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Post by jemand on Sept 18, 2010 13:14:49 GMT -5
To me, I don't really see true atheism here on the blog or on the boards. Agnosticism, definitely. well of course, we don't have any *true* Scotsmen here lol. We do though have several people who self-identify as atheist and it's probably best to let people self-define like that even if under your terminology you consider our position more agnostic than that.
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Post by jemand on Sept 11, 2010 15:03:17 GMT -5
ladygrace said: " They truly believe God provides. This is why I don't donate anything to QF-families, to be perfectly honest. It's an insult to the people who give to have credit for their generosity given to god." ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ I always loved the story (and I think I may have told it here already but . . ) of the Muslim woman who lived next door to an atheist who, when he heard her praising Allah in her morning prayers, would shout out the window at her, "THERE IS NO GOD!". One day her heard her explaining to Allah that she had no food to feed her children . . . could He please provide her with food for her children. So during the night he slipped off to the store and bought her a bunch of groceries and put them on the front porch for her to find in the morning. Sure enough, when she came out to pray in the morning and found the groceries she began to exclaim her praises to Allah for providing for her and her children, the atheist shouted, "Allah didn't provide that food for you . . . I did. THERE IS NO GOD!". To which she replied. "Thank you Allah, thank you Allah for all of this food . . . and you even got the Devil to pay for it!!". ;D John honestly, that *is* quite a cruel return to generosity, if you stop to think about it. Sure, the atheist might not be the perfect person, but by the end of the story, the believer pretty much has abandoned the moral high ground pretty precipitously herself. And... from personal experience and observation of how the standards for "militant" or "proselytizing" and "being loud" or whatever, is so biased towards the "religious as normal," it's not hard to see that the story is told as perception, but that in actual decibels, it is the believer who yells and the atheist who whispers a dissent. And I first heard the story with a Christian believer, which, because I am more familiar with that religious tradition, made even less sense personally. There are the injunctions by Jesus to feed the hungry, etc, plus the parable full of the one brother who said he would not obey, but then obeyed, being lauded as the one who was actually doing right, plus the idea that just calling someone *fool* much LESS "devil" was an offense that hurt your soul.... the story as commonly understood in a "haha loud atheist, you got it coming, Christians are awesome" just makes ZERO SENSE.
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Post by jemand on Sept 5, 2010 12:03:17 GMT -5
Looking at the other books on that website is very illuminating. The chapter headings in the book for Christian Manhood (a book written for boys) and Beautiful Girlhood is very telling: the boys get more meaty stuff and the girls get fluffy pablum about being cheerful and obedient. Figures. Although if I were a young boy I'd be concerned about a chapter called ' What is the Meaning of Circumcision?' Do they circumcise the home birthed boys? If not, that chapter might give me the heebies. There's another chapter called 'A Guide to T.V. Viewing-From Psalms 101:3-8a' which seems to be a stretch to me. But I digress... Everything is completely focused on works and appearances. They actually have a book called ' The Importance of Outward Appearance'. Have they actually read the bible? I guess I'm feeling particularly frustrated today with the state of the gospel in the hands of these people. It is just such a betrayal of what the 'good news' actually is, and so many people are being hurt by it. It makes me angry. Actually, if they DO perform home circumcisions after home births, THAT would give me the super heebie jeebies.
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Post by jemand on Sept 4, 2010 12:43:18 GMT -5
Now there are rare cases when dads get primary, but these cases are rare. This is true... but in fact I think that in cases of an abusive father/husband, he is more likely to get custody than a decent father. You probably have seen far more cases where good fathers get bad deals, while in circles of ex-qf families with higher likelihood for abuse, there is more chance of the father making off with everything. This would especially be true of the psychologically abusive who are good at charming those who aren't in the family. ALSO, there can definitely be a bias toward awarding custody to the more religious parent, in many cases that is, in fact, the mother and may explain some of why some very good fathers won't get custody, but in ex QF families a woman may have lost her faith before even allowing herself to consider divorce. So again, the situation may be slanted more towards her ex husband.
