RE: Could an aetheist do this?

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Lucylastic -> RE: Could an aetheist do this? (6/2/2013 1:31:46 PM)
quote: ORIGINAL: Kirata quote: ORIGINAL: Lucylastic Gotta love Mythology Well you might, in this case. It is a resurrection myth in which masculine evil is overcome by the feminine. K. While I disdain religions treatment of women in history. Ive had a fascination with greek, egyptian , pagan, norse etc etc etc mythology before I ever saw the misogyny in modern religions. I dont believe in a goddess either

Kirata -> RE: Could an aetheist do this? (6/2/2013 1:35:53 PM)
quote: ORIGINAL: njlauren I think you also have to look at the broader picture to understand that religion has had a lot of trouble with sex and sexuality. You are generalizing about religion, and as a consequence your claim fails. Religion has manifestly not "had a lot of trouble with sex and sexuality". Some religions have, others never have. K.

njlauren -> RE: Could an aetheist do this? (6/2/2013 1:42:37 PM)
quote: ORIGINAL: Kaliko "In God We Trust" first started to appear on U.S. money during the Civil War era, largely because of the nation's increasing religious sentiment. The motto was used for the first time on the copper two-cent piece in 1864. But it was not until 1956 that Congress passed a law declaring "In God We Trust" the national motto of the United States. The motto was first used on paper money in 1957, when it appeared on the $1 silver certificate." http://www.philadelphiafed.org/education/teachers/publications/symbols-on-american-money/ (I didn't know it is our national motto.) The line "Under GOd" In the pledge came into being at that time as well, both were the work of religious groups, primarily the Knights of Columbus (who every time I see one of their member collecting money, supposedly to help kids with disabilities, I want to take a baseball bat to them; a lot of the money they collect is used for do political lobbying, the Knights of Columbus, for example, spent several million dollars in California getting proposition 8 passed), it was an answer to the 'Godless communists" and the like, it was to show how the US was superior as a 'nation under God' than the evil soviets. Making that the national motto should have been struck down by the Supreme court, but given the cold war few wanted to fight it, and since then with the ascendency of the religious right and the GOP appoint right wing ideologues to the supreme court, not likely to be removed. I think there are a lot bigger battles than that to fry, but quite honestly, that motto and 'under God' in the pledge, tell a large tale about who oppresses whom in the this country, when you have a government body who puts out a motto like that, what does it tell atheists, agnostics, buddhists, muslims, jews and pagans about where they stand, if the Christian God supposedly represents the US? (Jews don't use the term God, and their God is not the God of the Christians)

njlauren -> RE: Could an aetheist do this? (6/2/2013 1:50:16 PM)
quote: ORIGINAL: Kirata quote: ORIGINAL: DaddySatyr Isn't all religion just mythology that people choose to believe? I can give you two answers to that question. And while I can make a case for both of them, I doubt it would be worth arguing over. So please just take them as me responding to your query as I see things. Firstly, myths are symbolic. Their purpose is to convey a truth, not to be believed as truth. Secondly, theology is to religion as theory is to practice. Your religion is what you practice, not what you believe. K. Nicely put! I remember all these religious types who got their nose bent out of joint about Joseph Campbell and his book on 'the power of myth' because it talks about jewish and Christian belief as myth, and assuming it as dismissing the belief, when what he was trying to convey is that myth doesn't mean something is worthless, it means it cannot be proven to be true, but nonetheless, it has great power. Where Christ turned water into wine or rose from the dead physically can be considered myth, but both of them have great power. Christ used parables, stories/myths, to teach important lessons. And yes, the idea that religion is what you believe, that if you believe the right things, believe what you are told, that God will bless you is the older mistake in the book, but alas people really believe if they believe the right things, all is right. The irony is that both Judaic teaching and Christ (who was a rabbinic Jews, after all, a rebbe), both said what you do, the way you live your life, is important. Sadly, it is why you can have these pious types who preach they know the true belief (fundamentalists are especially prone to this), everyone else is wrong, they are going to hell, and meanwhile, many of them routinely violate the way they are supposed to live; the bible, for one, has Christ telling his followers not to use their faith to judge others or to use as a weapon or as a means to say they are better, yet many do that, all the time, and it is a lot more prevalent among 'true believers', biblical literalists or orthodox Catholics, for example (in part because liberal churches teach that there is no one true belief, and people have to find the meaning for themselves).

