Pornography normalizes sexual harm, Dr. Cooper said. It shows children a lack of any kind of emotional commitment or relationship between two consensual partners, shows unprotected sexual contact and visual examples often of violent rape.“When a child sees this image of adult pornography, the mirror neurons that are in their brain will convince them that they are actually experiencing what they are seeing,” she said.
Children are very vulnerable as compared to adults because of the presence of mirror neurons in the brain, Dr. Cooper said. Mirror neurons are part of the brain that convince us that when we see something we are actually experiencing it.
I’ve wondered for years why, when I eight, I thought I lived on a lush island with a giant puppet with a huge head, an Australian boy with a talking flute, and a witch with a very strange nose. So now I know.
Just Dropping By says:
This is the problem with every single “neurological” critique that I’ve ever read about pornography — the changes in the brain that the anti-porn crusaders claim to detect are the sorts of changes associated with memory formation regardless of what kind of subject matter the patient is viewing.
I’m also curious as to what kind of pornography Dr. Cooper is spending her time watching if it “often” depicts “violent rape.”
June 17, 2010, 9:31 amNickS says:
From the article:
Uhhh, 7/10 and 3.33/10 adds up to roughly 10/10 (numbers are obviously rounded). So all children they interviewed have accessed internet porn?
As opposed to before when they were told their only value is in bearing children for their husband.
June 17, 2010, 9:42 amSmooth, like a Rhapsody says:
I was always under the impression that Jimmy was pure Cockney, not Aussie; (I wiki’ed him to be sure though).
June 17, 2010, 9:51 amTomHynes says:
Dear Donna Rice:
Once you receive national fame from sitting in a presidential candidate’s lap aboard the “Monkey Business”, denying the affair, finally getting caught, then selling a line of blue jeans called “no apologies”, you are officially the least qualified person in America to testify before congress on why it should regulate private sexual conduct.
June 17, 2010, 9:59 amChrisIowa says:
The numbers are not additive. One who found it accidentally could later also have found it intentionally.
June 17, 2010, 10:20 amcboldt says:
– So all children they interviewed have accessed internet porn? –
June 17, 2010, 10:23 amThe groups are not necessarily mutually exclusive. Some may have experienced both, intentional access, and accidental. But the fraction accessing is at least 70% (the accidental figure), plus those who obtain only deliberate access, and didn’t report accidental access.
I wonder how the inquiry is done? “This is porn. Have you ever seen something like this on the internet? …”
Anderson says:
One who found it accidentally could later also have found it intentionally.
I seem to recall having followed that sequence myself.
But I’m unconvinced by Dr. Cooper’s armchair theorizing. Until he’s done studies showing actual porn to actual children, his conclusions lack support.
June 17, 2010, 10:23 amjorge says:
I don’t think Jack Wild was Australian
June 17, 2010, 10:36 amAnderson says:
Jorge is correct; Wild was born in Lancashire (and died of cancer in 2006, sadly enough).
June 17, 2010, 10:43 amStan says:
“convince us that when we see something we are actually experiencing it”
Uh, aren’t we? Either we are “experiencing it,” or we are paying no attention to what we are seeing.
June 17, 2010, 10:51 amSteve P. says:
A Canadian study tried to quantify results using the typical scientific method – comparing the habits and actions of the testing group (men who consume pornography) with the habits and actions of the control group (men who do not consume pornography).
They had one little problem – they couldn’t find a single man who did NOT consume pornography. This must be why we’re all violent sexual predators.
June 17, 2010, 11:04 amAnonsters says:
That’s not the sense in which it was meant. It was meant more in the following sense (roughly): we perceive someone running. The same kinds of patterns of neuronal activation that occur when we ourselves run occur when we perceive someone else running. Obviously our legs don’t start going, or whatever, but the same areas of the brain that are activated when we run are activated when we perceive someone running.
That’s the super general idea, I think.
June 17, 2010, 11:13 amParker Sheppard says:
Some children may have accessed porn both intentionally and unintentially. But, given the prevalency of pornography, 10.33 out of 10 sounds about right
June 17, 2010, 11:18 amNickS says:
I was assuming that once someone intentionally seeks it out, they would no longer say that they accidentally came across it. Also, 7/10 of those kids are lying.
June 17, 2010, 11:21 amBleh says:
“Forty percent of children accidentally access Internet pornography through innocent word searches such as ‘water sports.’”
LOL
—-
But on a serious note, I’d like to know what Dr. Cooper would define as a healthy sexual image.
June 17, 2010, 11:28 amgtop says:
You may find it funny, but it’s actually true. I accidentally access porn several times a week when I innocently run the search phrase “gargantuan bazookas.”
June 17, 2010, 11:36 amAnonsters says:
Water sports. Disgusting.
June 17, 2010, 11:37 amJohn Herbison says:
Fear the genitalia!
June 17, 2010, 11:47 amBleh says:
No, I understand, I have constant issues finding pictures of shaved kitties.
June 17, 2010, 11:48 amDavid Bernstein says:
My mistake. But I experienced him as Australian.
June 17, 2010, 11:51 amFub says:
One that doesn’t involve sex, obviously.
June 17, 2010, 11:57 amChrisTS says:
The grubby jokes and the good Dr.’s obsessions aside, it is quite easy to stumble on porn sites. My daughter – then aged 10 – was looking for material on famous African-American women. You cannot believe what she found. The really creepy thing about those sites is that they seem designed to keep you from leaving. The shots just get worse and worse.
On the other hand, other than leaving the room shrieking, she seems no worse for wear.
June 17, 2010, 11:59 amtim says:
seems like a lot of rationalizing for something that really isn’t healthy, it desensitizes the mind to the point that it will take the fun out of the unknown because there will be no unknown. Public displays of sexual activity really demeans the gift of sexuality. If you love the one your with you will work to please each other by having fun and experimenting with each other…in private.
June 17, 2010, 12:01 pmChrisTS says:
Stan:
While Anonsters‘ explication of the intended meaning is no doubt correct, I appreciated your comment. It reminded me of how irritated I become when my colleagues suggest that reading, thinking, and writing are not ‘experiential learning.’ :-)
June 17, 2010, 12:01 pmChrisTS says:
David Bernstein says:
:-)
June 17, 2010, 12:03 pmRandy says:
tim: “seems like a lot of rationalizing for something that really isn’t healthy, it desensitizes the mind to the point that it will take the fun out of the unknown because there will be no unknown. Public displays of sexual activity really demeans the gift of sexuality. If you love the one your with you will work to please each other by having fun and experimenting with each other…in private.”
Thanks for the best laugh of the day.
June 17, 2010, 12:13 pmathEIst says:
Once when I accessed a reputable looking site on the Russo-Japanese War I got japanese pornography.
June 17, 2010, 12:14 pmtim says:
@Randy
June 17, 2010, 12:19 pmHomos always have a hard time with what is right…
falafalafocus says:
The only indication from the story seems to be this line:
There are so many ways to take that line. Fub’s is but one method of interpretation.
June 17, 2010, 12:29 pmNickS says:
Pornography is not harmful. It does not desensitize a person to sexuality, but rather allows them to not fear, be ashamed of, or repress their sexuality. Restrictive attitudes towards sexuality is correlated with increased sexual assault rates and pornography use is correlated with decreased rates. And I believe you are confusing sexuality with love.
June 17, 2010, 12:41 pmAnderson says:
But on a serious note, I’d like to know what Dr. Cooper would define as a healthy sexual image.
Bernini’s statue of St. Teresa of Avila?
Homos always have a hard time with what is right…
Tim’s mirror neurons have led him from observing bigotry to practicing bigotry. This is why small children should not be exposed to the Bible.
June 17, 2010, 12:47 pmNickS says:
Pornography out of context can be exceedingly dangerous to kids. But the same can be said of alcohol, guns, cars, etc. I would not give a kid a gun without proper training and knowledge of firearms safety as they would probably shoot someone like they saw on TV. What we need is early comprehensive sex education that allows kids to understand that porn != sex. It would also help prevent sex abuse as the kids will understand what is happening and why it’s not good.
June 17, 2010, 12:50 pmAnderson says:
… Re: whether *some* porn is potentially harmful, I have a hard time seeing how it’s not. As Wayne Booth pointed out, we believe that some works of art or literature improve their audience, so how can we reject the idea that other works injure their audience?
The usual trick by porn opponents is to treat the worst stuff as typical. For instance, “visual examples often of violent rape.” I daresay a good many of us have a working familiarity with internet porn; I have never seen “violent rape” porn, tho I’m sure I could find it if I wanted to.
I certainly would not want a 15-year-old to form the notion that anal sex and bondage are typical sexual activities or that most women enjoy them. But that is just another reason why we ought to be taking some lead in educating kids about sex, rather than letting the internet do it for us.
June 17, 2010, 12:52 pmluagha says:
There’s three main ways to learn a physical skill – be told how to do it, see someone else do it, and mimic them as they do it. The mirror neurons come into play in #2 – they are what allows you to learn a skill ‘monkey see, monkey do.’
June 17, 2010, 12:53 pmtheobromophile says:
NickS., what are you talking about? First, I would hope that you are not suggesting that women ought to be content with men treating us like sex objects, simply because you think that a previous alternative is worse. Nice false dichotomy.
Second, men who allegedly only care about our capacity for motherhood have a remarkable tendency to cling to our skirts – almost as if they care about interacting with us emotionally. As a pragmatic matter, men who are looking for the mothers of their children value different qualities than those who are looking to get laid; rare is the man who wants the mother of his children to be a moron, but many a man will happily bed anyone who is young, hot, and willing.
–
As for the science: my super-preliminary research into mirror neurons indicates that we aren’t even sure exactly how they work or if human beings have them, right?
–
Steve P: from the article:
20 is statistically significant? I mean, you could certainly extrapolate from 20 men to “the vast majority”, but not “all”. (Also, how many men would sign up for a porn study if they’ve never watched porn?)
June 17, 2010, 12:54 pmBleh says:
With all due respect, I tend to disagree. Another way to look at is that sex is an act that we’ve made into something that we have to be ashamed of and that should be hidden. I truly believe (and I believe there are studies which show this to some extent [I can't look them up now -- at work]) that that repression has created more sexual dysfunction / aberrant sexual behavior than open discussions of sexuality do.
Instead, in my opinion — which obviously only matters to me, we should strive to teach our children that sex isn’t a dirty unnatural thing but that it is something you should respect. That sex and love are different things. That sex is something that you do with someone you love romantically, but that just because you have sex with someone doesn’t mean that they love you or that you have to love them. Nonetheless, it also carries a level of intimacy and emotion that other types of interactions don’t, so both sexual partners should endeavor to be on the same page. In other words, they shouldn’t be afraid of sex, but they should be respectful of their sexual partners (in the same way that, really, they should be respectful of anyone they meet), and they should be safe.
I think it’s pretty obvious that a 5 year old shouldn’t be shown hardcore pornography. Simple nudity on the other hand doesn’t worry me as much (in fact it might be healthy for a kid not to be afraid of their own or other people’s bodies). BUT, no matter what your opinion is on nudity/porn, there are very good filters available to keep your children away from that type of material on the internet (even Google Safe Search, which is free, seems to do a pretty good job of filtering out most of the bad stuff when I’m at work). But when it comes right down to it, people are responsible for their own children — and this is something that Congress really should have no place in.
June 17, 2010, 12:56 pmOrenWithAnE says:
If you flipped a coin 20 times and got 20 head, you could conclude with 95% certainty that the coin is weighted to return heads at least 85% of the time. To illustrate what I mean, suppose the null hypothesis was “the underlying distribution of the coin is 80% heads, 20% tails”. Then the probability of getting exactly 20 heads in a row would be 1% and we can reject it (since our significance level is 5%). The only hypothesis that are not rejected at 5% are {P_head >= 85%}.
We can also say with 99.9% confidence that the underlying distribution is 70% or greater heads, if you prefer the 3-sigma rather than 2-sigma.
June 17, 2010, 1:06 pmChrisTS says:
Anderson says:
Nicely done.
June 17, 2010, 1:06 pmBill Twist says:
The battle for the mind of North America will be fought in the computer arena: the Internet. The computer screen is the retina of the mind’s eye. Therefore, the computer screen is part of the physical structure of the brain. Therefore, whatever appears on the computer screen emerges as raw experience for those who watch it. Therefore, the Internet is reality, and reality is less than the Internet.
June 17, 2010, 1:39 pmRedman says:
The deleterious effect pornography has on children is the lever which government will use to eventually restrict if not shut down the internet.
June 17, 2010, 1:45 pmrbj says:
Waddya mean thought? That’s where I live now.
BTW, throughout most of humanity people lived in one room homes & lived on farms. And there was breeding going on, so the idea that it is only in modern times that kids are being exposed to sex is laughable.
Pornography ranges the whole gambit from loving couples to downright freaky stuff.
June 17, 2010, 1:49 pmJPG says:
I’m sure talking about flipping heads and tails is this thread can be considered as a slippery slope.
