Obligation. If they went to a Catholic university, then you can’t even assume that they believe in the divinity of Christ.
Barrier and hormonal. NFP (or the tracking techniques) is fine because you are using the natural cycle God established. Pulling out is a no go (sin of Onan)…and non-vaginal sex from how I understand it must be finished vaginally.
I will add that I have been studying the link between in vaginal ejaculation (dirty words are shorter) and the bonding between husband and wife. It seems that if a man cums in his wife all of the time the bond is exponentially stronger. If you ask divorced men about their sex lives it seems that more often than not condoms or the pulling out method was used.
I’d agree…the chances of divorce go up each time a man pulls out or artificial contraception is used and there are stats to back this up.
And what I’ve told some men before (but they can’t seem to wrap their head around)…her taking birth control or you using a condom is basically a rejection of your seed. How valuable do you think or she thinks you are with that mentality?
I can’t believe this woman is hurting. The women trapped in pre-1960 suburban wifehood were hurting because of a nameless problem. They hurt so much then, they had to destroy marriage as we then knew it in order to find themselves while demanding that men stay the same and wife them up… People who are REALLY hurting are men who ordered their lives around marriage only to find their lives empty…all due to women’s choices. How can we expect them to take women’s emotions seriously after that?
Rollo Tomasi
This woman’s problem is a personal one she believes is a spiritual one. And that’s really the root of most intergender issues in the church, it’s a much easier solution to believe it’s not ‘God’s plan’ than to look in the mirror.
Yeah, I bet she doesn’t rely on God to hand her the soap in the shower in the morning, she surely is able to reach out her own hand and pick it up. If it’s raining outside she doesn’t call on God for an umbrella, likely there’s one near the front door. I bet when she went to college she didn’t expect her own personal chauffeur-God to give her the right answers for the ACT or SAT, either. So she and every other woman is capable of making an effort, for some things, some times. Other times, it’s the job of the God vending machine.
Having seen this kind of mindset a few times it appears to me to be just another version of narcisssim / snowflaking. “I’m such a special snowflake child of God that I get whatever I want when I want it”.
I’ll leave the theology this impllies to others.
Add that to other behaviors that are talked about such as her rushing to clean up or expel the semen. Most men don’t seem to pay attention to this but a women who not only enjoys the mas seed but almost makes an effort to retain it have less of a risk of infidelity. Observing a woman’s behavior, even the seemingly insignificant ones are important.
Lyn87 surely wins some kind of prize for being the first known poster at Dalrock’s to link to a Frank Zappa song, especially one from Joe’s Garage Part 1.
Oh yeah…those little things women do that seem insignificant are actually the most important things to watch for.
This does indeed hit upon many sweet spots for the MRM.
Dalrock nails it with this comment:
“Yet even when she can see the grim reality of the MMP for 30 something divorcées, she can only see the sin of men. In her mind, the reason it is so hard for a mid thirties woman to find a good husband and fall in love is something is wrong with men.”
Unfortunately, we live in a society that panders to the feelings of women. You will never go broke building a business model than tells people what they want to hear.
Women are told (indoctrinated) into believing they can ‘Have it ALL’, and believe that it is all there for the taking. No work required on her part.
However, men are lazy sods who need a good kick in the ass……and clearly this problem is his fault.
Reality bites hard, and men are becoming more and more discriminating in mate selection.
This woman does sound like a TERRIBLE risk for a man to DATE, let alone for MATRIMONY. She cannot even be honest with herself, let alone anyone whom she may be in a relationship.
@ Hurting,
“That being said, almost every parish conducts not only a short pre-Cana session, but requires prosepctive spouses to approach the Church six months before their planned wedding. In the course of that time, they are to receive tutelage from a parish priest regarding the sacrament. It defies credulity that reasonable adults could claim ignorance.”
We did all of this! As a result of meeting with the priest (more than 6 months before the wedding), we were directed to the pre-Cana course, as well as one-on-one ‘lectures’ on marriage with our respective parish priests (we lived in different countries, English is not my husband’s first language… and to ensure we understood correctly what was being said we went to our ‘one-on-ones’ separately each in his/her mothertongue (and for that matter our wedding Mass was conducted in both mothertongues with a specially chosen bilingual priest and in particular we each said our wedding vows in both our own mothertongue and the other’s mothertongue – we spent a lot of time arranging all this, to ensure we knew exactly what was being said at all times, so no excuses, lol).
All of this, and we still feel now that we don’t know enough.
But at least it is good that we know that we don’t know. So we can seek to learn more.
As Donald Rumsfeld said, something about ‘known knowns’ and in our case, ‘known unknowns’…or something like that.
I am not sure we will ever feel we know enough. That may be part of the problem…
But it’s always pleasurable to learn something new, so maybe there is no problem afterall…
Then again, it usually comes as quite a shock when one learns something for the first time that one feels one SHOULD have known, and the immediate visceral reaction is, ‘Oh my God, I didn’t know THAT?’
Have had quite a few of those moments by following this thread so far…
Beefy Levinson says:
September 2, 2014 at 3:35 pm
I’d agree that there are many poorly catechized Catholics out there, particularly those of us raised post-VII. This issue is not so much one of ignorance as it is obstinance in that a great many self-professed Catholics, in survey after survey, express not a lack of understanding of key tenets of Catholic teaching, but an outward disagreement with same. Particularly chilling in this regard is the topic of abortion.
Spacetraveller says:
September 2, 2014 at 3:54 pm
I don’t think the Church fathers ever expected any person to know everything about how married life would affect them, and historically they did expect relatively young persons to be able to understand them. The core elements of Catholic marriage (e.g., permanence until the death of one of the spouses, openness to life) are not that complicated and are not open to debate.
It’s precisely because the Church has tried to repackage its ages old teachings to make them more palatable or relevant or whatever (Cail makes this point better than I do) that people end up confused (or at least get the cover to claim they are confused).
The U.S. tribunals have purposely adopted a ridiculously high and nebulous standard for ‘understanding’ so that they can dispense annulments. You need look no further than the mid-1960’s in this country when annulments exploded; these were granted to people who probably had been catechized fairly well – or at least far better than the generation that followed.
Modsquad,
Those are great points too. One addition.
I’m talking about, have no idea if internal rules have changed, have no idea why I’d be concerned for losing my job.
It is my own firm. I am the boss, so I can’t use that. I would have to modify it to something like ‘I am re-evaluating my workload’ or ‘new government restrictions’ or something.
GodisLaughing,
There is also this, discontinuing managing their fund might be precisely what your BIL wants. You could very likely be embarrassing him, and making him feel emasculated.
Yes, I did mention this in my original comment, and is quite possible. He only contributes 10-15% of his family’s income stream (the rest being from my sister, and me). A happier man might see this as a blessing to do something he loves, since the onus of providership is not on him. But he might very well think what you described, and might well explain why someone who otherwise is ‘smart’ might choose to behave in a manner that would make me want to terminate that income stream…
It really bugs him that he hasn’t demonstrated success on his own (he can’t see what his personality might have to do with that), so your point could very well be true.
The game changer for everyone was artificial contraception. Everything having to do with the explosion of divorce, infidelity, general lower standards of morality and gender wars came from that.
It really complicated a fairly simple process between men and women. Now people have got used to the complication that the simple process for many seems insane.
I really want to fininsh that paper. It would be god to get contributions for it in the way of research and studies, along with the religious aspect and of course the biological observations.
eather Blade
She was young and attractive and a man did marry her.
@deti
“”Every unmarried American Catholic girl I ever met above age 16 was sexually active or desperately wanted to be. (The easiest girls to move from meeting to sex were Catholic.””
Bingo!…..This is the reason that myself and friends targeted the “good little Catholic girls”.They were all on the pill…and they were easy! When I was 18 in 1983,I was driving a 1981 Corvette.Black on Black with the bubble back window,rear lip spoiler.long front end spoiler.I loved that car.The Catholic girls loved us Jew boys because we had the money and the cars.It got me more sex at 18 than I actually needed.The irony is that they would never date us.Their reasoning…”we can hangout but,we cannot date as my parents would never allow me to date or have a Jewish boyfriend”….Translation…”I will give you all the sex you want as long as you chauffeur me around in your Corvette so all my friends can see me”……..I feel sorry for the poor shmoes that married these cum dumpsters!
But she didnt like that one and wantd God to give her another , and another, and another, and another, until she decideds who she likes. Actully come to think of it God really is not part of her thought process, not really anyway.
Anyway, I’m not sure that Deti is right about Protestant girls being more hypocritical, because it may be that they just try a little harder.
This is true. I have been out of the loop for quite some time, but I do know that Protestantism beats the abstinence drum hard, and most Protestant young people really do have every intention of abstaining. The few Catholics I attended school with didn’t seem to have as much angst. They did what they did and that was that. I suspect it’s because of the nature of the way Protestants teach certain things. Of course I’m just guessing, having never attended a Mass.
The behavior might evolve eventually into hypocrisy, but I don’t ever think that’s the case at the outset. Within Protestantism there is a strong drive toward propriety even when the attendant piety is glaringly absent to anyone who dares scratch the surface. It’s more like “hide it from Mom and Dad while agonizing over it while feeling unable to stop.”
And no this is not excusing promiscuity. It is a sin, period. Full stop. I just thought a glimpse into the way women rationalize this kind of stuff might be in order. Men who do it don’t bother. They just leave the church.
From the original post. In a moment of partial clarity the woman in question writes:
Her “trust issues with God” stem from her belief that God has promised her temporal happiness and has chosen a particular perfect man for her to marry (after she detonated her first marriage). God promises us joy, which is different thing entirely – and even that is conditional. She does, however, understand that her MMV and fertility are down and dropping, and that she bears at least some of the blame for her plight. She is almost certainly missing the point about her older friends, though. 1) They are even older than her, which means they have even fewer options than she does, and 2) she doesn’t say why they aren’t married – it’s likely that they spent their best years either not searching, or that their requirements don’t match their own MMV’s.
She’s 34. Using the very rough “half plus seven rule” for men – that translates to “minus seven times two” for women. For a woman her age, with the baggage she carries, a reasonable age for a man is anywhere up to the mid-50’s. I would guess that what she thinks of as her “reasonable age range” tops out around 40 or so, rather than a man old enough to be her father, or at least her uncle. But a man with options (the kind who would inspire the feeling she deems essential) even at the top of her range can date women who are younger and more fertile than her, and with a lot less baggage. That’s why the men are so hard for her to find – a man her age with options doesn’t have to troll “avemariahookups.com” – he can do better than her just by showing up at mass in a nice suit, and the little old ladies will have their daughters and granddaughters lined up for his inspection before Vespers. (One Sunday morning when I was a young Lieutenant I showed up to church in my uniform and before the echo from the last “Amen” had faded away I was being set up with someone’s extremely nice-looking 19-year-old daughter.)
I assume by “devoted to his faith” she would rule out any man who had been frivorced by his wife. Ironic, isn’t it? She also doesn’t see it from the perspective of the kind of man she says she wants. A man who is fighting the good fight and looking for a wife would probably take one look at her and say to himself, “No thanks: I want a woman who is serious about her faith, particularly with regard to marriage… this woman has demonstrated throughout her life that she is not.”
If she’s serious about being a good wife and mother she needs to adjust her sights right about… NOW, get over her pining for the alpha that got away, grow up and start thinking like an adult rather than a love-sick schoolgirl, and propose to her boyfriend… then spend the rest of her days going “all in” on her marriage. I wouldn’t take that bet, and I doubt she’ll get much of that kind of advice on CAF.
Typo from me too:
[Fixed]
Lord knows I don’t want to open that can of worms again.
[Ha!]
This woman has no interest in the truth, or in doing the “right” thing. She just wants God to deliver what she wants, because she is a “devout Catholic”. In my experience, truly devout Catholics are more likely to describe themselves as “faithful”, “orthodox”, etc. I really do not believe anything she says.
alamodicus says:
“With the epidemic of bad catechesis, one could validly argue (no pun intended) that a majority of marriages in the RCC are indeed invalid since many husbands and wives do not understand the covenantal nature of marriage or that fact that it is for life.”
It is set up so that any marriage can be invalidated.
Imagine if a guy that volunteers for the military, I submit none of the understand that fully, and they could get out of it by saying they didn’t fully understand what they were doing.
Its pure nonsense.
What the RCC is doing is nonsense its accepting the secular world and giving women a pass. I’ve seen happen repeatedly.
Finally got to the bottom of the thread. Just a couple of comments.
1. Unhappy marriages happen, and all marriages are stress and unhappy for a season or two (or twenty). But divorce hurts more and longer. If you marry, don’t divorce unless you absoultey have to: and (this is me, it’s not scriptural) I would argue that when the kids are being abused, it’s time to take them and walk. It is better for your faith and sanity to work through problems. You may even grow up a little.
2. Legalistic justifications help no one. The Westminster fellowship warns against them. The Divines were very aware of the slippery slope problem — which the Catholics have just as much as us Prots.
3. If you are divorced, you are damaged goods. You will not get Brad Pitt. If you are in your mid 30s and divorced with a kid I would think twice about going out with you — and I’m 20 years older. Because I am not going to bring crazy or narcassism into my family.
4. We need nunneries and monastories, badly. I think about a third of western society are not really fit for marriage at present, and these people need communities that will care for them and not exploit them (which is what happened when the psychotherapists advised Monks and Nuns that their vows were oppressive).
And this woman forgets that she has damaged her husband, and may have driven him from the church. For that she may have to give account.
Typos… stressed not stress
Westminster Confession not Fellowship.
And I cannot spell monastory. Mea maxima culpa
You should be right, but unfortunately you’re not, and that’s never been more true than for the Catholics raised since 1970. I can say in good faith that I was taught virtually nothing about the faith growing up — certainly none of the controversial bits.
Non-Catholics seem to assume that Catholics are raised and taught very differently, but the truth is that for the most part we attend the same schools (even those who go to parochial schools are taught from the same textbooks except for (maybe) a religion class a few hours a week), watch the same TV shows, shop at the same stores, played with the same toys, etc. Now I know some traditional Catholics who do live a different culture, but I saw nothing of that growing up.
Here’s how my cradle-Catholic upbringing was different from that of my Protestant classmates:
1. I went to Mass on Sunday morning, so for 45 minutes or so I sat through a ritual I didn’t really understand, which was “reformed” in 1967 until it didn’t look particularly Catholic anymore. During this there would be a 5-10 minute sermon which would usually touch on the Scripture readings for the day and exhort us to love our neighbors in some fashion.
2. On Wednesday evenings I went to a one-hour catechism class, at which I suppose we learned a few Catholic prayers like the Ave Maria, but where I mostly remember playing games and making macaroni pictures of Jesus and hearing how He loves me.
3. We made the Sign of the Cross before and after our pre-meal prayer.
4. A few other little things like having an Advent wreath or a crucifix on the wall.
That’s it. Two hours a week, max, engaged in learning the faith, and most of that led by people — priests and teachers — who were embarrassed by any overt show of “pre-Vatican II” Catholicism that might make us look different. That’s it. Humanae Vitae? Papal encyclicals on consent and annulments? You gotta be kidding. I probably barely knew the pope’s name, let alone what he said about anything. None of our teachers would have suggested that an old white guy in Rome could have anything useful to teach us anyway.
So yes, I was baptized Catholic as an infant, given my First Communion at about 7, confirmed at about 15, and even spent some time in Catholic school, all without ever gaining more than the most superficial knowledge of my faith. When I married in another church, I had some vague notion that Catholics historically were forbidden to marry non-Catholics; but I thought that was a relic of an older, less enlightened age, not something that applied to me. (And no one in my Catholic family suggested otherwise.) And I wasn’t unusual in any of that.
Look at it this way: if you’ve been participating here at Dalrock’s long enough that you’ve read at least a couple of these threads that got onto the topic, you know more about Catholic marriage and annulment than the average Catholic bride and groom standing at the altar. Yes, that’s sad; yes, it’s ridiculous and unnecessary and setting up the problem to continue into the future. It’s still the truth.
@Conundrum
Your BIL clearly has character flaws that have hindered his career, and are also hurting his relationship with you. Also he probably feels a sense of inferiority compared to you, which is magnified because your success reminds him of his father.
Thanks to your sister’s career, and your management of her investments, his own provisioning is rendered irrelevant. So irrelevant that he needn’t even bother going to work. While this is in many ways an enviable situation, and one for which he should show some gratitude to you, it puts him in a fix because his life, or at least its material dimension, has no purpose. This would be difficult enough for a stable person to handle; for a person who has weaknesses of character, it could be enough to push him towards destructive behavior.
Your BIL knows by now that he will never equal his father in being “king of the hill”; imagine his dismay when it dawned on him that he would not be the first or even second most important provider for his own nuclear family. His own perceived lack of power is the reason why he needs to boss more successful people around.
I suggest stopping managing your sister’s money, because this job is mixing business and pleasure. The bad news is that the personal strain of enriching a man you dislike, without even collecting fees, is too great for you. The worse news is that if the investments ever have a bad year, you can be sure that BIL will not let you hear the end of it. You don’t need to make a drama about it by telling your sister the full reasons for your withdrawal. Suggest a list of professional fund managers – even if their returns are not as high as yours.
I expect that your sister will understand the importance of professional management – in other words, that she is sane enough not to let her husband take over the portfolio and squander the lot.
I suggest meeting one of the BIL’s BILs for a beer, and mention an example of the BIL’s misbehavior. Pick an example that does not make you angry, and tell it like a funny story. The chances are that he will respond with a story of his own. Even if you don’t try to change anything about your BIL, at least you will have someone to talk to about him.
The most important thing is not to harm your sister’s marriage. Do not humiliate your BIL, especially in front of other people. Inside, he is clearly insecure. Putting him in his place might force him to contain his feelings, but it will not fix him, and it will probably make him resent you even more. I do not think he will improve unless he reassesses his own priorities in life, and I do not know what you could do, if anything, to help that process. Any attempt is likely to backfire.
Try not to let BIL make you angry. Instead, pity him; and humor him. Each time he is bossy towards you, immediately remind yourself that he is doing it only because he envies your success.
@ Lyn
That might have worked in the past, but not anymore. At least, not at any Catholic Church I’ve ever attended. I’ve been complimented on my suit or my tie, but never had anyone try to line up a young lady for me.
@Feministhater
“She’s a trollop, a disgusting whore masquerading as a devote Churchian. Only be serious about virgins, the rest need to join nunneries.”
What do you have against honest Nuns?
@Spacetraveller
“I attended a pre-Cana class just before my wedding last year (as did my husband) but neither of us knew this much detail about annulments (not that we would want to know!) but the point I am trying to make is that it IS indeed possible to be brought up catholic all one’s life and not know The Church’s teaching *in full*. Of course one would hope that one knows the basics… “
A friend is a former missionary to Papua New Guinea and he played Tennis with a Roman Catholic priest. The priest told him that he was a far more knowledgeable theologian than he was as the Catholic Seminary he graduated from taught mainly liturgy and canon law. In asking around, this seems to be rather typical, alas. It is quite possible that your priests did not know all that much about Catholic doctrine either. I found it rather easy to stump a Catholic Bishop. I’m sure there are some competent Roman Catholic Theologians out there, I just haven’t met them yet.
@Conundrum
“Also, they can’t go elsewhere to get these returns. No other Hedge Fund manager with these returns takes clients that small (and I only did because she was my sis, AND I wasn’t charging her fees. The whole thing was my mother’s idea). If I terminate the arrangement, they have no other place to go for such returns.”
All the more reason why they should appreciate what you are doing for them. I would talk with your mother. After talking with her, I might talk with them and lay it out for them as well. I would also wait until after the baby is delivered. There is no telling how she would react physically and she could miscarry. But, I would not continue to accept the treatment of your sister and BIL. They may not hold you in contempt now, but they are squarely on the road to it and you should not accept it as it will beat you down eventually.
Also, “God Is Laughing” may be right as well. Cutting them off may be for the best. After all, your sister has cast her lot with her husband and it is his responsibility to lead and provide for his wife and family. It does look like he may be feeling less than manly and is looking to find someone whose chest he can stand on so he feels a bit more masculine.
@deti
“Prots, at least the prots I have grown up with and around and interact with mostly, are positively obsessed with outward appearances and with what others will think of them. Prots also have a tenuous handle at best on the truth of human nature. The prots I’ve known believe that “God’s will” can and will override human nature on a regular basis. To prots, “human nature” is sinful, lustful, bad and unnatural. It’s “Wrong” for a woman to be attracted to a badboy. It’s “wrong” for a man to be attracted to a slender, fit woman with a pretty face, big breasts, firm butt and long legs. On the other hand, Catholics seem more willing to accept human nature as part of life.”
I’m sure there are some Protestants out there like that. I don’t know them, but given the heresy floating around mainline denominations, and some smaller, I have no doubt that there are some.
God’s will is for us to learn His will. Most of it can be seen in scripture and it is up to us, if we are believers, to make it happen in our own lives. We are called to overcome sinful human nature, but God does not force it on anyone. If we seek, He will open it to us. The application is up to us.
The special snowflake’s problem is not trust issues with God. She has shown she has problems with God’s will. She gave into her sinful human nature, so the problem is not a trust issue, but an obedience issue. She’ simply living for herself.
Bingo. The annulment topic always seems to get us going, probably both because it’s poorly understood (by Catholics and non-Catholics alike) and because it’s being abused today. But it’s really beside the point here. All her annulment does is makes it licit for her to marry in the Church. That’s all. It doesn’t remove any past sin. It doesn’t take away her memories, good and bad, from the marriage that never was. It doesn’t restore her ability to bond to a new husband, or increase the chance that she will be able to subject herself to him as scripture instructs.
In short, it means she can marry. It doesn’t mean she should.
Well, he did say he showed up in military uniform. I can see it happening then, since many women automatically see a man in uniform as alpha. But just dressed nice, in a suit, you’re right. And if the little old ladies do try to set you up with someone right away, beware: there’s a good chance that their first attempt will be with the craziest girl in the place — the one they’re desperate to get married off before she goes entirely feral, thinking that a husband and babies will settle her down.
All her annulment does is makes it licit for her to marry in the Church. That’s all. It doesn’t remove any past sin. It doesn’t take away her memories, good and bad, from the marriage that never was. It doesn’t restore her ability to bond to a new husband, or increase the chance that she will be able to subject herself to him as scripture instructs.
In short, it means she can marry. It doesn’t mean she should.
Yes, exactly. Unfortunately many people who *have* a decree of nullity don’t understand it that way, and take it as wiping away any fault they had in the breakdown of the putative marriage — and therefore no baggage either. It’s a damaging perspective.
I read the post and many of the comments on CAF and I have to say I was rather taken aback by the fact that grown thirtyfive year old women are talking with the maturity level of a ten year old girl. All about wanting to be lovestruck and all that crap. Not to mention the totally unrealistic ideas about having multiple children past their mid-thirties. And nary a comment on what the man might need and what the woman might bring to the table. It’s all about her needs and wants. These women seem sincere – they do not seem like feminist harpies. But it shows you the current state of unreality that even Christian women are in today. God help the man who marries any one of them: he will never be able to live up to what these women think is their right and their due.
Dear Robert:
That’s not the most extreme example of chuckleheadedness there, but it’s close.
I’m sure you’re amused, as I am, to read the ramblings of these supposed Catholic women, as they castigate their Catholic god for not granting them all their bizarre and selfish wishes. They seem to imagine their god to be some sort of Bob Barker in the sky, presiding over a cosmic “Price is Right” gameshow, whose job it is to toss money, men, and other goodies their way on a regular basis.
Not being a Catholic, I don’t like to judge; but, I’ve read some of their books, and this idea seems radically innovative. Traditional Catholic teachings have a lot to do with working hard, being productive, and helping oneself and his community. I don’t think Ignacio de Loyola or Luigi Gonzaga would have thought much about the idiots and ranters on Catholic Answers.
Regards, Boxer
As an aside: one of the female replies:
“Was my spouse perfect – uh, no. He decided that he really wasn’t a ‘believer’ and that was part of why I was attracted to him”
A rare moment of honesty, but not on purpose.
Earl:
This is a usual traditionalist talking point. Unfortunately it isn’t true. Artificial contraception, in various forms, has been around since practically the dawn of time. Hormonal contraception only represents an additional option.
The real game changer is the shift in viewpoint from children primarily belonging to the father to children primarily belonging to the mother. That is where the explosion of divorce, infidelity, and gender wars came from.
To expand on something Cail said, most Catholic girls listen to the same music, watch the same TV shows and movies, and study from the same textbooks as everyone else. They’re just as likely to follow the feminist script as their secular sisters, delaying marriage until they’re about to hit the wall so they can pursue nebulous career goals. That shouldn’t be so, but it is.
I really stuck out at Mass when I wore a suit – the other men were mostly in Hawaiian shirts, jorts, and sneakers. No little old ladies came rushing to introduce me to their granddaughters.
pukeko60 @ 7:07 pm:
“4. We need nunneries and monasteries, badly.”
I could sign on to monasteries. With the collapse of marriage, there’s a horde of honorable, hard-working men with little or no family and little status in the local, family-centric churches. Providing a home for Christian non-Alphas and giving them plenty of good manual labor sounds appealing. If we can’t fix marriage than a monastic movement could help us wait out the collapse… and rebuild society on our terms, not the United Nations’.
Nunneries won’t work for these feral women, however. They don’t want what they need. That alone explains a lot of hamsterizing.
…
I second BrainyOne. Birth control didn’t cause the current situation for the same reason it didn’t cause original sin: this is how women are wired to begin with, the fault they are naturally prone to. BC doesn’t make women feral; gov’t funding, media empowerment and Churchian sanction make women feral.
Very much so. Nearly all of the saints we revere are people who suffered or denied themselves the pleasures of life: virgins, martyrs, and religious. Fasting and mortifying the body were (and are still supposed to be) a major component of becoming holier. The idea that you can assume God wants you to be happy in this life is more New Age prosperity gospel than Catholicism.
Very much so. Nearly all of the saints we revere are people who suffered or denied themselves the pleasures of life: virgins, martyrs, and religious. Fasting and mortifying the body were (and are still supposed to be) a major component of becoming holier. The idea that you can assume God wants you to be happy in this life is more New Age prosperity gospel than Catholicism.
Yes, which is why it’s a shame that the fasting disciplines in the Latin Church were nerfed. The Eastern Catholics still retain the traditional discipline (recommended, but not required under penalty of sin, similar to how Orthodox deal with these), but the Latin Church nerfed fasting, and the result has not been impressive.
Donalgraeme and Beefy:
Hmmm… maybe it was the uniform, after all. And in my case Cail was right when he wrote, “there’s a good chance that their first attempt will be with the craziest girl in the place.”
I neglected to mention the rest of the story, but since Cail brought it up… I’m not sure how germane it is, but it’s kind of funny in retrospect.
Top set the scene: the church I attended was very small and very traditional… the kind of place where they sing hymns and all the women wear long skirts or dresses. I was the only military guy who went there.
I didn’t normally wear my uniform to church, but I went to a Wednesday night service straight from the flight line, so I was still in my flight suit (I wasn’t supposed to do that, but I didn’t have time to change). There was a woman there I’d never seen before, and she’s the one who corralled me at the end of the service. Older, but she looked pretty good for her age (the kind of woman whose daughters will keep their good looks). She asked if I was going to be there on Sunday morning. I said I was, and the next words out of her mouth were, “Good. I want you to meet my daughter.”
Right to the punch-line.
I was pretty apprehensive, and I thought about not going, but I said I would, so I did. I got there a few minutes late and saw the woman and her daughter. My first thought was, “WOW! She’s GORGEOUS!” quickly followed by, “Crap! She’s 15!” The moment the service ended the mother ran across the aisle, dragged me to her daughter, introduced us, and walked away.
Right to the punch-line again.
And she wasn’t 15 – she was 19. SCORE! I’ve only met a few women who are exactly my type. My wife is one, and she was another. But it would be another three years before I would meet my wife (I wouldn’t learn until later that this girl was a train wreck), and at the time it was like a line from a movie:
I took my shape from your mind.
I took your language.
I became the woman I found there…
in your deepest thoughts,
your deepest needs.
I am the feminine in your mind.
So… let’s see: Christian? Check. Single? Check. Interested in me? Check. Gorgeous? CHECK! We made a date for later that week.
But in the meantime I had no way to contact her. For some reason I no longer recall I needed to talk to her about the arrangements, so I called the church to see if they had her mother’s number. The pastor’s wife answered and I asked her. She gave me the number but said, “So, you’re going out with Michelle?” Me: “Yes. I’m taking her to the Officer’s Club.” — Pause — “Well… there’s something you should know about her…”
Oh crap: here it comes.
It turns out that the lovely 19-year-old Michelle was already married to someone else – but separated. Nobody much cared for her ne’er-do-well erstwhile husband, so her mother figured that a dashing, young, Christian Lieutenant was just the thing her daughter needed to get her life back on track. The pastor’s wife clued me in and said the church was trying to get them to reconcile. The fact that he was apparently sort of a punk didn’t stop them from recognizing that she had made vows and needed to stick to them – they were good that way – like I said: very traditional. Getting her into a “better class” of man was her mother’s idea, and she was on board with “trading up.”
It was too late to back out gracefully, so I took her to the O-Club, and wouldn’t you know, we hit it off. Of course I had to let her know that I knew she was married, and of course there was no second date. That was the first of two times I inadvertently went on a date with a married woman.
Another great and edifying example by Dalrock. I have some advice for this lady. Learn to say “Meow.” Has anybody else noticed how women become insanely solipsistic when they don’t have a man around to control them? I think their Hamster goes for a run and just keeps on going.
@Conundrum: Use some of your money and learn Karate. Then when your BIL tries to boss you around you can kick his ass. If he’s such a plebe I don’t understand why you can’t take him verbally either unless you are just losing it. Think of him as an insect and it will probably be easier to deal with him. Lyn is ‘usually’ right about stuff but in this case his advice sucks. The Lord took a whip and cleared out an entire room when he got pissed. Your BIL is sinning against you and you have no need to accept that. However, blackmailing your sister with money sounds like the work of a small man. Briffault’s Law works with sisters as well so you do need to accept that: http://www.reddit.com/r/TheRedPill/comments/1anu3q/briffaults_law/
@Earl: “Contraception is a willing attempt to block the procreative part of the sexual act…and indirectly weakens the union part of it too. Basically it is rebelling against what God designed the sexual function for.”
Not shooting the messenger but I have to respond to the RCC position.
I had a sinus infection today and a bad headache. I took antibiotics and interfered with the natural reason that God created pathogenic microbes in the first place (i.e. to make people sick) so have I rebelled against what God designed illness for? The RCC argument is specious. I seriously considered converting after I had a (very!) brief exchange with Pope Benedict. I did begin praying the entire Rosary every week in response to his suggestion to “pray” but I could not convert due to multiple differences on doctrine. Abortion I get (meditating on the Annunciation every week makes that very, very clear!) but the whole Birth Control issue is not Biblical. There are no instruction from the Lord on the issue even though Romans commonly used Birth Control (condoms, contraceptive sponges dipped in vinegar and so on). It is nothing more than a naked attempt to fill the pews.
If a good looking, confident eligible bachelor walks into a church for the first time he will definately get some play. Young kids in tow, all the better it seems. It will seem refreshing to many of the single women and their mothers, aunts, etc.
On Tue, Sep 2, 2014 at 10:55 PM, Dalrock wrote:
> mrpoptarts commented: “As an aside: one of the female replies: “Was my > spouse perfect – uh, no. He decided that he really wasn’t a ‘believer’ and > that was part of why I was attracted to him” A rare moment of honesty, but > not on purpose.” >
It is nothing more than a naked attempt to fill the pews.
A laughable contention on its face, really, since the overwhelming majority of American Catholics who are IN the pews do not observe the rule.
By the way, Humanae Vitae was right in its predictions about the impact of artificial birth control, almost to a tee. Protestants are in denial about this because they ditched almost 2000 years of Church teaching at the 1930 Lambeth Conference, and almost all have “embraced the freedom” since then — again, not just in practice, but in theory as well (different from dissenting Catholics on the issue). Rebels to the core (and, Dal, I only say that because there has been a good deal of slurs in this thread by some posters, so fair is fair) in the end.
BPP, you are giving bad advice. The clearing of the temple was not due to Jesus being mistreated, but because the Temple was being defiled. Let’s keep some perspective here: Jesus wasn’t being told to wash the dishes by a boorish relative… Jesus allowed himself to be crucified by the people he came to save!
This is a no-brainer for Conundrum – Matthew 5 has the only acceptable answer from scripture. He can – and should – draw firm boundaries with his BIL, but lashing out is exactly the opposite of what he ought to do: according to Jesus, who is a better source than either of us or anyone else here. Whether he ought to continue making the guy money can go either way, but if doing something nice for him (making him money) is going to get under his skin, isn’t that just the sort of thing that Romans 12:20 means when it says, “Therefore if thine enemy hunger, feed him; if he thirst, give him drink: for in so doing thou shalt heap coals of fire on his head.”
Backing away in a pique gives his BIL cover to claim a moral victory in his mind – while effortlessly burying him in more money than he could ever make himself would be like shoving needles in his eyes every time he looks at his bank balance. Every dollar would be a reminder that, not only is Conundrum the bigger man, the better man, but he can take care of his sister better than her own husband.
My guess is that either BIL will tell him to quit managing the money (which gets Conundrum out without being the one who backed down), or BIL smartens up and starts acting like an adult. Either way is an acceptable outcome and an improvement over the current situation.
Sorry but this is a laughable rebuttal. Yes they don’t observe the rule, and the pews are hardly filling up; rather, Church attendance is plummeting.
http://www.gallup.com/poll/10138/catholics-trail-protestants-church-attendance.aspx
Correlation != causation. And it’s really quite simplistic to claim that birth control is the cause of the sexual revolution. I think you’ve got it precisely backwards.
Lyn do you have a blog?
Sorry but this is a laughable rebuttal. Yes they don’t observe the rule, and the pews are hardly filling up; rather, Church attendance is plummeting.
He claimed that the idea was filling the pews. You seem to lack reading comprehension basics for such a self-proclaimed “brainy” one.
Correlation != causation. And it’s really quite simplistic to claim that birth control is the cause of the sexual revolution. I think you’ve got it precisely backwards.
And I disagree with you. See what I did there?
YHMP asks, “Lyn do you have a blog?”
No, I do not.
http://forums.catholic.com/showthread.php?t=906653
“When we argue, he comes unhinged, very verbally “abusive” and having kids and being married, I’m really struggling with the part of me that says ” I don’t have to be treated like this anymore!”
Earl – “The church itself addresses birth control as a grave sin”
This is not true in all circumstances. After a first baby, doctors usually advise a couple to wait for some months before trying for the second. How would using birth control in the interim be immoral? What if a married couple don’t want another baby?
I’m not talking about contraceptives that may also be abortofacients.
It’s a pity that natural law is so unknown/misunderstood. Human right this, human right that. Yet there’s no model as for why.
Conundrum,
Stop worrying about being the bad gal. That is inevitable if you don’t want to live a life of serving your BiL.
====
> Catholic canon law deals with this issue specifically by saying that children born into a putative marriage, which is later declared to be null, are legitimate and therefore not considered to have been born out of wedlock
My mother said she didn’t seek an annulment because she was afraid my sister and I would be considered illegitimate. Interesting to know that.
(I see her divorce in very different eyes as I have gone through my own experiences. My father was definitely not a saint, but she had her own pile of problems. It will be interesting to see how she handles my discussion of that in the coming years. She didn’t like what I said in a recent visit.)
Elspeth,
My experience with my own adopted daughters and daughter-in-law makes me question your idea that most young women really want to stay chaste. I doubt it is as strong as you thing, even in more conservative churches. How many of those young women stick around after they leave home?
@Dalrock – What’s your take on using birth control within a marriage?
“Hormonal contraception only represents an additional option.”
Then that was the option that was a game changer.
“How would using birth control in the interim be immoral? What if a married couple don’t want another baby?”
The woman is only fertile for a short period of time. If her husband and her learn her body and its cycles through NFP it is just as good as artificial contraception. The only thing they have to do is not have sex during the fertile times. It’s called self-control.
I suppose that the most famous instance – albeit fictional – of a marriage being fit for annulment would have been that of Oedipus. Oedipus, could not, however, alter the fact that he had married his Mother. He was blinded, was he not, and spent the remainder of his days in shame and misery. Those ladies at CAF whom Robert What so beautifully calls to task, seem to think that they get a blank-slate to start again, but even if that were true Sydney is no longer Twenty-one but Thirty-four and with all that that implies. If we live for three-score and ten years then if one were to treat life like a game of Soccer, she is about to come off for half-time – and is already a goal to nothing down.
It doesn’t seem age and biology enter into a woman’s pysche anymore. Or if it does they delude themselves with feelings or God’s will. That doesn’t even take into account their past.
There are some attractive 34 year old women…but if they have the past this woman has it automatically takes off 2-3 points at least.
All this chat about contraception dredged up a nutty thing (one of many lol) my practically neanderthal grandma used to repeat to us little kids, when we were helping her sort out grandad’s daily mountain of homegrown veg for dinner. When I say “repeat”, she did it in that weird singsong voice reserved for ‘old saws’ she had been told as a kid herself. It’s not as though she’d read it or anything, the pair of them were almost illiterate, actual Victorians.
When doing the herbs it was “The house where parsley thrives, it’s the woman that wears the trousers” (giggle, replace everpresent Woodbine in corner of mouth, throw chicken guts and feathers in fire, wipe hands down “pinny”, start kneading dough. Nobody died or even got sick, except from gluttony).
Never paid it any mind, if you thought about all the weird things she came out with all day long you’d have ended up as batty as her.
So I just had a lightbulb moment, and had a quick rake about on this here newfangled intertubes contraption. Sure enough, parsley’s part of a whole suite of cottage-garden contraceptives and abortifacients, along with Simon&Garfunkel’s sage, rosemary and thyme, with pennyroyal being top-o’-th’-shop.
The sly old witch. I bet the girls among us gaggle of little’uns remembered it too, whereas the boys having better things to think about (like .. Outer Space ♥♥♥!) dismissed it as yet another witless nursery rhyme thing.
You’re the one lacking comprehension. What he actually said was:
My assertion that your rebuttal (that the vast majority of the people in the pews don’t follow the idea) is laughable still stands.
Yes I do see exactly what you did there. You dismissed without proof what was asserted without proof, as did I. Now do you actually have a valid argument as to why contraception is the cause of the sexual revolution, or not? The fact they happened at the same time is not one.
Since we’re trading insults, did you fail Logic 101?
@ Elspeth:
“most Protestant young people really do have every intention of abstaining.”
I disagree with this. Doesn’t line up with my experience, unfortunately. Most protestant young people want to fornicate while making it appear as if they are abstaining.
“Within Protestantism there is a strong drive toward propriety even when the attendant piety is glaringly absent to anyone who dares scratch the surface. It’s more like “hide it from Mom and Dad while agonizing over it while feeling unable to stop.””
There is a strong drive toward the APPEARANCE of propriety.
The strong drive to appear a certain way is what is causing many to be fakes and hypocrites.
Perhaps if we just all admit we are sinners who needs God’s mercy, instead of trying to look self-righteous, life would be much better.
Humans have strong sex drives…mistakes happen. Trying to blame it away, cover up the problem, or double down on promiscuity doesn’t help.
I wonder if something like this is the reason the woman in the original article (Sydney28) is divorced at 34. In other words, no good reason. I see that neither ynotzap nor mlz responded badly, and even Xantippe wasn’t the heretic harpy she normally is, although none of them got to the heart of the problem. But the commentator who calls himself Clear Water said something interesting that also bears on the situation of Sydney28 (the 34-year-old divorcee that this thread is about). After saying a few reasonable things, he then writes, “If you are Catholic and have a valid marriage, remarriage would not be an option for either of you.”
If?
There is no “If” here. Even if everything she writes is perfectly accurate, and seen in the worst possible light, she is in a valid marriage and she has no right to even think about divorce.
The woman explained the entire issue – they say mean things to each other when they fight – and now she’s contemplating using the “abuse excuse” to rationalize hitting the detonator. Never mind that she admits that the “abuse” is non-existent (just words during arguments) and mutual (she’s just as guilty as he is). Never mind that she cannot be in submission to him when she’s screaming hurtful things at him. Never mind that she is disrespectful to his face. Never mind that she would turn their son into a divorce orphan. Never mind that there is no adultery (the only valid reason for divorce and remarriage). Never mind any of that… Clear Water reminds her that she gets to “never have been married” in the eyes of the Roman Catholic Church if some bishop says so.
Needless to say, no matter what the RCC says, in the eyes of God her divorce would be a sin and if she remarried she would be living in adultery (Matthew Chapter 19 is very clear about that), and all the popes, rosaries, and “Declarations of Nullity” in the world wouldn’t change that one bit. This woman isn’t as far along the Path of Sin and Stupidity as Sydney28 is – let’s pray that somebody, somewhere, sets her straight and stops feeding her incorrect / incomplete information (in this case, the Catholic doctrines surrounding “annulment”). If someone had told Sydney28 about that, she might not be a 34-year-old child in a woman’s body looking for something she already had but threw away.
Under Dog, you have an account over there – are you going to take a stab at this?
I’m sure you’re amused, as I am, to read the ramblings of these supposed Catholic women, as they castigate their Catholic god for not granting them all their bizarre and selfish wishes. They seem to imagine their god to be some sort of Bob Barker in the sky, presiding over a cosmic “Price is Right” gameshow, whose job it is to toss money, men, and other goodies their way on a regular basis.
The best answer about God answering prayers I ever heard (in a “Mash” episode, no less) was:
“Is it true that God answers all prayers?”
“Yes, and sometimes the answer is ‘No.'”
Actually you are both wrong. When a woman breastfeeds the body creates a hormone that prevents pregnancy. My ex and I tested that theory out…repeatedly.
@ Deti:
There is a strong drive toward the APPEARANCE of propriety.
That’s actually what I meant to say, so thank you for the correction.
Lyn87 says:
September 3, 2014 at 8:16 am
I’d bet that this is a fairly typical sequence of events in failed Catholic marriages:
1. At some point, the honeymoon ends and the day-to-day slog of being married settles in.
2. Princess realizes just how far she settled and/or gets bored with beta schlub and cuts him off.
3. Arguments ensue with increasing frequency and intensity; nasty things are uttered by both.
4. Wife enlists support of helping professions and learns that even civil divorce can be tolerated in the case of ‘abuse’. The helping professions with introduce the Duluth power wheel as prima facie evidence that it’s all his fault. Under no circumstances will her behavior in #2 ever be called abusive.
5. The clergy will likely do no more than stand by and watch; they may actively promote annulments directly or indirectly to her.
6. The hens will start clucking in the echo chamber, and the next thing you know, the papers are filed.
7. A marriage will be blown up, and the lives of the spouses and children will be drastically compromised if not destroyed.
8. One of the two parties to the marriage will want to move on and remarry; will seek and in all likelihood be granted a defective consent annulment based on canon 1095 (I have no way of knowing, but I’ll bet a lot of 1095 annulments are based on defective consent of both parties in keeping with the pastoral theme).
Where does hormonal contraception fit into that list? I’m sure it’s in there too.
He claimed that the idea was filling the pews. You seem to lack reading comprehension basics for such a self-proclaimed “brainy” one.
You’re the one lacking comprehension. What he actually said was:
It is nothing more than a naked attempt to fill the pews.
My assertion that your rebuttal (that the vast majority of the people in the pews don’t follow the idea) is laughable still stands.
He said that it was an “attempt to fill the pews”. No evidence was offered for this assertion. Looking at what has actually happened since Humanae Vitae, the fact that the pews have indeed been filled despite the fact that most of the people filling them are not following Humanae Vitae, is direct evidence that either (1) the attempt was successful (i.e., that HV successfully encouraged people to have had more babies and such babies are filling the pews) or (2) that the attempt had no impact (i.e., that people are in the pews regardless). The reality is (2) — people have ignored it, and yet are still in Church. So when we look at what happened, the fact is that the pews are filled regardless of following or not following HV. A bald assertion that it was intended to fill the pews, backed by no evidence either of this intention or of this effect, and rather contradicted by evidence that its lack of being followed has in fact had no negative impact on the situation in the pews substantially undermines the assertion that it was an attempt to fill the pews in effect. Of course, no evidence was offered that it was, in intention, an attempt to fill the pews, likely because no such evidence, in fact, exists.
Now do you actually have a valid argument as to why contraception is the cause of the sexual revolution, or not? The fact they happened at the same time is not one.
You’re the one attacking the assertion of Humanae Vitae. The burden is on you, not me (or others who have raised Humanae Vitae in the thread) if you disagree with its assertions. The argument is there. Address it, rather than making general statements such as “correlation is not causation”.
“If you’d like to discuss the question of divorce, annulments and remarriage, you might want to create a thread at the “liturgy and sacraments” forum. I expect that the regulars there will be more than capable of going verse for verse with you.” Translation- If you want to talk about all that bible crap go over to the geek forum, were talking feelings here!
Lyn87, great story. The problem with the older lady matchmakers is that they remember being flaky and wild in their youth (if only in their own minds), and then they got married and settled down into nice ladies. So they assume that a “good man” is what the problem-girl of the parish needs, without realizing that when they settled down it wasn’t just because they got married, but because they were surrounded by a whole societal structure of limits on behavior that’s gone now.
I too like Lyn 87 ‘s story. I regret to say that when a mother (or father) is keen for you to date her young daughter and you are a military officer (or the civilian equivalent) then you can be certain that there is something that you do not know, are not being told and would radically alter your approach if you knew. I had a similar experience and the secret of that young lady was that she had first been sexually active at thirteen and her parents knowing her propensity for dick – any dick – saw me (she was sixteen) as the answer to their prayers. Of course, I eventually discovered the secret. To this day, I feel somewhat abused by the young girl’s parents.
I have also experienced the opposite, by which I mean the parents who see you as the answer to their dreams of marrying off their celibate late-twenties daughter, and the reason for the daughter being single is lack of genuine interest in men combined with a closeted lesbian propensity, although that manifested itself years later. She came close to accusing me of attempted rape (or indecent assault) and (so I later learned) had made such a claim against one other guy.
Beware of enthusiastic parents.
@thecivilizationalist
I don’t have an issue with it. But either way it isn’t a focus of mine from a blogging perspective. I generally try to stay away from the contentious Protestant vs RCC & Orthodox questions. I’m quite happy to leave that to others better suited for it.
As for the question of whether birth control is the root cause of our current problems, I am not convinced. The fundamental problems I see are:
1) A deep seated revulsion to traditional headship.
2) An embrace of single motherhood as the new family model (replacing marriage with the child support model, or the welfare model in other countries).
These are problems throughout our society, but modern Christians are really no better on points 1&2 above, they just deny it. I’ve seen arguments that these flow from BC, but I’m not convinced.
I’m not interested in arguing it, but a bit of info on Humanae Vitae which might clear up some confusion:
First of all, when Pope Paul VI was working on it, many people, including prominent Catholics, expected that he would cave in and change Church teaching on artificial contraception, just as the other Christian churches had. After all, this was in the aftermath of Vatican II, when the Church was trying to attract Protestants by making the Mass, music, vestments, and everything else less overtly Catholic, so why not the doctrine? Many pastors were already promising their flock a relaxed posture, at least.
But Paul VI surprised them (though it shouldn’t have been a surprise) by not only upholding Catholic doctrine, but doing so in a way that left no wiggle room. Compared to the rest of what had come out of Rome recently, it was fire and brimstone. Only five days later, 200 priests and theologians signed a huge ad in the New York Times declaring their opposition, and many pastors simply told their parishioners to ignore it.
That’s been the situation ever since. (Some Catholics who want to remain faithful try to square the circle with NFP, but that doesn’t really work, because if you’re using it without a grave cause, that’s no better.)
However, that’s a separate issue from whether the pews are full. They aren’t. If you see a full Catholic church in the US, it’s usually because a couple other churches in that town were closed. In my town, for instance, we went from 7 churches to 4, and some of them have fewer Masses on Sunday than they used to. I’d say attendance is down at least 50% from fifty years ago, but it’s fewer people packed into fewer churches, so they still look about as full and get about as many tithes each week.
When Catholics decided to ignore Humanae Vitae, some left the Church, while others stayed practicing Catholics while denying that point of doctrine — making them material heretics. Humanae Vitae was NOT an attempt to sweet-talk butts into the pews; in fact, it’s one of the very few actions taken since Vatican II that wasn’t intended for that purpose. It was a rare attempt to uphold Catholic teaching despite the fact that it would anger the laity. It’s impossible to know how many people it drove away, though, because so many were leaving at that time for so many other reasons.
Also, to touch on something I mentioned before: when I say Catholics ignore Humanae Vitae, I don’t mean they read it and make a decision to reject it. Most wouldn’t recognize the title. I mean they pick up from the culture in their family or parish that artificial birth control just isn’t a big deal anymore. If they ask their pastor about it, he gives them a wink and a nod and says hey, nobody’s perfect. I know one father of 9 who was talking to a priest — not even on the subject of children or family size — and the priest suddenly offered to give him a dispensation for using contraception. Never mind that there’s no such thing — no one can give you a dispensation to sin — or that the guy hadn’t asked for it and had no interest in it; this priest took it upon himself to push the idea. That’s the atmosphere most Catholics are breathing when it comes to birth control.
@Ras Al Ghul
I’m not saying that I agree with the argument that most marriages in the RCC could be considered invalid because many do not understand what marriage means or is. It’s just a thought that’s circling out there. Ignorance of the law, as they say, is no excuse.
There is some pretty bad catechesis out there, and every parish is different. It’s amazing to see the unevenness in “orthodoxy” in my diocese alone (Cleveland), though I think some of it depends upon the quality and demeanor of the bishop.
Sometimes manosphere comments can sound as if people think women are the enemy. It’s important to remember that women are being deceived and harmed by feminism — often far more than the men are.
The real enemy is the evil men whispering into women’s ear to go out and sin. The serpents.
Good men are afraid to tell women they are wrong…so they white knight for the evil men (unbeknowst to them).
Fine. I’m with you so far.
Now I’m not with you. Church attendance has plummeted and evidence in support of this was provided by me upthread. Exactly to what extent failure to follow HV is responsible for this I don’t know. However, the hypothesis that it may have had something to do with it is not “laughable”.
No, the burden of proof always lies with the one making the assertion. You assert that HV was right in that contraception would lead to (the sexual revolution), based on the fact that both occurred at about the same time. I say that your evidence is insufficient, since correlation isn’t causation. I could just as well claim the sexual revolution occurred as a result of global warming.
BTW, I happened upon this interesting site, which shows how frivorce and divorce rape was a problem in the U.S., as far back as the 1930s.
http://www.sciencevsfeminism.com/history/a-womans-voice-various-quotes-women-20th-century/
These were the things addressed in HV that contraception would lead to.
Infidelity and moral decline
The Pope first noted that the widespread use of contraception would “lead to conjugal infidelity and the general lowering of morality.” That there has been a widespread decline in morality, especially sexual morality, in the last 25 years, is very difficult to deny. The increase in the number of divorces, abortion, our-of-wedlock pregnancies, and venereal diseases should convince any skeptic that sexual morality is not the strong suit of our age.
There is no question that contraception is behind much of this trouble. Contraception has made sexual activity a much more popular option that it was when the fear of pregnancy deterred a great number of young men and women from engaging in premarital sexual intercourse. The availability of contraception has led them to believe that they can engage in premarital sexual activity “responsibly.” But teenagers are about as responsible in their use of contraception as they are in all other phases of their lives–such as making their beds, cleaning their rooms and getting their homework done on time.
Lost Respect for Women
Paul VI also argued that “the man” will lose respect for “the woman” and “no longer (care) for her physical and psychological equilibrium” and will come to “the point of considering her as a mere instrument of selfish enjoyment and no longer as his respected and beloved companion.” This concern reflects what has come to be known as a “personalist” understanding of morality. The personalist understanding of wrongdoing is based upon respect for the dignity of the human person. The Pope realized that the Church’s teaching on contraception is designed to protect the good of conjugal love. When spouses violate this good, they do not act in accord with their innate dignity and thus they endanger their own happiness. Treating their bodies as mechanical instruments to be manipulated for their own purposes, they risk treating each other as objects of pleasure.
Abuse of Power
Paul VI also observed that the widespread acceptance of contraception would place a “dangerous weapon… in the hands of those public authorities who take no heed of moral exigencies.” The history of the family-planning programs in the Third World is a sobering testimony to this reality. In Third World countries many people undergo sterilization unaware of what they are doing. The forced abortion program in China shows the stark extreme toward which governments will take population programs. Moreover, few people are willing to recognize the growing evidence that many parts of the world face not overpopulation, but underpopulation. It will take years to reverse the “anti-child” mentality now entrenched in many societies.
Unlimited Dominion
Pope Paul’s final warning was that contraception would lead man to think that he had unlimited dominion over his own body. Sterilization is now the most widely used form of contraception in the U.S.; individuals are so convinced of their rights to control their own bodies that they do not hesitate to alter even their own physical make-up.
The desire for unlimited dominion over one’s own body extends beyond contraception. The production of “test-tube babies” is another indication of the refusal to accept the body’s limitations; so too are euthanasia and the use of organs transplanted from those who are “nearly” dead. We seek to adjust the body to our desires and timetables, rather than adjusting ourselves to its needs.
Cail Corishev says:
September 3, 2014 at 11:18 am
Regarding the attitudes of Catholics toward birth control…
I know of three men at my parish who’ve openly talked about their vascectomies. These are otherwise outwardly pretty devote Catholics (by today’s fairly low standard anyway). They send their kids to Catholic schools, attend mass weekly and participate in supplemental faith activities.
This ain’t a problem to those who prepare. It is, in fact, a blessing. The world cannot cope with more people. I don’t say that as a “greeny’ either, the world needs less, not more. As with most things in this life, it’s circular, as in, the world will suffer a population decline, forcing people to work together to get by, which in turn leads to higher productivity, better morals and more cohesive families, which in turn leads to more children. Wash, rinse, repeat.
The world could stand to lose 99% of the human population. I know, genocidal stuff, but it could and humans would recover and rebuild.
Cail Corishev
The problem with the older lady matchmakers is that they remember being flaky and wild in their youth (if only in their own minds), and then they got married and settled down into nice ladies. So they assume that a “good man” is what the problem-girl of the parish needs, without realizing that when they settled down it wasn’t just because they got married, but because they were surrounded by a whole societal structure of limits on behavior that’s gone now.
It is even simler than that, now that “older lady matchmakers” are increasingly leading edge Baby Boomers (2014 – 1946 = 68, whoa, ’68, that’s heavy, man!). TFH keeps observing that women are not all that good at cause and effect (obligatory NAWALT). Simple example: woman shrieks in her perpetual anger at a man You’re always withdrawing from me and I’m so angry about it! when it is obvious that it is her anger that makes him withdraw. Cause and effect swapped, in order to ensure that nothing is her fault.
So old lady matchmakers are swapping cause and effect, likely. It isn’t that “she found a good man and settled down to marry”. No. It’s that she settled down, and then some man considered her worth marrying. First she made herself worth the risk. First she took some action. First she showed some self-control, self-restraint, trustworthyness.
And yeah, I know there are women out there who are self controlled, restrained, trustworthy, not married – I’m not writing about them, I’m extending off of Lyn87’s anecdote and Cail Corishev’s very accruate observation.
Women who want to be match makers should do so under the supervision of a wise man. And yeah, I know, those aren’t all that common either.
The fundamental problems I see are:
1) A deep seated revulsion to traditional headship.
2) An embrace of single motherhood as the new family model …
Equalitarianism seems to lie behind both of them. If whatever can be said about men can be said about women and vice versa (except for plumbing) then certainly there’s no reason for the man to be the head of the family, and certainly there’s no reason why a child requires a mother and a father.
FH, that would leave the world population at around the numbers currently inhabiting Germany. I would argue that if you are feeling crowded it’s because you are in an urban area. Plenty of space and resources left but given the population concentrations and their proclivities to disease I think that we are overdue for a significant die off. The 4 horsemen will be accounting for more than a few of the 7 billion we’ve got now. It’s gonna be a bumpy ride.
Anonymous Reader says:
September 3, 2014 at 1:58 pm
And the 68-year old matchmaker in your example would have been 22 in ’68. Yes, she probably would have been a great deal more debaucherous than her only slightly older sisters, but she, on average, would have looked like the virgin Mary herself compared to today’s 20-somethings. So even if she did recognize that it was her settling down (and not some man doing it for her, so to speak), she can not comprehend the chasm that he party girl of today would have to cross to even approach being marriage material as understood by someone pushing 70.
Crowhill
Equalitarianism seems to lie behind both of them.
Yes, and equalitarianism rests on the blank-slate fallacy as a premise. The notion that any difference between men and women is purely a matter of learned behavior; “Gender is a social construct” as the femininsts chant. Science has and is kicking away that fallacy day after day – brain studies show physical, recognizable differences between male brains and female brains. Estrogen and testosterone are powerful compounds.
The equalitarians often claim to be part of some “reality based community”, when in fact their ideology denies reality at the cellular level.
Women are not “men with boobies who can have babies”. Discard that fallacy and equalitarianism crashes into ruins.
@Crowhill
I would use the term feminist rebellion instead. Equalitarianism pretends that it is dispassionate. Feminism is based on envy and rebellion.
Dalrock
I would use the term feminist rebellion instead. Equalitarianism pretends that it is dispassionate. Feminism is based on envy and rebellion.
Good point. As a general rule, it appears, any time feminists use a semantically neutral term such as “equality” or “equalitarianism”, it is because a more accurate term exists that just happens to shine too much illumination on feminism and its errors.
Pretty much. In other words, the process is exactly the same as in failed non-Catholic marriages, except that the Catholic can’t remarry without getting an annulment first. In the case of a man, he probably doesn’t want to remarry after just being hammered with divorce, so he doesn’t even explore the option until years go by and he meets someone new. In the case of a woman, she might already have someone in mind and apply for the annulment right away. But usually it’s something people don’t think much about until later — probably partly because there’s an assumption that anyone can get an annulment, but some just take longer and are more expensive than others. That’s false, but it’s close enough to the truth to cause problems.
Cail Corishev says:
September 3, 2014 at 3:48 pm
And as I believe you noted above, getting the ‘later’ annulment is just one of several hurdles to overcome. It does not, by itself, begin to fix the likely many problems a person so situated will bring to the new marriage – even if those problems were not mostly his/her doing.
Divorce is damaging enough to a person; I’ve often read about annulments being therapeutic in nature. I don’t see how they could be a a rule. Sure there may be small subset who realize some true peace as a result, but I’m sure there are a great many who feel it as yet another knife in the back.
Christians today seem to have a “good enough” attitude toward obedience to God’s laws, and Catholics are certainly no exception. Now, none of us is perfect, so we all fail to meet God’s standards. But there’s a difference between trying to obey and failing, versus deciding in advance to fail in certain areas. It’s one thing to try to achieve 100% and fail 10% of the time, and quite another to choose 90% of the rules — the ones you happen to like — and follow those perfectly while discarding the other 10%.
So many people seem to think, “I’m a pretty good person overall. I’ve never killed anyone or stolen anything big, I give to my church and to care for the poor, and I’m pretty respectful toward my parents. So I’m scoring points on those Commandments. But I really don’t want to have a dozen kids, and that Confession thing gives me the creeps, so I’ll just take a pass on those rules. I’ll surely make up for it in other areas.”
We call them Cafeteria Catholics — they go through the buffet line and select the parts of the faith they want to follow, and leave the broccoli and spinach behind. Another word for that is “heretic.”
Yeah, I’m not buying that either. I can imagine scenarios where it would be therapeutic; but as a rule, people just see it as a bureaucratic hoop they have to jump through.
Crowhill @ 11:52 am:
“Sometimes manosphere comments can sound as if people think women are the enemy. It’s important to remember that women are being deceived and harmed by feminism — often far more than the men are.”
Women are the enemy, excepting those who remain in submission to their men. They ruin good men, reward bad men and spread venereal diseases. If they suffer too then why don’t they ever repent? And how deceived can Christian women truly be? No sex outside marriage, keep your vow, respect your man, bang him often. Done.
Maybe this is a good time to post something I’ve been mulling. Elections are coming up and there’s a sheriff candidate I’m considering. His plan for the next decade is to retask deputies to high-level/organized crime and use volunteers to make up the manpower for lesser crimes.
Initially, I thought the plan was sensible. Getting citizens involved will help prevent the growing “us against them” attitude between people and law enforcement and gang violence is only going to worsen. Not to mention shrinking police budgets.
I talked with one of the candidate’s proponents and he made the comment “Nobody chooses to be a criminal when he’s growing up.” That got me thinking. With my red-pill knowledge, I believe that young men will choose crime with enthusiasm if that’s the reliable way to get laid. That means the sheriff’s plan is the exact opposite of what it should be. He’ll be allowing young men to cultivate the low-level thugness women crave then wondering why hardcore monsters keep turning up.
Instead, the sheriff should crack down on the lesser crimes, preventing young men from getting established in the crime patterns women are eager to bang them for. I’m less worried about the regional Cali cartel agent than a generation of horny, fatherless boys turning 18 and knowing chicks only want Dark Triad.
It’s like the Garden of Eden. First the gov’t snake offers abortion and Marriage 2.0. Then women seized them with enthusiasm, pulling the triggers on those atrocities time and again for any reason or none at all. If men now follow women’s lead into rebellion… well, the Garden story ended with a Fall.
Men must not follow the poor example set by women. This alone makes us their enemy– we follow God instead of them.
Why does birth control get discussed so often? There’s nothing in the Bible, or, at least, the King James/NIV type Bible at all about it. Onan is the only vaguely close thing, and that is blatantly clear about the family contract about giving his brother’s widow an heir. Does it “license” immoral activity? Sure. So does the internet, so do phones, so do cars.We don’t try to ban those.
gunner, I think that’s the approach the mayor of NYC started some years ago. Go after the small offenses, and the big ones also disappear. And, stats show it worked.
Re: Annulments and “closure.”
I recall reading something a few years ago about Joan Bennett Kennedy women (Ted’s first wife) – she was married to Ted for more than 20 years but he wanted some strange (being a Kennedy, after all). He divorced her and petitioned for an annulment so he could marry Victoria Reggie. After a suitable donation, the long-term marriage of two “devout” Catholics with a couple of children was declared to have never happened in the eyes of “Holy Mother Church.” However, because Victoria was herself a divorcee (and apparently didn’t have enough money or pull to buy an annulment) the couple married in a civil ceremony.
Needless to say, Joan was none too pleased with the RCC for essentially declaring that her entire adult life was fraudulent – as if it never happened. Of course, she DID marry into that family, so who knows which was the bigger blow: 1) that her church was willing to pretend that her entire adult life never happened for money or, 2) she lost the name and the benefits of being a Kennedy wife.
@Novaseeker
Thanks for the info on canon law. That’s a mighty bit of hamstering on their part, but I see that they at least answer the basic justice question.
The Roman Catholic Church has a more-or-less blanket prohibition on artificial birth control – but very few American Catholics refrain from using it. As for Protestants: you’re correct – it is not found anywhere in the Bible. Because it’s not in the Bible, (and Protestants tend to be more of the “solo scriptura” persuasion) most Protestants use it. So on the one hand you have a bunch of celibate men telling their flock to not do something that they’re doing anyway, and on the other hand you have another group that realizes that the prohibition is coming from a bunch of celibate guys who have no authority over them.
