The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

Feminism: It’s About SCIENCE!

Posted on | April 26, 2016 | 92 Comments

 

Sex is about reproductive biology. Human beings are mammals, and any eighth-grader can figure out what that means in terms of sex.

Once you understand this scientific definition of sex, everything else is just details. Young people have to figure out how to attract potential partners, how to choose a good partner from among the prospective candidates, and how to negotiate a relationship that will lead toward lifelong monogamous pair-bonding — i.e., a successful marriage — because this is the ideal situation in which to raise children.

“So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them. And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply . . .”
Genesis 1:27-28 (KJV)

Science and the Bible are not really in disagreement about sex. Godless atheists enjoy denouncing Christianity as “superstition,” but insofar as successful reproduction and child-rearing are concerned, do we find that Darwinism actually has anything to teach us? And am I the only one who has noticed that the fanatical advocates of Darwinism generally don’t do much in the way of reproducing the species? Having announced the Death of God in 1966, making godlessness the basis of their worldview, the secular elite now claim to worship at the altar of Science, and you might expect that pursuing a “survival of the fittest” strategy would lead these devout disciples of Darwin to procreate abundantly. Alas, no.

 

Those who imagine that they can kill God simply by not believing God exists are not as scientific as they claim to be. After all, if God does exist, his existence is independent of human belief, and therefore the logic of atheism is highly irrational. Atheists begin their argument with the conclusion — “The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God” (Psalm 14:1 KJV) — then seek evidence to support that conclusion, and confirmation bias always leads them to believe they are correct.

The motive for this search, of course, is that fools wish to live in a godless world where they can pursue their own selfish desires without limits. If God does not exist, there are no rules, you see. Atheism therefore attracts to its banner immoral hedonists and greedy materialists, as well as power-mad totalitarians who want to dictate their own rules to the rest of us without regard for any eternal standard of Right and Wrong. If we are Beyond Good and Evil, as Nietzsche believed, then everything is simply about The Will to Power and, once people start thinking this way, it is only a matter of time before the Panzer divisions are rolling across the Polish frontier and the Stukas are dive-bombing Warsaw.

The lessons of the 20th century, however, have not been properly taught in our schools, and so our university campuses are nowadays under the administration of godless fools, who sometimes seem shocked to discover that their students are dangerous totalitarians. It turns out, quite routinely, that the atheist decides the Meaning of Life is “Give me what I want” and “Do what I say,” a philosophy of selfish irresponsibility.

Marriage and parenthood are not very compatible with such a philosophy, which is why the godless so often fail to reproduce. Nietzsche, of course, died a lunatic, most likely as a result of tertiary syphilis, and more recently Michel Foucault died of AIDS, but it is among feminists that we find the perfect philosophical expression of the Culture of Death.

The road to Equality is paved with dead babies. Feminism’s idea of “empowerment” for women requires forsaking motherhood and, once the possibility of procreation is excluded, what does sex mean? If a woman decides to be a non-participant in the reproduction of the species, does she have any need for marriage? Indeed, why bother with men at all? This feminist argument has been obvious for many decades:

In 1980, Australian feminist Denise Thompson described how “countless numbers of lesbians” joined the feminist movement because it offered them “the possibility of a cultural community of women whose primary commitment was to other women rather than to men.” Furthermore, Thompson added, the rise of the feminist movement produced a “mass exodus of feminist women from the confining structures of heterosexuality” in such numbers as to raise questions about “the institution of heterosexuality in the consciousness of those feminists who, for whatever reason, chose not to change their sexual orientation.” . . .
Women “changed their sexual/social orientation from men to women,” Thompson explained, “in response to the feminist political critique of their personal situations of social subordination.” If the personal is political (as feminists say) and if women’s relationships with men are “confining structures” of “social subordination,” why would any feminist be heterosexual?

That quote from my book Sex Trouble (pp. 109-110) is not merely a summary of arguments by Denise Thompson, who is author of the 2001 book Radical Feminism Today. All she did was to describe a phenomenon that may be observed by anyone who studies feminism. Whatever else her ambitions include, if a woman desires to find a husband and have babies, there are obvious limits to how far she can go in supporting feminism, because the feminist movement is anti-marriage and anti-motherhood.

