I was explaining. When I learned you were debating, I conceded the debate to you.
Yes. In the LDS tradition, God consists of a Heavenly Father (who we pray to in the name of Christ, who we see as our older brother and Savior), but there is also a Heavenly Mother there. I believe we are unique among Christians in that there is a divine feminine. As a female, I was created in the image of God, meaning I am of His kind, much like your own daughter is of your kind, she’s your species and your kindred. I am his daughter, and His spirit child. In a larger sense the human family is very much patterned after an eternal family with a father, mother and children. For reference, our scriptural cannon includes the King James Bible, both Old and New Testaments, but we also have additional scriptures such as The Book of Mormon. When Jesus prays in Gethsemane, He is a son praying to His Father, much the way your own son would talk to you. Some LDS feminists pray to the Heavenly Mother, but this is not a part of typical LDS theology. She’s there, but we don’t typically pray to her. In that sense, it’s patriarchal. My role as woman and mother is eternal. When LDS people say, “families are forever,” that’s very literal for us.
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Thank you for that (I know very little about LDS theology).
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Sure thing. Jewbacca once had a thread about Judaism and I found it very, very interesting since I was not raised around Orthodox Jewish people. I found a lot of common ground.
No thank you 
Of course. I have firm convictions as well as malleable ones. Some of my firm convictions have evolved over time as experience does the shaping Skyz mentioned. An example would be my feelings toward social programs - my work puts me on the front lines of poverty, child abuse, adult disability (and what I believe are false claims on SSDI), and so on. Mostly my general view, which I express as that we need a safety net but not a hammock, has held. However, there have been shifts in the nuance of what that means to me.
I can appreciate T3hPwnisher’s stance, which is that he is trying to understand others’ positions rather than argue with them. What about that is difficult for you to understand? How does that make him lacking? I would imagine it makes him just the opposite. He has expressed a position on the topic at hand; he is simply unwilling to play word games defending it. He is not required to address your straw men as they fall in order that his beliefs be valid. He is not required to swear that his beliefs are unconditionally firm. To do either would be the mark of a lesser man, not greater.
If data comes along in the future that makes me realize I have been narrow-minded in any regard, I hope I have the strength of character to admit it.
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I disagree. I would be made very uncomfortable by a woman walking around naked and - here is the main thing - checking to see that I was watching. Exhibitionists don’t get off on being exposed, they get off on being noticed. Creepy is as creepy does.
Push, you surely realize that your argument breaks down completely here, don’t you? The people arguing for involvement in protecting the TG population ARE the do-gooders who ignored “6,000 years of tradition” to end child slavery in the factories, abuse of adopted and foster children, etc. “Negroes are people, too.” “Children are people, too.” “Women are people, too.” “Transgender men and women are people, too.”
But to answer your question very specifically, as asked - yes and no. I have a firm conviction that the Golden Rule is a very nice and good one, but I do not necessarily do unto others as I want them to do unto me.
Hockey is one example, and I suppose I would expand that to include all men. I want them to do unto me in subtly different ways than I do unto them. I do unto them more softly than I expect in return. I would be dismayed, to say the least, if Hockey expected me to reciprocate some of the heavy lifting he’s done unto me. I’d be a little put off if he straddled me on the couch for a hug, though I don’t hesitate to do that unto him. There’s a song whose lyrics are something to the effect of “take me in your arms, rock your baby.” It’s sung by a man, and I find it a little icky for that reason. He must be a very feminine man, no?
I do unto children and teens differently than I expect them to do unto me. Elderly people, too. I certainly hope that people someday will do unto me as I do unto them now, but for the moment it’s unbalanced. I do unto my clients differently than they do unto me. Although they know my life in broad strokes, we don’t spend an hour talking about my hurts and confusions.
So just as I have a firm conviction that the Golden Rule is a good guide and gender-segregated bathrooms are generally desirable, there are exceptions.
I would love to explore this idea further, if you would be interested. With your explanation, I cannot devise how being more concerned about morality than 90% of the rest of humanity WOULDN’T make you in turn more moral than 90% of humanity.