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Post by jemand on Aug 31, 2010 15:10:49 GMT -5
Gray-water from the rinse cycle of a previous load could be used, in conjunction with more soap, to wash the next load. (Unfortunately, however, unless you have a water treatment system on-site [like this or this, the latter of which I want for my birthday!], it isn't safe to reuse wash-cycle gray-water for anything else except flushing a water-toilet - not even landscaping.) ok... now I'm curious, why is this? because of the detergents? are there alternative detergents that would be safe for reuse on plants? (you've introduced me now to a world I'd not thought of but seems quite intriguing lol)
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Post by jemand on Aug 30, 2010 7:29:27 GMT -5
I agree in principle but it's difficult to regulate that. Part of my standard "adult responsibility" talk to my kids included the fact that I could point out to them, in their extended family and close friends, examples of the failure of every method of birth control except abstinence. How do you police that? How do you determine who's using bc and who isn't and what do you do about the children who come along even if bc is being used? Then what do you do about the woman who escapes a QF situation, or is in one, with a slew of kids who need food? I wish there were a simple answer but I'm afraid there isn't. Actually, abstinence fails at a pretty high rate if you consider the people who were *planning* on using it. But unlike when someone puts a condom on wrong, the failure is always ascribed to the *people* and not the *method* which is a pretty unfair comparison tactic. When any OTHER BC tactic is so complicated, confusing, or difficult to use properly, we consider that a problem of the method and try to improve the delivery system or make it simpler to use. When abstinence fails to be used properly, we just blame the people using it and say, they are at fault, not the system. Also, perhaps even pregnancy due to rape in abstinent women is perhaps on the order of failure if using both a copper IUD and hormonal contraception, or if not yet, add condoms in there as a THIRD method, and I'm pretty certain perfect use there would result in fewer pregnancies than abstinence-- even if only counting rape. It's kind of like when people respond about QF, well the problem is certainly not PATRIARCHY, that's great! The problem is YOU and our particular husband weren't doing it right enough! It's both unfalsifiable and doesn't take into account human realities. Here's a more entertaining take on the subject than mine: gretachristina.typepad.com/greta_christinas_weblog/2009/08/abstinence-theory-and-practice.html
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Post by jemand on Aug 28, 2010 11:33:37 GMT -5
Oh, and Hopewell. Here is a link to the website that is the group and couple whom my parents were intimately involved with. They are super, uber radical. But what is interesting is that they have a family owned business (lawn care) and on a nightly basis their 23 year old daughter is required to give dad back rubs, clip his toenails, and help with his grooming as a way to "prepare" her for marriage. Its pretty hard to sift through all of her articles, but its well worth it if you want to read some hard-core homeschool p*&n. www.chef-missouri.com (if that doesn't work, try .org at the end. or have vyckie contact me...) Does anyone see anything unhealthy about an adult daughter giving her middle-aged dad a backrub? !!!!! Holy smokes! Actually, the clipping toenails/helping with grooming seems much more unhealthy to me than a backrub... but that of course is without the "required" parts. I guess when my family is visiting together after a day, there are often backrubs being given, not spa-like shirtless backrubs but just some human touch and connection and such. So I think there's probably a difference of imagining what's involved in these backrubs but I don't see anything wrong in spontaneous backrubs between an adult child and parent, it just seems here though that there is entitlement and lack of reciprocation, plus creepy clipping toenails and such. Plus apparently she can't say no. And connecting it explicitly to "preparation for marriage" is SUPER CREEPY.
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Post by jemand on Aug 13, 2010 21:54:50 GMT -5
Annnndddd.... she also kinda had to take a bath. The first five books of the Bible, carry some pretty strong purity laws, which include requiring women to bathe twice during their monthly cycle-- on the 3rd and 7th day after it begins I believe (haven't looked it up in awhile.) Bathsheba's story makes it clear that's what she was doing-- fulfilling all of her religious obligations, while also narratively pointing out that the resulting pregnancy couldn't possibly have been her husband's. Sure, she wasn't required to bathe on the roof, but she was required to bathe, and given the relative height of most houses, and the fact they had to have a "parapet" around them (another law smashed somewhere in those early books), and the number of people living in a given house then... honestly, the roof might have been the most SECLUDED place she had available!
