The Neurology of Belief....

[_harmony]

Loran, learn to use the quote feature.

Quote:
Now, the underlying moral principle that makes homosexuality immoral is simply the general gospel principle that marraige as a concept is only intelligable when uderstood as occuring between a man and a woman and that such a marriage has as one of its primary purposes the creation, nurturing, and raising of children. It is further a general principle that any sexual activity whatever, outside of that covenant is illegitimate, including heterosexual premarital activity, extramarital activity, and, therefore, by definition, homosexual activity which is not even compatable with natural human physiology and anatomy.

Your slip is showing again, Loran. Marriage as we know it is a recent phenomena, a product of the Industrial Revolution. Prior to then, marriage was only utilized by royalty and the aristocracy, to ensure inheritances and property passed from generation to generation. The general population made do with simply living together or jumping over a stick type of ceremonies. Marriage's main purpose never was to nurture children. Marriage was a legal action regarding property.

The above is as devoid of serious intelletcual [sic] content as was your pityfully uneducated posing over the DDT issue. Marriage "as we know it" is a product of the last century and a half? Bluster on Harmony, your leftwing intellectual retardation is becoming a real drag.

You wouldn't know serious intellectual content if it bit you on the finger. My undergrad work was done in sociology and the family was a particularly interesting area of study for me. Open a book, Loran... read for a change, before you start typing. Your intellect is showing (kinda like that slip of yours).

Quote:
Homosexuality is also, however, a perversion of appropriate sexual relations as well as immoral, or outside the boundries of human integrity that form the moral and spiritual core of such relations.

Homosexuality is as much a perversion as heterosexuality. Morally acceptable sexuality is determined by society, not by some external spiritual source. Until we stop marginalizing members of our society, we will continue in the exclusionary exclusive pattern in which we're now caught.

Thanks for again confirming the naval gazing, nihilistic moral relativism that forms the core of liberal social and moral philosophy. It has always impressed my how liberals really don't believe in the existence of an external universe to which they must conform as rational beings but that they are themselves, in their adolescent fantasies of radical personal autonomy and polymorphous "liberation", the very universe around which all other things revolve.

Loran, you live your life based on a promise from a man who gazed into a hat looking at a seer stone. Don't talk to me about adolescent fantasies. You have your own problems with "fantasies". At least mine are based on reality, not a none-too-well-disguised knockoff of contemporary 19th century religious bombast.

Your entire philosophy of life, Harmony, is an adolescent separation fantasy. Still rebelling against curfew at your age. Tsk, tsk.

Honey, if my adolscents gave me a little separation, my job would be a lot less fun.

[_Coggins7]

You wouldn't know serious intellectual content if it bit you on the finger. My undergrad work was done in sociology and the family was a particularly interesting area of study for me. Open a book, Loran... read for a change, before you start typing. Your intellect is showing (kinda like that slip of yours).

And as anybody who has studied the dissolution of the humaities and social sciences in higher ed will tell you, the discipline of sociology has been so politicized, so riddled with ideology, and so given over to intellectual faddism that a liberal like yourself claiming to be an expert on anything remotely like the history of the family is suspect on its face. It is suspect because sociology, like cultural antthropology and some other hard hit disciplines in the humanities and social sciences, for all intents and purposes, no longer an academic discipline, but a ideological project of the acacemic Left. Your marriage-as-artifact-of-the-industrial-revolution concept is well known to me and it is nothing more that an politically driven revisionist theoretical structure from a highly theoretical social science discipline that has become notorious for its hearty appetite for cultural Marxist and post modernist ideology over serious acamemic inquiry.

That theory is not be any means accepted throughout the academic world nor by any means by all others in other disciplines, like history. Frankly, if your woeful performance on DDT (which is an empirical, scientific question and hardly saddled with all the subjective biases, uncertainties, and theoretical problems of the study of the history and attitudes of ancient societies about marriage) is any measure, your undergraduate work in sociology is probably about as worthless as Howard Zinn's historical scholarship.

[_harmony]

You wouldn't know serious intellectual content if it bit you on the finger. My undergrad work was done in sociology and the family was a particularly interesting area of study for me. Open a book, Loran... read for a change, before you start typing. Your intellect is showing (kinda like that slip of yours).

And as anybody who has studied the dissolution of the humaities and social sciences in higher ed will tell you, the discipline of sociology has been so politicized, so riddled with ideology, and so given over to intellectual faddism that a liberal like yourself claiming to be an expert on anything remotely like the history of the family is suspect on its face. It is suspect because sociology, like cultural antthropology and some other hard hit disciplines in the humanities and social sciences, for all intents and purposes, no longer an academic discipline, but a ideological project of the acacemic Left. Your marriage-as-artifact-of-the-industrial-revolution concept is well known to me and it is nothing more that an politically driven revisionist theoretical structure from a highly theoretical social science discipline that has become notorious for its hearty appetite for cultural Marxist and post modernist ideology over serious acamemic inquiry.