 

Feminism is fundamentally an anti-male ideology, and therefore is ultimately also an anti-heterosexual ideology. Whether or not the young woman who joins the feminist movement begins with any inclination toward lesbianism, she will discover that her commitment to the movement’s ideology makes it difficult for her to find happiness in heterosexual relationships. The kind of men who seek women as wives — romantic men, those who hope to find lasting love in a permanent, monogamous relationship — will tend to avoid women who denounce marriage as slavery, an institution of “social subordination.” Likewise, the young feminist will find that her support for the movement tends to exclude from her companionship any man who desires to become a father. Feminism is implacably hostile to motherhood, advocating abortion and contraception, and celebrating childlessness as the ideal expression of women’s liberation from the oppressive yoke of patriarchy. The social consequences of this hostility are obvious.

“Certainly all those institutions which were designed on the assumption and for the reinforcement of the male and female role system such as the family (and its sub-institution, marriage), sex, and love must be destroyed.”
The Feminists, 1969

“Pregnancy is barbaric.”
Shulamith Firestone, 1970

“Women’s oppression is based in the fact that she reproduces the species. . . .
“In terms of the oppression of women, heterosexuality is the ideology of male supremacy.”

Margaret Small, “Lesbians and the Class Position of Women,” in Lesbianism and the Women’s Movement, edited by Nancy Myron and Charlotte Bunch (1975)

“Women are a degraded and terrorized people. Women are degraded and terrorized by men. … Women’s bodies are possessed by men. … Women are an enslaved population. … Women are an occupied people.”
Andrea Dworkin, 1977 speech at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, in Letters from a War Zone (1993)

“The lesbian liberation movement has made possibly the most important contribution to a future sexual liberation. . . . What the women’s liberation movement did create was a homosexual liberation movement that politically challenged male supremacy in one of its most deeply institutionalized aspects — the tyranny of heterosexuality.”
Linda Gordon, “The Struggle for Reproductive Freedom: Three Stages of Feminism,” in Capitalist Patriarchy and the Case for Socialist Feminism, edited by Zillah Eisenstein (1978)

“The first condition for escaping from forced motherhood and sexual slavery is escape from the patriarchal institution of marriage.”
Alison M. Jaggar, Feminist Politics and Human Nature (1988)

“Woman’s biology oppresses her only when she relates to men. The basis of the inequality of the sexes here is seen as the inequality inherent in heterosexual intercourse as a result of sex-specific anatomy. To transcend or avoid this in personal life by having sexual relations only with women — lesbianism — eliminates the gender-based underpin­nings of sexual inequality in this view. . . . Women and men are divided by gender, made into the sexes as we know them, by the social requirements of its dominant form, heterosexuality, which institutionalizes male sexual dominance and female sexual submission.”
Catharine MacKinnon, Toward a Feminist Theory of the State (1989)

“To the extent that women harbor negative attitudes toward lesbians and lesbianism, we demonstrate identification with men. To the extent that women express negative attitudes toward lesbians in our words and deeds, we strengthen patriarchy.”
Dee Graham, Loving to Survive: Sexual Terror, Men’s Violence, and Women’s Lives (1994)

“The term motherhood refers to the patriarchal institution . . . that is male-defined and controlled and is deeply oppressive to women.”
Andrea O’Reilly, Feminist Mothering (2008)

“In the early 1970s both gay and feminist movements concurred in critiques of patriarchal, heterosexual institutions, such as the family, and there was a sense of common cause. . . . [A]ddressing the patriarchal structures that shaped family life, revealing women’s discontents with heterosexual relationships . . . feminists laid the foundation for a thoroughgoing critique of heterosexuality . . .”
Stevi Jackson and Sue Scott, Theorizing Sexuality (2010)

The logical consequences of feminism are not usually apparent to young women when they first join the movement. A young woman feels she is treated unfairly in some way and the promise of “equality” appeals to her, and so she starts calling herself a feminist. She begins reading feminist writers who tell her that she is a victim of oppression, and she learns a vocabulary — “sexism,” “misogyny,” “objectification,” etc. — to describe male behavior she doesn’t like. She develops an attitude of resentment and suspicion, a sort of sexual paranoia that makes it impossible for her to enjoy normal interactions with men. If a man expresses admiration for her beauty, he is objectifying her with the “male gaze.” She despises men who are sexually interested in her, who want to possess her body, to degrade and enslave her in the tyranny of male supremacy.

Her hostility toward “the patriarchal institution of marriage” (Jaggar) may not immediately lead the young feminist to reject “the inequality inherent in heterosexual intercourse” (MacKinnon), yet she must avoid any man who is interested in finding a wife, and she must also renounce any desire to have children, because her “oppression is based in the fact that she reproduces the species” (Small). Having thereby abandoned the kind of scientific understanding of sex that is apparent to any eighth-grade biology student, what purpose is served by her relationships with men? If sex is nothing but immoral hedonism — the pursuit of pleasure for its own sake — then what is a man to her, other than an instrument to serve her own selfish needs? And if a man does not willingly accept this role, if he has needs and purposes of his own, how or why would he possibly be of any interest to a feminist?