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Post by jemand on Aug 12, 2010 10:48:11 GMT -5
The problem isn't that one must make certain that one's every zygote implants, it's that one doesn't go out of one's way to make sure that a zygote doesn't implant. It's actively preventing an already conceived life from continuing that is the problem. You cannot control the universe and the natural operation of your body, but you can control what you choose to do that alters the regular course of nature. Women miscarry without even knowing they are pregnant. They miscarry regardless of what they do. That's just going to happen, it's life, it is no one's fault. Knowing you are pregnant and forcing a miscarriage or abortion is a completely different moral situation. And that is where using birth control which operates as an abortifacient would be a moral problem for a person for whom that is not a moral option. And it's really not an issue if you don't believe life begins at conception. That is the core belief that makes the problem a problem. If you don't believe that then the rest is pointless anyway. So what to one person is a non-issue in the selection of birth control methods is to another a huge factor in making those choices. Accurate medical information is important if one is to make those kinds of choices. That's all we're saying. The rest of the VF hyper-preoccupation with the sexual lives of women is quite disturbing as CherylAnnHannah pointed out. They do seem to be obsessed with the subject of sex and pregnancy and childbearing in general. It would be laughably ironic if it wasn't so tragically hurtful to so many people. Oh sure, but if we're going to talk about it, we should talk about the differences between what, if it happens, is a third line of defense and what is going to happen if you don't reduce ovulation-- because to *some* women, with *some* belief structures, THAT difference is going to be important. To you, maybe, it is most important that you don't take any medication that might have a tertiary effect of preventing implantation, but to other women, the most important thing is that they actively do what will cause the least number of non-implanted embryos, and controlling ovulation would be extremely important to them. Many people though, don't think life starts then and so won't worry about it. But even people who do think life starts then, may decide that in fact, under their priority system, using birth control is actually more in line with their morals and idea of the start of life, than not using it. Because the choice not to use birth control, is a choice itself which will actively result in it's own amount of non-implanted embryos, and it's a question of how you prioritize "natural" and how you prioritize tertiary effects of natural family planning verses tertiary effects of hormonal birth control, etc. It just bugs me when people put out information of the possible effects of hormonal birth control but don't ALSO put out information about higher rates of nonviable embryos due to old sperm/eggs while using natural family planning, or the less-hospitable environment of a uterus which has had no time to recover and prepare for the next pregnancy, or the fact that breastfeeding is very good for the survival rates of a just-born child but suppresses implantation. Those are *just as much* 'active choices' as taking a pill. The way any given woman prioritizes how the moral questions fall out there is very personal, and informed by their personal religion-- but we have a cultural blind spot I think where hormonal birth control is under a microscope of consideration, and those other choices are never considered at all in the same exhaustive manner, which I think leads some women to put their lives on hold because they feel they cannot morally control their fertility-- when if they knew the whole story, the might understand and prioritize differently. I'm trying really hard here not to say you're moral judgments are wrong, they are right for you in your personal decisions, but I think that while you clearly state why someone who doesn't share your belief about when life starts would disagree, you don't seem to linguistically allow that someone who DOES share your belief about when life starts STILL could disagree with your moral reasoning? If we're getting too close to uncomfortable abortion debates, I'll back off immediately... but when you respond with "the problem is..." and the recognized exception to this problem is only those who disagree on when life starts? It feels weird to me. But I do think it's a common message in society which may give some women a false dichotomy of a choice: "change your beliefs about life, or do just like this."