June 17, 2010, 1:51 pmtim says:
@ChrisTs & Anderson,
only when your principles are attacked is it bigotry, but those who put down normalcy don’t have an ounce of hate, their just open minded thinkers?
I coached high school football for 10 years in an intercity school, and dealt with many kids who had parents who were selfish adulters and generally weird, always making sexual comments about girls/women (including their professed love of pornography), and it big time effected their children…I know this (my own study) that when a husband and wife show respect and love for one another it leads to a generally mentally healthy kid…pornography can put you on an descending escalator into deviancy, you don’t arrive there over night, it takes time to become a amoral person
June 17, 2010, 1:51 pmba2 says:
I was thinking this was a libertarian blog not a libertine one. Those of you are arguing pornography is good are lying and you know you’re lying.
June 17, 2010, 2:03 pmAnderson says:
Tim, you are unaware of what your fingers are typing. Attacking gays as immoral is not “normalcy.”. Normal is fine, but there’s no reason why the sexual tastes of a majority should limit what a minority can do.
The fact that some assholes brag on porn isn’t a point against porn.
June 17, 2010, 2:03 pmAnderson says:
Those of you are arguing pornography is good are lying and you know you’re lying.
I thought this was a libertarian blog, not a telepathic blog.
Dude, your talents are wasted on comment threads. Get to a casino!
June 17, 2010, 2:17 pmtim says:
Anderson,
Many years ago I watched on CSPAN gay, lesbian, transgender, transsexual, horse lovers, etc, etc…in Washington DC at something or other protest, and I remember hearing a speaker say that it was about sex, and more sex. I have gay acquaintances and my feeling is we all have are own particular cross to bare…for all I know they may be less of a sinner then me, so I don’t judge. You will get me going and calling names when you are not civil with me, including everyone!
Again I reiterate, that pornography isn’t good, it leads to a twisted way of looking at sex. I have been very fortunate in my life, finding and marrying a wonderful women 27 years ago (not that the road hasn’t been rough), and raising three great sons. One son (23 years old) though went through an addiction to porn, I didn’t realize until one day he said to me that “all women are whores” I was shocked and ask him if that was the way he felt about his mother? he admitted to me his problem and I helped him through it….
June 17, 2010, 2:23 pmAnderson says:
Tim: “Homos always have a hard time with what is right…”
I am not seeing what is “civil” about that.
Yes, some people are addicted to porn. Some are addicted to alcohol. Most of us have figured out that does not make alcohol wrong.
June 17, 2010, 2:26 pmAnd So says:
“H.R. Puffinstuff, can’t do a little because he can’t do enough.”
June 17, 2010, 2:29 pmGreat, we also have hidden sexual innuendo in childhood memories.
For God’s sake bring back Led Zeppelin and back-masking!
John A says:
Children have “mirror neurons” which are lost as adults, like “baby” teeth?
Save us from the well-intentioned. Yes, I do not approve of “hard-core” porn for pre-teens. But I am old enough to remember when airbrushed Playboy photos were deemed hard-core (but non-airbrushed National Geographic photos were proudly left on coffee tables).
I am not old enough to remember directly but have seen the results of the mid-30s “code” on movies. The film First a Girl was rushed out a month before the “code” was to go into effect, and could not be re-done until 1982 as Victor Victoria (both based on a German play of 1932).
And (indirectly related) I have seen recent calls for movies like Casablanca to be re-mastered with smoking “photoshopped” out, and current movies with smoking to be restricted to over-eighteen audiences.
June 17, 2010, 2:29 pmptt says:
Heterosexual porn mostly, I would guess.
The most important thing is that you never, EVER get any outside ideas about what might please the one you’re with.
June 17, 2010, 2:32 pmREAL ecstasy is based on fumbling!
NickS says:
Sorry, but the sarcasm often doesn’t come through in print. I was referencing that the type of people who assert porn turns women into sex objects are often the same people who view women as sex objects to begin with; they just name it something different. I am very pro-porn because, apart from the extreme variations, it promotes the view that women are sexual beings instead of sexual objects.
June 17, 2010, 2:35 pmAnderson says:
H.R. Pufnstuf was all about drugs, not sex.
June 17, 2010, 2:36 pmAnderson says:
I am very pro-porn because, apart from the extreme variations, it promotes the view that women are sexual beings instead of sexual objects.
At least, if you’re looking at the good stuff.
June 17, 2010, 2:40 pmNickS says:
Well, tim claims to be a football coach, so he might actually believe that.
June 17, 2010, 2:41 pmMike G says:
It gave me unrealistic expectations about my career as a cable installer, and what a chick magnet my blond mullet would be.
June 17, 2010, 2:42 pmFearsome Tycoon says:
Libertarians can’t be satisfied by saying the government shouldn’t ban porn, hookers, and drugs. They have to go a step further and insist that porn, hookers, and drugs aren’t bad for you. And that’s why so many people view them as kooks.
June 17, 2010, 2:43 pmtim says:
Randy says:
tim: “seems like a lot of rationalizing for something that really isn’t healthy, it desensitizes the mind to the point that it will take the fun out of the unknown because there will be no unknown. Public displays of sexual activity really demeans the gift of sexuality. If you love the one your with you will work to please each other by having fun and experimenting with each other…in private.”
“Thanks for the best laugh of the day.”
my response to Randy was calling him out on why he is putting me down—I’ll bet anyone on this thread that Randy is gay (not that I give a shit), but that is the MO of militant gay people when you write about accepted morality as opposed to their own doubts, that is why they are so quick to attack…so I went for the jugular–that is what I do when people disrespect me. I have physically defended gay people from real bigots so lose the self righteous bullshit and get back to the topic!
June 17, 2010, 2:43 pmtim says:
there is no ecstasy when fumbling in football!!
but you don’t have to fumble to arrive at ecstasy, get into great mental and physical shape and learn the concept of selflessness over selfishness (team–can’t do it yourself, but don’t lose your identity) and you will be a winner, which will give you ecstasy!
gtg gang…was fun
June 17, 2010, 2:55 pmptt says:
Oh, I don’t know… I seem to recall one particular video.
Oh! You saw it too!
June 17, 2010, 3:02 pmSammy Finkelman says:
Maybe the article meant to say 7 in 10 have accessed Internet pornography, and 1/3 of them – that is, approximately 7/30 or between 1/5 and 1/4 altogether – have done so on purpose.
Only it got garbled. Possibly the author didn’t even really care about the exact nunmers, as long as they were huge.
That is putting aside whether any of this is true, or if teh access is a lot or just once or a few times.
June 17, 2010, 3:05 pmpmorem says:
Yea, Randy is openly gay. If you paid attention you’d know this. You took as a personal attack his laughing at you. Whatever.
Since you’re apparently into judging, judge me.
I’m not gay.
I do have a certain “mental defect” which makes it very difficult to interact socially. Recent changes in the patterns of social interaction have made mating even more difficult. Of those with the “mental defect”, males outnumber females 4 to 1, so breeding within our race is generally out.
There are certain biological requirements that must be met, one way or another. Porn is one way of meeting those requirements. There are other unlawful means. The remaining option is death.
Judge that.
June 17, 2010, 3:10 pmpmorem says:
Kenny Stabler? I watched it live.
June 17, 2010, 3:13 pmOrenWithAnE says:
Touche’.
Most libertarians allow that different people can have different opinions about the world without “lying”. Try it sometime, it’s really liberating (bad pun intentional) to acknowledge genuine disagreement.
June 17, 2010, 3:18 pmtim says:
one more …
June 17, 2010, 3:19 pm@pmorem
a weak mind always wins out over body
but hey…
thats your story and your sticking with it, (and I’m not judging) whatever floats your boat…
OrenWithAnE says:
And we are happy that you found happiness in your choices.
Now, would you allow others the freedom to do the same or are you still going to insist that what worked for you must necessarily be the only thing that could work for anyone?
June 17, 2010, 3:20 pmtim says:
@pmorem
June 17, 2010, 3:22 pmafter that season and because of that play, the league will not allow you to advance the ball on a forward fumble, so that example of fumbling for ecstasy is not valid anymore
M. Report says:
Back in the good old days Mrs. Grundy,
the Protector of Innocent Children,
claimed that reading pornography
turned teenage boys into sex maniacs;
Then it was discovered that a child’s
personality is pretty well set by the
time they learn to read, and it was
‘Back to the drawing board’
This iteration is more plausible,
June 17, 2010, 3:24 pmbut just as bogus, both for the
reasons given above concerning
children, and the observed fact
that adults display the same
behavior, or weakness or whatever:
A boxer watching a match, for one
example, or better, the scene in the
movie ‘The Piano’ where the British
immigrants to New Zealand are putting
on a play about Bluebeard, and a Maori
man in the audience sees it as real and
rushes forward to save the wife.
OrenWithAnE says:
No, we have to go the step further and insist that you are the only one qualified to decide what is good and bad for you (and similarly me for me).
Certainly porn is bad for Tim — he doesn’t enjoy it. I have nothing but respect for his personal decision not to view it. That does not, however, entitle Tim to decide what is good for Randy (just as much as Randy cannot decide that Tim’s choice in novels is not good for Tim).
June 17, 2010, 3:25 pmBarry D says:
The same would apply to whips, restraints and ball gags. Proper training is vitally important. And safe words. Make sure your kids have agreed-upon safe words.
June 17, 2010, 3:29 pmDr. Kenneth Noisewater says:
Sam and Criminy Crafft production!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TDpt9iicEow
June 17, 2010, 3:29 pmDr. Kenneth Noisewater says:
Sam and Criminy Crafft production!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TDpt9iicEow
June 17, 2010, 3:29 pmtim says:
OrenWithAnE
June 17, 2010, 3:31 pmlike I said whatever floats your boat, but I do have experiences and mistakes over my 51 years that might help others…
I do believe in in the libertarian philosophy, but not to the point of…”human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together, mass hysteria” Bill Murray
pmorem says:
It’s called Asperger’s Syndrome.
It’s how I was born.
What I’m saying is that even using the full of my intellect, I cannot sufficiently compensate for my poor social skills to form social bonds in anything resembling “normal” or what you would consider acceptable.
I’ve learned to mostly fake things like eye contact. My facial expressions are all wonky and horribly misread.
I haven’t touched the skin of another human (including hand to hand) in a couple weeks, which is not that unusual for me.
Porn is how I maintain my required minimum level of Oxytocin, without which primates tend to die.
Porn floats my boat, such as it is.
June 17, 2010, 3:31 pmNickS says:
I will judge that….Not Guilty.
June 17, 2010, 3:38 pmBarry D says:
Well tim I only have 44 years of mistakes and experience, but so far, unhealthy Judeo-Christian programming about sexuality screwed me up a lot more than porn ever did.
To quote James Joyce, “All right, then. I’ll go to Hell.” Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. A terrible read. I don’t recommend it. But James Joyce’s works were at one time banned as porn. One man’s porn, another’s literature, and a third’s really boring required reading for English class.
MYOB. That’s the libertarian philosophy in a nutshell. You either get it or you don’t.
June 17, 2010, 3:39 pmAnderson says:
To quote James Joyce, “All right, then. I’ll go to Hell.”
Isn’t that Huck Finn? “Non serviam” is Stephen’s line, IIRC.
June 17, 2010, 3:50 pmtim says:
so Barry,
to be a libertarian I have to reject my judeo-christian believes…I think your misrepresenting the movement…most of the people I know think it is about legalizing pot–which I’m for!!!
and…I got beaten by the meanest nuns around and was told all that horse shit too about sex being evil, but I made it through. I guess I just had a more cynicial view at a early age. Don’t condemn a philosophy because a pack of dip shits misrepresented it
June 17, 2010, 4:00 pmtheobromophile says:
Oren (with an E*): thank you for that – I was too lazy to look up the statistical significance of getting 20 of the same answers in a row.
If I’m not horrifically misreading your analysis, then, it’s entirely possible that 10% or 15% of men don’t watch any porn, correct? (This is all assuming that the 20-man sample represents an even distribution among the population, which I’m not sure is an accurate way of putting things.)
*Sort of like Anne Shirley?!
June 17, 2010, 4:02 pmOrenWithAnE says:
No. You have to accept that you JC (or any other) beliefs are valid only as to deciding how to organize your life and that your fellow citizens can organize there on whatever principles they find most likely to secure their happiness.
That is, all you have to reject is the idea that your beliefs have any relevance to my decisions (any more than my beliefs on pornography should govern your decisions, naturally).
Yes, there is at least a 5% chance that 15% of men do not watch pornography and a 12% chance that 10% of men do not.
Of course! The sample represents only the underlying distribution of the population sampled. All the normal statistical caveats apply as well — non-correlation, selection bias, reporting bias …
June 17, 2010, 4:11 pmtim says:
OrenWithAnE
June 17, 2010, 4:20 pmtotal agreement…my relatioship with God is personal, I don’t force anyone to go to church with me nor do I put them down for not going. But, if you are going to attack me and/or my believes then I have a right to defend them(in a public forum)
Anatid says:
Mirror neurons are cool stuff. They evolved to enable us to learn via mimickry – one of the awesomer traits of primates (yes, “awesomer” is a scientifically rigid standard), but we humans have since co-opted them to enable us to experience empathy.
