Moral superiority: Seculars vs Religious

[Dystopia]

It's still not valid: the pagan gods (and thus, in pagan religions) did not give any commandments to people on how to behave and how to treat women, etc. They simply demanded offerings and that was all. It did develop later on, as ideologies started to rise and they were transposed to gods, such as some forms of Buddhism, the belief in "good gods" and "bad goods" - which was borrowed by Judaism / Christianity from the persians, etc.

The concept of worship and unjustified authority is still present.

A more realistic counter argument for my position would be the popular belief that ideologies regarding sex and thus the women's place in society turned against women's favor when agriculture was discovered: it invented private properties, and thus some men ruled over others, and thus began to claim ownership over people and women's rights decreased. Whilst before agriculture, the tribes required that all members contribute to the group for the group to survive, so there was / must have been equality between men and women.

Yes, but irrelevant to the point of natural behaviour

First I want to emphasize that this is a hypothesis that I currently believe and which makes sense for multiple situations.
Second, if you look at various species of animals you will see behaviors where females are submitted to males and the alpha male mates with all the females and so on.

Dude, other species doing it doesn't prove it is right, even chimps - The analogy is not accurate because we are significantly different from chimps and different, allow me to say, from most animals. Comparing humans to animals is not a valid argument and an analogy is not evidence - Because A is true B doesn't have to be true, just because B is remotely similar to A

"Of course, some situations might not conclude now the same as they did thousands of years ago, but the natural instincts are the same."
The evolution does not keep the pace very well with our social and technological developments. If it had kept us up to date with everything, we would no longer have had pubic hair, after all.

Why no pubic hair?

You prove that masculinity and femininity are social constructed concepts.
But they are in animal kingdom. And it is the reason a male lion kills a foreign pack's male lion and takes the females as his own later on.
Or perhaps you meant something else?

Lions do it, humans should do it too... I love this logic!... Nooo dude. I didn't make a positive claim, there's statistically people who differ from the social constructed concepts, very few males fit the stereotype of alpha male and few females fit the stereotype of femininity, most people deviate at least a little from the norm and disagree with the extent of the stereotype. On the other hand, there's evidence that, for example, the concept of masculinity as it is now (alpha males) leads do depression, drug abuse, emotion suppression, suicide and unhappiness. Heck most of my childhood suffering was because of our overwhelming concept of masculinity and manliness. If you wish to challenge this, you need to provide proof that neurologically we are wired to act a certain way, not just bring chimps or lions into the mix

It can also have a natural explanation.

Prove it

[Zenith]

Dude, other species doing it doesn't prove it is right, even chimps - The analogy is not accurate because we are significantly different from chimps and different, allow me to say, from most animals. Comparing humans to animals is not a valid argument and an analogy is not evidence - Because A is true B doesn't have to be true, just because B is remotely similar to A

if B is remotely similar to A and they both have a common ancestor C, then it is possible that attribute X belonged to C, was transmitted to B, but faded in A.

"Of course, some situations might not conclude now the same as they did thousands of years ago, but the natural instincts are the same."
The evolution does not keep the pace very well with our social and technological developments. If it had kept us up to date with everything, we would no longer have had pubic hair, after all.

Why no pubic hair?

Because we don't need it.

Lions do it, humans should do it too... I love this logic!

Point... missed.

[Nope]

Although I liked the shaved look myself, pubic hair does have a purpose


http://gizmodo.com/why-do-we-still-have-...1591892257

But, as with many things in nature, the leading theory as to why we still have pubic and underarm hair is to increase the chances of getting lucky. This is perhaps backed up by the fact that unlike hair on your head, armpit and thick pubic hair tend to show up during puberty, around the same time your apocrine sweat glands become active and begin secreting an oily substance containing a variety of proteins and the like. These apocrine glands are, among a few other places, concentrated in your armpits and genitals, unlike your other main type of sweat gland, eccrine glands, which are distributed pretty well throughout your body. Pubic and armpit hair also usually begins to thin out significantly starting around when people hit their fifties, perhaps another indicator it's all about finding a compatible mate.

More specifically, it is theorized by some that the hair exists for the purpose of getting soaked in potent mate-attracting pheromones. This initially odorless secretion turns into a musky smell after various microbes have their way with it; a potential mate picks up the scent and their body uses it as an indicator that you are ready to make the beast with two backs, or whatever the kids are calling it these days.

Why compare human behavior to lions? Elephant herds are led by females. When my female dog was in heat, she would have mated with any dog that entered the yard. Male Grizzlies will eat their own young.