eulero83 -> RE: Could an aetheist do this? (6/2/2013 2:00:31 PM)
quote: ORIGINAL: njlauren quote: ORIGINAL: dcnovice quote: I noted that the missionary position is not in Catholic teaching This appears to contradict your statement in Post 63 that "a major church" claims "that the sex act other than in the vagina in the missionary position is sinful." In another post, I mentioned where I got that, from a catholic website where a priest told a questioner to use the missionary position, and I assumed he was speaking of official church teaching..on the other hand, doing some research, while never official teaching, apparently from the middle ages on, Priests would tell people to use the missionary position, implying it was somehow holier (pretty easy to find, do a google on it0. Official teaching in catholic religion can change in smaller things from pope to pope but major changes can happen during councils, for example before the council of trent concubinage for priest was not condammned or before the second vatican council it was mandatory to celebrate holy mass in latin, after this it was to be celebrated in the local language. It's not a long time that natural methods are accepted so maybe in the past even missionary position was mandatory but I don't know.

njlauren -> RE: Could an aetheist do this? (6/2/2013 2:06:06 PM)
quote: ORIGINAL: Kirata quote: ORIGINAL: njlauren I think you also have to look at the broader picture to understand that religion has had a lot of trouble with sex and sexuality. You are generalizing about religion, and as a consequence your claim is nonsense. Religion has manifestly not "had a lot of trouble with sex and sexuality". Some religions have, others never have. K. Very easy to say that, but you also have to look at the major religions before saying that. I am well aware that for example, pagan religions generally don't issues with sexuality, and here i am using a wide ranging bunch because there isn't one pagan religion...but if you look at the major religions, it has not been a pretty picture, and there have been whole books written on the topic, Jack Spong did a pretty good job with Christianity with his book 'sins of scripture', but there have been plenty of others. Judaism didn't have quite the problems Christianity did, among other things, Judaism never had the problems with birth control per se, though orthodox Jews tend to promote the idea of having a lot of kids, and Jews have been out in front of other groups in many ways on issues like homosexuality (almost all Jewish groups, except the orthodox, now support the idea of same sex marriage, whereas in Christianity, it is still in the fringes, at least officially). But given the dominance of the Catholic church, and the negativity its church fathers had towards sex, and later on Christianity as a whole, and if you consider the size of Christianity (2 billion Christians currently in the world), then it is more true then not true...and I won't even speak for Islam, which both in scripture and practice, is very, very sex negative, especially where it concerns women. There have always been faith groups who were more positive towards sexuality, but for a lot of centuries, until fairly recent times, they preponderance has not been sex positive. And let me throw a curve ball, even the most liberal religious groups still reserve sex for marriage, and right there you have a problem. Among other things, the idea of being a virgin at marriage (well, at least for women, I wonder if it was always for men) is still out there, and whether people follow it or not (they don't, and haven't for a lot of centuries), it still is manifested out there in negative ways. The idea that sex ed promotest teens having sex, the whole 'abstinence only' sex ed is right out the religious playbook, it is promoting the idea that sex should be reserved for marriage only....besides the obvious fact,that most people ignores it, it means that real information isn't getting to kids, it means they are being given mixed signals. On top of everything else, while I think teens and sex is a kind of caustic combination, for a lot of reasons, I also think that banning pre marital sex is contra indicated to building stronger marriages, one of the biggest problems with marriages is sexual incompatibility, and people going in with no experience have a lot rougher time, those who marry young, without sexual experience, especially with a mate, tend to end up with much more difficult marriages. And yes, I used the religion in a broad way, I should have said much of religion, but the reality is, given how powerful and widespread Christianity became in the west,it had its influences. I was talking to some Indian friends at work the other day about that, about sex in India, and they said the culture was pretty sex negative, and they said the reason was though traditional hindu religious views towards sex were positive, that the British Empire brought in the COE and their prudish ideas of sex, and that that was what changed the culture there...so Christianity in its spread brought a lot of the negativity with it.

