In English, words get multiple meanings when they are used to associate a base definition with a different context. I leave for your later exploration the word “bear” as a beautiful example. The best way of identifying that base meaning is to explore what other words or phrases can possibly used for the same meaning in the same context.
Continue readingMay. 12th, 2006
So, if I’m reading the previous correctly, it goes like this:
1. The highest expression of physical love is the creation of new life within a context where those responsible for creating that life will nurture and raise it.
2. Any physical pleasure which does not meet the above standards dehumanizes the participants, turning at least one of them into a “prostitute” or utility for the convenience of the other.
3. When the possibility of the creation of new life within a context where those responsible for creating that life will nurture and raise it is gone, then those people ought to cease engaging in physical pleasure, whether they are married to each other or not.
This leads to the following conclusions on my part of the logical outcomes of this set of statements:
A. A menopausal woman ought not to have sex with her husband. (Or anyone else.)
B. A man whose wife is menopausal ought not to have sex with her (or anyone else).
C. A woman who is currently pregnant ought not to have sex with her husband (or anyone else).
D. Any infertile person ought never to have sex, and probably ought not to be married.
E. Any unmarried person ought not to have sex at all.
F. No parent should die ever until the youngest offspring is at least 18.
G. Therefore, fertile or not, no one over the age of 50 should have sex, lest they inadvertently die before their offspring are completely raised.
OTHERWISE
The female participants are being devalued and dehumanized and turned into sex utilities.
I think that’s it.
Feb. 1st, 2007
I was just reading an article in The Advocate, a gay-issues national newspaper, entitled Gay marriage re-emerges as legislative issue, written by Brian Lockhart. In it, he quotes State Rep. David Aldarondo, D-Waterbury, as saying: “I am a Christian. I believe in the family, a married man with a woman.”
This got me to thinking: I, a former Christian, indeed a former Fundamentalist Christian, had always thought that Christians believed that the sacrifice of Jesus Christ paid the penalty for their sins, allowing them, on acceptance of the sacrifice, into Heaven without additional sacrifice or time in Hell.
Apr. 12th, 2007
for denying any recognition of formalized couple status for us homosektchuls.
And I was thinking of it in the context of the rage about women having the God-damned audacity to choose to have a child without the benefit of a present, wedded-to-her father.
And I know I’m preaching to the choir, here, but allow me to get my thoughts in order.
The thing that keeps coming back to me is that there are these limits being put on child-rearing that are mutually incompatible, and also incompatible with the reality of the world.
May 4th, 2009, 08:14 am
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mecurtin posted part of a discussion happening elsewhere, where she argues:
Given that there are *in fact* virtuous atheists and agnostics, religious belief *must not* be required for virtue. That’s what “sine qua non” means. The existence of moral atheists disproves the thesis that religious belief is necessary for a moral compass. Rod has acknowledged the observable *fact* that moral atheists exist — you cannot go on to argue that belief in God must be necessary for moral behavior.
Given that there are *in fact* virtuous atheists and agnostics, religious belief *must not* be required for virtue. That’s what “sine qua non” means. The existence of moral atheists disproves the thesis that religious belief is necessary for a moral compass. Rod has acknowledged the observable *fact* that moral atheists exist — you cannot go on to argue that belief in God must be necessary for moral behavior.
I would personally argue, as I have before, that morality is trained into the individual before knowledge of a divinity is transferred to that individual.
The infant’s very first interactions with Society comes through her primary caregiver – mother, wetnurse, adoptive primary caregiver, the Giver Of Milk. Infants primarily learn at that point ask, and it shall be given unto you, although some must learn ask and demand as you will, it will do you no good: your needs will not be met on time.
Infants also learn Cry injustice and dismay, and you shall be comforted – again, with the above caveat. I shall ask you to take that as read, from here on in.
These are the very roots of moral behavior. Please note the extreme lack of an invisible deity, and the lack of fear of the caregiver which is going on here.
The next roots also occur in the absence of deity: Things still exist even when you cannot see them, and don’t hit/don’t bite.
The final two roots occur in the presence of the understanding of language, although not necessarily in the presence of the use of language: share your belongings even when you would rather not, and when you have a fight, you can go back to being friends afterward.
Those are the roots on which all other moral behavior is based. They all are trained into the human (or fail to be so trained) before language, and therefor the concept of deity, is available to her.
The book All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten by Robert Fulghum argues this same issue, as I understand it, although it comes in at a later point in the child’s development: behaving well is a cornerstone, a necessary foundation, to having a society in which children survive. These are things that our cousins the apes and the chimpanzees learn from their mothers and their kin-groups; and no one has yet argued that these are rooted in a religious system there.
In fact, I would argue that the thesis that a Deity is necessary to moral behavior is evidence that the one posing it does not have a sound moral compass of her or his own.
October 11th, 2011, 02:38 pm
Every once in a while, it’s necessary to revisit this discussion. As a former christian I have a unique view of the question, my own efforts to gain a pure and therefore muscular and supportive version of the religion having been met with a series of increasingly narrow definitions that, eventually, defined me right out.
Yeah, really: I was a teenaged conservative fundamentalist evangelical Christian, halleluiah! God-fearing and Bible-studying, Amen!
Continue reading
Referring, of course, to the old – and quite true – adage about appropriate responses to attack, Nietzsche: “Beware that, when fighting monsters, you yourself do not become a monster . . . for when you gaze long into the abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.”
Continue reading
Well, I can tell you what I mean by Kitchen Witchery. I cannot tell you if this is the same thing that other people mean by it.
I mean: My spirituality and my priestesshood and my magick are based around the concept that my home is my temple, all in it are consecrated and holy, and each action that I do is a portion of the ritual of my life.
From a discussion on ISCA.
Sep 19, 1995 09:43 from FtC
I need some advice!
I have a really good friend (we’ve been friends for almost 20 years!) and he is gay, or at least he thinks he may be. The reason he thinks he may be is that he has fantasized about relationships with men, but he has never acted on these fantasies. He asked me a couple of perplexing questions, and I was hoping you may have an answer. First of all, he doesn’t want to be gay, but he says he “just can’t shake these feelings,” and second, he has had sex with a woman, but “it was empty sex – there were no real feelings there.” His questions I couldn’t answer were this:
We don’t think enough about what we do. We don’t think enough about what results are, and what results on other people are, and how the ricochet goes on and on.
But every action we take is rather like walking along a mountain path in avalanche country. A mis-step will knock some pebbles down the slope; perhaps it will only knock ten or twenty other pebbles loose, but perhaps it will knock loose a sufficiently large rock that there will be a noise.
The Dusty Kitchen 