[Zenith]

Why compare human behavior to lions? Elephant herds are led by females. When my female dog was in heat, she would have mated with any dog that entered the yard. Male Grizzlies will eat their own young.

My idea was: this "alpha male" happens in the nature. I knew about lions, I knew about chimpanzees, and I know there are a lot more, but 2 examples should suffice.
I also know that bonobo chimpanzees are led by a female, and they are most closely related to, well... the other chimpanzees, which are lead by males.

Certainly there is a wide diversity in the animal kingdom, but seeing similar traits between different kinds of animals, and seeing a similar approach in traditional and even ancient human civilizations should make one consider the possibility that our social treatment of women might be influenced by inherited natural instincts or that those natural instincts somehow favor certain behaviors. It could be that we inherited this 'gene' from our common ancestor, possibly altered it as time passed, or that we developed it independently in our own line of species.

I believe it is virtually impossible to test whether a behavior (like how we treat women) is written in our genes or not. It would be likely, though, that stupid people and / or people who start their life outside of a culture (like a jungle boy) could show us more of what our nature actually is like. A stupid man who lives in a permissive society might beat his wife and children to show who's the authority in the house (alpha male pride / like a gorilla hitting his chest with its fists) and / or influenced by the fact that men are stronger than women and men might be more oriented towards physical fight / battle than women, so it would be only a struggle to exercise will, where nature favors men. It might not require social indoctrination / influence to make a stupid man beat his wife. The tribal societies do have a culture which could influence people against their natural behavior, while an environment in which any one member might be required to be alive and happy for the tribe to survive could teach people to treat the others in the group equally, regardless of gender.

Regardless of whether I am correct about this behavior of men towards women, that it is something in our genes or not, we have our brains developed inasmuch as to be able to restrain and train ourselves to be otherwise, because we can understand what our actions can lead to and have ideas of what could work better.

Regarding monogamy / polygamy: I believe we are social monogamous. I believe that a man and a woman can best raise their children and provide the emotional support the child needs if they are in a one-to-one relationship; and they provide stronger emotional support for one another if there's a one-to-one relationship, more than they can do if there was one-to-many or many-to-many. On the other hand, I don't think one's nature can prevent him / it from having sex with someone else, as long as there is sexual pleasure, even enhanced by physical appearance, which applies between a man and any woman and vice versa. Besides, many occurrences of cheating happen because one's partner has not been satisfying him / her emotionally and / or sexually.

The example with the "walking marriage" could hint at social monogamy.

Traditional hawaiian society: this reminds me of the early books of the Old Testament (and thus, of the jews): they did not have the term "marriage", "pre-marital sex", that which is translated as husband in the original hebrew means "man" and wife in the original hebrew means "woman", they had no ritual of marriage, the man would take / buy her from her father, and when he had enough of her he would throw her out and take another one, or more. The problem with the woman fucking with someone else might simply be a matter of "I'm not the father! I might leave my inheritance to someone else's child !" issue in a property owning mindset. Regarding polygamous societies: I wonder, how did they deal with incest? I mean, no one of sexual maturity knows his parents, so when they fuck, they fuck with all their brothers, sisters and cousins. No?

(side note)
I have recently watched this video on monogamy (nothing about men treating their women):



He's not Richard Dawkins, but I suspect he's not talking bullshit.

---

It's still not valid: the pagan gods (and thus, in pagan religions) did not give any commandments to people on how to behave and how to treat women, etc. They simply demanded offerings and that was all. It did develop later on, as ideologies started to rise and they were transposed to gods, such as some forms of Buddhism, the belief in "good gods" and "bad goods" - which was borrowed by Judaism / Christianity from the persians, etc.

The concept of worship and unjustified authority is still present.

This reminds me of Nope's link on the traditional Hawaiian society: those people were worshipping gods, those gods were "authorities", they were having a King yet they were not mistreating women. So the existence of "authority" or "religion" does not imply mistreatment of women. And the jews of the ancient times were likely not writing and teaching against women because they were worshipping a god, but because those had been their ideology before, so they would have held those views even if they had had no religion.

[Angrboda]

I don't have numbers, but I'd suggest there is a correlation between secularity and affluence or standard of living. It's that relationship which results in more religious people engaged in negative behaviors than secular regions. I know it's that way in the U.S.. I don't know about internationally.

[robvalue]

250% correlation.