A young woman who becomes a feminist as a high school or college student is unlikely to perceive all the implications of her ideology. She aspires to a professional career and, insofar as she thinks of marriage and motherhood at all, these are merely potential choices for the future, activities she might choose to pursue when she’s 25 or 30, once she has gotten her degree and established her career. She therefore must avoid any genuinely serious romantic involvement with her boyfriends, because such a relationship could lead toward “the patriarchal structures” (Jackson and Scott) of the traditional family. In postponing serious relationships with men, the young feminist thereby makes herself unavailable to any man who is interested in finding a wife, and she makes this decision at an age — in her teens or early 20s — when young people normally begin pairing off together, engaged in the process of courtship aimed toward forming lifelong partnerships. Despite the trend toward postponing marriage and parenthood, the typical first-time mother in the United States is about 25, and most American mothers have two children by the time they’re 30. More than 42% of women who eventually become mothers have their first baby before age 25. A woman who delays motherhood thereby diminishes the likelihood that she will ever have any children, and there has been a remarkable increase in childlessness.

 

These trends demonstrate the influence of the feminist movement, which encourages young women to reject sex in its basic scientific meaning, i.e., as naturally related to procreation. Feminism tells young women that they should pursue sex on the basis of immoral hedonism, as pleasure without responsibility. Most young women who adopt this irresponsible attitude do so with the mistaken belief that the choices they make in their teens and 20s will have no permanent consequences. The young feminist believes she can be promiscuous in her youth without impairing her ability to find a husband later, and that she can choose to postpone motherhood without any increased risk of childlessness. She believes in equality, and therefore listens to feminist advice. She doesn’t bother to ask what equality may require, or who is giving her this advice.

“I was the editor of my campus sex magazine. I had some one-night stands. I explored my sexuality and what I wanted, and I met a guy at a party and he was amazing. He was super-charismatic and sexy and funny and brilliant and I fell really hard for him. We started seeing each other and then, three weeks later, I woke up with an outbreak of genital herpes.”
Ella Dawson, September 2015

“The labels I currently use for myself are queer, gay, femme, and homoflexible. (Basically, I’m a lesbian with exceptions.) The label bisexual doesn’t work for me right now. . . . I’m on the asexual spectrum somewhere . . . I don’t experience primary sexual attraction.”
Miriam Mogilevsky, October 2015

“Only when we recognize that ‘manhood’ and ‘womanhood’ are made-up categories, invented to control human beings and violently imposed, can we truly understand the nature of sexism. . . .
“Questioning gender . . . is an essential part of the feminism that has sustained me through two decades of personal and political struggle.”

Laurie Penny, October 2015

“I don’t particularly like babies. They are loud and smelly and, above all other things, demanding . . . time-sucking monsters with their constant neediness. . . . Nothing will make me want a baby. . . . This is why, if my birth control fails, I am totally having an abortion.”
Amanda Marcotte, March 2014

Do you suppose many young women would call themselves feminists if they were informed of the character of those who lead this movement? Do you suppose many teenage girls hate babies, identify as “genderqueer,” or look forward to the morning when they wake up with genital herpes? Yet these are the attitudes, beliefs, identities and behaviors that the feminist movement celebrates. This is the “empowerment” and “liberation” that feminism encourages in the name of “equality.”

Those who worship at the altar of Science exhibit a remarkable willingness to ignore any fact that does not fit their theory, and we are not surprised to see strange claims made by those who ignore eighth-grade biology lessons. Feminist Tumblr is full of these young lunatics.

Simple Objective Fact of the Day:
opposite-sex relationships are favored in society because of heterosexism. People in same-sex relationships are allowed to point this out.

Actually, ma’am, “heterosexism” is necessary to “society” because without “opposite-sex relationships,” there would be no “society,” because there would be no people. This is an “Objective Fact” that we are allowed to point out, but even if we never pointed it out, it would still be true.

