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Thursday, February 24, 2022

Social Ills and Critical Thought

Link: 

groping and belief

Of course, each incident is discrete and needs to be judged on the merits, but in a broad general way, I totally believe this happens. Both the more innocent examples and the more creepy/intrusive examples. That said, I do not accept the premise of male disbelief being the real problem here. In fact, I'd argue that type of thinking tends to alienate male allies. I wonder if any of my liberals can both accept the broad statement of belief in the existence of the problem and still bring critical thinking to the topic?


I can think of multiple complicating factors. None of them have to do with belief. Also, I am pretty certain we don't want policies and social responses based solely on belief. Such ideas are appealing on a surface level because they are simple and black or white. In fact, how we interact physically in the same space includes a complex  array of factors. Cultural norms, familiarity, changes in the nature of relationships from less intimate to more intimate or the reverse. The list goes on.





Monday, February 21, 2022

Bible Study




 It's funny, I only went for a couple of years but I don't remember these passages from my early childhood bible classes. On the other hand, our bible studies teacher might have considered the more overt deviant sexual references to be just a bit too much religion for six year olds. I do remember some of the demented murderous/war related passages but they were offered in such a wholesome positive way. Which is to say, the good guys were being oppressed by the bad guys and it was all part of God's plan to get those folks on the straight and narrow or the good guys were kicking some bad guy ass in righteous retribution which was, again, all part of God's plan. And, of course, the lessons were blunted by the fact that I had no clear idea of war and carnage either inspired entirely by human motivations or by heavenly design.


All this to say that I may have squeaked by the worst trauma one might have experienced from bible class by having half-ass non-committed Protestant parents who would rather have been golfing on a Sunday morning after they dropped the kids with the babysitter. Sure, it is speculation, but maybe the third year is when they did a deep dive into the really heinous material.

Whew!


So, in the same way that I would not want to ban books (including religious texts) I would certainly not want my children reading them (especially unsupervised) while they were young. Neither would I want them reading Ken Kesey or Kurt Vonnegut or a host of others before they had a solid foundation in reason, critical thought, and the principles of human decency so they were ready to question and puzzle through such material.