Dr. Cooper doesn’t say a word about the gender rift. Pornography is largely consumed by men in the same way that romance novels are largely consumed by women – men are more likely to be aroused by visual imagery, women are more likely to be aroused by fantasy. Women, whether for cultural reasons or biological ones (could be both), tend to show greater empathy than men, and increased mirror neuron activation as part of the process. So if enjoying porn is solely a function of mirror neurons, why are the overwhelming majority of porn viewers male?
The biggest problem I see with porn is that it’s almost exclusively designed to be consumed by men. Even lesbian porn is meant to be viewed by heterosexual men (big surprise). Know thy target audience, and all that, but why should women be interested in porn if none of it’s targeted to them? Veer away from direct, graphic images of penetration and towards classier imagery that leaves at least a smidge to the imagination. A complaint I’ve heard from a number female friends is that it can feel like the porn industry is dismissing a woman’s desire to feel aroused, too.
As a final note, folks with Autism Spectrum Disorder (includes Asperger’s) show a remarkable lack of mirror neuron activity. Empathy and theory of mind tend to be impoverished in ASD folks. Although capable of empathy, they have to get their information about the feelings of others from some other source, which is much harder. If Cooper was correct, pmorem should have a vastly reduced interest in porn than the rest of us.
This doctor isn’t a scientist, has published no peer-reviewed papers and conducted no research, and worst of all, her soundbite is being quoted in a popular press article (the horror, the horror). Like homeopathic medicine, taking information and diluting it down to one part per billion does not an educational article make.
Go back to your clinic, Dr. Cooper.
June 17, 2010, 4:35 pmBarry D says:
Well, if you’re a religious authoritarian, why violate another one of your beliefs and lie, by claiming you’re a libertarian?
And if your friends think libertarianism is all about legalizing pot, then that makes them ignorant (if not stupid or high). It doesn’t make them experts about what libertarianism means.
June 17, 2010, 4:40 pmtim says:
barry,
June 17, 2010, 4:43 pmso it is about watching porn and being gay???
Randy says:
Tim: “Many years ago I watched on CSPAN gay, lesbian, transgender, transsexual, horse lovers, etc, etc…in Washington DC at something or other protest, and I remember hearing a speaker say that it was about sex, and more sex.”
Oh, well then, you know everything there is to know about gays.
“my response to Randy was calling him out on why he is putting me down—”
It wasn’t a putdown of you, Tim, but rather of your comment. Sort of like hating the sin but loving the sinner.
“seems like a lot of rationalizing for something that really isn’t healthy, it desensitizes the mind to the point that it will take the fun out of the unknown because there will be no unknown.”
Laughable? Certainly, because just the opposite is true. Recent studies have shown that the highest sales of internet porn are in the states such as Utah and several of southern states, where sex is much more likely to be considered sinful than other places. It’s also high in countries that are highly restrictive on sexual mores such as in Islamic countries.
According to you, Saudi Arabia and other highly restrictive places should have the healthiest relationships, since not only is porn prohibited, so is the showing of any female flesh of any kind.
June 17, 2010, 4:48 pmpmorem says:
If Cooper was correct, pmorem should have a vastly reduced interest in porn than the rest of us.
I have no interest in observing others having sex. That does nothing for me.
Attractive women are nice, though. My tastes are fairly plain.
June 17, 2010, 4:50 pmDilan Esper says:
In honor of Donna Rice, I give you the late John Denver’s classic, “The Ballad of Gary Hart”:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wTvz3P_SH7A&feature=related
“Oh he met her at a party and her name was Donna Rice, she was Gary’s kind of woman, she was pure ‘Miami Vice’.”
June 17, 2010, 4:54 pmRoger McCandypants says:
Your theory is junk. I’m no sex expert.
June 17, 2010, 5:02 pmptt says:
Which is to say, with a box of tissues kept nearby, though for quite different reasons.
June 17, 2010, 5:13 pmSigmund Frood's Excellent Adventure says:
Obviously, you do tim. But sometimes a cigar (or a gay guy)…
June 17, 2010, 5:23 pmAnatid says:
Best line of the thread.
June 17, 2010, 5:28 pmElliot says:
Before I jumped out of an airplane for the first time I read and thought about it quite a bit. (However, I didn’t write about it.) But, no matter what label you use, they are very, very different learning experiences.
June 17, 2010, 6:25 pmOrenWithAnE says:
No one has attacked your beliefs. We have attacked your unjustified attempts to portray your beliefs as valid for the judgment of the acts of others.
June 17, 2010, 6:45 pmOrson says:
Were Dr. Cooper and tim (above) actually there before the pornographic image was taken to learn that there was no consent? Or not!
de gustibus…
June 17, 2010, 7:04 pmDaily Pundit » I think they’re serious. But they should be committed. says:
[...] this at Volokh. That Explains It Washington [...]
June 17, 2010, 7:30 pmBarb says:
Seems to me this is true. Whether there is rape or not, the “primal scene” ought not be viewed by children –and nudity of adults –except for limited same sex exposure of mom to daughter, father to son, when children are very small. Modesty is a virtue.
I would guess she means that people experience sex vicariously through porn –do get aroused, etc.
But I agree that it’s silly to think that children think they are experiencing whatever they see through “mirror neurons.”
Uhhh, I think the writer means 1/3 of the 7 have accessed internet porn deliberately.
June 17, 2010, 8:06 pmRandy says:
Back in the 90s, I attended so many seminars about the future of the internet, how to capitalize upon it, how to sell stuff, who is going to make money, that sort of thing. There were dozens of articles in trade publications too. They all had the same rosy predictions: This year, online sales are 1 billion, next year, 5 billion, the following year 20 billion, then 50 billion that 200 billion and so on. The proverbial hockey stick was the accompanying graph. Since the crash of 2001, these predictions have dried up, BTW.
Only a handful of these publications would a little footnote, which explained exactly what they think the online sales would be. Books? Wine? Legal Services? Nope. Invariably, they would explain, in very small print, that anywhere from 60 to 80 percent of these projected online sales would be pornography.
So even today, when I give lectures about the internet, I tell people that for all the email, blogs, websites and things that exist, they are pretty much immaterial; rather the internet is primarily a distribution channel for pornography.
Which upsets me. Had I been smarter, I would have started a series porno websites and I’d be very rich today.
June 17, 2010, 8:13 pmBarb says:
I’d like to say a word about the difference between the two: Women do identify with romance heroines (as men may with super-heroes?) but they aren’t committing an adultery in the process. There is something more sinister going on with men’s addiction to porn –and the women who bare themselves for public view.
June 17, 2010, 8:17 pmRandy says:
Incidently, AOL’s primary consumers in the early days were gays and lesbians. It was the first time we could find each other without going to gay bars. I had a friend who worked at AOL in those days, and he said that Steve Case was especially grateful to the gay community because it embraced the new technology earlier than straights did, they used it more and were devoted customers.
And with good reason. The internet allowed gay people, or those who same-sex desires, an outlet for their passions that was private and confidential. It’s no coincidence that the huge progress we have seen in gay rights is tied directly to the rise of the internet. Organizing, being out, finding each other — all became much easier because of it.
And yes, there are plenty of straight looking for man on man sex on the internet (just check craigslist sometime), which continues today.
Moreover, people with various fetishes can find each other and explore that side of them, something that previously they had to suppress.
Is a website devoted to a foot fetish pornography? Some say yes, others say no. But I am glad that this all exists because without it, we would be in the bad old days when people had to keep their desires to themselves for fear of being labeled a pervert, or even lose their job.
June 17, 2010, 8:21 pmneurodoc says:
Please, Dr. Cooper, the “forensic pediatrician and faculty member at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill School of Medicine,” is clearly unqualified to speak about anything “neurologic.” Her “forensic” experience it seems relates to child abuse cases, which has nothing to do with the neurologic, that is until you get to actual neurologic trauma (e.g., shaken infants; subdural hematomas; etc.), and then that’s for neurologists and neurosurgeons, who have expertise in the diagnosis and management of those conditions. Her faculty appointment at UNC is an “adjunct” one, which at most medical schools means exceedingly little, maybe spending an hour with some medical students sharing whatever you have to share. Her “science” neatly and conveniently dovetails with her fundamentalist religious beliefs.
June 17, 2010, 8:22 pmRandy says:
Barb: “Women do identify with romance heroines (as men may with super-heroes?) but they aren’t committing an adultery in the process. There is something more sinister going on with men’s addiction to porn.”
Are you saying that viewing porn is a form of adultery? I would say it is not. Are you saying that viewing porn leads to or encourages adultery? There is no evidence that it does, but if you know of any, please share.
June 17, 2010, 8:23 pmKazinski says:
If we could only go back to an earlier time when pornography was not technologically feasible, except as drawings and then unaccessable, like say the middle ages when everybody slept in communal rooms, where privacy was non-existent and children were surrounded by copulating adults every night of their lives.
June 17, 2010, 8:28 pmAnatid says:
Why would they appoint “faculty” who doesn’t have a single published peer-reviewed paper?
June 17, 2010, 8:39 pmBarb says:
Oren –this is the kind of irresponsible statement found in a public school life skills course: non-judgmental (non-discerning), morally neutral, values clarification thinking–which, in effect, erodes all adult authority to direct youth in what is right or wrong, good or bad, safe or harmful, high risk or low, etc.
I think anyone who tells you cocaine and heroine are bad for you is telling the truth –and has a right and an obligation to tell the truth. Same with nicotine and alcohol and various sexual lifestyles. I believe there are plenty of studies to say that pornography is really NOT helping marriage in the long run –nor helping youth to have responsible happy relationships.
I do have one of the non-porn-using men for a husband. He hates the computer for it’s interference in bringing up records in his med. practice –waiting on screens. He is one of the lone hold-outs in still doing paper charting. I know young men who have had difficulty with porn addiction–and seems to me, there still aren’t very many wives who tolerate it in their husbands when they know about it.
June 17, 2010, 8:40 pmBarb says:
No they weren’t –not until the kids were asleep –and this communal room no doubt was their birth control.
June 17, 2010, 8:42 pmLaura(southernxyl) says:
“You have heard that it was said, ‘Do not commit adultery.’ But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart.” Matt. 5:27-28.
(May I add that I hate noninclusive language. “Anyone” looking at a woman lustfully is either a man or a lesbian. Because of the way these things are translated, I don’t know whether Jesus said “a man who looks at a woman” or what. Can women not commit adultery? Of course we can. Did he mean this for us too and the translator had a blind spot? Maybe I need to find that inclusive-language NIV.)
I am old enough to remember when the argument not to ban porn altogether (sounds quaint now) was that what people looked at in the privacy of their homes was their business. My daughter had to shut down her hotmail account at age 14 because of an overwhelming amount of spam inviting her to “click here” to, for instance, find out how to consolidate her loans. I clicked on one once to see what kind of loans they thought a 14-yr-old had – OMG. I get why somebody might want to look at something in the privacy of their home. How did we get from that, to tricking random strangers into looking at something they didn’t volunteer for and could have gone looking for deliberately if they’d wanted it?
(Hotmail does a much better job of filtering that stuff nowadays, I’m happy to say.)
June 17, 2010, 8:47 pmBarb says:
Juvenile and adult sex offenders are big time porn consumers. This was said by the juvenile authorities in a newspaper article about our city’s juvenile rapists/molesters. Same with the adult guy who had a closetful of porn when he molested and murdered a little girl.
I like the treatment of porn in the broadway musical, “Oklahoma.” Poor Jud was a porn addict and Curly saw it for what it was –disgusting –making Jud dangerous to his Laurie. This shows how far we’ve come since the setting of that story. Will Parker was shown some dirty pictures and Aunt Eller was fascinated by them in the kaleidoscope type thingy –but they were shocked, too. And he had been to a burlesque show. It was all depicted as sort of “quaint” and humorous. A century later, porn is not shocking anymore –and it’s far more plentiful.
Yes, I know of someone married for whom porn led to online chatting to meeting strangers for illicit, high risk sex. “To Catch a Predator,” shows how the porn mindset and porn itself influences married guys to lust and pursuit of under-age girls who flaunt themselves, even verbally.
Fellows are very tempted by porn and solicitation and it’s no wonder that they expect sex early in a dating relationship –which wasn’t so in my day.
One of you suggested that someone here didn’t “like” porn and that was his choice. I think porn can beckon and lure any married man into mental adultery if not actual, and this is not good for marriage. So the guy who “just says no,” is a strong and good man. But I can’t go to the marriage stats because I have “be safe online” on our only computer –because I have grandchildren — and it won’t let me google “effects of porn on marriage.” I can unblock that word, but it’s too much trouble for the time I want to spend on it right now.