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Post by jemand on Aug 12, 2010 9:00:01 GMT -5
The issue isn't the fact that it occurs, it is the cause of the occurrence, the action of the doer, that presents the problem for those who believe it would be wrong to interfere in that way. It's like the maxim, 'first do no harm' -- harm may occur, often does occur, in life and in medicine, but one is actively attempting to avoid doing harm by intention or purposeful inattention. And if, as Jemand has said, it is true that we simply have no way to know if it's factually true or not then those who wish to err on the side of caution may do so and those whose beliefs make it unnecessary to think about it at all can continue not to worry about it. Well, see.... the fact that so MANY zygotes never implant means that taking action to reduce ovulation would probably be "action of the doer" that would REDUCE the number of flushed zygotes. Conceptus's from a relatively old egg or old sperm is much more likely to be flushed from a woman's system-- couples using natural family planning are much more likely to produce zygotes using old eggs or sperm due to scheduling, and thus create more flushed embryos. Zygotes have trouble in a uterus which has just been used, especially if it's after several kids, so trying for more immediately without using birth control will result in more fertilized zygotes which can't implant, than using birth control which will avoid ovulation itself. The problem with the 'action of the doer' is there is *literally nothing* women can do to ensure that every zygote implants, in fact, seems like certain things are contradictory. Being in good fitness= fewer miscarriages, however, any given episode of vigorous exercise might cause a zygote to fail to implant. And also, we only are barely scratching the surface of this because it is incredibly hard to test for the existence of a fertilized zygote that never implants-- so a lot of our knowledge is through inference and so it can be counterintuitive (i.e., not using birth control could result in far more zygotes being thrown away than using it.) What someone does with that biological information (which is super incomplete) is up to them... but it's not really a case of "choosing not to use birth control is an action that could never result in the 'death' of a zygote, but using birth control could."
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Post by jemand on Aug 11, 2010 20:34:16 GMT -5
Ugh - just had to post again. I understand that the pill can sometimes keep a fertilized egg from implanting. However, that can happen without BC pills for a lot of reasons, too, so I'm personally not bothered by that. Personally, I do feel there's a difference between something that would have occurred naturally and something that occurred specifically because of a medication you are taking. To extend the example a couple of months into the future, taking RU486 isn't the same as miscarrying naturally. Of course, at that point there's generally less debate about what does or doesn't constitute a life, so it's not quite the same, but it's the best example I could come up with on short notice But of course birth control is a personal choice for everyone. I just want all women to be informed so that they can be 100 percent comfortable with their choice and don't look back, like I did, with regret. For some people, that's a -life- (which may or may not have a soul at that point -- of course no one really knows when ensoulment occurs). And the info IS on the insert, but honestly, most people don't sit down and read that much 4-point type unless they have a compelling reason, and it's pretty darn jargony. I think that was probably the first time I'd -ever- read through the entire insert for any medication! And I know several women who'd asked their doctors if the pill prevented implantation, and were told flat-out that it did NOT. The latest I heard was that it has never been proven the pill has ever prevented implantation, but that also, it has never been proven that it never EVER can either. So the insert information is their to protect against lawsuits in an area of little definitive information, and the doctors are saying what there actually has been evidence of-- that it's never actually happened because of the pill. But still, nobody *really* knows for certain. Nobody really knows why all those early conceptus's spontaneously flush themselves out of the system, any given one could be from just some random activity, getting bumped, having coffee late in the day, standing on your head, taking your birth control pill, WHO KNOWS?! It doesn't seem to be the kind of thing anyone should really worry about, but if they aren't comfortable with it, fine. I just dislike it if anyone decides that someone *else* should worry about it lol. NOBODY KNOWS!
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Post by jemand on Aug 8, 2010 11:54:17 GMT -5
Patriarchalism nurtures this kind of blind narcissism in men. Most men need a little prodding to make a house a home and not some hole in the wall because many men don't pay attention to the niceties. That is just the way it usually is. Women tend to care about stuff that men don't even notice. If it wasn't for their wives most men would be living in a steaming crater with excellent television reception. In regular marriages women influence the home front for the better of everyone. But when they are silenced and their opinions count for nothing then you get this kind of crap -- a man who doesn't really notice or care whether they have water or can breathe in their own home, say, and a woman who has been told she must accept his non-caring without complaint or comment. That's not normal!! It's all skewed and unbalanced. And it most certainly is not Christianity. / end rant I *really* have trouble believing that a normal man would just not notice the fact that he can't breath in his own house, or has no water. This isn't the thing you can just mistake or not notice, like leaving socks on the floor or not dusting the cobwebs in the corner could be overlooked, no... your children having to break ice in the stock tank to bring it back to flush the normal toilet when you go... or having the air catch in your throat... that's something any man knows about, and if he insists on it not changing, it is an active choice to abuse. It has nothing to do with just being lazy or inattentive. And in any case, a lot of men raised today I think are much more capable of taking care of themselves than previous generations, knowing how to cook the basics, being able to figure out how to work a laundry machine, figuring out how to put a button back on, etc. Sure they might not decorate the same way women are taught to, or keep *all* their clothing off the floor *all* of the time, but I think most single men these days keep their living spaces at least *livable.* I think maybe whenever anything gets unpleasant, instead of spending any money to fix it, this guy decides it's time for a mission trip and goes off somewhere for months.