Because a statistically insignificant fraction of the world’s children are now conceived with the extraordinary assistance of Science, some people seem to believe that “opposite-sex relationships” are as obsolete as VHS tapes, manual typewriters, and vinyl 45-rpm records. Everybody’s gay now, and in the near future, all babies will be conceived in laboratory petri dishes, implanted in hired surrogates who will be paid to give birth, and then this generation of scientifically produced super-babies will be raised by trained experts in government-subsidized daycare centers. It is only the ignorant prejudice of “heterosexism” that causes “society” to expect that children will continue to be produced the old-fashioned way. And now, for some Simple Objective Facts:

Top Ten Countries by Total Fertility Rate
(Average lifetime births per woman)

  1. Niger …………………….. 6.76
  2. Burundi ………………… 6.09
  3. Mali ……………………… 6.06
  4. Somalia ………………… 5.99
  5. Uganda ………………… 5.89
  6. Burkina Faso ………… 5.86
  7. Zambia …………………. 5.72
  8. Malawi …………………. 5.60
  9. Angola …………………. 5.37
  10. Afghanistan …………. 5.33

Excuse me for suspecting that “heterosexism” is still quite prevalent in Burundi and Burkina Faso, Uganda and Afghanistan, and that all births in these countries result from “opposite-sex relationships.” While I suppose there might be some people in Mali or Malawi who could afford the “scientific” method — in vitro fertilization, etc. — why should they bother? These high-fertility societies aren’t suffering from any shortage of mothers and babies, whereas on the other hand . . .

Total Fertility Rates for
Selected Industrial Nations

South Korea …………… 1.25
Japan …………………….. 1.40
Greece ……………………. 1.42
Italy ……………………….. 1.43
Germany ………………… 1.44
Austria …………………… 1.46
Spain ……………………… 1.49
Switzerland ……………. 1.55
Canada ………………….. 1.59
Denmark ……………….. 1.73
Australia ………………… 1.77
Belgium …………………. 1.78
Netherlands …………… 1.78
United States …………. 1.87

The appropriate phrase here is demographic collapse, although “decadence” and “societal death spiral” might work as well.

Making atheism the basis of their belief system, celebrating selfish immoral hedonism as Science, feminists are the Darwinian Dead End.

“See, I have set before thee this day life and good, and death and evil . . . I call heaven and earth to record this day against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing: therefore choose life, that both thou and thy seed may live . . .”
Deuteronomy 30:15, 19 (KJV)

To reject God is to reject life. The curse is upon them.

Science? It’s so simple any eight-grader could understand it.

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The Sex Trouble project has been supported by contributions from readers. The first edition of Sex Trouble: Radical Feminism and the War on Human Nature is available from Amazon.com, $11.96 in paperback or $1.99 in Kindle ebook format.





 

 


Comments

92 Responses to “Feminism: It’s About SCIENCE!”

  1. Evi L. Bloggerlady
    April 26th, 2016 @ 9:47 pm

    Cole Porter got it.

  2. RS
    April 26th, 2016 @ 10:05 pm

    Most atheists will profess to be moral people. If you ask them, “Where does this morality originate,” they get flummoxed. Either a moral code is transcendent, existing independently of human actors or it is imposed by humans upon humans. There is no other possibility. Indeed, Ethics, i.e. “how shall we live” is one of the four great areas of inquiry in Philosophy.

    At this point, the dimmer bulbs among atheists will proceed to the ad hominem, “Well, you’re a Christian who just wants to impose your beliefs on me,” even though I’ve not mentioned God or Christianity once.

    The smarter atheists will admit the truth of the above statement, but then prattle on about the “social contract” of “it’s better, if we all just play nice with each other.”

    True enough.

    But what happens when that social contract breaks down, as it has repeatedly throughout human history. Upon what then do you base your authority to invoke certain moral precepts as a guide to behavior?

    Indeed, under a purely Darwinian/materialist reality, certain moral precepts like the prohibitions against theft, murder and so forth can be counterproductive to individual survival, not to mention the species survival when we throw procreation into the mix.

    The bottom line, as you point out is that atheism is simply a means by which people do what they want without (they think) feeling any guilt.

  3. NeoWayland
    April 26th, 2016 @ 10:19 pm

    ?If God does not exist, there are no rules, you see.?

    Pardon, but that’s not necessarily true. Aside from the obvious “Might makes right,” it’s also possible to build a moral system based on the Ethic of Reciprocity.

  4. RS
    April 26th, 2016 @ 10:38 pm

    What happens when “Reciprocity” no longer obtains, because individual self-interest is no longer served?

    (However, I see your point. I disagree with the assertion that there are no rules. Rather, there are rules, but the question is, “What is the origin of those rules?”)

  5. Finrod Felagund
    April 26th, 2016 @ 10:39 pm

    My rule of thumb is: if you want to know what leftists are up to, look at what they accuse conservatives of.

    Leftists accuse conservatives of denying science because they deny it whenever it gets in their way. Trump accuses Cruz of lying because he lies like a rug.

  6. M. Thompson
    April 26th, 2016 @ 10:57 pm

    The delinking of sex and reproduction in our society is causing quite a few problems.