June 17, 2010, 9:06 pmAnatid says:
Birth control? When you’re up against 2/3 infant mortality rates, you need to have six kids just to break even. Maybe it has something to do with living in a one-room wood hut with a dirt floor and no heating in the winter. Parents and kids didn’t just share a room, they shared a bed – how else would you keep warm at night?
June 17, 2010, 9:07 pmAnatid says:
Call it a great opportunity to create that second password-protected user account on the machine that you’ve been putting off for so long.
Google Scholar is alright, but you’d be better-served on PubMed or SSRN. A regular Google search will yield about as much rigorous scientific data as shouting your question out into the street.
June 17, 2010, 9:13 pmDG says:
{I do have one of the non-porn-using men for a husband.}
LOL. Right. I hope that erroneous belief makes you feel better.
June 17, 2010, 9:17 pmpmorem says:
So, Barb…
In your world, what would you have me do?
Would you seek to deny me access to porn?
If you’re certain it’s always bad, try walking a few steps in my shoes… and let me know how long it takes you to stop screaming.
June 17, 2010, 9:26 pmBarb says:
First of all, Neurodoc, how is it that you have time to blog here? My doc/husband doesn’t have any such time.
Interesting how so many “doctors”, including MD’s, are called “non-scientists” with their equivalent to a PhD in the sciences. Interesting how having religious beliefs seems to disqualify them as experts on anything according to some bloggers–even though many real experts in the medical and psych fields ARE, in fact, people of faith.
June 17, 2010, 9:27 pmzuch says:
I want to know when Sharon Cooper found these “mirror neurons” in the brains of children. Electrophysiological single-cell recordings? They wouldn’t let us record neurons in human visual cortex when I was in neurophysiology….
Cheers,
June 17, 2010, 9:32 pmBarb says:
My husband threatened to destroy the family computer if he ever caught the sons looking at porn. We know they ran into it on their own computers once they left home for college. And struggled with it, too. He never uses the computer except for the annual board review exam which I have to walk him through to get him going on the computer –and we have no porn in our house –nor is there any in his car –and his car radio is usually set on the Christian stations –(and sometimes NPR) And there’s none at the office or on our tv. So why do you assume mine is an erroneous belief? There really are some righteous guys around –with healthy libido expressed in marriage.
Perhaps you’d enjoy my blog post: http://thebarbwire.blogspot.com/2010/06/ring-sign-of-vows.html
June 17, 2010, 9:37 pmspanker says:
well, for those of you who like porn, feel free to drop by http://www.spankwall.com/, a new search engine for porn videos!
June 17, 2010, 9:40 pmBarb says:
I’m not really sure what it means to walk in your shoes, obviously. You scream when you can’t get to your porn? Have you tried meeting a real woman? Or is that the problem? Is porn the only sexual outlet you have? I’m not sure what you mean.
I do feel sorry for people who want sex and can’t find a suitable partner. Really, I do. But there are better ways to find people than sitting home with the porn. I so appreciate all aspects of marriage –except back seat driving husbands.
June 17, 2010, 9:46 pmBarb says:
What a humanitarian!
June 17, 2010, 9:47 pmBarb says:
Maybe if I went to Google Scholar instead of just “Google” my screened server wouldn’t have blocked me on the word “porn.” I never heard of Google Scholar. Thanks for trying to help.
June 17, 2010, 9:51 pmBarb says:
I love you guys–this blogsite. Reasonable politeness and tolerance for my oft-unpopular views. At other blogs, I find a lot of extreme intolerance on the left –and censorship. Most of the posts here at VC I can’t even weigh in on –they are over my head. But if we are talking about culture, religion and religious freedom, churches, family, child-rearing, sex ed, values ed., marriage, abortion –those kinds of issues, I am up for the discussion.
June 17, 2010, 9:55 pmBarb says:
I’m sure there were such situations common in the past –and probably nowdays too. But virginity used to be valued and protected in the girls, too. I doubt the “primal scene” of parents was often viewed by kids. I suspect most people had a loft and some separation for the kids’ beds or their own –you don’t have to be in bed with your parents to keep warm if you have siblings.
The trouble with historians, it’s hard to know exactly what life and morals were like going back many centuries. Interesting, how revisionist historians are so sure of everything they say and write about life in the past–while doubting the authenticity of NT. I’m inclined to believe the writings of the past over the conjectures of the present scholars.
June 17, 2010, 10:05 pmBarb says:
Laura –excellent example of how porn purveyors are chasing people –including our kids. There oughta be a law against porn. It’s enslaving people and corrupting youth.
Thanks for the verse.
June 17, 2010, 10:11 pmpmorem says:
See my comments above, explaining my situation. I have sensory issues, some of which are uncomfortable. If you were somehow able to directly experience what it’s like to be me, you would probably call it screaming agony.
“There are better ways”… you assert that finding a suitable partner is, in fact, possible. In my case, it might be. I still have hope.
Hope, however, would not have carried me through. Lack of affection is potentially deadly, and it’s really not a pleasant way to go.
Do you think ill of me for having done the only thing I knew how in order to survive?
June 17, 2010, 10:14 pmptt says:
I think Barb is saying she reads romance novels…
June 17, 2010, 10:32 pmBarb says:
I don’t think ill of you even if you didn’t have Asperger’s. It’s not my place to “think ill” or “judge” persons. But I can still think ill of the manufacture, sale and use of porn –even by people who believe they can’t get a real woman. I’m wondering why you think you would die if you didn’t have porn to stimulate and cause release.
I know someone thought to have that condition –and he has a bad relationship with his mother –who even gave his name to her 2nd baby when he was one and gave him a new one. Very odd on her part, I thought.
did you have affectionate parents? not my business, but I’m curious about the condition.
My heart goes out to you; have you tried eharmony? I always think there is someone out there for everybody –but it’s hard to find the connection. You are not alone. There are many in your shoes. Porn might be taking up time you could be using for meeting people –difficult though it is with your issues.
Someone said of porn, “You don’t meet any interesting people that way.”
June 17, 2010, 10:49 pmpmorem says:
Barb,
It’s not about ‘release’ per se. Mostly it’s about wrapping myself in fantasy, pretending things are ok.
As I understand it, the combination triggers release of Oxytocin, which is essential.
June 17, 2010, 11:02 pmneurodoc says:
superannuated and real estate
Graduation from medical school most definitely does not make one a scientist. I have known a great many physician/scientists, though, some Nobel Laureates, in the course of my career, which included several years at NIH. Dr. Cooper is not one (Anatid, “This doctor isn’t a scientist, has published no peer-reviewed papers and conducted no research.”) If your “doc” (physician?) husband counts himself a scientist, please come back and tell us what he can cite in support of that claim.
Nonsense. Francis Collins, a physician scientist (MD, PHd), formerly head of the Human Genome Project and now head of the National Institutes of Health, is a person of deep religious conviction and nobody questions his expertise in molecular biology and its implications. Unlike Dr. Cooper, a clinician who describes herself as a “forensic pediatrician” and represents herself as medical school faculty when she has no more than “adjunct” status, Dr. Collins doesn’t try to make science comport with his religious beliefs, which he does not see as conflicting with science.
June 17, 2010, 11:12 pmNickS says:
Must…not….vent….ah crap.
Except no, that is not the case. Ever. Unless the person has a mental impairment, which very well might be the case, the use of pornography has always been found to be inversely proportional to the rate of hands-on sex offenses (see Kutchinsky et al and the Report from the Presidential Commission on Obscenity and Pornography for starters. I can get more detailed citations if necessary). As for those “juvenile authorities” you quote, are they actual experts on the subject or just people involved in the system who are simply perpetuating common misconceptions? Janitors work in hospitals, but I wouldn’t call them in for a surgery consult.
Yes, let’s base all future legislation on a Rogers and Hammerstein musical written during the Hays Code era and set four decades before it was written, steeped in the glurgy nostalgia people today associate with the 70s (Yes, I’m sorry, it’s been four decades since the 70′s. You are old. Get over it).
Hitler ate sugar. Hitler went on to kill millions of people. Sugar causes people to become mass murderers with funny mustaches. Post hoc, ergo propter hoc. It’s SCIENCE!!!
A sample size of 1 is great for making bold statements, but makes bad science. How about you compare the number of people who commit sexual offenses and who watch pornography to the number of people who commit sexual offenses but don’t watch pornography. Oh wait, dozens of scientists over the past 6 decades have done just that. And the winner is……THE NON-PORN WATCHERS! That’s right ladies and gentlemen, in every single study, people who do not watch pornography have a much higher rate of hands-on sexual offenses than those who do. The Meese Report, which was specifically commissioned by the government to provide a link between pornography and sex offenses at all costs, was forced to admit that they had found absolutely no evidence of the same.
The company Internet Filter Review published an extensive study of online pornography habits a few years ago. 97% of adult males on the internet regularly view pornography. 97%. 35% of all traffic on the internet is pornography. By your logic, the entire world should be full of rape and murder. It is not.
As for online solicitation a la “To Catch A Predator”, it makes such good TV you forget it’s fake. Children are rarely contacted online by predators, and those that are by and large ignore those solicitations. The Pennsylvania Cyber Crimes Unit arrested over 400 people over a four year period for online sexual solicitation of a minor. Of those, only 4 involved an actual minor, and only 1 involved contact. It’s so much more PR friendly to invent crime, fight it, and claim victory.
So you are admitting that you have no verifiable proof of any of your assertions because you are too paranoid about the poiverts on the interwebs to look. Go back to watching Nancy Grace and Glenn Beck and leave the serious discussions to the adults.
June 17, 2010, 11:12 pmChrisTS says:
Ugh. First ‘Tim’s’ semi-literate babbling about gays and porn and his in-depth studies of his own life as grounds for what is ‘right’ for all. Now ‘Barb’ – here after having helped to close down comments on Religion Clause – brings her fundamentalist babbling about her equally extensive life experiences.
Joy.
June 17, 2010, 11:12 pmneurodoc says:
Gee, 3 back-to-back dismissive responses to Barb all clocking in at 11:12 PM.
[Did that mention of Hitler and his sugar intake in the second of those 3 11:12 PM posts mean the end to this thread per Godwin?]
June 17, 2010, 11:19 pmBarb says:
LOL! :D It’s been years. But I used to enjoy some summer reads –and I liked only the ones that ended up with marriage –which didn’t condone adultery and divorce in order for the heroine to find her happiness. I refused to see “Bridges of Madison County” and was furious to think that Oprah featured the movie/book and all her audience of women swooned. It’s about adultery. And while the heroine does stay with her husband, her infidelity was nothing to enjoy vicariously as readers did. That was condoning affairs. I think it was supposed to have enriched her appreciation for her marriage in the long run. But that doesn’t make an affair right.
As Laura quoted above, Jesus taught that lust was adultery in the heart/mind. Therefore, yes, using porn is adulterous –and fornication. And interestingly, His point seemed to be to tell his audience that they were ALL sinners –because they had all lusted and therefore committed adultery –even if they didn’t have sex outside marriage. That even my righteous husband had probably lusted in his lifetime and committed adultery with fleeting thoughts as normal men have the tendency –I’m sure –as all have sinned.
His point was not to say that pleasing God and gaining Heaven is therefore impossible –but that even the most faithful of husbands and the most righteous of the Pharisees needed a Savior to cover their sins –that they had ALL sinned in their hearts in one way or another –that “there is none righteous, no not one,” And thus none of us has any right to self-righteousness or superiority feelings over anyone else –no matter what our lifestyles. And yet, He calls us to follow Him, deny self, repent of sin, turn from our sins, and receive the free gift of salvation. “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”
And so we believe that if we fail, we belong to Him nevertheless, and He will keep us from any deep sin if we are truly following Him. He said He provides an escape from temptation –and so there are always alternatives when we are tempted.
I am overweight –and I confess to not really trying very hard to be thin. I lack the will power to beat the addiction of eating more than I should –of self-indulgence. But eating is necessary and something my mother started me on at a very early age –and porn is not. I am trusting Christ’s mercy to cover me inspite of this failing. But adultery, whether in act or porn, is somehow more evil than over eating, seems to me–unless I’m taking the food out of the mouths of the poor –and you can beat me over the head with that argument if you want –but in porn, girls are posing who may be victims –drug dependent –exposed to STD’s if they are making videos with others. Girls like our daughters are doing what they ought not for the pleasure of men who ought not be looking, but who, instead, should view young women as wives-to-be and daughters to protect.
I think there are some sins we will take to the grave with us –but rest assured, obesity is its own bondage right here and now, its own punishment. I’ve already had a hysterectomy this year for a cancer common to overweight women.
My point: I’m not better than the porn user or the homosexual –though i rail against porn and homosexuality. I am concerned that we are calling sin good as a society and that we will suffer for it in the here and now –that we are putting stumbling blocks in the path of children and ourselves with the porn prevalence.