That theory is not be any means accepted throughout the academic world nor by any means by all others in other disciplines, like history. Frankly, if your woeful performance on DDT (which is an empirical, scientific question and hardly saddled with all the subjective biases, uncertainties, and theoretical problems of the study of the history and attitudes of ancient societies about marriage) is any measure, your undergraduate work in sociology is probably about as worthless as Howard Zinn's historical scholarship.

Everyone's (well, mine anyway!) favorite apologist, Armand Mauss, was one of my professors. His specialty is Sociology. You want to take up the argument with him, go ahead. He's the one who first opened up the doors to a most fascinating topic of study.

And if I cared about DDT, and your pitiful response, we'd have a conversation about it. Since I don't, and we aren't, that should tell you something. You made a blanket statement that I refuted. You then took offense that I didn't give you proper homage. Tough beans, Loran. You think you're an authority on everything under the sun, but you aren't; your sources are as biased as mine; you just get all pissy because mine are in direct opposition to yours. Get over it. In case you haven't noticed, no one keeps score here, so declaring yourself the winner simply shows your lack of character, not your intellectual superiority.

[_Coggins7]

Some interesting food for thought, and I've italicized some of the statements that relate directly to the debate going on here. Allan Carlson, Ph.D. (http://www.profam.org/docs/acc/thc_acc_ ... &opt=EXACT)

Second: Marriage is the Union of the Sexual and the Economic.

This is not my original observation. Rather, this is the classic definition of marriage long used by cultural anthropologists to explain this institution: namely, men and women cooperate economically in order to produce and rear children. According to the great 20th century anthropological surveys, marriage as such is found "in every known human society."[17] Paleo-anthropologist C. Owen Lovejoy, writing in Science magazine, musters the evidence showing that men and women are drawn together by an innate desire for a lasting pair bond. Indeed, he sees this development of economic cooperation in permanent pair-bonds as the key step in human social evolution.[18] It is certainly true that for thousands of years and for hundreds of generations, humankind organized most economic tasks around the family household. The growth, preservation, and preparation of food; the provision of shelter and education; the construction of clothing: all of these tasks, and hundreds more, took place in the home. Wife and husband specialized in their labor, to be sure, according to their relative strengths and skills. The work of both, though, was home-bound and essential to family survival.

Some cast the industrial revolution of the last 150 years as the material source of contemporary challenges to marriage.[19] Industrialism tore apart the natural home economy. More precisely, this revolution shifted the place of work from the home to the factory or office; it displaced the generalized productive skills of husbandry and wifery with exaggerated specialization and commercially purchased goods.

There is much truth in this analysis. However, some go on to argue that a new family form is now needed: an "egalitarian" family, without role specialization or home production of any sort, that would accommodate the industrial impulse. But it will not work. I agree with Kingsley Davis that such an "egalitarian family system"–as dreamed of by the Bolsheviks and as seen today most fully in Western Europe–cannot be sustained. High levels of divorce and cohabitation combined with low birth rates actually "raise doubts that societies with this egalitarian system will [even] survive." [20]

The necessary alternative is to find new ways of articulating and advancing marriage as an economic partnership. Between 1948 and 1969, for example, the U.S. government did treat marriage as a true partnership for purposes of taxation, allowing married couples to "split their income" like all other legal partnerships. One clear result was "the marriage boom" of that era: a phenomenon that ended only after the elimination of income splitting.[21] In addition, calculations from Australia show that the traditional "home economy" has not disappeared at all. Even in advanced industrial societies, the uncounted but real value of continuing home activities such as child care, home carpentry, and food preparation is still at least as large as that of the official economy.[22] Moreover, a growing number of Americans are actively reversing the industrialization of key activities that were once the family's: this is how we should see home schooling, for example, now embracing over two million American children.[23]

The above implies two things, the first being that nobody is denying that for thousands of years, marraige had an economic basis. What Harmony neglects to inform us is that it still does, that this is unremarkable, and that her claimed absense of actual love between men and woman in ancient times is nothing more than an ideologically conveinent assumption that she's attempted to pass off as historical fact. Indeed, we have the ancient Roman and Christian tombstones inscribed with the touching tributes of love and affection to departed wives or husbands, the anceint poetry, the biblical relationships (and other sources. The Book of Jasher adds to the account of Abraham's wife's funeral that it was of a kind normally reserved for kings or other nobility) and texts like Romeo and Juliet from a time centuries before the industrial age that bespeaks a teenage romantic affection opposed by the respective families that looks not at all unlike modern post WWII relationships involving the same age group and very much the same social dynamics, including extreme, self destructive behavior in rebelleion against the forces (the adults and their interests) tyring to keep the lovers apart.

