The Problem with Christians

[TheRocketSurgeon]

One example is that it was an evolutionary survival factor for us to prefer fat, sugar, salt, and carbohydrates because food was hard to acquire in the H-G tribal days;

Call me a cynic but are you sure this was evolutionary? Seems to me we eat crap because of slick marketing and the food companies know how to get us addicted.

Good question! We call it being skeptical. It's okay!

We're encouraged to choose crap over healthier foods through marketing, etc., but that's not the only reason we crave it. Even the highest-quality gourmet meal will contain measures of salt, fat, and carbs (barring a couple of particular, deliberate diets that exclude same), because those are what our bodies crave. It's why "Diet" soda and "fat free" Ranch taste awful. Our brains have a dopamine-reward center that is triggered when we eat foods that would have provided calories at a time when food wasn't guaranteed to be available. (Salt, of course, is necessary for other reasons, and sugar seems to activate the opioid systems.)

What the food people have done is to lock in on the substances which our brains find addictive (for literally the same reason, and in the same brain-locales, as cocaine), and figure out the right proportions to make their product hit all those buttons, so to speak. They then put out advertising which reminds our brains how much we enjoyed those potato chips (salty, fatty, carb-filled snack) or candy bars (salty, fatty, sugar-filled snack, often with carbs).

You can Google it yourself, if you like... but the short version is that eating foods which would have helped our ancestors will trigger endorphin releases in your brain, which can be observed in brain scans.

What!?!

While I agree that our population is expanding too quickly for the health of ourselves or our planet, I find it sick that you could even entertain the thought (even if you're just fantasizing that that's how we think!) that our hatred/fear of one another has a good purpose.

I was extrapolating the cold hard logic of natural selection. You might be shocked to find just how many of the "elite" are depopulationists, eg Bill Gates, Hillary Clinton, Prince Phillip etc. Here's a list of interesting quotes to consider. Yes it is ugly but it's how a bunch of world leaders are thinking.

As for me, my wife and I sponsor 4 kids in Africa and have done for over 20 years. So no, I'm not a genocidal maniac

Um, there's not much question that we're a plague on the earth, and that it would be better to reduce the global population. However, that's nothing like being in favor of genocide or starvation. Through his Gates Foundation, in particular, Bill Gates has done amazing work in staving off both disease and starvation in third-world countries.

By the way, it's awesome that you and your wife do that. See? You have a little bit of Humanism in your heart.

[LadyForCamus]

Call me a cynic but are you sure this was evolutionary? Seems to me we eat crap because of slick marketing and the food companies know how to get us addicted.

Good question! We call it being skeptical. It's okay!

We're encouraged to choose crap over healthier foods through marketing, etc., but that's not the only reason we crave it. Even the highest-quality gourmet meal will contain measures of salt, fat, and carbs (barring a couple of particular, deliberate diets that exclude same), because those are what our bodies crave. It's why "Diet" soda and "fat free" Ranch taste awful. Our brains have a dopamine-reward center that is triggered when we eat foods that would have provided calories at a time when food wasn't guaranteed to be available. (Salt, of course, is necessary for other reasons, and sugar seems to activate the opioid systems.)

What the food people have done is to lock in on the substances which our brains find addictive (for literally the same reason, and in the same brain-locales, as cocaine), and figure out the right proportions to make their product hit all those buttons, so to speak. They then put out advertising which reminds our brains how much we enjoyed those potato chips (salty, fatty, carb-filled snack) or candy bars (salty, fatty, sugar-filled snack, often with carbs).

You can Google it yourself, if you like... but the short version is that eating foods which would have helped our ancestors will trigger endorphin releases in your brain, which can be observed in brain scans

As a dietitian I can confirm Rocket's position. Our brains are "wired" to prefer the more calorie-dense macronutrients as a survival instinct. So, you don't have to feel guilty for reallllllly wanting that snickers bar. But maybe, don't eat four of them. [emoji12]

[Esquilax]

If it's all the Christians fault, why have nearly all the countries in the world, regardless of religion (eg communist countries) designated it as a disorder up until the latter part of the 20th century?