SEx seems, somehow, to be more soul-involving than other addictions. Jesus said something about one joins his soul to the prostitute in the sex act –that there is a spiritual oneness in sex. There is something mystical in the one-flesh union –like Christ and His Body and Bride, the Church. And so it is, there is a lot of natural guilt for people of conscience when they yield to sexual sin.
But God IS merciful if we repent and strive again to fly right.
June 17, 2010, 11:25 pmBarb says:
Chris it wasn’t me who closed down comments at Religion Clause –I was on there quite awhile before a certain vile blogger came to stalk me there. He sours every blog and stirs everyone up to a high level of animosity. He’s obsessed. he comes to my blog at least once a day to spam and post people’s full names. Do you also like to sour a blog when you encounter people with whom you do not agree? You’re getting off to a good start here.
June 17, 2010, 11:36 pmBarb says:
Chris TS writes
Actually, the 70′s were well into the sexual revolution. How old ARE you anyway? Who was suggesting Oklahoma as a basis for legislation? You are in a foul mood –tell me you’re not drinking.
I don’t see us ever legislating against porn – except kiddie porn –because so many of you men have to have it, apparently.
June 17, 2010, 11:47 pmBarb says:
Tim, a lot of young men have been addicted. We had a son, too, for whom porn was a terrible bondage. He knew it was wrong and has truly overcome it –via faith and a good marriage, counseling, etc. I think one book on the topic is “the bondage breaker.” It’s a spiritual “stronghold” in peoples’ lives.
June 18, 2010, 12:06 amRandy says:
Barb: “But virginity used to be valued and protected in the girls, too. I doubt the “primal scene” of parents was often viewed by kids. I suspect most people had a loft and some separation for the kids’ beds or their own –you don’t have to be in bed with your parents to keep warm if you have siblings.
The trouble with historians, it’s hard to know exactly what life and morals were like going back many centuries.”
Barb, I’m really sorry, but the world was not some virginal place where Victorian values ruled for ever and ever until the 60s came. If you actually read any European literature, for instance, from Chaucer, Shakespeare, Fielding or basically any french novel, you will find that explicit sex was quite common. Ever hear of the Kama Sutra? Our museums are filled with vases from the ancient Greeks showing sexually explicit scenes, and those vases were for everyt day usage. Go to Pompeii sometime, and you’ll see what scholars think was quite common for Roman houses — sexually explicit frescos in most houses.
Sex was nothing taboo, shameful, illicit or wrong in any sense. It was considered natural. Heck, if you lived on a farm, you certainly saw plenty of animals copulating.
Few women were expected to be virgins upon their marriage bed, with the exception of women who would be married off to royalty or other high status.
June 18, 2010, 12:15 amIt was only in the Victorian era that sex became something you didn’t talk about or tried to hide — THAT is the exception.
leo marvin says:
Maybe the parents just seemed weird because you were exhausted from all the driving between cities.
June 18, 2010, 1:51 amOrenWithAnE says:
Adjunct faculty are mostly for teaching undergrads.
Oren –this is the kind of irresponsible statement found in a public school life skills course: non-judgmental (non-discerning), morally neutral, values clarification thinking–which, in effect, erodes all adult authority to direct youth in what is right or wrong, good or bad, safe or harmful, high risk or low, etc.Which is why I thank God every day for granting human beings the reason to discern for themselves instead of simply being “directed”. Were it not for his grant of the ability to discard such nonsense authority of the last generation we’d still be bashing each other’s heads in with rocks.Everyone has a right to express their version of the truth. Everyone has the right make the ridiculous claim that their version of the truth is congruent to the universal truth.
And you are entitled to those beliefs and even the ridiculous one seats you in a position of authority to dictate to others.
Beware, however. If you can start prescribing what is good for me then I will surely start making some prescriptions of my own about what is good for you. It’s only fair right — do unto others?
June 18, 2010, 2:30 amThrobert McGee says:
Speaking as an adult homo, I would agree with this, but add:
I certainly would not want a 15-year-old homosexual boy to form the notion that anal sex and bondage are typical sexual activities or that gay men ought to enjoy them.
(What’s NOT sauce for the goose shouldn’t be sauce for the gander, either.)
June 18, 2010, 2:59 amThrobert McGee says:
Hmmm, based on a quick Ctrl+F search, I see that no one has attempted to elucidate a distinction between “erotica” (from ἔρως, érōs, “sexual love”) and “pornography” (from πόρνη, pornē + γράφειν, gráphein, “whore-writing”).
That one describes sex as grounded in love, and the other describes sex as an emotionless transaction, seems to me to be a useful difference. Thus, XXX-rated movies that make SOME effort to establish at least a friendship between the people having sex are, in my mind, “erotica,” while those that treat some or all of the participants like meat-puppets are “pornography.”
June 18, 2010, 3:16 amleo marvin says:
Yeah Barb, I thought The Bridges of Madison County was evil too, and I felt traumatized when my girlfriend harangued me into sitting through it, but I doubt for any of the reasons you object to it.
June 18, 2010, 3:34 amAnatid says:
AFAIK, most of the mirror neuron data is from high-tesla fMRI. You are in pain, your insula lights up. You observe another person in pain, your insula lights up. It’s not my area of expertise but I don’t believe that individual mirror neurons have yet been isolated in humans.
Google Scholar is a good place to start. I also strongly recommend you try PubMed, a database sponsored by the NIH of peer-reviewed medical articles, and SSRN, which has less of a biomedical and more of a sociological slant.
What you’re encountering is the concept of academic validity. Although the peer-review process has its flaws (PLoS has some things to say about that), for the most part it establishes standards to which researchers must conform in order to have their works considered valid. Methods of data gathering and analysis make all the difference in whether a study is meaningful or worthless. Internal validity, repeatability outside of the originating lab, repeatability across cultures, and other factors influence the strength of a study.
Popular science literature is about as high-quality as popular legal literature. Just as I’m sure a lot of the legal folks on here grind their teeth when they see a news article quote a “legal expert” who’s never argued a case in his entire life, I also have a hard time respecting a “science expert” who’s never performed a single study.
June 18, 2010, 3:40 amJohn D says:
Isn’t it amazing how this study saying that pornography harms children comes out just when the government is seeking the power to control the Internet?
June 18, 2010, 3:43 amAnatid says:
There’s no study. She didn’t study anything. She’s making wild conjecture that is only loosely supported by the data and her social extrapolations hold no ground.
But a doctor being willing to offer a soundbite when a journalist is interested in writing an article about pornography just when the government is seeking the power to control the Internet? Ohhhh yeah.
June 18, 2010, 4:54 amneurodoc says:
I think most people would understand “faculty” to mean that a school formally hired that person, and the person then devoted a substantial amount of time to teaching and/or conducting research at that school. At most medical schools, though, it is a much more casual and far less meaningful thing, so that anyone who finished a residency or fellowship at that school could turn around and be appointed a “clinical instructor” or “clinical assistant professor” pretty much for the asking, then do little or nothing while keeping that title. And if you hadn’t trained at that institution but were credentialed, i.e., licensed to practice and board certified, knew the department chairman, weren’t a jerk and were willing to help out in some way, e.g., attend in a clinic for maybe 20 hours in the course of a year or let a student or two follow you around in your practice on occasion, you could probably get one of these appointments. They are a very different matter from being hired as full-time or part-time faculty, and not just because of the paid vs unpaid aspect. (“Tenure” exists in medical schools, but means relatively little for physician faculty, since they can almost always force you out with relatively little difficulty if they don’t want you any longer, and it is a total irrelevancy where “clinical” appointees are concerned. So call the latter “non-tenure track” faculty if you want, but pretty meanless to do so in the medical school context.)
Medical students aren’t “undergrads,” and medical school “adjuncts” (more often “clinical” faculty) might teach students or trainees, though usually to a fairly limited extent.
If you’re willing to say, I’m curious to know what your background in science is. Is it in the neurosciences?
There is “kindling” which involves motor neurons and may be shown in animal models of epilepsy, but where that phenomenon happens in human brains is not settled.
A large percentage of attorneys, especially law school faculty, will “never argue() a case in (their) entire life,” but that does not mean they may not be pre-eminent experts in a particular area of law. (I’ll bet that most of the VC have “never argued a case in (their) entire life.”) So your legal expert to science expert comparison isn’t that apt. But your point is entirely sound (“I also have a hard time respecting a ‘science expert’ who’s never performed a single study.”)
Now, I’m waiting for Barb to come back and tell us the basis for her claim that her “doc” (MD?, DDS?, DPM? DVM?, DC?) husband deserves to be counted a “scientist.” I think it far more likely that he doesn’t than that he does, but perhaps she will surprise me and tell us that he regularly publishes the results of research supported by NIH grants or other funding, e.g., drug company money. (I intend no disparagement of “clinicians,” only of those like Dr. Cooper who would pretend to be what they clearly aren’t, that is “scientists” or “experts” on that which they aren’t.)
June 18, 2010, 5:50 amneurodoc says:
OK, it looks like Barb‘s husband is an obstetrician or one of those declining numbers of general practitioners who still deliver babies. (Board certified?) As the son of an obstetrician-gynecologist, an unusually well-trained one, I’m not going to knock that specialty. I’ll stand by my “not a scientist,” though, unless the Ob-GYN in question is someone who has done and published real scientific research in a place where real scientific research, not simply clinical studies, gets published.
(And if Barb‘s husband “catches” a lot of babies, it is understandable that he would have little free time, since that is the nature of the specialty. Again, I would recommend real estate, which has been very good to us and allows one to get off the treadmill of a busy clinical treadmill sooner than they might otherwise be able to do so. Then they can devote themselves to opinionating on the blogs of others, as Barb and I do here.)
June 18, 2010, 6:10 amaggy says:
There are *extensive* sources (thousands of documents) that tell us exactly what kinds of situations predominated in family life during the middle ages. It’s not hard *at all* to know what life and morals were like then. Virginity was valued … if it could be maintained. Which it was, quite often, in wealthy families where the separation you talk about was feasible. But in most cases, that separation was not feasible, nor was it feasible in most situations for female virginity to be maintained. The general consensus (well validated by textual documentation) is that morals varied as much in those centuries as they do today. Among the wealthy, virtue was rewarded. Among the poor, where rewards were slim, it was not. That isn’t to say that many poor people didn’t succeed in maintaining, say, their virginity until marriage, but it wasn’t always possible.
The idea that they had a “loft” (I’m struggling not to chuckle at this ridiculous notion) for privacy during sex is … well, silly. The idea of privacy concerning sex was always regulated by practicality. Most people did not have access to privacy. The idea that sex is something done “privately” in the sense we might mean it today was not central to sex until the 19th century, and even then something regulated heavily by class and status. Until then, privacy might have been preferred, but it was never considered necessary. That is, unless you didn’t care to have children. Privacy is a modern luxury. Which is why the Christian moral proscriptions about sex say very little about privacy, and focus on other aspects of sex that were more important, like fidelity.
June 18, 2010, 7:48 amNickS says:
I’m older than I look and younger than I think. I was referring to the concept of the Nostalgia Filter, where “these things never happened in my day,” when they did but you just don’t remember it. Socrates was quoted as saying that back in his day, kids didn’t misbehave or gossip.
I’m not suggesting you stated Oklahoma should be the basis for laws, but you cited it as an example of how people should deal with pornography and you’re on a LAW BLOG discussing an article about censorship!
And yes, I am in a foul mood, though I resent your ad hominem attack. Insinuating that someone is drunk simply because they proved you wrong is a dishonorable tactic.
I get in a foul mood when people spout truthiness instead of truth.
I get in a foul mood when people insinuate scientists make up data to justify immorality when the very basis of science is to discover truth independent of morality or preconception. Galileo, having been forced by the church to recant his heretical support of the dark arts of astronomy and math, stated as a parting shot “Eppur si muove”: “It still moves”
I get in a foul mood when people say “It’s a well known fact” or “It’s common knowledge” when they are discussing opinions that have absolutely no basis in fact. My mood gets fouler when these people refuse to learn and/or accept the truth.
I get in a foul mood when people can’t do math. I can cite dozens of studies done on tens of thousands of people over several decades to show that pornography use is not harmful, and you state that the one person you know who had a problem negates all that.
I get in a foul mood when people use their beliefs to justify their beliefs. You state your son had a problem with pornography and it nearly destroyed his marriage, but you also state that any pornography use is a problem and threatens marriages. Who had the problem with his pornography use, you or him? And how long did you have to guilt him about it before he felt guilty about it?
“because so many of you men have to have it, apparently.” Wow. Just, wow. It’s the “apparently” that makes it special. It’s shorthand for “I have no idea what I’m talking about, but I’m against it.”
June 18, 2010, 9:18 amChris Travers says:
“Venus” and “Moon” searches may be close runners up ;-)
June 18, 2010, 10:09 amChris Travers says:
Lots of things can put you on a descending escalator. Video games, for example. Yet, I’ve never heard of anyone wanting to ban Qbert on the basis that maybe it will teach kids to say bad things. The larger question is whether pornography, as a whole, causes more help than harm or vice versa. The major demographic studies I am aware of have all concluded that legalization of pornography coincided EITHER with decreases in rape and sexual assault rates, or with expanding definitions of rape to include more types of activity. Thus it seems to me that the general evidence is that exposure to pornography may in fact be good for society overall, i.e. that the good may outweigh the harm.