That ancient peasants had little time or inclination for the specific kind of romantic love associated with industrial age western society is probably true as far as it goes (but these people never wrote any books or kept any records, so its really impossible to do anything but specualte through whatever modern filters we bring to that table about what they really thought about relations such as this), but such plausibilities are used by folks like Harmony as a stick to beat the horrible Judeo/Christian/Mormon sexual moral norms, traditoinal marriage, family, and gender roles she so fears and loaths.

And its not a proper or balanced use of historical knowledge.

[_guy sajer]

You wouldn't know serious intellectual content if it bit you on the finger. My undergrad work was done in sociology and the family was a particularly interesting area of study for me. Open a book, Loran... read for a change, before you start typing. Your intellect is showing (kinda like that slip of yours).

And as anybody who has studied the dissolution of the humaities and social sciences in higher ed will tell you, the discipline of sociology has been so politicized, so riddled with ideology, and so given over to intellectual faddism that a liberal like yourself claiming to be an expert on anything remotely like the history of the family is suspect on its face. It is suspect because sociology, like cultural antthropology and some other hard hit disciplines in the humanities and social sciences, for all intents and purposes, no longer an academic discipline, but a ideological project of the acacemic Left. Your marriage-as-artifact-of-the-industrial-revolution concept is well known to me and it is nothing more that an politically driven revisionist theoretical structure from a highly theoretical social science discipline that has become notorious for its hearty appetite for cultural Marxist and post modernist ideology over serious acamemic inquiry.

That theory is not be any means accepted throughout the academic world nor by any means by all others in other disciplines, like history. Frankly, if your woeful performance on DDT (which is an empirical, scientific question and hardly saddled with all the subjective biases, uncertainties, and theoretical problems of the study of the history and attitudes of ancient societies about marriage) is any measure, your undergraduate work in sociology is probably about as worthless as Howard Zinn's historical scholarship.

You don't by any chance also go by the name of Michael Savage do you?

[_Coggins7]

No. But you could ask David Horowitz, William F. Buckley, Victor Davis Hanson, Thomas Sowell, Allan Bloom, Alan Charles Kors, and any number of other first rate intellectuals with intimate knowledge of the problem about it and they can fill you in.

Would you like a list of think tanks and books on the subject by serioius Conservative and Libertarian scholars and public intellectuals?

[_guy sajer]

No. But you could ask David Horowitz, William F. Buckley, Victor Davis Hanson, Thomas Sowell, Allan Bloom, Alan Charles Kors, and any number of other first rate intellectuals with intimate knowledge of the problem about it and they can fill you in.

Would you like a list of think tanks and books on the subject by serioius Conservative and Libertarian scholars and public intellectuals?

To the extent the people you've listed share your narrow, dogmatic, intolerant, simplistic, stereotyped, black and white, ignorant world view, I'm not much interested in them.

If they are thoughtful and serious, I am curious as to why you're reading them.

[_Roger Morrison]

(By Guy Sajer) I think that they feel morally and intellectually superior because, well, they are compared to narrow-minded religious dogmatists who are obsessed with other people's sex lives and who attribute a grossly disproportionate importance to one's sexual orientation in the moral hierarchy.

Just what, in your opinion, is the underlying moral principle (without referencing scripture or appeal to authority) that makes homosexuality immoral?

Followed by Coggins (Bold added by RM)

Well guy, you make many of the more general points I've been making about the liberal mind and attitude here and on another post quite clear for me, for which I should thank you.

What you have written above is just standard early seventies leftist can't of the kind I grew up hearing throughout the pop culture and media of the day. Conservatives as a whole, have never been obsessed with other people's sex lives. It is the Left and secular social liberals, beginning in the late sixties, that became obsessed and has remained obsessed with sex per se during that period up to the present. Loran, you weren't asked to analyze his thinking. You were asked to answer the Guy's question.

Now, the underlying moral principle that makes homosexuality immoral is simply the general gospel principle that marraige as a concept is only intelligable when uderstood as occuring between a man and a woman and that such a marriage has as one of its primary purposes the creation, nurturing, and raising of children. It is further a general principle that any sexual activity whatever, outside of that covenant is illegitimate, including heterosexual premarital activity, extramarital activity, and, therefore, by definition, homosexual activity which is not even compatable with natural human physiology and anatomy. He asked you to forego the the traditional tie-in to church-stuff, and here you are referring to it right after your diversionary tactic of avoidance...