    I feel we are in an end stage with decadence on the inside and barbarism with out.

    Classical Greece was only a couple of centuries anyhow.

  7. Mike G.
    April 27th, 2016 @ 1:53 am

    The ” ethic of reciprocity” is the ” Golden Rule”, ie., do unto others as you would have them do unto you. I believe that is a precept espoused in Christianity, is it not?

  8. Mike G.
    April 27th, 2016 @ 1:56 am

    All politicians lie. Cruz is no exception. If politicians told the truth, none of them would be elected.

  9. Finrod Felagund
    April 27th, 2016 @ 2:11 am

    Humbug. Show me where Cruz lied, then.

  10. mole
    April 27th, 2016 @ 2:57 am

    Now Im not a religions chap but had a rather revealing (to me) chat with a Muslim Iranian bloke at the detention center I worked at.

    I was always fair and helpful in my dealings with the bloke, even after he had been involved in a number of incidents cumulating in him trying to tip an urn full of hot water over officers, only to accidentally upend it on himself and another detainee, causing 3rd degree burns.

    I chose not to take it personally and remained fair where quite a few of the officers involved would have nothing to do with him.

    He was pestering me for days over whether I was a Christian and couldn’t accept I was treating him like that out of my own moral compass (set largely by my parents). In the end i told him i had gone to a Catholic primary school as a kid and he just went “Aaaah”!!! all of a sudden the world made sense to him again. Up till then he couldnt see any reason I wasnt treating him badly.

    Which is a long winded way of saying people who make a virtue of unbelieving need to recognize that for a fairly huge chunk of the global population you are declaring yourself untrustworthy at best by doing so.

  11. mole
    April 27th, 2016 @ 3:00 am

    You cant have it without punishment or at least the threat of it as well though.

    Which then gets back all the way to Plato’s Philosopher kings and the problems of defeating personal corruption.

  12. mole
    April 27th, 2016 @ 3:04 am

    No THIS time its different and the empire will never end…

    Signed: Constantine XI Palaeologus

  13. Fail Burton
    April 27th, 2016 @ 4:52 am

    One learns at an early age that fire burns. Knowing that, you know it can burn others in the exact same fashion. Fire has fundamental rules which reach down to a sub-atomic level. It is a language we only poorly understand, but understand enough to know it is in fact a language. Who wrote that language? Chance? Chance of what, by what?

    Third Wave Feminism denies all that. They willingly burn others knowing it hurts. There is no moral ethos or equal protection within such a mad cult. They worship their own supremacy at the same time they can produce nothing which would pass on the knowledge of fire to the next generation. There is only darkness if such a cult comes to power, darkness occasionally lit by fire at Dresden and Hiroshima. TWF is a narcissistic stone age cargo cult and even worse, an evolutionary cul de sac. They can turn on a light switch, they just can’t make one. They can whine about human rights, but not write or even maintain a Constitution. They can adopt babies, but not make them.

  14. Dana
    April 27th, 2016 @ 5:00 am

    Our esteemed host wrote:

    Young people have to figure out how to attract potential partners, how to choose a good partner from among the prospective candidates, and how to negotiate a relationship that will lead toward lifelong monogamous pair-bonding — i.e., a successful marriage — because this is the ideal situation in which to raise children.

    My 63 year old self agrees with that, but I’m not so eaten up yet with Old Timer’s Disease that I can’t remember my 17 year old self, and my 17 year old self’s concern was not “how to negotiate a relationship that will lead toward lifelong monogamous pair-bonding,” but just how to get laid.

  15. robertstacymccain
    April 27th, 2016 @ 6:19 am

    “my 17 year old self’s concern was not ‘how to negotiate a relationship that will lead toward lifelong monogamous pair-bonding,’ but just how to get laid.”

    Your 17-year-old self has a lot in common with mine, but the point is, we had to learn, didn’t we?

    We did not know what we did not know, and we didn’t know we didn’t know it. This is what old people have to explain to kids. This is why we cannot allow kids to think they already know everything. And this is why girls must be warned not to listen to feminist advice.

    Look, my dear grandmother tried to explain to me to stop chasing girls. “Just get your education,” she said. “There will be plenty of time for girls when you’ve got your degree.”

    This was absolutely right, and I was glad for the advice, but I was still chasing girls — to my detriment and also, generally, to the detriment of the girls. To view it all in hindsight, it’s difficult to say how exactly I would have made wiser choices, but I know this: I failed to see how, at some level, all women are basically alike. That is to say, the problems I kept having with girls were the result of my own lack of understanding of the female perspective on love and sex.