There’s also some evidence that violent porn (depictions or rape, etc) may be particularly harmful where the reverse is true.
Also, there’s a general trend towards more women watching porn (women were around 30-35% of the internet porn market in 2007, and are probably closer to 40% now), and more couples watching porn together.
June 18, 2010, 10:24 amWhaddona More says:
Barb – you partake in deadly-sinful gluttony with limited remorse (and apparently choose not to make amends), but you manage to avoid sinful lust in your heart when you read romance novels (and watch TV and film, I presume although you didn’t mention it).
Taking you at face value, can you not see that skinny porn/erotica/romance novel-consumers are your equals? If your own comments were turned back on you, substituting gluttony for lust, would you be pursuaded in any way?
June 18, 2010, 10:32 amBarb says:
Like I said, i can avoid a lot of harmful addictions for a lifetime –but food is inevitable. Can’t go cold turkey on it. Can’t simply get it out of the house. It is good to be raised to avoid nicotine and alcohol altogether as I have no temptation with those. Nor with gambling and other drugs.
I’m not sure you’d follow me around and see me as a glutton. Maybe a person with some genetic issues of low metabolism and sedentary enthusiasms like blogging. I was just diagnosed as hypo-thyroid.
but I do think that tremendous will power is needed to lose weight, and i could make it a top spiritual priority but I’d have to really focus on it and I don’t.
Do I feel terribly sinful in being overweight? Not really. Would it help ME if I did? probably.
With porn, however, people are exploiting women who are somebody’s daughters –who may never be able to marry happily after such a life. We are giving young girls the wrong idea that the way to be desired and have a husband is to be like a porn star. Porn use is not without victims at both ends. Porn addiction is adultery in the mind and causes divorce. It gives young boys an unwholesome fixation in addition to the already highly erotic natural state of adolescent males.
So I’m not trying to shame the porn addicts, since I, too, am flawed –but railing against porn manufacture and availability and promotion because porn has victims beyond the user. Overweight mostly harms me. Porn has more victims and is more soul corrosive.
As for the romance novels, I haven’t read any for years –the last book I read was Karl Rove’s –besides the Bible and books of that nature. I don’t think romance novels cause adultery unless the story line promotes and lauds adultery –like Bridges of Madison County does. Porn, however, IS adultery in the mind -lust for people to whom you are not married. That’s not the case in romance novels. I suggest the porn-addicted men switch to marriage-exalting romance novels if they want to feel warm and cozy toward marriage for themselves and toward wives if they have them.
June 18, 2010, 12:12 pmChrisTS says:
Barb:
I did not write the comment about the ’70′s or whatever it was. That said, you might be enough to drive me to drink excessively.
June 18, 2010, 12:14 pmChrisTS says:
I hope your girlfriend has repented.
June 18, 2010, 12:15 pmBarb says:
And more and more children being raised without their original bio-parents. More and more gov’t dependent single moms. Thus, more and more financially strapped families. More and more extreme sexual activity among youth –like what we hear about student dances. (citation: Oprah show –and my husband heard it about a local h.s.)
don’t tell me that there is no correlation between this extremely high porn use and the growing family breakdown and dysfunction in America.
June 18, 2010, 12:20 pmBarb says:
O sorry. It was some other guy I meant to ask.
Nuerodoc
I just think people who have degrees in science qualify if their jobs are in a science field –which medicine is. He’s an MD in family practice who used to catch babies but gave it up when everyone’s OB malpractice shot sky high. He headed a high-risk Ob clinic for a hospital and got their high malpractice suits reduced to zero while he did that –they set up protocols to ensure better care and trouble shoot. In undergrad he did spend some time at the Argonne Nat’l Lab with electron microscope –doing some kind of “research” –and at med school could have written the paper for PhD on research with which he assisted regarding cholesterol meds on lab animals. He hates to write –chose to bypass the PhD since he was on track for the MD.
The point being, he is more a scientist than the average joe –and he is also a man of faith –who are often accused of being “unscientific” and not quite bright by some commenters in Blogland. My father was also a scientist in my opinion–chief quality control chemist for a lab that makes soaps, etc. for hospitals. And a chem prof. and a TVA dam chemist during WWII. And also a believer in the God of Creation and the Christ of the Cross.
Back to men and porn: I think porn can addict almost ANYONE –like cocaine can –and meth. The challenge is not to start. It’s not that porn users are lower people than those who don’t use — they just went through a door and got trapped –because of SOMETHING about the pleasure-receptors of the brain being hijacked as with drugs. It’s easier to get out of the trap if you really think it’s bad for you –and some here don’t seem to think it is. But I can’t think very many women want porn addicts for husbands –anymore than they want a gambling or a drug addict –unless they share the addiction. I think it can cause men to see all women as though undressed and to think sexually about them more than they otherwise would. And to set standards for what turns them on which normal women can’t meet.
Whether or not porn causes sex crime can be argued –but this idea that sex criminals don’t use it or that it prevents sex crime–I don’t believe your sources. I suspect biased research hired by Larry Flynt and Hugh Hefner.
I said above
Actually, being heavy is an albatross for me –and it does keep me humble spiritually to know that I am far from perfect in willpower –that I, too, have an addiction and am a very flawed person (particularly in getting things done –I’m self-indulgent about blogging and “law and Order” tv show –and going to the fridge. But I don’t let it keep me from identifying as a person loved by God because of His Grace through Christ. I feel His hand of mercy nevertheless –and we all can if we put our sins “under His blood” and so I really am, upon analysis, more remorseful than I indicated in the above statement –and I do try to obey the Spirit of God in service/ministry/attitudes/relationships/and even, yes, humility. But I have an inner bedrock of Christian joy that keeps me plucky and going forward boldly in life and online –though I’m a flawed vessel for His message of grace.
I would never hold a pride parade for porn addiction–or obesity.
June 18, 2010, 12:55 pmNickS says:
Oprah? You’re quoting Oprah? And a rumor your husband heard? Yeah, I’m sure they’re the most reliable source on statistics. How about those “rainbow parties” that kids were having left and right, until it was revealed to be a hoax? And I heard Obama was born in Kenya!
OK, I’ll bite. There is no direct correlation. Between 1989 (the year the internet, and internet pornography, took off) and 2002, divorce rates dropped 20%. Child sexual abuse dropped 75%. Violent crime dropped 30%. Sex offenses dropped about 30%. Now, this does not mean porn is responsible for these drops (although there are dozens of examples of similar behavior whenever the availability of pornography increases), but it at least disproves your claim.
June 18, 2010, 1:03 pmBarb says:
My apologies first –but i have experienced the irritability and irrationality and rudeness of drinkers and you sound like one. No offense intended. Just an observation.
I didn’t suggest the musical oklahoma as a basis for law –just an example of how people used to look at porn –the way Curly condemned Poor Jud as a dangerous and deviant neanderthal for his dirty pictures. And yet how Will Parker and Aunt Eller’s characters make light of the porn interest through humor. I was just chatting –but on topic.
I figure i bring one Christian layman’s perspective to this blog –and if I’m not welcome because I’m not a lawyer or law student, my apologies to all. But i do think “real world” people should participate in discussions with the people in the ivory towers–for their mutual enrichment.
NickS –Why do I get the impression you are a nice guy with a pleasant personality?
About the son –we didn’t have to guilt him. He knew it was wrong. I was sympathetic with what I view as typical carnal interest –but his in-laws and we were very upset when he confessed it to us–because the interest almost led to adultery with someone met online. He knows what’s right –and it isn’t lust or adultery. He’s a believer. He knew He was in the devil’s playground. He was remorseful –and addicted. And he’s doing fine now because he sought counseling and personal accountability and put in place a disciplined discipleship –and he also has deepened his marital love and wants to safeguard that relationship–rather than becoming a lonely old gink with one night stands, STD’s, a computer, and no meaningful family ties. It wasn’t an overnight process getting out of the filth.
Chris TS by any chance the same person as Chris Travers??
June 18, 2010, 1:22 pmBarb says:
Or maybe church attendance went up. I see you don’t bother to cite your sources but Oprah show never focuses on a real problem? like the behavior at school dances these days?
June 18, 2010, 1:25 pmBarb says:
http://www.troubledteenblog.com/teen-behavior-leads-to-dance-ban-at-local-high-school/
Here’s one article on teen dance behavior for Nick S.
http://www.wmur.com/education/18786397/detail.html
This came from a blog comment:
June 18, 2010, 1:40 pmNickS says:
Church attendance has stayed within a few percentage points for the past several decades (http://www.physorg.com/news190295315.html)
Statistics on crime rates (US): http://bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov/dataonline/
Berl Kutchinsky, Criminology Professor and publisher of the most famous studies of the social effect of pornography: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berl_Kutchinsky
The President’s Commission on Obscenity and Pornography, which found no detrimental effects of pornography usage: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/President%27s_Commission_on_Obscenity_and_Pornography
June 18, 2010, 2:01 pmNickS says:
Like this? Or this? Or maybe this?
June 18, 2010, 2:04 pmWhaddona More says:
I gather you don’t see sexual behavior in the same category, as a basic physical need. You see non-marital sexual behavior as highly addictive, but your own over-eating (sinful gluttony or not) as permissible since food is a basic physical need.
Seems convenient, no?
Again, a seemingly convenient distinction I wouldn’t make, but it raises interesting questions:
Is porn Ok if the characters are married (real or as a plot element)?
How about if the plot promotes marriage – like a married couple that goes through a bad time and winds up back together?
Is porn Ok if the subject is me and my hetero spouse?
June 18, 2010, 2:43 pmneurodoc says:
You may think that, but you will find very few scientists, including those who work in medical schools, who think an MD amounts to a “degree in science” and that the practice of medicine amounts to working “in a science field.”
It sounds as though he has done a lot of good for a lot of people with his medical skills, but that has little or no bearing on whether he should be counted a “scientist.”
(Do you live in a rural area? I ask because it would be very unusual in a non-rural community for a family practitioner to be responsible for the care of high-risk obstetrical patients. They are not trained for it, that is the domain of those who have been through residencies and fellowships in obstetrics.)
All well and good, but none of that is integral to the medical school curriculum or training experience, so doesn’t bear upon whether physicians should be counted as scientists without a great deal more. Also, I doubt very much the lab work your husband did looking at “cholesterol meds on lab animals” was anything like what is required for a PhD dissertation, especially if he spent no more than the usual four years in medical schools, did not take courses intended for grad students (not med students) in biologic sciences, etc.
I don’t react to “some commenters in Blogland,” so have nothing to say about what they may say. As for you husband being “more of a scientist than the average Joe – and…also a man of faith,” all well and good, but we already established that being a scientist, indeed one at the very top like Francis Collins, is not incompatible with being a person of faith, so you haven’t proved anything to me that I wasn’t already persuaded of. So, the strawmen arguments are wasted on me.
And Dr. Cooper doesn’t qualify as a “scientist” or a reliable expert on what she presumes to speak about, that is the neuroscience underlying human behavior. (She is board certified, though.)
June 18, 2010, 3:07 pmleo marvin says:
Her husband and kids seem well enough adjusted, which tells me she learned from her mistake and doesn’t try to drag them to Nora Ephron movies. It was only a couple of years before I could enjoy Clint Eastwood again, free from flashbacks to those two hours of soul-crushing boredom, so I’ve forgiven her. And she’s wise enough to understand that one monstrous act needn’t define a whole life, so I’d like to think she isn’t still punishing herself.
June 18, 2010, 3:57 pmleo marvin says:
Or how about if what they’re doing is bad… very, very bad… and they get severely punished for being so bad? Over and over and over again.
June 18, 2010, 4:13 pmBarb says:
Well, fine then. You made that point about Collins earlier. Did I say you were one of the bloggers who considers believers to be “not quite bright?” There are certainly many who take that position.
So? Your point? Did I cite my husband as an authority in some area, such that you should be concerned about his credentials? All I know is that he was in a research med school and had this opportunity to do the paper for the PhD and declined the extra pursuit since he was getting the MD.
I am very annoyed by those who don’t think medical doctors are “scientists.” What on earth is their definition? “A person having expert knowledge of one or more sciences, especially a natural or physical science.” The word physician derives from the obsolete L word “physic” meaning “natural science.”
The practice of medicine is certainly applied science –if not always research science.
June 18, 2010, 4:48 pmBarb says:
Boy, have you got time on your hands!
June 18, 2010, 4:53 pmBarb says:
Depends on who’s looking at it! Watch yourself if you want. Put that mirror on the ceiling.
June 18, 2010, 4:55 pmAnatid says:
This is what I get for making guesses outside my scope of knowledge. Thanks for the information on medical school and legal experts!