Is your thought process that some are inherently more moral than others, and thus they can be more moral without trying as hard, or are you saying that, despite trying harder to be more moral than 90% of the population you encounter failure in your efforts that don’t allow you to reach the top 10%, or is it something else entirely?
You will forgive my interest. I study a lot of systems of morality, and you have brought up something fascinating to me. If you’don’t rather not discuss, or do it some other time, I understand.
You guys would really like the Haidt book, The Righteous Mind. I mentioned it earlier in the tread. I’m just 45% in now, and it’s the most fascinating read. For anyone with a psychology background, it will take you back to your undergrad Intellectual History of Psychology days, in a good way. T3hPwnisher, since you have a specific interest in philosophy, and theory and research about moral reasoning, it would be completely up your alley. Philosophy, psychology, anthropology, politics, religion. I’ve thought about some of the ideas in it repeatedly as I’ve followed the various arguments on this thread.
You know how it feels when you read a really fantastic book and you want everybody else to read it? That’s how it is. I’ll stop now, but if any of you read it, please come over to my log and tell me what you thought.
Some of the reviews -
“A landmark contribution to humanity’s understanding of itself. . . . Haidt is looking for more than victory. He’s looking for wisdom. That’s what makes The Righteous Mind well worth reading.”
—The New York Times Book Review
“An eye-opening and deceptively ambitious best seller . . . undoubtedly one of the most talked-about books of the year.”
—The Wall Street Journal
“Splendidly written, sophisticated and stimulating. It may well change how you think and talk about politics, religion and human nature.”
—NPR
“Ingenious prose. . . . Beautifully written, Haidt’s book shines a new and creative light on moral psychology and presents a provocative message.”
—Science
Last thing. Fiction, but pertinent to this thread because it includes an inept policeman who gets demoted to going undercover as a cop covering vice in the bus station restroom. Very, very funny.
A Confederacy of Dunces is a picaresque novel by American novelist John Kennedy Toole which appeared in 1980,…the book became first a cult classic, then a mainstream success; it earned Toole a posthumous Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1981, and is now considered a canonical work of modern literature of the Southern United States.
The book’s title refers to an epigraph from Jonathan Swift’s essay Thoughts on Various Subjects, Moral and Diverting: “When a true genius appears in the world, you may know him by this sign, that the dunces are all in confederacy against him.”
Thanks for the recommendation. I will give it a look. I haven’t read anything modern in a while, and it sounds interesting. It reminds me of a book I had read in undergrad called “Culture War”, which examined the presumed ideological dichotomy rift in American politics.
I will be on the lookout for it.
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Bought this last week after you recommended it. I’m 2 chapters in right now, and fascinating is putting it mildly.
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Book group!! Glad you’re enjoying it, Steel Nation.
I think he does a great job of telling stories and giving examples so it’s very accessible. I don’t know if the book is making me less biased or intolerant, but I hope it’s making me a little less blind. It is a little bit depressing to see how much we humans overestimate our own ability to be rational and reasonable.
Sorry for the late reply, Powerpuff. I’m several hundred posts behind the discussion at this point, but you deserve a reply for such a well thought-out post. I’m sorry it was so late in the making.
I mostly agree with everything you wrote. I think most of us would manage to navigate these situations fine in the absence of any laws which, as you already pointed out, are unenforceable in practice. I also agree that “activist” positions are taken to ridiculous extremes and shoved down people’s throats with dirty rhetorical tricks buried underneath emotional pleas. That’s the modus operandi for much of the extreme left, but that’s another topic.
As far as research into this thing goes, well, isn’t all of this just another weird phenomenon of the human experience that we can try to understand better? I’m not saying we should re-allocate funds from cancer research to study why some men feel the need to get breast augmentation. I’m just saying that these gender gymnastics, like virtually every other human condition, are worthy of being understood in greater depth.
I enthusiastically second the recommendation of A Confederacy of Dunces.
It is one of the best, and funniest, novels I have ever read.
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