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Post by jemand on Aug 5, 2010 7:49:33 GMT -5
Well, my father wasn't narcissistic and didn't interpose himself into my dating/romantic relationships but actually did interact with me to teach skills such as photography, small engines, cars, his self-employed job, whatever I was interested in that he had experience with, etc.
However, when we were out, because of the age difference between me and my youngest sister and the fact that my dad looked young, I *did* get confused for his wife by strangers occasionally. When my dad wasn't around people would say stuff about teenage mothers, or assume my brother and I were teen parents. Sometimes strangers are assholes. It wasn't as damaging as what you describe, because I think that not being narcissistic meant my dad never promoted those ideas himself and so I didn't feel uncomfortable about my *family* hyper-sexualizing me, I just didn't like dealing with strangers as much.
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Post by jemand on Jul 29, 2010 11:14:54 GMT -5
This comment at the site where the photo of the migrant worker mother ( she looked so tired, haggard, sad) really burned me: "Why didn't she get some training and become a member of the wealthy elite class as the CEO of a BIG corporation. Or, become a sports or entertainment star? You commoners deserve your fates." What a jerk! I can still remember some of my mother's horror stories of the Depression Era...she (and I) grew up in California. Farmers who grew oranges, for example, were so bummed over not being able to get the prices they wanted for the oranges, hauled them by the dump trucks full to a local landfill and dumped them, then poured gas on them and burned them...while hungry children watched and longed for some of them. She and my Uncle Jim used to take their little wagon to the dumps and try to salvage some of them to take to neighbor children. I'm pretty certain that is what in internet circles is known as a "POE." People say something outrageous as sarcasm because nobody would be so cruel to actually say that in real life but there are socially accepted other comments that imply the full blown attitude the commenter takes. Then, because it's the internet and *because* people really do have terrible views, somebody thinks the sarcasm is serious. There are also reverse-poe's, where somebody says something they honestly believe and it is SOO offensive everyone thinks they are using sarcasm to point out troublesome assumptions. I am 90% sure that the commenter is using the depression era photo and their comment as a sarcastic dig at people today who say stuff like, well, why aren't welfare moms just working already and why don't those unemployed people just get jobs? There are jobs people are just spoiled and lazy! I think the comment was meant to show how ridiculous such thinking is by a reductio ad absurdum, but that doesn't always come across correctly online.
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Post by jemand on Jul 23, 2010 8:12:49 GMT -5
The three times thing is Islam. I remember a story that seemed quite ingenious to me on this note-- a muslim woman recently acquired a divorce by maintaining her husband said "I divorce you" three times in his sleep. He apparently had a history of talking in his sleep, and she was granted the divorce last I knew. She was the only one who'd heard the words, and while she in court said she didn't want to get divorced, but just was reporting what happened, I'm wondering if that's the actual dynamic or if she really wanted out.
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Post by jemand on Jul 19, 2010 18:48:17 GMT -5
I was debating this topic with a Christian friend of mine. He's essentially anti-abortion in his mindset, and refused to budge from the stance of "never kill an embryo", even after my many attempts to explain that if the mother dies, the baby dies. His stance seemed to rest on a belief that God is a God of miracles, and that if God really wanted to save that embryo, he could and would...if we let him, of course. He (my friend) would be willing to bet a mother's life on a possible miracle...and not only that, he believes that we have a moral obligation to extend to God that kind of trust. Of course, by implication, anyone who would terminate a pregnancy to save a mother's life obviously doesn't believe in God's ability to work a miracle, and by extension they deny his sovereignty. I just didn't know how to argue with that kind of thinking. I mean, I'm willing to believe in the possibility of a miracle, but not at the expense of a life that could otherwise be easily saved. Does that mean my faith in God is less than my friend's? I was curious what the folks here would think. Well... I know the folks here don't want to debate abortion, so we should be careful on this note. HOWEVER, isn't there a verse about thou shalt not tempt the lord thy god? From my understanding of Christian theology, you are not supposed to attempt to FORCE god into a position where he must act. y'know, the whole don't jump off the temple thing even if you believe god COULD work a miracle and save you on the way down. And if you're pushing people off the temple? Well... let me just say that I imagine god is going to be FAR less than pleased with that. But of course, I'm an atheist, what do I know.