Having said that: there are some Protestants who are against birth control. I used to go to church with a couple that was adamant about it… they were also recovering Catholics, though, so make of their position what you will. And as I mentioned a few days ago, there is the “Quiver full” movement among Protestants that embraces the same doctrine as the RCC, but for different reasons.
So basically: most everybody does it, but RC’s aren’t supposed to. I’m no Catholic, but my understanding is that the birth control prohibition may be the most divisive issue that separates the Catholic laity from the hierarchy.
@ archerwfisher:
Prohibition of artificial birth control means more ‘sheep’ to fleece a generation later.
I was a Catholic once.
Lyn87 says:
September 3, 2014 at 8:16 am
Under Dog, you have an account over there – are you going to take a stab at this?
Sorry I just saw this. I’m not sure that Under Dog would be much help in this case. 1seekingfaith doesn’t really sound like she is serious about leaving (at least not to me), and she at least admits that she is part of the problem and needs to get right before God. Oddly the usual harpies haven’t been pushing for the destruction of the marriage like they were in June. I wonder what, if anything, has changed.
Thanks, all, for the good advice.
@Quartermaster,
All the more reason why they should appreciate what you are doing for them.
To be clear, my sister is always thankful when I can be thanked in a vacuum. She has also made a few donations to my charitable foundation. BUT, in the event of anyone, such as my BIL, mistreating me, she will 100% side with him, and not admit that it is absurd for me to do this favor for someone who gratuitously is rude to me for no reason. Effectively, he has put her in a position that she cannot handle (due to her absence of absolute objectivity), and will lose this income stream as a result.
James K,
I suggest meeting one of the BIL’s BILs for a beer, and mention an example of the BIL’s misbehavior.
That would be a superb idea, except I live on one coast and all of them on another.
That is why only after 3 years of marriage (and after I had tripled their money) did I even meet my BIL for an extended period after their wedding, upon which his personality became evident. I wrote off prior examples of his rudeness as one-off misunderstandings, but now the pattern is very clear. The infrequency of meetings is why it took this long for his true intentions to become undeniable.
Your BIL knows by now that he will never equal his father in being “king of the hill”; imagine his dismay when it dawned on him that he would not be the first or even second most important provider for his own nuclear family. His own perceived lack of power is the reason why he needs to boss more successful people around.
Yes. This is almost certainly it. Just like GodisLaughing also suggested.
GodisLaughing,
Conundrum, it’s sounds to me like your BIL is trying to find a chicken lower on the peck order than him. That would be YOU. Based on what you said about your sister’s attitude towards you he’s probably picked up the social cues to decide to use you to get off the bottom rung.
Yep. The more I think about it, this is correct. Particularly since I have been backing down to ‘keep the peace’. My next in-person action will be a mockery of him, AMOG style (like patrickg said), but the decision to end their income stream will happen before I meet them in person, due to the geographical distance.
To Everyone,
The problem with stopping the generation of returns for them without telling them why, means they don’t learn why I did it. To attribute it to ‘new regulations’ or ‘new policies’ means my BIL (and my sister) never learn their lesson. If they know the real reason I stop, would that not be better? This is the crux of the ‘conundrum’ for me, as well as the fact that cutting my sister off while she has two very young kids, means I am the villain, not the BIL who behaves in a way that will reduce his family’s income even while he has two very small kids.
I am also a former Catholic. The priest at our local church drove most young men of my generation to the Protestant churches, then got married. Good job, idiot.
I have thought a lot about this b.c. issue. After many years of thought, I came to my conclusion. Repeat: MY. I will not try to change anyone’s opinion.
The RC church has sacraments. Different sacraments for different people. For example, the priests; monks; and nuns have Holy Orders.
Married people have Matrimony.
The Holy Order people are supposed to comply with the rules of their sacrament. They do not need permission from other people.
I have concluded that married people have their own sacrament and they have to make the decisions involved in complying with their sacramental obligations. One of them is how to manage their fertility. If a married couple conclude they cannot properly care for more children, that is their business and not the business of priests; nuns; and monks.
But, the priests decided to take charge of a sacrament that was not theirs. Just as SCOTUS decided to take charge of all parts of the US nation. Not defensible, but so far no one has been able to stop them.
So as loudly as the Catholic clergy screams that b.c. is a sin, the couple keep right on making the same decisions. Good for them.
When the new catechism came out maybe 20 years ago I ordered a copy just to see what it was like.
I found a place where it said (not sure of the exact wording) if the priest tells you something is a sin, and you disagree that means two sins. One, the sin itself and the other, disagreeing with the priest that it isn’t a sin.
To say the least I was pissed.
So, married people have no right to base their decisions on personal conscience? Well, if you wish to accept that, go right ahead. I do not and I will not.
And, as pointed out above, the b.c. issue is not even biblical. It is a decision made by allegedly celibate men.
I worked with a man who studied in Catholic Seminar. When it came time to be ordained, he chose to stay out of the priesthood and married. He said in medieval times, the clergy would sit in a darkened room and debate how many legs a spider had, by contemplating how many legs God would want it to have, rather than going out and looking at spiders to see how many legs they actually had.
I have read articles written by priests who left the priest hood and married. And, they admitted most of the advice they gave married couples was totally useless, because they had no idea what emotions existed between husband and wife, until they experienced it.
For celibate men to sit around darkened rooms and debate what married people were supposed to be doing isn’t much different from their medieval counterparts discussing how many legs spiders should have.
The fact that most Catholic couples use b.c. is more of an indication of the marital decisions couples make wisely than the degree of sin involved from not obeying an ignorant clergy.
@Conundrum
I wouldn’t fault her for following her husband. If she leads we know what a disaster it would be. She would be miserable, and he would still have all of his same faults. It sounds like she chose poorly, but is at least honoring her choice. I would avoid anything which would drive a wedge in between them, or disrespecting his position as head of their family.
As for continuing to manage their funds, it sounds like you aren’t comfortable doing this anymore, and that is understandable. However, I wouldn’t stop as a way to punish either of them (for the reasons I outlined in my first paragraph). What I would say is it made sense for you to help your sister manage her finances when she was unmarried, but now that she is married it is more appropriate that you turn this over to her husband. This gets you out without undermining her marriage.
“Needless to say, no matter what the RCC says, in the eyes of God her divorce would be a sin and if she remarried she would be living in adultery (Matthew Chapter 19 is very clear about that), and all the popes, rosaries, and “Declarations of Nullity” in the world wouldn’t change that one bit. ”
This is not true, if her marriage is null. To take a clear example, consider a pair of lesbians. They live in a state where gay marriage is legal and they find a progressive minister to perform the ceremony in a church. They have a couple of kids via artificial insemination and 10 years go by where they build a life together. Finally one woman decides the lesbian thing was just a phase and she wants to marry a man. The other lesbian was not abusive, not an alcoholic, etc. But she can’t quote scriptures forbidding divorce to make the ex-lesbian stay with her, because they were just never married, as would have been clear to any serious Christian at any point during the 10 years. If the ex-lesbian finds a man brave enough to marry her, she is as free to marry as any other single mom.
The same logic applies to a couple who vow “As long as we both shall love”. If that’s what they seriously want to limit their relationship obligations to, then again, they simply aren’t married in the sense Jesus meant, so you can’t apply his words to their situation. If they can prove to the annulment tribunal that this was in fact their attitude, then they’re going to get an annulment and they’re going to be as free to marry as anyone else with a long term boyfriend/girlfriend relationship in their past.
Now it’s also the case that some tribunals out there believe that everyone today is a Post Christian who meant “as long as we both shall love” no matter what they said, and therefore feel comfortable handing declarations of nullity out on the flimsiest of evidence. But sadly in this day and age, a lot of cases are just open and shut
Also, as a first time commentor perhaps it’s not my place to say this, but I know a bit about finance and I don’t buy Conundrum’s story at all. There is simply no way to reliably triple someone’s money over three years and then expect to do it again, at least not honestly. Bernie Madoff didn’t promise returns like that.
CLL: My pastor used to work as the Defender of the Bond for the diocesan marriage tribunal (for non-Catholics, the Defender’s job is to argue in favor of marital validity.) I asked him once if there was something broken about the tribunal process or if there really were that many Catholics joined in invalid marriages. He immediately replied, “Both.”
Conundrum:
If you’re still reading here, I’d like to contribute some thoughts to the discussion. I’m going to set aside the question of your BIL’s personality and speak more generally regarding your family dynamics.
If I’m not mistaken, I hear in your voice the tone of an eldest child. Maybe I’m incorrect in that, but at the very least, you’ve got the mindset of the eldest son, if not the eldest child outright. You and I are very much alike in that respect, and while I don’t share your enviable financial and social status, the challenges within my family are much the same.
In addition to being the eldest child (and son), I have one sibling, a sister roughly a half-decade younger than I am. Like you, I feel the burden of the protective instinct, and I relish my role as her big brother. The problem is her instinctive resistance to my efforts to help. This has led to a number of disastrous relationships and other significant life decisions. I suspect your family shares my family’s tendency to clannishness, which as I’m sure you know is a double-edged sword, bringing both socio-economic stability and the temptation for meddling and resentment.
In short, you want to help and protect your sister. Doing so is an immensely important part of your self-image, and you take a great deal of pride in being able to “serve” with distinction. The fact that your sister does not fully accept that part of your personality is a source of constant emotional disappointment, and I fully empathize with the instinct to withdraw. On several occasions I have been close to leaving my sister to the tender mercies of an abusive boyfriend.
This part of your personality is further complicated by the fact that your parents implicitly demand this level of “service” from you. This is the role you are expected to play in the tight-knit family unit they’ve carefully built over the years. This is exactly who they trained you to be, and they see your fulfillment of this role as key to the survival of their family unit.
So then. Duty, honor, strength, responsibility, service, and family uber alles. All of these elements together constitute a potent source of good in your life, and are far more enviable than your financial success. You and I are blessed beyond measure in these things. Very few people know what it’s like to grow up in such a family.
With that said, here is the revelation you and I need to have beaten into our heads: the kind of service we love, and were trained to render to our younger sibling runs the risk of alienating and infantilizing them. In a patriarchal society, this wouldn’t matter so much. Alienation would be reduced by the existence of a social structure that enforces our roles as burgeoning patriarchs. There would be a far deeper reservoir of respect for the work we are driven to do on behalf of the younger sibling. Infantilization wouldn’t be an issue because our younger siblings would never be forced to make the kinds of significant decisions they must routinely make in our current social model.
But even at that, the risk of infantilization would be significant with regard to your BIL. As a man, it is deeply humiliating to be provided for, especially by someone so clearly his superior. God has called him to be the leader of his family and the guarantor of its security and well-being. In short, your role as conscientious big brother is in an inevitable clash with his God-given, ontological role as the head of his home. He feels the *need* to fulfill this role perhaps even more keenly than you feel the need to fulfill your role as eldest son and big brother.
Basically we’re talking about an epic clash of the Classical Beta Males LOL.
Instead of making excuses for your decision to hand off management responsibilities, I would have a frank discussion with my parents and then my BIL (in that order). Your sister should not be a party to either discussion. She is under the headship of your BIL, for good or for ill. Address him as the head of his home starting now. The specific content of the discussion is your call, but I would announce my intention to relinquish management of your BIL and sister’s portfolio. I would be careful to couch it in terms of the roles I’ve described above. “I’ve been robbing [BIL] of the chance to be the leader of his/your home. That has damaged our relationship, and I would like to start over, this time on more equal footing.”
I can tell you want to “fix” your sister and BIL for their appalling ingratitude. Avoid that very natural, eldest son instinct to be didactic. That’s not a realistic objective. I can’t tell you what a relief it was when I realized I was trying to do God’s job for Him with respect to my sister’s idiotic, sinful decisions. In a different social context, yes, I believe “fixing” (i.e. policing) her would be my job, but at present it is not. That isn’t to say you should tolerate shabby treatment from your BIL in the future, but I would demonstrate strength and magnanimity by moving beyond his past offenses. In the case of future displays of rudeness, I would definitely AMOG him. You are the heir apparent of your family, and as such you deserve a certain amount of respect. But right now your BIL needs the opportunity to carve out a little space to regain his sense of headship in his home. “Putting him in his place” will ironically keep him from assuming it.
Lastly, I have re-balanced my acts of service to include people outside my home. Now that you’re not going to be managing your BIL’s portfolio, perhaps you might consider donating the same kind of attentive management to a needy family, church, or charitable organization. Play “Secret Millionaire.” Enjoy the snot out of being the kind of giver your instincts tell you to be, and do it for people and organizations who would be grateful for your help and responsible with its fruits. I’ve found that these little acts of unofficial “ministry” are far more significant and gratifying than trying to “fix” my sister’s sinful thinking. Francis Chan has been a significant influence on my life as I’ve made these changes, and I highly recommend a *circumspect* review of his work (just be aware of his blind spot for churchian feminism).
Hope this helps, and if you ever run out of clients, hit me up! Just kidding. Sort of kidding. I’m so conflicted! 😉
D,
It sounds like she chose poorly, but is at least honoring her choice.
She made the mistake of waiting until 30 to even consider marriage, and the marriage itself was when she was 32. Unlike most women who wait too long, she does have a high-level executive job. Also, apparently, marrying into a prominent family mattered more than whether the husband himself is an impressive individual, which is not an uncommon approach to marriage (although it is certainly an old-fashioned one). He does have many of the same personality traits as her/my father, so that could be why she doesn’t notice them, or see them as negatives (the cliche would be true in this case).
But their own marriage seems decent, and they have two kids, so that all seems to have worked out.
As for continuing to manage their funds, it sounds like you aren’t comfortable doing this anymore, and that is understandable.
Yes. I used to do it without even considering if ‘they were doing anything to me’, but now, the heart just isn’t into it, and I waited a few months to see if the sentiment would change, and it hasn’t.
but now that she is married it is more appropriate that you turn this over to her husband. This gets you out without undermining her marriage.
That is probably a good idea. as I can extricate myself from the arrangement that way. He has no talent whatsoever in this area, but then they are just going to be in the position they would be in if I were not in this line of work. He can find another manager to handle it.
Thanks.
I too must echo the sentiment that I’ve never met a Protestant(and I’ve worshipped with Methodists, Baptists, Evangelicals and non-denoms) that was serious about sexual purity. Most of the people I went to school with were either doing it with multiple partners, or doing it with the person they were engaged to.
Question:
Are most of the people that are virgins 4-6s in terms of SMV? 1-3s?
Anyone ever met anyone, male or female, that was a 7-10 that claimed to be a virgin, and/or was planning to save it for marriage?
@Cail Cor: “We call them Cafeteria Catholics — they go through the buffet line and select the parts of the faith they want to follow, and leave the broccoli and spinach behind. Another word for that is “heretic.”
You may call us “Cafeteria Catholics: or “Protestants” but Francis and other Popes have clearly said repeatedly that not all of us with doctrinal disagreements are “heretics.” Reasonable minds can disagree on the Vatican’s extra-biblical ban on birth control.
@ RPSMF
In my experience, once you get to 4 and above in SMV there isn’t a huge difference terms of variance between those who are virgins and saving themselves for marriage, or those who were virgins and saved themselves for marriage. Below that point you will see more virgins, although I think that is largely a product of few potential partners more than anything else. Although I should note that if you remove weight issues, there aren’t that many 1-3s out there, especially 1s and 2s.
Now, I included those who are virgins and those who were virgins at marriage for a reason. As I’ve argued before, more attractive virgins have it better in the present SMV/MMV, and so are more likely to marry consistent with their beliefs. If you remove that population from my personal sample, then yes, you will get more 4-6 SMV virgins.
As for those in the 7-10 range who claimed to be virgins and waiting until marriage, or were virgins at marriage, I know a few. Male and female. But only a few. But that answer is the same if you drop below 7 too.
In adulthood? Unfortunately, no. The virgins that I knew were virgins (in adulthood) they were virgin NOT by choice, but by physical circumstance (male and female, always ugly.) For men it was because they were short and fat and rude. For women, usually fat but always ugly. Always 1s, 2s, or 3s.
Two things: first,
To the first question: I don’t think ugly people are any more immune to temptation than anyone else, but since they would probably have fewer opportunities, it seems reasonable to think that they would be less likely to have completed the act.
To the second question: Yes. I did, and my wife did as well. We were both attractive enough to have had multiple opportunities to have sex with attractive people, too. One of my sisters-in-law was a looker in her single days, and she was a virgin bride as well. I’m sure some of the other guys in the thread would answer the same – but I’ll leave that to them.
Second,
Listen, Lady, you call yourself a lurker, but you’re re-plowing ground that was just plowed last week. Your “clear example” is meaningless, as you would already know if you had been lurking just a few days ago. Lesbians cannot be married to each other because they are both the same sex. Marriage is not defined by the state – it is defined by God, and all the certificates issued in all the courthouses in America cannot make two women into a married couple. All the certificate really means is that they can file joint tax returns – but just because the law says they’re married doesn’t mean they are. If I stand in my garage and call myself a LeSabre, and the DMV issues me a license plate to wear on my a$$ – that doesn’t make me a Buick. Same thing with “gay” marriage. We discussed this just a few days ago in a few hundred responses… try to keep up.
And just as a judge can’t turn two lesbians into a married couple, and the DMV can’t turn me into a car: neither can the Roman Catholic Church “nullify” a marriage with a piece of paper. A marriage requires three things, 1) a heterosexual couple that are Biblically eligible to marry, 2) a mutual acceptance to be married, and 3) a consummation. If you have that, you have a marriage. If you do not have any of those, you do not have a marriage. And nothing any pope, bishop, tribunal, or man-made tradition says can change that one bit. The words of Jesus in Matthew Chapter 19 are both clear and definitive – and in a dispute between Rome and Jesus, Jesus wins every single time.
As for my cousin, who you say would be eligible for a so-called annulment… it doesn’t matter what some bishop says. She and her husband were both single and eligible to marry, they had a wedding ceremony (not a “going steady” ceremony), and I’m sure they had already consummated plenty of times even before the “big day.” If they find some daffy tribunal or bishop who would let them pretend that they weren’t married, that just shows that celibate men ought to stay out of things they don’t understand (that’s probably the main reason that bishops have to be married men, according to both 1 Timothy 3:2, and Titus 1:6).
“Anyone ever met anyone, male or female, that was a 7-10 that claimed to be a virgin, and/or was planning to save it for marriage?”
Several. Y’all need to get out more and/or stop believing the hype.
Desiderian is correct – the number of people who wait until marriage to have sex in the U.S. is about 3% (about 10,000,000 people, which is probably greater than the number of homosexuals in the U.S.).
Of those who wait for marriage to have sex, about 4,000,000 are men and 6,000,000 are women.
Among highly religious groups, the rate of virgin brides/grooms is about 20% – nearly seven times the U.S. average.
The percentage of virgin brides/grooms in the 1950’s was 11%.
Source: http://waitingtillmarriage.org/4-cool-statistics-about-abstinence-in-the-usa/
Catholic Lady Lurker says:
September 3, 2014 at 8:59 pm
What!
I have read and reread your “logic” and it is madness. You are comparing apples with asteroids. Jesus said; “whosoever marries a divorced [read annulled] woman commits adultery”. Thats it. Period.
@Crowhill
Sometimes manosphere comments can sound as if people think women are the enemy. It’s important to remember that women are being deceived and harmed by feminism — often far more than the men are.
My sentiment exactly. If any of us men were told right from the cradle that we were special, an angel, or a prince; and the people we looked up to for guidance repeatedly told us that we were better than others, and “deserve to have it all”; and if this nonsense were repeated in the media, the school, the church, in the law courts and by politicians, no matter how humble we might be, we’ll soon begin to believe it.
I am of the opinion that feminism is the greatest evil that has ever been unleashed upon humankind, and women are even more victims of feminism than men are. At least, men have more choices. A man harmed by feminism can start over at age 40 or 50, and still go on to have his own family and biological children. For the women of comparable age whose youth was wasted by feminist ideologies, the die is cast; no do overs.
I’m still shocked over the official banning of MarcusD for being critical of feminism.
That wasn’t me that was banned. The image was posted on a traditionalist forum along with a few other images. CAF mods aren’t the most rational people around, and some of the ban reasons are absurd given the posting records of some people.
@Lyn87
How old was your wife when you married her?
It’s likely she was instilled with the right values, and at that age, wasn’t audacious/corrupted enough – yet.
Had you waited longer (before marrying her), and put some serious moves on her, would she have succumbed?
To me, the more interesting question is:
“Anyone ever met anyone OVER THE AGE OF 25, male or female, that was a 7-10 that claimed to be a virgin, and/or was planning to save it for marriage?”
Three considerations:
1. Surviving past 25 (I know, somewhat arbitrary number) demonstrates beliefs/virtues have stood up to the true test.
2. However, virgin females 7-10s are likely to be married by 25 years old.
3. They must have received temptation from someone he/she liked – not merely physical attraction. It’s easy to reject a 10 who offers a “casual encounter”. It may be a different story if there is already a considerable relationship and emotional investment.
I do know of several men like this, but can’t really say anything about such girls (how would you really know?). 5’s and maybe 6’s, certainly not 7+. I currently believe they are not strong enough. Once they fall into lust (or “love”), everything goes out the window, including God. It would be comforting to be proven wrong.
Lastly, is this question important at all? It gives me some reservation knowing that although the girl is a virgin, she would not survive my advances. Even though this somewhat appeals to my ego (to my terrible shame), I could easily imagine another man doing the same. I wouldn’t reject a girl just because she is potentially a slut (we are all potentially “X”), but its something that gnaws at the back of my mind.
I’ll give you an example.
There is one girl (teenager), who has shown “interest” in me. She has clearly demonstrated this to me. She didn’t outright offer “it”, but I have seen certain parts of her body (which I did not ask for, it was a surprise to me). May sound strange, but I am fairly certain she is a real Christian (she has since expressed sorrow – tears included – for what she has done). What does one do with such a girl? She is a virgin. She hasn’t shown such interest in anyone else (yet). I know if I married her, I could (or would like to think) effectively bring her under my control. The “upside” is I know she would be a complete freak for me (that’s my carnal side talking). On the other hand, it comes with great risk (extreme “red flag” according to the manosphere I believe). Shes technically not a slut, but it seems imminent. I absolutely have no doubt, if left to her devices when she goes to college, fornication will be added to her sins (I say this with regret). If I took her, I would feel like I was “manning up” to “save” her from herself and for some reason this bothers me. By the way, this is just something that has crossed my mind. I don’t think I have ever seriously considered taking this one. Good girls are the way to go.
Jay,
If I’m not mistaken, I hear in your voice the tone of an eldest child.
Correct.
I have one sibling, a sister roughly a half-decade younger than I am.
Same here. She is 4 years younger, and her husband is about the same age as me.
The problem is her instinctive resistance to my efforts to help.
Rather than resistance, there is a ‘taking for granted’ element here. To be fair, she is grateful when she can thank me in a vacuum, but would never, ever concede that the BIL did anything that would warrant a cessation of my services. As others correctly point out, that she sides with him even when he is wrong is a proper acceptance of his headship, so I can’t very well cause a division there by demanding she see his flaws.
consider donating the same kind of attentive management to a needy family, church, or charitable organization.
Yes, I have moved in that direction. I don’t take many fee-based clients anymore, deciding to trade the stress, legal risk, and regulatory burden for a life of relative leisure and the ability to not live in NYC. Thus, I am a couple of zeroes poorer than hedge fund managers of similar returns (but the ‘Occupy’ socialists nonetheless wouldn’t spare me from their list of people to lynch), and don’t really want those added zeroes at the cost of an eventual heart attack or stroke.
Thanks for your comment. Many of your points resonate very accurately.
I have a 20 year old virgin daughter. Not gorgeous (looks quite a lot like me actually), but cute enough and she has been asked out more than once. By unbelievers. She actually laments that SHE won’t be blessed to marry a virgin groom, and truly hopes she is wrong.
I have a 19-year old virgin daughter, who actually does turn heads. Never been on a date though because she’s only ever been asked out by unbelievers as well.
I have a second 19-year-old virgin daughter. Cute and outgoing and has also only ever been asked out by unbelievers. They are not allowed to date men who aren’t Christians.
Where they land on the scale I have no idea, although I’m sure they’re at least on the high side of average.
I second Desiderian. As many fornicating Christian teens as there are, not EVERY attractive young woman is slutting it up.
I have considered Conundrum’s conundrum, and this is my view: keep your BIL and his wife at a more comfortable distance, and that will include ceasing to manage your sister’s funds. My professional experience of representing people who employ hedge-fund managers is that the managers manage to lose everything (hence my – can we sue? – involvement) and thus you can plausibly allege that your luck may not last after the last three years remarkable results.
Based on the results I’ve seen IRL and around the web…I don’t disagree with the ban on birth control from the Catholic church.
If I want a guaranteed slam dunk on a terrible marriage or divorce, birth control will be involved. I’m against it…and any woman I marry should be against it and never take it.
“And, as pointed out above, the b.c. issue is not even biblical. It is a decision made by allegedly celibate men.”
Celibate men who got their authority from the succession of Peter. Therefore it’s rebellion from the church leaders to actively disregard it.
Crowhill says: September 3, 2014 at 11:52 am
“Sometimes manosphere comments can sound as if people think women are the enemy. It’s important to remember that women are being deceived and harmed by feminism — often far more than the men are.”
Dave says:
“my sentiment exactly. If any of us men were told right from the cradle that we were special, an angel, or a prince; and the people we looked up to for guidance repeatedly told us that we were better than others, and “deserve to have it all”; and if this nonsense were repeated in the media, the school, the church, in the law courts and by politicians, no matter how humble we might be, we’ll soon begin to believe it. I am of the opinion that feminism is the greatest evil that has ever been unleashed upon humankind, and women are even more victims of feminism than men are.”
Thanks for that, guys. It’s an important point, although I’m not sure whether women or men are the more harmed group, and I don’t think that even matters. The bottom line harm is the destruction of the family as an institution.
Do any of you read The Other McCain blog? He is doing a lot of good work lately on the Marxist roots of modern feminism. It’s a neat trick how over the course of a few decades, the movement goes from being openly revolutionary and anti-family, to being assumed as a matter of course to be as righteous and important as the Civil Rights movement.
http://theothermccain.com/2014/09/03/whose-agenda-is-the-feminist-agenda/
My best,
Lin
Several. Y’all need to get out more and/or stop believing the hype.
I second Desiderian. As many fornicating Christian teens as there are, not EVERY attractive young woman is slutting it up.
I never said that there weren’t any young attractive Christian virgins…I said that I personally never met a Protestant that was serious about sexual purity. I believe that the Duggars from 19 Kids and Counting are serious, I just don’t personally know them….my sister has met a few of them tho.
But even the most “serious” of females will give it up if the right man is asking.
Also, there are different levels of both virginity and chastity.
Some people count themselves as having a level of virginity even though they do handjobs, oral and anal sex…as long as the hymen is intact. Technically a virgin but not chaste.
Additionally, I went to school with a girl who was one of the biggest blue ball inciting teases on campus….she would date guys, and get into heavy making out(and she has a HUGE rack) but she would stop them before they got to second base and say that if they wanted more, it would have to wait until marriage.
Lots of men since we got out of school as well…I’m just assuming she hasn’t changed her ways.
But even the most “serious” of females will give it up if the right man is asking.
This is true, which is why our daughters are not allowed to date unbelievers, which means that as of yet they have not dated. At all. Better to date someone equally serious who will not ask.
This is true, which is why our daughters are not allowed to date unbelievers, which means that as of yet they have not dated. At all.
And that’s good and proper, and the accurate Biblical standard…the trick will be to find them tingle inducing providers, and teach them how to be content with such a man depending on which trait is waxing and waning over time.
Virgin men are puke inducing to females, precisely because of their lack of experience and corresponding lack of confidence.
High N count women are the ones most likely to do all the freaky stuff we like, but the ones that will be the worst wives.
One of these days I’m going to ask God why He made nature point us in one direction, and then gave us commandments that point us in the opposite direction.
Not Catholic ones, sorry. This isn’t the opinion of a pope or two, like JPII’s statements against capital punishment. I’m not pushing ultramontanism here. It’s long-standing doctrine of the Church, taught by the entire Magisterium and believed by all the faithful until recently. That makes it infallible doctrine of the Church.
Using “extra-biblical” as an epithet isn’t Catholic either, since we consider Tradition (defined as the consistent teachings passed down to us from Jesus through the Apostles and their successors in the Magisterium) and Scripture both to be necessary methods by which God transmits Divine Revelation to His people. If you think you can reject any teaching that isn’t found explicitly in the Bible, that’s sola scriptura, which is Protestant, not Catholic. (No insult intended to my Protestant brethren.)
That doesn’t mean every Catholic who uses ABC is going to Hell, of course. There’s always Confession and absolution, and a lot of the people using it are so badly led that they probably don’t know they’re sinning anyway. There are worse things one could do — I’ve done worse.
Reasonable minds can disagree with any decree from someone above them in authority. Doesn’t mean it is a good idea.
You were right up until this line, but the truth is that most of today’s clergy don’t like it any more than the laity do, and either tacitly or openly encourage their parishioners to ignore it. You have to understand that most of the clergy right now are children of the 60s, and being against birth control in 2014 is just so uncool, you know?
In 45 years of being Catholic, in which I’d estimate I’ve heard about 2000 sermons, I haven’t heard a single sermon against birth control (in person; I’ve found a couple online from priests in traditionalist orders). Think about that: here’s something the Church clearly defines as a sin, and 90% of its members consistently commit this sin, yet their leaders virtually never try to instruct them on it. That’s an obvious problem of both disobedience and failed leadership, whether you agree it’s a sin or not.
Earl, true, I should have made that distinction. It’s not necessarily a sin to disagree, as long as you follow the rules anyway. I was assuming that someone who says it’s okay to disagree about birth control would also say it’s okay to use it, but that may not be true.
A few random thoughts in reply to others:
Lots of virgins that are good looking are waiting. I know many who made it to marriage. I know a few who did not. But, honestly, if you are committed to it religiously it is not that hard to stay the course. There are so many good people out there trying to follow Christ, not all make it, but they are out there doing their best. I am no looker, but a few of my brothers are and they did just fine. One of them married a 9-10 and she was a virgin as well. If Christ does not give us temptations greater than we can bare, than for those who want to do it, it is very possible. Also, 3% at marriage is probably a really bad sample. There is good data saying 50% of high school graduates are virgins. In Washington DC only 10% are virgins, but in middle America it is probably higher than 50%.
Women are clearly not the enemy. Men are not the enemy. PUAs and sluts, feminists and their male enablers, yeah they are probably the enemy. But I hope that I have love and compassion for all of them.
I don’t understand the whole birth control thing either. However, I think having children is awesome and for biological reasons have not been able to have as many as I wish, so I clearly I am biased. The same hormone technology that blocks pregnancy has enabled a generation of parents who want to give birth to children to do so – so not all bad. Not even talking IVF here – just manipulating hormones to make it possible.
I am not Catholic, so apologies, but I think they don’t look at BC in isolation, it is all a set of life affirmative beliefs that fit together intellectually like their opposition to the death penalty (again, not a Catholic). So taking the issue in isolation it looks unique but my understanding is that it is just a piece of a bigger puzzle.
@redpillsetmefree
“But even the most “serious” of females will give it up if the right man is asking.”
I feel bad saying this in the manosphere – but that is actually misogynistic. Women have virtue and they can follow Christ, and they can keep his commandments in the face of temptation. Will even the most serious man give it up if the right female is asking? Your statement is as stupid as saying that all men are rapists – total nonsense.
Male virgins are repulsive to sluts maybe, but not to other chaste people. I think if you think our nature and God’s commandments are out of line maybe you are doing it wrong. The happiest marriages will result from restraining our impulses and then releasing them in marriage. That is God’s plan and it works out great.
We have primal urges, and the manosphere talks about that alot, but lets not forget we have Godly urges that can often align. But if they don’t – God also commands us to be humble and we are given to pride. He commands us to be generous and we are given to greed. He commands us to lead our home, and often we are tempted to let others do so. On and on.
“I was assuming that someone who says it’s okay to disagree about birth control would also say it’s okay to use it, but that may not be true.”
It may not be true…but I figure most people disagree about it because they want to use it. Sex without pregancy as a consquence (well ~90% sure) is quite a hook.
What people don’t get is that it is rebellion against God’s design. Men rebelling against God, what do you think a woman is going to do? If a man that is divorced didn’t ever use birth control in the marriage…that would be a shocker to me.
God put in plenty of natural ways to not have 19 kids or kid right after kid. All it takes is some knowledge, communication, and periodic abstinence.
Virgin men are no more puke-inducing to promiscuous women than virgin women are. Both cause them to feel something like shame. Their disgust is for themselves, but they don’t comprehend it. God gave them a gift to use to form a strong family bond and they instead offered it to the idol of lust.
Across the board, it is not virginity in men that is disgusting, it is the lack of a backbone. We are instructed to encourage one another. Is not the most effective form of male encouragement boldly but kindly speaking the truth (it is described by Christ as a sword)? Is not the most effective form of female encouragement simple quiet, joyful service? [I look back on people I have been most encouraged in the faith by: men who told me the truth when I was believing a lie and women who demonstrated godliness in their behavior- specifically gentleness and kindness. “encouragement” has been corrupted into this idea of saying to others “everything will be allright” etc.] In churchianity, men want to have the woman’s job. But women cannot fill the man’s role. Cannot. And do not. Look at the church today- filled with a bunch of females trying to by organizing events and more emotional “worship” and “participation”. But none have stepped up to the male gauntlet at all. It remains empty. The men simply stopped professing the truth. This is one thing I first loved about reformed churches in general. The men do not accept another’s version of the truth; they are serious about examining and living what they find in Scripture. When men take their rightful position as head, women step down naturally and quietly or end up leaving the church with their effeminate husband in tow.
So much complaining about what women should be doing and so little analysis of the total picture. Apathetic, effeminate men and frigid, feminist women are counterparts. They BOTH must exist for the current structure in mainstream churches to survive. Bold Christian men are an affront to christian feminism. Submissive Christian women are an affront to male apathy. Our personal sins tempt those around us to engage in a counterpart sin: Christian women serve the idol of personal happiness; Christian men serve the idol of personal peace.
I feel bad saying this in the manosphere – but that is actually misogynistic. Women have virtue and they can follow Christ, and they can keep his commandments in the face of temptation.
You know what? Kevin is right. I should not have concurred. Projecting my sin onto better women was not only uncharitable, but un-Biblical.
And yeah, what Ellie said.
Something was bugging me: I really do not think that it is grammatically correct to write, ‘She’s done it all wrong’. As a grammar-nazi I must insist on, ‘She did it wrongly’ (the ‘all’ is superfluous).
I might be wrong about this.
RPSMF:
Almost true, but not precisely (see below).
True (see below).
He didn’t. Evolution provides a simple explanation for the above. Modern civilization is a very, very recent historical development and men and women haven’t evolved in harmony with it (yet).
Women are evolved to be attracted to thugs who will perform violence at their behest because, in the wilderness, they need it for their and their children’s protection. They don’t want a man to make nice and be all diplomatic to a lion. They need the man to kill the lion, ruthlessly. The confidence to fearlessly take on the lion is precisely what women find sexy, not precisely experience and confidence in bed. But this confidence will correlate with a high N count, whereas this lack of confidence will correlate with virginity.
There are obvious benefits to female promiscuity, because the more men out there killing lions for her the better. On the other hand, men are evolved not to heavily invest in promiscuous women because there is too much of a danger of investing resources (including doing dangerous things like killing lions) for children who turn out to be not their own. Whereas men are evolved to heavily invest in women with greater fertility and likelihood of healthier offspring. The freakishness of high N count women is simply the simulation of fertility even when she is not ovulating; it is an alternative strategy to keep men around.
earl:
Ok. I am a man who is divorced and didn’t ever use birth control in the marriage. There ya go.
So which is it: “High N count women are the ones most likely to do all the freaky stuff we like” or high N count women more likely to be frigid in marriage as we have discussed elsewhere? Or can anything be everything?
Now that would be an interesting divorce story tale.
“Based on the results I’ve seen IRL and around the web…I don’t disagree with the ban on birth control from the Catholic church.”
And what results are those?
And the ban on contraceptives didn’t stem from some divine succession from Peter, as someone mentioned. It came from a legalistic succession from Augustine, who was one of the biggest Christian apostates in Church history.
“I feel bad saying this in the manosphere – but that is actually misogynistic. Women have virtue and they can follow Christ, and they can keep his commandments in the face of temptation. Will even the most serious man give it up if the right female is asking?”
Possibly. It’s not misogynistic or misandristic to proclaim that both men and women fall prey to temptation.
Ellie:
I think you just answered your own question.
“One of these days I’m going to ask God why He made nature point us in one direction, and then gave us commandments that point us in the opposite direction.”
He gave us free will. The commandments were to protect us from ourselves. Free will means we can follow them or go our own way.
“And what results are those?”
https://dalrock.wordpress.com/2014/09/01/shes-done-it-all-wrong-why-hasnt-god-delivered-the-husband-she-is-praying-for/#comment-139086
“And the ban on contraceptives didn’t stem from some divine succession from Peter, as someone mentioned.”
Humanae Vitae came from Pope Paul VI.
RPSMF, Kevin and Elspeth are all correct.
Most women will have sex outside marriage with the “right” man, one who pushes her attraction triggers. But, like all rules of general application, it is subject to exceptions. NAWALT always applies.
There are some women who will not have sex outside marriage, even with the “right” man. In today’s society, there are not very many of these women. Hence, the general rule. Even if the rare woman will not have sex outside marriage with the “right” man, she sure as hell will want to, and will express that desire openly and obviously She will resist that temptation, but she will WANT to succumb to it and resisting it will be excruciatingly difficult for her.
(In my view, even her exposure to such attractive men whom she cannot have will bend and ply her away from the less attractive men she actually CAN get and who will be willing to offer her commitment and who will be willing to wait for marriage; but that’s another story for another thread.)
I disagree with Kevin that observing the general rule is misogynist. It is not. It is not misogynist to observe and verbally express a simple fact about most women.
The prohibition of birth control is not some doctrine that was taken from out of thin air, it is based on holy tradition which also carried weight in the Church as with Holy Scripture. From the beginning, in the early Church, Christians did not practice contraception and Church fathers spoke against it.
http://www.staycatholic.com/ecf_contraception.htm
@ Ellie:
“So which is it: “High N count women are the ones most likely to do all the freaky stuff we like” or high N count women more likely to be frigid in marriage as we have discussed elsewhere? Or can anything be everything?”
I’ll elaborate on Brainy’s answer: It’s both.
The high N woman enjoys sex with sexually desirable men who don’t want to marry her. Then she marries a man who is less attractive. Then she goes “frigid” or doesn’t want sex with her husband, precisely because he is less attractive than the men she had sex with before marriage.
Women cannot see this because most won’t admit that they act this way. They also deny what I just wrote above, because otherwise they’d have to admit they bear some responsibility for the problem.
And by the way, the reason the high N woman marries the less attractive man is because the less attractive men are the ones willing to marry her. She’s already had sex with all the attractive men who were NOT willing to marry her.
Ellie
So which is it: “High N count women are the ones most likely to do all the freaky stuff we like” or high N count women more likely to be frigid in marriage as we have discussed elsewhere? Or can anything be everything?
Both and neither. One possible path: carousel rider with a high N approaches the Wall, finds a beta provider who is good enough, does whatever he wants sexually in order to convince him to marry her. Once the ring is on her finger, this declines, and after the first child comes to a near stop. Another possible path: high count woman resolves to stop being promiscuous, moves to a new town where her past is not so visible (not as easy in a world of social media), meets her “nice guy” and marries – but anything other than matrimonial position intercourse reminds her of the past she’s trying to hide / forget, so she balks, refuses, becomes emotional, etc. Another possible variation, high N count woman approaching the wall marries good enough beta & does whatever he can think of sexually, they have a child and then join a church. The combination of motherhood, estrogen dose during pregnancy and new exposure to the Bible leads to deep shame and she reseolves to not do any of those things anymore.
Just off the top of my head. I’m sure there are first person experiences out there.
The takeaway for any high N count woman who really wants to bond with a man is she will have to work at it every day. And every night. When various whispers float up in her head, she’ll have to stomp them out mentally. She’ll have to refuse to have any contact with any men from her past, not even a cup of coffee, because of “nostalgia goggles”. Those are the goggles that fuzz out the bad parts of the past and preserve the good parts in a kind of glowing light, and they are real. And she will have to learn to go along with whatever man she marries, in Bible terms she will have to submit and build up his headship, in evo-bio / Game terms she’ll have to consciously control her fitness tests and help him become more of the Alpha she craves.
This requires some degree of serious internal reflection, she will have to look at herself as honestly as possible and not lie to herself. Many people are not willing to do that. In my biased opinion, more men than women are willing to do that.
All of this is work. It could be hard work. Nobody can do this all the day, every day, I will admit. But the lapses should be only from time to time, and never serious, like sexual contact with a man from the past. Hard work, but if she’s not willing to do it more often than not, then she should not sign up for the job of “wife”.
deti
I disagree with Kevin that observing the general rule is misogynist. It is not. It is not misogynist to observe and verbally express a simple fact about most women.
Oh, come on, you know that any criticism of women is misogynous, doubly so if based on reality.
Yes, that’s right, reality is misogynous…
Hmmmm…I notice that Conundrum hasn’t addressed this:
[[Also, as a first time commentor perhaps it’s not my place to say this, but I know a bit about finance and I don’t buy Conundrum’s story at all. There is simply no way to reliably triple someone’s money over three years and then expect to do it again, at least not honestly. Bernie Madoff didn’t promise returns like that.]]
I tend to agree. The smell of overripe fish is in the air….
Basically a lot of women today get freaky the times they shouldn’t (outside of marriage with many men who won’t commit)…and then shut it down the times they should (in marriage to a guy not up to her attraction standards).
It’s rebellion on both sides.
There are attractive virgins to marry. I married a 25 year old virgin. She was (and still is) an 8 IMHO. When we go out she gets lots of male attention and if I leave her side for even a minute there is a guy there ready to take my place, so it isn’t just my opinion. Let me add that she was not a technical virgin, but the real deal. Two weeks before our wedding she told me that I was the first boy she had ever kissed. How was she still and virgin and where do you find such women? Not in the US or the west in general. I found her in the Philippines. Her family asked two questions of me immediately and before our first date. The first was, “Are you Catholic?” The second was, “Are you willing to have only chaperoned dates with our daughter?” A yes was required to each before I could date her. She had never been anywhere without being accompanied by a male family member. It was a huge adjustment to come to the United States and have me expect her to be able to go places on her own. She still doesn’t like it. About the only place she goes on her own is to work; everywhere else she talks me into taking her.
My second response is about the use of BC. My mother was more Catholic than the pope. She never used BC and taught against it. She was pregnant 13 times over a 22 year span, counting multiple miscarriages after she had polio before I was born. One of my six sisters followed her teaching on BC. She got pregnant at 17, married, had the first child, and then had a second 2 years later. She is now 57 years old, has only the two middle aged daughters, and has never used BC in her life. And since she has had a man in her bed continuously since she was a teenager, I am pretty sure there was sex going on; not that it is any of my business. I on the other hand have used BC to regulate my family size and have 6 children. Just because you don’t use BC does not mean that you will be blessed with dozens of children, and just because you do use BC does not mean you will not have lots of kids. BTW, the mother of my children died in 1997, and is not my current wife. My current wife also has never used BC and is dead set against it, but we have not been blessed yet and we have been married for over 6 years.
“I on the other hand have used BC to regulate my family size and have 6 children.”
Does that mean your wife took hormonal BC or did you use NFP?
MarcusD says:
September 4, 2014 at 3:27 am
My mistake.
Even if the rare woman will not have sex outside marriage with the “right” man, she sure as hell will want to, and will express that desire openly and obviously She will resist that temptation, but she will WANT to succumb to it and resisting it will be excruciatingly difficult for her.
Relevance? No one is claiming that devout chaste women are somehow asexual or can’t be tempted. However, I do assert that choosing a man who won’t put that kind of pressure due to similar devotion markedly decreases the intensity of the temptation.
In my view, even her exposure to such attractive men whom she cannot have will bend and ply her away from the less attractive men she actually CAN get and who will be willing to offer her commitment and who will be willing to wait for marriage; but that’s another story for another thread.
This can be true even if she’s never exposed to many men out of her league. This is not the result of being around or dating very attractive men. This is the result of increased freedom of choice, and a culture in which everyone is admonished not to settle.
My girls have never dated anyone and in the oldest I can already see that the eyes through which she views her father narrows the number of men she will seriously contemplate considerably. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing. My father’s commanding presence had a similar affect on me. But it can be a problem.
If authentic, the Didache states you should not procure abortion nor commit infanticide. The work was one of a handful of the earliest Christian writings predating the Gospels.
Opus,
and thus you can plausibly allege that your luck may not last after the last three years remarkable results.
Yes, that is always possible. Past performance is no guarantee of future results (in case anyone thought I said otherwise).
However, legal risk, which I addressed upthread, would be true of any client. The situation with my sister has its own set of characteristics. You do bring up the good point that it would be prudent to have the same type of contract with her that I have with any other client, either way, especially if she is under her husband’s headship. Another reason to gracefully wind down the arrangement.
True, we should never assume that someone with a small family used birth control. I know an extremely devout Catholic couple who have no kids, and I can’t imagine them using it. I’ve never asked because it’s none of my business, but I assume one of them is infertile. Lots of things can keep people from having babies.
On the other hand, when you have a whole church building full of couples claiming to belong to a faith that forbids any use of artificial birth control, and they have an average of 2.1 children per family, you know what’s going on — maybe not every couple, but in general, most couples are using it. And that’s what the polls show.
Ehh, I don’t think birth control is that difficult to use. I mean, seriously. Teen birth rates are way down, but I bet most teens still have plenty of sex.
Another random question. Do you guys think church actually cares about why their attendance is down? Like, college age men/women are the missing generation in church. I know, I’m part of it. I live right by Kennesaw State University, 25k students and staff. I visited a “College Ministry” at Kennesaw First Baptist, maybe four miles from campus. Not a huge church, but decent sized, you can look it up.
9 people were in the “College Ministry.” As far as I know, there’s only one decent sized college youth group within 10 miles or so of Kennesaw State.
Anyway. On point. Do you guys think that churches would actually change to attract young men/young women if they were told why their attendance is so remarkably low, or do you think Churches don’t care?
“While her story is tightly packed with manosphere clichés, it is important to remember that she is a living, breathing, and hurting person. Our (collective) rejection of biblical marriage has created a sea of human misery, which is as easy to witness on Catholic Answers Forum and ChristianForums.com as it is on Yahoo Answers.”
Thanks for that reminder. It is far too easy for me to get caught up into a “well, serves her right” self-righteous attitude instead of showing compassion (while remaining firm to your convictions).
Showing compassion, and remaining firm in my convictions and knowledge at the same time is a very difficult synergy for me.
YHMP asks me:
How old was your wife when you married her? Me: She was 20 – I was 25. We were both virgins until after the wedding.
It’s likely she was instilled with the right values, and at that age, wasn’t audacious/corrupted enough – yet. Me: Well, she was raised with the right attitude about premarital sex. I’m not sure why you felt the need to add the “yet.”
Had you waited longer (before marrying her), and put some serious moves on her, would she have succumbed? Me: I really don’t think so. It’s hard to be objective about one’s own wife, but I’d say she was in the HB8.5 range when we met – maybe edging toward the HB9 mark. She’s always looked young for her age, and young guys would hit on her well into her 30’s. It wasn’t lack of opportunities or the attention of “players” that kept her legs closed… it was her commitment to be a virgin until her wedding night.
__________________________________________________
Earl responds to something I wrote:
Celibate men who got their authority from the succession of Peter. Therefore it’s rebellion from the church leaders to actively disregard it.
I’m going to refrain from restarting the 30-Year’s-War and just write this: Protestants do not acknowledge the claims of authority by the Catholic clergy to be legitimate.
__________________________________________________
RPSMF writes:
Also, there are different levels of both virginity and chastity.
Chastity? Absolutely. Virginity? No: virginity is either/or.
And, One of these days I’m going to ask God why He made nature point us in one direction, and then gave us commandments that point us in the opposite direction.
He didn’t (and neither did “evolution” – which is a fairy-tale for adults). God created us to align with His will, but mankind rejected that – basically, we did this to ourselves.
__________________________________________________
Cail writes to me:
…the truth is that most of today’s clergy don’t like it any more than the laity do, and either tacitly or openly encourage their parishioners to ignore it.
Thanks; I didn’t know that (which is why I said, “my understanding is…”). Now that you’ve explained it, it does make sense – today’s mid-level RCC clergy are children of the 60’s. Having said that: given enough time, the RCC will allow it: we’ll have a papal bull “clarifying” it, and the “tradition” will go the way of murdering Lutherans and the prohibition against crossbows by Innocent III and the Second Lateral Counsel.
__________________________________________________
And finally, several people have posited that females find male virginity… repulsive. Kevin hits it on the head when he notes that other chaste people do not find it repulsive at all. For my wife, that would have been a deal-breaker. And it did nothing to cool the jets of my… well…. horny Catholic girlfriends. Some unchaste women view it as a challenge to bed a guy who could have sex with other attractive women, but chooses not to. I suppose that does not apply to incels.
mikediver5 says:
September 4, 2014 at 11:13 am
“BTW, the mother of my children died in 1997, and is not my current wife. My current wife also has never used BC and is dead set against it, but we have not been blessed yet and we have been married for over 6 years.”
How old is your wife? If you’re having a decent amount of sex, and she’s early 30s or under, I’d start looking for a Norplant bump, receipts for Depo Provera injections, etc.
“Let me add that she was not a technical virgin, but the real deal.”
This is an interesting point. I once dated a girl who was committed to being a virgin until she married, except that she had had anal and oral sex with three past boyfriends. But she was dead set on doing things “God’s way” and holding out for PIV until marriage. I didn’t believe her and she even offered to get a letter from her OBGYN that she had an intact hymen.
So, what should be a man’s view be on marrying a woman who IS a technical virgin and can prove it? Would having anal sex with three guys be worse than a single partner via PIV sex?
“And finally, several people have posited that females find male virginity… repulsive. Kevin hits it on the head when he notes that other chaste people do not find it repulsive at all.”
While I would agree with this, I would posit that this is EXTREMELY rare. I dated since high school for about 15 years. During that time, I dated maybe 20 women and with the exception of one, none were virgins. The one holdout was a very attractive gal I met at church and after about 6 serious months she wanted to have a talk about my sexual history to make sure we were equally yoked. I told her I was a virgin and found her attractive since she shared my convictions. Next day she broke up. Just wasn’t working out. Next!
For my wife, that would have been a deal-breaker.
My daughter says it might be a deal-breaker for her as well. She stops short of saying it definitely would be a definite deal breaker because she fears saying that would be in some way to denigrate her father or me. But we’ve both made it perfectly clear to her that it is perfectly good and right for her to want a groom who has not been with anyone other than his bride.
“Anyway. On point. Do you guys think that churches would actually change to attract young men/young women if they were told why their attendance is so remarkably low, or do you think Churches don’t care?”
It’s a common contention that the turning away of the mainstream denominations from their traditional roots and doctrines in the 1960s and 1970s in pursuit of relevance and social justice has resulted in the emptying of the pews.
Additionally, my understanding is that in many places, the leadership would rather see the entire thing burn to the ground rather than revert to the old ways.
So, if you believe that the changes necessary are a return to their roots, the odds of that happening are in my opinion less than the proverbial snowball in hell. If you envision some other change in hopes of being relevant to a younger crowd, at this point about the only thing left would be to have an open bar. My local mega church rocks out and pointedly offers that if the music is too loud, there are earplugs in the back. Oh, perhaps they’ve changed since I was there last some eight years ago, but I doubt it. They make a lot of money putting on a highly relevant rock concert every Sunday morning.
I sometimes wonder if the churches in urban downtown areas are better attended by men and women in their 20s as they seem to flee the suburbs for the city as soon as they can.
“Protestants do not acknowledge the claims of authority by the Catholic clergy to be legitimate.”
I’m speaking about Catholics rejecting it. Protestants can reject whatever authority they want.
“Unfortunately, such an investment in justice is not as evident in other parts of the world. This is why the numbers in the United States appear high. In fact they are skewed.”
o.O Divorce as justice. I just… it.. *sigh* I just can not get my head around how highly ranked members of the Catholic church can make statements like this that so directly contradict the words of G0d himself on divorce.
http://biblehub.com/nasb/malachi/2.htm Malachi 2:16 “For I hate divorce,” says the LORD, the God of Israel, “and him who covers his garment with wrong,” says the LORD of hosts. “So take heed to your spirit, that you do not deal treacherously.”
Dear Dalrock,
I have recently discovered your blog and was quite fascinated by it. I fully agree with you on most points. Moreover, I often engage in debates on feminism with my friends, always trying to point out its harmful effects to society. I basically was arguing many of your points without knowing it. I am still quite surprised about widespread obliviousness to this situation even among smart educated people.
I couldn’t find a way to contact you directly other than posting a comment. This short essay is not directed at the topic at hand, rather it is an expression of the opinion on big picture origins of feminism. Some of it was taken from a number of popular science books, and some of it is my own speculation. May be it was already covered in earlier posts, or in other blogs, I didn’t happen to run across it yet. I would like to engage in a debate and/or be proven wrong, so please don’t hesitate to comment. I hope everyone finds it interesting.
To begin with, I and pretty much all scientific community agree with you on human female evolutionary needs:
“1. Sex from the most attractive, powerful, highest status man they can get.
2. Maximum investment and commitment from a man (love, courtship, romance, his lifetime commitment to her).
3. Children.”
In fact, evolutionary biologists logically explain these desires. Firstly, the male attractiveness strongly implies good genes therefore the offspring has much better chance of surviving. A lot of research has been done on that, e.g. it was recently shown that “Physical attractiveness as a phenotypic marker of health: an assessment using a nationally representative sample of American adults” http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1090513814000749. Secondly, due to large size of the human brain babies have to be born quite helpless, and a woman could not raise the children on her own for at least few first years. That’s why such unique features as constant availability for sex and concealed ovulation had evolved, so as to keep a man loyal and committed. And finally, I don’t think I need to comment on how evolutionary biologists explain a desire to have children.
This means that a woman that followed up on those desires had higher chance of leaving more descendants in the primitive hunter gatherer environment. This is a very important caveat because in all the blogs and modern literature we use such terms as “traditional”, “old-fashioned”, “for thousands of years”, or “for generations”. All these terms typically imply the environment humans lived after the onset of the agriculture: from few thousand years to about couple of hundred years ago. This period is blink of an eye with very limited impact on humans as a species. The vast majority of time was spent in so called primitive hunter gatherer setting. Our behaviors and instincts have evolved to adapt to that environment, which in fact has very little similarity to what we would call traditional.
How family arrangement and human sexuality worked in primitive societies is hard to figure out for certain. However, such methods as observation of modern primitive societies, records of observations in the past, archeological evidence, details of human anatomy, observations of our close relatives – apes, and other species give some clues for our current understanding (Matt Ridley in “Red Queen” and Jared Diamond in ”The day before yesterday” elaborate on that). The answer turns out to be that throughout most of their history humans lived in predominantly monogamous families (at least serially monogamous) with a widespread cuckoldry. This implied that in a given tribe/village there was one or few dominant men who were in fact biological fathers of about 10-20% of all children. These alphas typically had their own wives and children, while the adulteresses were conning hapless betas into providing for the kids, whose true father was unknown even to the mother herself. Yes, women always wanted to “have their cake and eat it too”. Women went for their #1 desire, despite the fact that in all societies, it was a very risky activity. Adulterers were almost universally severely punished if caught. But there is not much the majority of man could do under such conditions, hence women were moderately successful in pursuing all three of their desires.
That is until the onset of agriculture. More people were now able to crowd together so laws and norms enforcement institutions had to be created. This part is somewhat related to the current topic in this post, it may sound a bit blasphemous for some readers, and I apologize for it in advance. After the onset of agriculture a bunch of men got together and developed a set of rules so that strangers could live next to each other without conflict, it is often overlooked that the important part of these laws was aimed at curbing the adultery (just read Ten Commandments).
Provided much more resources (available manpower) the institutions were quite efficient at enforcing the rules and achieving their goals. These developments created what we call now “traditional” family arrangement. This typically involved patriarchic structure, where women’s chastity was highly valued. A monetary transaction typically took place between patriarchs, whenever a daughter changed household in an arranged marriage. The virginity of the daughter in such situation was of paramount importance. It was often argued, and rightly so, that men ended up on a winning side of this arrangement. I like to think about it as “Revenge of the nerds 1.0” – ordinary men stuck it to women hard for all those hundreds of thousands years of cuckoldry.
A side note: another interesting side effect of agriculture is the appearance of harems. In a primitive society rarely could a man afford to take care of even two wives. But with agriculture and division of labor, some men accumulated insane amount of resources. Obviously, they created themselves a heavily guarded breeding machines comprised of up to thousands of fertile women. This summarizes human male’s evolutionary needs pretty well.
The “traditional” arrangement with some variations lasted for several thousands of years. Women were not completely powerless during this time on both individual level and as a whole. There are multiple examples of societies where many women appear everywhere in societal hierarchy having successful careers. We all know examples of powerful queens in European nations. It’s hard to say, however, whether those women could or ever considered instituting feminism reforms. Some feministic propositions, or rather pieces of work that pointed fingers at the unfairness of women’s situation appeared here and there in western literature long before the onset of feminism. You could check out “Madame Bovary” or “Anna Karenina” for example, and you will find some resemblance to “Eat Pray Love”, safe for eventual outcome.
I speculate that there is one good reason why feminism never took hold or became popular before recent times. One big difference is that throughout all human history except may be last 50-60 years women lacked a remarkable technological invention: reliable and painless method for birth control. Indeed, the one thing women could never do, even now, albeit to a lesser extent, is to raise a child on their own. Children of single mothers are and have always been at a great disadvantage from the start, more so in the past than recently. Yes a woman could engage in her #1 desire and hook up with the alpha, but if she gets knocked up her life was ruined. That’s why they needed men, and needed “traditional” arrangement to help raise the children. And about 50 years ago it all changed, now women had means not to get knocked up. Obviously a set of propositions that appeal to basic subconscious instincts was bound to become widespread and popular. There are certainly other important developments such as democracy and freedom of speech that had an impact. But I’m strongly convinced that the “carousel” and “hookup culture” wouldn’t be possible without a means of birth control.
Now we find ourselves in a truly unprecedented situation: women bunch together and successfully pressure to legitimize their sexual promiscuity. Adultery is no longer a crime in civilized world, for the first time in history. And nobody knows how it will affect subsequent generations. One consequence is already experienced by both men and women, your blog devotes a lot of attention it: Achieving desire #1 by means of utilizing birth control, fundamentally contradicts achieving desires #2 and #3. It’s obvious that’s it hard to get kids with birth control, but the absence romance in hookup culture is trickier, such that most feminists still don’t get it. In this blog you explained it remarkably well, I learned a lot reading it.
This is probably a simplistic view. I would like to learn more and be contradicted. Please ask questions, I omitted many interesting details for the sake of brevity and clarity.
@ Earl,
I’m speaking about Catholics rejecting it. Protestants can reject whatever authority they want
Got it. I wasn’t sure if you were saying that everyone is obligated to obey the pope, whether one acknowledges his authority or not. I’ve heard Catholics say that obedience is obligatory, and that Protestants are just sinning by refusing to do so.
But it’s not true that we Protestants can reject whatever authority we want – in theological matters we may not reject the authority of God or the Bible.
This woman’s article shows what is wrong with American Christianity/churcianity(?) vs Christianity in third world countries/developing countries. In America, women view God as the ultimate Santa Clause: giver of wishes, dreams, boyfriends, and presents, etc. And don’t forget that Jesus is no longer the savior who died on the cross and came to set us free! No! He is the epitome of the perfect boyfriend that we sing love songs to on Sunday morning. Now compare that to Christianity in developing countries. Think of the Christians being slaughtered, crucified in Syria, beheaded in Iraq, raped and sold into slavery in Africa, etc. They depend on God for survival and worship Him in a more meaningful capacity. Maybe we have it too easy here, maybe too much time on our hands? Just imagine God looking down from Heaven hearing prayers from these two different groups. One is pleading “send me a boyfriend/husband” (because God is in the dating business these days) and the other one is praying for their survival. Just my observation.
@Lyn 87
Where I live there is a saying that ‘Winter is God’s hint to burn more Catholics’. This is exactly what the Bonfire Societies of which every village has one does on November 5th, just about the time it begins to get cold. Not real Catholics – as that would be unfair on the Irish and Polish – they are not allowed to do that; but effigies of real Catholics like The Bishop of Rome – as they call him – or indeed anyone else who is unpopular.
For their part Catholics regard all Protestants as destined for the fiery place.
@Elspeth
“”They are not allowed to date men who aren’t Christians.””
I assume by your post that you would not allow your daughters to date a Jewish man?
Cail Corishev says:
September 4, 2014 at 1:52 pm
Exactly. There is no way that there could be that many families who happened to end up with 2.1 kids based on only either random luck or properly practiced NFP (it’s not just artificial birth control that’s against the rules; NFP must be practiced for a serious reason as you mentioned upthread).
The school attached to my parish has about 330 students enrolled from more than 150 families. When I last checked there were only a handful of 3-kid families and none with 4 or more. Sadly there is one large family (7 kids) who opted out of the parish school because they could not afford it.
Catholic here: I remember women of my parents’ generation saying the Church lost them with that ban on artificial birth control. They were (and still are) firmly anti-abortion, but they wanted the solid line drawn just short of abortion rather than just short of artificial contraception. So present day numbers of American Catholics who don’t buy the Church teaching do not surprise me. Economic matters and incentives writ large.
Along those lines, some form of birth control has always been around, it’s a mistake to think that it sprang up out of nothing in the 60’s as Earl and other Catholics want to maintain. The trends were there long before hormonal birth control entered the picture; it was just gasoline on the small fire already present. Not just condoms made from sheepskins, but folk medicine in many parts of the world included knowledge of herbs that could be used to induce abortion as well as to enhance libidos. Seem to remember a friend telling me that somewhere/sometime during the Renaissance, anal sex was often used between husbands and wives to avoid pregnancies: this practice was condemned by the Church at that time. Do not have any reference for this though.
“Along those lines, some form of birth control has always been around, it’s a mistake to think that it sprang up out of nothing in the 60’s as Earl and other Catholics want to maintain.”
I never made the assertion birth control was never used before the 60s. I’ve read stories about the different things women did to prevent pregnancy.
What is different is that contraception hasn’t been used as widespread in the course of human history as now. That was because of hormonal birth control that came out in the 60s.
They care about attendance (and donations), but in most cases, they care more about their beliefs. That can be good or bad. It’s good when their beliefs are the right ones and they refuse to compromise on them. We wouldn’t want Christian pastors to bring in belly dancers during services to increase attendance, for instance.
But it’s bad when the things they won’t change are sinful or ideological rather than religious. I’ve related this before, so I won’t go into detail again, but I know of cases where priests (those liberal ones from the 60s and 70s) absolutely refused to allow any traditional practices in their parish, even when the applicants were offering large donations and offering to do it when it wouldn’t bother the other members. So in those cases, the beliefs being defended weren’t Christian ones, but their attachment to modernism and liberal innovations.