njlauren -> RE: Could an aetheist do this? (6/2/2013 2:11:46 PM)
quote: ORIGINAL: eulero83 quote: ORIGINAL: njlauren quote: ORIGINAL: dcnovice quote: I noted that the missionary position is not in Catholic teaching This appears to contradict your statement in Post 63 that "a major church" claims "that the sex act other than in the vagina in the missionary position is sinful." In another post, I mentioned where I got that, from a catholic website where a priest told a questioner to use the missionary position, and I assumed he was speaking of official church teaching..on the other hand, doing some research, while never official teaching, apparently from the middle ages on, Priests would tell people to use the missionary position, implying it was somehow holier (pretty easy to find, do a google on it0. Official teaching in catholic religion can change in smaller things from pope to pope but major changes can happen during councils, for example before the council of trent concubinage for priest was not condammned or before the second vatican council it was mandatory to celebrate holy mass in latin, after this it was to be celebrated in the local language. It's not a long time that natural methods are accepted so maybe in the past even missionary position was mandatory but I don't know. I don't think official teaching ever was on the missionary position, that was my mistake based on a reply to a question a priest gave someone on a catholic website. I did some research, curious, and apparently while never actual teaching, that it was often promoted as if it was. Missionaries in places like Africa and Asia told people there that the missionary position is what they should use (over the 'doggie style' often common in those places) because doggie style was how animals did it, and the woman being on top was wrong because the woman would be in the dominant position; a variation on this was that the missionary position gave a better chance of getting pregnant...and older Cathlolics have told me they were told that by the priest when they did their pre marital counseling, same people said priests would tell people they should if at all possible refrain from sex after menopause, though that, like the missionary position, was never teaching. The latter was explicitly stated as not being teaching when the church came up with a document in the 1970's to clarify the role of sex in marriage and explicitly came to state that sex after menopause was okay, that it fit teaching, as long as it was 'open to life'.

Kirata -> RE: Could an aetheist do this? (6/2/2013 2:15:56 PM)
quote: ORIGINAL: njlauren Very easy to say that, but you also have to look at the major religions before saying that. Well just how major does a religion have to be to qualify as "major" in your thinking? Saivism has no problems with sex or sexuality. Tantric Buddhism has no problems with sex or sexuality. I've never even seen sex or sexual issues addressed in Zen Buddhism, except dismissively. And no form of panentheism anywhere in the world, whether primitive or modern, would have any intrinsic "problem" with sex or sexuality. K.

vincentML -> RE: Could an aetheist do this? (6/2/2013 2:26:29 PM)
quote: ORIGINAL: Kirata quote: ORIGINAL: vincentML Or maybe it was an engineering imperative???? Needing the incline to raise those massive stones?? That constructon method is an archeological speculation. I doubt there's an engineer anywhere in the world who believes it. K. Neu? So they had cranes maybe? Or a skyhook?

JeffBC -> RE: Could an aetheist do this? (6/2/2013 2:32:08 PM)
quote: ORIGINAL: Kirata Well just how major does a religion have to be to qualify as "major" in your thinking? Saivism has no problems with sex or sexuality. Tantric Buddhism has no problems with sex or sexuality. I've never even seen sex or sexual issues addressed in Zen Buddhism, except dismissively. And no form of panentheism anywhere in the world, whether primitive or modern, would have any intrinsic "problem" with sex or sexuality... I think that to an American steeped in puritanical "sex is bad" crap then it'd be easy to assume "religion" thought that. The fact that "religion" does NOT think that nor do all societies is exactly why you get some of the "weird shit" coming out of Japan and related counties. Nobody ever told them sex was bad, only that it was private.

