Posts by James Butler
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Up Front: It's Not Sex, and It's Not Education, in reply to Jackie Clark,
And what about people who don't believe in gods but have a very strong spiritual belief system that isn't covered by any organisation or religion?
Oh sure, full power to those people, they get to decide what to call themselves. It's fully up to the individual non-believer to decide whether the thing they don't believe in isn't not Theism.
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Up Front: It's Not Sex, and It's Not Education, in reply to BenWilson,
Wider out, it's just "you can't prove it", to which the comeback is "neither can you". Which leads to the rational position, IMHO, of withholding judgment, rather than claiming to actually know. It's the difference between being Agnostic and Atheist. I'm personally Agnostic, leaning toward Atheism as being likely. That does not, IMHO, make me an Atheist.
You see I agree with that position, but I'm comfortable calling myself an atheist, because my assessment of the likelihood of a/some Gods' existence falls below my 3dB line, as it were.
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Up Front: It's Not Sex, and It's Not Education, in reply to Lucy Stewart,
There are definitely some atheists who define themselves primarily by not being Christian, but they are usually ex-Christians
I have to admit to suffering a bit from this. Doesn't help that I still participate in church services more often than you might expect an atheist to (although I know I'm not the only one in my choir).
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Up Front: It's Not Sex, and It's Not Education, in reply to BenWilson,
Yes, it's something Atheists are stuck with. They have extremely powerful arguments against the existence of one formulation of the Christian deity, which I find compelling. But they get weaker and weaker the wider they cast the net - most kinds of gods can't be disproved, and the worship forms and practices aren't always bad. So the belief flutters around Christianity like a moth around a lightbulb. Further away you just don't see them so much - they fall into a darker backdrop of general scepticism and unbelief, the place I've been fluttering most of my life.
Hang on. You seem to be arguing about a different kind of Atheist than the ones I'm familiar with. It's not a matter of having "powerful arguments against the existence of one formulation of the Christian deity", but of no-one else having testable arguments for their particular deity. I don't see exactly how this differs from your "general scepticism and unbelief".
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All I’ll say is that Saint Fucking Paul has a lot to answer for.
ETA perhaps that should be Saint "No Fucking" Paul.
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Up Front: It's Not Sex, and It's Not Education, in reply to Russell Brown,
Satanism is a Christian heresy. It doesn't exist independent of the Christian myths.
Atheism simply sees no evidence for the existence of any of it. Hardly the same thing.
Well I think modern LaVey-esque Satanism is more like Objectivism-with-rituals-and-costumes, much like Anglicanism is just Englishness-with-rituals-and-costumes.
The old "Atheism only defines itself in opposition to Christianity!!" meme is an unfortunate side-effect of living in a culture which draws so many referents from a Christian, erm, heritage. Statistically, any move suggested by Atheists towards secularism in western society is likely to be a move away from a Christian tradition, giving the haters a chance to say "Oooh, look who's defining themselves against Christianity again". Screw 'em.
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Up Front: It's Not Sex, and It's Not Education, in reply to Emma Hart,
This is quite a common argument, to which I think it’s pretty obvious to reply, “Wait, dude is pressuring you into something you don’t want to do? Why the fuck does it matter where he got the idea? DTMFA.”
Sure, but if it's something you haven't done before, you have to use the resources available to assess whether you think it's going to be enjoyable or not. But yeah, in a healthy, trusting relationship it shouldn't be as much of an issue.
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Up Front: It's Not Sex, and It's Not Education, in reply to George Darroch,
There’s also the interesting question of whether porn is giving younger people better information about sexual pleasure. While much of it is indeed bad and highly unrealistic, it isn’t an entirely static medium either, and I’ve heard it suggested that the focus has changed with the much wider uptake of porn through the internet.
I’ve seen it suggested that young people, girls especially, feel more pressured to say yes to sex acts which are common in porn but less likely to be pleasurable IRL, because their partner can find hundreds of porn examples in a second and say “Look, everyone does it!”. But I don’t know if that’s a real problem or an OMFG TEENAGERS SEX PORN beatup.
Also, from an interesting Salon interview with a male pornstar:
I once did a magazine interview where they asked me for tips on how to have sex like a porn star and one of my biggest pieces of advice was, don’t.
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Up Front: It's Not Sex, and It's Not Education, in reply to Emma Hart,
I love it how your post wasn't about porn to start with, but now it is.
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Up Front: It's Not Sex, and It's Not Education, in reply to Emma Hart,
OIC. I was working from a hearing-impairment perspective. I now think I should just... (ironically and impossibly) quietly withdraw.
S'okay. Anyway, the metaphor, thin and flimsy to start with, was swelling alarmingly close to breaking point.