So it depends on the change. Catholic churches changed like crazy in the 1970s to try to attract more people, especially the young. They brought in guitars and modern music, groovy decorations and outfits, English over Latin, comfortable pews and less kneeling — pretty much every innovation they could squeeze through the relaxed standards of Vatican II, and then some. When the pews emptied instead of filling, not one parish in a hundred tried rolling back the changes to see if the people would come back. Most doubled-down on the innovations, leading eventually to girl altar servers, lay people doing more of the priest’s work up around the altar, and in some cases bizarre nonsense like liturgical dance and clown Masses. The pews continued to empty. Still, very few parishes scaled back any innovation after it had been introduced, until finally the pope started cracking down on some of it.
So if a change is new and liberal, many will go for it if there’s any chance it will draw more people — or even if it won’t. If a change looks like rolling things back or making the practice of the faith harder in any way, most won’t, even if there’s evidence it would draw more people.
I was having a conversation over coffee.
‘You should come to Church with us on Sunday at the Anglican Church of — —-‘- ——–.
The music is very good. My daughter is in the choir.’
‘Oh no’ I replied, ‘I am not interested in listening to girl trebles.
‘That is so sexist’ she replied, obviously getting turned on by my chauvinism.
‘You, as a musician, believe in Historically Informed Performance Practice’ (HIPP) I replied. ‘You would not approve of a quartet of saxophones in a Beethoven Symphony just to give the female saxophonists something to do. would you, so how can you tolerate girls voices Tallis or Byrd?’.
That shut her up.
It’s not just Catholics throwing away centuries of tried and tested tradition.
…says someone who believes in miracles.
*sigh*…
It would be nice, if you were right. Curing cancer with chemotherapy would be far easier than it is, for example. Unfortunately, we are not living in a fairy-tale.
redpillsetmefree @ 7:34 am:
“Virgin men are puke inducing to females, precisely because of their lack of experience and corresponding lack of confidence.”
Well, I’m a puke-inducing virgin man but it can’t be because I lack experience and confidence. No girl has shown enough interest in me to find out. The sense I get in my area is there’s an incredible amount of location pre-selection. Girls go to nightclubs to be sexy and go to church (Protestant) to NOT be sexy. I don’t do the bar scene and only encounter women at church so I’m a sexual nonentity.
Or, maybe girls are so Facebook-addicted that they just don’t look for men in the real world. I don’t do texting. Then again, the year I spent trying online dating was most discouraging.
archerwfisher @ 2:00 pm:
“Another random question. Do you guys think church actually cares about why their attendance is down? ”
I’ve attended a couple churches that were almost completely old people. They talked about bringing in newer, younger members but clearly had no clue how to go about it. The most recent church thought hiring a current youth pastor for their senior pastor opening would be a good way to do it. Red Flag One, they weren’t reconsidering their doctrine or bylaws.
When the prospective pastor visited, his wife turned out to be extremely attractive. Me in my red-pill cynicism, I read that as Red Flag Two. Seminary students are the rock stars of the Christian world. This guy obviously bagged a hypergamous hottie and was now a rising star in the denomination hierarchy. Was this guy going to understand or care about what we mortal men are going through, when the current system worked so well for him? Or was he just a symbol for who the congregation hoped would start coming?
I checked out. When a church is that badly out of touch, just let it die. The contraction we’re seeing is a good thing… there’s nothing like sticking out the hard times to identify who the true believers are. However, I expected a corrected denomination would have formed by now. God knows there’s demand for it.
Earl
What is different is that contraception hasn’t been used as widespread in the course of human history as now. That was because of hormonal birth control that came out in the 60s.
How do you know this to be true, Earl? Birth rate information from history is not always reliable.
Then there is this: Silphium
True. Most girls assume the guys at church will be “nice guys”: boring. To attract girls in church, it’s not enough to look nice and be friendly; you have to be overtly alpha so they can’t miss it. That’s why the music leaders, and sometimes pastors, clean up.
Also, girls who know how to attract a man at a night club don’t necessarily know how to do it at church. They’re consciously on their good behavior, which takes away the easy techniques. Even if there’s a guy they like, they don’t know how to get him to approach while still looking like a good church girl, so nothing happens.
@Gunner Q
I don’t do texting.
Are you under 50? Because not texting is like someone in the 1920s swearing to not use one of them talking boxes, those dern tely-phone machines!
Google “delta male” then learn how to not be one. If you become bitter you are in danger of backsliding into gamma…. dating/mating death sentence.
My job routinely takes me to remote locations where cellphone signal is iffy at best. As texts often get through when voice calls don’t (due to low signal strength), text messaging is essential for communication both with the office and with my family. Now, using the camera function on my cellphone, no, I haven’t bothered with that yet. 😉
I received a party invitation a few nights ago from a woman in one of my circles. She seems to like me, but is not my type. Not the point, point is she first asked for my Facebook as if she just assumed I was on there. No I’m not, can’t be bothered. Shock … gasp … what’s wrong with you? She had to write down the info for the party invite. Her solipsism: she couldn’t imagine anyone not on Facebook. There was a husband and wife nearby, wife said hey we’re not on Facebook either. To which I said, “good for you!”, much to the first woman’s consternation.
@Gunner, @Cail, I can speak to my invisibility at Church. It’s bad everywhere I go. Women, even much younger women do not turn me down for dances during the week and I get the occasional phone number. But attend Mass on Sunday morning and …. and …. and … crickets. If one is not clearly alpha, never going to get anywhere without some inside help. Hopefully the help does not steer one to the problem woman they might want to fob off on some unlucky man. I suppose it’s possible to develop some social circle game, but that’s a long term project at best.
As fun as an open bar or rock music or belly dancers might be, not quite what I was thinking of. I was thinking start simple. (I visited one such church–rock music–and it damn hurt my ears. I work in security, I shoot handguns regularly, but I still was wincing in pain.) For example–why not work to make church more about social friendships? Look at your typical Sunday morning. The main service is usually–about 10 minutes of loitering around beforehand, songs, a “hug the person next to you” thing, sermon, songs, goodbye. The format says that meeting people is not a priority. For those of us who are not super outgoing, Sunday morning is not helpful.
Why not make it a priority to put something in to help people socialize? Like, a college youth group I attended. It was “go, loiter about, then songs begin.” Casual environment, Thursday night–why not put in a small snack bar with trail mix and iced tea/pop, or even Foosball table? A videogame system? I’ve seen all these things in college environments, and it works dandy to help people meet and begin friendships. Churches don’t care though, it seems, to try to help people be social. This would be a simple thing that would make people my age much more appreciative of church.
Or another. Teaching things that fucking apply to real life. I kid you not, I’ve debated for Christianity so much in college classes, one professor started calling me “our resident theologian.”
How much of that stuff did I learn at church? Zilch, nada, diddly squat. I had to learn all the real facts that support my faith on my own. I remember last year, at mega church Church of Apostles in Atlanta, Michael Yousef had a sermon specifically for college kids going back to school who would have their faith challenged. “Oh, nice,” Thought I. “We’re going to learn all sorts of neat facts, or maybe philosophy truths, that support Christianity.”
Nay, I found out. What was his sermon for the college kids having their faith challenged? Basically, “read your bibles, pray and have faith!” I HAVE put together fact based lessons supporting Christianity that were better than this. It’s part of why church is not relevant to life–they don’t bother teach things that are relevant.
A really good fairy-tale for adults involves particles of dirt spontaneously assembling to produce a grown man, then particles of bone spontaneously assembling to produce a grown woman since the man was lonely, immortality for the man and woman provided they don’t eat a forbidden fruit, but a talking snake convincing them otherwise, and this being the complete explanation for all evil tendencies in humanity, including ones we discuss here such as female hypergamy and solipsism. (Never mind there is not one iota of scientific evidence for any of this.) It gets even better when this is claimed as how man “rejected” God, despite the fact God would have had to have rejected man first; since in order for man to accept God God must will that man does so.
Meanwhile, in the real world, we can work with plausible explanations for things like female hypergamy and solipsism.
@archerwfisher –
I remember last year, at mega church Church of Apostles in Atlanta …
I’m tempted to make a comment like “Well, there’s your problem” and leave it at that, but I’ll expand on this.
Basically, you can’t really expect much better from a mega-church. I have heard teaching on the facts that support Christianity, but it was at small churches. Mega-churches usually became mega by avoiding the hard stuff and sticking to nice, easy messages that people want to hear. And most people don’t want to hear the stuff you were asking for, like “here are all the facts so you can think for yourselves.” So mega-churches, as a general rule*, don’t give them hard teachings.
* There may be one or two shining exceptions to this rule, but if so, I’d love to hear about them, because I don’t personally know of a single exception.
That word “misogyny?”
…I do not think it means what some people think it means.
I forget often that we live in a time where every single statement must be constantly qualified, less the All Police swoop down with full fury.
To make a statement that applies to the vast majority of women, and does not apply to perhaps 3-5% of women is neither misogynistic nor invalidated by the women that are the exception to it.
If the rebuttal idea here is that a woman can make a choice for obedience to God in the area of sexual purity, even in the face of extreme(read: Alpha) temptation, that is a statement of truth.
95/97 out of 100 women will sleep with the men they truly desire commitment from to secure the relationship before or outside of marriage. That is a statement of fact.
If people are offended by the idea that a majority of the most beautiful and/or high N count women use the Alpha F**/Beta Bucks strategy for mating, then, be offended. It is, nevertheless, the most common experience.
http://nypost.com/2012/11/25/nobody-marries-their-best-sex-ever/
http://blog.californiapsychics.com/blog/2013/01/why-women-dont-marry-their-best-sex-partners.html
http://alphagameplan.blogspot.com/2014/08/n-and-odds-of-marital-satisfaction.html
People are also now saying that the male disposition towards variety and spreading seed, and the female biological imperative of maximizing hypergamy is a result of the curse.
Hmmm….interesting.
@BrainyOne –
If you’re going to lay claim to being brainy, you could at least make a small effort to understand the opposing points of view you’re so cavalierly dismissing. Your use of the word “spontaneously” completely omits the central point of the Creation story — the guiding intelligence of God — so it’s no wonder you’ve gotten it completely wrong. What you’ve set up and demolished is a straw man that no Christian actually believes.
1. The high N woman enjoys sex with sexually desirable men who don’t want to marry her.
2. Then she marries a man who is less attractive.
3. Then she goes “frigid” or doesn’t want sex with her husband
4. precisely because he is less attractive than the men she had sex with before marriage.
Women cannot see this because most won’t admit that they act this way. They also deny what I just wrote above, because otherwise they’d have to admit they bear some responsibility for the problem.
And by the way, the reason the high N woman marries the less attractive man is because the less attractive men are the ones willing to marry her. She’s already had sex with all the attractive men who were NOT willing to marry her.
Emphasis mine, but what deti said.
@Gunner Q
1. Learn to dance. And by dance, I don’t mean wandering around like a wooden marionette. Bachata is the way to go (if it’s in your area) for learning how to move around smoothly and read body clues well. After, west coast, lindy, country, whatever.
2. Watch videos of Putin. He may be a murderous tyrant, but he has *presence.* Women notice that.
3. Have a girl take you shopping. Preferably one not related to you, as they will be honest. We none of us know what we look like from behind, but everyone else does.
4. For the love of (whatever) never talk like this in public! I know a man who does and he’s still single. 6 figure salary, hot cars, owns house outright, is in fitness commercials and does modeling. Can’t bag a girl longer than a month. He’s missing the stoic part of frame.
They do care about attendance. The problem is that they double-down on the same things that drove people off in the first place. They won’t care about the real answer because it will challenge the accepted way they’ve done business (talking about attendance in general).
This is an example of doubling-down on the same things that drove them off in the first place. As I illustrated here, the churches are very concerned about attracting young men/women. The problem is that as for the generations before, they’re Churchian in their outlook. They compromise what they purport to defend so much that they stand for nothing other than kissing up to people so they warm seats and hemorrhage money. Naturally, when it comes time for people to look at what there is beyond these things (the coffee bar for adults, the big rock show that passes for music, and the like), all that remains is sheer rot.
Simple answer: There is no answer other than weeping in sackcloth and ashes, returning to Christ, and walking fully in His ways. This applies to all the “churches” on this planet.
BTW, just for the record, the RCC does not interpret Genesis I this way and is quite accepting of evolution.
No, no, I get that – it’s those who deny evolution who aren’t getting the central point of the Creation story – the guiding intelligence of God.
No, no, I get that…
Then your word choices were quite poor, because you were coming across as not getting it at all, but rather mocking those who held that interpretation of Genesis 1.
… it’s those who deny evolution who aren’t getting the central point of the Creation story – the guiding intelligence of God.
Not exactly. Evolution, as it’s presented in nearly every secular realm (the media, the public schools), is presented as having no guiding intelligence behind it: genetic mutations happen by mere chance, then natural selection selects for the mutations that have any benefit in the organism’s current environment. No guiding intelligence required, and a specifically anti-God motivation behind how many present the concepts — that’s what causes most people to reject the whole package. Then when they later encounter the idea of theistic evolution, they see it as a compromise that rejects Biblical inerrancy, and they reject that idea too. They do get the idea of the guiding intelligence of God, and it’s precisely because they get that that they reject the idea of evolution — because it’s been presented to them as denying God.
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“A marriage requires three things, 1) a heterosexual couple that are Biblically eligible to marry, 2) a mutual acceptance to be married, and 3) a consummation. If you have that, you have a marriage. If you do not have any of those, you do not have a marriage.”
The church would go a bit farther and say the mutual acceptance to be married has to include an acceptance of certain things such as permanence and fidelity. For example, a couple of friends with benefits have a green card marriage so the lady won’t get deported. She goes out on dates with other guys with the gentleman’s full knowledge and in fact he is looking forward to the day someone takes her off his hands, The church says this is just not a marriage, and can you blame them?
“As for my cousin, who you say would be eligible for a so-called annulment… it doesn’t matter what some bishop says. She and her husband were both single and eligible to marry, they had a wedding ceremony (not a “going steady” ceremony), and I’m sure they had already consummated plenty of times even before the “big day.””
I don’t know whether your cousin would be eligible for an annulment – my understanding is it would hinge on why they dropped the “until death do us part”. If they just thought it sounded more poetic with “love” instead of “death”, while still having every intention of working through tough times together, then no they couldn’t get an annulment. But if they went around telling everyone who would listen “If you love something set it free”, “If he doesn’t love me any more I wouldn’t want him to stay with me out of obligation”, etc etc, then again, how are they married? They haven’t said marriage vows, they don’t want to be committed to each other – maybe it said “marriage” on the front cover of the program they handed out in the church vestibule, but lots of lesbians can say the same. You have to draw the line somewhere.
“If they find some daffy tribunal or bishop who would let them pretend that they weren’t married, that just shows that celibate men ought to stay out of things they don’t understand”
It is definitely not my intention to argue that annulment boards are doing a good job (although FYI boards are staffed with lay canon lawyers who are married as well as priests, not that it helps). Not even Catholics are required to agree with their decisions. My goal here was to explain why the women on that Catholic forum don’t even feel the need to do a head fake at claiming abuse. Once you’ve drawn the above mentioned line, people on the wrong side of it are on their own.
@Ellie
“Across the board, it is not virginity in men that is disgusting, it is the lack of a backbone.”
There’s a line from a Lucy Maud Montgomery book where Anne of Green Gables (or whoever the heroine of the book is, I forget which one) can’t understand why everyone in her story writing club wants the heroine of her story to dump the nice guy hero and end up with the villian. And Anne’s bachelor uncle explains she’s written the hero too sappily. “Everyone knows you can teach a bad man to be good, but you can’t teach a jellyfish to sit up.”
Not that I agree that you can teach a bad man to be anything he doesn’t want to be on his own, I just think it’s interesting that people 100 years ago were saying the exact same things we are today.
About BC … while Catholic I found Catholic objections to it incomprehensible. No longer Catholic I feel like I “get it” … which is not the same thing as saying I think BC is wrong, but I get what the RCC doesn’t like about it and I think the truth is BC is a far greater threat to the church than the way the church outwardly behaves.
And as that goes I’d put myself in the camp that says BC is what changed everything.
But I’ll put it this way.
Let’s say the only way you could have free health insurance was to run at least one marathon per year in under 4 hours. I bet anywhere from an eighth to a half of people would …
“choose”
…to run. And they would be really healthy!
See the order: 1) powerful incentive placed in front of reward in the form of something good for you, but hard, 2) people “choose” good for you but hard in mass numbers, because they want the reward, 3) goodness and health follows.
Ok, now what if you take away the incentive? Everyone gets free health insurance no marathons required. Will we have so many runners? I doubt it. Will we have a few? Of course.
I think that Dalrock’s argument that BC is secondary to other factors in causing the sexual revolution is like looking at the healthy people who run without the incentive and saying “hey, isn’t it obvious more people should run and be healthy?”
Well, I completely understand why Dalrock thinks so, and I’m also equally sure that in mass, the majority, will disagree as regards themselves. Absent the incentive, they aren’t going to run, and they aren’t going to save sex for marriage, and they aren’t going to put marriage and family ahead of sex, and they aren’t going to feel obliged to stay married. They won’t. It’s a pounding of sand.
I realize that a likely response is that I’ve made an argument for preserving sex for marriage but not against BC but I think that is a point of view typifying Americans. To understand that it is about the ongoingness of sex and children and the kinds of families that are a product of this is to have a connection with an ancient wisdom that understands there are reasons women agree … that is there are reasons women use their free will and agency to agree, to go along with this and the reasons are much more than a marriage monopoly on sex.
Those reasons, qua BC, are gone.
I don’t make that as a moral case as much as I mean to be saying I take it to be a factual account of the state of affairs.
Anyway, OT but not so much because it sure seems like Catholic hour at Dalrock today…Dalrock you are in Dallas right? Check out the University of Dallas. Now those are some really conservative Catholics. I’m not conservative myself but I speak the language and that’s on account of the non randomly high number of UC grads I’m acquainted with.
“it is the lack of a backbone.”
“you can’t teach a jellyfish to sit up.”
Do women still not understand this for fuck sake?
In the US family courts, where a man can be dragged by his wife on a whim, his children will be taken from him and given to her, along with his home, along with his assets, along with significant amounts of his future income in the form of child support/alimony. All of this can be done even if he was a decent husband, even if his wife was an adulterous whore.
***These decisions will be enforced by men in black robes and men in blue with automatic pistols, riot shotguns, and steel bars, not the ridiculous, selfish, impulsive ex-wives.
I know many of these divorced/married men. Trapped in a hopeless situation married or divorced. Lives of drudgery in a marriage or without their children and destitute in divorce. I know a man with three daughters, everyone one of which was sexually molested by the sleazy men his ex wife whored around with after the divorce. Next time you see a story in the news about a seemingly normal man. Friends, family, coworkers, neighbors on the TV news saying “he was a great guy, never thought he would do something like that!” after he killed his wife, every last one of his kids and then died in a police shootout. Think about how a man gets pushed to this point. Backbone? Thats the kind of backbone I have. I would never let a woman or anyone else take my children, my home, everything I’ve worked for. Thats why I’ve never married. If men in the west all had that kind of backbone feminism would have been stomped into a bloody slurry the minute it showed it’s sorry face.
what would you do?
http://forums.catholic.com/showthread.php?t=906941
Please pray for a very devastated man. (Wow)
http://forums.catholic.com/showthread.php?t=906927
I’m getting a vasectomy 🙂 (Speaking of educating Catholics…)
http://forums.catholic.com/showthread.php?t=906915
@ballista47
They do well to attract men and take a few pages from the eastern orthodox church:
http://www.pravoslavie.ru/english/42390.htm
If they don’t focus on men they will decline:
http://churchformen.com/men-and-church/why-men-matter/
If you guys want to debate the scientific case for evolution with me, you’re going to lose. I’ve had this debate more times than I can count, and every time the “evolutionist” crawls back into his hole. It always starts the same – some guy who thinks he knows science better than I do tries to straighten out little ole’ me… “Gee: he’s such a simpleton”.
The fact is that I’ve seen a miracle (a blind kid got his sight back after years of blindness from a BB to the eye). Not some fake “healing show” either – I personally knew everyone there.
Who here has seen macro-evolution? Anyone? Beuller? Bueller?
I didn’t think so.
And frankly I couldn’t case less whether some guy in a dress and a funny hat in Rome knows so little about science that he accepted Darwin’s idiotic theory as the official doctrine of the RCC. The simple fact is that naturalism is based on little more than circular reasoning and just-so statements. Don’t believe me? No problem, maybe you’ll believe one of the top “evolution scientists” in the world: Harvard Professor Richard Lewontin – who knows a lot more about the doctrine of evolution than anyone here. He flatly admits that there’s no scientific reason to accept materialistic explanations of supernatural ones. In the following excerpt, keep in mind that when he says science he is using the term to mean naturalism – (excluding God). In this statement he admits the naked bias most so-called “scientists” have against supernatural explanations – even thought they fit the data better than naturalistic ones. Here’s what he said [emphasis added]:
Our willingness to accept scientific (by which he means “materialistic”) claims that are against common sense is the key to an understanding of the real struggle between science (materialism) and the supernatural. We take the side of science (materialism) in spite of the patent absurdity of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a commitment to materialism. It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counter-intuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door.
That’s not science – that’s philosophy.
So, in his own words, one of the top “evolution scientists” in the world admits that he believes as he does – not because the evidence supports it – but because he dare not follow the evidence to where he fears it might lead: God.
Meanwhile, Exfernal thinks that if you bang enough hydrogen atoms together for a long enough time they’ll spontaneously turn into Mozart… and he thinks that I’m the gullible one. [sigh]
If macro-evolution was not an article of faith among materialists, and someone tried to pass it off as a new theory… with what we know today, it would not even make it to peer review. He would be laughed out of the room, and possible institutionalized.
Evolution – fairy tale for adults since 1859.
> Do you guys think that churches would actually change to attract young men/young women if they were told why their attendance is so remarkably low, or do you think Churches don’t care?
I don’t think many young people in today’s society would view church attendance as very important or desirable. I struggle with it myself and I am both far from young and I know better. I went there a lot when I was young, but I am a unique individual in that regard. Few others had that same drive, even in the early 1980s.
The fluffy things they would do to attract “youth” are a large part of the problem. You need to build a core of committed people and build on that, not have all the junk we put forth today as hip.
@infowarrior1 I’m not sure of the point you were trying to make by posting those links. Anyway, part of the problem in general is illustrated by Murrow’s outlook. David Murrow is very Churchian, and proposes a Churchian solution to the question of the gender gap. Why Men Hate Going to Church is good on observation of the societal trends, but gets abysmal when it comes to the solution that Murrow proposes (basically “start kissing up to the men”). It only furthers the rot that exists.
I would completely agree with Kevin, Elspeth and others. Society pushes against it, but some are still driven by convictions, both men and women.
I found it very interesting that my dad blamed my mother for “taking his virginity” when he was on his deathbed (literally) about 15 years ago (prostate cancer). I am the reason they married and it would not surprise me at all that she threw herself at him, even though she noted her contempt for him many times. (She has serious “daddy issues” that she has never faced and he could never meet that. He had his own pile of them and we would be arguing now if he were alive today. He was quite blue pill as well.)
He felt he had been sucked in. I don’t buy that he had no fault in things, but I do think that he may not have been expecting to go that route. This doesn’t prove anything of course, but is another data point.
Women can make good moral choices as much as they can make bad ones. The fact that Elspeth’s daughters still respect their father (and mother)’s rules is likely a strong factor for them as well.
I would add my voice to one who thinks the idea of birth control is very presumptive on our part, even though I am not sold on the RCC view on it. We only did it for 3 months (the pill), though I don’t think it was the reason we never gave birth to any children. (My wife’s age at marriage, early childhood diseases and possible the drugs she had for a mission trip to Kenya the year before probably added to all that.)
That is why I am a bit angry (of sorts) at those who view children as bad things that must be prevented at all costs. I would do almost anything now to have them and wish I had at least tried to do so earlier. Adoption, especially with children who return to the ways of a horrid birth family is not good in my view.
SO here we are, not having children in spite of trying for years, while others are helping the downfall of civilization by stopping at one or two. Frustrating.
Archer,
> I visited one such church–rock music–and it damn hurt my ears.
This is one of my big current drawbacks to church. I would be bored to tears in a church that didn’t play a somewhat contemporary style (no organs or pianos for me), but I HATE the loud amplified music. I think too many people think God is deaf and can’t hear without it being too loud. I wonder how many will have hearing problems when they are older just because of that.
This has made my church seeking even harder for me as well.
I have seen the miraculous as well, though not as directly, though I am fully convinced of it.
BrainyOne would have us believe that those dirt particles gathered over long periods of time with processes we never see rather than in the hands of a creator. Go for that belief, but it takes far more faith than believing something with all appearances of design was really designed.
I would also say that while I quit at my M.S. because I got bored with school, I have more intelligence than most I here arguing that we went “from goo to you by way of the zoo” to put it in the words of one Christian writer.
I have also had a personal relationship with that Creator almost my whole life, so you will have a hard time selling me on your fables that don’t match reality. He kept me from plenty in my life that should have gone wrong and me being where I am now is a miracle in itself.
I will leave the arguing to Lyn87, but enough intelligent people find TENS to be hogwash that you really should try to find the brain you seem to have left behind BO.
> It only furthers the rot that exists.
Only if it is not consistent with the Scriptures Ballista. We can do many things to meet our audience that are perfectly fine adaptations. We have to diligently watch that we don’t ultimately stray from the Scriptures, and I am sure you and I disagree on what is straying, but that can be done. Paul did write
[1Co 9:22 KJV] 22 To the weak became I as weak, that I might gain the weak: I am made all things to all [men], that I might by all means save some.
Clearly he did not bend down to sin, but even his speech in Athens (I believe that was it) was far different than his normal approach, because that was appropriate to his audience.
It is not an all or nothing approach, with a single perfect way to run a church.
Levontin, a colleague and supporter of Gould. Not someone every geneticist agrees with.
A simple case of ‘assisted’ speciation: a plant callus, a drop of colchicine, a stereo microscope and lots of patience. Speciation through polyploidy among plants is widely recognized.
Would you demand a proof of continental drift? What kind of proof do you require? Would you invoke God manipulating probabilities to produce the equivalent result?
Many years ago I drove up to The City on a Sunday morning and attended St Paul’s Cathedral: my purpose was to hear one of the Schubert masses in its liturgical setting with soloists, choir and orchestra. Only played that way do those masses – usually Austrian or French, and of course originally for Catholic service – make proper musical sense.
Not the sort of thing Vatican II would approve of, I suspect.
It was free too.
“How do you know this to be true, Earl? Birth rate information from history is not always reliable.”
Look up the history of birth control. Alligator dung isn’t as effective as the pill.
@ Mark:
I assume by your post that you would not allow your daughters to date a Jewish man?
A Messianic Jew? Perhaps.
For some reason, there seems to be some confusion.
Making excuses for people’s(read: women’s) choices, minimizing rebellion against God and His rightly divided biblical teachings, and/or trying to imply that they can’t help it and have no agency….not what I’m saying.
Drawing conclusions and making statements of fact based on observed and documented human behavior…this is what I’m saying.
Hope this clarification post unbunches some panties.
……In a figurative sense of course.
Lyn87 says:
September 5, 2014 at 1:46 am
If you guys want to debate the scientific case for evolution with me, you’re going to lose. I’ve had this debate more times than I can count, and every time the “evolutionist” crawls back into his hole. It always starts the same – some guy who thinks he knows science better than I do tries to straighten out little ole’ me… “Gee: he’s such a simpleton”.
The fact is that I’ve seen a miracle (a blind kid got his sight back after years of blindness from a BB to the eye). Not some fake “healing show” either – I personally knew everyone there.
Who here has seen macro-evolution? Anyone? Beuller? Bueller?
I didn’t think so.
And frankly I couldn’t case less whether some guy in a dress and a funny hat in Rome knows so little about science that he accepted Darwin’s idiotic theory as the official doctrine of the RCC. The simple fact is that naturalism is based on little more than circular reasoning and just-so statements. Don’t believe me? No problem, maybe you’ll believe one of the top “evolution scientists” in the world: Harvard Professor Richard Lewontin – who knows a lot more about the doctrine of evolution than anyone here. He flatly admits that there’s no scientific reason to accept materialistic explanations of supernatural ones. In the following excerpt, keep in mind that when he says science he is using the term to mean naturalism – (excluding God). In this statement he admits the naked bias most so-called “scientists” have against supernatural explanations – even thought they fit the data better than naturalistic ones. Here’s what he said [emphasis added]:
Our willingness to accept scientific (by which he means “materialistic”) claims that are against common sense is the key to an understanding of the real struggle between science (materialism) and the supernatural. We take the side of science (materialism) in spite of the patent absurdity of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a commitment to materialism. It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counter-intuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door.
That’s not science – that’s philosophy.
So, in his own words, one of the top “evolution scientists” in the world admits that he believes as he does – not because the evidence supports it – but because he dare not follow the evidence to where he fears it might lead: God.
Meanwhile, Exfernal thinks that if you bang enough hydrogen atoms together for a long enough time they’ll spontaneously turn into Mozart… and he thinks that I’m the gullible one. [sigh]
If macro-evolution was not an article of faith among materialists, and someone tried to pass it off as a new theory… with what we know today, it would not even make it to peer review. He would be laughed out of the room, and possible institutionalized.
Evolution – fairy tale for adults since 1859.
Lyn87 says:
September 5, 2014 at 1:46 am
Spot on. Your entire comment is a keeper. Thanks.
Yes, the context is critical. I’ve tried listening to Gregorian chant and other traditional church music at home or in the car, and it leaves me cold and gets on my nerves. But at Mass, with the incense and the somber mood and Christ hanging on the Cross above, then the organ and a full choir break into the Kyrie — gives me goosebumps.
On the other end, I enjoy pop/rock/folk music just fine at home, but at a Catholic Mass it’s a travesty.
@redpillsetmefree
“95/97 out of 100 women will sleep with the men they truly desire commitment from to secure the relationship before or outside of marriage. That is a statement of fact.”
There are all sorts of weasel words in this statement which exist to allow you to confirm your bias (truly desire being the biggest – oh she did not give in – she didn’t truly desire him).
The first link you provide- no one married their best sex (guess what – virgins do!) actually says about 48% do marry their best sex. Also, on the website that made the survey they give no indication how they generated their data that I could find. Might just be an internet survey of their readers – which is to say garbage.
Second link goes to a psychic (seriously?) quoting the same “data”.
The last link to Alpha Game just reiterates what everyone knows, high N women make crappy wives. It does not say all women will give it up for the “right guy”.
None of these support the claim that 95/97% of women will give it up to the “right guy” or the men they “truly desire”.
Your proof was…not that persuasive. However, instead of just going based on these bizarre scenarios, lets just look at the data we do have. Since you also include married women let’s just look at rates of adultery between men and women. As women have been in the work force their rates of adultery have consistently increased until they have approached, but not surpassed men. So, a fair statement would be that men and women are equally willing to sleep with people outside of marriage they truly desire. But – the rate is still around 20-30%, no where near your imagined 95%. So, you and deti just don’t have the evidence to say that all women do this, or will given the right scenario. It appears no more than men. Its not observable fact.
I don’t have a problem with generalities that place men and women in a negative light that are true/based on facts, but this one simply isn’t. Your drawing conclusions based on bad data or nothing.
We live in a fallen wicked world and lots give in to temptation, but many don’t. We have primal tendencies but we are not animals.
We just have no data suggesting women are so given to their desires that they will give in to them any more than men.
@ Cail
Yep, it’s not that most men are invisible to her, or that her past relationships have driven her expectations too high and she’s unwilling to lower them as her own MMV has fallen. No, it’s that Satan is making men suck and be unworthy of her.
Is she wise? No. Is she humble? No. Does she seek truth or wisdom? No. She’s hurting. So?
Well, let’s look at these:
http://www.truthaboutdeception.com/cheating-and-infidelity/stats-about-infidelity.html
http://www.statisticbrain.com/infidelity-statistics/
Also. Please provide some links to data that support your claims.
no one married their best sex (guess what – virgins do!)
You realize how ridiculous a statement that is, right?
That a virgin that gets married has married their “best sex?”
…That would be their only sex. So there’s no way of knowing if it’s the best without comparison.
Also, people that keep claiming that “life experience doesn’t count” just make me laugh.
People knew what bullying was before it became a “cause” and a collection of YouTube videos.
People knew who God was before the canon of scripture was completed and codified.
And people(read: men) know that women will give it up if it’s the right man, and her saying “no” is always more of an indication of your lack of status in her eyes than the presence of any integrity on her part.
Real life just seems to rankle you; tough day for you, then.
redpillsetmefree says:
September 5, 2014 at 8:08 am
no one married their best sex (guess what – virgins do!)
You realize how ridiculous a statement that is, right?
That a virgin that gets married has married their “best sex?”
…That would be their only sex. So there’s no way of knowing if it’s the best without comparison.
Mustard says:
You realize how logically ridiculous your reply was, right?
They married their “worst sex” too.
her saying “no” is always more of an indication of your lack of status in her eyes than the presence of any integrity on her part.
Your assertion is certainly true as it applies to everyone else (the unchaste, irreligious, *regular* culture folks). I don’t think anyone would argue otherwise.
The point being made is that among devout people, committed to chastity, this is not true. The rule simply cannot apply in the same way many other normal things don’t apply to serious Christians. What’s more is that if both people are devout and committed to Biblical standards, no matter how attracted they may be, no one will be asking or pushing toward pre-marital sex.
You guys seem to be talking about two different sets of people.
Earl,
Yes, we used the pill (HBC). We used it to time the births of our children. My wife was a school teacher and we wanted the birth to be late in the spring so she had maximum time with the newborn before the next school year. We (or at least I) also decided to stop at 4. When the youngest of the first four entered full day kindergarten my wife tearfully said, “Now we don’t have a baby.” My foolish argument against having another was that since there would be 6 years age difference between the current youngest and any new baby the new baby would grow up as an only child. She of course countered with, “Well then we will have two more.” When the woman decides to have more children there is little a man can do to stop her. In any case, I was not fully committed to not having the two more; we both had always wanted a big family. I am very glad we had them. They were a great consolation to me after my wife died.
To the person that wondered if my very Catholic wife of 6 years might be surreptitiously using some form of BC; No. She is 31 and desperately wants a child. The fault is mine. I had a benign growth on my pituitary gland, which caused me to have all kinds of problems with hormones. I am on several hormone supplements as a result. One of those supplements was testosterone. At the time, the doctors assumed a man of my age and with 6 children would not want more children so they omitted telling me that being on testosterone supplements would suppress the FSH (Follicle Stimulating Hormone), making me sterile. Often the sterility is permanent. When we found this out I went off the testosterone. My FSH level has come back to the normal range, and my testosterone level is low in the normal band. The problem is my sperm count is very low and their motility is as well. The fertility experts say that I am not infertile; it is just that there is a low likelihood of my getting my wife pregnant. We are doing our part while we pray that God does his part. My wife is using the rhythm method to determine when she is fertile rather than infertile.
Cail, Jesus is no longer on the cross! Read a bit farther in the Book….
Note that it is all vain without the resurrection. The point was the new birth, not the suffering.
(Lots to discuss theologically there, but the focus needs to be in the right place.)
I don’t remember any Gregorian chants at any RCC I have been at, even the traditional one that had my grandfather’s funeral.
I should also add that Gregorian chants came after Jesus’ time, so they are their own adaptation to the time. Those may be appropriate, but they are not more “original”.
“How do you know this to be true, Earl? Birth rate information from history is not always reliable.”
Earl
Look up the history of birth control.
I have done some of that. Apparently you didn’t bother. Here is a free hint: try clicking on the link I generously embedded for you in my previous comment. Yes, I know it is Wikipedia and therefore comes with embedded assumptions and biases on such a topic. There are still references. Follow some of the references. Then see if you can still honestly claim that there has never been any society that widely used contraception prior to the 1960’s.
. Alligator dung isn’t as effective as the pill.
Non sequitur.
1. Your assertion is certainly true as it applies to everyone else (the unchaste, irreligious, *regular* culture folks). I don’t think anyone would argue otherwise.
2. The point being made is that among devout people, committed to chastity, this is not true. The rule simply cannot apply in the same way many other normal things don’t apply to serious Christians.
3. What’s more is that if both people are devout and committed to Biblical standards, no matter how attracted they may be, no one will be asking or pushing toward pre-marital sex.
As usual, if you and I talk long enough, we come to some kind of agreement. So we’re in alignment on Point 1.
I think the disagreements then are on:
-What constitutes a “serious Christian” (Point 2)
-Actual numbers when it comes to pre-marital or extra-marital sex, broken down by gender
and/or faith (Point 3)
I think it can be safely said that, if we’re defining being a “serious Christian” as one that will not engage in pre- or extra- marital sex no matter what, then that group of people would be in the minority.
And I understand Earl’s point as well as yours, that being that my above statement is a shame. Being a Christian should be synonymous with being chaste and faithful, but alas, it is not.
Often the discussion in these parts center around a woman that’s either blown up her marriage because she wasn’t haaaaapy(oh and Elspeth have you checked out the hubbub around what Victoria Olsteen http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/09/04/victoria-osteen-reactions_n_5759860.html said?)
or a woman that is post wall and post carousel, complaining about how she “can’t find a good man.” Often because she had one and discarded him callously. So it’s easy to see how these discussions spiral in those directions, because that was normally the impetus for the blog post to begin with.
Does anyone do a blog or know of one that’s specifically dedicated to Christian pre-marital chastity and post-marital fidelity?
@redpillsetmefree
I like those stats – but I cannot get access to the original papers where I am. But lets just use those – they are in range with what I said and great.
So – based on your data – women are AS LIKELY AS MEN to “give it up if its the right man/woman”.
And, based on your data (which I cannot link to the source of), its maybe 15% of MARRIED women, nothing like “all women”.
Here is my guess, you grew up in the US and a member of an awful sexual culture. You either are a PUA and mess around with sluts so you think you are a stud and can get any slut to give it up to you. Or, maybe you have had girlfriends or a wife cheat on you so that colors your view. Or maybe your mom was a immoral. I don’t know. (Maybe I suck my thumb at night and cry at the idea of my mom giving it up to have my brother before she was married and it colors my view – who knows…). Maybe you spend too much time in the manosphere and too little time loving women. But data does not support your view.
Life experience counts. But when it conflicts with data, I defer to accumulated experience.
Even in the most sexual culture on earth, only 50% of women do as you claim, and only 15% of married women. In not slutty cultures with a culture of chastity it would be much less. That data was even better than mine for making the case that a sizeable group of women don’t just give it up to the right alpha. They engage their brains/souls and choose something else.
Exfernal doesn’t know when to give up:
Would you demand a proof of continental drift? What kind of proof do you require? Would you invoke God manipulating probabilities to produce the equivalent result?
1) I demand evidence for anything I am told to believe. You ought to as well. Unlike macro-evolution, continental drift is observable using GPS. That doesn’t make the plate tectonic theory correct, by the way. MIT Professor Dr. Walter Brown developed the “Hydroplate Theory” that fits the observable data (including the observed phenomenon of continental drift) better than the plate tectonic theory. The problem with the hydroplate theory is that it points to the Great Flood, and because of their refusal to contemplate that (“cannot allow a Divine foot in the door”), so-called “men of science” just ignore the superior explanation. They don’t argue against it on the scientific merits, mind you (they know they would lose), so they pretend it doesn’t exist for philosophical reasons, like Professor Lewontin noted. It’s like those evolutionists who refuse to debate creationists. They claim that they don’t want to give them credibility by debating as equals (as if…), but the real reason is that they almost always get their heads handed to them. Not only was that embarrassing to them as individuals, but it showcased the weakness of the materialistic explanation of origins in general. We can’t let Dorothy and the Tin Man look behind the curtain and see that the “Wizard of Materialistic Science” is a fraud, can we? Defeating materialists in debates is easy – all you have to know is which questions to ask that require them to contradict their own theory (hint: there are a lot of them), and demand the same level of proof they demand of others (which they can never meet).
2) You keep using the word “proof.” In the immortal words of Inigo Montoya, “You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.” The origin of species already happened and nobody was there to observe it – no unique, unobserved, historical event can be “proved” in that sense (that also applies to what you believe, by the way). All we’re left with is the weight of the evidence that we do have. And that evidence points to the fact that complicated systems do not come into existence without being designed… and the more complicated something is, the greater the ability of the Designer. Darwin dreamed up his wacky theory when “scientists” thought of animal cells as very simply structures. They are not – each one of the 100,000,000,000,000 cells in your body is far more complicated than the Space Shuttle, and none of them can survive outside the organism. For even the simplest of organisms, all of its individually-ultra-complicated subsystems had to pop into existence – ex nihilo – at the same instant or it would not be able to live at all. The biosphere is an incredibly complex system, and for anyone to think that that system – with all of its quintillions of individual, symbiotically-related parts of extreme complexity – happened by chance, piecemeal – well… let’s just say that that requires a lot more blind faith than believing that a system that shows design actually has a Designer.
3) To say that God “manipulated the probabilities” would be like saying that an architect “manipulated the probabilities” to design a building. The world as we know it – as we can scientifically observe it – cannot be the product of chance. Symbiosis alone is enough to rule that out as a serious possibility. But you made the same mistake every person makes with whom I’ve had this discussion: you demand a level of proof that you cannot meet yourself. Something “manipulated the probabilities” – whether by chance or Design. The difference is that the evidence strongly suggests that the probabilities were deliberately manipulated (and by “strongly suggests” I mean that there is no conceivable alternate theory that’s not based on philosophical bias rather than evidence). So even though all the evidence is on the side of Special Creation (SC explains everything as well as macro-evolution, and fits the data FAR better), you demand a level of proof that you cannot meet. So because I cannot “prove” a Divine explanation that has a 99.9999999+% probability of being true, you declare that the only viable explanation is the impossible “materialistic” one, because only materialistic explanations can be replicated, and “science” demands replicability. That’s what we logicians refer to as the fallacy of circular reasoning. And never mind that your materialistic explanation has not been replicated either – nor will it ever be because it flies in the face of everything we know and can observe.
D – this is getting seriously off topic. If you want us to drop it, just say so.
Don;t know any blogs on the issue of fidelity. Christian marriage blogs (I consider my own one of those although I occasionally cover other topics) assume fidelity. It’s not Christian marriage otherwise. By the same token Christian blogs devoted to ministering to singles (Peaceful Single Girl springs to mind) assumes chastity as the standard.
As for the pitfalls some Christians find themselves in in this and other areas, I have a few thoughts on that but it will have to wait.
Evolution…
Pure sophistry, masquerading as “science.” The logical leaps and mental gymnastics just bore me to tears at this point. It takes a complete silencing of every fiber of your being that screams out: “this creation is astounding, gloriously intricate, the obvious work of a singular omnipotent Creator!”
And yet, its proponents will continue to wear the mantle of “science” and try to insult and bully anyone who even dares suggest that maybe God created all this.
There is a profound difference in micro and macro evolution. This applies to Evo-Biology and Evo Psychology. Darwin mostly used assumptions to fill in the various “missing links” in his theory.
“Apparently you didn’t bother.”
I did actually.
Birth control usage grew exponentially once hormonal birth control came about.
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/need-to-know/health/a-brief-history-of-the-birth-control-pill/480/
Was there ever a time before the 60s that many women were on widespread birth control?
“When the woman decides to have more children there is little a man can do to stop her.”
Which is why I think a woman taking birth control is stupid for the man’s sake. She can have that agenda, say nothing, and the man would have no idea about it. He could think she is still on the BC. Then some “oops” happened…and he’s on the hook for 18 years worth of oops.
Using NFP there is open discussion about those sort of things and the man can at least address his side of the story before things get going.
Just to try to bring a bit more perspective to the discussion between Kevin and RPSMF:
Kevin, it’s really not a matter of “spending time in the manosphere” or “not loving women”. It’s a matter of observing, reading statistics (albeit on self-reported sexual behavior, unreliable as this is), and then doing your best to draw some conclusions that make sense in light of the available information.
That said, what we know from CDC stats based on surveys during face to face interviews, the stats are from 2002 to 2010, the number of ever married women who had had premarital sex hovers around 85 to 86%.
From the same survey, among all surveyed women, 8% were virgins and had never had sex of any kind whatsoever.
I tried to find stats on never married women and the percentage who had had any kind of sex, but that wasn’t immediately available to a stat dunderhead like me.
I think the offered stats on men and women who have cheated on a spouse is probably correct. For men it’s around 20 to 25%; for women it’s around 15 to 20%. At least that’s what is reported. I frankly don’t have lots of confidence in those numbers. My gut tells me that the actual numbers are a bit higher than that because I suspect more than a few cheaters won’t fess up to it, ever, not even in an anonymous survey.
I also speculate that women are more loath to admit cheating than men are. I know for a fact that in the main, it’s a lot, lot easier for women to get sex than it is for a man. So I suspect the female cheating numbers might be on par with men or even a bit higher. But that’s speculation on my part and no one will ever know. (It’s really difficult to get high-confidence numbers on illicit sexual activity, simply because more than a few people don’t want to admit, even anonymously, what lowlifes they really are.)
Having said all that, and applying what is generally known of human nature around these parts, the following is pretty clear:
1. Most women – including Christian women – are not going to be virgins when they marry. That’s simply a fact today, and has been for a long time. (By most, I mean a good, solid 75% of women have given up sex before they marry. That’s all comers across all demographics. Do I KNOW that that’s the figure? No. But it’s a good working hypothesis, based on what I’ve seen and heard and read.)
2. No one is saying that every woman, without exception, will have sex every time circumstances are optimal for it (right man, right time, right circumstances, low risk of detection or slut accusations).
3. What IS being said, however, is that MOST unmarried women WILL give it up under those circumstances. That means that SOME unmarried women WILL remain virgins. There are not very many women who will.
4. Why is this important? Because female premarital sex is being shown, time and time again, to be quite damaging to the women who engage in it and then marry. Premarital sex has an immense effect on everything in her marriage – her fertility, her marital contentment, her long term sexual response to and attraction to her husband – just everything.
5. What IS being said, however, is that SOME married women WILL cheat under those circumstances. And many, many more will be tempted. They might not succumb; but they will sure as hell WANT to.
redpillsetmefree
That a virgin that gets married has married their “best sex?
…That would be their only sex. So there’s no way of knowing if it’s the best without comparison.
It would seem to be a tautology. If there is only one cake in a restaurant, obviously it is the best cake in the place. You appear to be missing the well known, and increasingly documented, issue of the “alpha widow”, although perhaps I am misreading.
monkeywerks says:
September 5, 2014 at 11:05 am
There is a profound difference in micro and macro evolution.
True. micro-evolution (variations within types – within boundaries) is observable every day of the week. Macro-evolution (changing from one type of creature to another), has not only never been observed, but it is physically and logically impossible.
Darwin may have had more modest goals, but he really wasn’t all that bright and perhaps did not fully understand the implications of his unscientific musings. People ran with them – not because there’s any evidence for macro-evolution – but because it implies a cosmology that does not require the existence of God, even if that’s not what the dim-witted Darwin had in mind in 1859.
No God means no moral arbiter. No moral arbiter means no moral law. No moral law means no sin. No sin means they get to do what they want without a God to judge them. That’s why atheists can never be moral – although they may hold to a code of ethics (until push comes to shove anyway). For that matter, they should logically refrain from using words like good, bad, evil, should, or ought when speaking of moral/ethical issues. For atheists to use such words demonstrates that they hold two mutually-exclusive things to be true (the absence of a moral lawgiver and the existence of moral law). The cynic in my would point that out as an excellent example of “magical thinking.” Ironic, when you think about it.
But we’re WAY past the “insufficient evidence against it” phase for believing in macro-evolution anyway. With what we know now, such ignorance among learned men can only be called willful blindness. We’re well into the “denying the very laws of nature” stage for those who continue to have blind faith in blind chance.
Earl
Birth control usage grew exponentially once hormonal birth control came about.
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/need-to-know/health/a-brief-history-of-the-birth-control-pill/480/
Ah, the famous peer-reviewed, totally unbiased source known as the government television network. Earl, that’s not research. Just for a start, go look at how they know what they think they know, and here’s a hint: self-reported surveys on sex are often worthless, because people lie.
Was there ever a time before the 60s that many women were on widespread birth control?
In what sense? In terms of sheer numbers? Obviously unlikely, since the population of the world in the 1960’s was far greater than at any previous time. In terms of percentages? That’s a more challenging problem, because birth records are not always reliable, declines in birth rates can obviously have mulitple causes, etc. Nevertheless, there are indications from history of prior eras when some significant portion of the female population apparently was controlling conception in some fashion or other. Why, for example, does the original Hippocratic Oath contain words about abortofacients? Again, did you bother to look at the link I embedded for you, or not?
But it increasingly appears that your mind is made up and you do not wish to examine facts that don’t fit your dogma, so this conversation is becoming a waste of time.
@Deti “I also speculate that women are more loath to admit cheating than men are. I know for a fact that in the main, it’s a lot, lot easier for women to get sex than it is for a man. So I suspect the female cheating numbers might be on par with men or even a bit higher.”
Then, you’ve also got the rationalizations. I wonder how many people having made a decision to divorce will consider any sexual activity with someone other than their spouse to not be cheating even though their relationship has not yet been legally sundered?
Evolution – fairy tale for adults since 1859.
Yep!
“But it increasingly appears that your mind is made up and you do not wish to examine facts that don’t fit your dogma, so this conversation is becoming a waste of time.”
Sounds like you are doing that more than I am.
The Brass Cat @ September 4, 2014 at 6:36 pm:
“@Gunner Q
I don’t do texting.
Are you under 50? Because not texting is like someone in the 1920s swearing to not use one of them talking boxes, those dern tely-phone machines!”
I’m weak against Internet porn. If I allow myself easy Internet access then I WILL backslide so I live unplugged. Work needs Internet and there are public terminals at the library but that’s as much as I can safely handle. Might as well carry Playboy in my pocket as have a smartphone. Nobody can be strong 24-7.
It’s one of the crosses I bear for Christ but I’m not bitter. Clean air, clean living, getting dirt on my hands and meeting the few other guys who don’t waste away in front of the boob tube… a pleasant life I might not have discovered on my own.
Cail Corishev @ September 4, 2014 at 6:31 pm:
“Also, girls who know how to attract a man at a night club don’t necessarily know how to do it at church. They’re consciously on their good behavior, which takes away the easy techniques. Even if there’s a guy they like, they don’t know how to get him to approach while still looking like a good church girl, so nothing happens.”
Girls know how to show interest. Smile, say hello, sit next to him, offer a water bottle, ask for his opinion on the sermon. Acknowledge his existence. I for one am completely unmotivated to continue cold-approaches. It hasn’t worked dozens of times, celibacy is the smart move anyway when living in urban California… and would any desirable girl accept my offline existence?
Take note here, single ladies. Are you frustrated with being pressured for early sex in dating? Then notice that quiet man sitting alone in the pews and make an effort to be pleasantly feminine. Or, quit complaining that guys want tingles, too.
As I sit here reading Lyn87, I pull out of my pocket the Ten Pound note sterling which I will shortly spend. On the reverse of the note is to the left a chaffinch pecking at what looks like a mirror, in the centre in the distance is a sailing ship, and on the right the head of a man with a long beard with the dates 1809-1882. Let’s hope that the new £10.00 Jane Austen notes (thus ensuring women – neither of whom I trust are too dim-witted for Lyn87 – are on both sides of the note) are introduced before Lyn87’s forthcoming trip to Great Britain.
Would you demand a proof of continental drift? What kind of proof do you require? Would you invoke God manipulating probabilities to produce the equivalent result?
Evidence is not proof. Will you at least concede that there is no proof for macro evolution?
“Self-reported surveys on sex are often worthless, because people lie.”
Sometimes they are worthless. More often, the results of a self-reported sex survey certainly don’t stand for what people want them to stand for. And even more often, they’re used to draw conclusions about things that they don’t say. And they’re used to support claims that they don’t support.
Methodology often isn’t accounted for either. The one I quoted from involved face to face questioning by “trained” female interviewers of men, women and children. Think about that – a woman from the government (the CDC) is in your house. You have signed a consent form. Said female from the government then proceeds to ask you very pointed and explicit questions about the most intimate details of your past and present sex life – who you screwed, how many you screwed, where the *ahem” screws were placed on or in your body, when your first screw was. Any illegal screwing with prostitutes? Ever cheated on your spouse (who is sitting in the next room, perhaps, and if not, the spooks know who you are and therefore who your spouse is)?
How many women are going to answer honestly and without reservation? How much confidence can we have in the results? And what can we use the results for?
I’d put more faith in the numbers of women taking hormonal birth control because they can’t really hide the fact they are using it from everybody. They still have to see a doctor and purchase it.
The fact it exponentially increased once it was put into use because it was found to work tells me that the old ways were either unreliable or not often used.
@Gunner Q
“Might as well carry Playboy in my pocket as have a smartphone. Nobody can be strong 24-7.”
That’s understandable. I suggest getting a not-so-smart phone that can do texting but is too limited/small for web browsing. Those sort of phones are usually marketed toward senior citizens.
There is a huge advantage for texting over voice from the Game perspective. A voice phone call is like a mini-date; it’s high-pressure and one slip of the tongue can derail the whole thing. With texting you have all the time in the world to engineer the best opener or response, and you don’t need to worry about things like tone of voice, volume, and trying to sound Alpha.
Don’t give up on cold approaches just yet. I don’t know much about you, but based on what you’ve said, the first step for improving your cold approach is developing the art of the one-liner (or zinger, some call it). Making a quick and sharp joke (that boarders on inappropriate) is a big improvement from “Hi, I’m Gunner, do you come here often?”
I still would have been crazy excited to marry him
This is because he DIDN’T ask her, or even stick around very long. This is why I tend to have sex with women and move on. I have my core – those are women that meet my needs when I need it, and they bring something hard to find. So they can be around from 6 months, to several years – they know it won’t be anything more than it is – but all of them want it to be. But the ones that are just for pump and dump – those are easy, especially if you are in entertainment, and there are a lot of women on vacation. But the fact that you can do what you want to her feeds her fantasies of “rape”, “powerlessness”, and being “carried away by the moment” – especially if she is in a long-term relationship to which she is comparing things. All of the above are short term – anything long term is based on reality – short term is based on fantasy. If you want a woman to pine away for you – hit it once, and move on. I learned that long ago – in college I would have sex with a woman and then ignore her. That ensured that the next time I met her she would be ready willing and able – in the library, in a bathroom, in a class room, at a party with her BF in the other room, you name it.
Women will romanticize such things so you are “the perfect man”. Of course women tend to do that and beta-men – all men that have enjoyed women, know that basically they are just variations on the theme, and it’s the journey, rather than the destination that is fun. Doesn’t mean that I would ever turn down an attractive woman though… But that’s me… If I find a woman attractive, that’s enough for me.
OK, you’re on, pal. I do not think you know science better than I. I have a Ph.D. in physics. You?
That is a really stupid argument. We make inferences to conclude with a high degree of certainty the existence of things we haven’t seen all the time. If you deny this, you simply deny that the scientific method is capable of ascertaining truth at all, and then there is simply no more point to this discussion. (And according to the theory, we shouldn’t see macro-evolution, since our life span is infinitesimal compared to the time scales on which macro-evolution occurs.) I would like to know when you or anyone else has ever seen inanimate matter spontaneously rearranging to form a living entity.
This is a red herring. I thought we were talking about the scientific case for or against evolution, not the philosophical case for or against “naturalism”, which turns out to be a rather ill-defined concept anyway. But since you’re quoting Lewontin (who, in case you’re interested, has even made quite silly scientific claims; google “Lewontin’s fallacy”), let’s listen carefully to what was said.
Well he has this prior commitment to “materialism”, a better defined concept than “naturalism”. I don’t. Nor must I, according to the bolded print, to follow the methods and institutions of science.
That’s not science – that’s philosophy.
I agree. So can we get back to the science?
And therefore, if one of the top evolution scientists says this, all scientists must think the same way. LOGIC FAIL 101.
Guess what? I agree. Science does not have a good theory of abiogenesis. But we’re talking about evolution, not abiogenesis.
No. I would agree with this claim if it were regarding abiogenesis. But it is precisely what we know today which makes it much, much more likely that new types of life forms arose via common descent then via some other mechanism. It is precisely because the odds of inanimate matter spontaneously rearranging to even form a single cell, let alone a fully-formed animal are infinitesimal, so infinitesimal compared to the odds of mutations and descent resulting in different life forms (small though that may be), that the latter hypothesis is much, much more likely. If you want to argue with this, then you show you don’t even know what is meant by “maximum likelihood”.
As an aside, I know evolutionary biologists insist mutations arise via “random chance”. This is also a philosophical position, not a scientific one. It is one I happen to disagree with; one of my reasons and certainly not the least of them being that philosophy really doesn’t have a good definition of “randomness” or “chance” in the first place.
“The fact it exponentially increased once it was put into use because it was found to work tells me that the old ways were either unreliable or not often used.”
Random anecdotes, but my grandma tried to use one of those folk remedy abortifacients to abort my dad. (WWII Asia, worried about feeding first two kids, never mind a third one. God had better plans.)
As for me, my mom got pregnant while using IUD B/C. Other/older methods certainly had significant failure rates.
Future will tell. *shrug*
BrainyOne,
I am not trying to imply that you are not well read, but, as a physicist, can you rightly claim that your training has endued you with any significant advantage when it comes to the discussion of evolution, a biological science? If so, which part of your training deals with evolution?
@deti
Its tough to disagree with you because I lurk here and really am impressed by the things you say.
I think we all generally agree, but my initial response was because RPSMF and others were making statements like most women will give it up for the “right” guy. The data RPSMF linked to does not remotely support that claim, because the best test for that would be already involved or married women and they don’t give it up very often.
Reviewing your points briefly:
“1. Most women – including Christian women – are not going to be virgins when they marry.”
Sadly this is true (although I come from a subculture where most are virgins when they marry). However, I think it does not matter regarding what I was discussing. The overreach of claiming all women are going to give it up given the right magical circumstance was my objection. Women that have little moral objection to giving it up are not surprising.
“2. No one is saying that every woman, without exception, will have sex every time circumstances are optimal for it”
If that overreach had not been made, I would not be having this discussion. 95% is effectively every and those numbers did not come from me. RPSMF said “even the most serious of females” will give it up for the “right man”. I think we agree that was total BS.
“3. What IS being said, however, is that MOST unmarried women WILL give it up under those circumstances.”
Most unmarried women will give it up for almost any reason in todays society. They don’t even need a special man or a special reason. However, most is not very precise. Data suggests in many non-urban communities only 50% of HS graduates have lost their virginity. The rest might give it up the first weekend in college….
“4. Why is this important?”
I agree with this entirely. Its important because sexual immorality on both sides is a disaster.
“5. What IS being said, however, is that SOME married women WILL cheat under those circumstances. And many, many more will be tempted. They might not succumb; but they will sure as hell WANT to.”
Disputing this would be crazy. However, being tempted is the lot of everyone. It means nothing. People that are not tempted cannot even know the strength of their convictions.
My response has simply been that saying most or all women will give it up is wrong factually and probably wrong morally. Either be more precise as you have been, or acknowledge that the data don’t support it. Modern society wants to turn all women feral, but a large proportion of women are not feral. And thank goodness – last thing most men need is spending every waking moment romancing their wife worrying she is one cute guy away from an extramarital affair. If all women were already feral it would be game over so much sooner.
Kevin,
I think part of your “problem” in relation with RPSMF is that you view women undeserved positive light rather than the fallen human beings they are.
Not in absolute but practically, women ARE the enemy. Or rather, when you start viewing them as the enemy, you are more clearly able to see their fallen nature. Its not that we want them be the enemy, its just more strategic and practical to view them as the enemy. Why? Because it is important to know their “true” character viewing them as the “enemy” keeps us from seeing them though rose tinted lenses.
What does this boil down to? View women for the fallen human beings that they are. Viewing them as the enemy is a fast and effective way to view them in an “accurate” way.
If you can see their true nature with out having to view women as the enemy, thats better. I want to protect against “white knighting” which I feel you may have a tendency to do (though I do believe that this need to white knight will wane, as it has in me and a lot of people in the manosphere)
RedPillPaul,
Well, I find this interesting because I am working on a long letter for the male members of my family which begins with exactly your assertion – women are fallen, JUST LIKE MEN, and if we look at the world this way so many more things will make sense to us, instead of looking at women as sacred pillars of virtue. I may copy some of your text into my letter because it is more elegant.
I don’t cross the line from women are fallen to women are the enemy. Women are my sisters in Christ. We have a common enemy, and it is not each other (I understand your practical distinction).
If you say 100% of marriages end in divorce, I will say – not so. What is happening is bad but not close to that bad. So, if you say all women are…whatever… and its not true you don’t have an accurate map of reality and so with a bad map you get bad conclusions. Some lose hope. Some will act in a way they may regret. Some will justify trashing women (no one seems to hate women like PUAs).
Asking for others not to needlessly push the bounds of how bad women are…that’s some pretty weak white knighting. If a woman says all men are rapists and some other woman says – that’s crazy is she …white maidening (does someone have a term for a woman who speaks up for men)?
I have spent too much time on this and probably bored alot of others, but this distinction is worth making. Society has no chance if a sizeable portion of women are not yet in the thralls of sin and the modern world. I think the evidence say that portion of women exist, just like a sizeable portion of men exist that would resist sexual sin in all circumstances.
However, I have likely entered the splitting hairs realm and will leave it at that.
Dave:
Yes I can and do insofar as a training in physics helps in various ways to evaluate scientific claims, even those made in other branches of science. I am not saying that such a training is necessary for these things, only that it helps, and I think physics in particular helps due to its particular history. I’m not claiming to know molecular biology as well as one trained in that discipline, of course. However, I’m still able to download and read the peer-reviewed literature like anyone else and learn facts that way, whereas it is not so easy to learn to think scientifically.
Anyway, first, a training in physics helps to disentangle scientific claims from philosophical ones, due to the history of the discipline. Quantum mechanics has spawned numerous philosophical debates even going so far as to touch on the very nature of reality. QM is weird no matter how you slice it. Yet the fact of the matter is that QM does a spectacular job of predicting observations. This doesn’t change just because someone uses it to claim there are multiple universes which split off everytime a wavefunction collapses, or that objective reality doesn’t exist, or any other of the weird philosophical claims which have been made. And, it shows the particular danger of letting science be driven by philosophical claims since that mistake was made by the man reputed by many to be the greatest physicist ever, Albert Einstein, when he inserted a term into an equation simply because he wanted a steady-state universe.
So, definitely, here some discussions about evolution are about philosophy, not about science and they need to be distinguished. Evolution = or => atheism is a fallacy whether made by Christians or by atheists.
Second, it helps one realize how to evaluate scientific claims and evidence for or against them. The history of physics isn’t nearly as pristine as textbooks make it out to be. Millikan ignored contrary data in his oil-drop experiment. The Michelson-Morley experiment claimed a “null” result but that was only due to the size of the error bars, and a few years later Dayton Miller actually got non-null results from doing the same experiment at altitude. And even in the best experiments, there are always error bars. Even today, Newton’s “universal” law of gravity may fail at large distances. Does this mean scientists are all liars and frauds, and we shouldn’t trust anything they say, or that science can tell us nothing meaningful about the world? No. It simply means scientific conclusions are descriptive, not prescriptive; always tentative, and never final, and does the best job both of explaining previous data and predicting new results. (As to mathematics of how exactly that is done, that is where I turn it over to the statisticians.)