    Because I had enough “wins” to keep me playing the game, I failed to analyze my losses correctly. Hurt though I was, my basic response was to shrug off losses and focus my attention on getting the next “win.” And it was probably not until I was 26 that I really began to figure it out: “They’re all that way.” It was my own failure to accept this reality, and adjust my behavior accordingly, that had sabotaged previous relationships. The problem was ME.

    Figuring out that you are the cause of your own problems is important. Realizing that you have arrogantly overestimated yourself, that you were rationalizing failure and blame-shifting — this is what helped me get past that game-playing mentality. And I think a lot of young guys don’t understand this problem.

  16. robertstacymccain
    April 27th, 2016 @ 6:22 am

    I’ve long thought that Calvinists and Stoics are on the same page, basically. Yet I am a Christian, and therefore a Calvinist still.

  17. robertstacymccain
    April 27th, 2016 @ 6:27 am

    Trying to make a non-believer see that it is not “my” morality and I don’t want to “impose” it — that’s where the difficulty lies. To be called into the service of The Lord of Hosts is an honor, and a most unworthy servant I am. That so many people are unwilling to acknowledge God’s power, as proven by the fulfillment of His prophecy, is a testimony to mankind’s hopeless folly.

  18. NeoWayland
    April 27th, 2016 @ 7:10 am

    I’d argue that in peacetime, there are very few times that reciprocity doesn’t apply, at least in the long term. You want to screw with the people around you, they will remember and be less likely to deal with you in the future. (There was a great Bill Whittle essay on this that I used to point people at, but it’s not online anymore).

    ?What is the origin of those rules??

    That is a great question. The practical part of me would ask does it matter as long as the rules work?

  19. NeoWayland
    April 27th, 2016 @ 7:17 am

    Not just Christianity.

    ?In our opinion, the greatest failure of many organized religions is their historical inability to convince their followers that the Ethic of Reciprocity applies to all humans, not merely to fellow believers like themselves. It is our group’s belief that religions should stress that their members also use their Ethic of reciprocity when dealing with persons of other religions, other genders, other cultures, other sexual orientations, other gender identities, etc. Only when this is accomplished will religiously-related oppression, mass murder and genocide cease.

    Crimes against humanity require that the victims first be viewed as subhuman and the as not worthy of life. If the Ethic of Reciprocity is applied to all humans, then no person or group of persons can be seen in this way.?

  20. USA Joseph
    April 27th, 2016 @ 7:20 am

    [You’re a slow learner, aren’t you? Out, damned troll!]

  21. NeoWayland
    April 27th, 2016 @ 7:20 am

    I think the mark of an adult is the ability to make the right choice without the threat of punishment. Or perhaps despite it.

    We know that’s possible. Under the right circumstances, we even revere the people who did that as saints and heroes.

  22. NeoWayland
    April 27th, 2016 @ 7:25 am

    On some issues, yes.

    But I think there is more to life than following rules.

  23. daialanye
    April 27th, 2016 @ 7:28 am

    You are a vile disgusting troll as proven by the hiding of your Disqus history.

  24. daialanye
    April 27th, 2016 @ 7:34 am

    Yes, and all Americans break the law. Still, there’s a considerable difference between the occasional jaywalker and someone who commits vehicular homicide, just as there’s a considerable difference between Ted (The Honorable) Cruz and Donald (Say Whatever Comes to Mind) Trump.

  25. NeoWayland
    April 27th, 2016 @ 7:35 am

    Technically, everything is up in the air until after the Republican convention.

    You know, like it was designed to be.

  26. NeoWayland
    April 27th, 2016 @ 7:39 am

    *grins* You really think so?

    The deals in smoke-filled backrooms have been a part of party politics since the beginning of the republic. It’s one of the things that George Washington warned against.

    The purpose of the party system is to control who gets to run for office and to keep the public out of the process.

  27. NeoWayland
    April 27th, 2016 @ 7:56 am

    We don’t know that.

    At best, we know that among the Republican voters who have chosen to vote so far, Trump seems to winning.

    It’s one reason why I advocate None of the Above. Otherwise it’s a sucker’s bet, a game of three card monty where you’ll never find the red queen.

    What’s the point of choosing between column A or column B if you’re in a bad restaurant?

  28. @ImaCarNow
    April 27th, 2016 @ 8:13 am

    If one builds a moral philosophy, may one not tear such a philosophy down and build another? Is there a more reciprocal relationship than that of a sadist and a masochist? If morality is a choice, one may always reasonably (or unreasonably) choose to ignore it, modify it, reshape it, remold it, laugh at it…

  29. @ImaCarNow
    April 27th, 2016 @ 8:15 am

    Kinda depends on how you define “human” doesn’t it…human?