I know this might be hard for you, but could you try not being simplistic for a change? I think we both know that homophobia has been a tool employed by many religions, but it's no less baseless for being a popular Othering technique.

No, because the APA appears to have caved in to intense lobbying from homosexual activism.

So, again, when an organization produces a result that comports with what you already believe, then it's an accurate result, but when they produce one that disagrees with you, it's not a good result. Is your metric for acceptable citations seriously how much it aligns with what you want to be true?

Your bigotry against Christians is quite evident here. In Australia, there has been no such "war" against transsexuals. If there is any aggression towards them, it is most likely going to come from the irreligious .

Shall I give you a piece of advice, mate? Don't try to tell an Australian, what Australia is like. Because I'm going to be able to correct you: now, Australia might be better, in that there isn't a concerted, government based effort to discriminate against the trans community state by state, but that doesn't mean my country is free of cultural memes or ideas of acceptable treatment that negatively affect trans people, and those are promulgated, in large part, by your religion. I'm looking at a study right now, because unlike you I actually research my shit before I make wild, random claims: trans people still experience the highest rates of discrimination and abuse among LGBTQI peeps in Australia: fully half have experienced verbal abuse, a third threats of physical abuse, with half again reporting sexual assault. Your claim that all of this comes from the irreligious is completely baseless, especially in light of the already established fact that anti-trans and LGB bigotry tends to scale with religious fundamentalism.

As for this claim of "bigotry against christians," I know you guys love this petulant little tu coque fallacy, but it simply doesn't stick: my wife was still a christian when we started dating. Also, you don't know me at all, but hey, don't let that stop you making wild assumptions about me to attempt to shame me into silence so I stop criticizing your complete failure at argumentation.

[Crossless2.0]

Good question! We call it being skeptical. It's okay!  

We're encouraged to choose crap over healthier foods through marketing, etc., but that's not the only reason we crave it. Even the highest-quality gourmet meal will contain measures of salt, fat, and carbs (barring a couple of particular, deliberate diets that exclude same), because those are what our bodies crave. It's why "Diet" soda and "fat free" Ranch taste awful. Our brains have a dopamine-reward center that is triggered when we eat foods that would have provided calories at a time when food wasn't guaranteed to be available. (Salt, of course, is necessary for other reasons, and sugar seems to activate the opioid systems.)

What the food people have done is to lock in on the substances which our brains find addictive (for literally the same reason, and in the same brain-locales, as cocaine), and figure out the right proportions to make their product hit all those buttons, so to speak. They then put out advertising which reminds our brains how much we enjoyed those potato chips (salty, fatty, carb-filled snack) or candy bars (salty, fatty, sugar-filled snack, often with carbs).

You can Google it yourself, if you like... but the short version is that eating foods which would have helped our ancestors will trigger endorphin releases in your brain, which can be observed in brain scans

As a dietitian I can confirm Rocket's position.  Our brains are "wired" to prefer the more calorie-dense macronutrients as a survival instinct.  So, you don't have to feel guilty for reallllllly wanting that snickers bar.  But maybe, don't eat four of them.  [emoji12]

Calories aside, isn't another reason for our craving sweets our bodies' inability to produce vitamin C, which would have been found in nature overwhelmingly in sweet tasting fruits?

[Esquilax]

Do you think that the experiences of three people constitutes scientific proof of anything? For a guy who bangs on and on about the scientific method, your appeal to anecdotal experience is quite a turnaround.

Hey, you were the one who said that following your religion brings about certain responses. You certainly didn't appeal to statistical averages or population studies when you made your claim, you simply made the simplistic assertion that it would change people for the better: don't then get uppity when someone tries to falsify your claim on the same terms.

Besides, you're the one advocating for a magical god working his magic in the hearts of everyone that believes, why should there be anyone no feeling it in that case?

Oh, and by the way? The guy going on about "spiritual fruit" and the effects of divine influences probably shouldn't then be dismissing others because of a lack of scientific rigor. You might be a tad bit... massively hypocritical, there.