Sheepskin condoms? No. Condoms made of sheep intestines. They do not protect against viruses, but they do protect against pregnancy. They are expensive, but they probably provide the most pleasure, because they are pretty much the same as the inside of a vagina / outside of a penis in texture. You are banging the inside of one; your mate is banging the outside of one. They were believed to be used in ancient times. It has been a while since I had a need, but they were once sold at Wal-marts, called Lambs-eeze or something like that. The package had a picture of a sheep on the outside. I haven’t seen them in Mexico, probably because of the high cost.
###
Evolution. I graduated from high school in 1960. We were taught evolution as scientific fact, just like atoms and electrons.
I was a good student. A real good student. I memorized it all. IT WAS TRUTH!
Coelacanth. Yes, indeedy, Coelacanth was a fish early in the evolutionary period that helped create higher forms of fish life then winked out of existence.
Archaeopteryx. Sure proves evolution. So called scientists were so danged sure, that I believed them.
Then in the years that passed after graduation, everything they told me proved evolution was proven to be not proof of evolution. I do not respond well to being lied to.
In the case of Coelacanth they found them being eaten in Asia. Not a fossil at all. Unchanged in the alleged millions of years it took to turn rocks into fossils.
Archaeopteryx. Okay, so they went extinct. But, they found no evidence that its existence proved evolution to be true.
So, having realized that all their proof of evolution was false, did the smart aleck scientists toss out the theory of evolution and start over from scratch figuring out what really happened, with evolution as only one unproved theory?
Oh, Hell, no! They announced that though the evidence they had been using to support evolution as scientific fact was all discredited, evolution was still the only correct theory, but that they had to start all over seeking proof of it. And of course anyone who didn’t believe in evolution was an ignorant fool who deserved to be destroyed and discredited.
That irrational sort of pronouncement gives new meaning to the word, stupid.
Darwin’s big error was he made his theory in a time of ignorance of DNA. He saw the species of birds and animals change as he traveled around the world and did not understand that meant a loss of genetic material which caused the changes. So he thought it was proof that DNA could be added spontaneously which would be needed to produce evolution toward the more complex creatures.So far no one has produced any evidence of an evolution of a simple creature to a more complicated one.
###
Let me tell you about the millions of years required to make a fossil. I have on the floor beside my computer table a leaf fossil. The rock it is in would be nice to have in a street fight.
A cousin’s son is working in Chicago, doing remodelings, making $20 an hour. He sends money and his father is in charge of building his house for him.
The hills here are travertine marble. When they were excavating for the house, I want from time to time to watch. They know I am interested in fossils so they showed me a place where they were being made.
Leaves were fallen from a tree up the hill. There was a place where it was moist, and the mineral content was so high it was like a thick soup of minerals.
At one side, were leaves just drying from falling from the tree. Inches away in the soup were the exact same type of tree leaves, already getting hard.
And, a few more inches away was my rock with the ‘fossilized’ leaf in it. It was still a bit soupy. I took it home and as soon as it dried out it looked as if it were millions of years old.
So, don’t tell me about millions of years.
Notso BrainyOne,
If you want to have this debate, you have to decide which branch of naturalism you’re going to defend. Arguing with evolutionists is a lot like arguing with feminists – every time you nail one for faulty logic they claim to not be “that kind” of feminist… always the “other kind” – Same thing you’re doing, by the way. You won’t defend abiogenesis because you can’t. To say that “science does not have a good theory of abiogenesis” is the understatement of the century. To the extend that one can prove a negative, science has proved that abiogenesis is not even theoretically possible. The implications of that are staggering. Either life arose spontaneously, or it did not. Since it did not, that means it was engineered by something above nature (the very definition of the word “supernatural”). In other words, a supernatural designer built this machine we call the Universe. And a being (let’s call Him “God”) who did so would not need a few billion years of trial-and-error to make you and me out of the scraps He had left over.
You don’t want to defend abiogenesis? Too bad – you’re stuck with it. Defend it with scientific evidence that is replicable or admit that the vast majority of people with PhD’s in physics are full of crap, since most of them believe in it. (Oops, I just exposed your appeal to authority fallacy, since you’re claiming expertise based on holding such a degree yourself… Logic fail, indeed.)
You criticized me because “I believe in miracles,” then when I gave eyewitness testimony to having seen one, and responded with a demand for the same level of proof for the miracle YOU believe in (macro-evolution), you called it a “really stupid statement.” If it is, your beef is with Exfernal’s comment at September 4, 2014 at 5:16 pm. Logic fail again. You’re really not very good at this, are you?
But before I continue, I have to address what is one of dumbest things anyone has written to me in a very long time. You wrote:
“We make inferences to conclude with a high degree of certainty the existence of things we haven’t seen all the time. If you deny this, you simply deny that the scientific method is capable of ascertaining truth at all, and then there is simply no more point to this discussion.”
Didn’t they teach you anything in your physics courses? Guess what, the “Scientific Method” is capable of ascertaining certain truths (to a high level of confidence, anyway) about things that are subject to the methods used. Other things? Not at all. How do we determine the truth of good and evil via the so-called “Scientific Method,” Doctor? So either you have to say that “good” and “evil” do not exist (pleeeeeease say that – I really want to tie you into more knots) or you have to admit that on questions outside of the ability of materialistic experimentation to successfully conduct relevant experiments (or at least observations), what you call “science” must be silent. But if you believe – absent the slightest bit of evidence – that the so-called “scientific method” is capable of ascertaining all truth, then there really is no point to this discussion – because you’d be a loon to believe that. Again, which position do you wish to defend? The one that says naturalistic science is capable of answering questions in the absence of observations or successful experiments (hint: I’m going to demand proof that you don’t have), or the one that says that the “Scientific Method” is incapable of answering questions that fall outside of materialistic methods of observation and/or experimentation (hint: your physics degree won’t help you after that)? For a PhD physicist, you certainly jumped head-first into the logic trap Exfernal inadvertently set for you.
Anyway, back to Evolutionary Biology (which you do not have any special expertise in). How did the wings of birds evolve? A wing is only useful for flight if all the parts of that wing are available in some sort of “final” form (wing bones, feathers, the shape of the airfoil, etc). Each part is useless unless all the other parts are also in final form. Even if you accept neo-Lamarckism (which has never been demonstrated, despite lots of “scientists” trying unsuccessfully for the past 150 years – and then developing new theories to explain why they can’t explain the phenomenon that Lamark was trying to explain), you still can’t make it work. An appendage that was in transition toward becoming a wing would be useless for a very long time (tens of millions of years, according to the “theory”). Needless to say, having a big hunk of useless flesh, good for neither handling things nor flying, would be a HUGE survival DISadvantage. Yet your miraculous theory would have us accept that something that would almost certainly result in the creature being eaten would be passed along, generation after generation for millions of years, until just the right DNA sequence turned it into something useable as an organic airfoil. Oh… and all the complex “software” that it takes to use that new-found airfoil to actually fly would have to happen right then, as well, otherwise even a fully-formed wing would be useless – the exact opposite of a survival advantage.
Yeah… that’s likely. I trust you won’t think it’s a “stupid” question for me to ask for some evidence for that, will you? If you cannot show – by what you call “science” – that a bird wing could (and did) evolve, then I expect you to be enough of a man to admit that your belief in macro-evolution is nothing but faith – and the worst king of blind faith, at that… faith in something that is not only not supported by evidence, but that actually defies logic and biological science.
Once your done with that: if you want to continue, I’ll need you to stake out your position as a believer in phyletic gradualism or punctuated equilibrium. Either way, you’d better buckle up – it’s going to be a rough ride.
________________________________________
For the uninitiated: there are basically two opposing camps among evolutionists, and each considers the other to be completely wrong. Phyletic gradualism is the belief that macro-evolution happens in small increments over vast spans of time, while punctuated equilibrium is the belief that species remain in a more-or-less static state, then large changes occur rapidly. Gradualists deny the possibility of rapid genetic change to create “better” creatures (they call them “hopeful monsters”. That would be like two iguanas mating and the female giving birth to a Cocker Spaniel). On the other hand, Equilibriumists reject gradualism because the fossil record would have to be FILLED with transitional species, and they are absent (there is not a single fossil that is an unambiguous transitional species – if gradualism was true, the vast majority of fossils would be of that type). Also, slowly changing one type of creature into another type little by little would be like taking a 2-stroke, one-cylinder engine and turning into a four-stroke V-8 by replacing one piece at a time – while it was running. By the way: if it stops, you have to start over.
So gradualists say that punctuated equilibrium has no scientific merit. Equilibriumists say that gradualism has no scientific merit. Creationists agree with both assessments – both are absurd.
Lyn87 says:
September 5, 2014 at 1:46 am
Lyn87 says:
September 5, 2014 at 9:53 am
and
Lyn87 says:
September 5, 2014 at 4:07 pm
Thank you sir. I am taking notes.
Two quick clarifications: It was Exfernal who implied that I was gullible for believing in miracles (although I have seen one), not Brainy One. It was Brainy One who declared my demand for an equal level of proof for macro-evolution to be “stupid” though – although he didn’t seem to have any problem when Exfernal did it. Apparently it’s only “stupid” to demand proof from his side.
Also, I actually understated the unlikelihood of gradualism in my example. It’s actually much worse. I’ll make the following adjustment to demonstrate the absurdity of this so-called “theory”:
Of course that’s about as likely as two iguanas giving birth to a cocker spaniel, but then again I don’t have a PhD in physics to help me “understand” why the obvious explanation (that design implies a Designer) is wrong.
JDG,
My pleasure.
Modern society wants to turn all women feral, but a large proportion of women are not feral.
Paging Rollo Tomassi. Paging Rollo Tomassi. Dr. Tomassi wanted in surgery.
And thank goodness – last thing most men need is spending every waking moment romancing their wife worrying she is one cute guy away from an extramarital affair.
….You need an education.
If all women were already feral it would be game over so much sooner.
Lord, you have given them eyes, but they cannot see.
I pointed out to Earl
“But it increasingly appears that your mind is made up and you do not wish to examine facts that don’t fit your dogma, so this conversation is becoming a waste of time.”
Earl
Sounds like you are doing that more than I am.
“I know you are, but what am I?” isn’t exactly the reply of a thinking man, Earl. You don’t actually address the facts that I bring up, rather you just repeat the same unsupported claim. That’s not logic, it’s not thought, it’s dogma.
It appears that you are clinging to some myth, along the lines of “Feminism, divorce, etc. is the fault of the inventors of hormonal birth control”, rather than face the reality of the Female Imperative. Therefore, you must close your eyes to facts and refuse to even consider for a second that there is evidence for wide spread use of various forms of contraception in earlier civilizations, because that would upset your dogma. Thus instead of actuallly reading and learning about ancient history, you burp up non sequitors about alligator scat.
You’ve been more thoughtful in the past. So there must be some emotional issue involved for you to abandon thought in favor of empty slogan-chanting.
Too bad. Not my problem.
Earl
I’d put more faith in the numbers of women taking hormonal birth control because they can’t really hide the fact they are using it from everybody. They still have to see a doctor and purchase it.
And this proves what with regard to any pre-modern society?
The fact it exponentially increased once it was put into use because it was found to work tells me that the old ways were either unreliable or not often used.
Or you don’ t really know what you are babbling about. The latter appears to be more likely.
Again, for the 3rd or 4th time, click on the link I embedded – I won’t bother to embed it again – and learn something.
Alternatively, read about the contraceptive diaphragm and how it works (barrier method) then compare that with hormonal birth control – in a monogamous relationship both methods are pretty much equally effective. Now recall the Female Imperative, with its hypergamy, its desire for AF and BB, and consider which of the two contraceptive methods works with female ferality?
You used to be better at thinking, Earl. What happened?
No, I don’t. I don’t have to defend naturalism (whatever you mean by it) at all and I’m not defending it. You’re just mindlessly flailing about beating a strawman to death. Let’s just assume for the sake of the rest of the argument God exists.
Indeed. It shows it to be infinitesimally unlikely that there ever was a time in which the universe (or at least the earth) was without life. We only have access to data from earth, of course, but the earliest life forms have been dated very close to the time of earth’s formation, agreeing with this.
And a being (let’s call Him “God”) who did so would not need a few billion years of trial-and-error to make you and me out of the scraps He had left over.
The argument is not over what God could do, but over what the evidence shows He actually did do.
No, I’m not. You are. You are the one claiming that a fully grown advanced life form spontaneously formed from inanimate matter.
I did not. How about responding to what I actually wrote?
Now that is dumb. You are simply reading into my words what I didn’t say. Where did you learn reading comprehension? I didn’t say the scientific method was capable of ascertaining truth in everything. Science might be able to inform a debate about morality by providing additional information but morality is properly the domain of philosophy.
So you want me to admit there is no science without data? Fine, so admitted. You really needed to take half the post to get here?
No, it isn’t a stupid question. As you say, it is quite unlikely for wings to have evolved in this manner. However, wings having evolved in this manner is still the preferred scientific explanation (despite the low likelihood) if the likelihood of any other explanation is far, far less. And it is. The likelihood of a fully-formed bird arising from inanimate matter is far, far less. Not only do you need wings to spontaneously arise, but you also need a digestive system, lungs, eyes, etc. Even a single cell arising spontaneously from inanimate matter is far less likely than wings evolving in this way.
Of course it could have. Since we’re admitting the existence of an omnipotent God, I assume we admit anything is possible except the logically impossible. The question is whether it did. That is one of weighing likelihoods.
It is supported by evidence. Be man enough to admit that.
@Earl
I recall a period in the latter days of the Roman Empire when bachelors were taxed amidst the decline of marriage and birth rates. Many societal factors went into that but given what we know about the nature of women, I’d find it hard to believe they stopped copulating. But birth rates dropped during that era. I think it’s a safe bet that contraceptive methods were involved.
Or check out the Wikipedia article about the ancient plant silphium which was evidently so popular as a birth control medicine that it was overharvested into extinction. The article mentions that there exist plants in the parsley family that have the capability of acting as abortifacients such as wild carrot.
Even today, I hear stories about folk medicine methods to induce abortion. Go to the Philippines or to China, for instance.
You’ve made the case for the wide influence of birth control since the 1960’s. By itself, not a bad case. But you’re also trying to say that birth control never influenced society to a noticeable degree before the 1960’s. To hold that to be true implies that you believe there never was a time in history when women couldn’t act in large enough numbers to influence the society they lived in on their desire not to get pregnant or carry their babies to term.
No, I’m not. You are. You are the one claiming that a fully grown advanced life form spontaneously formed from inanimate matter.
This is not what Lyn87 claimed, and without a creator (God) you don’t even have inanimate matter to begin with.
“Brainy One”
I see you have withdrawn from the debate by tilting at straw-men and declining the provide any evidence for your assertions.
I can’t say that I’m surprised. Based on my numerous previous discussions with evolutionists, and the fact that you’re following the same script as all the rest of them to a “T” – I would estimate that we’re around the 80% mark – right before you just fling poo and storm off. Geez, you guys are predictable.
The fact is that you wish to believe that unimaginably-complex systems-of-systems (from bird wings to the biosphere) were not designed – although that is the only reasonable explanation… your unsupported appeals to “science” notwithstanding.
Good luck with that. If you want to rejoin the debate, try bring something to the thread better than – “I have a degree in an unrelated field and I said so.” Start with walking back these weasel-words, “However, wings having evolved in this manner is still the preferred scientific explanation (despite the low likelihood) if the likelihood of any other explanation is far, far less. And it is. The likelihood of a fully-formed bird arising from inanimate matter is far, far less. Not only do you need wings to spontaneously arise, but you also need a digestive system, lungs, eyes, etc. Even a single cell arising spontaneously from inanimate matter is far less likely than wings evolving in this way.”
The fact is that it is not just unlikely that wings evolved in that way – it is highly unlikely that wings evolved at all. And I’m not the one who said that fully-formed creatures arose from inert matter – that’s your side that states that as a matter of doctrine. Your side’s devotion to spontaneous generation is YOUR problem, not mine. I have repeatedly posited that there is nothing spontaneous about this (that’s your position) – but that a supernatural Designer created things – without a lot of trial-and-error that is conspicuously absent from the fossil record.
But since you reject that evolutionary path, does that mean you think it evolved some other way? Punctuated Equilibrium, maybe? For Heaven’s sake, be enough of a man to take a position.
_____________________________
Nonetheless, you did answer some of my queries – although you had to throw in gratuitous insults while claiming not to answer. To wit: I wrote,
1) “Defend it with scientific evidence that is replicable or admit that the vast majority of people with PhD’s in physics are full of crap, since most of them believe in it.”
Your unwillingness to defend abiogenesis means that you cannot use your degree to claim expertise, since most people with that degree believe in it. Now we’re getting somewhere. Your refusal to defend it means that we all get to disregard your claim of “expertise.” Got it.
2) I also asked you to choose between the idea that the “scientific method” can solve all questions or not. You chose, “Not” when you wrote this: “I didn’t say the scientific method was capable of ascertaining truth in everything.”
Good to know – I wasn’t sure whether you were a loon or just had too much blind faith. It’s the latter: not good, but better than the former.
3) Your statement that bird wings probably didn’t evolve “in that way” (I described the gradualist method) – implies that you may believe in punctuated equilibrium. Are you SURE you want to defend that position, or do you want to fall back on ambiguity again?
_____________________________
On the other hand:
1) You refuse to defend naturalism – or even define what you mean by it – that gives you wiggle-room to change the terms when I skewer your arguments (again).
2) Also, you refuse to state what you mean by evolution in plain language (although you were critical of the gradualist theory of wing evolution) – and since there are two competing branches and each side considers the other side to be without merit, you are hiding behind ambiguity to avoid the thrashing you would receive by just declaring which flavor of magical thinking you adhere to.
3) You accuse me of believing in spontaneous generation, when the very crux of my argument is that such an event is impossible. Yet you think I’m the one with a comprehension problem.
4) Finally, I asked you to provide evidence for something you believe in (the evolution of bird wings) or be enough of a man to admit that your belief is just blind faith. You have declined to do so, and responded with an unsupported assertion and a baseless insult.
What that says about you and your ability to comprehend this subject is not flattering. You should apply for a refund of your tuition – a PhD in physics with so little understanding of how one arrives at veritas means that you didn’t get an education: you just received high-level training in a glorified trade school.
The Brass Cat @ 1:02 pm:
“Don’t give up on cold approaches just yet.”
Appreciate the advice (also Isa above) but my issue now is trusting women, not approaching them. As a Christian I can’t demand a girl put out right away to show interest; instead, I demand she demonstrate submission before I generate a single tingle. A woman leaving her comfort zone and indicating interest shows respect for me… and probably a willingness to buck some peer pressure. That’s critical for the low points of a future marriage.
Using Game is, for me, putting on a mask. That’s great for playtime but, if I wear a mask to make women notice me, then like me, then love me, then I’ll be wearing that mask for the rest of my life. Eventually, it will slip… and meanwhile, what’s the cow doing besides judging my performance? No. She must respect me because I’m a man, not an Alpha, just as I respect Christ because he’s God, not a miracle worker. I don’t know how else to trust a modern girl than to watch how she treats me before the Gaming starts.
Brainyone,
I think you might take an interest in some research going on with a fascinating fish:
bichir (Polypterus senegalus)
http://m.csmonitor.com/Science/2014/0828/To-study-evolution-scientists-raise-fish-to-walk-on-land
There’s a good body of work too on fish evolution:
Tiktaalik
http://m.livescience.com/42525-early-fish-evolved-rear-legs.html
Some interesting research on birds concluded that birds don’t “want” to fly. It was a complex of bio-physio-energetic research that exceeds me but the upshot is both that the energetics of flight are improbable – i.e.: not really the first survival strategy an energy conserving mother nature would choose. More importantly though the research looked at the physiological process of a bird taking flight and determined that the biomechanics don’t favor it, inother words its as if the bird would prefer to run, but once it’s wings are deployed it doesn’t really have a choice – it experiences lift and off it goes.
A lot of flying creatures actually glid, i.e.: flying squirrels.
It all brings to mind quails – common where I live. Quails love to run, hate to fly and don’t fly very well it’s as if … their wings are only halfway evolved to flying. You can chase a quail all over (I did when I was a kid) and they have to really feel like capture is inevitable before they’ll spread their wings and even when they do it’s like a 30 foot longm 1 foot high windborne sprint that accelerates them out of reach.
It’s not hard to imagine though that quails have a bell curve and there must be a top 10% of quail flyiers. If the top 10% were separated from the rest and bred only with other top flyers it’s not hard to imagine a breed of strong quail flyiers coming from that. It wouldn’t be speciation I suppose, more like dog breeding, but I don’t see how anyone could claim it isn’t an evolution of a flight capable wing and bodyframe.
One can see it going the other way too. I bet there’s a subpopulation of quails with exceedingly poor flight skills but relatively more effective digits.
Stochastics dynamics are interesting. It’s just my personal opinion but I think if you understand stochastic dynamics and you read Darwin’s OOS, then you’ll sense you are reading a qualitative narration of what we know to be a mathematical truth.
In that respect DNA/RNA are fascinating because they are recombinant data units that are expressed as chemicals rather than electron gates (bits/bytes) or auditory phonemes. Scientists have translated books into DNA sequences … that’s how direct is their relationship to letters and syllables.
Like any other alphabet they are, well, recombinant, meaning we can combine and recombine letters any way we want, so one wonders what creationists mean that recombination cannot evolve beyond some qualitative barrier that they call a “kind”.
I wonder what the “kind” looks like, genetically. I wonder what mechanism creationists propose that exists and is testable that blocks recomination at this theoretical theshold. I’m sure a discovery of such a thing would upend science as we know it. It really makes you wonder why creationists don’t put more resources into discovering it (let alone coherently articulating it) rather than say, running expeditions looking for Noah’s Ark on Mount Ararat.
I would sure love to see this. The first thing I’d study if someone came up with it would be how to square it with all the parts of our genome that we share with jellyfish.
Anyway,… you seem like you like intellectual stimulation so thought I’d pass a few ideas your way. I’ve never found debating creationists to yield an iota of profit myself.
In a divorce there is always a bad guy. Kids will figure out most of the truth surrounding those circumstances at some point in their lives. Unfortunately these revelations occur near middle age or when the child himself divorces. When this happens they will often have to relive all of that old bottled up pain in order to work through his own immediate situation. The feminine imperative tells men that the children do not need to know anything when young or even when they mature. The FI tells men to shut up and play nice in every circumstance. I would think that children deserve the truth from the beginning. They deserve to know that yes mommy broke her promise (vows) to daddy and mommy wants the divorce and daddy does not. If the children know how babies are made, it may even be necessary to explain in an age appropriate way mommy’s sluttiness. Or, if the husband decides to divorce his wife for her infidelity; mommy broke her promise (vows) to daddy, and what she did was so bad that daddy cannot simply ever forgive mommy. These methods teach many lessons most of them subconscious. Truthfulness may even stop generational divorce.
Let’s look at it another way. A mother divorces for her infidelity. She had a daughter. The daughter watches what occurred, but was told the same old trope that it’s nobody’s fault, mommy and daddy still love you, blah, blah. Daughter learns this lesson. It becomes a part of her very moral center. She learns that she can commit adultery and that it is ok. She also learns that she can divorce and will likely not have to suffer any serious consequences. If sons are observing this it is much worse. They will learn that a woman can disrespect him and he is not to do anything about it.
Men try to put up the valiant exterior for their kids but it’s a lie. The kids see that divorce and any corresponding behaviors are ok, when committed by mommy at least. This is probably why children of divorce will often fail in their marriages as well. It’s not the men in these subsequent generations divorcing, it’s still the women. For us men who had to go through this growing up, it’s our own brokenness that often compels us to marry broken women. Yes, EVERY SINGLE WOMAN who is divorced is forever broken. Every woman who comes from a broken family is ALWAYS broken herself. Every man is also broken, but our ability to love unconditionally and men’s general sense of responsibility to their families often compel us to not blow up the marriage for anything less than the most grievous of situations, such as infidelity and cuckoldry. Stats bear all of this out.
Many men will scream from the hilltops that NA(broken)WALT and that it’s a very broad grey line. No. It’s actually fairly black and white. So much so that it may even make sense that daughters from broken homes should essentially be discouraged from marrying. Can you imagine how that might motivate a mother to keep her family intact come hell or high water if her daughter would essentially be given over to the PUA’s and eventual spinsterism should she break up her family?
Either way the children will learn something. It’s not wrong to point out who the bad guy is and in most cases it’s the mother.
@Lyn87
Of course evolution is compatible with God. Anyone tempted to think otherwise is confusing the question “Who?” with the question “How?”
Lewontin sold us a dummy on the issue of race, so I am not inclined to believe that he speaks with honesty about other matters.
The hydroplate theory is an embarrassment. If you believe it “fits the observable data (including the observed phenomenon of continental drift) better than the plate tectonic theory”, well you are entitled to your opinion, but I would vote to return to the main topic of this thread where we can usefully learn from one another.
We all have different level of understanding the red pill truths. These levels are affected by our marital/divorced situation, our age at first being exposed, our personalities (ie; alpha or beta), our religious beliefs, our own innate sense of morality, and of course our life experiences.
One thing to note is that for men who were decent with women, and I mean closing the deal, or him having the choice of the best when in his 20’s and still married, for these men they have a unique take on the red pill truths and how they affect their own personal observations and experiences. For the beta’s, gamma’s and delta’s, they bring their own unique perspective. Our experience and innate morality will often dictate how we see the truth, even more so than our religious beliefs, interestingly enough.
Anyways that the foundation or motivation that fuels a few of the particular debates occurring here. This is why so many of the commenter’s here who are professing Christians’ are in fact white knights to a greater or lesser degree. As we grow and learn many men will lose a substantial portion of the white knightism. This is why (the real)alpha’s leave churches and either become pastors, hold home church or just say screw it and become apostate. If real leaders were actually leading, the church in general wouldn’t be so screwed up. As other have I too led men in battle. However unlike my brothers I did not have have the bars that gave me the faux leadership position that is all too common in our military when someone slaps on some shiny bars. I took command because the situation dictated I do so at the time, and for the remainder of the campaign I kept my leadership position. I was part of an awesome team overall with a core handful of Marines who helped lead and train the much bigger group. I believe our methods were pretty novel for the Corps, but all of my men came home in one piece.
I use that story to illustrate how a lowly E3 carried the billet of an E5 and even E6 at times. Not everyone was happy with the situation. Those men went back to the rear and relative safety and comfort. Fort the ones who followed we saw a lot of action and used up a lot of ammo.
The modern church will never be fixed in a temporal sense. For that reason men may want to consider taking the gloves off. I think that a type of guerilla and psychological warfare was a big part of the lesson we can draw from the bible. Except the modern kinder and gentler church man won’t normally even broach the subjects that are of the highest import to the Christian faith. If in the rare circumstances that one of these issues is actually brought up in conversation or even a sermon, the real lessons are so watered down to the point of irrelevancy.
A lot of these lessons and red pill truths are in fact black and white and have been throughout humanity regardless of the societal mores of the day. The coloring of the truth via religiously colored glasses only will not rectify the problem we are faced with today.
@Gunner Q
Erm women who cold approach are exactly who you don’t want really… It means (generally) that they have bought into the girls and guys are the same memo. The “look at you smile look away” girls are maybe 50/50 decent not decent (at church settings). I would say you probably need a better selection filter (most people do), but that is quite hard to develop.
Also, I don’t view fronts or “alphaness” in a particularly positive light for the reasons you mentioned. The point is to find inner confidence and learn how to project it. Until you feel it, you have to fake it, but most things are that way including faith. I believe God values the prayers and obedience to divine teaching of a doubter far more than 10,000 prayers of a believer.
Of course evolution is compatible with God
I don’t see how if the Bible is from God. How did the process of evolution occur before death, through sin, entered the world?
Of course evolution is compatible with God. Anyone tempted to think otherwise is confusing the question “Who?” with the question “How?”
Evolution doesn’t even come close to answering any questions of “How?”. It’s so inept, that only God (or some other sufficiently competent designer) can make it work.
Evolution is possible with God, but that says little when all things are possible with God.
Kevin says:
September 5, 2014 at 9:51 am
“So – based on your data – women are AS LIKELY AS MEN to “give it up if its the right man/woman”.
And, based on your data (which I cannot link to the source of), its maybe 15% of MARRIED women, nothing like “all women”.
Even in the most sexual culture on earth, only 50% of women do as you claim, and only 15% of married women. In not slutty cultures with a culture of chastity it would be much less. That data was even better than mine for making the case that a sizeable group of women don’t just give it up to the right alpha.”
American women (and U.K. women and Canadian women and German women) are much sluttier than you understand. A collection of cuckoldry rates (which will logically be considerably lower than wive’s infidelity rates):
From https://web.archive.org/web/20050306032730/http://nomarriage.com/paternity_test.shtml
From the Guardian, 1998-07-14: “More than 25 years ago the consultant obstetrician E E Phillipp reported to a symposium on embryo transfer that blood tests on between 200 and 300 women in a town in the south-east of England revealed that 30 per cent of their children could not have been fathered by the men whose blood groups had also been sampled”.
From the Dallas Morning News 1999-10-31: “DNA Diagnostics Center … an industry leader, says 30 percent of the men it tests prove to be misidentified. Similar numbers come from the Texas attorney general’s office, which enforces child support: About a quarter of the men who disputed paternity in the last year turned out to be right. In Florida, the proportion was one-third”.
From the Sunday Times 2000-01-23: “David Hartshorne, spokesman for Cellmark, said that in about one case in seven, the presumed father turns out to be the wrong man”.
From the Santa Barbara News-Press 2000-02-27: “For the population as a whole, “The generic number used by us is 10 percent,” said Dr. Bradley Popovich, vice president of the American College of Medical Genetics. [15 to 25 % has been determined from blood tests of parents and offspring in Canada and the US.]”
From The Age 2000-03-26: “About 3000 paternity tests are carried out a year in Australia. In about 20 per cent of cases the purported father is found to be unrelated to the child. This figure is estimated to be 10 per cent in the general community”.
From The REPORT Newsmagazine 2000-04-24: “The rate of wrongful paternity in “stable monogamous marriages,” according to the Max Planck Institute in Munich, Germany, ranges from one in 10 with the first child to one in four with the fourth”.
From the Independent 2000-05-12: “… biologists Robin Baker and Mark Bellis … review of paternity studies also suggested frequent infidelity, with extra-pair paternity running between 1.4 per cent and 30 per cent in different communities”.
From The Globe and Mail 2000-05-20: “Anecdotal evidence suggests these numbers bear out in Canada as well…. Maxxam Analytics in Guelph, Ont., performs approximately two paternity tests a day. And according to Dr. Wayne Murray, head of the human DNA department, one out of four men who come in pointing a finger at their spouse is not the biological father of the child in question”.
From the Sunday Times 2000-06-11: “More than 250,000 tests a year are now conducted in America, and about 15,000 in Britain…. roughly 30% of men taking the tests discover that they are not the fathers of the children they regarded as their own. In the wider community, social scientists say up to 1 in 20 children are not the offspring of the man who believes himself to be their father”.
From the Observer 2000-09-03: “One study followed couples waiting for NHS fertility treatment, where the men were ‘azoospermic’, meaning they produced no sperm and were totally infertile. The researchers found that 25 per cent of the women became pregnant before fertility treatment started”.
From the American Association of Blood Banks – 2001-02-26: “The overall exclusion rate for 1999 was 28.2% for accredited labs. Exclusion rates for non-accredited US and foreign labs were slightly less at 22.7% and 20.6% respectively”.
Well, well, well…
Bluedog says, “I’ve never found debating creationists to yield an iota of profit myself.”
Yeah… I get that a lot when people who attend the “Church of Scientism” have nothing further to say. Like I wrote earlier, you guys are pretty predictable.
_____________________________________________________
James K goes for the “Hail Mary” though, with this, “Of course evolution is compatible with God.”
That depends on which “God” you’re talking about, I suppose. It is not at all compatible with Christianity. Why? Because if the absurd theory of evolution is correct, then death preceded sin. If that’s true (thankfully, the evidence is overwhelming that it is not), then Romans 5:12 would be a lie, “Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned:…”
It also invalidates Romans 6:23, “For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.”
If Darwin was even close to being correct, then death is not the consequence of sin, and Christianity is fraudulent. That’s why so many secular “scientists” who ought to know a bogus “theory” when they see one embrace it despite the fact that it is patent nonsense from a scientific standpoint – it’s bad philosophy masquerading as “Science” that posits a cosmology that attempts to explain the world without the need for God… a God to whom we will all answer.
2 Peter 3: 5-7 sums up such rationalizations nicely, “For this they willingly are ignorant of, that by the word of God the heavens were of old, and the earth standing out of the water and in the water: Whereby the world that then was, being overflowed with water, perished: But the heavens and the earth, which are now, by the same word are kept in store, reserved unto fire against the day of judgment and perdition of ungodly men.”
Willingly ignorant of the creation, of the flood (God’s past judgement on a sinful world), and of the future reckoning that sinful men will face. Believe what you want, gentlemen, but don’t say you weren’t told the truth.
It is possible to be a Christian and believe in evolution (although it’s stupid), just like it is possible to be a Christian and believe that Mary wasn’t a virgin (which is also stupid), but ideas have consequences, and teaching such falsehoods acts as a stumbling block because it undermines the very foundational facts of Christianity.
If it makes anyone feel better, I used to believe that crap myself – I went to public school and my “science” teachers were so sure of themselves. Then I studied as an adult and learned what my secular teachers didn’t tell me. I’m reminded of why adults should discard magical thinking by 1 Corinthians 13:11, “When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things.”
Put away the fairy tales, gentlemen – they are unbecoming of grown men.
Boom:
http://alphagameplan.blogspot.com/2014/09/why-low-n-matters.html?showComment=1409937705805#c2576749030774798863
Linked this in a post recently. This candid admission is one more manifestation of the social trend of women embracing Open Hypergamy:
http://therationalmale.com/2014/08/07/open-hypergamy/
Women have become so comfortable in their ’empowerment’ and having the long term security needs side of hypergamy so well provided for (by state and indentured men) that any secrecy, prudence or discretion about the true nature of their hypergamy is now replaced by an open discourse about it.
Women are now proud to openly let men know that their sexual strategy means women expect them to be responsible to provide for them, support and love them and accept that they will need to qualify, perform and negotiate for a compromised sexual experience with them that will never approach the urgency, fervor and enthusiasm of the sexual experience they unconditionally had with more Alpha men during their peak SMV years.
You’ll accept hypergamy / proactive cuckoldry because it’s your social responsibility to do so ‘as a man’ and you’ll like it.
http://therationalmale.com/2014/06/18/controlling-interests/
Repeat:
BOOM.
RPSMF,
I just read the article “Controlling Interests” that you linked.
Wow – that’s depressing. BOOM indeed. Good find.
I’ve always been amazed that so many single guys say they consider prior sexual experience as a bonus in a future wife. Some of them even thought that virginity made a girl a “no-go.” And that was back in the 70’s and 80’s. Feminists have been hard at work “building beta’s” for a long time.
At this point Lyn, I’m extremely interested in seeing how all of this plays out.
All around the Manosphere there is constant talk of “collapse” and the current system being “unsustainable,” and of course this classic piece: http://www.singularity2050.com/2010/01/the-misandry-bubble.html (A very long read but well worth it.)
What’s the future going to look like? Will it be filled with frustrated Betas that finally decide to become MGTOW? Will there simply be less males in the world in general? Will the U.S. regress to an earlier time, like the return of Finishing School for women and male chivalry, or go extreme hardcore women-are-property like many countries in the Middle East?
Or will enough men with enough power realize that shipping in beautiful wife trained women from other countries will shine an even greater light on how worthless the 21st century American female is?
Or will we just go straight on Logan’s Run and say that nobody gets to live past the age of 30?
RPSMF,
I re-read TFH’s “The Misandry Bubble” a couple of months ago – it’s uncanny. It will be interesting to see how the second half of his timeline plays out – that’s were most of the real action is. I don’t see this ending well any time soon. The west is committing cultural suicide, and while there are many factors in play, male awareness of what has become of our women is a big one. It’s not like most young men are “red pill” in the sense that the guys here are – it’s that millions of them grew up with “choice mommies” either because of divorce or the social network that allows single women to breed like feral cats.
But when energetic young men are told that they suck (and that they’re just big-brained monkeys in a Universe where God has been “explained away”), they instinctively do what comes naturally. Since advanced civilization rests on the backs of beta men doing the grunt work, and the grunt work brings so much risk and so little benefit these days, “what comes naturally” to aimless young men isn’t good for anyone – even them.
The “Open Hypergamy” article that you linked got me to thinking about what economists call the “Tragedy of the Commons.” I imagine you’re familiar with it, but for those who are not: the idea is that people will take care of their own stuff because it is in their benefit to do so. But if a resource is shared (“held in common”) the incentive is to use it as quickly as possible to extract the most benefit before it is gone. Such resources are not cared for because to do so is to enrich everyone who uses it – the provision is personal while the benefit is shared, so only the “suckers” do the work to “preserve the commons.”
With open hypergamy, the Mighty V for most women is, for all intents and purposes, “held in common.” Why provide personal provision for a girl who’s vagina is available to all comers (no pun intended, really). Like the guy who plows the field that everyone gets to plant in, only a “sucker” provides provision to a woman who everyone gets to “plow” (dang… this really lends itself to double entendres). So as women become more brazen about their hypergamy, and more men see how little is being offered in return for playing their designated role, many with withdraw. That doesn’t mean MGTOW necessarily – I don’t foresee that happening in great numbers. But it does explain the plummeting marriage rate and the rise of disposable relationships.
If reliable male birth control (like the extract of the Justicia gendarussa plant in pill form) becomes widely available, that would probably be a game-changer of similar magnitude as HBC for women was. I don’t want to re-open the “Pill debate” from earlier – whether it was cause or effect: it changed how society look at things. I would think that the birthrate would go into a nosedive, especially among unmarried women who would no longer be able to “oops” their way into 18 years of child support, free housing, free heating, free food, free college, and welfare payments.
You’re lying. That’s right, LYING. Is that what God wants you to do, you think? You’re lying through your teeth.
You’re lying. That’s right, LYING. I never said ANYTHING whatsoever about whether these (admittedly) unimaginably complex systems-of-systems were designed. I’ve already admitted (for the sake of this argument anyway) that God exists. Therefore, if He wills that these unimaginably complex systems-of-systems exist, then they exist. I’m not exactly sure (I admit) what God “designing” something exactly means, but if He wills they exist, then they exist.
You are LYING. That’s right, LYING. Those aren’t weasel-words. They constitute an argument you can’t answer. That means, I WIN THIS DEBATE.
Which I already admitted. You are LYING. It is MUCH MORE UNLIKELY that wings came from inert matter – THAT is why wings evolved is the more likely explanation.
Then where does YOUR side state they came from? You are LYING. That is EXACTLY where your side states they came from. And it is NOT where I state they came from.
I have said I am NOT devoted to spontaneous generation – the extreme unlikelihood of such a thing is EXACTLY WHY common descent is the preferred position. You are LYING.
Yes, a supernatural Designer created things – but exactly how did He do so? Trying to make the argument over the former rather than the latter is dishonest. You are LYING.
Fine, disregard my claim of expertise if you like and focus on the arguments. But where exactly is the evidence that most with Physics PhDs believe in abiogenesis? I posit that you don’t have it, and you are once again… LYING.
ROFLMAO…
You really don’t get it, do you? I said the likelihood of bird wings evolving in that way is small. It is still the preferred hypothesis if the likelihood of bird wings coming in any other way is infinitemisally smaller.
There is no reason why I should need to defend naturalism – ESPECIALLY when the term is so ill-defined. I have NO IDEA what is meant by “naturalism” anyway so I don’t even know WHAT I would be defending.
I’m talking about COMMON DESCENT. Is that so hard to understand?
BRAVO!!!! So life forms (including advanced life forms) ACTUALLY DID NOT come from inanimate matter. You just admitted the very crux of MY argument. Congratulations. We’re done here.
LYING again. It is indeed EVIDENCE that the likelihood of the alternative hypothesis (coming from inanimate matter) is so much less (which you JUST admitted).
What that says about you and your ability to comprehend this subject is not flattering. You should apply for a refund of your tuition – a PhD in physics with so little understanding of how one arrives at veritas means that you didn’t get an education: you just received high-level training in a glorified trade school.
Fuck you. You probably couldn’t solve a simple differential equation – and you feel qualified to “lecture” us with advanced degrees. What are your “qualifications” pal – besides reading the latest articles from Answers in Genesis.
Would you rather be a husband or a wife? (… *cough*)
http://forums.catholic.com/showthread.php?t=907274
—
Am I being too sensitive or is husband just being super rude?
http://forums.catholic.com/showthread.php?t=907195
CAF is starting to sound like these people: http://www.reddit.com/r/TwoXChromosomes/comments/2fhnmo/i_just_got_slut_shamed_by_a_nurse_practitioner/
(Probably due to some posters who frequent there…)
“Let me tell you about the millions of years required to make a fossil.”
Been a while since I read up on it, but I think the million of years is the conclusion from dating methods about the age of the fossil, not the period of time required for fossil formation.
Again, to reiterate for everyone else: if evolution were not correct, what we should see is a much greater likelihood for new life forms to form from inanimate matter than for new life forms to form from preexisting ones. It is analogous to a stem cell differentiating: once it’s differentiated, it doesn’t change into another type of cell, with inanimate matter the analog of the stem cell. This could have been the case based on knowledge in Darwin’s time. They didn’t know about the billions of base pairs in DNA, the complexity of the cell, homochirality of animo acids and sugars, the length and complexity of amino chains, etc., etc. (and all these things are amply documented even on Creationist websites). But we know all about this now and we can conclude, therefore, that there is much, much, much greater likelihood for new life forms to form from preexisting ones than for new life forms to form from inanimate matter. This is an absolute knockdown argument. Deny it, and you simply refuse to use critical thinking skills.
The actual reason Creationists like Lyn fight tooth-and-nail against evolution is because, while they crusade against atheism and materialism and “naturalism” (whatever that is), and they are right some scientists are atheists and materialists and letting that override doing science, they themselves also have an a priori ideological position – that of traditional Christianity’s idea of Adam and Eve and original sin. How does this fit in with billions of years of evolution? It doesn’t – at least not without radical modifications of the doctrine. Unfortunately, the evidence above supports long years of evolution, and while (often correctly) claiming that atheists and materialists are letting their philosophies dictate interpretation the data, they themselves are doing exactly the same thing.
Two fallacious arguments are used. (Everything that Lyn writes, except for the gratuitous insults, falls in to these two categories.) The first fallacy is that common descent is unlikely, based on the “fitness landscape” – therefore, we should reject that hypothesis. I concede that the likelihood is quite low. It doesn’t matter how many other examples besides the wing Lyn wants to bring in. What I deny is that the posterior probability (the relevant issue) is low. The posterior probability of a hypothesis can be quite high even if the likelihood is low, when the likelihood of all other alternative hypotheses is much lower. Again, if you deny this, you deny basic scientific reasoning, logic, and math.
The second fallacy is that God can do all things. Well, yes, certainly He can, but not being blessed with the Divine intellect ourselves, we need to use logic and inference and observation to figure out what He has done or what He is going to do. It is possible that five minutes ago, when I wasn’t looking, my cup of coffee changed into a cup of water and then back again into a cup of coffee. God can do all things. However, there is no good reason for me to think that He did that. So it is possible that God created all life forms from inanimate matter. However, the evidence is strongly against that.
Lyn,
re: “Church of scientism” … funny, as when I am inhabiting (cough) “naturalist” circles its usually me taking the position of the humanities. Otherwise what reward do you think I take from occupying the parts?
I have been through this enough to recognize a circular script. Come back in a month and read the debate you had with Brainyone. Come back in a year and ask if it differs in and respects from anyone else you have since debated. Come back in two years and ask if you can understand the sentiments of someone reading your line of argumentation and deciding “if that is what it means to be Christian I want nothing at all to do with it”. Come back in four and ask if there are modes of judgment Brainyone and I are applying that – I guess – you are too smart and knowledeable and busy “winning” a debate to recognize when they are put right in front of your eyes.
We needn’t debate to communicate. I assure you, you have been heard and well understood.
All, I apologize for the length of this post, and I normally dislike lengthy point-for-point rebuttals, but it’s not every day that an evolution-believer tees himself up quite as well as the guy who – for some reason – goes by the name of “BrainyOne.”
Okay, “Brainy One”,
We’ve moved past the 80% mark (“I would estimate that we’re around the 80% mark – right before you just fling poo and storm off. Geez, you guys are predictable”). In your post at 11:59 pm you went full-on with the poo-flinging – all that’s left is for you to storm off in a huff. You are following the “arguing evolutionist script” almost down to the letter. Let me show you to the exit.
You bore false witness against me by accusing me of lying (I keep picturing Gene Wilder screeching “LYING! LYING, I SAY!” in his faux-indignant voice – ROFLMOA yourself), because you didn’t like the fact that 1) I systematically destroyed everything you wrote, and 2) I demanded that you just state your freaking position already (still waiting on the specifics, by the way), so I can demolish the rest of them without having to play hide-and-seek with what you’re advocating. That’s how grown-ups debate things. But since you seem to want to keep acting as the punching bag, and it’s instructive for the audience to see how to demolish bogus evolutionist arguments, I’ll oblige you with another round.
_______________________
1) You’re lying. That’s right, LYING. Is that what God wants you to do, you think? You’re lying through your teeth.
Since you have yet to offer a single substantive response to any question I asked you, including HOW “science” has shown HOW bird wings evolved, and then accused ME of believing in spontaneous generation (when the crux of my argument has always been that there is nothing spontaneous about any of this) then yes, I can say that you have withdrawn from the debate. All you have said is that “it probably didn’t happen that way.” Well, no $h1+, Sherlock, I’ve been saying that all along. The question I keep asking, and that you keep NOT answering is, “How do YOU think it happened: Gradualism or Punctuated Equilibrium? AGAIN, you have choices: 1) choose ONE of those two and provide the evidence that it happened that way, 2) posit a different mechanism for the evolution of bird wings and provide the evidence for that, or 3) just admit that your belief in evolution is unsupported by evidence. You’re the one claiming that speciation is the result of evolution, not me… and you keep claiming to have “evidence” for it. I’ll ask AGAIN, how did it happen, and where’s the evidence to support your specific position? Until you answer, I will correctly maintain that you have withdrawn from the debate, and are just poo-flinging. If you want to prove me wrong, feel free to try, but use something besides screaming variations of “Liar, liar, pants of fire!” at me.
2) I’ve already admitted (for the sake of this argument anyway) that God exists. Therefore, if He wills that these unimaginably complex systems-of-systems exist, then they exist. I’m not exactly sure (I admit) what God “designing” something exactly means, but if He wills they exist, then they exist.
If you stipulate that God is capable of doing whatever He wants, and you have no evidence that He used evolution to do it (still waiting on that evidence you keep claiming exists… somewhere, by the way), then why do you continue to maintain that evolution (an unguided method) is responsible for creating complex systems-of-systems that could only come into existence if they were designed and not the result of unguided chance? You continue to contradict and undermine your own position. And I am not lying (LYING! LYING, I SAY!) when I point that out. And by the way, if you really have a PhD in Physics and you don’t know what the word “design” means, you should try to keep that bit of information from your employer.
3) You are LYING. That’s right, LYING. Those aren’t weasel-words. They constitute an argument you can’t answer. That means, I WIN THIS DEBATE.
Really? That’s cute… or it would be if you were three years old. I called them weasel-words because I asked you to choose ONE of the two methods for macro-evolution that are believed by most “scientists.” I did so because I had already shown that neither was viable, and you STILL refuse to stake out your position by choosing one or providing an alternate theory of your own. But since you did not state HOW you think it happened, and have yet to provide the first piece of evidence for it – but preferred to issue yet another “just so” declaration in order to avoid my question – then yes, my characterization of your statement as “weasel-words” is 100% accurate. If you don’t want me to accuse you of using weasel-words, then just state your freaking position and provide the evidence to support it already. That’s how adults debate.
4) Which I already admitted. You are LYING. It is MUCH MORE UNLIKELY that wings came from inert matter – THAT is why wings evolved is the more likely explanation.
Again, I am not claiming that anything came from inert matter – ever. I’m not sure why you keep beating that straw man, but nobody is arguing for the position that you are arguing against, least of all me. And AGAIN, if you have a theory for HOW bird wings evolved, I’m all ears. But that would require you to just state your freaking position and provide the evidence to support it already, which you seem unwilling to do. I can understand that, since whichever position you choose, Gradualism or Punctuated Equilibrium, can easily be shown to be not viable. (LYING! LYING, I SAY!.. that Gene Wilder… he cracks me up.)
5) Then where does YOUR side state they came from? You are LYING. That is EXACTLY where your side states they came from. And it is NOT where I state they came from.
My side says that they were created by God in their final form – that has been my unambiguous position all along. And since God is neither material nor inert, I have not posited that anything came from inert matter. It is people on your side of the debate that have concocted a theory (with no evidence to support it that you have provided), to try to explain how complex systems-of-systems came about without the agency of a Designer. Still waiting for that, by the way.
6) I have said I am NOT devoted to spontaneous generation – the extreme unlikelihood of such a thing is EXACTLY WHY common descent is the preferred position. You are LYING.
Sigh… I thought I was clear… my side credits God with creation, your side (the side which tries to explain things without the agency of a Designer) had to come up with explanations for two things: the genesis of life, and subsequent speciation. For the former they gave us spontaneous generation (abiogenesis is just the new name for “life springs from inert matter,” since SG was disproved by Pasteur in 1859), and for the latter they gave us macro-evolution. My side does not have that problem because we posit an omnipotent, omniscient Designer who created things in their final form the first time. Without the agency of a Designer, both abiogenesis and macro-evolution are required. With the agency of an omnipotent Designer, then both abiogenesis and macro-evolution are redundant. You, and most of the people on your side, are trying to explain things without the agency of an omnipotent Designer. If you don’t want that albatross around your neck, then denounce the atheistic model, and not just “for the sake of this argument.” The you have to explain why an omnipotent, omniscient Designer would have to use billions of years of trial-and-error to come up with what we have now. And your continual screaming about “common descent” doesn’t answer the question of HOW you think it happened… just state your freaking position and provide the evidence to support it already.
7) Yes, a supernatural Designer created things – but exactly how did He do so? Trying to make the argument over the former rather than the latter is dishonest. You are LYING.
(LYING! LYING I SAY!… this never gets old, does it?) How did God do it? He spoke it into existence because, well… BECAUSE HE’S GOD. I’m pretty sure everyone else understood that. If you didn’t understand that, then maybe you shouldn’t stand so close to the particle accelerator – this is really simple stuff.
8) Fine, disregard my claim of expertise if you like and focus on the arguments. But where exactly is the evidence that most with Physics PhDs believe in abiogenesis? I posit that you don’t have it, and you are once again… LYING.
Thanks, I will disregard your irrelevant degree. And now maybe you’ll join me in focusing on the arguments (by providing that ever-elusive “HOW?” of yours.) As for the rest, your argument is not with me, but with with the National Center for Science Education: “Defending the Teaching of Evolution and Climate Science.” Here’s the link to where these people on your side of the debate make the claim that 97% of scientists adhere to the same position you do about macro-evolution (http://ncse.com/blog/2013/08/how-many-creationists-science-0014996). Those are the lying liars who claim that there is virtual unanimity among “scientists” in this area. Unless you’re going to claim that PhD physicists differ from the rest of the “scientific community” about this then if you have a beef with that claim, take it up with them. Maybe you should go there and tell them they’re LYING! LYING I SAY! That should go over well.
9) You really don’t get it, do you? I said the likelihood of bird wings evolving in that way is small. It is still the preferred hypothesis if the likelihood of bird wings coming in any other way is infinitesimally smaller.
I get it just fine, thanks. I get that you’re starting from a false premise. What you don’t seem to get it that there is another way that is not infinitesimally smaller. In fact, it is almost certainly the correct answer – special creation by a supernatural Designer – no evolution required at all. Still waiting for how YOU think it happened, Gradualism or Punctuated Equilibrium, by the way. But you won’t acknowledge that other way, because it requires the active agency of a supernatural Designer – not because you have evidence to the contrary (if you did, you would have presented some of it by now), but because you have a philosophical bias against non-material explanations (just like Lewontin says). You know… if you’re going to criticize Lewontin, you should probably stop proving him right by demonstrating the bias he writes about.
10) There is no reason why I should need to defend naturalism – ESPECIALLY when the term is so ill-defined. I have NO IDEA what is meant by “naturalism” anyway so I don’t even know WHAT I would be defending.
I asked you to define precisely how you define “naturalism” because there are slight variations, and you moved the goalposts every time I tried to nail your position down. I asked you to defend it, because you posit that material explanations of speciation are the only ones with any validity – and that is THE quintessentially naturalist position. Not so complicated, is it? And if you actually have a PhD in physics and you have NO IDEA what the word “naturalism” means in terms of this debate, you had no right to insert yourself into it – since you don’t even understand what the debate is about.
11) I’m talking about COMMON DESCENT. Is that so hard to understand?
It’s not hard to understand it at all. However… common descent doesn’t answer the “HOW?” of macro-evolution. AGAIN, Gradualism or Punctuated Equilibrium?… those are the two main current theories for the HOW. Neither is valid. So pick one and defend it, or come up with one of your own and defend that. Still waiting for you to just state your freaking position and provide the evidence to support it already.
12) BRAVO!!!! So life forms (including advanced life forms) ACTUALLY DID NOT come from inanimate matter. You just admitted the very crux of MY argument. Congratulations. We’re done here.
Cute, again… if you were three. Again, I am not arguing that anything came from inanimate matter. I have specifically argued against it. The very crux of MY argument is that spontaneous, material explanations are false. I’m glad to see that you’re willing to acknowledge that the quintessential naturalist position of abiogenesis is stupid. Too bad for you that abiogenesis and macro-evolution are part and parcel of the same materialist paradigm. You ought to have this discussion with the guys over at the National Center for Science Education. Be warned, though, they’re going to call you a “Science Denier.”
13) LYING again. It is indeed EVIDENCE that the likelihood of the alternative hypothesis (coming from inanimate matter) is so much less (which you JUST admitted).
(LYING! LYING, I SAY!) Sigh… this is getting tedious, You are once again attributing a position to me (life arising from inanimate matter) that is the exact opposite of my repeatedly-stated position. I assume you are familiar with the term “Straw Man Fallacy.”
14) Fuck you. You probably couldn’t solve a simple differential equation – and you feel qualified to “lecture” us with advanced degrees. What are your “qualifications” pal – besides reading the latest articles from Answers in Genesis.
Poo-flinging… right on schedule, just as I predicted in my post at September 5, 2014 at 6:14 pm. Rest assured, my credentials in this matter are every bit as relevant as the ones you claim to have (I have an advanced degree in an unrelated subject).
Brainyone, re:
“The actual reason Creationists like Lyn fight tooth-and-nail against evolution is because, while they crusade against atheism and materialism and “naturalism” (whatever that is), and they are right some scientists are atheists and materialists and letting that override doing science, they themselves also have an a priori ideological position – that of traditional Christianity’s idea of Adam and Eve and original sin. How does this fit in with billions of years of evolution? It doesn’t – at least not without radical modifications of the doctrine. Unfortunately, the evidence above supports long years of evolution, and while (often correctly) claiming that atheists and materialists are letting their philosophies dictate interpretation the data, they themselves are doing exactly the same thing.”
See Moses Maimonides and his Guide for the Perplexed, written in the 12th century, centuries before Darwin, … it is about this. So too is the Summa Theologica though the latter delves far more deeply into matters of doctine.
Maimoindes held that God cannot be compared to anything. It is an apophatic theology common to Catholicism, orthodoxy and Judaism. He also insisted that math, biology and physics should be studied prior to metaphysics or the student would be sure to fall into hopeless confusion. Understanding Providence through Aristotle, he did not believe that every leaf that falls falls on the will of the divine, but that our small deposits of consciousness and agency are a participation in the mind of the divine.
bluedog says:
September 6, 2014 at 10:13 am
… Come back in two years and ask if you can understand the sentiments of someone reading your line of argumentation and deciding “if that is what it means to be Christian I want nothing at all to do with it”.
I seem to recall another man who spoke the truth with conviction against the ruling falsehoods of His day. Only a handful went with Him, and the rest rejected the truth He told and decided that “if that is what it means to be Christian I want nothing at all to do with it.” He is far greater than I, but that puts me in pretty good company. I’m okay with that.
BD and BO,
Neither of you is very good at mind-reading. The reason “creationists like Lyn” reject macro-evolution is because it is both irrational and devoid of proof.
Go ahead, prove me wrong – just state your freaking position and provide the evidence to support it already.
I know this, like A72 wrote earlier: almost everything in my “science” textbooks said on this subject has been discarded as being incorrect over the years (they were still teaching “Ontogeny recapitulates Phylogeny” as if it were an established fact – even though it is UTTERLY FRAUDULENT). It takes an act of supreme hubris to think that the current contents are going to survive any better. The Bible has stood the test of time FAR better than anything any “scientist” has ever written to the contrary. It is an anvil that has worn out many hammers – and macro-evolution is merely one of them.
and they are right some scientists are atheists and materialists and letting that override doing science, they themselves also have an a priori ideological position – that of traditional Christianity’s idea of Adam and Eve and original sin.
With out Adam, Eve, and original sin there was no reason for Christ to come and die for our sins. Without the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ there is no Christianity.
and while (often correctly) claiming that atheists and materialists are letting their philosophies dictate interpretation the data, they themselves are doing exactly the same thing.”
Everyone has a bias. The trick is to be biased correctly (IMO).
Again, to reiterate for everyone else: if evolution were not correct, what we should see is a much greater likelihood for new life forms to form from inanimate matter than for new life forms to form from preexisting ones.
Why? If an all powerful God is the cause, why would there be a much greater likelihood for new life forms to form from inanimate matter? Why would we see anything other than what we see now?
Why? If an all powerful God is the cause, why would there be a much greater likelihood for new life forms to form from inanimate matter? Why would we see anything other than what we see now?
Good rhetorical question, JDG. Of course if God created things in their final form and declared His work of creation to be “ended” (Genesis 2:2. as you and I know), new life arising from inanimate matter would the last thing we would expect to see.
On the other hand, for those who deny the miraculous active agency of a supernatural Creator, life would have HAD to arise from non-living matter. Not only do we not see that in nature, but every attempt to create it in the laboratory has failed. The famous Miller-Urey experiments were abject failures in that regard, yet my “science” books spoke about them as if they had accomplished something more significant than turning a bunch of inert molecules into a different configuration of those same inert molecules. Once again, an evolutionist has attributed a bogus argument that his side made up – then attributed it to Christians after it has been demolished.
Everyone –
I don’t see how theistic evolution can be true if the Bible is true (which I am convinced that it is).
Lyn87 –
There is another point on which I might be confused.
My understanding is that God 1st created the dust (with the earth).
Gen 1:1 In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.
Then later God formed the man, and God breathed life into the man.
Gen 2: 7 then the Lord God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature.
So my understanding is that God formed the man from the (inanimate) dust and caused him to come to life. Doesn’t that mean that our side believes that inanimate matter was caused by God to become animate? And isn’t it atheists who believe that inanimate matter came to life through some serious of accidents (chance)?
ROFLMAO… I’m sure it’s instructive for the audience to see how really evasive, dishonest, and smarmy you really are.
I don’t know. My guess is Punctuated Equilibrium. Now no doubt you will show a lot of evidence showing the likelihood of this is low, but I have already conceded that point. What you continually (and quite dishonestly) fail to address is the fact that this does not “disprove” evolution. Because you can’t.
The evidence is that the likelihood of common descent (small thought it may be) is much more than the likelihood of spontaneous formation from inert matter. I keep on saying this.
Because I don’t maintain this. I don’t believe evolution was the result of “chance”, which is a completely ill-defined concept anyway. I never said this, and you are simply putting words in my mouth.
Really? I mean if you adhere to a “literal” reading of Genesis:
So, you are not a bible-believing Christian in the first place then if you deny that anything came from inert matter. Apparently your hatred for “evolutionists” is so great that it even leads you to deny the Bible you claim to believe in.
I tell you what, how about you start debating me for a change, instead of supposed “people on my side of the debate”. I don’t speak for them, and they don’t speak for me. Many other scientists would probably be at my throat, metaphorically speaking, for saying evolution is not the result of “chance”.
The evidence is that several simultaneous changes in DNA would be necessary to cross a fitness landscape and therefore produce a different phenotype upon which natural selection could then operate. While highly unlikely, this is much less likely than life forming from inert matter. That’s the evidence. Do not dishonestly say that I haven’t provided it.
You are begging the question. You are assuming what God would or would not do. A dog could give birth to a cat, if that is what God willed.
No, I don’t need to do this. My position is “even if an omnipotent Designer exists, you’re still wrong”.
Clearly an omnipotent Designer doesn’t “have to” do anything. He also doesn’t “have to” create things in final form. The debate is about actually what He did do.
Not macro-evolution. The claim was about ABIOGENESIS. Again where is the evidence that so many with Physics PhDs believe in ABIOGENESIS. (Lyn is smart enough to know this, he’s just playing to the crowd in the hope you won’t notice.)
JDG asks,
So my understanding is that God formed the man from the (inanimate) dust and caused him to come to life. Doesn’t that mean that our side believes that inanimate matter was caused by God to become animate? And isn’t it atheists who believe that inanimate matter came to life through some serious of accidents (chance)?
Yes, but that is incomplete. God created everything from nothing but His spoken word (the normal term used is ex nihilo – “from nothing”). After He created the universal framework in which life could exist, He created living things. At the end of that sequence He created Man “of the dust of the ground.” Since dust isn’t alive (just as the molecules that comprise our bodies are not alive), He used inanimate matter as one of the raw materials with which He made man. The other raw material was non-physical (“And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.” – Genesis 2:7). That’s why it is highly misleading to characterize Christians as advocating abiogenesis – there was life involved, but that “breath of life” is non-physical – and it is not even possible that it could be the result of chance, while it was an attempt to posit a cause for life other than God that caused them to dream up abiogenesis to begin with.
As you correctly noted, atheists also posit the same physical raw materials, but since they deny miracles and a Supernatural (literally, “above or greater than nature”) first cause, they have to come up with some way to “get the dirt to wake up.” (Needless to say, they have no testable hypothesis for where the all that matter came from if not from God, but that’s a topic for another day.) But “life” is non-physical. No atheist has ever shown me a test tube full of “life” and every experiment that has tried to produce life from non-living materials has failed. That’s somewhat surprising and disheartening to them, but should not be the Christians, since the power to create life is God’s prerogative alone.
An all powerful God can do anything and in fact does do (e.g. is First Cause of) everything that happens (e.g. He wills the sun rises and sets, etc.) So when we make predictions into the future or retrodictions into the past based on available data we are just using reason to determine (or at least make the guess at) what God will do or what He has done. In other words, putting an all powerful God into the mix does not change the equation, scientifically speaking. He could tomorrow switch around the orbits of Jupiter and Saturn. But just because He could do this does not provide justification for us to think He will. So just because He could have created new life forms from inanimate matter in the past does not provide justification to think that He did, or any justification to change the likelihood calculation.