njlauren -> RE: Could an aetheist do this? (6/2/2013 2:44:17 PM)
quote: ORIGINAL: Kirata quote: ORIGINAL: njlauren Very easy to say that, but you also have to look at the major religions before saying that. Well just how major does a religion have to be to qualify as "major" in your thinking? Saivism has no problems with sex or sexuality. Tantric Buddhism has no problems with sex or sexuality. I've never even seen sex or sexual issues addressed in Zen Buddhism, except dismissively. And no form of panentheism anywhere in the world, whether primitive or modern, would have any intrinsic "problem" with sex or sexuality. K. Pure and simple, numbers, and given that most people on here are from western countries, the major I am referring to is influence, and in the west, that was Christianity. Buddhism is a major religion/philosophy, but from what I understand not all variations of it are sex positive, and I know that countries heavily influenced by Buddhism are not necessarily sexually open societies (China is pretty prudish, for example)......When I say major, I mean having direct influence on people's lives, and for example, pantheistic/pagan religions comparitively have few followers, whereas the Catholic church alone has a billion members, Christians2, and that is a lot of influence. If pagans had power in the US, DOMA probably would not have existed and homosexuality would be no big deal, but in fact Christianity in its various forms held sway, and whether native american religions din't make a big deal of it, Christianity did...... when you talk of historical influences, major means the faiths that impacted the most people, and that is what I was driving at.....it has nothing to do with their beliefs, it has to do with influence, so when I say that religion has had a negative affect on sexuality, it is that the predominant religions that had influence did. I didn't say major or dominant in my original post, but my underlying thought was the religions that dominated most of the lives in the west were problematic with sex.

njlauren -> RE: Could an aetheist do this? (6/2/2013 2:55:37 PM)
quote: ORIGINAL: JeffBC quote: ORIGINAL: Kirata Well just how major does a religion have to be to qualify as "major" in your thinking? Saivism has no problems with sex or sexuality. Tantric Buddhism has no problems with sex or sexuality. I've never even seen sex or sexual issues addressed in Zen Buddhism, except dismissively. And no form of panentheism anywhere in the world, whether primitive or modern, would have any intrinsic "problem" with sex or sexuality... I think that to an American steeped in puritanical "sex is bad" crap then it'd be easy to assume "religion" thought that. The fact that "religion" does NOT think that nor do all societies is exactly why you get some of the "weird shit" coming out of Japan and related counties. Nobody ever told them sex was bad, only that it was private. Interesting, so Puritanism wasn't driven by religion? The very attitude you are talking about came from a religious tradition, of the branches of protestantism that were very anti sex, it included the original lutherans, calvinists and the 'dissenters', the 'free church' of the scots border regions and so forth. When you say 'religion does not think that', which religions? Japan is predominantly Shinto, and that doesn't have the problems with sex (as you say, it is private), but that doesn't change the fact that religion often has been very sex negative, and Christianity given its wide breadth has often been at the forefront of it. Japan is one relatively small country, and take a look at the relative spread of Christianity and how much influence it had. I am well aware not all religions have trouble with sex, but that problems with sexuality, repression of it, etc , where it occurs can generally be traced back to religious traditions..you kind of made my point, Shinto doesn't have problems with sex, so the society while sex is something private, doesn't have the problems you see elsewhere. On the other hand, Islam in its writings is not sex positive, it is very puritanical in its own right, and it shows in how sexuality is handled in the Islamic world. Indian traditional religion was pretty sex positive, but modern India is very, very prudish with sex, and that can be traced back to the British influence and their attitudes towards sex, which sorry, have been a joke for a long time, about Brits awkwardness with sex and sexuality (it has changed, of course, UK attitudes towards sex today are not much different than most people in the US). Put it this way, arguing that most religion was positive towards sexuality could easily be disproven..give you an idea, in the 1970's, the Vatican released a document on the role of sex in marriage, and in it, they basically admitted that the church in prior times had appeared almost psychotic in its attitudes towards sex and sexuality......it would take a pretty strong argument and evidence to show how religion for the most part, especially in the west, has not been positive about sex, how in many cases it was treated as a necessary evil to make babies and so forth.