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Post by jemand on Jul 11, 2010 11:19:13 GMT -5
Yeah... I find this whole topic *interesting*... but the idea that christianity is more suited to women because men are having to translate more to feel comfortable? Oh please. Give me a break. This is just a single rather small element which is of more modern popularity-- having men have to internally translate to fit as bride. Maybe it is precisely BECAUSE men have for centuries been the "brothers of the church" and "father son human relationship" and "Jesus died to save all men" and "all men might come to the Father." Etc. etc. times one hundred thousand million. Women have had to translate even to get the understanding that they are *saved* and even STILL there are some quotes, like I believe one by Luther, which trumped up "women are saved through childbearing" or something. I.e., saved through their relationship with a son or husband or father or else some other MAN who could help them get into heaven. (or heck, Jesus, Men can get back into heaven, but women? Well, a woman could damn us all, but no female incarnation could save us-- THAT required masculinity apparently. And I do think that there is at least an unconscious recognition of that fact-- in that element of thought that women can't be saved as easily) Anyway a couple links, fanniesroom.blogspot.com/2010/02/religion-with-god-father-not-manly.htmlfanniesroom.blogspot.com/2010/06/usual.htmlfanniesroom.blogspot.com/2010/07/fun-with-contradictions.htmlYou could even look through the entire set with the "religion" label: fanniesroom.blogspot.com/search/label/ReligionI think that perhaps it is because men have traditionally NOT had to do ANY translation to feel comfortable in the church, that it's so noticed and remarked upon and hand-wringing and energy is being expended to fix it. Women's alienation in church is just taken for granted-- up to the individual woman to deal with it or else. Nobody else's problem, nobody else cares NEARLY that much. Precisely BECAUSE it is endemic and poisons nearly everything IN church language and function. Sorry everyone for the rant....
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Post by jemand on Jun 27, 2010 20:05:20 GMT -5
Ok, so I'll go through the quote and react based on my personal experiences, so we can see where you and I part company, as many of these things seem pretty basic to me, not at all controversial.
In my experience, this part is *very* common. Pretty widespread through many, many churches, they don't even have to consider themselves dominionists.
There are a TON of churches and Christians asserting that our legal system *already* is based on the 10 commandments, and the push to get creationism and "Christian values" into school systems seems very well documented and hardly contestable-- at least again, from my perspective.
There is a lot of pressure against any thought of, say, not starting government business with prayers and other Christian invocations, and there are *many* churches which greet political statements of faith with great pleasure and just gobble it up. As for the media, I have fewer examples in mind, but it certainly strikes me as believable, as something that many Christians, who might not even consider themselves dominionists, would welcome.
Here we are getting to those who most probably could only be described as Dominionist. However, the Seventh Day Adventist church which I left, which I don't think qualifies, had "prophetic" writings describing how those joining unions were just bundling themselves together for hellfire. There are also a LOT of christians in, say the Tea-Party movement who think civil rights legislation shouldn't exist, even if they personally think discrimination is wrong. Rand Paul got himself in trouble with this recently-- it's a sort of libertarianistic streak, the church, as a private entity, should take up most of the charity.
I don't really think any of these dominionists are wanting to *forcibly* remove women from the workplace. But... as I said before, threads of thought against civil rights and anti-discrimination legislation definitely exist in these groups, and coupled with no unions to fight for maternity leave, and restrictions on birth control as "abortificants" and what will the rational outcome would be? They aren't envisioning any police yanking women out of offices, but there are a LOT of Christians who would like some political outcomes which will *result* in women not having the ability to work outside the home.