Ah… I see BO has placed himself on the tee for another drive. I’m going to decline, though, because I see the possibility of a light at the end of this tunnel, since BO is starting to clarify his specific position.
BrainyOne,
You’re leaning toward the “Punctuated Equilibrium” camp. Good to know, as that gives me more to work with. And since you are backing away from the idea that evolution was not guided, I think that puts you into the “theistic evolution” camp. If I’m wrong about that, well… at the risk of repeating myself, just state your freaking position. I’ll get back to that in a bit.
Again, I’m not sure why you keep insisting that I believe in “life from dirt.” I’ll concede that you may not know Christian theology well enough to understand how you are mischaracterizing my position, but see my response to JDG at September 6, 2014 at 12:55 pm – I explain it there: go read it before you accuse me of holding a position I have repeatedly denied… AGAIN.
This time I’ll skip to the bottom first: you wrote this about the article from the National Center for Science Education, “Not macro-evolution. The claim was about ABIOGENESIS. Again where is the evidence that so many with Physics PhDs believe in ABIOGENESIS. (Lyn is smart enough to know this, he’s just playing to the crowd in the hope you won’t notice.)”
True, but I find it both interesting and telling that you keep trying to de-link abiogenesis from macro-evolution, though. This is not just some esoteric point I keep coming back to to put words in your mouth… they go together, as both are part of the same materialist paradigm. You cannot seriously believe that many “scientific” materialists who believe in macro-evolution do not also believe in abiogenesis, do you? Well, no matter I guess. But… I see now that you are trying to separate those conjoined twins (very typical for Theistic Evolutionists, by the way – I know: I used to be one myself). It’s a promising start, but it would have been nice of you had just stated your freaking position from the get-go. I’m glad you’re starting to do so now… we might find a bit of common ground, after all.
That answers most of your missive at September 6, 2014 at 12:53 pm, actually. So… let’s cut to the chase, because despite what Bluedog thinks, and what you may think, I am not doing this because I enjoy it or because I want to “win” for some personal gratification.
Let’s look for some common ground. Here’s where I think we agree:
1) God created everything, initially as a sterile Universe with life coming later.
2) God used inert materials – “the dust of the ground” – as one of the raw materials for Man.
3) Neither the beginning of life nor the process of creating biodiversity was the result of random chance. In other words, both were the work of a supernatural entity (God). (Although we differ on the particulars.)
Are we good so far? If so, we can move on, preferably with less rancor.
Lyn87 says:
September 6, 2014 at 12:55 pm
Excellent! Thank you.
Glad to see you’ve conceded this point. You’re halfway on your way, then, to becoming a dreaded “evilutionist”, once you realize the likelihood of this is so much less than common descent.
Abiogenesis doesn’t say anything about the existence of anything non-physical or not.
One moment you have a pile of dirt, the next you have a man formed from it. That’s what abiogenesis means. “Genesis” means creation or birth, and “abio” means “not life”. Of course the concept can be used with materialist or atheist connotations, but I don’t it’s inherent in the word itself.
Maybe this is why you keep harping on the words “spontaneous” and “naturalism”. There is a conceptual difference in your mind, then, between Genesis I and molecules “spontaneously” rearranging to form a man, even if God’s existence is presumed? There is a conceptual difference between life arising via “natural” processes and God’s creation of it, even if God’s existence is presumed?
There is not. If God exists, if molecules arrange to form a man, it is because He wills them to do so; and if they do not, it is because He wills them to move in other directions. You might claim those other directions are where they would “naturally go”, but that is because God has willed that molecules virtually all the time move according to rules we have discovered in physics and chemistry, not that there is something somehow “natural” about that movement; if God willed they moved according to different rules, then they would. There isn’t somehow some “natural world” existing without God’s will or not under His power.
How is “naturalism” not simply synonymous with atheism?
So just because He could have created new life forms from inanimate matter in the past does not provide justification to think that He did, or any justification to change the likelihood calculation.
Well the Bible says He did. So I guess from here we would move into the topic of why to believe or disbelieve the Bible if we were so inclined. I guess we pretty much know where each of us (in this discussion) stands on that subject.
You’re halfway on your way, then, to becoming a dreaded “evilutionist”, once you realize the likelihood of this is so much less than common descent.
If there is an all powerful creator that made everything, and a believable account given of how he made it, then how does this even make sense?
And you still haven’t really explained why common descent is more possible than God just doing what his word says He did. You did say that when we make predictions it has to be based on available data. I submit that you aren’t taking into account all of the data.
OK, fair enough. Here goes.
Not convinced on 1). We find evidence of life on earth almost as far back as the earth’s formation has been dated. Creationists say, see, see, see, not enough time for life to develop. I agree. I deny there was ever such a “primordial soup”. While extrapolating back from the beginning of the earth to the beginning of the universe is admittedly speculative, we’re never going to get the necessary data. Also, “simple” life forms are sometimes not so “simple” – with DNA strands much longer than are found in humans.
Not convinced on 2). God could of course cause inert molecules to assemble in such a way as to produce a man. But why think that He has done that, rather than causing the necessary mutations so that we arrive on the scene via common descent? Perhaps you think that billions of years is inelegant. But then again, there are lots of things people could say are “inelegant”. We have to eat. God could have created us so we didn’t have to eat. Or having to eat, God could have created us and the rest of the planet such that we could use all of the nutrition in the food and not have any waste. Do you have an argument besides either claiming to know the mind of God, or the Bible? See, we can actually see mutations in the laboratory, so we know they happen.
Agreed on 3).
There’s a fourth point I’d like to add (see what you think):
4). Natural laws (meaning descriptions of the physical universe) do not exist on some separate plane of existence apart from God. It’s meaningless to talk about “naturalism” or “natural processes”. Everything that happens happens because God wills it to.
Well adding in the Bible doesn’t really help. If you accept the Bible as the absolutely accurate Word of God, then there is no need to even consider what the scientific evidence says or doesn’t say, so this entire discussion is moot. If you don’t accept the Bible as such, then it is merely some man’s opinion of things, much less scientifically knowledgeable than ourselves. If you are trying to convince someone to accept the Bible, you need to try convince him the Bible is accurate without an a priori assumption of such, because he has no such assumption, which means you need to rely on some other mode of reasoning, such as science.
As for common descent being more “likely”, I did not say possible, let me ask you a question. Let’s say you see some man swimming across a river with very strong currents. He is not a good swimmer, and you judge it highly unlikely that he will make it across. There are no boats anywhere in the vicinity. 10 minutes later he is standing next to you, huffing and puffing and coughing up water, but alive. God could have transported him right from the middle of the river to where you are standing. The Creationist argument is, God must have done that, because otherwise it is so unlikely he would still be alive. My reply is, no, obviously he is alive because God wills it, but there no reason to think that that is for any other reason that God willed he have enough strength to get across the river and resist the current, unlikely as that is. We simply never see people disappear and reappear yards apart.
Okay… more progress. This is good. My response:
I have never maintained anything other than that life came form God using the raw materials He created plus His miraculous intervention to form living beings from those materials – my position is the standard position of Christians in general for the past two millennia. So we’re in agreement on points 1, 2, and 3. Excellent: let’s continue.
I understand now why you keep insisting that my position is consistent with abiogenesis. Allow me to explain why I reject that label. If the Bible is true, then neither abiogenesis (as it is taught in schools, and as it is commonly understood) nor macro-evolution over vast periods of time can be true. Darwin wasn’t much of a scientist, per se, but he was a naturalist. If the H.M.S. Beagle was the U.S.S. Enterprise of its day, Charles Darwin was a very poor Mr. Spock. Mr Darwin’s theory, which has been rejected in most of its important particulars over the years, gave “scientific respectability” to question the very existence of God, in a time when the best scientists thought of the cell as little more than a tiny ping-pong ball made of protoplasm. That’s why I wrote that if evolution was not already an article of faith in the “scientific community,” anyone who brought forth a theory like Darwin’s today would be laughed out of the room – we know too much about the complexity of the cell to buy the idea that it could be changed slowly over time – one random piece at a time – with each variation making the organism better able to survive. It is nonsense on stilts to even contemplate it if there is ANY other viable theory (and there is). Only a philosophical bias in favor of material explanations accounts for the a priori rejection of supernatural causes now – Lewontin may have been wrong about a lot of things, but he was right about that.
To answer your last question – I don’t think Darwin was an atheist in 1859 – naturalism and atheism are not synonymous. “Science” – as the term in commonly used – is naturalistic, in that it focuses on natural phenomenon using natural means. There’s nothing wrong with that, but it’s important for experts in naturalistic sciences to refrain from offering “expert” opinions about metaphysical questions, and anything that falls outside of their ability to observe or successfully demonstrate by experimentation. Some things that fall outside their ability to observe or successfully recreate are the expansion of a singularity or the creation of life from non-living materials. THAT is really important. Which brings me back to this…
Darwin didn’t go far enough for some – for God to be discarded, it became necessary to posit two additional “natural miracles” – for lack of a better term. Those required miracles were the creation of the Universe itself, and how to go from a sterile Universe to one that contains life. We now have two unique “events” to explain the Universe without the meed for some pesky Creator who sets down moral codes. So we have a “singularity” expanding a very long time ago to explain the Universe, and abiogeneis to explain how that sterile Universe spawned life. Add in macro-evolution, and we have all the pieces needed to declare God to be a myth. See? SCIENCE! But it’s not science – it’s only naturalism, and naturalistic science must remain neutral with regard to anything that falls outside of their ability to observe or successfully demonstrate by experimentation. Calculating probabilities is fine, but far too many scientists make claims with serious metaphysical implications based on things they can neither observe in nature not demonstrate in the lab. Combine that with an a priori bias against perfectly acceptable non-material explanations, and the results are awful. (You should hear some of the names I’ve been called because I don’t accept the expertise of naturalistic scientists to make metaphysical pronouncements.)
So I don’t accept the term abiogenesis as my own, since life isn’t “dirt alone” but “dirt that God animated by non-physical means.”
This is getting long – I’ll post this and continue in a bit.
Oh crap, you responded at 2:11 while I was typing my response that posted at 2:33…
This may take a while…
Well adding in the Bible doesn’t really help. If you accept the Bible as the absolutely accurate Word of God, then there is no need to even consider what the scientific evidence says or doesn’t say, so this entire discussion is moot
There is a need if you want to keep science on the correct trajectory.
If you are trying to convince someone to accept the Bible, you need to try convince him the Bible is accurate without an a priori assumption of such, because he has no such assumption, which means you need to rely on some other mode of reasoning, such as science.
Which is why I posted this above:
“Well the Bible says He did. So I guess from here we would move into the topic of why to believe or disbelieve the Bible if we were so inclined.”
The Creationist argument is, God must have done that, because otherwise it is so unlikely he would still be alive.
I don’t believe this is the Creationist argument. I believe the Creationist argument is just taking God at his word. God did not give an account of how the man in your example survived. He did give an account of how He created his creation.
Okay… back at it. I see your response to my three questions at 2:11 now. I’m not likely to convince you about #1 and #2, but you remain “agnostic” about them and I can at least explain why I accept them. The fact that you agree with #3 is very good, and I’ll start from there.
Since we agree that God provided the design, we don’t have to argue over His existence, or His ability and willingness to create effects in the physical Universe. That alone gets us half-way there. I don’t have to speculate about what God did – because He told us. I understand that you do not accept the veracity of Genesis story, but I do. Her’s why: considering the Bible as a whole, it is a remarkable thing – unlike anything else in the world. It’s not like the Qu’ran, it’s not like the Bhagavad Gita, it’s not like the Book of Mormon, it’s not like anything written by Nostradamus – it’s unique. There are many examples of prophecy in the Bible that have been verified over the years – accurately predicting events that were in the future at the time they were written. The 11th chapter of Daniel predicted – in excruciating and exact detail – the struggles between the Seleucid and Ptolemy kings that happened centuries after his death. He predicted the rise of the Medo-Persian Empire and its overthrow by Alexander the Great, and the ascension of Rome as a world power. None of those events could have been predicted without supernatural revelation. The prophet Isaiah (among others) made numerous predictions about the Messiah – prophesies that a man named Jesus fulfilled to the last detail seven hundred years after Isaiah’s death (even the ones over which he had no control – like where he was born and where his family moved to when he was a small child). There are literally scores of examples. And not only has every prophesy for which we have independent evidence been verified to the last detail, but not one single prophesy has ever been disproved. Not. Even. One.
So… when I have a “science textbook” talks about “Piltdown Man” or shows me the imaginative (although fraudulent is a more accurate term) drawings of Ernst Haeckel to demonstrate that ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny, next to a book that contains scores of unlikely predictions that have been verified to the last detail with no known errors of any kind… let’s just say that that’s why I declare the Bible to be “an anvil that has worn out many hammers” and consider this year’s edition of a “science” textbook to be a work of educated speculation – probably containing more fiction than fact.
So… the Bible declares points #1 and #2. And since nobody has ever observed or demonstrated anything that makes me believe otherwise, I will accept the simple explanation – “God did this like He said He did it.” YI don’t want to put words into your mouth, but I think you admit that the probabilities of any specific mutation being beneficial and accumulating over time is astronomically low. I agree. I also agree that we would have to accept them if there was no more likely explanation. But if we strip away the “a priori” bias against a supernatural cause, the result is entirely consistent with what we can observe and replicate, and does not require inert matter do have done things that it never does – like form itself into living creatures.
Which brings me to your point #4: “Natural laws (meaning descriptions of the physical universe) do not exist on some separate plane of existence apart from God. It’s meaningless to talk about “naturalism” or “natural processes”. Everything that happens happens because God wills it to.”
I disagree as a matter of definition and logic. Let me explain. As a supernatural being, God is not bound by the rules He set for His creation. How could He have existed before He made those laws if He was bound by them Himself? When Christians use the word miracle – properly – we mean that God supernaturally intervened to create an effect that would not otherwise occur… like the creation of the Universe from nothing; or the creation of living beings in a sterile Universe; or a virgin birth; or an angry kid, blind in one eye from a bb gun accident, getting his sight back in the park across from the Alamo in San Antonio, Texas; for example. Those things would not otherwise happen, because matter does not behave that way while it is obeying natural (physical) laws. God is not material, He is spirit, and cannot be bound by the physical laws He himself created.
I’ll post this now before it gets any longer.
God won’t send her a husband because she’s ALREADY GOT ONE. As long as her first husband is alive, they are still married! It PLAINLY says so in the Bible!!!! And all other sexual connections are ADULTERY, regardless of any ceremony or paperwork. Again, it PLAINLY says so in the Bible!
Isa @ September 5, 2014 at 8:53 pm:
“I would say you probably need a better selection filter (most people do), but that is quite hard to develop.”
I’ll gladly listen to advice on how to identify a trustworthy Christian girl. Without some kind of reassurance that she won’t betray me on a whim, I’d be making approaches with a bitch shield up the Death Star wouldn’t penetrate.
“I believe God values the prayers and obedience to divine teaching of a doubter far more than 10,000 prayers of a believer.”
You speak of fidelity, not just acceptance of Christ’s offer? Yesss… fidelity is a good word for what I’m looking for.
And yes, the best Christians are those who follow God despite how they’re treated rather than because of it. Anybody would obey God in exchange for rewards or if they’re allowed no choice. Somebody who freely obeys God even when He promises great suffering in return? That’s the one thing an omnipotent God cannot make for Himself… and therefore, the one thing He will value above all other possessions and servants.
God isn’t some sort of matchmaker or pimp. If you want to find a husband/wife, you need to get out there and start interviewing potential candidates for the job, making yourself as attractive as possible in the process..
These idiots think that their God has nothing better to do than to toss men at them, and they have the audacity to get all upset at him when he doesn’t provide them with whatever they want. It’s simultaneously funny and pathetic.
Boxer
Married Couples- Quickies to Avoid Sin?
http://forums.catholic.com/showthread.php?t=907440
How do I go about getting remarried in the Catholic church?
http://forums.catholic.com/showthread.php?t=907420
God won’t send her a husband because she’s ALREADY GOT ONE. As long as her first husband is alive, they are still married! It PLAINLY says so in the Bible!!!! And all other sexual connections are ADULTERY, regardless of any ceremony or paperwork. Again, it PLAINLY says so in the Bible!
Actually, this is not entirely correct. While it is true that a divorce does not end a biblical marriage, a subsequent marriage by either party ends the previous marriage.
OK, let’s rewind a little. A biblical marriage (i.e. one between two consenting adults of opposite genders) cannot be ended by a divorce decree issued by any human being. Jesus made this clear by stating that “What God has joined together, let not man (i.e. human beings) put asunder. This must include the situation where both parties mutually agree to end their marriages. Before God, they are both married.
However, if either of them, regardless of the legal status of their marriage, begins to have repeated sexual activities with anyone outside the marriage (regardless of the name they call their relationship), such acts are sufficient to end the marriage. Again, that is the biblical view: Adultery is a biblical ground for the end of a marriage, though it does not have to be.
Thus, the following is clear:
1. A man and a woman are bound to each other for life once they agree to get married.
2. Divorce, as is commonly practiced today, does not necessarily end their marriage.
3. Fornication, or sexual immorality (not merely falling into a sexual sin), is a ground for ending a marriage, should the offended party wants to go that route.
4. Subsequent marriage, even if not recognized by God, is at least a form of habitual adultery, or sexual immorality.
5. Therefore, subsequent marriage frees the other party from the original marriage.
A more important question though is this: are most marriages entered into today considered biblically valid? Or, in other words, at what point does a marriage becomes a marriage before God?
1. Must sex be involved? Or does sex ONLY between two consenting adults of opposite genders make them husband and wife?
2. Must there be a marriage certificate?
3. Must there be public proclamation of their love for each other before their union can be deemed biblically valid as a marriage?
4. What happens if they have had sex with other people before they met each other? Is their marriage still valid? If so, what makes that different from those who obtained a certificate before they had sex (i.e. got married first)?
5. What about those who never consummated their marriages through sex, due to any reasons (e.g. an absentee wedding)? Are they still married for life?
All this still leads to the original question: when does a biblical marriage take place? Does a biblical marriage require that both parties be virgins on their wedding night?
Dave: the first list of five items is good. The only possible exception would be with regard to #3. The proof text for that is in Matthew 19, and Jesus used masculine pronouns, not neutral ones, so some people would maintain that it only applies to men. I’m not one of those people because it’s important to consider the totality of the question and the context in which it was made, as well as the point of the answer. Jesus always chose His words VERY carefully, and often there were layers of meaning, especially when He was talking to learned hypocrites who were trying to trip His up with technicalities of the Mosaic Law. Anyway, I’m on board with the first five.
Which brings us to the questions. Obviously none of them have definitive proof texts, so we turn next to inferences.
1) I would say so. The reason for that is that, if a man discovered that his new bride did not have an intact hymen on their wedding night he was free to send her back. They would have already gone through the ceremony, but the marriage was not “finalized” until the completion of the consummation, and only then if there were bloody sheets to prove that there had been no fraud. (In Deuteronomy the husband was required to give the bloody sheets to his wife’s parents, so they would have her “tokens of virginity” in case he ever accused her of not being a virgin later.) Once the ceremony was complete, the marriage had been consummated, and the husband accepted that he had not been defrauded, was the “wedding process” complete.
2) No. To posit a requirement for a certificate from the state is to allow men to define marriage rather than God. Some states allow two people of the same sex to get such certificates – but that doesn’t mean they are actually married. Another example – I knew a guy who married his first cousin. Most states won’t issue a marriage license to first cousins, but some did at the time (maybe still do for all I know). Since there is no Biblical prohibition against it, and the marriage is otherwise valid, I say they would be married wherever they go, even if they go to a state that doesn’t permit first cousins to marry. Certificate =/= marriage.
3) Although public proclamations are probably a good idea, I see no reason to think that they would be required. But it’s important to understand that the lack of such a public proclamation does not invalidate the life-long obligations of either party at all. Nobody gets to say, “We didn’t have a public wedding so we’re not really married and I get to leave.”
4) If people had sex with others before they were married (but not in such a way as to form a marriage with any of them) AND nobody is deceived about that, then I would say their marriage to each other is valid. On the other hand, if one party falsely claimed virginity, and the other party would not have agreed to the marriage if the truth had been known, I would say that the defrauded party would have the option of walking away – innocent and free to remarry – at any point when the truth came out.
5) In general, consummation is required. However, if a couple is unable to consummate due to a medical issue or advanced age – and both parties understood that going in and accepted it – I would not presume to tell them that they aren’t “really” married – I think the gracious thing to do would be to honor their wishes.
The advice in the “quickies” thread is absolutely horrible and marriage destroying.
Newdist,
I was reading that too. It was either turning sex into a commodity, using it as a punishment, and basically using it a control mechanism for the woman. Common sense would say “yes a quickie is good to calm a man down”, but those commenters don’t seem to operate with common sense.
Lastly, why would a woman need to ask a forum full of strangers about something that should honestly be kept between her and her husband? I mean come on, give up the vajaja every morning for a month and see what happens. Also what is this with men giving all of their passwords to their wives?
@Gunner Q
Precisely, obedience and fidelity. I don’t know your Christian persuasion, but I find the attitude of faith in exchange for goods far more often among protestants (especially evangelicals). Missouri/Wisconsin synod Lutherans? Not so much. Same for high church Anglicans, especially those from the global south (my cousin is a priest, and he stamps out that sort of thing in his congregations). Generally speaking, women involved in megachruch/nondenominational/charismatic leaning churches are taught more of a feeling based or wealth gospel message which is an automatic disqualification in my mind (unless they are attending with their parents out of filial duty).
Overall, look at actions rather than words. You are in Cali correct? Generally speaking, the decent girls there won’t be very pretty (compared to the average girl, which is an actress/model/whatever) and more focused on their careers until perhaps 27. My sister works at a tech company (engineering), and she worked a good 100 hrs a week for the first couple of years. Good point, no time for dating, bad point, can lose focus on getting married. However, the choice behind the work is important. If a girl’s job is chosen because they “like it,” probably run. If it was for practical reasons (they are good at it, it makes good money, etc.) that should make them a decent contender. Vanishingly few people become engineers/accountants/doctors/lawyers because they like it, far far far too much work.
The obedience bit really comes into choice of lifestyle as well. If a girl won’t do xyz thing out of obedience to her parents or has xyz job etc. or studied xyz thing, this is a very good thing. Filial obedience is only downgraded after marriage, when the husband gains the role, so a history of obedience is key. The downside is when a girl has no experience of the outside world a la Dugger. While I’m sure that they can have good marriages, they will not have been prepared for the temptations of the modern world or have a large mature toolkit of saying no. Basically, look for a woman who knows what the general culture is, and says no for herself, not because someone else is controlling her decisions.
Finally, take a very very good look at their friends. If they are generally average looking, no drama, professional types, in decent marriages with children, she is a very very good bet. I.e. her social circle supports the prior social contract of be a nice person. If her friends run down their husbands in public, she will too. Run. To this point, I would probably watch Mean Girls a couple of times. It is probably the most decent exposition of how women treat each other, although the misbehavior is far more obvious that in real life.
There are never any guarantees in life, so all of us in the end make a go of it. Also, I’m not sure this is the best forum to expound much more than I have already done, but further questions can be directed to email which is isa.h42 and the handle is hotmail in France (i.e. .fr).
“Lastly, why would a woman need to ask a forum full of strangers about something that should honestly be kept between her and her husband?”
These days, marriages are not between a man and his wife, but between a man, his wife and all his/her friends, his/her pastor and deacons, and countless number of strangers on the internet. No wonder most marriages can’t work; there are too many people in it.
Lyn87:
So, from the foregoing, a valid, biblical marriage occurs if it takes place between two, biblically single, consenting adults of opposite genders, who freely and truthfully enter into the union, and who subsequently consummate their union by having sex if at all possible. A marriage certificate or public proclamation of their commitments is not required; and prior sexual experiences are irrelevant, provided adequate disclosure is made before the wedding.
OK, additional questions:
1. Where does parental consent come in? Are Christians obligated to follow the culture?
2. Why couldn’t two Christians enter into common-law marriages, since a marriage certificate is not really required for a biblically valid marriage?
3. In view of #2 above, how do we reconcile this definition of a marriage with the injunction to “submit to civil authorities for the Lord’s sake”, as stated in 1 Peter 2:13-14? Civil authorities will not recognize a marriage without a certificate.
Dave,
1) Parental consent… is generally a good thing, but again, I’m certainly not going to say that it’s required. But if a Christian girl has Buddhist parents and they won’t consent to her marrying a Christian man, then her parents lose. 2 Corinthians 6:14 outranks the preferences of pagan parents, “Be you not unequally yoked together with unbelievers: for what fellowship has righteousness with unrighteousness? and what partnership has light with darkness?”
2) They can.
3) There’s nothing to reconcile. If the couple wishes to have their marriage acknowledged by the state, then they must obey the rules by which the state agrees to acknowledge it. If they don’t care whether the state acknowledges it, then they are under no obligation to seek such acknowledgement, nor subject themselves to the strictures that go with it. If a couple meets the aforementioned requirements to be married, but do not seek state acknowledgement: no sin – no problem. Of course they also forgo the benefits of state acknowledgement if they go that route… so if they attempt to file a joint tax return as a married couple, they would be subject to prosecution for tax fraud, since the state requires that the marriage be official in their eyes to do so.
Lyn,
I’d say if that was the case, it would be a bigger win to rely solely upon God and maintain a common-law marriage. But here’s an honest question..how come many churches have forfeited their responsibility and authority to address marital issues and marry believers? Why is it that they require a license from the state to marry individuals? Shouldn’t their true license come from God? Why do preachers, pastors and priests have to say “By the power vested to me by God and the state of …”? Is that state on equal footing with God? Marriage is of God, NOT the state, and the power to bind two people together in holy matrimony comes from God, not the state. I think this is just another way to demonstrate that churches have abdicated their role and thus their worship in service to God to in service to the State.
I don’t think we have a true separation of church and state in this country. True, we have almost unilateral separation of the church from state affairs, but you have a near hostile takeover of the church by the state. They didn’t want the church telling the government how the country should be run..vis a vis a theocracy. But I guess it was just fine to tell the churches how they are to be run by the state. If some saved tax money is all that you honestly get as a benefit from a state-recognized marriage, then the choice is rather apparent at this point. No man can honestly save more money thru filing jointly with his wife than what he already risks with the potential of divorce and a lifetime of parasitic hemorrhaging of his personal finances.
Sigh, it’s no use Isa. I made an approach today at church (Orthodox Presbyterian, very conservative) to a girl who was sitting alone. I was looking sharp in my suit and polished shoes (zit on my face, sigh). Sat near her during the service and psyched myself up with a couple tactics. End of service, she quickly packed her things. I tapped her on the shoulder with a hymnal to get her attention. “Not many people take notes on the sermon. Are you helping someone?” (I’d noticed her writing in a diary booklet during the sermon…bonus for not using a iPad, I thought.)
“No,” shook her head. Weak smile, frozen body language.
“What’s your name? Elizabeth, I’m Sean Connery.” Trying to break the ice.
She turned away and picked up her purse. Trying to close while holding the frame, I tried “Aw, you don’t got it.”
“Oh, I think I got it.” End approach.
That’s a typical example. Maybe she really was in a hurry… but every girl I’ve ever approached had that exact same response. Freezing, turning away, zero positive response. What the hell? Women look away when I show up and back away when I say hello. Church, gym, burger joint, Christian girls, college girls, fat girls, it’s always the same. I revised my wardrobe, changed haircuts, muscled up and read Game but no improvement. I don’t need to fake confidence until it feels natural. I need to wash the Mark of Cain off my forehead.
For what it’s worth, I do get attention from old women, age sixties or so. They never introduce me to their (grand)daughters but are very happy to chat me up. Too bad I can’t bring myself to rob the grave.
The advice in the “quickies” thread is absolutely horrible and marriage destroying.
I find it a rare thing that they don’t give out marriage destroying advice, and I’ve seen them encourage marriage break up.
Lastly, why would a woman need to ask a forum full of strangers about something that should honestly be kept between her and her husband?
This also seems to be a pattern over there.
Church, gym, burger joint, Christian girls, college girls, fat girls, it’s always the same. I revised my wardrobe, changed haircuts, muscled up and read Game but no improvement.
You probably have dodged a multitude of metaphorical bullets. Even if they were attracted to you and you ended up married to one, there is something like a 37% chance she will nuke your family a few years down the road. If you vet very carefully and biblically, 90+% of those that spurned you would most likely have failed the process. Most girls in western societies these days can’t even pass the basic standards that most of the world has understood and used for most of recorded history, let alone biblical standards.
Gunner,
Sometimes those who are perishing are repulsed by the Holy Spirit within us. Darkness attracts darkness and often times most of the girls out there are living in darkness, so they will usually respond to the darkness in others. Only someone who is living in the Light or is seeking Light will be able to respond to the Light in others. I urge you to read 2nd Corinthians 2:15 which says (NLT): “Our lives are a Christ-like fragrance rising up to God. But this fragrance is perceived differently by those who are being saved and by those who are perishing. 16To those who are perishing, we are a dreadful smell of death and doom. But to those who are being saved, we are a life-giving perfume. And who is adequate for such a task as this?” You see, and I assume you are being sincere about your walk in Christ, the light within you, the Holy Spirit dwelling within, repels the darkness they have. That cold shoulder treatment is a pretty good sign of that type of revulsion that the Bible speaks of. If you have honestly given your life over to Christ, (and only you and Him know this), then you will often find yourself at odds with more people than you ever have, at least that is what I have found. ““Students are not greater than their teacher, and slaves are not greater than their master. Students are to be like their teacher, and slaves are to be like their master. And since I, the master of the household, have been called the prince of demons, the members of my household will be called by even worse names!” Matthew 10:24-25.
Now some may say that I have no right to judge, and to them I would say “by their fruits you will know them”. If you are going forth and warmly and winsomely chatting with girls or at least attempting to bring joy and peace thru humor, and you’re getting reactions of mild anger, distrust, and fear then they are bearing their fruits for you to see. Now I don’t want this to go to your head in thinking you are holier than them, but take heart, brother. God does not want us to be unequally yolked and the revulsion that you see in the girls, is a pretty good indicator that that is exactly what is happening..the Holy Spirit in you is like a stench of death for them that are perishing. Not by your power or skills or machinations but by the grace of God, un-meritorously given by His Son. Approach is one thing, but I hold the spirit in higher priority in regards to what is really going on. God just might be watching out for you and preventing you from walking into a minefield. Pray about it, sincerely (and I know I’m probably going to be called a Churchian, but I’ve been called worse by atheists).
Re some thread at CAF that MarcusD pointed to:
Also what is this with men giving all of their passwords to their wives?
Control, obviously. But not so obviously, denegrating men’s sexuality: poor hubby, he can’t be trusted because he’s a may-un and so just a slobbering animal who has to have his Virtuous Woman looking over his shoulder both physicallly and virtually. It is also another version of “What’s mine is mine and what’s his is mine”. She insists that he cannot be trusted, and that she must be trusted. One could argue it’s all neo-Victorianism combined with feminist stinginess.
Control, obviously. … he can’t be trusted …
Which puts her in authority over her husband, the very opposite of what is instructed in the Bible. I wonder if these women love being in control (but hate the fruits of it), or do they love to hate being in control (and hate the fruits of it)?
Gunner, church is a social circle. Read up on social circle Game.
Most night club tactics don’t work in a social circle. Here’s one way to solve the approach problem. If you ask a girl to do something easy for you, like lend you a pen or pencil, they’ll probably do it. Then it gets easier to talk because a girl is a little invested. You might ask for a copy of their sermon notes over email. Get girls to invest by doing stuff to help you, engage* them a bit, don’t sexualize directly or quickly. A brief, gentle touch on the arm as part of convo is helpful. A quick look up and down in front of her face is too heavy sexualization. Better is from behind and it’s good if she “catches” you doing it–it will confirm for her that you aren’t a monk. From behind tells her that you understand the social nuances. If she 5h1t-tests you about checking her out, just tell her that you aren’t a monk.
Tell her that you’re trying to get to know some people and you wondered if she might be fun to know (make her qualify herself). Tell her some story that shows that you’ll be fun to know (demonstrate your value). Ask her about her life–that builds comfort–and about logistics like where she lives and when she has leisure time.
If she says that she has a bf, just ignore it by reframing. My devout college gf had a bf when we met and we were making out ten minutes into our first study date at her instigation.
Hope that helps.
* Engaging them a bit means saying some detail about a girl that shows that you see her. It’s about being playful. See my post Sexual Macrodynamics for a general discussion of human mating.
Oh, it doesn’t hurt to take the persona of a bad boy trying to learn this Christianity stuff. Girls eat that up and it’s true to some degree for every man.
Control, obviously. … he can’t be trusted …
JDG
Which puts her in authority over her husband, the very opposite of what is instructed in the Bible.
Waste of time to take that approach at CAF or many other online Churchian forums; “You’re reading it all wrong, my pastor/priest/whatever says….”.
I wonder if these women love being in control (but hate the fruits of it), or do they love to hate being in control (and hate the fruits of it)?
Probably all of that and more. In Bible terms, “sin of eve”, in evo-bio / Game terms she wants the authority to lead but not necessairly the responsiblity that goes with it.
I see people with dogs that behave badly on a regular basis. Observing the dog and human, it is obvious that the human isn’t in charge, that he or she regards the dog as an equal. The dog on the other hand likely regards the human as a failed leader, and since the pack must have a leader to survive, the dog loyally steps up to that job…and can’t do it, because it’s not up to the task. Just an observation, absolutely nothing to do with anything. Nuh-uh. Nope. Just me being random…
@ Gunner Q
I second a lot of what was said. What really stands out is your attitude. That of “mark of Cain” no girl will ever like me blah blah blah blah blah. I can’t speak for your experience, but that is never useful. Also, cold approaches are are rarely successful (maybe 0.5% on average). Switch it up a bit, different churches, bible studies, etc. Also most people find mates through weak ties (friend of a friend), so start there. Your friend’s pretty wife probably has pretty single girlfriends. And I second ASDGamer in that in how to approach a girl at church “club game” will get you shot down every. single. time. Instead, perhaps give her a specific complement (like, I like your dress, blue is a good color on you) then move to a question like where is the nearest Starbucks. Nonthreatening. Jokes are a bad idea generally, but especially in a house of worship!
the dog loyally steps up to that job…and can’t do it, because it’s not up to the task. Just an observation, absolutely nothing to do with anything. Nuh-uh. Nope. Just me being random…
lol
At least the dog is loyal. I can’t even say that for the authority usurping woman.
JDG, a dog is loyal to the pack leader will be loyal to death. A dog that has decided to be pack leader to humans can be a real terror, because that dog expects humans to submit to it, and when they don’t many bad behaviors can result. One dog training essay I read stated that a human dog owner must learn to think dog becaue the dog can’t think human…and that what would seem demeaning and humiliating to a human is just fine to a dog provided it comes from a pack leader. But, again, I’m just being random…
@ Gunner
Isa is wrong about validating a woman’s appearance–that screams “beta”. (Sorry, Isa.) I never do that unless a woman is in my bed–which means Mrs. Gamer.
Isa is spot on, however, with the following: “then move to a question like where is the nearest Starbucks.” Panera works too, of course. Ask her what she usually orders there–get her thinking about food. And smile and say something like, “You’re not hungry, of course. Girls never eat.” (See, Isa? Jokes work sometimes.) And assume that she wants to eat with you. “Let’s meet there in ten minutes.” Then head out without waiting for an Ok. Leadership. If she has logistical problems, she’ll let you know right away. In which case ask her to input her phone no. into your phone since she will want to maintain rapport but will want to see you lead and show confidence.
Maybe she really was in a hurry… but every girl I’ve ever approached had that exact same response. Freezing, turning away, zero positive response. What the hell? Women look away when I show up and back away when I say hello. Church, gym, burger joint, Christian girls, college girls, fat girls, it’s always the same. I revised my wardrobe, changed haircuts, muscled up and read Game but no improvement. I don’t need to fake confidence until it feels natural. I need to wash the Mark of Cain off my forehead.
It sounds like, probably through no fault of your own, something in your body language or mannerisms is being perceived as creepy or desperate. No clue what. You probably need the advice of a close, competent male friend who can actually tell you what’s what based on experience.
and that what would seem demeaning and humiliating to a human is just fine to a dog provided it comes from a pack leader. But, again, I’m just being random…
Parallels abound.
@theasdgammer
Not the appearance as much as something she picked out, meaning you noticed her/her taste. So “you’re really pretty” “I like your eyes” = bad bad bad. But rather. “I like XYZ thing” “your watch is really neat” whatever. And not body part related. That screams creepppeeer. Also, commenting on shoes = gay.
I have often noticed on this blog (mostly in the comments rather than from Dalrock himself) some misunderstandings about the Catholic Church.
The teaching authority in the Church is not individual private interpretations of Scripture, but the Pope and Bishops together (or the Pope alone, if he so chooses). This authority comes from the Holy Spirit and does not rely solely on what is written in the Bible, though of course the Bible is of great importance to the Church. So it is a waste of time for you Protestants to complain when you personal reading of the Bible does not match [what you think] the Catholic Church’s teaching is.
However, here is what Pope Pius XI wrote in his 1930 encyclical “Casti Connubii”. I am not aware that any Pope since has contradicted it, nor do I think it ever will be contradicted, though I admit that it is rare to hear this teaching from a Catholic priest nowadays. You won’t hear it from many Protestants either:
>25. By this same love it is necessary that all the other rights and duties of the marriage state be regulated as the words of the Apostle: “Let the husband render the debt to the wife, and the wife also in like manner to the husband,” express not only a law of justice but of charity.
>26. Domestic society being confirmed, therefore, by this bond of love, there should flourish in it that “order of love,” as St. Augustine calls it. This order includes both the primacy of the husband with regard to the wife and children, the ready subjection of the wife and her willing obedience, which the Apostle commends in these words: “Let women be subject to their husbands as to the Lord, because the husband is the head of the wife, and Christ is the head of the Church.”
>27. This subjection, however, does not deny or take away the liberty which fully belongs to the woman both in view of her dignity as a human person, and in view of her most noble office as wife and mother and companion; nor does it bid her obey her husband’s every request if not in harmony with right reason or with the dignity due to wife; nor, in fine, does it imply that the wife should be put on a level with those persons who in law are called minors, to whom it is not customary to allow free exercise of their rights on account of their lack of mature judgment, or of their ignorance of human affairs. But it forbids that exaggerated liberty which cares not for the good of the family; it forbids that in this body which is the family, the heart be separated from the head to the great detriment of the whole body and the proximate danger of ruin. For if the man is the head, the woman is the heart, and as he occupies the chief place in ruling, so she may and ought to claim for herself the chief place in love.
>28. Again, this subjection of wife to husband in its degree and manner may vary according to the different conditions of persons, place and time. In fact, if the husband neglect his duty, it falls to the wife to take his place in directing the family. But the structure of the family and its fundamental law, established and confirmed by God, must always and everywhere be maintained intact .
Is there anything in this teaching you disagree with?
GunnerQ,
Have you tried arranged dating? I met Mrs Lyn87 through a dating service, and that was before the internet. I’ve got cajones in spades, but I’ve never been very good at closing the deal with approaches… but I looked good on paper and I exude confident in person (to a fault, I’ve been told). That combination allowed me to get a crap-ton of offers – the girls saw my profile and ask to be set up with me, which the “matchmaker” would dutifully pass along for my acceptance of rejection. Essentially… I outsourced the one thing I sucked at (getting my foot in the door more than very occasionally). It’s something of a numbers game, and the “bottleneck’ was in getting first dates. Once I fixed that, everything was working in my favor. I had my pick of new offers all the time, and I was swatting away not-bad-but-less-than-optimal girls like flies at a picnic – until I found one I liked well enough to marry.
The question I asked myself when I saw the ad for the Christian dating service was, “What do I have to lose but 20 bucks and what’s left of my dignity?”
@ Gunner
First and foremost, understand that you are God’s gift to some woman. In a sense, you are God’s gift to women. Internalize that. Men are God’s gift to women and vice-versa. You are a high value man. You need to understand the mind of women. Read the SoS as a manual about understanding women. I can guarantee you that single (and a lot of married) women think about sex or men about as much as men think about sex or women.
Here are two examples from my experience last night at a country dance bar:
I was flirting like crazy with a couple of women last night (just for fun). My flirting was g-rated, but sex was on their minds. One of them is married and she was brushing her hair with her hand almost nonstop while we were dancing (a lot!) and towards the end she was complimenting me (a lot!) on my leading. However, when I was about to leave, she started avoiding me. Likely she was projecting her attraction/arousal onto me, lol. Women tend to project their emotions a lot. My method of flirting with her was dancing with her a lot. I never made any direct or indirect sexual references with this woman the whole night, but there was a lot of subtext.
The other went out with me to my truck and drank a beer with me there and we chatted. She flirted some and I had “The Chat” with her about how there are three ways to take flirting: 1) fear/avoidance (this is immature), 2) expectation of poaching, or 3) it’s just harmless fun that won’t lead anywhere. I didn’t flirt with this woman or even touch her in my truck. My body faced forward and she imitated my body language, except that her legs were leaning a bit towards me. I turned my head to face her occasionally when I spoke. It was very low key. The main flirtation was asking her to go out to my truck. I think that the only direct sexual reference I made was later when her butt hit my hand accidentally while were dancing swing. I said that her butt was a weapon that needed to be kept under control. She was a little tipsy at the time. She hung onto my neck as we walked off the dance floor.
@ Isa
And not body part related. That screams creepppeeer.
Well, it’s socially inept, which screams “unattractive”. Looking briefly at body parts means that a man isn’t a monk or embarrassed about sexuality. Talking about body parts can be appropriate, but there has to be comfort and rapport to go along with it.
Not the appearance as much as something she picked out, meaning you noticed her/her taste.
Ok, I’m not sure what this really does…once I commented on a woman’s earrings and she immediately changed out her pearl necklace. Women care about those things but I’m not sure how it helps with mating (sex, relationship, whatever).
Well, I certainly agree that if you accept the Bible as Word of God, any doubt in your mind should cease right there. In fact accepting the Bible as Word of God means there can’t be anything which anyone would ever observe or demonstrate which should make you believe otherwise, because what is in the Bible must be true. So I respect that, but I don’t really think Creationism can be defended without recourse to the Bible as most Creationists attempt to do.
However, (it must be said), the track record of Christians here is not good. They believed in a geocentric universe because that was in the Bible, Catholics and Protestants alike. Then along came Galileo, and while he was resisted at first today as far as I know there is not a single denomination which doesn’t accept heliocentrism. The kicker here is (and I know because I’m a physicist) that you can correctly model the motion of bodies in the universe regardless of where you put the center, and regardless of what reference frame you choose (even if isn’t inertial), so there is no reason from physics why the earth can’t be the center. Christians (or at least individual Churches) would have much more credibility had they stuck to their guns on the geocentrism issue.
I wouldn’t quite go that far (or at least you are not wording this correctly), because recent beneficial mutations have been observed to occur and to accumulate over time; examples of this are malaria resistance to chloroquine and bacterial resistance to antibiotics and metabolism of nylon by bacteria. What I would say is traversal over a fitness landscape to where you actually end up with a new kind of life form (at least at the phylogenetic level of order) is very, very unlikely, since simultaneous beneficial mutations are necessary.
OK, good.
This is where I disagree, even though I explicitly posit the existence of God. If I rephrase a bit: you are claiming that something was done to inert matter which is never done to it: being formed into living creatures. Yes I absolutely agree God has the ability to do such a thing. But He also has the ability to cause the necessary simultaneous beneficial mutations to occur. If you (arguendo) deny the existence of God, then you agree simultaneous beneficial mutations, however unlikely, is much more likely than spontaneous formation of living organisms from inert matter. But when you affirm the existence of God, you insist the relative likelihood is different, without providing any justification whatsoever. Therefore, your argument constitutes special pleading: if the existence of God makes formation of life from inert matter more likely, then it may also make simultaneous beneficial mutations more likely; but there is really no justification for thinking either one.
Let me ask you this: it is possible that God could create a fully-grown creature out of the dirt on your back yard tomorrow. Without reference to the Bible, you would still regard such as highly unlikely, infinitesimally unlikely. It is also possible God could cause the grass in your yard to grow a bit taller. That you regard as almost certain. If a car pulls up in your driveway, it is possible God instantaneously transported it from two States away. But you regard this as infinitesimally unlikely. We simply infer these things (what God will do) from background knowledge about what God does and has done.
I think you must have completely misunderstood what I was saying; I cannot see where I implied above that God was “bound” by anything. Anyway, I agree with what you just said.
The point is that “intervention” and “not otherwise occur” are meaningless and even erroneous. An “intervention” by someone implies his otherwise not acting, and “not otherwise occur” implies what would occur without his acting. But even when matter obeys physical laws it is doing so because God is willing it so do so. Sure, in a miracle God does something else than what He does the vast majority of the time, but that vast majority of the time He is definitely doing something, and I know enough theology to say that attempting to divide God’s will into “supernatural intervention” and “normal willing” is certainly wrong, and probably heresy according to most denominations. God is One.
He didn’t “create” physical laws. Physical laws are merely descriptors of how God acts the vast majority of the time.
P.S. I think for now we’ll just have to agree to disagree on the veracity of the Bible. But if you’d like to try to refute my contention that “theistic abiogenesis” is still much less likely than “theistic common descent”, then please go ahead.
Okay… I think I see where you’re going with this. We’re almost certainly at an impasse, or at least very close to one, as we differ on definitions. Two things, though, then it’s probably a good place to stop.
1) There in nothing in the Bible that declares or even describes a geocentric universe as the term is commonly understood. Most people before Galileo probably believed it because it fit with what they could observe with the methods of the day (“We don’t seem to be moving and everything around us is spinning the same direction – we must be in the center”). Retrograde motion threw them off a bit, but that’s not terribly important. It was a logical inference based on what they knew, but before Galileo they didn’t know what they didn’t know, and the Roman Catholic Church built a series of doctrines around that inference which is not supported by anything in the Bible – but they do that for all sorts of stuff all the time about all sorts of subjects.
So Biblical Christianity did fine by Galileo – it was Roman Catholicism that dropped the ball on that. Roman Catholics will freely admit that the Bible is one of three sources of their doctrine – the other two are the traditions of the church and the pronouncements of their hierarchy.
2) The main definitional difference we have is the existence of natural, physical laws that are distinct from Divine intervention. Yes, both the “normal” behavior of matter and “abnormal / miraculous” behavior are due to the will of God. No argument from me. But as a physicist you know that matter behaves in extremely predictable ways once you understand the laws that apply to the specific situation. We call them laws for a reason. For example, with slight variations based on your precise location, an object in free-fall near the surface of the Earth will accelerate toward the center of the Earth at around 9.8m/sec^2, minus whatever effect friction has. Every. Single. Time.
So if an object entered free-fall near the surface of the Earth and accelerated at 500m/sec^2 – in the total absence of some natural means that caused it to do so – that would indicate that a supernatural force was involved. Science as we know it could not exist if not for those laws operating in predictable ways almost all the time. God is a god of order, and you would be out of a job if He wasn’t. Those laws are the “rules” while miracles are the one-off “exceptions” that only something outside of nature could cause. There is absolutely nothing any of us can do to make matter disobey the laws God set – but He can. Likewise, the possibility of a complex living creature springing forth whole from some primordial goo is ZERO – because matter just doesn’t work that way. The odds against just assembling the parts are tens of thousands of orders of magnitude beyond the longest odds our human brains can comprehend – and even if that happened it wouldn’t be alive. For anyone interested, this link gives some of the numbers (http://www.scienceforums.net/topic/67884-what-are-the-odds-of-life-evolving-by-chance-alone/). So since biological life exists, and inert matter simply does not come to life when it is obeying the laws for the normal behavior of matter that God ordained… for inert matter to defy those laws and form the physical body of a living being is properly termed “miraculous.” God supplies the non-physical part – “the breath of life” – which is the miracle that makes a pile of non-living molecules into a “living soul.”
Anyway, I think we’re close to agreement on the “Divine mechanism,” but we are using different terms to describe the same things in this case.
Oh… two more things:
I cannot disagree with any of that except for one of your conclusions. You said that I have no justification for believing that God did it one way as opposed to another. I disagree with that – because He told us how He did it. The Bible is filled with prophesies that defy all odds, yet in every case for which we have independent evidence, the Biblical account has been verified. If you and I went to Vegas and I told you which number to put your money on at the roulette table, and I was right 57 times in a row and you’ve never seen be be wrong, or even know anyone who can reliably testify to having seen me be wrong, you’d be foolish to bet it all on a different number the 58th time. When the odds of unlike events happening actually happen exactly as I predict every single time get long enough, a prudent man – a logical, scientific man – would figure that I had access to special knowledge. The Bible is like that… it claims to be inspired by God and backs up that claim with scores of unerring prophesies that would make my hypothetical roulette run look like a parlor trick in comparison. Accepting what’s in the Bible is not the Fallacy of Special Pleading since the source has verified itself as being written by an omniscient author.
As a physicist, you know that everything in the Universe operates within time – time itself is part of creation. (This is one way I blow the minds of people who tend to think of “eternity” as an endless amount of time. In fact, to exist in eternity is to be outside of time, since spacetime is created and temporal.) I would posit that the laws of which we speak are equally part of creation itself. Gravitational acceleration only exists in a “plane” – for lack of a better term – that contains physical mass. When God made a universe that contains mass, He set the rules that govern gravitational attraction. Creation of matter without laws would be chaos, and writing laws with nothing for them to govern doesn’t even make sense. Therefore, it only makes sense to conclude that the laws that govern the creation are part of creation itself.
@AR
One could argue it’s all neo-Victorianism combined with feminist stinginess.
That’s basically it. Fourth-wave feminism, in my estimation, will be a neo-Victorian morality (i.e. Victorian+). It really is amazing to see these things come full circle (and for people to recognize, having actually studied history, that many things have not changed at all, but simply are changes of synonyms).
Women
http://forums.catholic.com/showthread.php?t=907680
I am attracted to women for their negative traits and not positive traits. I fantasize about women like Miss Trunchbull from Matilda (although I’m not attracted to her physically) who force children to eat 18 inch (in diameter) chocolate cakes, hang children up from their hair, and lock children in closets with broken glass and nails sticking out from the door and walls. I am attracted to women who are dominant, aggressive, short tempered and physically larger (maybe muscular or athletic) than me.
—
I think some women on CAF have found their perfect man…
@Lyn87
“He set the rules that govern gravitational attraction. Creation of matter without laws would be chaos, and writing laws with nothing for them to govern doesn’t even make sense. Therefore, it only makes sense to conclude that the laws that govern the creation are part of creation itself.”
This may open you up to this charge:
(1) Miracles, by definition, are events which violate genuine laws of nature.
(2) If a generalization is violated by an event, then it cannot be a genuine law of nature.
(3) Thus, it is impossible for a genuine law of nature to be violated by any event. [from (2)]
(4) Hence, it is impossible for any event to be a miracle. [from (1) & (3)]
http://infidels.org/library/modern/theodore_drange/miracles.html
Dave says:
September 7, 2014 at 6:29 am
Hi Dave, I would like to offer my $0.02c worth.
As I understand it a marriage is valid in the eyes of God when the following requirements are met.
1) The couple must be man and woman.
2) The couple must be eligible for marriage. I.e She must not have a previous husband still alive. And he must not have divorced a previous wife to remarry.
3) The freely offered exchange of marital vows before witnesses. No shotguns involved.
4) Parental approval if possible.
If these requirements are met the couple are married before God. I don’t believe that consummation is required. If consummation were a requirement for marriage then Jesus was born out of wedlock. I.e Joe and Mary didn’t consummate their marriage until after Jesus was born.
I don’t believe that state approval is a requirement. I also don’t believe that virginity is a requirement but it certainly helps with the bonding process.
Finally, I don’t believe that adultery is grounds for divorce and remarriage. I don’t want to start that debate/discussion all over again so if your interested click on my name to see my reasons.
Gunner, you’ve already gotten some good advice, but I want to specifically second Matt’s contribution.
You really need a/some in-person advice from someone who can see you and advise you on how you come across. We literally can’t do this over the internet. I have no doubt that the previous advice (that you’re dodging the xy% who are corrupted by the typical modern American church environment) is accurate; but you also MIGHT be doing something yourself that puts off the z% remnant would would be worth pursuing. Or you might not… but impossible to know over the internet.
Quixote,
“Finally, I don’t believe that adultery is grounds for divorce and remarriage.”
Good grief, Jesus Himself said so.
BrainyOne,
“Christians (or at least individual Churches) would have much more credibility had they stuck to their guns on the geocentrism issue.”
Oh dear G*d no! William of Ockham really was onto something, you know…
To you, Lyn87 and the rest who are discussing among other things geocentrism: you ought to check the extended context around the wonderful passage C. S. Lewis passed on that his friend Owen Barfield minded out of Acquinas*: “[In Aristotle] an account is given of eccentrics and epicycles, on the grounds that they explain the observed phenomenon. But this is not a strict proof, since for all we know the phenomenon could be accounted for by some other explanation.”
THIS is how strictly the man who was still the leading Catholic authority in these matters, at the time of Copernicus and Galileo, took the details of the Ptolemaic system–i.e. NOT as a matter of dogma at all, just as the best or most convenient theory to date.
————————————————————-
*Too lazy to look up the specific reference, but it’s in Barfields Saving the Appearances (the title of which comes from the standard English translation of the Acquinas’ phrase in Latin which I’ve rendered “explain the observed phenomenon”), quoted by Lewis in The Discarded Image.
Further: Galileo really was a cantankerous a**h*le, which is perhaps why nobody in the Church hierarchy objected to Copernicus but Galileo caused a fuss; on the other hand both the Pope and Cardinal Bellarmine could have really benefited from an understanding of the Streisand Effect.
This may be long past, but I am not going to get caught up before I get a few hours of sleep tonight.
> Neither of you is very good at mind-reading. The reason “creationists like Lyn” reject macro-evolution is because it is both irrational and devoid of proof.
I would whole heartedly agree with Lyn87 on this. TENS is utterly devoid of rational sense. Those who cling to it do so for religious reasons, not due to any stretch of logic.
James K (I believe) implied God could have used Evolution. That ignores the fact that nothing today is made with “tiny adjustments over time” by any designer. Why think God worked in a way we cannot see now? TENS (Theory of Evolution by Natural Selection) is not a logical conclusion, so we don’t need to bow down to it. God can do whatever He wants, but I am going to believe the things that fit the evidence and not the ones that are made up in attempt to not have to deal with hard truths.
BrainyOne,
Crying “liar” enough makes it look like you are just projecting. I didn’t see any truth in what you posted. You fail to intentionally take any firm positions that can be tested as well. Is this because you really know you have no solid foundation?
Yes bluedog, arguing with those who believe in a designer is just as fruitless as telling a red pill man that modern marriage has no risks. Both are equally foolish assertions, devoid of reality.
It looks like BrainyOne may have shifted a bit after my post, so the above may not be completely accurate. It was based on the post with “Liar” every other paragraphs (at least).
@Lyn87 –
I have a question about one of your assertions in the evolution debate. I’ve thought through the “theistic evolution” concept myself, and I can’t say I’ve done enough research into the evidence to settle on a position for myself yet. (E.g., several Christians I know have told me that the scientific evidence for the earth being billions of years old does seem pretty solid, though that really doesn’t prove anything either way as far as the “God used evolution to bring about the current state of affairs” vs. “God created all living beings ex nihilo in just a few days” debate goes. God could perfectly well have created the universe, and a planet Earth that wasn’t yet ready to support life, billions of years ago, and then taken six days to shape the Earth into a form that could support life as Genesis 1 lays out. In which case Genesis 1:2 would cover that very large gap in time when “the Earth was formless and void, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters.”)
But as I was thinking about the philosophical implications of this, the “did death enter the world before sin?” question raised its head. And I concluded that since God is outside of time, I have no philosophical or theological issues with the idea that He might have put an effect into the world before its cause had happened yet. I’ve heard many stories of God answering prayer by a chain of events that He clearly would have had to set in motion before the person prayed. (Such as the story of a missionary who prayed for the money to cover a large bill, went outside to the mailbox, and found a check sitting in the mailbox for the exact amount needed. The check had been mailed the week before, but I’m not going to claim that that wasn’t a direct answer to the missionary’s prayer.) So that’s one instance of God taking a cause (choosing to answer the missionary’s prayer) and then putting its effect into the world (prompting someone to write and mail that check to the missionary) at an earlier time than the cause. And if He can do that, He could also have done that with sin and death. So I have no theological issue with death entering the world before Adam and Eve sinned, and yet that still being the result of their sin.
Would you have any philosophical or theological objection to that particular line of thought?
KP says:
September 8, 2014 at 3:59 am
I don’t want this tread to go the way of the previous thread, but I think you have misunderstood the ‘exception clause’. Please have a look at Once Married Always Married. http://oncemarried.net
Or perhaps you might want to read up on:
https://dalrock.wordpress.com/2014/08/18/from-celibate-boyfriend-to-celibate-husband-true-love-doesnt-wait/
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I’m OK with that (making the Bible the source of the belief in Creationism). After all, there are many other things in the Bible which one (even he believes in God, and even if He were a Christian) wouldn’t think happened otherwise but for its mention in the Bible (e.g. men risen from the dead, water turned into wine, etc.) so special creation is in that category. As I said, I’ll leave a debate about the veracity of the Bible for another day.
I disagree here for two reasons. In the first place, you seem to be saying that God, after creating the physical universe, gave matter “rules” or “laws” to obey and then withdrew from the picture, save for those very special occasions on which He performed miracles. I am saying no, the idea of an omnipotent God “withdrawing from the picture” is impossible; even when a ball is falling to the ground and accelerating at 9.8 m/s^2 (minus effects of air resistance) this is taking place because He is specifically willing it to do so. (IOW, you see physical laws as “prescriptive” whereas I see them as merely “descriptive”.) Why do I say this? Because God can’t contradict His own will. He can’t will, initially, that all matter obey physical laws, and then change His mind later when He performs a miracle. I do think you leave yourself open to the charge cited by infowarrior1.
In the second place, as a physicist I know that matter, at the quantum level, actually behaves in quite UNpredictable ways, and the only reason why it is predictable at the macro level is because what we see at the macro level is an averaging out of a huge number of quantum events.
@ BO
Because God can’t contradict His own will. He can’t will, initially, that all matter obey physical laws, and then change His mind later when He performs a miracle.
Depends on the nature of Law. Is it Lex Rex or Rex Lex? Are laws for subjects only or is the law king? If the law is king, then your position stands. If the king is the law and laws are for subjects, then that solves the problem. The king can do what he likes without being constrained by law. Hence, miracles are no problem.
We can talk about God’s natural law and the laws of physics as two distinct things. Physicists are trying to figure out nature and the laws of physics are descriptive, but are likely contextual and will be made more general at some point. Have you read “When the Laws of Physics Lie” by Cartwright? Its main point is that experimental applications can’t really test general laws because of contextual constraints.
Brad:
Well, Brad you are wrong, and taking this tone merely makes you look like an ignorant, Bible-thumping ass. It’s just so easy to declare your opponents foolish, irrational, devoid of logic, and clinging to superstition devoid of evidence for religious reasons, and therefore I win the argument. Are you aware that this is EXACTLY what your opponents say of you, clinging to “outmoded, irrational superstition” (e.g. the Bible) written by a bunch of “scientifically illiterate goat-herders”. And that is just what I did not do in this discussion. But I am now telling you these kinds of arguments are ignorant.
Look, I’m OK with people that say, well, one wouldn’t (or probably wouldn’t) arrive at the conclusion of special creation without the Bible, but because we believe the Bible to be the Word of God via (XYZ reasons) and therefore we believe in special creation, since it’s in the Bible. This, at least, is an intellectually honest argument. Saying “there’s no evidence whatsoever for evolution!” or “evolutionists are all materialists and atheists” or “evolutionists are all idiots” or “evolutionists are completely irrational” is not. Many are quite intelligent, with PhDs in scientific disciplines, not all are atheists (surveys indicate about 50% of working scientists are in fact not atheists IIRC) and serious evidence implicating common descent, at least in primates, has been shown in our DNA, such as pseudogenes and endogenous retroviruses in orthologous positions in the genome. While this doesn’t absolutely prove common descent, saying “there’s no evidence whatsoever!” is simply a lie, or else an admission of one’s complete ignorance on the topic.
Oh, really? Have you ever been part of a team that designs a software program? Or an airplane? Or an automobile? There are obvious “tiny adjustments over time”.
And who are you to claim to a priori “know” what God has done?
If you want to take this tack of “knowing” what God should or should not do, did God “design” the (broken) GULO pseudogene which makes us unable to synthesize vitamin C? “Obviously” this is faulty design, which disproves special creation, since “obviously” God would not have done such a thing. Similar arguments can be made for the tailbone, endogenous retroviruses, “junk” DNA, and other things which “obviously” implicate “faulty” design. Of course these things do all have other functions, and the problem is being arrogant enough to think that we wouldn’t have done it that way, so “obviously” God wouldn’t have.
Indeed, we don’t see abiogenesis now, do we? Why think God worked that way in the past? Whereas we do see mutations now. Why not think God worked that way in the past?
And just what are these “things that fit the evidence”?
Oh that’s a hoot. Crying “I am going to believe the things that fit the evidence” makes it look like you are just projecting. See, two can play this game. Of course you didn’t see any truth in what I posted, because you didn’t want to see it. What you wanted to see was an “arrogant, atheist, materialist” scientist get taken to the woodshed. Instead, everyone here has admitted that their Creationist beliefs stem from the Bible, and not from the consideration of scientific evidence alone apart from the Bible (which is fine, as I said; this leads to a debate on the veracity of the Bible which we can save for some other time).
First of all Lyn began with a very snarky, arrogant tone, so I replied in kind. It was simply intellectually dishonest, for instance, to bring in Lewontin’s a priori naturalism as “evidence” as soon as the discussion began (and many scientists, including myself, don’t respect Lewontin. He’s made plenty of intellectually dishonest arguments about the subject of race, and he has frankly admitted this was because of his Marxism.) Once he decided he wanted a discussion with less rancor, I matched that as well.
And, common descent is a “firm” position which already has been tested. It is based upon the consideration that formation of life forms from inert matter is such an extremely unlikely event (even the complexity of a single cell is staggering) while formation of new types of life forms from pre-existing ones, while highly unlikely, is more likely since this requires simultaneous beneficial mutations. The data on this is readily available even from Creationist websites. It is intellectually dishonest of you to suggest that since I won’t take a “firm” position on gradualism vs. punctuated equilibrium (since I don’t see enough evidence to resolve this debate either way) that I’m not taking a “firm” position in general.
Of course God isn’t constrained by any law. That isn’t the issue. The issue is that God is immutable.
Maybe this will help clarify my position a bit. I am not saying miracles are impossible. Just the opposite. What I am saying is that the statement that He initially wills that all matter obey physical laws is incompatible with the statement that He wills miracles (defined as a violation of those laws) since He is immutable and His will cannot change. I am saying that therefore “physical laws” are merely descriptive as to how God wills matter to behave most of the time.
BrainyOne,
> Well, Brad you are wrong, and taking this tone merely makes you look like an ignorant, Bible-thumping ass.