Powergamz1 -> RE: Could an aetheist do this? (6/2/2013 3:01:17 PM)
The exact words 'open to life' appear nowhere in the document. For that matter, neither do 'forbidden', 'banned', 'venial sin', or 'mortal sin'. The notion that procreation is important is balanced against people exercising 'self control', which as all good Catholics know, allows for lapses to be rather easily forgiven. http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/paul_vi/encyclicals/documents/hf_p-vi_enc_25071968_humanae-vitae_en.html quote: ENCYCLICAL LETTER HUMANAE VITAE OF THE SUPREME PONTIFF PAUL VI TO HIS VENERABLE BROTHERS THE PATRIARCHS, ARCHBISHOPS, BISHOPS AND OTHER LOCAL ORDINARIES IN PEACE AND COMMUNION WITH THE APOSTOLIC SEE, TO THE CLERGY AND FAITHFUL OF THE WHOLE CATHOLIC WORLD, AND TO ALL MEN OF GOOD WILL, ON THE REGULATION OF BIRTH Observing the Natural Law 11. The sexual activity, in which husband and wife are intimately and chastely united with one another, through which human life is transmitted, is, as the recent Council recalled, "noble and worthy.'' (11) It does not, moreover, cease to be legitimate even when, for reasons independent of their will, it is foreseen to be infertile. For its natural adaptation to the expression and strengthening of the union of husband and wife is not thereby suppressed. The fact is, as experience shows, that new life is not the result of each and every act of sexual intercourse. God has wisely ordered laws of nature and the incidence of fertility in such a way that successive births are already naturally spaced through the inherent operation of these laws. The Church, nevertheless, in urging men to the observance of the precepts of the natural law, which it interprets by its constant doctrine, teaches that each and every marital act must of necessity retain its intrinsic relationship to the procreation of human life. (12) 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. quote: ORIGINAL: njlauren It isn't all that nuanced, according to Catholic teaching, the exact words are the sex act must be 'open to life', which can only mean one thing, that it has to be an act that ultimately can result in the creation of a child. NFP uses a woman's fertility cycles to avoid getting pregnant, but because it uses the 'natural' mechanism, there is a shot at getting pregnant..which oral, anal and any kind of manual getting off doesn't do.

Kirata -> RE: Could an aetheist do this? (6/2/2013 3:15:39 PM)
quote: ORIGINAL: njlauren Pure and simple, numbers... Numbers? Seriously? No cigar. K.

cordeliasub -> RE: Could an aetheist do this? (6/2/2013 3:45:22 PM)
I definitely agree that many many churches have a backward and prudish take on sex. I know my husband's childhood church certainly did, and his parents were even worse. In fact, I put a lot of blame on both his church and his parents for the irreconcilable sexual differences in our marriage. Regarding what an "old fart" priest might say.....I am of the view that people who don;t actually HAVE sex don't get to pontificate about it lol That's like people who have never had kids being "experts" on parenting IMO

MrBlue76 -> RE: Could an aetheist do this? (6/2/2013 7:15:04 PM)
quote: ORIGINAL: cordeliasub But I digress. I don;t really care what is on money. The idea that this country is somehow "more holy" because the word God is or isn't on money is laughable. And because faith is a personal, internal thing anyway, it's not like taking the word off my 5 dollar bill is going to rip God out of my heart or something. To be honest, if I was american, I wouldn't care "personally" what is on money either. I mean, I'm not going to pretend that I'd feel... faithraped or offended, or something like that. (Oh, faithraped, what a nice verb). I'd simply consider it a false statement ("we trust"? Who is "we"?) and something that simply doesn't belong there. And it says a lot about who gets usually invasive, in these matters. quote: ORIGINAL: cordeliasubIn other words - I think if some of the more extreme religious people are really THAT concerned with the spiritual state of America, they might want to try loving their neighbors as themselves instead of having loud angry rallies and threatening poor scared pregnant girls. Agree.