Homosexuality is also, however, a perversion of appropriate sexual relations as well as immoral, or outside the boundries of human integrity that form the moral and spiritual core of such relations.

OK, so maybe You/Loran think your above sentence is a direct response... However, IMSCO, it in no-way supports "immorality" as understood in a "moral" society. In such a society, as the one sketched in the sand by Jesus when he asked the one without sin to cast the first stone... A moral society is concerned with abuses; with inflicting pain to another; with taking away 'free-will' from others simply because they don't follow-the-leader. Yes "human integrity" is a most important aspect of an accoutable society. It must not be sacrificed to accomodate an edict.

The core of an individual, or the collective, should be formed by a spiritual appreciation of individual differences that do not bring pain and/or injustice to others.

It appears that Your moral-high-ground might simply be so in the minds of those who lack the 'charity' to live the higher laws introduced by Jesus???

Your camp, so-to-speak, seems to dwell on "...appropriate sexual relations..." as the crux of the matter. Really, where do we find that idealism to be preached from pulpits--to a GREAT degree? Seems we've moved from lust to love, to relationships as the base for family security. Both D.O. Mackay and H.B. Lee made that the purpose of home and family in their famous quotes. Yet a long way from the norm in LDS and other sectarian religions...

Could it be possible that neither you nor i (among others) know so little about "God's" ways, and fall so short of measuring-up by the "NEW" moral-code he left us with, that the world could improve IF we just gave a chance to setting aside violence and dogmatism to practice 'charity in all things'. And that ain't no Leftist Bull-S*** Bro!! Warm regards, Roger

[Dr. Sunstoned]

Coggins7 wrote:

Quote:
(By Guy Sajer) I think that they feel morally and intellectually superior because, well, they are compared to narrow-minded religious dogmatists who are obsessed with other people's sex lives and who attribute a grossly disproportionate importance to one's sexual orientation in the moral hierarchy.

Just what, in your opinion, is the underlying moral principle (without referencing scripture or appeal to authority) that makes homosexuality immoral?



Followed by Coggins (Bold added by RM)

Well guy, you make many of the more general points I've been making about the liberal mind and attitude here and on another post quite clear for me, for which I should thank you.

What you have written above is just standard early seventies leftist can't of the kind I grew up hearing throughout the pop culture and media of the day. Conservatives as a whole, have never been obsessed with other people's sex lives. It is the Left and secular social liberals, beginning in the late sixties, that became obsessed and has remained obsessed with sex per se during that period up to the present. Loran, you weren't asked to analyze his thinking. You were asked to answer the Guy's question.

Now, the underlying moral principle that makes homosexuality immoral is simply the general gospel principle that marraige as a concept is only intelligable when uderstood as occuring between a man and a woman and that such a marriage has as one of its primary purposes the creation, nurturing, and raising of children. It is further a general principle that any sexual activity whatever, outside of that covenant is illegitimate, including heterosexual premarital activity, extramarital activity, and, therefore, by definition, homosexual activity which is not even compatable with natural human physiology and anatomy. He asked you to forego the the traditional tie-in to church-stuff, and here you are referring to it right after your diversionary tactic of avoidance...

Homosexuality is also, however, a perversion of appropriate sexual relations as well as immoral, or outside the boundries of human integrity that form the moral and spiritual core of such relations.

OK, so maybe You/Loran think your above sentence is a direct response... However, IMSCO, it in no-way supports "immorality" as understood in a "moral" society. In such a society, as the one sketched in the sand by Jesus when he asked the one without sin to cast the first stone... A moral society is concerned with abuses; with inflicting pain to another; with taking away 'free-will' from others simply because they don't follow-the-leader. Yes "human integrity" is a most important aspect of an accoutable society. It must not be sacrificed to accomodate an edict.

I think your understanding of what a moral society rather lacks both philosophical depth and a substantive understanding of the the New Testament texts actually say about specific instances of immorality such as fornication, adultery, and homosexuality. If a moral society is concerned with abuse, then a moral society is most certainly going to be quite concerned with both cohabitation and adultery, two features of the 'sexual revolution" that have generated vast social pathologies that have victimized not only the the intimate others involved but indirectly, all other members of society as they must bear the burdens, cultural, financial, and political, of cleaning up the societal messes left be the critical mass of those engaging in such behavior. All must endure the socio-cultural effects of the breakdown of the family, marriage, parental authority, and Judeo/Christian sexual boundaries and the violence, alienation, crime, lost future economic prosperity, and the vast sums of money spent on alcohol and drug rehab, the processing and warehousing of people in the criminal justice system, and psychologist's and psychiatrist's couches that would have better been spent in productive economic activity or in taking intact, successful families to Disneyland and putting psychologically and spiritually healthy children into quality private schools.