Think what you will. I don’t have a PhD, but it is quite likely I have more education that you do. Sit in one of my classes on information security or web design and tell me I don’t know technical stuff. (Some students do, so that would not be sufficient, but I definitely don’t “Bible Thump” there.)
I have had a tie to Jesus since and early age and I am one who cannot say the date I first confessed Him as my Lord, but I have done so many times as an adult and I know God had his hand on me. (Single mother, should have been completely whacked out, etc.) I also could do just about any academics I felt like doing with minimal effort on my part. I am sure I would not fit your little box, so you have to insult me in some other way.
My achievements are “filthy rags” as the Apostle Paul noted, but they are what they are in human reasoning. How many certifications do you have? I may or may not have passed, but I took another test on last Saturday and finished first before the time was half over. (The questions have their own weird logic, so that is my uncertainty. I have passed 3 other similar tests before I didn’t feel great about, so I am waiting to see the results this time first.)
How many things in real life does a designer start at a very basic level and let it “evolve” into something else? The only time we use that phrasing is when the designer(s) is actively guiding the advancement of the item. Not much fit with the claims of macro evolution there.
Have you seen even one building that was built “over time” without some kind of plan, even if just in the head of the designer? Why can you assume the wonderful variety we see in nature “just happened” if that never happens with a building, let alone is not the default choice.
Would you ever believe someone who said a watch “just came together” over time? Why is the same logic not applicable to life? I would rather follow Occam’s Razor and believe that things normally work the same way when they are complex -> Someone designed them!
If you really think that is a “backwards hick” thinking then you only have slander in your toolbox.
> implicating common descent
Of course we are similar. The same designer made all the items. Are you really that slow? We can look at paintings and pick out common traits from the same painter. Why is the same in life not a strong indicator of a common designer? This really isn’t that hard….
> Have you ever been part of a team that designs a software program? Or an airplane? Or an automobile? There are obvious “tiny adjustments over time”.
Now you are way out of your depth. I have 20+ years in software development. Hardcore stuff, from assembly language to C++. A software program proves the existence of a designer more than anything else. What successful program “just happened”? Even the changes you note required active design, not letting the program “work itself out.” If you want to write secure code you have to actively do so, not wait for it to just happen.
It is really funny that you argue my own case in your examples. Did Excel start out as a desktop calculator program that slowly grew its own features over time? Or is that the next replacement for Excel that is coming down the line?
> Indeed, we don’t see abiogenesis now, do we?
Why raise that straw man? Designers take “inanimate objects” all the time and create useful things out of them. That is how your airplane got produced. Nothing “just happened.” God took stuff, put life into it and it “reproduced after its kind” from that point on. Your harping of some irrelevant point is tiresome and way off track.
> And just what are these “things that fit the evidence”?
That designed things were designed, not random results of a fridge experiment.
> Oh that’s a hoot.
You cried liar every other paragraph, at least. You are the one with the problem here. Your attitude was quite snarky, so Lyn87 met what you posted. You probably believe it to be “scientific certainty” or some other made up thing, but it was full of snark.
Answer the hard questions about how macro evolution plays out and you might have a firmer basis to argue you are standing for facts, but you distinctly lacked things you stand for, as do many who claim TENS is true. Lyn87 changed his tack, but his core points were not rebutted. You remain self assured without the evidence to back it up. Blame me if it makes you feel better though. I am just one of those who are “uneducated, ignorant and easy to be led” according to a past and future politician, right?
> And, common descent is a “firm” position which already has been tested.
Where? We have a lot of stories that make up descendant trees that get changed frequently. I have not heard any tests proving common descent. Could you enlighten us on those controlled tests? I see nothing more than looking at the evidence, force fitting it to a predetermined outcome (one that is purely natural) and then proclaiming that it was “tested”. No testing there, just proclamations.
I wouldn’t accept that if I was auditing your organization for information security compliance. Why should I accept it as valid when explaining how life got here?
> I’m not taking a “firm” position in general.
You do take the firm position that no designer created something oozing with design. It is unclear how you really think things started from “no life” to “life,” but you take the firm position that it started very basic and “evolved” into the more complex.
No evidence for that of course, just your assertions. Provide the evidence where information and complexity is added to the system in a testable environment. if you want to claim it fits validation. All experiments I have read of had human involvement and those were quite weak.
As noted above, we cannot test historical actions. The only thing we can do is look at the evidence and fit it to a theory. We can never, by definition, test it. We can however take an eyewitness account and evaluate its trustworthiness.
You ultimately seem to be hung up on the idea that God can create what He wants to create. That is your prerogative, but your god is awfully small if something like that is unreasonable. You don’t apply that standard to anything else. Software doesn’t make itself automatically, nor do physical items. All require an initial designer and maker. How is life so different?
Note to others: My achievement thumping is in the context of claiming I am an ignorant Bible believer. I will be gladly be considered that if it fits someone’s irrationality, but I wanted to note it is irrational. I may still be ignorant and I am sure some here thinks so, but it is not due to lack of traditional education.
Geez,
I just need to stop sleeping – questions seem to pop up for me whenever I do…. 😉 – just kidding. I’ll try to answer
@ Inforwarrior1 – Fair point… sort of. It’s fair in the sense that absolutes with exceptions are not absolutes by definition, but it’s unfair in that it does not consider that God is not bound by the absolutes He imposes on His creation. BLUF: the intervention of an external force that changes the conditions within an otherwise closed system to achieve a different result does not disprove the existence of laws that always apply to that system in the absence of such intervention. When that system is the physical universe, we refer to such outside interventions as miracles.
Let’s use the gravitational acceleration example I used with BO earlier. If you drop a cannonball from the top of a tower, it will accelerate toward the center of the Earth at about 9.8m/sec^2 until it hits something, minus the effects of friction. There is absolutely nothing you, I, or anyone else can do to change that in the slightest. We can only change the local conditions to get a different result, but that result will still be in accordance with all physical laws as they apply at that location. (We could do that by, for example, taking the cannonball to the Moon, in which case it would not fall to the Earth, but toward the Moon, which is the local gravitational sink for small objects at that location. But we still would not have altered the effects of the Law of Gravity one iota. It would not be proper to say that the law of gravity was violated – only that we changed the physical conditions so that they result in a different outcome from the perspective of the cannonball.
(Before anyone starts positing quibbles… technically, since the Moon is in orbit around the Earth, the cannonball would be falling toward the Earth, but the Moon’s orbital velocity (almost) precisely balances the gravitational attraction between the two bodies and keeps it from approaching the Earth: objects in orbit are also in free-fall. Note — I didn’t put that in there to be a d-bag or to sound smart – I try to be as technically correct as possible to head off accusations of deceit or ignorance before they pop up – not that you would do that, but many people have and do.)
So, the things of nature follow the laws of nature every single time. None of the physical sciences could exist it they didn’t. But… He who is above nature (the actual definition of the word supernatural) – He who created nature and imposes His will on it by His laws (normally) and His miraculous interventions (when He intervenes) – is not bound by those laws Himself. He retains the option of breaking them, since they don’t apply to Him nor limit His actions in the physical universe that He created. So if an object is acted upon in such a way as to disobey the laws of nature (such as accelerating at 500m/sec^2 towards the Earth instead of 9.8m/sec^2 – or inert matter coming to life), we can rest assured that a supernatural force changed the conditions, because matter by itself cannot disobey God’s laws. But unlike us, who can only change the conditions so as to get a different result that also obeys all natural laws, God may simply miraculously do whatever He wants. In such cases, it is God who “changes the conditions” in ways that we – being bound by His laws – Every. Single. Time. – cannot even comprehend. To reiterate: the intervention of an external force that changes the conditions within an otherwise closed system to achieve a different result does not disprove the existence of laws that always apply to that system in the absence of such intervention. When that system is the physical universe, we refer to such outside interventions as miracles.
@ KP – while I agree that not everyone thought Galileo was a heretic for publishing what he saw through his telescope, it was, indeed, the Roman Catholic Church that tried and imprisoned him for it. The point is not that Galileo was wrong (he was right), but that the blame for his unjust persecution falls on fallible men acting in the name of “Holy Mother Church” rather than anything from the Bible.
@ Robin Munn – that’s a very interesting position: one I’ve never heard before. However, I think that logic and the evidence stacks against it. I’ll explain my position since you asked for it.
Although God exists outside of time, we don’t. And the introduction of death into God’s perfect creation is specifically said to have been caused by sin in the Garden – time-based cause-and-effect. The missionary example you gave doesn’t mitigate against that because the timing is not critical – people mail checks, people pray for their needs, and God hears prayers outside of time. God may, in His sovereignty, choose to meet a need He knows is coming in two weeks by prompting someone to mail a check today that will arrive moments after the recipient prays for it. That fits what God reveals of His character. But it seems to me that’s a different kind of thing entirely than punishing someone for something their unborn great-great-great-great-grandchildren are going to do long after they are dead themselves. That would be patently unjust, and God is not unjust – it does not match His character.
Deuteronomy 24:16 says, “Fathers shall not be put to death for their sons, nor shall sons be put to death for their fathers; everyone shall be put to death for his own sin.”
Ezekiel 18:20 says, “The soul who sins shall die. The son shall not suffer for the iniquity of the father, nor the father suffer for the iniquity of the son. The righteousness of the righteous shall be upon himself, and the wickedness of the wicked shall be upon himself.”
Death is a punishment for sin, and physical death is about as personal a punishment as you can get. In the theoretical “ages” before the Fall, for death to have occurred would have been to say that God punished beings that existed – bound in the time that He created – while there was no such thing as sin. It just doesn’t work theologically or physically, since before the Fall things were not designed to die. It was the Fall that changed the natural world from one of life to one of death.
Of course that requires that there not be billions of years for all that trial-and-error to occur. Fortunately, there’s no good reason to think that there was. There are plenty of reasons to think that the Earth isn’t very old at all. I’ll give one example that alone disproves the theory:
The Moon is receding from the Earth at the rate of about four cm per year. Because we know how gravitational attraction works, we know that if the Earth-Moon system is young, there is no problem, but if it is very old, in times past the Moon would have been significantly closer than it is now (inside the Roche limit). As recently as about 1,000,000,000 years ago the Earth and Moon would have torn each other apart due to their proximity to each other.
There’s a list of 101 different scientific reasons to question the Old-Earth paradigm. Most have links for further explanation. Some link the original papers from peer-reviewed scientific journals that themselves are hostile to the young-Earth paradigm. And the authors are honest enough to admit when a particular fact is consistent with both models – a courtesy that is almost never returned when believers is the Old-Earth myth are writing about creation science. Here is the link: (http://creation.com/age-of-the-earth).
Robin Munn @ 4:46 am:
“I’ve thought through the “theistic evolution” concept myself, and I can’t say I’ve done enough research into the evidence to settle on a position for myself yet.”
The central point of evolution is that it’s a random, undirected process, making it fundamentally incompatible with divine oversight. It would be like calling dog breeding an act of evolution. Also, nowhere in the Bible does God use trial and error to accomplish his purposes.
The timeline of Creation can be debated by Christians. The phrase “God created”, not so much.
…
Lyn87 @ September 7, 2014 at 8:23 pm:
“Have you tried arranged dating?”
If you mean Internet dating, yes. It was a year-long New Year’s Resolution, well-funded, serious and with multiple venues. Results were a 10% rejection rate, 90% silence rate and an early shutdown so I wouldn’t be depressed during the holidays. Matchmakers were too expensive when I checked.
Everybody else, thank you. I’ll look into social circle game… maybe learning about women from pickup artists created some biases.
@ BO
He wills miracles (defined as a violation of those laws)
The problem is with your Humean definition. The fallacy is similar to “Can God make a rock so heavy that he can’t lift it?” The assumption of a contradiction is baked into the definition.
There are potentially other laws that can override what humans normally experience as laws. For example, let’s suppose that the highest law is that God’s will trumps every other law. Hence, if God applies his will for a pig to fly, the pig will fly, gravity notwithstanding. Similarly, if we equip a pig with a remote-controlled rocketpack, we can make the pig fly, gravity notwithstanding.
So, we can set laws at odds without violating laws and achieve unusual results. Really, the miracle-as-divine-law-violation argument has been uninteresting for a while. Move along, move along.
BradA, all I see you doing is reciting Creationist talking points and not actually addressing the arguments.
@theasdgamer:
This is not what I mean.
Well, yes, but are they actually laws?
But since “every other law” only comes about because God wills it (which it does), then you have God’s will trumping His will, which is theological nonsense. If the pig flies because God wills it to fly, then God can’t have previously willed for it not to fly. Do you agree with this?
GunnerQ,
Good grief… that’s an awful ROI. My experience was before internet matchmaking, and I have no experience with it. From what I’ve gathered the data-crunching is often more harmful than helpful. For example, I’m just shy of 5’7″ – which is around 1 StDev below the mean height for men. I’m still taller than most women, though. But women express a strong preference for tall men, and most women want a guy who’s at or above 6 feet (around the 95th percentile) – which means a lot of them are going to have to adjust.
In person it’s not that big of a deal – being within 1StDev of the mean means that I’m still “normal” in that regard, and in person my other traits can come out. But with computer dating, a woman can set screening criteria, and the computer doesn’t care how unrealistic her standards are, or whether she really wants to categorically reject every guy even one millimeter under her “standard.” If a woman set her lower height limit at 5’7″, and I listed my exact actual height of 5′ 6.75″, the computer would not match us up and she’d never get to be exposed to my other qualities. Garbage In – Garbage Out, and that includes bad screening criteria.
I’m glad I never had to go through that. I feel bad for you, brother.
But that comes back to “looks good on paper.” In the system I used when I was single, my profile looked good enough to generate a lot of female interest, I guess it would be a matter of understanding what works to generate interest in that environment and doing that.
If I found myself in that position now… if I used the same profile that used to work so well in an internet system today I would be in the dating desert because they all require you to list your height. I imagine that I would list my height as 5’9″ (which is my height in my boots) in the section that the computer uses to make matches, then put a note in my “essay” explaining it. Smart and mature women would see the sense of that, while any woman who was offended, or would then be superficial enough to reject me because of height, would not be worth my time anyway.
monkeywerks says:
September 5, 2014 at 8:27 pm
There is so much truth in what you have posted; there absolutely needs to be a ‘bad guy’, so to speak, and the children need to know about it in age-appropriate terms. I can not fathom how it is supposed to help children not to be shown why their parents divorced and/or whose idea it was.
@ TBO
you have God’s will trumping His will
You have God’s will in a specific, limited context trumping His general will which applies outside that context. I don’t see a problem here. Are we getting into the question of the nature of “will”?
OK, everyone, what hidden assumption has been smuggled into this? That’s right, what reason is there to think the tidal forces are going to remain absolutely constant? Well, uh, none.
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/moonrec.html
Creationist arguments that life doesn’t come from non-life is emphatically supported by the data. Young-earth arguments, not so much.
but actually there is no good reason to think an omnipotent common designer should use a common design (since He is under no constraints) if all life forms are all created at the same time, whereas common DESCENT constrains the design of a new life form to be highly similar to its ancestors
Is an omnipotent designer capable of creating a common design? If so, then your argument here is speculation on what an omnipotent designer may or may not want to do. What is your evidence for stating what an omnipotent designer wants?
Commonality between lifeforms can indicate common design or common descent. You’re trying to rule out common design because no omnipotent designer would want to do things that way – when human designers use common designs all the time. Why would an omnipotent designer be more constrained than human designers? Common designs are less work and have other advantages. Why can’t an omnipotent designer choose a lazier solution?
Ah… now we’re debating an item with a mutual understanding of each other’s position. Brainy One writes,
The flaw in that argument is that it itself relies on assumption of things not in evidence. The author of the linked piece admits that there has been significant disagreement over the effects described over the past couple of decades (some of those positions are currently held by credentialed scientists and categorically rule out an old Earth-Moon system), but assures himself and the readers that “this year’s estimations that I chose to highlight must be correct.” How very convenient for him. Tell that to all the kids who were taught that “Piltdown Man” was the final nail in the coffin of Genesis, before the guys who “found” it admitted that it was a practical joke that got out if hand – never meant to be taken seriously, but swallowed whole by an entire generation of gullible “objective scientists” who accepted an obvious fraud in order to “prove” their pet theory – while calling their critics Bible-thumping simpletons for questioning their conclusions.
I could give other examples, some of which were taught when I was in school. But since “Piltdown Man” could be found in “science” textbooks for decades – and it was a hokey fraud all along – then I’m going to reserve judgement about an untested bit of speculation that reduces the “drift” of the Moon by a factor of four just to get it to start outside the “Roche limit.”
@ Gunner
You might check out the following page to see if you are doing unattractive stuff: http://alphamalelifestyle.com/avoid-beta-male-traits/
Replacing Darwin with Austen on the Ten Pound Note is in my view a mistake. They should have chosen Mary Anning (1799-1847). Anning was a fossil collector and set up business selling what she had managed to extract – Pterodactyls , that sort of thing – from the exposed cliffs in Dorset near where she lived in Lyme Regis – what is now sometimes called Jurassic Coast. Wiki’s entry for Anning (obviously written by one of The Ladies of Perpetual Victimhood aka Feminists) seems unable to decide whether she is the greatest female scientist of the time or a woman who would have been the greatest female scientist were in not for Patriarchal Oppression – suffice to say it is all the fault of men. It is true she had little education and was non-conformist but that applies equally to Faraday, so the Femi-nazis need a better excuse form their usual woeful failure to achieve anything. Women really do seem to live in a world where desire, possibilities and stuff is unlimited – at least in their imagination.
At least I had heard of her which is more than I could say for the lady (on the front) of the Five Pound Note (we do not have a One Pound Note any more). I have no idea what she did – and the picture of her surrounded by seated children and standing men provides little enlightenment as to the possibilities. I knew who Florence Nightingale was however and she was previously on the Ten (before Darwin) but did that not stop Caroline Criado-Perez (hardly sounds English and double barrelled indicates illegitimate these days) complaining that there was a campaign to keep women off the money though obviously not from spending it. Mark Carney (our Canadian CEO at the BOE) reassured her that nothing was further from the truth as they had already selected Austen.
At least we still have Adam Smith on the Twenty, though I suppose that will have to go when Jockistan vote themselves independent next week. We do not get a vote as to whether we can return all the Porridge-wogs north of Hadrian’s wall.
Opus… you crack me up. I’m really looking forward to my trip to your fine little island. We’re planning on seeing parts of both southern Scotland and northern England (that big wall with all its Roman forts is calling to me). Sadly, part of my trip is on Aer Lingus and they won’t let me select my seat until I show up at the airport. I’m a big admirer of Adam Smith, though, so I guess I need to pick up a 20-pound note – while he’s still on – when I’m on your side of the pond.
_____________________________
The rest if this is mainly for BradA:
This argument has been raging for a while now. Allow me to offer a few words that might help if you wish to continue with your discussion with Brainy One. Plus… I realize that you have been told that I’ve been “snarky” a couple of times – a label that will likely come your way soon.
This all started when Brainy One wrote, “He (God) didn’t. Evolution provides a simple explanation for the above.” In his post at September 4, 2014 at 9:31 am…. In which he categorically dismissed the idea of Divine agency, and even divinely-guided evolution in the matter in question.
Since people who argue in favor of evolution and against Divine agency almost always mean evolution as it is commonly understood and taught in “science” courses (as an unguided process with no supernatural input), I called it a “fairy tale for adults” at September 4, 2014 at 2:17 pm. After all, what is asserted without evidence may be dismissed without evidence.
What I did not know until much later, was that Brainy One was not arguing in favor of naturalistic macro-evolution as nearly everybody on the planet understands it, but in favor of Theistic Evolution (macro-evolution guided by God), which attempts to square the circle of the existence and agency of God with “evidence” that is almost always presented with a materialist bias that pointedly excludes God.
So we went round-and-round on such topics as abiogenesis.
Then Exfernal felt the need to insult my intelligence because I believe in miracles (the typical opening salvo of evolutionists who are about to get their heads handed to them) at September 3, 2014 at 5:52 pm. Of course if Brainy One had let it be known that he was arguing in favor of Theistic Evolution from the start, Exfernal could have insulted his intelligence too, since Theistic Evolution requires divine intervention (“a miracle”) to create life initially.
But at September 5, 2014 at 1:46 am there were three opponents in the field, all of them touting evolution, and I responded with “If you guys want to debate the scientific case for evolution with me, you’re going to lose” and addressed Exfernal’s statement by asking him to meet the same standard he asked of me.
Frankly, if Brainy One had just stated, “I’m am arguing in favor of Theistic Evolution” at the start most of the ensuing debate would have been avoided. But rather than just saying that, he only let that out in dribs and drabs, using commonly-used terms to mean things other than their common usage. (The standard protocol if one is going to use an uncommon meaning of an otherwise commonly-defined phrase is to explain that from the start.) The phrase “Theistic Evolution” is well-known, and Brainy One should have used it early on. But since that fact was so long in coming, I repeatedly asked him to state his position in plain language. Then I could have avoided the issue of abiogenesis and dealt with Theistic Evolution alone – which we are doing now.
The walls of text that followed did not consist of me being “snarky” so much as me being “strident.” Oh… and two more foes took the field to simply declare my position to be incorrect. Yeah… no snarkiness there…
Then at September 5, 2014 at 11:59 pm, Brainy One called me a LIAR 13 times and tossed in a “F— You” to boot. But, hey… that’s certainly not snarky….
I responded at September 6, 2014 at 10:20 am with a point-by-point rebuttal, along with a request that Brainy One “just state your freaking position and provide the evidence to support it already” four times, so he would stop accusing me of arguing against positions he said he did not hold. I made the same request a fifth time at September 6, 2014 at 10:49 am.
Brainy One responded at September 6, 2014 at 12:53 pm. He still didn’t state his position in plain English, but he gave me enough hints to figure out that he was actually arguing in favor of Theistic Evolution, not evolution as the term is commonly understood (an unguided process).
So rather than tee off again, I saw that we had a common starting point after all (acknowledgement of a supernatural Creator). Given that, and the fact that I finally had a rough grasp of his position, I reached for an olive branch rather than a one-iron to respond at September 6, 2014 at 1:42 pm. We’ve been civil to each other since then.
Unfortunately, you were reading down the thread and posted a response to the “LIAR!” post before you saw that we had found the means to continue the discussion elsewise.
Anyway – here’s the bottom line. Brainy One simply does not accept the veracity of the Bible, and has openly stated that – although He eventually declared that he does accept that God created and guided the process. I do accept the veracity if the Bible, and have likewise openly stated that. He and I also have different definitions for the words “miracle” and “laws,” but at least we understand each other now… I think.
At the end of it all, other than disagreeing about the veracity of the Genesis account as written, this mainly boils down to different ways of defining “Divine agency acting within the physical universe.” To wit:
The crux of Brainy One’s position is, “You see physical laws as “prescriptive” whereas I see them as merely “descriptive.” (He’s right about that – we do see them that way.)
While the crux of my position is, “The intervention of an external force that changes the conditions within an otherwise closed system to achieve a different result does not disprove the existence of laws that always apply to that system in the absence of such intervention. When that system is the physical universe, we refer to such outside interventions as miracles.”
And now: back to your regularly-scheduled discussion.
I see people with dogs that behave badly on a regular basis. Observing the dog and human, it is obvious that the human isn’t in charge, that he or she regards the dog as an equal. The dog on the other hand likely regards the human as a failed leader, and since the pack *must* have a leader to survive, the dog loyally steps up to that job…and can’t do it, because it’s not up to the task. Just an observation, absolutely nothing to do with anything. Nuh-uh. Nope. Just me being random…
Perfect analogy Its a personal pet peeve of mine to see people, men especially, being controlled by their dogs. .They do not control them and god forbid do not train or discipline them. Its easy to deduce that their homes are the same way and in the times I have correlated this I have seen this withing their own families where the women and the children control them.
Hopeless gamma. Will get into a cuckold relationship (if any) and probably has a femdom fetish.
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Lyn, I think that you may be underestimating the depth of your disagreement with BrainyOne. His stated position is that everything which ever occurs is a direct result of God’s will. He doesn’t distinguish between things which God wills to happen, and things which God allows to happen.
If his position is true, it rules out the existence of evil. Everything which happens, happens because God wills it. Thus, everything is good. It rules out the existence of sin, since humans can only act as God directly wills. In fact, it rules out human agency entirely. We are just meat puppets with the illusion of agency.
BrainyOne doesn’t just decline to accept the veracity of the Bible. Under the philosophy he advances, the Bible cannot be accurate.
Opus says:
September 8, 2014 at 3:09 pm
LOL!
Well played sir, that was a beautiful reversion. And I am truly sorry for the plight of your nation.
I cannot enter the debate: I ceased to study Biology at the age of fourteen and although I studied religious-knowledge until sixteen the school (doubtless wisely) decided that it was not appropriate for so much as one boy in my class to sit the O’ level examination therein. Given that I attended a fee-paying school (albeit with a partial grant) I am not sure whether to feel saddened or angry at the lack of and standard of instruction in either subject on both of which I am entirely ignorant.
So much for male privilege.
Correction to my post at 3:36 pm today.
I stated that the Piltdown hoaxers admitted their fraud to be a prank – a practical joke that got out of hand. I read that somewhere and hit the “Post Comment” button before I verified it. I should have checked first. That statement (although it does not invalidate the point about “Piltdown Man” being taught as fact by gullible scientists with a materialist axe to grind), is not correct. It may have been a deliberate fraud by Charles Dawson, rather than a prank by his friend Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. It seems nearly certain that Dawson at least, and probably both of them, knew that “Piltdown Man” was a deliberately fraud.
Speculation that it was a “prank” by de Chardin, rather than outright scientific fraud by Dawson, was printed in The New York Times, the Washington Post, the Associated Press, and Time magazine. Nobody ever admitted it publicly.
Those who wish to preserve some of Dawson’s reputation point out that he died before he could set the record straight. That seems unlikely, but not technically impossible, and in any case, does not invalidate that the “great men of science” were willing to jump from, “Some guy found this stuff in a pit” one day to, “that disproves Genesis” the next based on an obvious fraud that just so happened to “confirm” their bias.
Not unlike the guys who say that, “Somebody has an untested theory of gravitational variation that might mean the Moon was never close to the Earth,” a couple of years ago being willing to jump to, “The Moon would not have been inside the Roche limit even if it’s 4 billion years old” today.
Well, wait a minute. Evil is not a “thing” which “exists” in the ontological sense; rather, evil is the absence of something which ought to be there. So, sure, God allows evil (e.g. by not willing the opposite good) but does not will it directly; there is no ontological “it” to will. It is still true that everything (when that “thing” is a true thing in the ontological sense) happens, happens because God wills it; otherwise He is not First Cause. God allows evil only for the sake of a greater good which He wills instead, when such evil is logically necessary. But to say that God merely “allows” good is to deny that He is First Cause.
The premise is true, but the conclusion doesn’t necessarily follow, since it can be argued when God wills us to do something we still maintain a secondary, derivative agency; and that we sin when we fail to will what we ought to will. But you are right that “humans can only act as God directly wills” does have troubling implications; look up “Predestination” for many of them.
Lyn,
I know you’ve had your hands full with the Creationism debate, but did you get a chance to answer the questions I had posed. I only ask because I’m honestly interested in your input.
Thanks,
CV
Michel Mason says:
September 8, 2014 at 4:03 pm
Lyn, I think that you may be underestimating the depth of your disagreement with BrainyOne. His stated position is that everything which ever occurs is a direct result of God’s will. He doesn’t distinguish between things which God wills to happen, and things which God allows to happen.
Michel, I know that BrainyOne and I have some pretty basic disagreements that go beyond Genesis and definitions. I’m trying to 1) keep things civil, and 2) deal with the issues in small chunks rather than huge ones. Most of this discussion for the first two days was me trying to get him to state his position in plain language – my position was always clear, and now that his is as well, we can address individual issues without having to debate everything at once.
Having said that, I think you are correct. He has – if not outright declared, then at least strongly suggested – that he believes that there is no difference between God’s sovereign will and God’s permissive will (what He merely allows to happen). If I understand his position correctly, there in no room for “God’s permissive will” in his thinking at all. Good catch – I didn’t notice that.
BrainyOne, if that is not your intended implication, it is nonetheless what we are inferring. If we’re mischaracterizing your stance, please clarify.
Arrrrg! I didn’t see BrainyOne’s 4:45pm post before I made my 4:59pm post.
All – I have a class to attend… I’ll be away for a few hours… an “eternity” in a time-lag conversation like this one.
CV, I’m sorry – I must have missed your question. Would you repeat it so I can get to it when I get back?
@theasdgamer:
I’ve been consciously working on eye contact since going red-pill so that may have been a past factor… posture, too, until I began martial arts years ago. Is that a website you recommend? It looks a little… Godless.
For that matter, what are people’s experiences with PUA coaches and seminars? Any California resources you guys can suggest?
I’m sorry for introducing confusion in definitions. I’m coming from a Christian moral philosophy which holds that “good” is that which is in line with God’s nature, and “evil” is that which runs counter to God’s nature. Thus, everything God does is good by definition.
I took it for granted that even if you believed in a different moral philosophy, you would expect most Christians to adopt this one. Sorry again for the confusion.
@BradA
God is outside time and space. He can choose to create things by a series of “tiny adjustments over time.” It is absolutely no trouble to God to create the universe over a period of 13.8 billion years. Whether He simply set the machine running with the Big Bang, or had to intervene many times over prehistory, no one knows.
The evidence for evolution abounds. Endogenous retroviruses are a good example. Our DNA has nearly 100,000 embedded fragments of retroviruses, de-activated relics of ancient infections. Most of these are older than our species, and are also found in chimpanzee DNA: the original retrovirus infection occurred in a common ancestor. The more ancient the infection, the wider the range of primate species in whose DNA it can be found.
To me, this insight into how God worked is a glimpse of the sheer, unparalleled magnificence of Creation.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endogenous_retrovirus
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/section4.html#retroviruses
https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Psalm+111%3A2&version=KJV
Lyn,
“But here’s an honest question..how come many churches have forfeited their responsibility and authority to address marital issues and marry believers? Why is it that they require a license from the state to marry individuals? Shouldn’t their true license come from God? Why do preachers, pastors and priests have to say “By the power vested to me by God and the state of …”? Is that state on equal footing with God? Marriage is of God, NOT the state, and the power to bind two people together in holy matrimony comes from God, not the state.”
I’ll just toss this over here…
If we are going to postulate a designer of life then let’s use the cheetahs and gazelles as example:
“the designer has evidently put every ounce of his designing expertise into the task of perfecting a superlative killer. One look at that magnificent running machine leaves us in no doubt. The cheetah, if we are going to talk design at all, is superbly designed for killing gazelles.
But the very same designer has equally evidently strained every nerve to design a gazelle that is superbly equipped to escape from those very same cheetahs. For heaven’s sake, whose side is the designer on? When you look at the cheetah’s taut muscles and flexing backbone, you must conclude that the designer wants the cheetah to win the race. But when you look at the sprinting, juking, dodging gazelle, you reach exactly the opposite conclusion.
Does the designer’s left hand not know what his right hand is doing?
Is he a sadist, who enjoys the spectator sport and is forever upping the ante on both sides to increase the thrill of the chase?
Did He who made the lamb make thee?
“Is it really part of the divine plan that the leopard shall lie down with the kid, and the lion eat straw like the ox? In that case, what price the formidable carnassial teeth, the murderous claws of the lion and the leopard? Whence the breathtaking speed and agile escapology of the antelope and the zebra? Needless to say, no such problems arise on the evolutionary interpretation of what is going on. Each side is struggling to outwit the other because, on both sides, those individuals who succeed will automatically pass on the genes that contributed to their success.
Ideas of ‘futility’ and ‘waste’ spring to our minds because we are human, and capable of looking at the welfare of the whole ecosystem.
Natural selection cares only for the survival and reproduction of individual genes.”
RICHARD DAWKINS. “The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution.”
James K and others of the Theistic Evolution persuasion:
Yes, an omnipotent creator could indeed have created the universe 13.82 billion years ago (funny how they claim certainty out to four digits – that means they think they’re right to within one one-hundredth of one percent. That’s pretty bold, considering all the easy questions they can’t answer. On a related note, when Ben Stein – a conservative comedian, lawyer, and commentator with no advanced scientific training – interviewed Richard Dawkins in Expelled, he had him backtracking and stammering like a ninny by just asking him to state his position and provide evidence for it, and then questioning his answers when he waffled or said something he couldn’t back up. It would have been embarrassing it wasn’t so funny: one of the most famous and respected and current “evolution scientists” in the world was utterly stymied by simple questions in his supposed field of expertise by a guy who hadn’t cracked a science book since before the first Moon landing. But I digress.
And sure, such a being could have made the Earth 4-point-(whatever the value is this week) billion years ago, For the record, when I was in school in the 1970’s, I was told – as a fact – that the “known” age of the universe was around 20 billion years, and was also told that only ignorant Bible-thumpers thought otherwise. (Today’s “known” age of the universe is 13.82 billion years. That’s 6 billion years lost in the last four decades – 1.5 billion years per decade. If this keeps up, some time in the first decade of the 22nd Century “scientists” will begin telling school kids that the universe will not have come into existence yet, and that only ignorant Bible-thumpers think otherwise.)
But although it is possible to imagine that an omnipotent supernatural being did all that creating all those long years ago, and then did all those billions of years of trial-and-error, it is not possible that Christianity is true if THAT is true. Simply put, if God used evolution, then everything that Christianity says about sin is nonsense, since death is the result of sin, and in evolution, death precedes sin. If everything it says about sin is nonsense, then everything it says about redemption is also nonsense. But not to worry – because if that’s true, then everything it says about judgement is also nonsense. Eat! Drink! Be Merry! For tomorrow we die!
Fortunately, there’s no good reason to think that the Bible is wrong. There is no evidence for evolution that does not rely on begging the question, just-so statements, and magical thinking. There is no evidence for vast ages that does not rely on an a priori materialist bias – that cannot just as accurately describe a much younger system. There is also no way to discount the fact that the Bible contains scores of prophesies that have come true, and every one for which we have independent evidence happened exactly as predicted. Not one has ever been shown to be false. Waaaaaay better than my “science” textbooks from college. Of course they were fine when they stuck to actual science – things that can be observed or successfully demonstrated in the lab. THAT is science – science is great… it’s when they started musing about “billions of years” and “primordial soup” that they ran off the rails.
http://creation.com/age-of-the-earth
Ha. Of course Xantippe replies:
The good news is that there should be absolutely no difficulty in finding a woman who will tell you what to do. Whether or not you’ll like it in real life is another thing entirely.
http://forums.catholic.com/showthread.php?t=907680
—
https://dalrock.wordpress.com/2014/09/01/shes-done-it-all-wrong-why-hasnt-god-delivered-the-husband-she-is-praying-for/#comment-139505
My husband forced me to have an abortion
http://forums.catholic.com/showthread.php?t=907706
Lack of Intimacy (Notice the contrast between approach to men and women)
http://forums.catholic.com/showthread.php?t=907818
Crimson Viceroy asks me, and I respond. Sorry it took so long, CV. I was… distracted.
“But here’s an honest question..how come many churches have forfeited their responsibility and authority to address marital issues and marry believers?
I’m not sure I know the historical answer to that. I suppose now they just do it because “that’s how it’s done,” since it’s been this way longer than any of us have been alive. I’ve been led to understand that the states started tracking marriages (which they usually got from church records), and eventually got more and more involved and took more and more power as they did – government tends to expand their authority and scope like that, as I’m sure you’ve noticed.
Why is it that they require a license from the state to marry individuals?
Civil marriage requires a state license, and the authority to create civil marriages can only be given by the state. Currently, the state allows recognized clergy to perform marriage ceremonies, and such credentials are easy to come by… for now.
Shouldn’t their true license come from God?
I don’t see that a license (for either the couple or the person presiding at the wedding) is required for Biblical marriage at all. I’m not even convinced that anyone but the couple needs to be involved. But obviously, if such a “license” is required, it ought to come from God, such as someone recognized as an elder, perhaps.
Why do preachers, pastors and priests have to say “By the power vested to me by God and the state of …”?
I don’t think that they have to say it, but since they are presiding over a “merger” that the state recognizes, they typically verbally state the source of their authority to do so.
Is that state on equal footing with God?
Nope. But that doesn’t mean the state doesn’t claim superiority any time it feels like it.
Marriage is of God, NOT the state, and the power to bind two people together in holy matrimony comes from God, not the state.”
I agree, but my government doesn’t.
@crimsonviceroy
Interesting questions, indeed. Since it might be useful to further the discussion (and I’m kind of bored right now), I thought I’d answer them myself. I’ll change up the order though. Assume American, though I’m sure the concepts carry across. (I can add many more links as I discuss this much on my own blog, but I’ll keep the chatter to a minimum)
Addressed here. License (making something illegal and then granting permission for it) originally happened in cases of miscegenation and then the scheme was extended to all people. It’s a revenue stream. But it is a device by the State (it is a three-party contract) to define/redefine all the terms, as well.
In terms of American legal law, people have rights, and they can give them up via contract – the term here is “voluntary compliance”. Every licensing scheme in existence involves this – the State knows that they can not force compliance to something due to the violation of Civil Rights (changing marriage and holding court over marriage violates Amendment I, Freedom of Religion, as governance of marriage the purview of the Church), so they license it and get their compliance that way. Accepting the marriage license causes your agreement to all the terms of the State, enabling frivorce, divorce rape, child support, visitation, and all that stuff. You take the license, you’re in Marriage 2.0, no exceptions.
The churches lobbied for their pastors to be the legal officers of the State (that’s what a minister is when he “performs a marriage”) – men love to be set in high places and these men are no exception. It is not of God though. Given the license, coupled by State overreach and Church consent, the power is vested solely from the State.
If you look at how marriage was done before the advent of the marriage license, you will see that it required no State or Church official. Beyond God’s laws (incest, etc), it simply required parental permission, and the verbal assent of both husband and wife in a public arena with witnesses. The affirmation of the witnesses were enough to prove the marriage to all concerned, including the State.
A lot of this is due to the ignorance of most men of the historical role of the Church, or they are simply shirking persecution. The Church is in the place it is in because a great many men over the last 1700 years have refused to follow in the footsteps of Peter and the apostles. Instead of rendering to God what is His, they have rendered God’s things over to Caesar. And the damage results.
Dear KP:
This thread is relevant:
http://mpcdot.com/forums/topic/8088-the-myth-of-galileo-muh-science-vs-the-catholic-church/
Offensive content abounds at the above site. You hace been warned…
There is a tendency for experts to be gullible – to see what they are hoping to see. Piltdown is an obvious case, as no further Piltdown Men have, since Dawson’s demise, been discovered in the Ashdown Forest – Dawson, if my memory serves me correctly was a lawyer, by the way. Generally, it seems, the more fantastic and unlikely the hoax, the easier it is to pull-off.
There is, however, something about hoaxes which is worth noting; that although contemporaries may be fooled, time has a tendency to reveal the obviousness of the hoax: is there anyone today who would even take a microsecond to rebut the assertion that those who merely touched the hem of the cloak of the Emperor Vespasian were cured of whatever palsy was ailing them – yet Suetonius, as perceptive a Roman as you could get, fell for that one.
In my humble opinion and in our own time there have been no shortage of hoaxes both large and small which continue to be swallowed whole.
Marcus D,
Re ‘my husband forced me to have an abortion’,
*Sigh*
This poor woman’s pain is palpable. I can really feel it.
But…notice how (quite rightly) most commenters point out that what SHE did was wrong. She herself feels the guilt. Her husband may have forced her, but SHE did the act. This is a woman with 5 children, and yet the loss of ‘the one that got away’ is eating at her very soul…
Not so long ago, I got hammered here for suggesting that submission in ALL things to one’s husband, if it is contrary to a higher law (God’s) is a bad thing. (But thank you to those commenters who gave me great advice in this matter. And thank God that it remains only a theoretical/intellectual issue for me personally).
Submission of a woman to her husband is good, very good. I concur. In fact, I would go so far as to say that it is the ONLY way to go.
But when the line between submission to God’s law, and submission to the husband who has temporarily ‘fallen’ (where this is easily clear to all concerned, as in this awful case), then a woman must somehow keep to God’s law even if she will displease her husband for a short while.
I think she needs to.
I am not talking about banal things. I am talking about serious moral issues that constitute ‘grave sin’, or ‘mortal sin’ as they are known in canon law.
Some of you may think this kind of situation is rare. In fact I think someone stated so.
I have since learned that it is not.
I hope and pray I never encounter this kind of dilemma, but those people who face it, they are certainly in my prayers.
The biggest problem with this sort of thing is that it is almost always ‘reported’ retrospectively, after the event, as in the case of Mrs. Vicky Pryce, whose case eventually led to the explosion of her family, amidst a national and very highly publicised messy scandal.
Agan I say that this situation is NOT rare, or at least not as rare as one might think. It is simply ‘hidden’ because it is too painful to discuss with the outside world…. until the inevitable ‘explosion’ happens.
These are things I never got to even hear about before I was married. But now, I hear things, I see things…maybe because I get entry into a kind of ‘married women’s club’ that I wasn’t privy to as a single woman? Perhaps…
Sadly, this sort of issue is affecting the very women who ARE trying to be the best they can. These are not women who are the usual ‘subjects’ of the conversation here. These are women who are respectworthy. But something goes terribly wrong…as in this particular case.
They are certainly in my prayers.
But when the line between submission to God’s law, and submission to the husband who has temporarily ‘fallen’ (where this is easily clear to all concerned, as in this awful case), then a woman must somehow keep to God’s law even if she will displease her husband for a short while.
I think she needs to.
I am not talking about banal things. I am talking about serious moral issues that constitute ‘grave sin’, or ‘mortal sin’ as they are known in canon law.
But this is always the case with those that adhere to the letter of the law while completely missing the spirit thereof.
Does God indeed command us to obey the authorities on Earth, irrespective of whether or not those authorities & their edicts conflict with the will of Heaven?
If that’s the case, King David, Daniel, and more importantly, Jesus Christ himself, are abject failures.
The particular issue when it comes to wives, however is that women have the push pull of wanting to be submissive and simultaneously wanting to rebel. If women get out from underneath the authority of men, they go stark raving wild. So submission protects them as well as the larger society.
….the million dollar question is(one that the Bible does not directly address I might add), what is a woman to do if her husband requires her to submit to things that are unlawful or ungodly?
And, even more pressing…….who’s to judge when she’s actually not supposed to submit?
*smells the stink from that freshly opened can of worms*
@Lyn87
There is clearly a conflict between science and a literal interpretation of Genesis 1. Fortunately, a literal interpretation of Genesis 1 is not one of the tenets of Christianity.
The link you provided describes a “young earth” hypothesis: that the earth is about 6,000 years old. Such theories are a painful effort to telescope the whole of geology and cosmology into a timescale that is scarcely older than the Egyptian pyramids, usually with the Flood as the explanation for most of the geological record. Inevitably, such schemes need to accelerate rates of radioactive decay in the earlier stages of history, and even change the speed of light. Ultimately this exercise is self-defeating, because you end up having to believe that the universe is 6,000 years old but the clocks ran a million times faster near the beginning.
If you insist that the world was created 6,000 years ago, it is much more straightforward to believe that God created the geological record of rocks, fossils, and radioisotopes as if the universe had had a much longer history. That starlight was created in transit as if it had originated in remote galaxies billions of years ago. That our DNA was written, complete with endogenous retroviruses, as if we shared a common ancestor with chimpanzees.
Perhaps that is how God created the universe. However, it is impossible to find evidence to distinguish this explanation from a creation billions of years ago followed by, as you call it, “theistic evolution”.
Michel:
Sure, but none of this contradicts any of what I wrote. I thought the idea of evil as “defect” rather than as proper ontological “thing” was pretty universal in Christian philosophy, logically stemming from the idea of God as all-Good and as First Cause. If evil is a real thing which exists because God wills it, then He is not all-Good. If evil is a real thing which exists because something else causes it, or it is uncaused, then God is not First Cause of everything. Therefore evil isn’t a real “thing”, but rather a defect. Running counter to God’s nature is the absence, the defect, of running in line with it.
“The particular issue when it comes to wives, however is that women have the push pull of wanting to be submissive and simultaneously wanting to rebel.”
This idea of ‘woman’s rebellion’ always comes up when the topic of submission of wives arises here on this blog. In the grand scheme of things, I see where you are coming from.
But as I have said time and time again, I am talking about a different breed of woman here. I am talking about women who are already maximally submissive. They don’t do ‘rebellion’. They are very good wives.
The rebellion you are referring to is the type that is found everywhere in secular circles. I suspect we are talking about two very different groups of people. This is where the confusion comes from.
“….the million dollar question is(one that the Bible does not directly address I might add), what is a woman to do if her husband requires her to submit to things that are unlawful or ungodly?”
I think you answer your own question with this:
“But this is always the case with those that adhere to the letter of the law while completely missing the spirit thereof.”
I think the ‘letter of the law’ is indeed this: wives, submit to your husband. On that we are both agreed, no problem, as I state ad nauseum.
And what is the ‘spirit thereof’?
The ‘spirit’ must be: together we walk with God, hand in hand, all the days of our lives. This is what marriage means, no?
So, where either party is being led into sin (and indeed sometimes it is the woman leading the man to sin, but that is not nearly as complicated as the other way round as husbands don’t have the complicating issue of submission to a woman), this is the crux of where the problem lies, the ‘conflict of interest, so to speak’.
Who judges?
Depends on whether you believe women have moral agency or not.
In clear cases like abortion, I would hope that even you can see that it is wrong. And if you can’t, I hope at least that the spiritual torment of this woman says it all for you, as it does for me.
In which case, ‘my husband made me do it!’ is definitely no excuse. In less extreme cases than this one, I would go the submission route, I believe (accompanied by prayer, of course). If in doubt, submit, as we (women/wives) are called to do.
But this case is anything BUT unclear.
The sad thing is, this woman’s marriage is all but over.
Why?
Because she will never forgive her husband for the sin which although SHE committed, she sees as HIS sin.
This is what happened to Vicky Pryce.
This is why the woman we are talking about is SO much in my prayers, and indeed the whole family.
This is such a sad case, I can’t tell you how much it hurts to read it.
Marriage is supposed to be a scarament, a channel of Grace, at least this is what it is supposed to be, for us Catholics.
A temporary insanity on the part of the head of the household should not be allowed to derail the whole household like this.
This is where a wife can come into her own and ‘hold the fort’ until he can take the helm again.
An old woman I know used this analogy when she was explaining to me what marriage is. I listen to the women who are married for many years. In this woman’s case, 55 years and counting. Her husband is also a great mentor for me. It was a great joy for me when they jumped through several hoops to make it to my wedding.
I am not criticising the woman in the OP, as I don’t criticize any other woman in this position. Horrible situation to be in. But I think everyone agrees that she should NOT have had that abortion, including herself.
Time and time again, I see where failures of this magnitude at this important time can lead. It is a clear lesson for me, and other newly married women.
I am slowly beginning to understand that there is a lot more to wifedom that meets the eye…
That ill-defined trait called ‘discernment’. It is oh so important. But it is not an Earthly trait, I don’t think. It really must come from God himself. This is why prayer is crucial. I think prayer will always lead to the moral choice in the end. Even better if both husband and wife pray together. I don’t think this shows ‘weakness’ on the part of the husband. Au contraire…
I have said before how I knew I would marry my husband when on one of our early dates, he took me to a statue of Our Lady at a convent we had visited and said to me ‘Now we say a decade of the rosary…’ He said one part in his language, and I said the other half in English…I loved this display of leadership. Totally Catholic Game, as I call it!
(I must add that this woman wasn’t even accorded the chance to pray had she wanted to – she was basically handed the abortefacient and told to take it NOW. How utterly heart-rending).
Anyhow, I shan’t go on and on about this anymore. The lesson has already been learned. I just wanted to share my personal thoughts about this with those who care, and for whom it is relevant.
Even animal death and plant death? Are you really suggesting that, before the Fall, all animals would have been immortal? After a while, the entire surface of the globe would be covered with live animals, and the entire volume of the ocean would be filled with fish! Are you suggesting that animals didn’t have to eat before the Fall, even though Adam and Eve did? Or, if not, I guess they’re only eating fruits and leaves, since otherwise there would be plant death. But, without plant death, trees will take over and no sunlight will get to plants at lower levels of the ecosystem. I suppose God miraculously keeps them alive?
Actually, Christianity doesn’t teach this kind of nonsense. But just saying…
Biblically-speaking, plants weren’t considered alive. They had no blood and the life is in the blood.
Animals weren’t carnivorous before the Fall. And there’s no reason to assume that animals would have multiplied with no control of their mating. It’s the usual error of reasoning that current post-Fall conditions would necessarily have applied to a pre-Fall world.
@ James K
Fortunately, a literal interpretation of Genesis 1 is not one of the tenets of Christianity.
Unfortunately for your argument, if you take Genesis 1 purely figuratively, then you can also take the entire NT purely figuratively.
Genesis 1 doesn’t require a young earth, even when taken literally. “Day” is defined in Genesis 1 as one cycle of darkness/light, not as 24 hours. The sun wasn’t created until the fourth day; the sun is the clock for the 24-hour day. The length of the 1st three days of Genesis 1 is indeterminate.
Plants were created on the third day and they need the sun, so it was created on the fourth day. Dry land was created prior to plants as dry land is necessary for plants. Water was created straight up.
Animals need plants for food, so plants were created before animals.
The Genesis cosmogony is very straightforward, really, if you don’t try to impose the current context on the original creation.
@theasdgamer
Strangely enough, the fossil record shows that “the water teem[ed] with living creatures” (Genesis day 5) long before “seed-bearing plants and trees on the land that bear fruit with seed in it” appeared (Genesis day 3).
The reason is that early plants were not angiosperms that flower and bear fruit.
Of course, you would be quite right if you were to point out that the author of Genesis 1 was not a botanist, and when he wrote “seed-bearing plants and trees on the land that bear fruit with seed in it” he really meant all plants. But then you would be interpreting the text figuratively, like I am.
For any discussion of wifely submission I always recommend ME? OBEY HIM? by Elizabeth Handford. The woman’s view of submission, written by a Baptist Minister’s wife, with all the relevant Bible sources. Get the second edition.
One thing she makes clear is this very topic of the poor abused wife who is forced, forced I tell you, to commit some terrible sin. Always the wife has lived in rebellion until that very moment when she suddenly becomes a battered, abused submissive wife.
Reminds me of my eldest daughter. Quarrelsome and argumentive every day all day with her husband, until Sunday morning when shew walks into the church. “I am such a submissive wife!”
Let me state right off that I am not interested in all this discussion of the merits and demerits of evolutionary theory versus creationism. It is way off topic. I tried to skim over those comments but they are becoming the bulk of this discussion.
On the issue of God making the rules and then breaking them to perform miracles, which is equally off topic, I do have an opinion. If you study Quantum Physics at all you see that what we take as normally observable reality is just the billions and billions of median values of normal distributions of probability. What normally happens and we observe is just the most probable outcome, out of the infinite possible outcomes. God can choose to select from the extreme tails of the probability distributions if he chooses; without violating the laws of the universe he set down in the beginning. As a thought problem I propose a case of gaseous diffusion. Under normal probability oxygen molecules are uniformly distributed throughout a room due to random motion and diffusion. However, there is nothing in the physical laws of nature that makes this an absolute requirement. It is possible that all the oxygen molecules in a room will all be in one small corner. It is unlikely but well within the laws of nature (QP wise) for all the oxygen to shift to one location causing everyone not in that location to die. God would not have to violate “the rules” he created to do this. If you choose to recognize this as a miracle, then that is your choice. If you choose to deny Devine Intervention and look at is as a random event, then that is your choice too.
OT but very interesting nun the less http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2263518/I-left-love-life-I-thought-I-better-Now-Im-childless-42.html This is what needs to happen more and more with less effort being made to rescue the hypergamous slut. This lady from CAF needs to be left to her self. To save this women is insulting to the women that make good Christian choices. You go girl and enjoy the decline
But as I have said time and time again, I am talking about a different breed of woman here. I am talking about women who are already maximally submissive. They don’t do ‘rebellion’. They are very good wives.
The rebellion you are referring to is the type that is found everywhere in secular circles. I suspect we are talking about two very different groups of people. This is where the confusion comes from.
Oh okay, I gotcha, yes, that wasn’t clear to me.
Question then: the women you refer to, were they raised to be good wives, a la Duggars or homeschoolers, or did they become Christians and then just learn to trust the Word of God when it came to marriage? Or if we’re talking strictly Catholics, is that just an assumed part of the upbringing? I studied Catechism as a child, but grew up Methodist.
I have said before how I knew I would marry my husband when on one of our early dates, he took me to a statue of Our Lady at a convent we had visited and said to me ‘Now we say a decade of the rosary…’ He said one part in his language, and I said the other half in English…I loved this display of leadership. Totally Catholic Game, as I call it!
Ha hAH, Big Dog staked his territory and Little Muffin melted.
It works, folks.
This is what needs to happen more and more with less effort being made to rescue the hypergamous slut. This lady from CAF needs to be left to herself. To save this woman is insulting to the women that make good Christian choices. You go girl and enjoy the decline.
Seconded.
Plus the woman in the article, Karen, even isn’t that good looking. She’s a solid 6.5 at best. And she threw away the perfect setup…life had put the ball right over the net and she missed the alley-oop.
Oh well. YouGoGrrl with your career and cool house and financial security and your cats and your OH YEAH COMPLETELY BARREN WOMB AND MISERABLE MAN-FREE EXISTENCE.
@ James K
Strangely enough, the fossil record shows that “the water teem[ed] with living creatures” (Genesis day 5) long before “seed-bearing plants and trees on the land that bear fruit with seed in it” appeared (Genesis day 3).
Let’s correct this. “The fossil record shows 5h1t.” You read into it whatever the ll34 you like.
There, that fixes it.
Spacetraveller says:
September 9, 2014 at 5:08 am
Some of you may think this kind of situation is rare. In fact I think someone stated so.
I have since learned that it is not.
In western society a wife submitting to her husband in any capacity is rare. So how is it that the abuse of such authority is not rare?
@ theadsgamer,
You are correct, of course. The current state of our understanding of the natural sciences does not permit us to declare that either the Old-Earth theory or the Young-Earth theory is correct. However… since the overwhelming bulk of the “scientific community” interprets everything they see through the “Old” paradigm, it is not surprising that they think that the evidence weighs more on that side. You tend to find what you’re looking for. If not for the materialist paradigm being An Article of Faith (and that’s what is it), and all data were objectively weighed without a bias either way, we would be having a much more fruitful debate.
For example, that list of 101 items I have posted twice contains all sorts of things that mitigate against the “Old” theory. I recall being shown many “definitive proofs” for that worldview, and every single one of them has either since been exposed as a deliberate fraud, or disproved and rejected by secular scientists themselves, or can be legitimately called into question if one discards the a priori materialist paradigm. Every. Single. One.
Anyway, it makes sense that God would have created the universe in mature form – if Adam and Eve were newborns they would have died within days, for example. For a mature Creation there is no need to “speed up the speed of light” to make distant objects visible or account for the apparent size of the Universe. That’s one reasonable possibility, but it’s not required. Regarding the speed of light not being constant: there are some interesting hints that suggest that that may have happened – and still happening right now… hints that are acknowledged by secular scientists (http://www.livescience.com/29111-speed-of-light-not-constant.html). One thought is that light travels faster in space that contains fewer “virtual particles” – and the universe is filled with them. But imagine how fast light would travel if were going into a TRUE void – expanding the edges of the universe itself. The fact is, we don’t know and we never will (it’s not even remotely possible to test it and may never be) but what does seem to be likely is that the speed of light near the edge of the universe (the variable that governs the “top speed” of its expansion), may well be a whole-helluvalot faster than it is here, which means that the universe may be a whole-helluvalot younger and smaller than the current theories that underpin everything from astronomy to evolution require. (On a side note: two physicists at the Max Planck institute have calculated that there “should” be around 100 types of such particles – but fewer than a dozen have been discovered. They posit that the other 90% or so are likely to be too “heavy” to show up in particle accelerators – in other words, we cannot currently built any means of finding them to either confirm or deny there supposition. Not everyone agrees with those two, but it seems clear that there’s a lot more that we don’t know than what we do know. Saying anything definitive based on the current state of our scientific knowledge of Creation at this point is unjustified.)
But either way, the current iteration of the “Big Bang Theory” requires the universe to have undergone a period of rapid expansion (they call it “inflation”) when the leading edge of the universe was moving many times faster than the speed of light. In fact, the entire theory comes apart if that didn’t happen. Yet, we are repeatedly told that nothing can exceed the speed of light… so when anyone declares the Biblical account to be false because the speed of light is an inviolable constant – remind them that the Big Bang Theory has the same problem. If the speed of light is either constant or inviolable then the BBT is wrong and Genesis is called into question (but remember: if there are two possibilities and one is impossible, the other, no matter how unlikely, must be true. Bad news for the BBT). But if the speed of light is not either constant or inviolable, both theories survive that test. Yet James K brought up the speed of light as an inviolable constant to declare Genesis – and Genesis alone – to be incompatible with “science.” In other words, evidence that can point either way is only presented as supporting one view – the materialist view. As I wrote earlier, that’s not science, it’s philosophy – and it is typical for how the other side interprets data and uses those interpretations to dismiss legitimate criticisms.
https://archive.today/h2q4c
@Marcus D,
Interesting article. It is specifically about the Ladies’ Home Journal’s marriage advice column but it sheds some light on the history of marriage counseling in general. The old materialist marriage counseling seemed to have been the correct advice in the sample cases. It is a shame that marriage counselors had it figured out only for their truths to be lost to modern Feminist-approved approaches.
The article mentions again and again that Paul Popenoe (progenitor of the older marriage counseling approach) was a eugenicist. This strikes me as odd because when I think of eugenics I think of Planned Parenthood and Nazi Germany. Where does Popenoe’s goal of functional marriages fit in here?
Some of the sample cases included domestic violence:
That’s the case with all domestic violence if you think about it. It is a symptom of other dysfunctions.
In this quote we see marriage counseling changing:
Honey, God gave you free will as a test… and you failed. Whore.
> Your claim “..nothing today is made with “tiny adjustments over time” by any designer.” is falsified in your own line of work and thus you are dishonestly trying to make this argument about the existence of a designer. It isn’t.
Yeah right BO. It is all just tiny adjustments over time. Right. Try telling that to the IT and Information Security management that they are working too hard and should just let things happen. We will be secure and effective in no time at all!
It is not TENS if it is guided the way modern systems are guided. Natural selection is not a real individual, but a theoretical process. You really need to study AND get out more.
Your big canard is that you oppose abiogenesis, yet it is the required foundation of your religious clinging to TENS. Go for it if that is what makes you feel better, but it is ludicrous. Someone making something is not it “just happening” no matter how many times you claim that.
It is amazing you can keep a job with that kind of illogical thinking.
SirHamster,
> You’re trying to rule out common design because no omnipotent designer would want to do things that way – when human designers use common designs all the time.
That is his illogic. I already gave the example of a painter’s works being similar, but he wants to assert that they must all be different because science. Whatever.
Lyn87,
Arguing with BO is about as effective as nailing Jello to a tree. It won’t work no matter how hard you try! He is determined to sling accusations instead of logic. It could be that the reason some of the YEC “talking points” get used is that they are logical. That is a distant thought for him though, so I doubt he will open his eyes on this earth.
I am not as articulate on it as you are, which is somewhat surprising since I am usually fairly articulate. But I find the arguments lacking in so much logic it always amazes me that otherwise seemingly smart people could hold the views the put forth.
The theistic evolutionists get me even more, since they posit something that is completely unlikely as more likely. I assume that is because they are convinced of the “science” of the whole thing, but it is far from it.
I should also ignore these things more. You were handling it quite well. I do seem to recall that “Liar” post being what finally pushed me into the fray. I may respond to one or two things after this, but I am not going to waste time on a point by point response since he won’t really read it anyway. He is missing a huge amount of logic, but then they don’t train people well in logic today, do they?
monkeywerks,
The problem with training a dog is that it is not a one time thing or even something that can be done only when walking the dog. It must be done continually, over time, to be effective. That is one of the reasons I don’t own a dog now.
James K,
> The evidence for evolution abounds.
Hardly. The evidence that “things change over time” abounds, but little evidence that “this” changed into “that” exists. None at all in fact.
You are saying “things changed so God must have used those same principles to changes fish to humans, for example. You are making an unsupported leap there. Though please correct the record if you are saying differently.
Clearly variety happens. The Designer built a lot of potential for that and I have no problem with it. It is also quite consistent with a YEC view.
I do not have the time now to completely dig into the retrovirus stuff, but I have found all the talkorigins stuff I have read in the past to be lacking in a lot of reality and common sense, with a good measure of handwaving. How do you prove a common ancestor in that case anyway? Were you there? Similar systems get attacked by similar things. No common descent is required.
James K,
You may want to note that the literal 6 days is in Exodus, not just Genesis. That was noted as the reason for the Sabbath being on the 7th day. You have to explain that away as well, though many do that for certain.
BO,
Key Scripture:
[Rom 5:12 KJV] 12 Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned:
Death came by sin (of one man). Do death before that. Plants do not die in that sense, when eaten, people and animals do. They die now Read more of Romans for the context.
That should say “No death before that.”
BradA says, “I should also ignore these things more. You were handling it quite well.”
Actually, I’m very glad that you and few others did. Being “Vox Clamantis in Deserto” gets pretty lonely when nobody jumps in. Normally I’m dealing with multiple opponents, and just keeping up with the back-and-forth can get overwhelming. The fact that I’m not a particularly good typist is an added factor. I would have responded to a few things that I let lie because I saw that you and others addressed them with the same rebuttals I would have used myself. Most people who throw down with me aren’t as smart or educated as BrainyOne, and the fact that he didn’t reveal himself as a Theistic Evolutionist until two days in was exasperating. Arguing against an ambiguous position is maddening, and the case against Theistic Evolution is entirely different than the case against Atheistic Evolution. Who knows? Maybe someone else needed to read the arguments against abiogenesis.
Thanks for the compliment, though – I’ve been doing this for along time… studied it, prayed about it, and taught it. A few years ago I was the adult Sunday School teacher in my church, and I offered to teach Apologetics if the class wanted it. They said they did. I told them I would, but that I was going to give them homework – real homework – and I expected them to do it. I told them that there was no point in me doing it if they were just going to view it as a once-a-week thing, since it can get VERY involved – I told them it was going to be at the Master’s level and I meant it. One of the things I used to do in the military was teach a course that included a lengthy section on formal logic and critical thinking. My students were eligible for Master’s credit from an accredited university if they graduated. I taught the Sunday School class much the same way. We started with a short battery of Learning Styles and cognitive assessments, then I explained the reasons behind why I did that. Then we went straight into a month of Aristotelian logic before we started talking about the science, and by the end we had progressed all the way to Biblical inerrancy with regard to the Resurrection. It was very systematic… and many months long.
It consider it to be a calling. Gotta’ say, though: although I enjoy live teaching, I don’t particularly enjoy this, but I understand that the vast majority of people who read what I write on the internet will rarely if ever comment themselves. I suspect the bulk of my audience is those people. Those people who were sold the same crap you and I were… who never heard of the other side in anything but dismissive hand-waves… who know nothing about the weight of the evidence, or even what it consists of. It’s important for those people to hear an articulate spokesman for the Biblical view who can and does go toe-to-toe with “experts” and NOT. BACK. DOWN.. To not yield an inch without forcing them to meet the same standard of proof they demand for the claims of the Bible. And to expose their hypocrisy when they dismiss one argument that has a 99.99999999999999999% chance of being true – because it cannot be tested by materialist means – then turn around and declare an argument that has a 0.0000000000000001% chance of being true be not only right, but to be unassailable because it could – theoretically, be tested by materialist means, although dozens of “scientists” have may tried and failed.