dcnovice -> RE: Could an aetheist do this? (6/2/2013 7:32:35 PM)
quote: njlauren is a religious person. You're obvious not talking to someone who thinks that about "all religious people", as you're talking to someone who is religious and doesn't think that about themselves. Not being a mind reader, I don't know what Lauren thinks. I do know what she wrote, and that's what I responded to. quote: Seriously, your position's a turd, a heap of putred bullshit and that should be incredibly obvious to you. My "position" is that sweeping generalizations about whole groups of people--"the religious"; "the Latinos"; "the French"; and so forth--are at best unwise and at worst downright bigoted. You're welcome, of course, to think otherwise.

dcnovice -> RE: Could an aetheist do this? (6/2/2013 8:32:27 PM)
quote: Firstly, myths are symbolic. Their purpose is to convey a truth, not to be believed as truth. Secondly, theology is to religion as theory is to practice. Your religion is what you practice, not what you believe. Beautifully said, Kirata. Thanks! In Amazing Grace, Kathleen Norris quotes a Jungian writer who embraces a five-year-old's wonderful definition of myth: "a story that isn't true on the outside, only on the inside."

njlauren -> RE: Could an aetheist do this? (6/2/2013 8:57:02 PM)
quote: ORIGINAL: Kirata quote: ORIGINAL: njlauren Pure and simple, numbers... Numbers? Seriously? No cigar. K. Yes, numbers, because sorry to tell you, numbers=influence. The Christian faith is a major faith because it is widespread, as is Islam, something practiced by 40 people on an Island somewhere is major to them, but in terms of human civilization, is not going to be very influential. Shintoism was very influential in Japan, but in the rest of the world, had little universal impact. I wasn't talking about the relative value of any one faith when I said major, I was talking about its impact and influence, which with Christianity has been very widespread, literally covered the globe.

njlauren -> RE: Could an aetheist do this? (6/2/2013 9:09:05 PM)
quote: ORIGINAL: dcnovice quote: njlauren is a religious person. You're obvious not talking to someone who thinks that about "all religious people", as you're talking to someone who is religious and doesn't think that about themselves. Not being a mind reader, I don't know what Lauren thinks. I do know what she wrote, and that's what I responded to. quote: Seriously, your position's a turd, a heap of putred bullshit and that should be incredibly obvious to you. My "position" is that sweeping generalizations about whole groups of people--"the religious"; "the Latinos"; "the French"; and so forth--are at best unwise and at worst downright bigoted. You're welcome, of course, to think otherwise. sweeping generalizations about anything are going to be false, because there are few groups where 'everyone' is the same. That said, you can make statements about groups if backed by facts. For example, with a group you could define as religious, people who routinely go to church, when they asked questions about thinks like attitude towards sex education in schools being taught, same sex marriage, erotic literature and so forth, every study has shown (not surprisingly) that among those who fit this particular definition, their attitudes are a lot less liberal than the general population as a whole (for example,if I remember the numbers correctly, something like 70% of people in general are in favor of sex ed in the schools in some form or another, it is about 30% for the 'religious' as defined above. Among this group, almost 70% are against legal recognition of same sex unions, among the general population last numbers are as high as 60% approving it.......and so forth. Generalizations have merit when backed by facts. For example, it isn't a stereotype to say that among Latino's, attitudes towards family and marriage tend to be a lot more conservative and traditional than among people as a whole, surveys and studies pick this up. While it is often considered stereotyping when people talk about immigrants learning English, and that some groups are either having a hard time or refusing to learn English, there have been studies showing that at least with one group, Mexicans immigrating to the US, there are some issues, they are learning the language at a much slower rate than other groups (as to why, there could be a lot of reasons for it, could be because many might be coming here for jobs and plan to go home, or the people being studies are living in areas where they don't have to learn English....not important why, I am using this simply as a point that generalizations can have basis in fact). When I used the term "the religious', I did have frequent church attendance in mind, it is one of the ways that sociologists and those looking at societal trends define religiousity......and there are correlations there.

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