  30. NeoWayland
    April 27th, 2016 @ 8:27 am

    One may also choose to honor it, cherish it, and nourish it.

    It’s a matter of choice.

    So tell me, is morality stronger when one chooses it? Or is it stronger when one holds a gun to another’s head and says “Do as I say or else!!!

    Isn’t morality really about making a choice?

    If it’s made under duress, doesn’t it cease to be moral?

    If morality is really a choice, then people will make choices you do not like. The next question is what do you intend to do about them?

  31. NeoWayland
    April 27th, 2016 @ 8:28 am

    I think that was the point.

  32. RS
    April 27th, 2016 @ 8:32 am

    Those of us of a certain age recall the 1968 elections, which saw Richard Nixon beat Hubert Humphrey and George Wallace to become POTUS. The reason the Dems got Humphrey had nothing to do with primaries or popular vote of Democrats. See, e.g. Eugene McCarthy among the northern more liberal, anti-war crowd and Wallace, who left the Dems and ran as an independent because of the 1965 Civil Rights legislation, passed only with the assistance of the Republican Party.

    No, the Dems put up Humphrey because of those smoke-filled backroom deals and the influence of Richard Daly at the 1968 convention. Had Wallace not run as an independent and carried Dixie, Nixon never would have seen the inside of the Oval Office.

  33. NeoWayland
    April 27th, 2016 @ 8:35 am

    We don’t know until after the convention.

    This was one of the risks that Trump himself invoked when he chose to run from “outside” the system. He made the rules part of the table stakes.

  34. RS
    April 27th, 2016 @ 8:37 am

    That’s the classic atheist response: “I’m better than you because I don’t murder. because I want do behave that way, not because I fear eternal punishment.”

    It is a laughable assertion because there is always force standing behind a moral injunction, whether that force is temporal or spiritual.

    The question is, as I posed above and which you still have not answered BTW, what happens when your temporal force standing behind your “chosen” morality disappears? In the midst of a lawless, anarchistic, dog-eat-dog society without the force of made-made law compelling certain modes of behavior, whom would you rather trust? The person whose morality is based upon something higher than his own self-interest, or someone who’s just realized it’s every man for himself?

  35. USA Joseph
    April 27th, 2016 @ 8:39 am

    Trump is playing by the all the rules. He’s not running outside the system. He’s playing in the system.

    Trump is not my guy. I am disgusted with both. I am not voting for either, but if the system denies him then that is wrong.

  36. Jason Lee
    April 27th, 2016 @ 8:48 am

    “I failed to see how, at some level, all women are basically alike.”

    Is this revelation now a McCain family secret?

  37. RS
    April 27th, 2016 @ 8:53 am

    The point is, this primary system which everyone gets the vapors about, has only really existed since the 1972 election, and it arose on the Democrat side because of the 1968 debacle. (I forgot to add that RFK’s assassination threw more sand in the gears, as well. IIRC, it was really neck and neck among McCarthy, Kennedy and Humphrey, with Wallace pulling everybody’s chain by threatening to take the “Solid South” with him. Until Sirhan Sirhan pulled the trigger, nobody expected Humphrey to be the Democratic nominee.)

    The nominating process is not supposed to be a popular vote run-off. The parties nominate their candidates and for most of our history, that was done through wheeling and dealing and smoke-filled rooms. The purpose was to select a candidate who best represents the party’s platform, not the candidate who got a lot of votes in open primaries where people vote in order to screw with the other side.

    This is not to say that back room deals select a winner any more so than open-primaries. Indeed, every election has its loser, so by definition, a good chunk of the populace or party members were idiots. Thus, my comment was/is not about Trump v. Cruz, but about a little historical context, inasmuch as we’re running out of smelling salts.

  38. Dana
    April 27th, 2016 @ 8:57 am

    And you know what the young people would say to that? “Hey, he tells us now that we all ought to stop screwing around, after he’s already had his fun before marriage! He’s just a hypocrite!”

    In a way, I was lucky: I managed to stay with one girl for 6½ years, so my number of sexual partners before marriage didn’t go through the roof. (I don’t need to take off my shoes to count them.) But I’d still be accused of the same thing, having had my fun first, and then told other people not to have so much fun.

  39. NeoWayland
    April 27th, 2016 @ 9:09 am

    I’m not an atheist.

    Again, if it’s a choice made under duress, is it really moral?

    If morality can only exist by force, what’s the point?