[emilynghiem]

So I was reading "Non-believer Nation" and the writer brought up a number of very good points about the correlation in national population percentages between secularity and religiosity in regards to crime. I knew about the studies in the US, but apparently it's not just in the US; the higher the ratios of secular individuals to religious individuals, the lower the rate of violent crimes, particularly murder and sexual assault.

This is a topic trail that we've walked many times before, or at least most of us have, but I'm interested in hearing what our resident theists have to say on the matter. I find myself wishing there were more around here for these kinds of conversations, believe it or not, largely because I'm interested in hearing the explanations of religious people as to how they feel about this. I'm not asking for refutations of the statistics; they exist, and the closest thing I can call absolute truth is that of numbers, and given how the statistical trends are always in favor of this outcome, my mind is all but concluded in the regards of whether or not this is a fact. I just wanna know what theists think about this.

If one says that "good wholesome Christian values" are a good strong moral backing, how does one explain how the less a national population adheres to those values, the lower the crime rates are?

If it went the other way around, that the more secularization of a population, the more violent the society, I personally would find myself hard-pressed to explain it other than to say "religion must provide peace of mind and culture," but such is not the case.

Dear Creed of Heresy
the factor I have found in people's ability to break the patterns of abuse, crime, violence and other sickness is
forgiveness that promotes natural healing of mind body and relationships.

I have found this forgiveness and recovery counseling based on it
in both secular forms and religious forms.

There are advantages and disadvantages to both:
the secular forms can reach more people, both religious and nonreligious,
who still need to identify which problems in their minds are causing problems
to repeat and preventing steps to resolve them.

the religious forms, particularly Christian healing prayer and deliverance,
can heal very deep extreme conditions that secular methods cannot affect.

Scott Peck used deliverance to treat otherwise incureable patients with such
extreme schizophrenic conditions that they refused to follow therapy and treatment,
until after the deliverance process was used to get rid of their demonic obsessions.

I would recommend studying both the religious and secular forms of therapy,
and using both to treat drug and criminal addictions,
before judging which methods work better in which cases.

I would guess the secular methods work more broadly to cover general issues
of the larger population; but the religious methods may be the only methods
that work on extreme addictions and abuse cases where secular means fail
because they do not address the deeper spiritual levels keeping people sick.

[Zenith]

the factor I have found in people's ability to break the patterns of abuse, crime, violence and other sickness is
forgiveness that promotes natural healing of mind body and relationships.

I have found this forgiveness and recovery counseling based on it
in both secular forms and religious forms.

There are advantages and disadvantages to both:
the secular forms can reach more people, both religious and nonreligious,
who still need to identify which problems in their minds are causing problems
to repeat and preventing steps to resolve them.

the religious forms, particularly Christian healing prayer and deliverance,
can heal very deep extreme conditions that secular methods cannot affect.

Scott Peck used deliverance to treat otherwise incureable patients with such
extreme schizophrenic conditions that they refused to follow therapy and treatment,
until after the deliverance process was used to get rid of their demonic obsessions.

I would recommend studying both the religious and secular forms of therapy,
and using both to treat drug and criminal addictions,
before judging which methods work better in which cases.

I would guess the secular methods work more broadly to cover general issues
of the larger population; but the religious methods may be the only methods
that work on extreme addictions and abuse cases where secular means fail
because they do not address the deeper spiritual levels keeping people sick.

I have also seen cases where 'religion' actually does help people in critical cases: there are people, such as drug addicts, or other kinds of people who had a terrible life, and who need something to cling upon. Or perhaps they are ordinary people who see no purpose and no taste in life at all. Then when they're caught by a religion they say "Jesus saved me!" or "Islam brought me peace!" But this same kind of people go two years later on a killing spree saying "Allahu akbar!" or, instead of being caught by religion groups, they are caught by ultra-nationalistic groups or extreme leftists or extreme rightists or embrace wholeheartedly ideologies like Nazism / Socialism / Social darwinism. This 'good effect' of religion is only good if it finally leads - i.e. on the long term - to more good than evil to the one embracing it and his descendents.

I believe people who suffer from these things (e.g. addictions) see in the (religious) group they embrace, a new kind of family, one that truly cares and tends to them. Perhaps our societies, which over time had been communistic or capitalistic, encouraging values such as "all for the society!" (the individual doesn't matter, all in the name of the group, sacrifice yourself for the society / country) or individualistic (you yourself matter, fuck the others!) need to encourage some more... I don't know, altruism? empathy? While, of course, evading those who try to wickedly profit off the good intentions of others...