This does stretch belief for me, however, if he would have narrowed it to, say, "Muslims will be denied citizenship" I could *definitely* believe there are christian groups who would go for that. Again, fewer than would go for anything I've already talked about in this list, but existent, yes.
Oh man, don't a lot of European countries have a very small church tax for the local congregation? You can get out of it, but it's not the easiest and you won't be able to be buried with your grandparents, but this seems *totally* believable to me. Probably not nearly 10 percent, but we seem to be outsourcing our millitary to private contractors no problem, and the "faith-based" initiatives. Heck, church run publically funded schools sounds about the *most* likely to actually happen on this list.
Really, there were only one or two on there that I'd judge as "very uncommon." Of course I don't think the political landscape will actually change enough for them to actually *do* all these things, but which ones did you think aren't believed?
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Post by jemand on Jun 24, 2010 13:53:34 GMT -5
So if NARAL comes out with a public statement decrying the VF stance, VF will be in a position to say to the more sane pro-life groups, "You're compromising your pro-life position by allying yourself with NARAL on this matter." Ah, okay, I see. I see, but I do not understand. This kind of black and white thinking is problematic-- hitler breathed air, so we should all drown? NARAL doesn't want women to die, so "sane" "pro-life" groups should join with those opposing lifesaving medicine? I end up questioning both the sane and pro-life elements of these supposed groups.
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Post by jemand on Jun 22, 2010 8:26:03 GMT -5
The escalation of the pro-life position into more and more hardline stances reminds me of something I read in an essay by the late Michael Spencer, the "Internet Monk." www.internetmonk.com/archive/imonk-classicHere's an encapsulation: The “More, Higher, Most, Highest” game is the tendency to escalate theological claims and language, and to claim that the escalation of claims and language indicates an accompanying increase in truth, faith, commitment or other valuable commodities among Christians…. And the person willing to say the most, to make the highest claim- like a KJV Only-er for example- feels justifiably proud that he’s climbed further out on the limb of faith than anyone else. …“More…higher…more…highest.” “You can’t say more than I’m willing to say. You can’t pay more compliments, make more claims, use stronger language, be more public, make more noise…..than me.”
Is all of this really necessary? Or is this a manifestation of the need of theological types to find some way to create a stadium full of people who just don’t believe enough, or believe right or believe enough right?I've been thinking about this ever since I read this Internet Monk essay a few months ago. I think it's a very common and easy trap for people to fall into, particularly when they are involved in a cause. Just how committed are you? How far are you willing to take that commitment? Are you committed enough if you just believe tenet A? Or do you have to believe A + B? But I can be more committed than you! I believe tenets A + B + C + D! Are you committed enough to join me? There's a one-upmanship that goes on, to where it gets competitive: who can be the most committed, as shown by the most radical stance? It used to be that no-one who considered themselves pro-life would even think about telling a woman she must not end an ectopic pregnancy. But now allowing that "out" is just not committed enough to the pro-life position. It's an expression of ever higher rhetoric. I think QF in general represents this kind of "more, higher, most, highest" mindset. It seems like the pattern is to progress into more and more radicalism in every area of life. This reminds me of something that I was thinking while reading the book 1984. When the protagonists realize that the bombs and terrorist attacks are backed by their own government to control the population, and decide to fight it. They go to the guy they think is leading the resistance movement and go through a list of things they would be willing to do for the resistance, as they get progressively morally wrong-- destroying buildings, killing people, torturing children, etc. It turns out the guy they are talking to is a mole for the government and they get picked up. But this part so disappointed me. It would have been so much more realistic and believable if THEY were used then by the government mole to conduct the terrorism they had originally planned to fight. If we saw that the government set it up that the people who tried to fight them ended up serving a purpose they wanted. And it would have been a better lesson too. Because if you are not committed to moderation in the support of your cause, you end up at that point. You end up as the "pro-life" faction that supports watching women die-- heck, even taking positive actions of lying and coercion which end up in death. You end up SUPPORTING the very thing you started out to FIGHT. All because you aren't willing to stop when your zealousness starts contradicting your original goals.