BradA:
Seriously.
You are still arguing quite dishonestly. You know QUITE WELL that IT and IS people make “tiny adjustments over time” ALL THE TIME as part of the design of software and information security systems and therefore your claim that “nothing today is made with “tiny adjustments over time” by any designer” is falsified IN YOUR OWN LINE OF WORK. You know QUITE WELL that what you were trying to argue is that design doesn’t happen that way today (e.g. with tiny adjustments over time) today, so why think God designed life that way? Rather than admit your claim is falsified, you QUITE DISHONESTLY try to insinuate that I am arguing against the existence of a designer, when the existence of a designer has already been stipulated to.
OK, fine, but then your argument is against those who term my position “theistic evolution“. I’m not interesting in arguing semantics and don’t have a dog in this fight.
I don’t know what you mean by this, but even Creationists admit natural selection occurs; it clearly does, because it has been directly observed. Their argument is by what means the natural variety required for natural selection comes about.
No, it isn’t.
Slinging insults, huh? You are determined to sling accusations rather than logic, then huh? Maybe while you’re at it you can show exactly where I claimed that someone making something is it “just happening”. Oh, guess what, I never said that. It is amazing you can keep a job with that kind of (lack of) reading comprehension, and that kind of intellectual dishonesty.
Aw, poor Brad, so “unfairly” accused. I accuse you of arguing dishonestly because you are doing exactly that, and when called on it, you take refuge in “persecution”. As for YEC talking points, some are logical while others are not. YOU apparently lack the logic to distinguish them. Logic is not equivalent to “agreeing with YEC talking points”, believe it or not. The evidence we have today is overwhelming that a) abiogenesis did not occur and b) the earth and universe are very old. That doesn’t agree with either the current materialist conception of things or YEC. So much the worse for both of them. They both have an a priori view of things, so they will both twist the evidence to support it no matter what. You know, it isn’t only atheists who have been caught in lies; some YECs have done it as well. That’s what an a priori commitment brings you.
YEC “arguments” for a young earth for the most part involve poking holes in the modern scientific conclusion due to anomalous data points. (Guess what? I’ve read them.) And sure, they are there to poke at, because science is most of the time inherently a messy enterprise. Nevertheless that doesn’t provide a good reason to believe a young earth more likely.
Even if that were true (about talkorigins), that would simply mean they are doing a poor job of presenting things, but the evidence stands on its own or it doesn’t.
So, you haven’t even done your homework, you probably don’t even know exactly what an endogenous retrovirus is, but you just “know” that this is not going to provide evidence for common descent; and you accuse everyone else of handwaving and not being “logical”? Your mind is clearly made up even before looking at the evidence.
@ Gunner
Gunner Q says:
September 5, 2014 at 11:46 am
You should have paid more attention to Cail’s preceding paragraph.
Most girls assume the guys at church will be “nice guys”: boring. To attract girls in church, it’s not enough to look nice and be friendly; you have to be overtly alpha so they can’t miss it.
If you are overtly alpha, you will approach women and get their numbers and date them. If you’re a beta you won’t. Women’s flirtations are irrelevant.
Don’t do beta stuff. It’s unattractive.
@ James K
YEC “arguments” for a young earth for the most part involve poking holes in the modern scientific conclusion due to anomalous data points. (Guess what? I’ve read them.)
(Guess what? I have too.) One person’s data is another’s anomalous data. And words and phrases like “science”, “scientific”, “scientist”, and “scientific method” have no intrinsic meaning but really only have rhetorical meaning. Been there, done that, published.
the evidence stands on its own or it doesn’t.
Tsk, tsk. Philosophy done by amateurs is so shoddy. http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/scientific-underdetermination/
@ Brainy One
Oops, should have directed my last comment at Brainy One.
This seems to be winding down. Two things before I go in to the office.
1) Theistic Evolution is not some term I made up, or some esoteric phrase that describes a little-known phenomenon – it is the standard term for the belief that God used / directed macro-evolution, and it has been that way for at least several decades. The earliest use of the term in print I can easily find is from 1974, but it almost certainly predates that, since I can only search for titles, rather than content. In any case, I remember the term from my childhood, and it has been in common usage for at least 40 years – BO’s “ignorance” of the term notwithstanding. Nobody is trying to put BO in some sort of box by calling him a “Theistic Evolutionist” – he is one by definition.
2) The normal way theories are refined is that, when a data point renders a theory untenable, the theory is modified to accommodate it. If the modification requires the total revamping of the theory, we discard it (or most of it) and start anew with what we do know. But that’s only intellectually honest people who do that – not people for whom “Old Universe” is an article of faith. The phrase BO just used to described phenomena that don’t fit today’s theory was “anomalous data points.” Funny, when the amateurish Piltdown hoax was being swallowed hook, line, and sinker by “men of science” nobody thought to call that an “anomalous data point” for Creationism. This is how it works in practice for those true believers: anything that can plausibly be interpreted to NOT immediately outright disprove the prevailing theory is touted as solid evidence that the theory is a good one and that the competing theory is absurd, while the mountain of facts that mitigate against the prevailing dogma (like these 101 items) are just “anomalous data points.”
This is what world-renowned evolutionist Professor Richard Lewontin meant when he wrote the following about “scientists” who are more concerned with preserving the materialist worldview than seeking the truth wherever that search may lead:
BO,
Believe what you want. I am not going to hop around at your command. Talkorigins has a history of BS, so they have to overcome that. The true believers lap it up, but it lacks what it claims to provide.
Kind of ironic that the abbreviation of your name fits.
@theasdgamer:
Bravo!!! You’ve shown you can dishonestly quote someone out of context and give a meaning which was not intended. Obviously the point I was trying to make is that the evidence is the evidence, regardless of where it comes from (e.g. not falling prey to the genetic fallacy). But that doesn’t matter as long as you can score a rhetorical point. And give yourself a big pat on the back for having “refuted” one of those “evilutionists”.
Maybe you can now join the big time:
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/quotes/mine/contents.html
Meanwhile, back to the serious argumentation:
@Lyn:
True, but the new theory (or modification) must do a better job of explaining and/or predicting the data than the old one.
Quite so. That is standard usage. What would you prefer I call them?
But let’s do an example. See, I can “disprove” Newton’s law of gravity. I calculate how long it should take to fall to the floor from a given height. Then I drop a feather from that height. Whoa, guess what, the time is several orders of magnitude longer. (This is PROOF that physicists are intellectually dishonest people for whom Newton’s law of gravity is an article of faith. If they were intellectually honest they would scrap the entire theory and start over with what they did know. They have a data point SEVERAL ORDERS OF MAGNITUDE wrong.) Sure, they might have thought that Galileo’s experiment “proved” that heavier objects fall at the same speed as light objects, but the feather renders this theory “untenable”. (And to prove how dishonest they are, they are calling the feather, a phenomena which doesn’t fit the theory, an “anomalous data point”.)
Well of course the feather is an anomalous data point. But it doesn’t provide justification for completely scrapping Newton’s theory of gravitation. After all, we observe plenty of other light objects which fall much faster than the feather. This means we should investigate further and see if there isn’t something we missed that needs to be added to the theory in order to provide a more accurate description. It does NOT mean we should go back to Aristotle.
Of course not, because it is properly classified as a hoax. Meanwhile, some YECs were promoting the Paluxy River hoax or claiming to have found the Ark of Noah. That’s not an anomalous data point, it’s properly classified as a hoax. Your point is?
Exactly right! Did you notice that not ALL of those 101 items were actually such “anomalous data points” but in fact quite a lot of them were things plausibly interpreted to NOT immediately disprove a young earth (age of oil, age of Mississippi river delta, age of coal, age of trees, etc.) and yet they are touted as solid evidence that the theory is a good one? Meanwhile I suppose Lake Suigetsu in Japan, is for you, an anomalous data point. http://thenaturalhistorian.com/2012/11/12/varves-chronology-suigetsu-c14-radiocarbon-callibration-creationism/
We’ve gone over this point before. Scientific induction involves comparing the likelihood of the data under various theories and tentatively picking the best one on that basis. If YECs would actually make an argument that the likelihood of the data if the earth were young is much larger than the likelihood if the earth were old then I’d listen. But they don’t. Because they know there are plenty of problems with YEC: the starlight problem, the radioactive decay problem (if speeded-up radioactive decay is the reason why we see the mother/daughter ratios we do, everyone would’ve fried), the fossil problem (sorry, appealing to the Flood is just hand-waving), and others.
And again, if the response is, one probably wouldn’t arrive at a young earth if not for the Bible, but we believe the Bible to be the revealed Word of God (through other means) and therefore believe the earth to be young, that’s fine with me; we’ll have to leave the debate on the Bible for another day.
@ TBO
Bravo!!! You’ve shown you can dishonestly quote someone out of context and give a meaning which was not intended.
Bravo!!! You’ve shown that you can assume divine prerogative and see the heart!!! Maybe you should make your intent clearer….Your feminine shaming reframing attempt fails.
Obviously [not to me] the point I was trying to make is that the evidence is the evidence, regardless of where it comes from (e.g. not falling prey to the genetic fallacy). But that doesn’t matter as long as you can score a rhetorical point. And give yourself a big pat on the back for having “refuted” one of those “evilutionists”.
I’m assuming that you mean “data” when you say “evidence”. No, the data is never just the data. There’s always an interpretive framework applied to the data. When two opposing frameworks claim that the same data refutes the opposing framework, we have…[cue drumroll] Science! [Cue applause and dramatic music here.]
Not really concerned about refuting anyone…more into clarity and reason. If you want to keep the conversation free of rhetoric, avoid using rhetorical words like “science”, “scientific”, “scientists”, etc.
@ TBO
Scientific induction involves comparing the likelihood of the data under various theories and tentatively picking the best one on that basis.
Actually, “comparing the likelihood of the data under various theories and tentatively picking the best one on that basis” is called “Theory Choice” in Philosophy of Science. PDBAISS (Philosophy done by…)
Too easy,
My point is that neither Paluxy River nor Noah’s Ark was ever in any science textbook I ever saw, while the laughably-transparent Piltdown Hoax was… for MORE THAN FORTY YEARS. Ernst Haeckel’s drawings were exposed as obviously fraudulent in 1864, but they still appear in “science” textbooks that are currently in use! Really, it’s been 150 years, can somebody get on that one of these days? Not only did those hoaxes make their way into “science” textbooks, but “scientists” were touting them as proof-positive that some sort of unguided macro-evolution was beyond serious dispute, and used to denigrate and ridicule anyone who dared to question the prevailing orthodoxy. If the evidence was so “strong” back when I was a child – strong enough to declare that the case for evolution was closed – then why has every single bit of that “evidence” been exposed as a hoax, or rejected outright, or come under legitimate scrutiny? This isn’t a few “anomalous data points” on the fringes of the matter – this is every single brick in the foundation of the theory you espouse. If “scientists” cannot manage to get drawings that have been known to be fraudulent since Abraham Lincoln was President out of textbooks that are being used to indoctrinate innocent children right this moment, why in the world should anyone have any faith when “scientists” make any pronouncement that “just so happens” to fit This Week’s Theory? Trust has to be earned – and doubly so when it has been so cavalierly squandered – and the members of the so-called “scientific” community need to do a FAR better job of policing their own ranks than they currently do if they want serious people to take them seriously again. Even peer-review is under heavy fire – one technical publishing house alone had to pull 120 peer-reviewed papers when it was found that they were gibberish written by computers that randomly inserted technical terms into sentences. And that’s just two publications from a single publisher over six years. There are literally hundreds of such journals – it is no exaggeration to think that thousands, or even tens of thousands of “scientific” papers published in peer-reviewed journals in the past two decades might simply be computer-generated gibberish. And now think about what that says about how well even the legitimate articles were vetted. Starting right now, every single “Scientific” journal and textbook ought to have this on the cover for the next several years:
THAT would be a step in the right direction – but it will never happen, of course.
____________________________
You’re making my point for me. When guys like me, and the guys who compiled that list, see data that does not distinctly favor one theory over the other, we say “this, but not necessarily that.” But that courtesy is NEVER returned, even when a datum fits the “Young Earth Theory” far better than the “Old Earth Theory.” How many times do so-called “scientists” point to data that could be legitimately seen either way as evidence for the “Old” theory? If you were on my side of the debate you would discover that it happens all the time – it is the usual response. James K did it just yesterday by pointing to the “speed of light dilemma” as evidence for your position. I correctly pointed out that it’s at least as big a problem for the “Old” theory as for the “Young” theory. I don’t expect you to police everyone’s comments, but now that I’ve pointed it out to you: are you willing to disagree with him on that – right here and right now – or does he get a pass because he’s on your side? For that matter, Exfernal feebly attempted to insult my intelligence at the start of this debate because I believe in a Supernatural First Cause – and you have since admitted to believing that as well… yet your only response was to take issue with me for asking him to provide the same type of evidence he demanded.
Again, the Bible has an unblemished record – while even “science” textbooks and peer-reviewed technical journals are notoriously filled with fraud… and that doesn’t even include all the things “scientists” are wrong about without even realizing it because their knowledge is too incomplete to support their conclusions.
Drat, my embedded link didn’t work. Let me try it again
Even peer-review is under heavy fire – one technical publishing house alone had to pull 120 peer-reviewed papers when it was found that they were gibberish written by computers that randomly inserted technical terms into sentences.
In case that doesn’t work:
http://www.nature.com/news/publishers-withdraw-more-than-120-gibberish-papers-1.14763
I have been enjoying the debate here between Lyn87 and The Brainy One; I won’t say who I think the victor (on points?) is and in any case that would merely reveal my own prejudice or prior opinion – and my view is not I think of any interest, not even especially to me. It did however prompt me to look at some of the debates between the usual suspects that have been uploaded to YouTube.
I have to say that some of the scientific debaters make me cringe: they often appear to have exactly the same traits of which they mockingly accuse their opponents, but worse: arrogance, snark and faith on a massive scale (because another scientist or politician told them). One only has to read the writings of former scientists and philosophers (Aristotle, Roger Bacon, D’Holbach to name just three) to see how wrong-headed scientists can be even as in the case of D’Holbach he berates the believer – no, Baron, just because Aristotle think there is an Ether does not make it true – at least no Ether is the present view. It would be most unlikely that the current crop of scientists will fear much better and do not so many scientific concepts look so similar to religious tenets – Big Bang for instance looks to me to bear more than a passing similarity to Creation – Christians are accused of cherry-picking but is that not rather similar to scientists happily adopting the latest fashion in scientific thought. One scientist in particular who on certain subjects is (in my view) as gullible as they come was holding forth as to the in-appropriateness of a Mormon becoming your President – and for just that reason. Grand Inquisitor was surely the profession to which that scientist might have been better suited as heresy is hunted down and snuffed out. Going glossy-eyed at the thought of nature seems to me to be sentimental dross, but each to their own. Whether believer or non-believer we are all humans and thus can not without a skyhook escape our human-nature, yet the scientists often give a rather Mr Spock-like impression that they are above and beyond normal human responses even as they in the next breath demonstrate the worst of human prejudices. Most scientists accept scientific dogma in exactly the same way a seminarian learns the Bible or Catechism – that is to say, by rote.
I realise it is heresy to say so, but some of us are left cold by the vastness of space, the incomprehensibility of quantum physics and the gapiness as well as the political correctness of evolutionary biology as it applies to humans – as well as being bored by the concepts of the various branches of Mathematics – and regard those who get-off on such stuff as very weird.
Personally, I am with Vaughan-Williams (an agnostic despite being the composer of much fine church music) who when asked, said that he trusted after his death he would turn into pure music. The Universe is then not filled with Maths or quarks or Muons but hopefully ‘sweet sounds that delight and do not hurt’. If post mortem I am hearing Mahler I am obviously in Hell – now that would be a fate worse than death.
@BradA:
I find his lack of response telling. But PhD in physics means I should defer to his opinion on what God would do, I guess.
@Lyn87:
Have been appreciating your posts. They certainly are master-level analyses in clarity and detail.
Grew up thinking “evolution” was a serious threat to my faith that needed careful study to contend with. Was surprised to dig a little and find it a paper tiger. A bit like preparing for a shooting war and then finding your opponents are only armed with water balloons.
This was the best they could offer … bluster and deception, even while claiming the mantle of rationality and evidence-based thinking. Tell the tree by its fruits.
There has been quite a bit of effort here “rebuilding the mound”.
In the meantime, I have read some of the pages linked from http://creation.com/age-of-the-earth and found them interesting.
Those pages report several scientific results that, if reproducible, would not only earn their authors the Nobel Prize, but overturn 200 years of science.
Why do the authors not submit their work to a conventional scientific journal, and book a ticket to Stockholm?
It is not that the journals will not consider work that breaks the scientific consensus: for example, “Nature” published a controversial paper on homeopathy by Jacques Benveniste.
Nor do the authors shun publicity, and work only for the glory of God: their own books, DVDs and lectures, and their disputes with conventional scientists, make that much clear.
I picked a page from http://creation.com/age-of-the-earth on a scientific topic that I have studied professionally, and followed it up to its source, an article in the format of a scientific paper. I prefer not to say which one, because I do not want to get into an argument with its authors.
The authors do not submit their work to conventional scientific journals, in spite of the possibility of honors, prizes, and the pleasure of demonstrating that conventional science is wrong and Young Earth Creationism is right. Why do they not take up the challenge?
The key words are in the third paragraph above, and are “if reproducible”. The paper that I examined does not describe its experimental procedures, even though its results hinge on the exclusion of chemical contamination. A respectable scientific journal would return the paper, with a recommendation that the authors add a careful description of their measurement and laboratory techniques.
It seems to me that the authors do not care whether their work is accepted into the scientific mainstream, or even whether it deserves such acceptance, because their purpose is something different. Millions of people are in denial about modern science, for reasons that are both intensely personal, and quite unnecessary to Christian faith. What the pseudoscientists are doing is selling denialists plausible denial. “Selling” in every sense of the word: some of them are making a good living from it.
Why do the authors not submit their work to a conventional scientific journal, and book a ticket to Stockholm?
Where is your evidence that they have not?
If your evidence for that is that they aren’t published in a scientific journal… congratulations on presenting a circular argument.
What the pseudoscientists are doing is selling denialists plausible denial. “Selling” in every sense of the word: some of them are making a good living from it.
Your willingness to label people “pseudoscientists” and “denialists” does not make them wrong. Many manosphere blogs are labeled “misogynists” or “Neanderthal”, but that does not change their accurate observations on the nature and behavior of modern feminist culture.
What does it say about the case for evolution when its supporters regularly rely on namecalling in lieu of pointing out the “airtight” case for evolution? Since it’s so obvious, it should be trivial to demolish the counter-arguments – that is the path of least resistance if evolution were undeniably true!
@ James K
Why do the authors not submit their work to a conventional scientific journal, and book a ticket to Stockholm?
They have published in a research journal–The Creation Research Society Quarterly.
It is not that the journals will not consider work that breaks the scientific consensus: for example, “Nature” published a controversial paper on homeopathy by Jacques Benveniste.
There aren’t Committees of Correspondence set up to get journal editors fired for publishing papers on homeopathy. Creationism is another matter. There are gatekeepers to prevent creationist articles from getting published in most major journals.
I notice that you use the word “conventional” a lot. I suspect that your usage is rhetorical in nature. I’d prefer the term “majority favoring evolution” to make clear what you mean and get away from rhetoric.
Millions of people are in denial about modern science
I think that you are doing philosophy badly. You are in denial about modern philosophy of science (i.e., sort of being a crank).
What the pseudoscientists are doing is selling denialists plausible denial. “Selling” in every sense of the word: some of them are making a good living from it.
More anti-philosophical nonsense and mixing in an ad hominem to boot. Yes, the argument must be unsound if people advocating it are making money from advocating it. lol
The challenge is quite simple – reproduce the results of the science experiments reported by young-earth creationists, and you will win the Nobel Prize.
The challenge is quite simple – reproduce the results of the science experiments reported by young-earth creationists, and you will win the Nobel Prize.
Which ones are you talking about? You’re being deliberately vague. Which YEC experiments do you think is Nobel Prize worthy if true, AND that you think is irreproducible?
Note that most YEC arguments are not, “this proves the earth is young”, but “this contradicts Old Earth assumptions but is compatible with a Young Earth”. Ultimately, Old/Young Earth is a historical claim, and you can’t use scientific experiments to determine historical fact, any more than you can prove that Lincoln was president with the scientific method.
In the spirit of demanding the same level of proof that evolutionists require on “Young Earth” theorists:
My challenge to James K is also simple: reproduce the results of scientific experiments that demonstrate the essential elements of the materialistic paradigm. Here are six that popped into my head:
1) Something coming into existence from nothing (or there’s nothing to go “Bang” in the first place).
2) Matter exceeding the speed of light (required by the BBT for the formation of large astrological objects.)
3) Fill a beaker with “dark matter” (to account for all the missing mass of the Universe required for the formation of large astrological objects).
4) Spontaneous Generation – although you may prefer the term “abiogenesis” (required for life to emerge in a previously-sterile Universe).
5) Actual, no kidding cross-phylum macro-evolution (required to turn simple creatures into more complex ones).
6) Symbiosis arising in a complex inter-related system where it did not exist before and is necessary for each element of that system to survive).
Let us know when you’ve got that done… or even one of them.
7) Get Mr Higgs to bring a beaker with his Boson.
Opus says:
September 11, 2014 at 1:47 pm
7) Get Mr Higgs to bring a beaker with his Boson.
Careful now, Opus. I’m sure some Royal Navy bosun could be persuaded to smash a beaker for a few quid, and that would be more than enough for certain individuals to proclaim the “Ancient Age of the Universe” (accurate to four digits, no doubt) to be thereby proved beyond doubt. Add in some technical-sounding gibberish randomly generated by a computer to get the article past peer-review and into a “Scientific Journal of Quality,” and next thing you know someone will have to fly to Stockholm to pick up the Nobel Prize for Physics… and a check. And although someone will quickly point out that a boson and a bosun are two different things entirely, he will be denounced as a “Science Denier,” and “science” textbooks will proclaim the “truth” for the next 150 years, by which time another similarly-contrived piece of data will be ready to take its place.
And although someone will quickly point out that a boson and a bosun are two different things entirely, he will be denounced as a “Science Denier,” and “science” textbooks will proclaim the “truth” for the next 150 years, by which time another similarly-contrived piece of data will be ready to take its place.
We will always have the Chewbacca defense.
“Why would a Wookiee, an 8-foot-tall Wookiee, want to live on Endor, with a bunch of 2-foot-tall Ewoks? That does not make sense! But more important, you have to ask yourself: What does this have to do with this case? Nothing. Ladies and gentlemen, it has nothing to do with this case! It does not make sense! Look at me. I’m talkin’ about Chewbacca! Ladies and gentlemen, I am not making any sense! None of this makes sense! If Chewbacca lives on Endor, you must accept that Evolution is true science! “
I certainly found some of those 101 points of interest. I will consider them further later. In particular I find interesting the question as to why given that there have been humans for about 200,000 years agriculture only arose apparently 10,000 years ago? Of course one might say the same for say Shakespeare or The Beatles, but even so. Then there is the intriguing question of whether and where cities were flooded (and remain underwater) post ice-age. The danger is of course that one does not want to then go to the other extreme – that is to say, ‘aliens built the pyramids’ new age stuff.
Inadvertently, the Creationists are I think posing some interesting questions – the sort of question materialists scoff at – and questions are I find more interesting than answers.
@SirHamster
Which ones are you talking about?
Look through http://creation.com/age-of-the-earth for experiments that claim to prove a young earth – for example carbon-14 measurements on ancient specimens.
Note that most YEC arguments are not, “this proves the earth is young”, but “this contradicts Old Earth assumptions but is compatible with a Young Earth”.
If only this were true! Many articles cannot resist waxing lyrical about Noah’s Flood.
@Lyn87
Whoa! Now you’re moving the goalposts. Evolution by natural selection covers the development of living organisms from the first cell to the present day. This covers your (5) and (6) but not the other questions.
Most scientists will admit, for example, that they do not understand why there is something rather than nothing. Many scientists have religious faith, because they know that science is a box of tools, and they find that their toolbox helps them to understand the Creator, not abolish Him.
You might have heard the phrase “Theory of Everything”, usually as a description of a scientific goal. It is a goal – meaning that we haven’t got a Theory of Everything now. In other words, there are still a lot of things that science does not understand. Perhaps there always will be.
James K,
If you perceive the goalposts as having been moved, perhaps it is because you are surprised at where you put them when I asked you to use the same ones you asked us to use.
And although you claim “Evolution covers… questions 5 and 6,” surely even you understand the logical fallacy known as “begging the question” – assuming the conclusion. You asked us to (and I’m quoting you here) “reproduce the results of scientific experiments that demonstrate”… (our position). In return, I merely asked you to meet your own standard with regard to your position… and the very best response you could muster was to make a statement that assumes the conclusion: the question amounted to, ‘Using the same standard you demand that I meet, demonstrate that evolution covers points 5 and 6,” and your response was, “Evolution covers… points 5 & 6.”
Apparently you think that your unsupported statements are now definitive. Can I play, too? How about this then?… “Special Creation answers everything.”
There – I’m glad we got that settled.
What? You demand more than my simple declaration? Guess what? I demand more than that from you as well. Seriously, I gave you six options, just pick one of them and link me the scientific experiment to demonstrates it. But we both know you can’t because no such experimental results exist.
And you know good and well that anyone would could demonstrate the results of a scientific experiment that shows that Evolution could answer either 5 or 6 would win the Nobel Prize before the ink was dry on the final draft, and probably end up with his picture on the 20-pound note as well.
Is that all you’ve got?
Look through http://creation.com/age-of-the-earth for experiments that claim to prove a young earth – for example carbon-14 measurements on ancient specimens.
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/c14.html
“So, it looks like in-situ production of new 14C is the best-supported hypothesis”
Does this mean anything to you? It means that people with an Old Earth/atheist/evolutionary PoV did not dispute the C14 measurements, but appealed to an alternative explanation for its presence.
The only example you pointed at has already been accepted by YEC opponents as a reproducible fact in 2002, 12 years ago. Was this the best example you found in all of the “irreproducible” YEC experiments you had issue with?
SH: Note that most YEC arguments are not, “this proves the earth is young”, but “this contradicts Old Earth assumptions but is compatible with a Young Earth”.
———————
If only this were true! Many articles cannot resist waxing lyrical about Noah’s Flood.
The article you linked compares the consistency of scientific evidence with a Noah’s Flood model versus a uniformitarian model. The article does not argue, “Noah’s Flood happened, therefore the Earth is young”. Many YECs would believe that Noah’s Flood did happen, but that does not make their work unscientific.
What, specifically, do you think is wrong with a reference to Noah’s Flood? You may think it is self-evident, but I find no chain of logic that supports such a conclusion.
@Lyn87:
You’re jumping to conclusions. I meant that (5) and (6) are fair questions, the others are expanding into other subjects. To attempt answers:
(5) Cross-phylum macro-evolution has not occurred for a long time. Modern phyla appear to have originated in the Cambrian Explosion, more than 500 million years ago. As far as I know, the phenomenon is not understood.
(6) The evolution of symbiosis – I’m not sure what you’re looking for. Please give an example.
@SirHamster:
Re: carbon 14 – it is a pity then that the YEC papers that I read dismiss the alternative explanations of the 14C. If the results are compatible after all with an old earth, it only goes to show that YEC papers published in non-journals cannot be trusted.
Correction:
In my post at 1:24 pm I referred to astrological objects. Obvious I meant astronomical objects.
To the extent that is deals in things can be measured and observed, Astronomy is a science, while astrology – like evolution – is an irrational faith-based belief system.
My apologies for any confusion.
@SirHamster:
Note that the 14C “evidence” is also prominently listed on http://creation.com/age-of-the-earth
If as you say there are valid “old-earth” explanations for the 14C, this supports the idea that sites like creation.com are disingenuous, and the purpose of the non-peer-reviewed “science” that they report is to provide “plausible denial”.
If “old-earth” theorists would stop claiming that everything from aardvarks to zebras was “PROOF-POSITIVE THAT THE EARTH IS EXACTLY 4.54 BILLION YEARS OLD – AND ONLY SCIENCE DENIERS BELIEVE OTHERWISE,” and refusing to permit alternate explanations into mainstream “scientific” journals (while printing thousands of articles that are literally computer-generated gibberish), and then having the audacity to use that as “evidence” that Creation Science can’t pass peer review…
… then maybe scientific (not “scientific”) organizations on our side of the debate wouldn’t have to generate what you think of as “plausible deniability”. Our side has to deny your claims, because it is your side that continues to make claims that data that can support either theory are evidence for yours alone.
Note that the 14C “evidence” is also prominently listed on http://creation.com/age-of-the-earth
Uh, yeah. You said it was an “irreproducible” experiment. I provided a critical response that demonstrated that opponents thought it was reproducible 12 years ago. Since they have a strong interest in disproving the result, their silence on that point demonstrates the weakness of your criticism.
Maybe you’re confused about what the creation.com webpage is claiming. You don’t reproduce conclusions, you reproduce results. The reproducible result is that C14 is detected in fossils. That is a scientific observation, evidence that can be used to guess at historical reality.
That observation can then be explained by various historical theories. Old Earth theories must appeal to contamination to explain the presence of C14. Young Earth theories do not. Depending on how widespread C14 is present in various fossils, the contamination theory may not be a very good fit for the scientific evidence.
If as you say there are valid “old-earth” explanations for the 14C, this supports the idea that sites like creation.com are disingenuous, and the purpose of the non-peer-reviewed “science” that they report is to provide “plausible denial”.
You do not understand how to handle scientific evidence and historical theories. You do not understand the difference between scientific and historical claims. You are unqualified to criticize anyone’s scientific credentials.
This is the best you have to offer? Like I said earlier, water balloons.
Just one question here… Is there anyone posting on this thread who’s made a professional-level study of the Earth that’s pro-YEC/anti-evolution? (I’m defining this as went to the effort of getting a degree or two in Geology and working in that field for a living, as I have done and do.)
@Luke:
I am a scientist (Physics and materials science), but I’ve drunk the mainstream kool-aid. If you are a professional geologist with a YEC viewpoint, I would be interested to hear your 2¢.
What is the best geological evidence for a young earth?
@ Lyn87
Astronomy is a science, while astrology – like evolution – is an irrational faith-based belief system.
More hack philosophy. Really, this is very sad.
Some random physicist spouting off about creationists being science-deniers: “I’m a physicist; therefore I’m expert in philosophy of science.”
Uh, no, you’re not. You’re out of field.
I think there was some other scientist (in economics) who was also spouting off about evolution.
James, I apologize for writing my post above poorly. I am not a young-Earth creationist, instead also finding the conventional explanation for the variety and distribution of species the one the most likely to be correct. If there is any significant piece of evidence for an Earth that is only a few thousand years old, I’ve never heard of it.
James K writes,
If the results are compatible after all with an old earth, it only goes to show that YEC papers published in non-journals cannot be trusted.
Again, two can play this game. Just one publishing company that produces two peer-reviewed publications (in other words, the tiniest tip of the iceberg), published more than 120 “peer-reviewed” papers that were actually computer-generated gibberish over a six-year period. The problem is not just with that one publisher, either. There were certainly thousands, and possibly tens of thousands of such “gibberish papers” published in the past two decades. And if the screening process is so lax that literal gibberish makes it through the peer-review process, how good is the screening process in general?
Q) So what does THAT go to show?
A) It goes to show that Old-Earth papers in peer-reviewed journals cannot be trusted either.
Houston, we have a problem.
_________________________________
As for your replies:
(5) Cross-phylum macro-evolution has not occurred for a long time. Modern phyla appear to have originated in the Cambrian Explosion, more than 500 million years ago. As far as I know, the phenomenon is not understood.
Let me fix that for you. Cross-phylum macro-evolution has not occurred… – period. If you have evidence of the same caliber that you demand of creationists, I’d love to see it. So would the Nobel Committee, no doubt. It is not accurate to say that this is “not understood.” It is, however, accurate to say that it is pure speculation. Stop asking for us to provide a level of proof that you cannot meet yourself. I’ll use your own words to ask you again: “Reproduce the results of the science experiments that demonstrate”… cross-phylum macro-evolution. That was the nature of your “challenge” to our conclusions. Can you not meet it yourself? If not, at least be willing to admit that you demand a higher level of proof for things you want to believe than for things you do not want to believe.
(6) The evolution of symbiosis – I’m not sure what you’re looking for. Please give an example.
Sure: reproduction in sexually-dimorphic species requires a male and a female, each with highly specialized internal structures of unimaginable complexity, and each only works in conjunction with the other. Any significant change to either one renders both set of organs useless for reproduction. My challenge is simple, “Reproduce the results of the science experiments that demonstrate”… the spontaneous rise of sexual dimorphism.
Not speculation, mind you. Not, “It might have happened this way,” either. Not “It is poorly understood.” Show me the results of the experiments or admit that you don’t have any.
It always amazes me the way true believers have had so much trouble with negating Dawkins. Arguing as Lyn87 does merely leaves one open to the charge of God of the Gaps, where the ultimate position is that when one is not buggering the science one resorts to Godditit.
There is a much better way to deal with Dawkins: by observing that he is a true believer. Dawkins is a glorified schoolmaster who at the age of sixteen swallowed Darwin whole – much as many another would have swallowed Marx or Freud – or Jesus. As I went to just the sort of school that Dawkins (and Hitchens) attended and as a boarder, I know exactly his arrogant type, indeed I see that the standard A’ level guide to Biology as available in Waterstones was written by one of my former classmates; now he was a nice chap who even looked a bit like Dawkins now I come to think of it but hardly super intelligent and neither is Dawkins. He (Dawkins) has a vested interest in augmenting his teachers (now pension) income with book revenue – and all his books are as with so many authors, rehashes of the first one. That first book was The Selfish Gene where (I am told) he invents the concept of the Meme. The Meme is fiction and has no more reality than The Unicorn – it is what we would previously call word-of-mouth, but he has reified the concept much as the Christians he berates anthropomorphise concepts of the Deities. Genes (and Memes) are genetic Calvinism.
Behind his well-modulated Oxford accent (do not be fooled) he is a paid up liberal of the Marxist Feminist (even though he upset Becky Watson) type – a useful idiot in fact – whose frequent Twitter outbursts are a source of embarrassed amusement. I need not go into all the subjects on which he reveals gullibility or prejudice – you will have to work it out for yourselves. Consider the way he waxes lyrical about the eye – clearly if the eye were wired differently he would love that instead much as were he a designer he would be gushing over Heath Robinson’s contraptions. His explanation of the eye is thus tautologous – it is wonderful because it is wonderful: this is Pantheism – nature worship. He is rude and arrogant with the unsophisticated but cowers when faced with someone smarter than himself – like Paxman.
He is your typical modern Englishman – a denier of the OT god but a believer in Jesus and imbued with the rituals of The Established Church – he even sounds like an Anglican Archbishop, most of whom have no greater belief in the OT than he does, and a Muslim-basher – the only acceptable sort of racism – which is otherwise the number one moral crime in England. A man who wrote as he did ‘Atheists for Jesus’ would do far better to keep quiet. To listen to Dawkins you would think that Jesus was Emeritus Professor of Science at the University of Nazareth (much as women like Pugsley and Erikson recreate Jesus to suit their own agenda) He denies in Creationists the very processes he accepts of Biology; thus he berates the Bible for being a random collection of books yet seeks to defend the randomness of the evolution of the eye. He judges God for testing Abraham and sees Jesus as merely a scapegoat yet when faced with some anomaly of evolution reverts to a just-so approach. I can only recommend the late David Stove (the man who wrote The Intellectual Inferiority of Women) and his Darwinian Fairytales for those who want to see Dawkins made to look really stupid. He (Dawkins) sees Jesus as merely a thoroughly decent chap (and probably English) but this is no less self-centred than Dianna E Anderson seeing Jesus as a happiness-machine. Dawkins has a literalness (and lack of nuance) in relation to the Bible yet he mocks the believer for a similar literalness. Dawkins regards original sin as hideous and demeaning and yet has surely never objected to the fact that even now the Germans (not then born) are paying tribute to Israel for the events of seventy years ago and best of all in justifying evolution though one can, as he says only see traces, (and not the process) he is saying pretty much what any believer would say. The mans a twat – and I say that as someone who does not believe.
The best take down I have seen of Dawkins came from Terry Eagleton. Why I wonder do you Americans welcome middle-class English public-schoolboys like Dawkins and Hitchens to debate religion in your Universities? Have you no one better of your own?
Oops,
The sentence that reads “Can you not meet it yourself? If not, at least be willing to admit that you demand a higher level of proof for things you want to believe than for things you do not want to believe.”
Should read, “Can you not meet it yourself? If not, at least be willing to admit that you demand a higher level of proof for things you do not want to believe than for things you want to believe.”
I wrote it backwards in my haste and didn’t catch it until just now. Sadly, even written backwards it is still more reliable than peer-reviewed papers for the “Old Earth” theory… at least what I wrote is not computer-generated gibberish or pure unsupported speculation.
@ Gunner Q
Please do email me. My husband and I can look at a photo and give you a bit of advice, but only if you feel comfortable. The issue with game and pick up artistry is not that it doesn’t work, but that it is generally to get easy girls/sex.
As an illustration, this is how my husband “picked me up.” I was out with my girlfriends at our favorite live music venue with the best dance floor on Halloween dressed very very very PG. At the free bachata lesson, he made sure to position next to me so that he was my partner. Later in the night he found me again, and asked me to dance. We then merged our groups and all switched up dancing together the rest of the night. After randomly meeting a couple times over the course of 3 months, I gave him my number, and done. I believe the line to get said number was similar to “May I have your number? You are a rare girl, and unlike the rest of the women here. I will never lie to you.” A bit odd, but he is overly serious at times.
He was straight with me from the first date, he was looking for a very rare type of girl to marry and have a family. He saw me dressed modestly and being friendly but not flirtatious in a club atmosphere, and thus decided I was trustworthy. He also, probably on the second date, discussed his ideas of submission, marital debt, and children. That 100% worked for me. A man with a plan? Perfect. The fact he had a pedophile mustache and no hair was frankly not that important to me. Although in the first picture we took together on Halloween he does look unbelievably sketchy!
Alpha/Beta are useful, but not the end all be all, as each woman finds “alpha” different! For me, it was quite simply, knows what he wants, says what he wants, goes after what he wants. Period. And he has clear boundaries that he communicated to me, and if I cross them… I am out of his life forever. Period. Because of that, really nothing he does is Beta in my eyes because he does what he does to express himself, not to fulfill my needs (although he does).
I cannot describe how fortunate I am to have found him.
@Lyn87
I’ve not followed the entire argument, but one small question, why is this so important to you? The way in which God made things seems to me to be entirely unimportant compared to the why. I couldn’t care less if we popped into existence or two chimp men were given souls after billions of years or evolution.
The only thing that seems to fit is that God made the universe with physical rules and order. He made natural law (morality), with spiritual rule and order. Can he subvert that? Well, perhaps. We believe and can see miracles happen, although perhaps it is due to processes we still do not know anymore than St. Peter would understand an electric car.
Either way, science, theology, and philosophy are very separate fields and don’t do well mixed together. It’s the first rule in understanding, how, what why, where, who. Separate questions, separate answers, separate thought processes, put together they make a whole.
@ Opus
Props for your nuanced, well-reasoned comments.
Re: Dawkins
The reason to debate Dawkins is for marketing. A debate with an institution like Dawkins will be much better attended than a debate with Billy Bob Hawkins, Ph.D. (not a real person)
Dawkins reads the Bible woodenly, rather than plainly. Plain reading assumes taking the writer’s context into account, which is something that Dawkins is allergic to or is just too lazy to do. Wooden reading applies the reader’s context in a literal sense. Likely, Dawkin’s arrogance also figures into his illiteracy, as in “those religious yokels are too stupid to take seriously, so the Bible is equally stupid and I don’t need to bother really trying to understand the historical/cultural context”.
Re: true believers
True believers have a habit of doing the same thing as Dawkins WRT reading the Bible from their own context or a Divine context rather than from the author’s. For example, they assume that a day in Genesis 1 necessarily means a “24 hour period of time”, which is a modern assumption. However, the Hebrews understood that the sun determined the number of hours in a day and that the sun wasn’t created until day 4, so assuming that a day necessarily meant a “24 hour period of time” prior to the sun having been created was absurd. (BTW, I am agnostic as regards the age of Creation.) In Jewish practice, you see that their days of observance always begin at sunset, in line with the Genesis 1 definition of “day” as a cycle of darkness followed by light.
@theasdgamer
Silly man, mustn’t listen to the Jews talk about what the bible means as if they wrote it! It magically flew down from Heaven and was translated directly into the Queen’s English.
Opus,
I enjoyed your take-down of Dawkins. We have a gentleman in the U.S. named Ben Stein who you have probably never heard of over there. He’s pretty famous around here. He’s was classically educated and attended some of our most prestigious schools back when that used to mean something. He’s a syndicated columnist of the conservative persuasion, a trained barrister (as you would say), and a comedic actor of moderate renown. He is not a true believer either way, but he, like you, noticed all the “just-so” pronouncement by guys like Dawkins, and parroted by guys like BrainyOne and James K. So he made a documentary about their strident refusal to consider legitimate criticisms of their theories and their remarkable success in silencing their opponents by denying them a place at the table… and one of the people he interviewed was Dawkins. It would not be an exaggeration that within a few minutes Stein was showing that – if anything – evolution runs in reverse, since he made Dawkins sound like a chattering monkey.
Anyway, I have to object to your assertion that my position opens me up to the weaknesses of the “God of the Gaps” model. I’m no fan of GOTG either, and have occasionally asked fellow commenters to stop “helping me” if that’s all they can contribute. We really haven’t gotten into the science very much at all here yet. I have a whole barrel-full of science that I haven’t even cracked the seal on yet, except for the link that I provided earlier that shows that much of the data that is touted as “proof” for the “Old Earth” Theory actually works just as well for the “Young Earth” theory, and that quite a bit of it renders the “Old Earth” theory highly suspect, if not outright untenable.
I’m brought back to basic logic and the Law of the Excluded Middle. Sometimes there just isn’t a compromise position – sometimes there are only two mutually-exclusive options, and one must be right and the other wrong. Evolution is like that: either God made things in their final form or He did not. If He did not, then either He guided it over time or He didn’t. And in cases where the Law of the Excluded Middle applies, if one hypothesis can be shown to be false, the other MUST BE TRUE, no matter how seemingly unlikely it is. BrainyOne wrote something similar to me three times up-thread, under the mistaken impression that it undermined my position rather than his. Creationists only need to show that natural forces are incapable of producing the observed results to prove our opponent’s position to be incorrect. If and when that happens, the Law of the Excluded Middle vindicates our position. That’s the real reason these debates tend to go as they do – BOTH positions rely on “just-so” explanations. The critical difference is that their “just-so” positions rely on things that can be shown to be literally impossible, or so close as to not matter. If the odds of something that is required for their model to be correct is 1-in-1×10^122 (more than the number of atoms in the entire universe), then we can safely say that “It didn’t happen.” Here’s what we KNOW – matter cannot create itself from nothing… matter cannot exceed the speed of light… entropy always increases in closed systems… inert matter cannot come to life by itself… complex symbiotic systems cannot arise piecemeal by chance. All of those are requirements for strict naturalism to be true (not that BO is taking that exact position – he’s not, but his position contains many of the same weaknesses).
The same law applies to “Old versus Young Earth,” by the way. Either this system is old or it is not. If theorists on either side can show that something that is necessary for the competing theory to be impossible, then that theory goes into the dustbin. So if, for example, it can be shown that the Moon is receding from the Earth (it can), and if it is possible to calculate the rate at which it is receding (it is), and we understand how to plot trajectories based on gravitational attraction (we do), then we can show that the Moon and the Earth would have torn each other apart less than a billion years ago (we can), then we can categorically eliminate all theories that requires the Earth-Moon system to be more than about one billion years old (plus the margin of error, which is nowhere near enough to make up for all the time they need). The implications of eliminating 3/4 of the assumed timeline upon which all “Old Earth” conclusions are based in enormous. You can see up-thread that someone came up with a supposition that extends the timeline, but even if we allow a margin for error of two entire orders of magnitude, the time available is only about half what their theory requires.
What I’m doing is not fundamentally different from what the other side does all the time. They used to point to C-14 concentrations to put a “minimum” age of things, reasoning (correctly) that if something can shown to be very old, that the “Young Earth” theory would be untenable. That is essentially their version of the GOTG method – with time playing the role of God. Of course, we now know that the C-14 thing didn’t work out after all, so they are currently speculating about the source of the C-14 that “shouldn’t” be there – rather than re-evaluating whether they wish to believe the objects are as old as they would like to believe (since that would undermine the rest of the paradigm).
Unfortunately, we cannot talk about the theories that remain standing, because I’m still trying to get the other side to admit that their theories don’t even pass the tests they demand that competing theories pass to even be considered. I’m not appealing to the GOTG’s – I’m trying to get them to stop doing it themselves (with time playing the role of God), so that we can actually discuss the science.
@theasdgamer
Thanks.
Dawkins does indeed seem to wear ideological blinkers.
Dawkins reminds me of the tone-deaf person holding forth about the awfulness of Mozart (or as you wish). Dawkins may be entirely correct about The Bible but if so I think we might be told how some of the greatest minds of the last two thousand years (Augustine, Aquinas, Scotus, Ockham, Kierkegaard – and many more) – people who spent their whole lives on the subject (and not crammed in between Biology classes) got it so stupendously and spectacularly wrong.
Newton, who was no intellectual slouch was a believer and regarded his work on The Apocalypse (rather than The Principia) as his main contribution to knowledge.
Crap… I did it again.
The sentence that reads, “You can see up-thread that someone came up with a supposition that extends the timeline, but even if we allow a margin for error of two entire orders of magnitude, the time available is only about half what their theory requires.”
Should say “You can see up-thread that someone came up with a supposition that extends the timeline, but even if we allow a margin of error of 100%, the time available is only about half what their theory requires.”
Dear Lyn:
Dawkins’ ideas about evolution and memes were largely cribbed from someone named William Hamilton; and these ideas seem only moderately understood by the man when he began writing about them. This may be interesting:
http://www.amazon.com/Darwinian-Fairytales-Selfish-Heredity-Evolution/dp/1594031401
While Dawkins is the type of goofball that makes real unbelievers embarrassed, I enjoy his occasional work trolling the “atheism plus” crowd.
Boxer
Isa says:
September 12, 2014 at 8:57 am
@Lyn87
I’ve not followed the entire argument, but one small question, why is this so important to you?
Obviously I disagree that it doesn’t matter, although I understand that you do not see the point. Nor do I agree that the areas you mention have no relationship to each other. But no matter…
… and I see that you admit to not having followed the entire thread, else my reason might be more apparent to you. Still, I’ll answer your question if you answer one of mine first:
None of what transpired since then would have happened if BrainyOne had not written that. None of it. Ask yourself why you question my motives for responding while not questioning his motives for making the comment I responded to.
@ Opus
I think we might be told how some of the greatest minds of the last two thousand years (Augustine, Aquinas, Scotus, Ockham, Kierkegaard – and many more) – people who spent their whole lives on the subject (and not crammed in between Biology classes) got it so stupendously and spectacularly wrong.
Well, playing Devil’s Advocate, plenty of great minds have gotten lots of things stupendously and spectacularly wrong throughout history. So, Dawkins isn’t necessarily to be discarded simply for making the claim that great religious minds got it wrong. How did they get it wrong? Yes, Dawkins misses providing the explanation, doesn’t he?
Darwin provided one useful service–he managed to eliminate the notion of the fixity of species.
Now we are just left with the huge vagueness about what a species is. Kind of like p0n0graphy, I think–we know what it is when we see it, but we have the devil of a time denoting it.
Lyn:
Wow this debate is still going on.
Not my position. You may not agree with me, and that’s fine, but I’ve devoted quite a good bit of thought to it and I do react in quite a negative manner when I am accused of, or just supposed to be, thoughtlessly parroting the views of materialists and atheists like Lewontin and Dawkins. (FWIW, Dawkins may be a good biologist but otherwise he’s an ignorant ass IMO. Lewontin and Gould were dyed-in-the-wool Marxists and extremely dishonest on the question of race.) We’ve already discussed common descent vs. special creation. I don’t have to be “dogmatically” committed to an old earth (and am not) because obviously an omnipotent God doesn’t have “time constraints” in how slow or fast theistic evolution will play out. I do think with the evidence we have though the likelihood of an old earth is much much bigger. You do say “(not that BO is taking that exact position – he’s not, but his position contains many of the same weaknesses)” would you care to expound on them?
I would agree, but “impossible” is (no pun intended) an almost “Impossible” bar to get over (the likelihood is exactly zero). The plot of trajectories based on gravitational attraction is based on an assumption that the underlying tidal friction remains constant. What basis is there to think so? There is none either in an old-earth or a young-earth model (at least one where the continents aren’t in the same places at Creation as where they are today). Now, of course, for me, a billion-year-old earth is still pretty “old” anyway, but still.
Sort of, and you no doubt will counter that an old-earth is also based on “uniformitarian” assumptions. Because otherwise there is this argument: If it can be shown that mother isotopes decay to daughter isotopes (it can), and it is possible to calculate decay rates (we can), and we understand how to plot exponential decay curves (we do), then we can categorically eliminate all theories that require the earth to be only 1000s of years old (as that is well past the margin of error on all these measurements). But what is more likely? That the tidal friction was different in ages past, simply due to a different configuration of continents/oceans etc., or that the physical laws drastically changed in the past to allow for speeded-up radioactive decay, and that somehow the massive radioactivity from all that decay didn’t fry all living things on the planet. So, on the other hand, maybe radioactive decay was slightly speeded up in the past, and tidal friction was slightly more in the past, which would make the age of the earth say 1-2 billion years. I don’t think what we know about possible changes in the speed of light in the past can accommodate this hypothesis, but I’m open to it.
Well you’ve got that admission from me, FWIW. There are very, very few cases of absolute knockdown arguments in science. Science is messy because there are always error bars. It is a matter of evaluating likelihoods and posterior probabilities.
As you’ve written it, it would be assumed that I what I was saying that God didn’t create life; that evolution provides a simple explanation. That was NOT what I was saying God didn’t do. What I was responding to was a poster who asked why God created man and woman with all these impulses (e.g. high N women being great in bed, but bad at marriage; and virgin men being unappealing to women) and yet rules contrary to all that.
@Lyn87
Simply that I know very few people that are passionate about creationism or argue well for it (which you do). I read about half way through, but people were following in circles so I decided to ask directly. There is so much division and infighting within Christianity, and I would prefer to understand the mentality of the opponents to find a way to stop fighting amongst ourselves (or at least come to a truce) so that there is a united front against the licentious onslaught of the west.
Generally speaking I have few motives in asking questions other than to know the answer. In college, we has guest lecturers for all of the viewpoints discussed (creationism, intelligent design, theistic evolution, bam ensoulment, macro vs micro etc.). The creationists, however, were mowed down quite mercilessly as they seemed to be fresh out of bible college with no scientific literacy.
Is that sufficient?
If you insist that the earth is only a few thousand years old, then it must have been created with isotopes, rocks, and fossils pre-formed in the state they would have been if the earth had been billions of years old:
Isotopic abundances
A natural uranium fission reactor existed 1.7 billion years ago: its remains are at Oklo in Cameroon:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_nuclear_fission_reactor
Natural nuclear fission was possible in the Precambrian. It cannot occur in the present day, because the abundance of uranium 235 has decreased by radioactive decay to a level where a chain reaction is not viable.
The unstable fission products (half-life up to 16 million years) have decayed, leaving only stable isotopes.
Sea-floor spreading
The Atlantic ocean widens by 2.5cm per year, with new seafloor generated from lava at the mid-Atlantic ridge. The distance of separation is 5,000 km, indicating an age of 200 million years. The magnetism of the earth is recorded in the seafloor rocks when they solidify. The earth’s magnetic field reverses on an irregular basis, and the present pattern of reversal goes back 30 million years.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seafloor_spreading
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geomagnetic_reversal
BrainyOne,
We seem to be veering towards each other again. Most of my comment wasn’t directed at you per se, so much as to people who argue against Supernaturalism from a strictly materialist viewpoint. Perhaps I didn’t make that clear enough, but you did position yourself on the “Evolution explains this – no need to consider God” side of the fence at the very start. It was, after all, that unqualified assertion that started the whole kerfuffle.
Some, like Isa above, don’t think it really matters whether evolution is true. I disagree on multiple grounds, but since I am not a professional scientist, the only important one is theological. From a strictly scientific perspective, I couldn’t care less: and although I think the scientific case for Genesis is well-nigh definitive, if not for the theological ramifications of evolution I would likely give it no more thought than I do about the rivalry between Manchester United and Liverpool (sorry Opus).
I apologize for accusing you of parroting, though… you did clarify your position as distinct from Dawkins, Lewontin, et al. In my defense, Creationists are almost always accused of “Mindlessly parroting the fairy tales you learned in Sunday School” as a means to use ridicule to silence us before the debate even starts. Ironically, the people I debate typically know nothing of the case against their position, or even that such a case exists. As a holder of a minority view – and a product of the public school system – I know the opposing view very well, usually far better than the person arguing in favor if it. Yet if I had a dollar for every anti-Creationist who has called me a dummy – rather than address my criticism – I’d be able to do this full-time (which I would not like to do – I meant it when I wrote that I do not enjoy this sort of thing at all.)
Having said that, you asked, “You do say “(not that BO is taking that exact position – he’s not, but his position contains many of the same weaknesses)” would you care to expound on them?” It’s a fair question, and my answer is, “Yes, in general.” Your view – if I understand it correctly – is that the speciation process (however accomplished) took vast amounts of time – making it vulnerable to evidence that suggests a maximum age for the Earth. You differ from strict materialists in that you accept that God could have done it quickly, but you think that He probably didn’t. You are with Isa in that you don’t think that matters. I do, for reasons stated above.
I’m with you on the “impossible” bar being very high. But I’m also with you in what you wrote three times up-thread about accepting an unlikely explanation if the only alternative is much less likely. I’ve actually been on your side of the debate, and now I am not. As we both know, accepting one or the other requires a massive paradigm shift. The way one views the entire universe and everything in it is completely differently depending on which view one accepts as true. I freely admit that I view evidence by first trying to reconcile it with my view. The thing is, so do the people who write science textbooks, and the people who decide who gets published in journals, and who gets tenure, and who gets an “A” or an “F.” If those people would just acknowledge that they view the evidence with the same degree of bias toward materialism, and not immediately go into “You’re a religious idiot who just knows what some book of fairy tales says,” this whole debate would be a lot more productive… and civil. Let’s face it, both of us are blessed (or evolved, if you prefer) with great intellect. I know my I.Q. to within a few points, and I’m confident you’re way up there yourself. I’m willing to surmise that no Creationist has ever called you a simpleton who cannot comprehend basic factual information. I may be wrong, but I’d be surprised. On the other hand, I get that almost every time… initially.
I also get your point about isotopes as a counter to my argument about the Earth-Moon system. But we cannot both be correct. I accept that I don’t have the expertise to answer it, although I’m sure I could find something to explain it if I looked, just as you (I think it was you) came up with a proposed rebuttal to the lunar trajectory issue. Where I hope we can agree is that if this shows anything, it is that neither view can ultimately be dismissed with “just-so” statements. Unfortunately, far too many people who write textbooks, publish journals, decide tenure, and grade papers do just that. That brings us into agreement on your final paragraph as well. I will gladly stand with you in making the same assertion.
@Lyn87
Either God made things in their final form or He did not. If He did not, then either He guided it over time or He didn’t. And in cases where the Law of the Excluded Middle applies, if one hypothesis can be shown to be false, the other MUST BE TRUE, no matter how seemingly unlikely it is.”
It is possible that God made things in their final form 6,000 years ago, but created an earth that appeared to have a much longer history.
It is possible that God guides things over time, but rather than providing constant intervention, He only needs to give an occasional nudge. Perhaps He started life 600 million years ago, with the phyla, sexual reproduction, and Precambrian fossils ready-made. Evolution then proceeded, with only an occasional Divine Intervention – sending an asteroid to wipe out the dinosaurs, for example.
Isa,
Okay. As I wrote to BrainyOne in my last post, the science only matters to me because of the theological ramifications. If the other argument is true, then death preceded sin, and everything the Bible says about it – including the redemptive work of Jesus Christ – falls into disrepute. This isn’t just a matter of “hominid animals eventually being imbued with souls” – this strikes at the very foundation of Christian truth claims. People often understand that viscerally, although few think it through. 2 Peter 3: 4-7 says,
Knowing this first, that there shall come in the last days scoffers, walking after their own lusts, and saying, Where is the promise of his coming? for since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation. For this they willingly are ignorant of, that by the word of God the heavens were of old, and the earth standing out of the water and in the water: whereby the world that then was, being overflowed with water, perished: But the heavens and the earth, which are now, by the same word are kept in store, reserved unto fire against the day of judgment and perdition of ungodly men. But, beloved, be not ignorant of this one thing, that one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.
I included verse 8, not because it’s especially pertinent to the matter at hand (it doesn’t imply vast amounts of time in Genesis – it’s referring to God’s mastery over time from His vantage point in eternity). I just didn’t want to open myself up to the perception of cherry-picking.
If people are ignorant of Creation, and the flood (which is an example of God’s judgement on sin), then they will not seek repentance – and they will inhabit the Lake of Fire in eternity. I wish to warn them against that. Since the “Old Earth” paradigm (especially strict materialism as it is taught in schools), negates both Divine Creation and Divine Judgement, it must be opposed if it is not true. Fortunately, the scientific evidence favors Creation.
It is often noted that Jesus met sinners where they were. In this day and age, the enemy’s go-to philosophy is materialism disguised as objective science. I go to where the enemy speaks freely to proclaim a different message. That is my calling.
James K,
(Almost caught up on my responses…)
Both of those examples come with an unspoken assumption of gradualism. But if gradualism is not correct, neither phenomenon is persuasive for your case. Anyway, the “reactor’ could not have been running 1.7 billion years ago, because the Moon would have been inside the Roche limit and the entire Earth-Moon system would have torn itself apart. Same thing with assuming steady-state continental drift. You note that the continents on either side of the Atlantic are moving away from each other. I agree, since I’m the one who initially brought it up. You can, indeed, tell how far from each other they are. You can also measure their current velocity. But you cannot turn this into a grade-school word problem unless you assume that the speed was always constant, which is precisely what you did. There is good reason to think that it was not – during the Deluge. If you want to persuade me, you have to do so without assuming the starting conditions that – if true – prove your point… like gradualism. That’s called begging the question.
As for your post at September 12, 2014 at 11:56 am, I agree with every word. All of those things are – in the strictest possible sense – possible. But if any of them describe reality, then it is not possible that the Bible is true. And since the Biblical explanation work just fine, there’s no need to adopt unlikely ones.
@James K.
You still have not accounted for our earlier exchange. What did you mean by “irreproducible” YEC experiments? How was the 14C observation not reproducible? Did you concede the points? You’re certainly still interested in debating the subject.
If you insist that the earth is only a few thousand years old, then it must have been created with isotopes, rocks, and fossils pre-formed in the state they would have been if the earth had been billions of years old:
Only if you use OE uniformitarian assumptions. YE arguments may or may not use that assumption (ex: some believe there was a global flood), so why handle their arguments as if they all use OE assumptions? You are no longer dealing with a YE argument, but a strawman of one.
A natural uranium fission reactor existed 1.7 billion years ago: its remains are at Oklo in Cameroon:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_nuclear_fission_reactor
Natural nuclear fission was possible in the Precambrian. It cannot occur in the present day, because the abundance of uranium 235 has decreased by radioactive decay to a level where a chain reaction is not viable.
The unstable fission products (half-life up to 16 million years) have decayed, leaving only stable isotopes.
1. What reproducible scientific experiment demonstrates that the fission reactor was formed 1.7 billion years ago? Seeing how human history is around 10k years long, you most definitely did not observe this fission reactor. In fact, the reactor was never observed, it is “a possible explanation” for unexpected uranium isotope ratios. Do you think “possible explanations” are reproducible scientific results?
2. What is the reproducible scientific experiment that measures the abundance of uranium 235 in the Precambrian era?
3. What is the reproducible scientific experiment that demonstrates that unstable fission products were present but then decayed?
The Atlantic ocean widens by 2.5cm per year, with new seafloor generated from lava at the mid-Atlantic ridge. The distance of separation is 5,000 km, indicating an age of 200 million years. The magnetism of the earth is recorded in the seafloor rocks when they solidify. The earth’s magnetic field reverses on an irregular basis, and the present pattern of reversal goes back 30 million years.
4. What are the reproducible scientific experiments that demonstrate a 2.5cm/year constant rate of widening over a timespan of 200 million years? Actually, we already see that you didn’t use an experiment, you speculated and projected. That may very well be a true speculation, but please stop confusing educated guesses with “reproducible scientific results”. Projection is not an experiment, and it may not be true.
http://xkcd.com/605/
The way in which God made things seems to me to be entirely unimportant compared to the why. I couldn’t care less if we popped into existence or two chimp men were given souls after billions of years or evolution.
Evolutionary theory is so ridiculously sloppy that it does not survive critical examination. If it’s not true, that’s reason enough to promote truth in its stead. The truth is that evolutionary theory doesn’t fit the evidence.
The system of system of systems that is life exceed the complexity of any man made thing. The fancy computer you use to interact with this website in a network of network of network of computers took trillions of dollars and countless man-hours to create and establish. No one considers that these complex information processing systems are the product of random chance.
And yet, those computers are still not as complex as you are – starting with a single cell and growing into a person formed with trillions of cells according to some internal blueprint. Think about how difficult it would be to get 7 billion human beings to work together for a common goal – your trillions of individual cells developed into interdependent systems in an orderly fashion, and are continuously working together to sustain your life. How is it coordinated?
And that’s not even looking at what each individual cell is – which some have compared to a nano-scale factory in its operation. Here’s the problem for evolution – how do you build up such complexity in a piecemeal unguided fashion? If it’s entirely by random chance, this can be calculated, and the numbers don’t work. (and often ignores the probability of extinction)
To look at human works and say, “that’s artificial” and then look at life and say “that’s accidental” requires ignorance that evolutionists are all too happy to promote. Think about a beautiful piece of art, or a great work of literature – it is insulting to their creators to suggest that their output is indistinguishable from something randomly generated; especially when the observable output of such random generators is gibberish and static!
@Lyn87
I don’t think you understand the Roche Limit. I might be wrong, but I think that satellites beyond a geostationary orbit (such as the moon) are pushed outwards by tidal forces, whereas satellites within a geostationary orbit are drawn inwards. The Earth’s Roche Limit is well inside the geostationary orbit. The tidal push/pull vanishes as a satellite approaches geostationary orbit. If you run the clock backwards, the moon will gradually approach the earth, and will settle down slightly outside a geostationary orbit. You might argue that a long spell very close to geostationary orbit is not credible – and you might be right – but there is no Roche Limit singularity.