Just completed my undergraduate degree – interdisciplinary psychology and neuroscience – and currently trying to figure out what to do for graduate school. Area of emphasis looks at the biological underpinnings of stress disorders and the contributing developmental factors. Currently courting an interdisciplinary neuroimaging lab that follows children longitudinally to try and figure out who will develop PTSD, and why.
My education is by no means complete (learning is a lifelong process, will it ever be?) but I still find I often have more to contribute on specific neuro-related topics than, say, someone whose life sciences education ended with high school freshman bio thirty years ago.
It’s a wonderful time to be studying neuroscience. In some of my classes, we’d stroll into class and the prof would tell us that the day’s lecture wasn’t on the syllabus, because the papers he wanted to teach that day hadn’t yet been published at the beginning of the course. So many new developments happening so quickly …
June 18, 2010, 5:09 pmAnatid says:
Yeah, they both wear white lab coats and received advanced education, but there are other differences. From my view, at least, a scientist is someone who applies the scientific method to gain a greater understanding of the natural laws of the universe. A scientist friend of mine is doing mathematical modeling of dynamic air cell flow to change the virtual shape of the wing of an aircraft in flight. A scientist friend of mine is collecting neuroimages of developing teens and correlating them with behavioral data to track the lifelong development of grey matter in the brain to see how cortical thickness predicts intelligence.
They don’t know what the answers are yet. No one knows. That’s why they’re asking questions, and trying to find out.
Medicine, on the other hand, draws its information from what science has already established as more-or-less true (again, I keep saying this, you can never PROVE anything in science, even gravity is only a theory) in order to protect the healthy and cure the sick. They take the theories and turn them into applied practice. Although some doctors also perform research, most are not trying to answer new questions, they’re using the knowledge previously gleaned in order to save lives.
They’re two different ways of thought, so far as I understand them. One deals with applying existing knowledge. One deals with collecting new knowledge and synthesizing it into a useful form. Blurring the lines – when doctors perform experiments upon their patients – can be quite dangerous without regulation and oversight.
A doctor sees a sick person and wishes to gather information about the individual in order to understand which of hundreds of known diseases he might have, and then determines which of hundreds of known treatments might be optimal to cure the disease. (To grossly oversimplify.) A scientist sees a phenomenon that he does not understand, and no one else really understands, and designs an experiment to expose the mechanisms of the phenomenon and bring understanding. A doctor thinks, “What is this? I know what it is, or I can look it up.” A scientist thinks, “What is this? I have no idea. I can look up a few people who were on the right track, so I know where to get started, but it’s up to me to figure this out.”
Heck, even within science, there are different modes of thought. I remember a summer when a friend and I were both performing research internships trying to understand the behavior of pathogen proteins. His lab created digital models of the proteins with their known properties and observed them in simulated environments. My lab took the physical protein and mutated specific amino acids to have different properties and then observed how the protein’s function changed within the cell. And at no point were either of us qualified to stroll into a hospital and attempt to treat patients infected with the pathogen we were studying.
A doctor and a scientist don’t necessarily think the same way. Their education is different. The paradigms with which they understand their field of study are different. They may approach problems differently when seeking a solution. Sometimes, the resemblance ends with the white lab coat.
Suggesting that a doctor isn’t a scientific expert – any more than a scientist isn’t a medical expert – surely can’t be an unreasonable notion.
June 18, 2010, 5:31 pmcustard says:
Correlation isn’t causation. There is a correlation between the number of pirates in the world and global temperatures, it does not however prove that the lack of pirates causes global warming.
June 18, 2010, 5:53 pmJohn Herbison says:
Barb mentions that many bloggers consider religious believers to be “not quite bright”. I don’t doubt that she is correct that some hold that opinion.
I haven’t studied this subject, but I surmise that the intellectual ability of believers runs the gamut from quite dense to brilliant, just as there are some non-believers who are sharp as a light bulb and bright as a tack and others whose mental acuity amazes.
I suspect that belief in the literal truth of holy scripture, however, does require an extra measure of credulity or willingness to suspend disbelief. Take, for example, the proposition that Adam was a natural person who lived to age 930. Or for that matter, the story of Noah, the ark and the flood, or the story of Jonah’s survival despite being swallowed by a fish. (For one who worships a Jewish zombie, I hope that I have myself retained some measure of skepticism.)
I am glad that people such as Barb have a belief system that comforts them. When it comes to imposition of that belief system on others, however, (especially through the blunt instrument of government,) let’s not forget that the Apostle Peter ranked busybodies alongside murderers, thieves and evildoers.
June 18, 2010, 5:55 pmcustard says:
I’m not sure that looking to the bible as a guide to morality and sexual morals is altogether wise. As I recall:
- Lot offered his two virgin daughters to the mob to do as they would with them.
- Lot’s daughters subsequently got him drunk and raped him.
- Jacob had 2 wives and concubines
- Moses after defeating the Middenites directs his army to kill all the women and children, except the virgins which they should “keep alive for themselves”.
- King Solomon had 700 wives and 300 concubines
- Jesus encourages followers to abandon their wives and children
- Deuteronomy tells us that if you “seest among the captives a beautiful woman, and hast a desire unto her, that thou wouldest have her to thy wife” you should take her.
Of course that’s just a few of the many disturbing things you find in the old and new testament.
June 18, 2010, 5:59 pmAnatid says:
I know little about the New Testament … out of curiosity, how did Peter define “evildoers?”
June 18, 2010, 6:00 pmleo marvin says:
Of course not. It proves global warming is killing the pirates.
June 18, 2010, 6:24 pmcustard says:
Of course! and i thought it was becuase they had been strangled by His noodly appendage.
June 18, 2010, 6:26 pmneurodoc says:
Your explication of the differences might not get you an A+ for a final paper in a philosophy of science course, but pretty damn good for practical purposes here.
If you were a racehorse, I’d put my money on you. You sound like a very promising prospect for a career in science. Are you going straight on to graduate school?
June 18, 2010, 6:46 pmJohn Herbison says:
The words I referenced are from I Peter 4:15, the King James Version; the text does not define “evildoer”. Some other translations may be instructive:
June 18, 2010, 7:00 pmBarb says:
By what you call your gross over-simplification, I could say doctors do everything the scientist does above. He, too,experiments, when the knowledge of others before him doesn’t help him solve the problem. He may send you to the specialist –but hopefully, somewhere, doctors are experimenting and finding new remedies. The advances in medicine have often been made as a result of clinical trial and error by lowly MD’s.
June 18, 2010, 8:59 pmBarb says:
Maybe you should think outside the box: Adam had no genetic defects, after all. There is evidence of water covering the earth — salt water fish fossils in America’s deserts, I believe. Sedimentary layers everywhere you look. And isn’t there a modern day fish story about a man who survived a short time after being swallowed by some big fish? But the big one was only 20 centuries ago –the resurrection of Jesus who raised others from the dead. I’m with him!
June 18, 2010, 9:05 pmBarb says:
Something tells me some of you think it’s meddling to oppose unrestrained pornography, to denounce it. I don’t think in terms of making it illegal –but our culture should realize its harms and want it inaccessible to children, for sure. If saying that makes me meddlesome, so be it.
Again, the porn starlets are somebody’s daughters who are selling their bodies to strangers. That can’t be good for them.
June 18, 2010, 9:10 pmAnatid says:
Thank you! But hey, no pressure …
I’m working for a year or two first – take the GRE, establish friendly contact with potential advisers at schools I’d apply to, work in a lab for experience and a letter of rec, take some time off after sixteen years of school. But there’s too much I’m not learning for me to want to stay away for long.
June 19, 2010, 5:25 amKirk Lazarus says:
The experimental hypothesis wasn’t of that form, in fact it’s not clear there was one. Morever you ignored the suggestion that the sample was unrepresentative.
June 19, 2010, 7:06 amKirk Lazarus says:
Almost all the bad stuff is in the Jewish part of the Bible.
June 19, 2010, 7:08 amBarb says:
and Lazarus was raised from the dead in the New Testament!
Y’see, if the Bible wasn’t true, they would have taken all that demeaning stuff out. God redeems an extremely fallen human race, obviously –though Christ. That’s what the NT says –and what the OT predicted. Read Isaiah 53.
June 19, 2010, 11:50 amBarb says:
Here is a NT list by Paul, the Jewish convert who used to deliver Christians to their deaths:
June 19, 2010, 11:55 amhttp://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Romans%201:%2018-32&version=NIV
neurodoc says:
A very thoughtful approach, more so than most of your classmates I expect. Best wishes in your further educational and professional undertakings. In a couple of years, return in the course of one of these threads to give us an update.
June 19, 2010, 2:13 pmChrisTS says:
WHAT? What ‘Paul’ are you talking about? The Paul who arrested Christians was a gentile. It was Jesus and his earlier disciples who were Jews.
June 19, 2010, 2:54 pmleo marvin says:
“Think outside the box” is one way to put it. “Assume the conclusion” is another.
June 19, 2010, 3:31 pmneurodoc says:
“Think outside the box” is one way to put it. “Assume the conclusion” is another.When you see a balloon, can you never leave it alone, must you always reach for that sharp logic pin of yours?
June 19, 2010, 3:53 pmJohn Herbison says:
The Apostle Paul, formerly known as Saul of Tarsus, was a Jew of the tribe of Benjamin. A Pharisee, in fact. (Philippians 3:5) He was also a Roman citizen by birth. (Acts 22:25–28)
June 19, 2010, 3:56 pmChrisTS says:
Ah. Why, then did he want the gentiles to be directly admitted to the christian sect without conversion to Judaism?
(Thanks for remedying my bad memory.)
June 19, 2010, 6:08 pmleo marvin says:
I only wish it was that easy. The balloons around here fight back.
June 19, 2010, 6:33 pmLaura(southernxyl) says:
Chris, Paul (the person formerly known as Saul) had a fairly dramatic conversion experience. It’s been speculated that while he was waiting for his blindness to be cured, he had some specific and personal revelations. It’s also possible that he was reacting against his former rigidity in obeying Jewish law up to and including overseeing the stoning of Stephen for blasphemy.
Here is Peter being made to understand that he had to talk to Gentiles.
June 19, 2010, 9:28 pmneurodoc says:
You could say that, but you would be wrong, and it wouldn’t comport with Anatid‘s “gross oversimplification” (which I endorsed).
Those may be “experiments” in a colloquial sense, but they are not “experiments” as science understands “experiments.”
I am very familiar with clinical trials, having been a “consumer” of the knowledge gained from clinical trials throughout my career as a physician, and more importantly for purposes of understanding clinical trials, having had graduate level training in the design of trials and having been employed at the National Institutes of Health to oversee a number of them. They are anything but matters of “trial and error” by anybody. And as someone who has done plaintiff’s med mal work, I can tell you that “cinical trial and error by lowly MD’s” is one way to give a plaintiff’s med mal attorney work.
Again, “physician” is not synonymous with “scientist,” though a small percent of the former may also function as the latter.
June 20, 2010, 7:44 amwhit says:
i see the food thing as rather telling. sure, food is ESSENTIAL (you will die without it) but beyond a certain minimum amount of kilocalories and essential fatty acids, essential amino acids, water, and some nutrients, everything beyond that is for PLEASURE.
and there is nothing wrong with that. but many people eat to the point of obesity. why shouldn’t it be as morally wrong, or at least morally wrong, for many people to abuse their own bodies with FOOD, as it is with drugs, etc?
food can be used responsibly or abused.
ditto with drugs, alcohol, etc.
i find it ironic that so many of the people who moralize heavily about various things like alcohol, drugs, etc. are obese. THEIR form of abuse is ok, but others’ isn’t.
and of course it’s all about willpower. you CAN use even “hard drugs” responsibly. or you can abuse them. some drugs are much more prone to abuse than others, but no drug forces itself into your bloodstream . and food certainly doesn’t force itself down one’s throat.
there’s a personal responsibility thing there.
regardless, being a libertarian isn’t about saying drugs are good or bad, etc. it’s about saying it is not THE PLACE OF GOVERNMENT to intrude into people’s bloodstreams, private sexual matters, etc.
the CDC estimated (last i checked) that about 2/3 of chronic disease was primarily related to personal behavior choices, and the VAST majority are food, smoking, and alcohol related. all legal substances.
i know a few religious folk who are GROSSLY obese, and i find it ironic when they say that god doesn’t want them (according to their interpretation) to have even a DROP of alcohol (and fwiw, the current medical consensus is that SOME alcohol is actually beneficial, not merely benign) or for some even CAFFEINE is verboten, but god doesn’t care that they are destroying their god given bodies with food?
this is just insane to me.
the reality is that many people can use drugs, alcohol, porn, food, etc. without abusing them. none of these things are “bad” in and of themselves.
certainly, there are some drugs that are so far on the edge of the spectrum that it’s nigh impossible to use them responsibly. PCP comes to mind. but when talking about most drugs, and frankly lets be honest and include alcohol and even food as a drug (and fatty salty food can have very druglike effects on the brain as SCIENCE ™ shows), most of them can be used responsibly or irresponsibly.
for every person who abuses fatty, overprocessed foods, there are plenty who indulge responsibly and dont’ destroy their own bodies.
the same goes for drugs.
porn.
etc.