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Post by jemand on Jun 20, 2010 6:40:52 GMT -5
Speaking of the martyrdom of women in the fertility cult... After some frustration with my husband, I asked him to describe for me a scene that he himself would find romantic. The definition of 'romance' was at issue, and I didn't seem to be getting through. His response? Seriously and with absolute sincerity: my death in childbirth. That was the most romantic scene he could imagine. The melodrama, the tears, the dying declarations of love as I gave my life while giving him a child... Stunned doesn't even begin to describe my reaction to that piece of the marriage puzzle. Astonishing. I read this last night and had no idea how to respond. Still don't, but... astonishing. I'd probably have been like, oh? guess what I think is romantic. Serving you divorce papers! lol. I'm mostly speechless though.
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Post by jemand on Jun 19, 2010 14:42:15 GMT -5
ok I found another source: www.medic8.com/healthguide/articles/ectopicpreg.htmlIt looks like roughly half of ectopic pregnancies will resolve on their own as the fetus begins to burrow into the tube, causing bleeding that flushes the fetus out of the tube and ending the pregnancy. About half the time, this isn't fatal, which would explain the numbers from the 1800's. Methotrexate can end an ectopic pregnancy non-invasively before it progresses to that point. This and other modern treatment has gotten the death rate down to, as they say here, "rare" though it's still a fair chunk of maternal deaths.
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Post by jemand on Jun 19, 2010 8:41:46 GMT -5
Cindy, thanks for your amazing work here digging up all these statistics-- they are sometimes confusing to me even as someone with a math degree lol. I also appreciate you attempting to track down clear language protecting women's lives and health from major pro-life organizations in the country. I hope they come through with what you're expecting.
I am curious about the one statistic about historic ectopic pregnancy-- when you say 5 in 35 women who were operated on survived, while 2 in 3 who were not operated on survived. Why is this? Was ectopic pregnancy perhaps misdiagnosed then to up the survival rate? This seems like an unlikely statistic given what we know with today's diagnostic tools. Or did women use herbal methods to flush out the pregnancy, and survive that way compared to the unsterilized operating conditions? It just seems beyond belief that 2 out of 3 women with true ectopic pregnancy could survive with no intervention whatsoever before the advent of modern medicine-- and I'm just curious what's going on.
I'm also afraid that without any additional clarification of that number, people like the vision forum will consider it "what happens" if you don't go to the doctor at all, and focus on that statistic rather than the more modern statistics with better diagnostic imaging and better documentation of all interventions attempted. This is because it seems there is a kind of veneration of the "traditional" in QF, traditional gender roles, a great focus on pioneer behavior, etc. If it looks like pioneer communities could just watch women with ectopic pregnancy and do nothing at all about it and get a 60% survival rate, I'm afraid this will encourage these agencies to stay their course-- and not pay attention to the more modern stats.
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Post by jemand on Jun 18, 2010 19:35:01 GMT -5
Your link to alternet isn't working for me... (oh and I just bought the book)
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Post by jemand on Jun 18, 2010 8:50:43 GMT -5
I actually do believe there are very few doctors or nurses who would stand by and let a patient die because of an ectopic pregnancy. That may be true... however personally it's about as comforting as saying there are only a very few serial killers-- if serial killers couldn't even be fired from their jobs in gun shops. But even then, I wonder why the law even says what it does, if nobody wants to use it to the fullest extent. Laws are written very carefully-- social movements work very carefully, there are extremely religious people who purposefully go into pharmacy and health care work *in order to* reduce access to abortion and birth control under the protection of these laws. Sure, many of even them might not go as far as they are allowed to... but certainly some will. And... there are gradations in this situation. Extremely few may do absolutely nothing for a patient with an ectopic pregnancy, but I do think many would probably wait much longer than necessary watching it progress, and then have to do a much later and more emergency operation with a much greater chance of death and permanent morbidity. Or wait until operations are much more dangerous and have to stop interventions due to the instability of the patient. This kind of behavior is going to be much less obvious, especially if the doctor isn't fully honest with the patient and her family about the situation and her options. However, the doctor would eventually do *something* and even if many more deaths result from his kind of care, no one family will be able to notice that as easily.
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