"Morality" is integrity of relationship, and that integrity does not end with only those closest too us (and it cannot so end, as the quality of our relationships with them will determine the quality of our relationships with the greater community and with the nation as a whole, as the effects of those most intimate relationships are manifested in effects through wider and wider concentric circles of societal structure). In other words, in a gospel context, acute abuse of others is only one manifestation of "immorality". Our private behavior, as with our private thoughts, attitudes, motivations, and core characterological attributes, have effects outside of those uniquely private spheres. "Abuse" then, involves a definitional problem when the secularist attempts to deal with gospel contexts and concepts. Your definition seems to include exclusively the imposition of the will of one on another such that a given behavior occurs at the expense of the free will or rights of another; or in other words, when another's consent has been violated.

This is one valid definitional perspective, but far too limited in the context of LDS doctrine and philosophy. In this context, anything we do to one another that hinders, retards, or in severe cases, cripples or destroys our ability to move closer to our Father in Heaven, become more like him, and eventually return to his presence as outlined in LDS theology, is immoral, since it is a relationship of disintegrity in that the consequences of such actions, even when full consent is present, is, being destructive to the happiness and ultimately, spiritual and personal fulfillment of the individual as a child of God, destructive to all involved in that consensual relationship.

In other words, in the gospel, there is nonconsensual immorality and consensual immorality. The one is based on a violation of others rights and free will. The other is based on not a denial of another's will but a consensual misuse of will between individuals. That is a matter of essential principle, not a pragmatist or utilitarian morality in which only overt trespasses against the consent of lack of such of another person carries moral weight.

The core of an individual, or the collective, should be formed by a spiritual appreciation of individual differences that do not bring pain and/or injustice to others.

I agree with this (although I have no idea what 'the collective" means), but from an LDS standpoint, this is a fragment of a larger whole.

It appears that Your moral-high-ground might simply be so in the minds of those who lack the 'charity' to live the higher laws introduced by Jesus???

Sexual immorality of all kinds were condemned as the grossest and most serous of sins by Jesus' Apostles, and they are the only recourse we have when deciding what Jesus actually taught in the New Testament texts. We have no book written by Jesus, nor any teachings of his that have not come down to use from his disciples. You either believe what they said Jesus taught, or you reject both them and Jesus. You can't have it both ways here.

Your camp, so-to-speak, seems to dwell on "...appropriate sexual relations..." as the crux of the matter. Really, where do we find that idealism to be preached from pulpits--to a GREAT degree? Seems we've moved from lust to love, to relationships as the base for family security. Both D.O. Mackay and H.B. Lee made that the purpose of home and family in their famous quotes. Yet a long way from the norm in LDS and other sectarian religions...

I'm not sure what you're getting at here. I'll just say that, as far as the church goes, it is not the church that dwells on appropriate sexual relations. This is a fundamental late 20th century, post sixties misunderstanding. It is the secular world that has become preoccupied with and dwells upon sex and sexuality per se that necessitates a continuous response from those who, according to New Testament mandates and LDS theology, are obligated to warn the world and individuals within it of the ultimate consequences of these behaviors and cultural patterns.

Could it be possible that neither you nor i (among others) know so little about "God's" ways, and fall so short of measuring-up by the "NEW" moral-code he left us with, that the world could improve IF we just gave a chance to setting aside violence and dogmatism to practice 'charity in all things'. And that ain't no Leftist Bull-S*** Bro!! Warm regards, Roger

Your conernts here are valid, but I'm not sure how they are relevant to the crux of the matter here, which is human sexuality. Non-consensual immorality such as violence and other violations of the free agency and rights of others are a concern of the church, as is the consensual immorality that occurs when we do things to,or with each other, than cripple or truncate our relationship with our Father in Heaven.

Loran

[_rcrocket]

Loran, you live your life based on a promise from a man who gazed into a hat looking at a seer stone. Don't talk to me about adolescent fantasies. You have your own problems with "fantasies". At least mine are based on reality, not a none-too-well-disguised knockoff of contemporary 19th century religious bombast.

What a hypocrite you are. Posting anonymous statements like this, while carefully claiming elsewhere to be a recommend holding active member of the Church. You are either lying about your church status, or a complete coward. Either way, your position does not look attractive.

P