  40. NeoWayland
    April 27th, 2016 @ 9:14 am

    If Trump was playing by the rules, the GOP leadership wouldn’t be trying to derail him in those backroom deals you despise.

  41. NeoWayland
    April 27th, 2016 @ 9:16 am

    In answer to your question, I don’t think the only two choices are anarchy and civilization.

  42. daialanye
    April 27th, 2016 @ 9:19 am

    The subject of the article is feminism. Your injection of election results is off-subject.

    Nor does whatever happens with Ted Cruz change the fact that you’re a dishonest troll, hiding your comment history.

  43. RS
    April 27th, 2016 @ 9:22 am

    Replying to this and the above comment, with my emphasis:

    The practical part of me would ask does it matter as long as the rules work?

    Therein lies the rub, and the reason for inquiry as to the origin of morality. It is either man-made or it is not, i.e. transcendent. If it is man-made, it can change based upon the ability to use force to make others conform. If morality is transcendent, man-made rules become irrelevant.

    Again, whom would you rather meet in the midst of a riot? The person who has no fear of punishment because the law has broken down or the person who believes that his behavior should be guided by transcendent moral precepts ordained by a Creator?

  44. RS
    April 27th, 2016 @ 9:25 am

    You misstate my argument. A double whammy with a straw man and false dichotomy. I did not say the choice was anarchy or civilization. I said morality is either transcendent or man-made. How one views that determines behavior if, and only if there is a breakdown of society, where social breakdown is defined as an absence of human behavioral enforcement mechanisms, i.e. cops, prosecutors and prisons.

  45. CrustyB
    April 27th, 2016 @ 9:30 am

    The arrogance of modern scientists of self-evidently anti-science.

    Scientist: “Pastures are blue and skies are green.”
    You: “OK, well, I’ve seen evidence that this is not true.”
    Scientist: “Hah! You’re anti-science. Moron.”
    You: “I think I have the right to disagree. I mean, common sense…”
    Scientist: “I’M A SCIENTIST SO THAT MEANS YOU HAVE TO AGREE WITH ME!!!”
    You: “But your own data collapses on itself…”
    Scientist: “Num num num I can’t hear you num num num. Guards! Sieze him!”

    To believe that people should agree with you because you’re you, not because your argument is sound?

  46. RS
    April 27th, 2016 @ 9:35 am

    Sure, he can win the likes of Wyoming and Idaho, etc. But that’s what he can win. People who are ill-informed and live out on the sticks away from reality.

    With that one comment, you demonstrate a complete ignorance of the foundational precepts upon which this country was formed. Truly, you are the ill-informed one.

  47. NeoWayland
    April 27th, 2016 @ 9:35 am

    ?…social breakdown is defined as an absence of human behavioral enforcement mechanisms…?

    I disagree. I think the core of civilization is cooperation, not force. Positive not punishment.

    Although I differ from most libertarians when it comes to the Zero Aggression Principle, I believe that relying on force alone will create disaster.

    Is morality transcendent or man-made? That’s ultimately unanswerable on anything except a personal level. Practically, it only matters if I can trust you and you can trust me.

  48. RS
    April 27th, 2016 @ 9:46 am

    That’s easy to day, (cooperation is better than force) when “911” works.

    And indeed, force alone leads to disaster. That’s my point. There is man-enforced force or there is a transcendent view of the world. A complete Judaic-Christian apologia is outside the scope of this comment section, but Christians behave a certain way not because of fear, but because of a desire to live to please God and in praise of Him. Atheists cannot/will not understand that mindset, and I don’t expect them to do so.

    As for your final paragraph, upon what do you base that trust?

    An excellent piece of fiction examining this issue is Cormac McCarthy’s The Road. Among all the accolades, reviews and analyses, little-remarked upon is this very question. Worth a read with that in mind.

  49. NeoWayland
    April 27th, 2016 @ 9:48 am

    I can see your point, if the rules are transcendent, then they are universal.

    But if that guy over there doesn’t believe the rules are transcendent, then for him they won’t be. That’s true regardless.

    And then you get into the arguments over which particular Deity wrote the rules and what the “civilized people” are going to do with those folks who do not believe.

    That’s an incredibly dangerous path to take.

  50. NeoWayland
    April 27th, 2016 @ 10:07 am

    A couple of years ago I asked on this site if someone could be a “good” man if they weren’t Christian.

    I don’t think force is a foundation of civilization.

    What do I base trust on? Past behavior if I have a history with you. The chance to make things a little better today if I don’t.

    It’s an act of faith. *grins*

    You know, we’ve had this discussion before. Somehow, I don’t think either of us has changed our views since then.