@SirHamster:
You still have not accounted for our earlier exchange.
I’ll be back later. Food beckons.
@Lyn87
We can agree on the theological ramifications. If there was not originally a man and a woman who fell but rather a tribe of people, original sin no longer exists and thus the need for salvation. The question science can never answer is what is a soul, why do we have one? When did it happen? A good book on that topic is “10 Philosophical Mistakes” by M. J. Adler. It explains the difference between the ability for abstract thought in humans vs perspective thought in animals. It is worth a read.
Roche limit: The Roche limit is the minimum distance to which a large satellite can approach its primary body without being torn apart by tidal forces. If satellite and primary are of similar composition, the theoretical limit is about 2 1/2 times the radius of the larger body. Source.
Because of its trajectory, 1.7 billion years ago the moon would have been rolling around the surface of the Earth near the equator like a 70 Septillion ton bowling ball – obviously that did not happen (nor would it – the two bodies would merge or the Moon would have been reduced to rubble, like the rings of Saturn – I just thought it made for an amusing visual). In all seriousness though, the uniformitarianism upon which your ancient reactor depends goes right out the window because of it.
None of what transpired since then would have happened if BrainyOne had not written that. None of it.
I for one am glad he did. Brainy One’s provocation inspired responses that were very educational and well worth the time and effort IMO.
Isa,
One of the things that inspires me is something I read in C.S. Lewis’s “The Screwtape Letters” many years ago. At one point, the Senior Demon Screwtape writes the following to his nephew, the Junior Tempter Wormwood:
“I have great hopes that we shall learn in due time how to emotionalize and mythologize their science to such an extent that what is, in effect, a belief in us (though not under that name) will creep in while the human mind remains closed to belief in the Enemy… “If once we can produce our perfect work—the Materialist Magician, the man, not using, but veritably worshipping, what he vaguely calls ‘Forces’ while denying the existence of spirits—then the end of our war will be in sight.”
Another angle to consider: almost all organisms living today employ very similar molecular machinery involved in DNA replication. One of common features is formation of Okazaki fragments on the ‘lagging’ strand of replication fork. Complicated biochemical reactions are required to process these fragments into a single, new DNA strand. There is unavoidable risk of DNA fragmentation leading to large scale genome rearrangement.
Is there another plausible explanation for all these organisms sharing the same inherently faulty mechanism than them sharing a single common ancestor?
^
‘…a continuous, new DNA strand…’ sounds better.
Is there another plausible explanation for all these organisms sharing the same inherently faulty mechanism than them sharing a single common ancestor?
Yes, a single uncommon Creator.
When sin entered the world, the were other ramifications besides death. Also, what we consider faulty may be due to our not fully understanding the thing we consider.
A perfect Creator implies perfect creation, not ‘perfectible’ creation.
When God made everything, it was good. This implies perfection. So why do cells break down and why are there various imperfections in creation? Perhaps because the fall changed much of creation for the worst. With the fall came sin. With sin came death. What was “good” was now full of imperfection to the point that not even one natural born human being was with out imperfection and sin. Hence the need for a Savior.
Crud, my post didn’t come up. Trying again from memory…
I’m no geneticist, but I can think of two plausible things right off the top of my head.
1) The geometry of the double-helix requires it. And since the 3′ strand is “easier” to replicate, the replication fork sends the 5′ strand to be “flipped” so that it acts more like the “easier to work with” 3′ strand. It’s ingenious actually: you are ascribing a flaw to a design where none exists. Think of the two strands as a pair of ballroom dancers: one of them has to do what the other is doing backwards.
2) The system works perfectly well as designed. (By the way, the narrator in your video specifically used the word “designed.” Designed by whom?) The Fall resulted in systems malfunctioning. Death is the ultimate “system malfunction.” So a perfect Creator designed a perfect system, but “Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned” (Romans 5:12), imperfections now mar that perfectly-designed system… imperfections like DNA copying errors.
If you would step outside of your bias toward materialist solutions, you would see a couple of things:
1) Nothing that complicated can reasonably be attributed to chance. Not only is the system itself mind-bogglingly complicated, but the function it performs (regulates the reproduction of a code that literally controls all the functions of the body) is even more complex by orders of magnitude. Its mere existence is evidence for a Designer.
2) The fact that genetic mutations occasionally occur is consistent with the Fall. It is not, however, consistent with evolution. Why? Genetic mutations increase our genetic load (which puts an upper limit on our ability to survive long enough to reproduce). Over eons of time, our genetic load as a species would have wiped us out. Yet here we are: indicating that mutations have been happening for a very short period of time rather than eons.
Part 1
Part 2
All one has to do is step outside the materialist paradigm to see that it. So once again, a fact that is touted as evidence for unguided evolution is perfectly consistent with a Designer – and actually fits the creation paradigm better than the evolution paradigm.
A perfect Creator implies perfect creation, not ‘perfectible’ creation.
The Bible said it was “good”, it did not say it was incorruptible.
JDG,
First, Exfernal is attributing a flaw to a design that is not a flaw – it’s a positively ingenious way to replicate DNA, given its geometry. He could not design or build a better way to do it if his life depended on it.
Second, he is blaming God for judging the actions of mankind. Theologically, Exfernal is saying that God made a mistake when He imposed consequences for the Fall, since creation has been corrupted.
Lyn87 says:
September 12, 2014 at 5:30 pm
Yep! That’s the impression I got too.
@Lyn87 JDG
If all disease not attributed to hostile organisms is due to entropy: ”’DNA copy errors etc”
Then this passage indicates an end to dysfunction:
Romans 8:19-25
For the anxious longing of the creation waits eagerly for the revealing of the sons of God. For the creation was subjected to futility, not of its own will, but because of Him who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself also will be set free from its slavery to corruption into the freedom of the glory of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation groans and suffers the pains of childbirth together until now. And not only this, but also we ourselves, having the first fruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our body. For in hope we have been saved, but hope that is seen is not hope; for why does one also hope for what he sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, with perseverance we wait eagerly for it.
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Mutations are half the requirements for evolution happening. Another half is natural selection – some organisms leave more offspring than others.
So human sin is so all-pervading that even Escherichia coli or Saccharomyces cerevisiae were affected by it? As much plausible as organisms causing lethal diseases now doing something else than killing other organisms before just because of that event. So much self-importance, it’s mind boggling.
The ‘inherently faulty mechanism’ was a statement of fact. DNA replication doesn’t have a perfect, hundred percent fidelity.
Last night I once again picked up (in the pub) my weekly copy of The War Cry (as well as being mauled as usual by the saleslady); it is the newspaper with colourful photographs of Salvation Army (perhaps you have them in the United States, I don’t know) for which they charge twenty new pence. I have no interest in the paper – other than that they do have an on going series of interviews with leading British-based scientists who are also Christians. The questions, from Nigel Bovey, are always highly intelligent and probing and the answers likewise intelligent and illuminating.
This week (for example) the Interview is with Ard Louis who is the Professor of Theoretical Physics at Oxford University and who despite being a physicist in answer to Bovey’s question ‘What have you discovered’ (following on from ‘have you made any scientific breakthroughs’) replies that he has some new theories about (not against) Evolution. He is clearly very excited by this.
A few months back I e-mailed Bovey and suggested that given the quality of these interviews they should be put into book form. I did not receive the courtesy of a reply, but perhaps The Sally Army will do that in time. I hope so. I think Lyn 87 in particular would find the interviews (which are about science and the scientists faith) of great interest. I suppose that The War Cry is not available in Texas.
You’re grasping at straws, Exfernal. If you want to argue the science, you’re welcome to: you’re still going to continue to lose that debate, but at least we’re not dismissing you out-of-hand (more on that later). But when you try to tell us we’re wrong for theological reasons all you do is expose your lack of understanding of Christian theology – you are simply out of your league here. For example, I see that you’ve fallen for the same type of theological fallacy that I have seen many weak Christians fall for… in fact, the particular error you made at 3:18 is one usually made by Churchian women.
The Theological – It’s the idea that they must be so wonderful that God would send His son to die for them. They think, “Look at what was sacrificed for ME – I must be really worth it!” That’s not really the point of it – the great sacrifice by Jesus on the cross wasn’t because we’re so deserving, but because the magnitude of our sin – and the Grace of God – are so great. (And in His grace God loves us anyway… despite our pathetic state.) So when we point to the all-encompassing effects of the Fall and you say it’s because we think it’s because we’re so important, you’re making the same type of error as those weak-minded chicks who think it’s okay to slut around because the sacrifice Jesus made on their behalf means that they’re so special that the rules don’t apply to them. No, the consequences of the Fall of mankind are not great because we’re so important, but because our sin is so grievous and all-encompassing.
So, yeah, creation fell, even to the point of affecting the animal kingdom – if you would stop making silly arguments about theological points that you don’t understand, you would already know that was one of the results of the Fall. It is literally in the first two thousand words of the Bible. It is a basic tenet of Christian theology and you expose your ignorance of it when you make statements like that. You’re acting like some freshman in Philosophy 101 who thinks he – and he alone – is the first one to have some profound insight into the human condition because of something he read on Page 57 of his textbook, then sticks his bony finger in God’s face to tell Him how wrong He is.
The Link Between the Theological and the Scientific – The DNA replicating mechanism you showed is a absolute marvel of design, and works with 100% accuracy unless it malfunctions. That may seem like like a tautology to you, but that’s only because you don’t understand that before the Fall, such mechanisms would never malfunction…
The Scientific – …but since you want to attribute the replication fork to evolution, you’re going to have your hands full. One problem is that the replication fork exists only to replicate the DNA of the creature it resides in. Yet the instructional code for the body to create the replication fork itself can only be found in the very DNA that the replication fork replicates. How is it even remotely possible that a biological encoding device of incredible complexity could arise by chance… especially when the instructions to the body upon which it depends to even come into existence, could not produce it without the very instructions it encodes? Not only is it mathematically impossible, but it is logically absurd since it puts the effect before the cause… by millions of years.
Show me the results of the experiment that reproduces THAT, please. You are positing something that is literally impossible. From that, I assume that you did not look at the links I provided at September 12, 2014 at 5:18 pm – the talk given by Dr. Steven C. Meyer, (PhD from Cambridge University), utterly demolishes the argument you’re trying to make. That’s a typical error people on your side of this debate often make – you only know your side with any fidelity. That’s one reason why creationists usually destroy evolutionists in debates: we’ve all been taught your side since kindergarten and learned to reject it because of its absurdities (like effect preceding cause by millions of years… seriously?). Whereas most people on your side don’t even know that cogent arguments against what you’ve been told to believe even exist… much less what those arguments are.
Now What? – If you follow the pattern of argumentation you’ve been following so far, you will ignore the rebuttals that are already on the table (other than perhaps to sling another off-hand comment that betrays your ignorance of the weaknesses of your position… like you did at September 12, 2014 at 4:51 pm, September 13, 2014 at 3:18 am, and September 13, 2014 at 4:51 am), and go on to your next equally- flawed “proof.”
Thanks for the heads-up, Opus. The War Cry is available online, but all I can see is the U.S. edition, which may be different from what you’re seeing. I’m sad to say that the current edition here has an article about DV that reproduces the falsehood that 85% of DV victims are women. At least they’re willing to admit that a non-trivial number of DV victims are men – the usual feminist “factoid” is that men are never truly victims at all, since any man who is victimized must have “pushed her to do it” through some fault of his own.
Anyway, perhaps I’ll see it when I’m on your side of the moat next month. Which monthly edition contains the story you’re referring to?
Reproducibility
@SirHamster:
“So, it looks like in-situ production of new 14C is the best-supported hypothesis”
This is my mistake for not doing a professional job, i.e. taking the time to examine every paper on this subject before coming to a conclusion. I rashly assumed that, because the 14C results were listed on the page @Lyn87 linked, as one of “101 evidences for a young age of the earth and the universe”, that the findings, including the detailed rejection of in-situ production of 14C, were to be taken as such evidence. Then you come along and tell me that, after all, the 14C has a perfectly good old-earth explanation.
In fact neither of us is investing the time to make a proper case.
Which leads us to …
Professionalism
… @Luke’s highly pertinent question.
Is there anyone posting on this thread who’s made a professional-level study of the Earth that’s pro-YEC/anti-evolution? (I’m defining this as went to the effort of getting a degree or two in Geology and working in that field for a living, as I have done and do.)
Some of us have professional qualifications, but not necessarily in Geology; some have made a brief study, but not at a professional level. I doubt anyone has invested the time needed to do the subject justice.
Suppose that a suitably qualified person was considering a three-year professional study of YEC, perhaps with postdoctoral funding. The chances are that most such people will have much more interesting and useful things to do with their time. The rare person who decides to take up this challenge will have a personal axe to grind – a Richard Dawkins or a Stephen Jay Gould – and so, even when they are telling the truth, creationists will not believe them. Even I am put off by Dawkins’ tone, and that’s when he is saying things that I agree with.
Theology
@Lyn87:
“the science only matters to me because of the theological ramifications. If the other argument is true, then death preceded sin, and everything the Bible says about it – including the redemptive work of Jesus Christ – falls into disrepute.”
Amateur theology is even harder than amateur science. The theologians of the Catholic Church have pondered evolution for 150 years, and reached the opposite of your conclusion.
As long as you believe that sin and death have entered the world; but our Redeemer liveth; the “How?” is unimportant. A literal reading of Genesis is not essential to Christian faith.
I do feel that an insistence on young-earth creationism adds unnecessary baggage to Christianity. You can believe it if you want to, but if you insist that it is an essential part of Christian belief, some people will infer that Christian belief itself must therefore be wrong. That is the problem.
The Bible was inspired by God, not dictated by Him. If God had given the author of Genesis 1 an account of the history of the earth that was in accord with the modern scientific view, that person would have written it down, to the best of his ability, in language that he could understand. I suggest that the result would have been something like Genesis 1-3.
So human sin is so all-pervading that even Escherichia coli or Saccharomyces cerevisiae were affected by it?
Yes, either affected or a result of it. As infowarrior quoted, “…For the creation was subjected to futility, not of its own will, but because of Him who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself also will be set free from its slavery to corruption …”
The ‘inherently faulty mechanism’ was a statement of fact. DNA replication doesn’t have a perfect, hundred percent fidelity.
Sounds consistent with the creation / fall model to me.
@ James K
Suppose that a suitably qualified person was considering a three-year professional study of YEC, perhaps with postdoctoral funding. The chances are that most such people will have much more interesting and useful things to do with their time.
Like Dean Kenyon? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dean_H._Kenyon
The problem is, when someone with credentials does a thorough study of YEC, they have tended to become convinced and lose their “qualification” to speak.
There are many more names which might be added to the list of those who have lost “qualification” by becoming convinced of YEC.
James K,
It appears that you were typing your post of September 13, 2014 at 7:19 am the same time I was typing mine of September 13, 2014 at 7:03 am.
Here’s where you are right: A literal reading of Genesis is not essential to Christian faith.
That’s true – the only thing necessary to enter the Kingdom of Heaven is to accept Christ as your savior.
Here’s where you are wrong: “…an insistence on young-earth creationism adds unnecessary baggage to Christianity.”
The necessity of Divine Creation and the preceding of death by sin is important. You may think it is a trivial matter, but it calls into question everything that Christianity says about sin and redemption. First of all, there’s not the slightest reason to think that unguided macro-evolution over billions of years is even theoretically possible, much less established fact. It’s not even a decent theory. The fact that it is taught to ignorant school children and sold to the general population actively works to undermine faith in the God of the Bible. An understanding that God was able to create everything – and did it as He said He did – should inspire awe and a sense of humility that should make the hearer humble in his sin and then seek repentance. But because people like you insist – against the overwhelming evidence that macro-evolution does not explain anything (much less everything) – people choose instead to point to non-existent “mistakes” in the Bible as a reason to reject all of it. You are giving people a “reason” to reject what the Bible says about sin for the sake of a theory you can produce no evidence for other than blind supposition. If you want to believe that nonsense and be a Christian – go ahead – I’ll see you on the other side. But you walk a dangerous path when you give others an excuse to reject the majesty of God of the Bible.
The theologians of the Catholic Church have pondered evolution for 150 years, and reached the opposite of your conclusion.
If this is true, then its not the first time that the Catholic theological position didn’t line up with what is written in the Bible, and that’s just one more reason not to become a catholic IMO.
If macro-evolution is true than the Bible is not, and if the Bible is true, then macro-evolution is not. I see no way around this without discounting parts of the scriptures. Jesus himself gave the accounts in Genesis credibility. Why should anyone take the words of a bunch of PC scientists over the words of the Son of God?
@ James K
I do feel that an insistence on young-earth creationism adds unnecessary baggage to Christianity. You can believe it if you want to, but if you insist that it is an essential part of Christian belief, some people will infer that Christian belief itself must therefore be wrong. That is the problem.
[Cue music] Feelings. Nothing more than feelings.
The feminized churches have placed a great emphasis on feelings, feelings, and more feelings. A masculine approach to theology and Christian practice requires using the intellect in theological affairs. Apologetics. Doing one’s own Bible exegesis instead of delegating it to so-called experts. Things like that. Being a man, you ought to try it.
@JDG:
Yes, either affected or a result of it.
A literal reading of Genesis can lead to some very strange ideas.
That before the Fall, lions must have eaten grass, because the possibility of death, even for a prey animal, had not yet entered the world.
That before the Flood, kangaroos and polar bears must have lived in the Middle East, because otherwise Noah could not have accommodated them in the Ark.
“Ideas” like this give Christianity a bad name.
@theasdgamer:
Kenyon
Most readers who have studied a relevant scientific subject can immediately detect that there is a problem with works of pseudoscience. At best, the problem is the material that has been left out.
At worst, the author does not understand his subject, or tells outright lies. Unfortunately, this appears to be the case for Kenyon. See
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Of_Pandas_and_People#Criticism
re the Tasmanian Wolf.
@theasdgamer:
feelings
Ha ha, here’s the feelings-free version just for you:
“An insistence on young-earth creationism adds unnecessary baggage to Christianity.”
Doing your own exegesis doesn’t mean you can reach any conclusions you like.
@Lyn87
I think that the on-line edition of War Cry must be very different, as the one I buy is very Britain-centric. As I indicated, I am not otherwise interested in War Cry (or its lady saleswoman, even as she seems, for some reason I have never entirely divined, fascinated by me) and indeed one of the reasons for that is its Fem-centric bias.
What first struck me about the Bovey interviews (you will like this) is how they give a very different impression from the one Biologist Dawkins likes to give that Believers are both terminally sub-normal and not to be found in academia. I may not be a believer myself but that level of arrogance stupidity and inaccuracy from Dawkins and his disciples chime in likewise (the brights as they used to like to appelate themselves) has me distancing myself from them and their works. As I like to say, I may not believe in God (or any gods) but I absolutely draw the line at Atheism.
@Lyn 87
The Lewis Aud was yesterday so you won’t see it, but most weeks they have a Bovey interview. I had forgotten that you are coming soon and so would be able to gauge the paper for yourself.
A literal reading of Genesis can lead to some very strange ideas.
That before the Fall, lions must have eaten grass, because the possibility of death, even for a prey animal, had not yet entered the world.
That before the Flood, kangaroos and polar bears must have lived in the Middle East, because otherwise Noah could not have accommodated them in the Ark.
Lions eating grass isn’t that strange of an idea compared to the idea that God can’t be taken at His word. Also, you assume that the earth in pre-flood days was the same as it is today, which is unlikely. Lyn87 is correct. You pro-evolution folks are turning Christians away from the faith. If folks can’t trust the Bible in the areas you say they can’t, how can they trust any of it? The good news is that they can trust the Bible, all of it.
In other words, was even chemistry different then?
For example, DNA ligase is just like any other enzyme: it’s speeds the reaction that it catalyzes to the point of thermodynamic equilibrium. The point of equilibrium is never at 100% products, 0% substrates. Some ‘mishaps’ are unavoidable. Also, the coiling double-strand of the lagging DNA ‘lariat’ puts some strain on the remaining single strand part. It’s not impossible to have it break from time to time.
I know, biphosphate is being removed to ‘push’ the reaction in one direction. It’s still not at 100% efficiency.
Exfernal asks,
“In other words, was even chemistry different then?”
Perhaps… and if so, why not? It’s a much smaller leap than the ones you’re taking. The Big Bang Theory falls apart if the speed of light was not inviolable in the past. It also requires gravity to have been MUCH stronger in the past, as well as MUCH stronger than it currently is in other parts of the universe (or that the universe is comprised mostly of undetectable “dark matter” – how convenient (and ironic) that you guys had to dream up an undetectable cause to explain the observable order of the cosmos so as to criticize Christians for believing in… an undetectable cause that gives order to the cosmos). Abiogenesis requires the laws of mathematical probability to have been radically different in the past. Macro-evolution requires the same, and for genetics to have been radically different in past – to the point of reversing cause and effect by millions of years.
I could go on, but I think I’ve made my point to any fair-minded observer.
@ James K
You are operating like a standard evo-troll. Libel, hack philosophy, pretensions about scientific training, and rank dishonesty.
Most readers who have studied a relevant scientific subject can immediately detect that there is a problem with works of pseudoscience.
People who use meaningless words like pseudoscience show themselves to be hack philosophers. Training in physics doesn’t mean that you know anything about philosophy. You can’t distinguish between “science” and “pseudoscience” if those words have no intrinsic meaning. Get the point? You look like a fool.
At worst, the author does not understand his subject, or tells outright lies. Unfortunately, this appears to be the case for Kenyon.
If you had bothered to check the references, you would have noticed that not a single reference in the Wiki article was to a publication that defended Kenyon. You should know that on a subject as controversial as this, Wiki is hardly a reliable resource.
Dr. Eugenie Scott, Director of the National Center for Science Education, has made it clear that the evolutionary establishment not only opposes the teaching of Biblical creationism in public schools and colleges, but also “scientific creationism,” “intelligent design,” “abrupt appearance,” or any other system which would dilute naturalistic evolution. They oppose allowing any arguments or evidence that might throw any doubt on evolution at all. The name of the game is evolution, and only evolution, with no hint of anything else. http://www.icr.org/article/games-some-people-play/
Back to the Tasmanian wolf.
Kurt Wise (Ph.D. in Paleontology from Harvard–Steven J. Gould was his advisor): re: marsupial vs. placental wolves. Although there are differences between these two animals which are a consequence of being marsupial vs. placental, there are rather remarkable similarities between them. According to evolution the marsupials and placentals separated early in mammal history, when neither group looked anything like a dog. Since that time, both groups have evolved a dog morphology — apparently independently. That such a convergence of form could occur in such unrelated groups is rather unexpected in evolutionary theory. But, the marsupial/placental story only begins with the similarity in dogs. There are marsupial/placental convergences in skunks, flying squirrels, tigers, and even saber-toothed tigers (as well as others). For it to happen once is a bit amazing. For it to happen many times really stretches the credulity of evolutionary theory to the breaking point!
http://carm.org/secular-movements/creation-evolution-debate/tasmanian-tigers
How did you miss this??????
An insistence on young-earth creationism adds unnecessary baggage to Christianity.
You are delving into the realm of apologetics, where materialists have launched an attack on Genesis 1. It sounds like you are advocating feelings again.
Doing your own exegesis doesn’t mean you can reach any conclusions you like.
And water is wet. Are you going to go swimming and use your intellect like a man or will you delegate your exegesis of scripture to others like most women do? Intellect or feelings?
It does grate on me a little when people pick off low-hanging fruit and then pat themselves on the head for thinking they’ve completely demolished the other side. Both sides are guilty of this in various ways IMO.
Refuting Dawkins and Lewontin is like shooting fish in a barrel; it doesn’t give you reason to think you’re a good marksman. There are much better arguments to be made for materialism/atheism (some have been made by physicist Victor Stenger). (I’m not saying I agree with them, mind you, but just that they are much better arguments and don’t have a trivial refutation.) So, I’d posit a multiverse, with lots and lots of individual universes. However unlikely it is that life would arise in an individual universe, the probability that life will arise in at least one universe approaches one as the number of universes approaches infinity. Given that intelligent life has arisen at least one universe, the probability that we are in one of those universes is one (by definition). Possible refutations: 1) Argue the physics. I think this is highly unlikely to work. The difficulty here is, multiverse theories are much more on the level of theoretical physics than experimental physics, given how hard it is to get relevant data. It can (and has been) argued by other physicists that multiverse theories are even in principle unfalsifiable and therefore belong to the realm of philosophy and not physics. (While I have training in physics I never studied cosmology at all (not my subarea of interest) so I don’t anything to add to this debate.) 2) Argue the philosophy. I don’t see how this could possibly go anywhere, since a multiverse is logically possible either way. 3) Argue that among the subset of possible universes with intelligent life, we are incredibly unlikely to find ourselves in the one we actually do due to some feature about it. This could possibly work, but a lot of spade work will be necessary to get there. (E.g. in other universes with different physical constants, silicon-based life forms may arise.) Or, 4) give up and go back to the old traditional or kalam-style cosmological arguments.
OTOH, “God wouldn’t have done it that way!” arguments don’t work either. Surely God wouldn’t have designed animals with vestigial organs, so therefore we can conclude they arose via common descent. Surely God wouldn’t have designed the eye the way it is (supposedly faulty), so therefore we can conclude it arose via common descent, so the arguments go. Surely God wouldn’t designed DNA with lots of nonfunctional regions (“junk DNA”, to be distinguished from noncoding regions), and so on. Creationist rebuttals that vestigial organs actually have a function and maybe the eye isn’t so faultily designed after all and some “junk DNA” has been shown not be “junk” after all somewhat miss the point. The rebuttal doesn’t work to this: Surely God wouldn’t have designed a rational creature which has to waste time eating; and then, the creature can’t even extract all the energy from the food, necessitating an additional bodily system to get rid of the waste; but Adam and Eve did eat in the Garden of Eden. Well, the point is, while we sure do now know lots, lots more than we did even 200 years ago, there is a whole heck of a lot (an enormous mountain of stuff in fact) we still don’t know, whereas God knows everything. There may well be a good reason beyond our current knowledge why God did what He did; who knows, maybe science 50 or 100 years from now will make a lot of it much clearer.
Teaching children – with no ability to question what they are being told, and the threat of failing grades if they do it anyway – that the Bible is wrong, and that death is not the consequence of sin, has already led many children away from God with more joining the ranks every day. One of the quotes from Jesus that appears in three of the gospels is below. (As recorded by Matthew, Mark, and Luke – New International Version)
“If anyone causes one of these little ones–those who believe in me–to stumble, it would be better for them to have a large millstone hung around their neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea.” – Matthew 18:6.
“If anyone causes one of these little ones–those who believe in me–to stumble, it would be better for them if a large millstone were hung around their neck and they were thrown into the sea.” – Mark 9:42.
“It would be better for them to be thrown into the sea with a millstone tied around their neck than to cause one of these little ones to stumble.” – Luke 17:2.
Continue your attacks on the truth found in the Bible at your peril, gentlemen. The eternal destiny of souls – including your own – may ride on your decision. Choose wisely.
@ BrainyOne at September 13, 2014 at 11:29 am
That’s a reasonably fair post to which I can offer only a few objections… I’m actually going to chime in in support of most of it, because I think you said some things worth expanding on.
1) “Refuting Dawkins and Lewontin is like shooting fish in a barrel; it doesn’t give you reason to think you’re a good marksman.” – Your point is okay as far as it goes, but it is up to evolutionists to denounce these clowns – and, more importantly, the philosophy they espouse – if they don’t speak for them. I can call someone an idiot until my voice gives out, but if my objection is to his delivery rather than the ideological content of his speech, I haven’t really done due diligence. When the mainstream journals of the natural sciences stop censoring anything that runs counter to the prevailing theory, then we can all ignore those guys. Until then, they are legitimate targets for creationists.
2) I’m with you on the multiverse idea (obviously we both agree that it cannot be classified as a theory). It acknowledges that the only way to get life to arise without a supernatural cause is to posit an infinite number of universes. Since the odds of it happening are essentially zero (and probably actually zero), only by positing an infinite number of “tries” can the impossible be made theoretically possible. And I appreciate that you noted that the multiverse idea is a philosophical one, rather than a scientific one. I’ll go one step beyond and say that it belongs in the realm of science fiction rather than science philosophy.
3) I also appreciate that you acknowledge that “vestigial” organs may not be vestigial after all. I distinctly recall being taught that the appendix was evidence for evolution – we have since discovered that it has a function. You can live without it (just as you can live without your thumbs), but it’s not just a useless leftover from the past.
4) And finally, I appreciate that you acknowledge that what we know of DNA coding is rudimentary at best. I was not a cryptologist, but in my military career I dealt with encrypting and decrypting quite a lot. I got so much practice that in my unit I was known for my ability to decode messages nearly as quickly as they came in – practically in real-time. I’ve also done some graduate-level study on the history of military encryption/decryption. Like I wrote above, I’m no geneticist, but I can say that, in my experience, what appears incomprehensible to someone trying to break a code is always there for a reason. The key to viewing code is not to view the incomprehensible parts as “junk” – but to realize that you haven’t cracked the whole code yet.
Posting too fast again. Two corrections:
…the coiling double-strand part…
Diphosphate in the place of biphosphate.
@theasdgamer:
not a single reference in the Wiki article was to a publication that defended Kenyon.
Perhaps the reason is that there is nothing to be said in his defense.
If you honestly believe that marsupial wolves and placental wolves should be classified together because of their shape, then you are fighting your battle as if it is still 1859. Look at the DNA.
@JDG:
Lions eating grass isn’t that strange of an idea compared to the idea that God can’t be taken at His word.
– as interpreted by you?
My work here is
doneundoable.– as interpreted by you?
No, I wouldn’t dare to presume. I’m just a messenger. The ground work for proper biblical hermeneutics and exegesis has long since been laid. It doesn’t just go away with the latest popular notion that comes along.
My work here is
doneundoable.If only that were so.
If everyone got to interpret the Bible their own way, then it wouldn’t really mean anything (kind of like a ‘living constitution’). Fortunately that’s not the case.
JDG,
There’s no real point in asking James K any more questions – he just ignores the ones he can’t answer and changes the subject to whatever his next claim is. That has not stopped him from challenging us to “produce the results of the science experiments” that demonstrate our position, however, he has steadfastly refused to provide any such evidence for even a single claim he has made.
Here is his standing challenge to us:
Here is where we have asked him to do the same for things that are necessary for his materialist viewpoint to be correct:
here, here, and here.
He has yet to produce those results… or similar-quality results for any of the claims upon which his position relies, for that matter.
Unless he can produce those results, I have to consider him to be a troll from this point forward. He demands results that he cannot produce himself, and then he changes the subject every time he gets called on it. Rather than continuing to allow him to switch, and switch, and switch, I recommend just reminding him that he has yet to establish his first claims before allowing him to change the subject to a new one.
C’mon. You haven’t exactly replied to my comment here.
My short reply is here. It is quick and easy to ask questions. It is very hard to provide satisfactory answers. Neither of us has the time or energy. You’ve made it clear anyway that you will not accept the evidence, however good, because you regard it (wrongly, in my opinion) as bringing the Bible’s statements about the redemptive work of Jesus Christ into disrepute.
Let’s agree to differ, and try to stay on-topic in future, so we can actually learn useful things from one another.
James K,
I did not respond to your question because you did not ask me one. Care to stay on topic? It was you who wrote this…
James K says:
September 11, 2014 at 12:57 pm
The challenge is quite simple – reproduce the results of the science experiments reported by young-earth creationists, and you will win the Nobel Prize.
… two days earlier. I asked you to provide answers to even one of six questions that your worldview requires. You did not even attempt to do so. You still haven’t, and I’m still waiting for you to do the bare minimum of what you asked of us, rather than changing the subject again and again each time one of your “data points” gets squashed.
As for the link to my post – I did not say that that I would not accept evidence – I said “the science only matters to me because of the theological ramifications.”
How you got from “It’s important because of the theological reasons” to “Lyn87 said he won’t accept good evidence” is beyond me. You completely mischaracterized my position. Frankly, I don’t know how I would react to such evidence – because you have yet to provide any. When do you think that might be forthcoming?
But you say you want us to “learn from each other.” Fine. Learn this:
If you don’t think that the relentless attack by the so-called “scientific community” against the very foundations of Christian doctrine (despite overwhelming evidence that macro-evolution is mathematically and physically impossible) – has undermined the faith of many, then you are – of all men – most blind. Why is it so important to you that the Bible be wrong?… to the point of declaring that things that are demonstrably false are true? This isn’t just Genesis on trial here – Jesus Himself vouched for its authenticity… and the Bible names Him as an eyewitness to Creation, and as a co-Creator Himself (John 1:3 and Colossians 1:16). Among other endorsements of Genesis, Jesus is recorded as saying:
“But from the beginning of the creation, God ‘made them male and female.” – Mark 10:6.
If evolution occurred as you are claiming, Jesus would have been incorrect, since sexual dimorphism would have taken eons to develop (in fact, it is impossible that sexually-dimorphous reproduction would ever spontaneously evolve at all, but that’s a different matter you also haven’t addressed). Jesus claimed to be “one with the Father” – a member of the Trinity, and a witness to Creation. So if He was wrong about the Genesis creation account (like you say He was), then either He was a madman if He believed it, or a liar if He did not. In either case, redemption would be a lie.
C.S. Lewis summed it up pretty well. Jesus was either a Liar, a Lunatic, or Lord. Pick one
If you are correct, then Jesus was no Messiah, and sin is a myth, and redemption is a lie. Eat, drink, and be merry: for tomorrow we die! Again, why is it so important to you to believe that despite the evidence? Why is it so important to you that others do as well?
If you accept Jesus as the Messiah, the Son of God, the Second Person of the Trinity, and the one who takes away the sins of the world, doesn’t it make sense to look at the evidence with a bias in that direction, rather than against it? There is not one single bit of evidence that macro-evolution is even theoretically possible… the odds of all the right things having taken place are ZERO. If every atom in the universe was, itself, made into a universe, the odds of all the right things happening to create just the physical world we see around us – still devoid of life – are less than randomly finding a single specific quark in all those universes combined. Yet when a piece of evidence does not rule out evolution pops up, you insist on viewing it (not matter how far it stretches credulity) as “more likely” to favor the idea that Jesus was a fraud.
Why are you so insistent on spreading that? And if you believe what Jesus said in Matthew, Mark and Luke, “If anyone causes one of these little ones–those who believe in me–to stumble, it would be better for them to have a large millstone hung around their neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea.“… do you not care that you are undermining the faith of others? Do you not tremble for the state of your own soul?
Obviously it is more important to appear “intelligent” (as defined by the majority) and accepted amongst men.
@Lyn 87
It is serendipity that as this thread has heated up that the War Cry should this week have interviewed Professor Louis (the Lord truly does work in mysterious or at least well-timed ways) – the interviews are not that I can recall usually so concerned, if at all, with Evolution. As the interview is not otherwise available to you, I thought you might be interested in some of what Professor Louis says. For myself I make no judgement on any of this.
“Unfortunately ‘evolution’ is often used as an ideology – ‘evolutionism’. Referring to evolution palaeontologist George Gaylord Simpson said ‘Man is the product of a process which did not have him in mind. He was not planned.’ That is a completely metaphysical statement not a scientific one.
It is the metaphysics that make some Christians nervous about evolution…”
“People such as Richard Dawkins wrap themselves in the mantle of science and proclaim this loudly. This evolutionism is not just bad philosophy, it is bad for science….”
“The fundamental driver of anti-evolutionary thought in Christians has to do with the way that evolution is taught in schools and the way it has been popularised with lots of unnecessary metaphysical baggage attached. Geology and certain interpretations of Genesis do not agree. This is a problem not with evolution but with natural history…”
“If you believe that there was no death before Adam then you have to explain an enormous amount of fossils. It doesn’t really matter by what mechanism (evolutionary or not) they all got there.”
“Genesis was written within a cultural context. The dominant intelligentsia of the time were astrologers. They regarded the Sun and Moon and Stars as living beings that controlled their lives The author of Genesis does not use the Hebrew word for Sun and Moon but calls then lamps. In other words the writer is saying: these things are not deities up in the sky, they are physical objects like lamps in your tent. In fact they are so unimportant I am going to relegate them to the fourth day. The passage was never meant to be read as journalistic narrative. We modern westerners have problem in that if something is not written as Journalistic text then we think that it’s somehow less valuable. We are not good at handling symbolism.”
The interview in the War Cry with Prof Ard Louis
http://www.salvationarmy.org.uk/uki/Article_3
Opus, thanks for the head’s up – James K linked the article and I looked it over (thanks, James). Professor Louis is a smart guy and probably a decent scientist, but he is simply wrong about some things. One cannot separate the metaphysical ramifications from the theory of evolution as easily as he blithely assumes. The reason that the teaching of macro-evolution (and the active and vehement suppression of anything – even damning evidence – against it) is so problematic is only partially because so-called “men of science” have turned it into a article of faith. It is also problematic for at least two other reasons: 1) the fossil record presents a FAR larger problem for evolutionists than for Creationists, since the fossil record fits catastrophism far better than uniformitarianism, and 2) if evolution is true and death preceded sin, than Jesus was, quite simply, a fraud.
That may not matter to people who have internalized the materialistic paradigm and have tried to graft Belief in God onto it – those people are properly called “theistic evolutionists”… I know: I used to be one myself. BrainyOne, James K, and Professor Louis are examples, as was I many years ago. But for people who cannot so easily hold two contradictory ideas in their minds by appealing to the idea that a something that has a 0.000000000…………….00000000001% chance of being true “cannot be definitively ruled out,” the metaphysical implications of being repeatedly told that the Bible is a book of interesting allegories cannot be so easily escaped. People WANT to sin – it has been in our nature since the Fall of mankind – and people will grasp at any rationale to act as if the Word of God doesn’t apply to them. Even Christians struggle with our carnal nature… how much more difficult is it for non-Christians to see through the fog when even professing Christians are busily trying to extinguish the lamps?
I’m glad you brought up fossils, by the way. There are two basic ways to look at the fossil record – as the product of eons of gradual build-up, or as the result of one or more catastrophic events. The Bible posits a single such event – the Great Flood. As a factual matter, the Great Flood provides a far superior “fit” for the fossil record (as well as all sorts of geological phenomena) than the uniformitarian model upon which all “Old Earth” theories depend. By there are metaphysical implications there as well. The Great Flood is specifically noted as having taken place for a metaphysical reason – God’s judgement on a sinful world. Jesus Himself spoke about it as a literal historical event that demonstrates God’s Divine judgement. If one “waves away” the Great Flood by positing an ill-fitting materialist model to explain natural phenomena, then not only does that render the Christian cosmological paradigm absurd, it also calls into question the reality of Divine judgement and the sanity of Jesus Himself, since He claimed to be a member of the very Godhead that unleashed the flood.
What theistic evolutionists do not understand is that there really is no way to reconcile the materialist and the Christian worldviews – one of them has to be wrong, and the metaphysical implications don’t go away by wishing then away or declaring them moot. Christianity is, itself, the most comprehensive paradigm shift one can undergo. And if theistic evolutionists would simply stop interpreting everything according to a materialist worldview, they would see that the universe around them is perfectly explicable without it. Souls hang in the balance when they insist otherwise.
Lyn87, why won’t you have a chat with this marine paleobiologist, James W, Valentine? He specializes in marine fossils of plankton algae. It would be difficult to explain to him that sediment layers that he estimated to have been formed in hundreds of thousands of years were made in 40 days or so.
It would be difficult to explain to him that sediment layers that he estimated to have been formed in hundreds of thousands of years were made in 40 days or so.
Not all that difficult at all – if one doesn’t begin with the a priori assumption that the layers were deposited over hundreds of thousands of years. Begging the question always gets you the answer you want – that’s why it’s a properly classified as a logical fallacy – it is useless for inquiry.
Now I’ll ask you the question that I asked James K earlier – why is it so important to you that the Bible be wrong?
Lyn87 says:
September 13, 2014 at 10:18 pm
Lyn87 says:
September 14, 2014 at 12:52 pm
I’m adding these responses to my notes.
BTW, what is cumulative probability of an event with a singular probability of one in a million, when you attempt it a million times?
Apparently, all the people writing
these articles and books have some nefarious agenda against the Bible on their minds.
Take this example:
Deccan Traps mantle degassing in the terminal Cretaceous marine extinctions
It has to be a deliberate hoax, because nothing from this article was mentioned in the Bible.
Exfernal continues to ask the wrong questions, offer rebuttals to arguments nobody has made, and ignore the question he prefers not to answer.
The wrong question that Exfernal asks: “BTW, what is cumulative probability of an event with a singular probability of one in a million, when you attempt it a million times?”
The right question would have been: What is the cumulative probability of trillions of mathematically-impossible event occurring in the exactly correct sequence?
Exfernal’s rebuttal to an argument nobody has made: “It has to be a deliberate hoax, because nothing from this article was mentioned in the Bible.”
Nobody said that everything is found in the Bible – only that everything that is found in the Bible is true.
The question Exfernal ignored because he prefers not to answer:
Why is it so important to you that the Bible be wrong?
@Lyn87:
Ard Louis is more expert than me at the science, and much more expert at the Bible. Also I expect he has spent a significant amount of time talking to people who have different ways of thinking about the Bible and science. I am sure he can do a better job than me on this subject.
He will be expecting a postbag as a result of his interview in the War Cry. Why not email him privately to discuss your concerns? His contact detail are here:
http://www-thphys.physics.ox.ac.uk/people/ArdLouis/louis.shtml
Thanks, James.
I have no wife.
Why is it so important to you that the Bible be wrong?
I’m interested what fits with facts and what doesn’t. It’s not important if it’s specifically about the Bible.
Returning to the totally arbitrary one in a million number and possibility of mutations. Hypothetically, if you set the frequency of DNA ligase ‘malfunctioning’ at that value, then how often might it lead to DNA breaks and mutations from that source? Genome sizes are known for many species (subtract telomere length, as they are produced by different method ), the average eukaryotic Okazaki fragment length is known as well. How many of these fragments are joined in the replication phase of a single cell cycle? How many cell divisions happen in human life of average length? The resulting number does not account for all mutations from other possible sources (like DNA depurination that wasn’t corrected soon enough to not affect replication), for example.
These are important questions, because they illustrate that human genome is not ‘written in stone’. Obviously, only those changes that affect the germ-line cells have the potential to be transferred to the next generation. This explains my beef with the linked statement of Michio Kaku (a physicist of some renown).
^
Tags missing.
He said that ‘gross evolution’ has stopped.
Not entirely, IMO. In the past, the ‘selective mortality’ part of natural selection was the driving factor. Now, we have ‘selective pairing and mating’ taking the first place for some time. Sometimes, it selects for beauty, but sometimes, it selects for the genetic component of psychopathy. Of course, trends are slow and not aligning exactly with these lines, but still… basic rules still apply.
And I am still not addressing abiogenesis, because it is only tangentially related to evolution. If even there was a miracle of God that started the life on Earth, it still does not affect how is evolution proceeding after that.
Besides, we don’t know how small was the genome (probably RNA) of the very first organisms to be, Drake’s rule notwithstanding. It didn’t have to be replicated by the current method. The ‘rolling circle‘ type replication is more probable.
If it comes to the Bible, I admit to make mistakes (like with the Lucifer issue recently). Therefore, I prefer to refer to experts on the subject.
^
I admit to making mistakes…
Okay, Exfernal,
Since you have yet to answer a single one of the questions I posed several days ago, and all you do is to keep tossing out new issues rather than conclude any of the old ones, I must consider that you have functionally withdrawn from this debate… preferring to just fling more and more and more untested claims rather than come to any conclusions about anything. In just the past 20 hours alone, you have thrown out 1) the results of a web search for “marine fossils plankton algae dating,” 2) an article about “Deccan traps mantle degassing in the terminal Cretaceous marine extinctions” (which starts with materialist assumptions that are not in evidence – haven’t I warned you to look out for the “Begging the Question” Fallacy?), 3) a talk by Michio Kaku that actually undermines your point of view, and links to articles about 4) Drake’s Rule, 5) the “Rolling Cycle” and 6) some dude’s critique of Isaiah 14:12. Meanwhile, I initially posed several questions that go to the heart of your hypothesis that you have not even attempted to answer. So although I would be normally happy to broach new subjects, I know that with you, as soon as I or someone else points out a flaw in your argument that you cannot answer, you ignore the fact that a flaw has been uncovered and just throw out two or three more equally-untested hypotheses as if nothing had happened. I will not dance on your strings by responding to the barrage of links that constitutes the sum total of your “argument.” You’ve had multiple chances to deal with the underlying issues and you have steadfastly refused to do so – you have proven yourself to be nothing more than a troll seeking conflict for its own sake rather than a man seeking answers through legitimate argument – and thus forfeited the right to further responses.
But I’ll leave you with this – since you cannot be swayed by facts, I’ll ask you a rhetorical question since you seem to think of yourself as a Christian (at least I think you do).
Just for the sake of argument, let’s say that you’re right: that God used eons of time to create the modern world, and all the references in the Bible that say otherwise were meant to be allegorical rather than literal. Knowing that this philosophy has resulted in countless people drawing metaphysical conclusions against the Bible and the truth-claims of Christianity, wouldn’t it be better to limit a discussion about this to only include people whose understanding was deep enough to handle the metaphysical implications without having their faith undermined? Every day, people are choosing to reject Christ because they don’t understand the “subtle nuances” you claim to see that allow the Bible to be “wrong” about history and yet still correct when it comes to sin and redemption. Every day, people die and go to Hell because they have done so. You want to have this discussion with people like me, or Sir Hamster, of JDG? Fine. Your arguments aren’t going to shake our faith, but to tenaciously defend something that – even of true – is so easily misunderstood (as making literal claims rather than allegorical ones) that it has undermined and destroyed the faith of millions… is it worth it to you? Is arguing a point that you know undermines the faith of others worth the loss of those souls for all eternity?
I don’t expect an answer, but I hope you think about lost souls, and millstones.
“If anyone causes one of these little ones–those who believe in me–to stumble, it would be better for them to have a large millstone hung around their neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea.” – Matthew 18:6, NIV
OK, so tell me, how is a single mutation that takes a part in macroevolution different on the molecular level from a ‘silent’ mutation, or a mutation that is being expressed so late in life that is has little bearing on selection (think Alzheimer’s)? They all originate from biochemical processes. And the Bible is not a biochemistry, nor a molecular biology textbook.
When I die, there will be nothing left of me beyond the collection of atoms. At least I hope so.
Sigh… yet another new issue rather than addressing one of your unresolved ones already on the table. Perhaps you didn’t think I meant it when I wrote this:
Well… I did mean it, and do not intend to be drawn off-topic by your newest feint about mutations when you still have not addressed any of the underlying issues that have been on the table for days. Anyway, I and others have already addressed the topic of genetic mutations when you brought it up three days ago: you just don’t like our answer for philosophical reasons of your own.
And now I see that you have written this: “When I die, there will be nothing left of me beyond the collection of atoms. At least I hope so.”
I was under the impression that you were some sort of Christian (or at least a proponent of theistic evolution). If you mean what you just typed then I can now see that you are not. That explains why you, 1) cannot even begin to mentally process an argument that does is not dependent upon an a priori assumption of materialism (which is why all of your arguments rely on the “Begging the Question” fallacy), and 2) you don’t care that what you’re shoveling can and does undermine the faith of people who might otherwise find salvation.
Your arguments lie in tatters around you on scientific, mathematical, logical, and theological grounds, yet you remain strident. So be it. I have prayed for your eyes to be opened, and intend to continue to do so. The 17th Chapter of Acts describes the debate that the Apostle Paul had at the Areopagus in Athens – somewhat similar to the one we’ve had here. Some of his listeners were persuaded and went on to salvation – most were not and went on to face those terrible consequences – but eventually Paul left them to their choices and walked away.
@James
This is my mistake for not doing a professional job, i.e. taking the time to examine every paper on this subject before coming to a conclusion. I rashly assumed that, because the 14C results were listed on the page @Lyn87 linked, as one of “101 evidences for a young age of the earth and the universe”, that the findings, including the detailed rejection of in-situ production of 14C, were to be taken as such evidence. Then you come along and tell me that, after all, the 14C has a perfectly good old-earth explanation.
I did not tell you that the 14C has a “perfectly good explanation”. OE believers have a speculative model to explain the presence of 14C where it is not expected. The existence of speculation is NOT experimental validation. You are still sloppy in evaluating the facts, and drawing conclusions that are not evidentially supported – while demanding a high standard of YEC.
The areas of “What you believe” and “validated by scientific experiment” may overlap, but you should know better than to treat the former as a complete subset of the latter.
In fact neither of us is investing the time to make a proper case.
I reject your attempt to disqualify us both. You made errors that I did not. Why should your faulty claims reflect on me? I’m still not sure you understand the difference between historical claims and scientific claims, and the methods for evaluating each type. (you should re-read the YEC article you tried to criticize, because it explains it)
You can believe in the evolutionary fairy tale all you want, but I expect you to show more respect to those who disagree with it until you develop the ability to come up with valid criticisms. A starting point would be to retract the accusation that YEC is a “denialist” belief, or that YEC journals are “disingenuous” hucksters selling “plausible denial”. Allow them the honesty of belief, and I will be satisfied.
I’m enjoying this debate, and didn’t want to distract the gentlemen directly involved until it slowed down. Biology and the related sciences (life sciences) have always fascinated me, probably because they’re beyond my ken. I’m one of those guys who studied physics and mathematics so he didn’t have to memorize the kingdom-phylum-class stuff. We all have our little weaknesses, and I know mine.
I think there’s a prevalent fallacy that is easy to slip into, even for smart folks like yourselves. It’s a sort of vain solipsism, that assumes first that things are knowable at all, and then that the subject is himself qualified to interpret these things. I think that when I try to ponder such weighty issues, I most closely resemble a dog, sitting atop a hill, watching the sunset, and trying to understand the dimming of the world. I can grasp a few things that may be going on, but I’m confident I don’t have most of the important answers.
It may be that we will understand everything someday, but it’s certain that this day has yet to come.
The bible is a mix of history and literature, compiled by men who were making their best attempt to understand God. Even the most hardcore Christian scholars and philosophers don’t try to pretend it’s a verbatim account from the divine monarch as to his recipe for the universe. It contains a lot of stuff that appeared long before there were Christians and Hebrews, which those early scribes probably found inspirational.
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/11088a.htm
If God exists (anything is possible) he didn’t leave a detailed diary anywhere, explaining exactly what he did, and when, to bring about the present state of affairs. Why would he owe us an explanation, anyway? We ought to just be grateful. I’d also like to think that he created us to wonder, and didn’t want to spoil the surprises that we’ve encountered along the way.
There is no immutable law that says God had to create everything with a snap of his fingers, as the text (which was written by some dude, a long time ago) alludes to. He doesn’t have to follow our orders, or dance to our tune. He could have used processes that have become familiar to us in Biology class (whatever those entail — I don’t pretend to know), or he could have opted for some third process, about which we know nothing.
Anyway, good conversation. Cheers to all participants.
Boxer
@SirHamster:
You said:
Does this mean anything to you? It means that people with an Old Earth/atheist/evolutionary PoV did not dispute the C14 measurements, but appealed to an alternative explanation for its presence.
I said:
In fact neither of us is investing the time to make a proper case.
You said:
I reject your attempt to disqualify us both.
You apparently have no idea what a “proper case” would look like. A review of all known measurements of 14C in fossil matter, covering all types of allegedly ancient specimen (diamond, coal, oil, gas), from different types of environment, and different parts of the world, and including new experiments to fill any gaps. A careful review of possible errors in each measurement. An genuine search for any specimens that have 14C below the measurement limit. An investigation of all the proposed mechanisms for the infiltration of 14C into supposedly ancient samples, and a finding of which mechanisms (if any) are valid in which circumstances. Conclusions, if these are possible. A subset of this, if it is possible to draw adequate conclusions and demonstrate reproducibility. A particularly careful investigation of any results that appear to contradict these conclusions. All complete with references.
Instead, you have done the same as me, and performed a quick search on the web.
You said:
What, specifically, do you think is wrong with a reference to Noah’s Flood?
When advocating unconventional ideas, wear conventional clothes.
Everyone understands this to some extent. If you are in a court hearing for custody of your children, you are not going to start talking about lions eating grass, or kangaroos on Noah’s ark.
If you want to overturn the scientific status quo, you do not produce a slapdash mineralogical study and mix it up with your opinions about the Flood. You produce a careful study and publish it in a journal of mineralogy; you use the terms of reference of the status quo in order to demonstrate a contradiction and undermine it. If you want to mention the Flood, you make sure that your original study has been accepted first.
First of all Lyn began with a very snarky, arrogant tone, so I replied in kind.
It wasn’t snarky. It was bitchy. Which I associate with difficult women or red-faced men waving the world’s tiniest prick in your face as they fling spittle at their interlocutors. Which I associate with people to be ignored whenever possible, and that’s thankfully saved me a helluva lot of time in this hijacked thread.
Wow this debate is still going on.
LOL, and I was wondering how a thread here got to 750+ comments.
It is possible that God made things in their final form 6,000 years ago, but created an earth that appeared to have a much longer history.
Then you’re left defending a fucking sadist. Which is absolutely the tack you should take, since it happens to be the narrative I prefer.
Darkheart – You really have no idea what you are talking about. You may as well accuse everyone (including juries and judges) who dispenses justice of the same thing.
You apparently have no idea what a “proper case” would look like.
You are mixing up different claims.
The scientific claim is that C14 was observed. The historical claim is that the C14 observed in fossils is there because reason X happened Y years ago. Scientific experiments in all of the different methods you describe can be used to support the various historical claims with differing
The claim that OE has sufficiently explained away C14, however, is not based on any of the scientific experimentation you say is necessary. Double standard in favor of your pet belief.
Instead, you have done the same as me, and performed a quick search on the web.
To show how trivially wrong your accusation of “irreproducible experiments” is. The evidence is the scientific observation that C14 was measured in various substances where they were not expected. The conclusion that this creates problems for an OE theory of origins is NOT the experiment. It’s an experimental CONCLUSION. What was the experiment? The measurement of molecules in a fossil.
If you want to overturn the scientific status quo, you do not produce a slapdash mineralogical study and mix it up with your opinions about the Flood. You produce a careful study and publish it in a journal of mineralogy; you use the terms of reference of the status quo in order to demonstrate a contradiction and undermine it. If you want to mention the Flood, you make sure that your original study has been accepted first.
And once again, you confuse history for science, resulting in a nonsensical criticism. The belief that the earth is billions of years old is not the scientific status quo, it is the historical status quo.
Do you not understand that the study of past events is history? You don’t use scientific experiments or studies to determine if the American Revolution happened, an event 200 odd years ago. Events further back in time, whether 6,000 years ago, or 100 million or 1.7 billion years ago – are in the exact same category of knowledge as the American Revolution. Historical knowledge/claims.
You don’t prove the AR happened like you prove the theory of gravity. So this talk about “accepting studies” first is silly – scientists are not historians, and scientific journals are not the authority for history. That you think this is a problem for YEC is evidence of your poor understanding of the knowledge domains involved. History is what it is, and a belief that a historical event happened based on historical documentation is not dependent on first seeing a study accepted in a journal.
Yup, it’s history. It’s the kind of history that you do in a science lab, with a mass spectrometer.
If you do not fully understand the results, you might try asking a professional historian to discuss them; but if you are talking about a time before contemporary written records, he will tell you to try an archaeologist.
Ask to discuss the results with an archaeologist; but if you are talking about a time before man, he will tell you to try a geologist.
Ask to discuss the results with a geologist, and he will probably refer you to another geologist who is skilled in isotopic analysis, and works closely with mass spectroscopists. The latter will know how to acquire and prepare the specimens to minimise contamination. The tradecraft, the experimental techniques, and the methods of analysis will be discussed in science journals.
Some history.
Ask to discuss the results with a geologist, and he will probably refer you to another geologist who is skilled in isotopic analysis, and works closely with mass spectroscopists. The latter will know how to acquire and prepare the specimens to minimise contamination. The tradecraft, the experimental techniques, and the methods of analysis will be discussed in science journals.
The precise measurement of matter and the techniques used are science. The part where you use those numbers to estimate eras longer recorded human history is no longer science, but educated guesswork on history.
There is value to this sort of analysis – but the estimated ages are not verifiable by scientific experiment, and have historically fluctuated by many orders of magnitude as new techniques/methods were deployed. (eternity, millions, billions, etc) To treat the current number as sacred is to ignore the assumptions involved – such as a belief in an Old Earth where fossils represent a geological timeline.
Don’t confuse this guesswork with science. Until we have time machines or the ability to create and observe universes on the billion year time scales, there is no repeatable science involved with those numbers. Being published by a scientific journal is not needed to challenge the assumptions used.
Being a “professional” does not change whether or not the emperor is wearing clothes.
Ask to discuss the results with a geologist, and he will probably refer you to another geologist who is skilled in isotopic analysis, and works closely with mass spectroscopists.
…whose analysis are based on assumptions and speculations.
JDG, just because you don’t understand something, doesn’t mean that all other men are so limited. You have how many degrees in Geology, Physics, or Astrophysics, again?
You genuinely don’t sound as if you have enough background to be entitled to an opinion that adults with such a background should bother listening to. It’s as if YEC were proponents of the stork hypothesis for where babies come from wanting equal lecture time and equal respect at a professional technical conference of obstetricians. Uh. no. For now, let the adults handle this — and come back when you have some real background in the subject.
I try my best not to appeal to consequences. It seems that the whole of reasoning of Lyn87 here is built around it. ‘You have to believe, because you will be punished with certainty through all eternity, if you don’t’ – that’s my impression.
The mathematical ‘proof’ of impossibility of evolution linked above is an example of a Fermi problem. In this case it happens to be a part of the Drake equation. The results are very dependent on estimates for particular variables. At this moment, any specific answer will be more or less in the category of ‘guesswork’. I am especially interested in the works of Jack Szostak, as they have the potential to narrow down the value of fl in Drake equation.
Apparently, the [sub] tag doesn’t work in comments…
I have forgotten exactly what Lyn 87’s I.Q. is. I knew mine was only 87 so I decided to let my pet chimpanzee do an on-line test. He pressed the same key twenty times and the score was 74. I think that is pretty good for a chimp. I then thought I would have a go, and do it more or less properly. I scored 140, but I am still not convinced that the test really says anything about intrinsic intelligence (whatever that may be) – some other guy, calling himself Einstein seems to have been using my computer for it says he scored 160 – he probably cheated.
Questions such as, ‘is a snake more like an elephant than like a toad’ are apparently capable of determining intelligence; what I say is, is it in the emperors collection? – and as I don’t think he has any toads the answer has to be that a snake is indeed more like an elephant – besides both can kill you which a toad is surely incapable or unwilling to do that. Poems and flowers are nice (and frequently poems are about flowers) so I had to exclude statues which are cold and lifeless as belonging together from a list also including painting and novels.
Whoever invented these tests has no appreciation of life as we know it, Jim.
It boils down to Pascal’s Wager. I’m basing my choice on this: even if there is an infinite gain possible, then from my POV it’s at infinitesimal probability.
I do believe that this thread has been invaded by Pyrrhonists, although I should be sceptical about that..
Biology (and Zoology) like Economics suffers as a soft science from being largely unfalsifiable and devoid of logical inference. This perhaps explains why there are so many women in economics – it’s all about how they feel the market may respond. They can never be wrong – how could they have predicted the Danish would invade Russia thus setting in motion a bear market.
Luke says:
September 19, 2014 at 10:54 pm
Sorry Luke, I can’t agree with you. I’ve sat through enough lectures (Physics, astronomy, ect.) to know that dating of any sort has included assumptions about the past and the nature of Earth. Every model relating to the past as presented had built in assumptions that things always worked as they do now (Earth’s polarity for example). I still remember when the “truth” was the yo-yo model. I’ve also come to realize that the more degrees a person has the more likely he has swallowed the PC kool-aid.
It would be nice if we could trust scientists to remain neutral, but alas they are only human and develop biases of their own (global warming anybody). Every one has a bias, and mine leans towards the Bible. Other folks put their trust in man. Trusting man has gotten us where we are today in our depraved society. To me nothing short of feminism screams PC louder then evolution.
I bowed out of this almost a week ago because the alternate view has been thoroughly demolished by logic, math, and science, but I see that others have been chattering in my absence. That’s as it may be – “There is none so blind as him who will not see,” and all that.
But if Exfernal has read what I wrote in this thread and come away with the idea that my argument boils down to an appeal to consequences, I can definitively say that he is no scientist, or if he is, that they no longer teach how to make logical inferences in science courses. “Your theory defies every known law of physics” is not an appeal to consequences, and I suspect that even Exfernal knows that he’s lying when he defines my argument that way.
Nonetheless, God is self-evident – even the most ardent self-proclaimed atheist knows the truth deep-down. Yet people who don’t want to deal with the implications of a just God attempt to persuade themselves of a comfortable lie. That’s why people grasp at absurd theories that defy logic, math, and science. Everyone knows that God exists, and the ability to lie to oneself doesn’t change it one iota.
“Wherefore God also hath highly exalted him, and given him a name which is above every name: That at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven, and things in earth, and things under the earth; and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.” – Phillipians 2: 9-11
Every knee. Every tongue. Whether that will be an utterance of joy or of horror will depend on the decisions made in this life. That’s not an argument for the existence of God, by the way, we are way past proving that at this point – even God does not “argue” for His own existence. He merely declares and demonstrates it.
Like Paul leaving the Areopagus, I will now attempt to bow out again.
@Luke
“You have how many degrees in Geology, Physics, or Astrophysics, again?”
If I had multiple degrees in women’s studies, would that make me an expert on women?
Or would you prefer to consult Roissy, uneducated as he may be?
John Nesteutes says:
September 24, 2014 at 11:55 pm
Yikes! Well played sir.
John, I just wanted to know if you had anything in your background besides your FEEEELLINGS to give you reason to oppose evolution. Apparently, the answer is zip.
I believe that Alpha widowhood is equivalent to what is described among evangelicals as a “soul tie”. It is a spiritual phenomenon that requires deliverance, just as demon possessed people require deliverance. The affected “widows” cannot wish it away; manosphere cannot shame it away. There is no amount of love and devotion that the current husband displays that can extinguish it. This is what happens when a piece of someone’s heart remains with a past alpha lover. Or many alpha lovers for that matter, and pieces of the alpha’s souls remain with the widow. What remains with the widow are a fragmented, partially substituted and incomplete soul. Such a person needs their soul to be “restored” (Psalm 23:3).
Dave you might be on to something. The only way that can be restored is through confession. It’s a God matter.
Absolutely. We co-mingle more than body fluids during sex. We co-mingle souls as well. That is one reason that indiscriminate sex is extremely dangerous. It dilutes the soul and weakens the will. Ever noticed that those who have been previously sexually loose tend to be almost irredeemable?
Apostle Paul said sexual sin is different from every other sin, in that it is the only one that we not only sin against God, we also sin against our bodies.
Flee from sexual immorality. All other sins a person commits are outside the body, but whoever sins sexually, sins against their own body.
1 Corinthians 6:18
Those who continue on in sin that seem to disregard the gospel do not seem irredeemable to me. I think often times they haven’t experienced the consequence of that sin yet (pain), which in can lead them to the greatest solution. Finding Jesus Christ and everlasting life.
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