[Esquilax]

The report doesn't say the exact opposite to what I am claiming. All I said was that the suicide rate in transsexuals was high and as a therapy, should be seriously questioned given the alarming suicide rate in post transitioned individuals. To simply blame the Christians is hopelessly flawed since a huge amount of grief is coming from non-religious people.

Yes, you were saying that the suicide rate was high, and that we should question transitioning as a therapy given this... while quoting from a study that links an inability to transition with a rise in the suicide rate. The claim that you made, is directly opposite to the conclusions in the report. Directly. Opposite.

Did you even read the report? Did you even read my post that you're quoting there? Because you just repeated the same faulty assertion as though I hadn't explicitly shown that that same assertion is the opposite of what was in the report.

How did you think you were going to get away with that?

[TheRocketSurgeon]

As a dietitian I can confirm Rocket's position.  Our brains are "wired" to prefer the more calorie-dense macronutrients as a survival instinct.  So, you don't have to feel guilty for reallllllly wanting that snickers bar.  But maybe, don't eat four of them.  [emoji12]

Calories aside, isn't another reason for our craving sweets our bodies' inability to produce vitamin C, which would have been found in nature overwhelmingly in sweet tasting fruits?

Nah. Not as far as I'm aware. Hypoascorbemia (the condition in which we have deletions in the gene to make Vitamin C naturally, so we must instead consume it) was a genetic balls-up that went unnoticed by Natural Selection because our ancestors lived somewhere that let their diet contain lots of stuff containing ascorbic acid (Vit-C). We craved sugar, so we got the nutrient we needed along with it. Horses have the gene for Vitamin C, and yet they love sugar, for instance.

[Esquilax]

Back to the point at hand, in Australia, less than 10% of the population are practicing Christians.

Do you seriously think you're going to get away with that one?

According to the latest census, sixty one percent of Australians are christian, not fucking ten percent. Now, that percentage is dropping, but not to the degree that there'd be a fifty percent drop between census time and now: the percentage drop between the last two censuses was three percent!

So you're dead wrong on your baseless bloody assertion, but more to your point, regardless what the actual number is (not yours) it does not follow that all the rest are non-religious, because there are more religions in the world than just your own. In fact, the "no religion" category on the census, which still isn't the same thing as atheist, was at 22 percent.

Just to recap: you give a statistic based on nothing that is, at last count, dead wrong. You then go on to assume that no other religion is practiced in Australia, and I simply cannot understand why you'd do that in general, let alone in a multicultural country like Oz. And finally, you assume that the irreligious constitute the rest of the population, which again, is a completely unjustified and unfathomable leap.

You kinda fucked up on this one, son. Again.

[Esquilax]

You are correct that I didn't read the article. This is because I was already aware of the 41% figure for transgender suicide and was providing a link to  authenticate the number. Probably should have read it and saved myself some grief.

If you're gonna use that data to formulate a conclusion then it's probably the least you could do, yeah.

Note that I am not disputing the reasons given for the suicide. I did say that it wasn't established how much discrimination is responsible for and I believe that reliable figures are hard to come by. What I am disputing is the overall effectiveness of the "therapy." If my son liked wearing dresses, I wouldn't allow him to go to school in one, since the bullying would do him a huge amount of damage. It is pointless to say, "he has a right to wear a dress and everyone should respect that." In the real world, this ain't gonna happen. He's going to be picked on mercilessly by all sorts of people, religious and non-religious.

So your real problem is with bullying... you just baselessly think that it's easier to deal with a completely unrelated issue instead, and completely knuckle under to the pressures of the bad behavior you actually have an issue with. Because nothing corrects bullies like... showing them that bullying is a great way to make people change to suit them? Yep, surely that'll work wonders.

But in any case, the fact that the study links not being able to transition with a higher suicide rate doesn't change your view because...?

[robvalue]

Confirmation bias at work.

Only things that support the beliefs already held are considered to be valid.

Anything else is explained away, no matter how ridiculous the explanation.

You're guaranteed never to change your mind. Congrats!