June 20, 2010, 10:44 pmBarb says:
So many of ALL people in America are obese –regardless of their moralizing. And those who do drink and smoke are often obese, too, compounding their problems beyond mere obesity. It’s not that their form of abuse is ok –and most of them feel bad about it and won’t march in a pride parade for obesity and celebrate over-eating (though our culture does encourage the latter.) They try dieting, but the food is there every day and not something they can avoid by never starting or “just saying no.” Because they have to say “yes” to food to survive –the difficulty of eating the right things, limiting quantities is a daily struggle. It is actually much easier to never start to smoke, drink, gamble, and commit illicit sex –and use porn –than it is to avoid too much fattening food and burn more calories than you consume.
We are very focused as a culture against obesity and over-eating. Consider Michelle Obama. Does she care that we are influencing kids to explore sexuality and consider being gay starting in kdgtn.? that we are lax in protecting children from ubiquitous internet porn? that we in fact “wink” at porn in general? No, she’s just concerned about overweight kids. In fact, we should be just as focused against porn, drug abuse, and illicit sex –which all do more harm than being obese –which mostly harms oneself.
June 21, 2010, 12:12 amBarb says:
Particularly without circumcision and the yoke of rabbinical laws. (Imagine trying to insist that to follow Christ, you must undergo adult circumcision.) Paul had come to understand that Christ died for all the sins of the world –and that the Jews were no longer the Family of God under the Old Covenant with Abraham –but that Gentiles were now welcomed into the family of God –”made clean” through the sacrifice of Christ –and their faith in that sacrifice. Salvation came through the Jews in the person of Jesus. The Law was important but following it to the letter (and including all the Jewish tradition) was not the means of God’s grace anymore. It was JEsus’ death and resurrection.
I’m not sure any of the NT writers was a Gentile. My sense is that they were all Jews.
June 21, 2010, 12:27 amwhit says:
my point is the hypocrisy. obesity, which in the VAST majority of cases is caused by over/improper eating is abuse of food. it’s that simple. personally, imo it’s more responsible to use food, drugs, alcohol and porn RESPONSIBLY than to abuse ANY ONE of those substances.
there are few things in this world we have more control over than the food we eat.
drugs, food, porn, and sex can be engaged in RESPONSIBLY or IRRESPONSIBLY. there is NO harm to ones self (let alone others) when any of these is used responsibly.
what you fail to understand is – it’s not the drug, it’s the ABUSE.
porn, drugs, alcohol, etc. can all be used in a healthy and a responsible way, JUST LIKE FOOD.
and to put it on the biblical level, since you like that stuff, there is a reason why gluttony is one of the 7 deadly sins.
obesity is a tremendous economic burden in this nation. it also harms families, worker productivity, etc.
as for michelle. sure, she is tackling obesity and NOT some of that other stuff . so what? it’s an issue that is addressable. it’s like when somebody complains when they are getting arrested for assault, “why aren’t you out there arresting rapists”. hey, they are BOTH important
June 21, 2010, 12:30 amBarb says:
I may not say it right–I’m trying to remember what my husband said –but his “research” was under the discoverer of Vitamin K –and had to do with mitochondria of rat cells in their livers, and the impact of colestyramine upon the mitochondria –re: cholesterol. As med students, they also did an independent research project.
Research enough for you? Probably not.
He says all doctors have done science via scientific method quite often by the time they’ve gone through their 11 years of post h.s. education.
Tell me, what is “medical science” and who does it? Who makes the scientific advances in surgery –if not the surgeons? There is all kinds of science
You are splitting hairs. As for “trial and error,” we’re not talking about going out on a limb and committing malpractice as you suggest –but just hypothesizing about a person’s problem based on what you know about the body, and what usually works, what hasn’t worked for this patient, what might be tried –based on good scientific knowledge. And doctors sometimes make discoveries by trying something new.
HEre are definitions of “science.”
1. a branch of knowledge or study dealing with a body of facts or truths systematically arranged and showing the operation of general laws: the mathematical sciences.
June 21, 2010, 12:46 am2.
systematic knowledge of the physical or material world gained through observation and experimentation.
3.
any of the branches of natural or physical science.
4.
systematized knowledge in general.
5.
knowledge, as of facts or principles; knowledge gained by systematic study.
6.
a particular branch of knowledge.
7.
skill, esp. reflecting a precise application of facts or principles; proficiency.
Barb says:
What you fail to understand is that there is no responsible use of porn in that the making of it and the viewing of it are irresponsible by definition. Even for our victim of Asperger’s Syndrome, the porn isn’t a necessity. Sexual orgasm might be, but he doesn’t need to see pictures of people’s daughters prostituting themselves for viewing by male strangers in order to have relief.
I doubt there is a responsible use of cocaine or meth or heroine–so addicting and damaging are all 3. And nicotine –no responsible use of it, in that it is so hard to quit once a person starts.
What’s more, I believe the 7 Deadly sins are not listed as such in the Bible. Gluttony is listed as a sin –and there is a mention of people “whose God is their stomach.” The 7 Deadly Sins may be a Catholic list –made by a skinny priest.
June 21, 2010, 12:57 amBarb says:
Yes, especially for senior citizens –and people whose jobs are physical and they have ruined their knees with weight (though slender people have bad knees quite often–athletes, e.g.) The heavy person’s medical chart starts to look bad around age 60 –unless he’s a smoker,drinker, drug abuser –if he’s a drug abuser, he usually smokes and drinks, also; then his chart looks bad around age 40.
Obesity is not harmful to families like drugs and alcohol addiction are –and porn and adultery. The families are only harmed in that their loved ones can’t do all the things they’d like to with the family. But that doesn’t mean the family doesn’t function well as a family because one or more of them is overweight or obese.
But this is a silly discussion, because I don’t really defend obesity. But the ridiculous comparisons made here are not rooted in reality. Yes, obesity is bad –and drugs, alcohol, nicotine compound the damage of obesity. But obesity alone doesn’t do the damage to persons and families that porn, online or other adultery, and substance addiction do. It mostly gives women low self esteem.
June 21, 2010, 1:12 amOrenWithAnE says:
I don’t think you understand what the phrase “by definition” means. There is nothing in the definition of pornography (or chicken) that is tautologically irresponsible. You have a certain set of beliefs including labeling it irresponsible, many of us disagree and believe you are incorrect in that regard. Nothing more, nothing less.
June 21, 2010, 6:39 amWhaddona More says:
How about an analogy to help explain neurodoc’s point -
June 21, 2010, 9:17 amClinical Doctors are to Medical Science as Chemical Engineers are to Chemical Science. If that doesn’t help, how about Clinical Doctors are to Medical Science as Sign Painters are to Fine Arts. The former are trained in the latter, and can even be said to work in the same field, but they don’t advance the body of it in their daily role.
neurodoc says:
So did your husband’s name appear as a co-investigator on any papers with the discoverer of Vitamin K (Dr. Doisy at St. Louis U?)? Has your husband published any research articles in any scientific journals, which is what scientists do or aspire to do, during the course of his career? (American Family Physician may be a “peer-reviewed” journal, but no one would imagine it to be a place where “science” is published.) Does your husband read anything that would be counted a “scientific” journal, of which there are a huge number, rather than just clinical ones? These are basic, though not exhaustive, indicia of who is/isn’t a “scientist.”
If we employed your loose criteria, we might count everyone who has worked in a laboratory or assisted a scientist in collecting data a scientist, including those whose job title is simply “lab assistant” or “lab tech,” some of whom may be very proficient in lab work but have only a high school education and no role in designing or directing the scientific work of the lab. (Do you regard everyone who graduates from college with a major in science as a “scientist,” or only after they have earned a more advanced degree that requires them to have produced publishable research, something an MD degree most definitely does not? Do you count along with MDs/MBs all DDSs/DMDs, DVMs, and DPMs as “scientists”? How about DCs?)
If you asked the chairmen of basic science departments in medical schools, medical school deans, training program directors, or those in medical schools who are doing grant supported research, whether those they have educated come out “scientists” absent a good deal more than is part of their medical school and residency/fellowship experience, I doubt that 1 in 20 would say they do. (And to say “done science via scientific method” shows a basic non-comprehension of science, since there is no other way to “do” science other than “via the scientific method.”)
No, Barb, we can’t let you get away with the obvious silliness of circular logic like that, “who makes scientific advances…if not scientists?” You tell me what advances in surgery you have reference to, preferably with the literature cites for the papers reporting those advances, and we will see who was responsible; whether the advances were simply technical ones, case series, etc., or new scientific understandings of human physiology, disease processes, etc..
Right, many different scientific disciplines.
No, go beyond asking your physician husband and consulting the dictionary to read something about the nature of science and you may come to appreciate what science is.
I don’t see how what you found by going to the dictionary is at all helpful here.
June 21, 2010, 11:56 amBarb says:
I’m getting the impression that you are a science snob, Neurodoc –you and anatid. My husband probably is listed with Doisy’s project as some underling –I don’t know–but not a co-publisher. He had the opportunity to use his work under Doisy for the PhD and did not. My father was accepted to do research with Doisy years earlier as a chemmist –and he decided not to do it. His father helped him decide that –and he always regretted not going ahead for the PhD with Doisy. The reason for the connection was that their under-grad college, my father’s and my husband’s, had a positive connection with SLU.
Every medical doctor is more of a scientist than us folks in the general public. Make your fine distinctions, if you want.
Hair-splitting with my word choice/syntax/writing here. You’re a smart guy, so you knew what I meant. Since “doing science is only done via the scientific method,” then why isn’t a person who has used that method in scientific research called a scientist –at least for the time when he “did” it.
sign-painters to artists? C’mon. Much medical science is advanced by practitioners in their clinical roles –yes, at the uni setting perhaps –but they are still docs making medical advances via their clinical experience. Their degrees are in the sciences; that makes them scientists –unless they are teaching lit. and not using what they learned at all.
You have this idea that science has to be DOING research –a medical career is a career in medical science –thus, a doc is a kind of scientist because he applies science.
this is all about semantics –and not worth our time. You’re just venting because you all like your porn and consider it a right. So this science thread was to debunk the “expert” who said porn was not good for kids. Call her a junk scientist –even I don’t agree that kids think they are experiencing the activity in porn when they see it. But her conclusion –that porn is bad for kids –is more right on than that of the alleged expert scientists here. Actually, I think adults think they ARE experiencing what they see in porn. Almost. That’s the allure.
June 21, 2010, 1:27 pmneurodoc says:
If you want to see everyone with an MD (or a DDS/DMD, DVM, DPM, DC?) after their name as a “scientist” so you can count your family practitioner (board certified?) husband, who it seems has never authored or co-authored a scientific publication at any time; who doesn’t read scientific journals; who might have pursued a PhD, doing the couple of extra years of course work and years of independent research at a level well beyond what medical students might do, but chose not to; etc., feel free to do so. And if the efforts of neurodoc and Anatid to explain to you what it means to be a “scientist,” and why Dr. Cooper is almost certainly not one, make them “science snobs” in your eyes, that’s fine, at least with me. (What about Whaddadona More, who tried to make it clear with his “Clinical Doctor to Medical Science as Chemical Engineer to Chemical Science,” is he another “science snob”?)
My scores on standardized tests and the math and statistics courses that I have had undoubtedly put me in the 1 percentile of “folks in the general public.” So, can I fairly call myself a mathematician? I don’t think so and would never do it no matter the company I was in. (Yesterday, I was in the company of my cousin who earned a PhD in math at MIT and then went on to teach at in a couple of the top math departments in the country. When I see him again this evening, I could ask him if he agrees that I must be in the top 1 percentile of “folks in the general public,” but I won’t embarrass myself by asking him if he would consider me a fellow mathematician.)
Thank you for the “smart guy.” I do know what you mean, and see it as reflective of an incomprehension or unwillingness to comprehend what exactly being a scientist entails.
Because at most your husband’s experience sounds like a brief apprenticeship, too far below that which would make him a legitimate claimant to being a “scientist.”
I agree that “sign-painters to artists” isn’t apt, since it is a “lesser” to “greater” comparison, whereas “physician” to “scientist” is a matter of differences, with some commonalities, not a “lesser” to “greater.”
As Leo Marvin said to you above, “‘Think outside the box’ is one way to put it. ‘Assume the conclusion’” is another.” You don’t prove your proposition by simply asserting it (“Their degrees are in the sciences; that makes them scientists…”).
With that I think we can call this a wrap. You have accused all of us off “venting because (we) all like (our) porn and consider it a right.” And I will say that you have made it abundantly clear that you are a religious dogmatist who isn’t really prepared to engage intellectually with anything that challenges your belief system. Dr. Cooper has effectively been “Daubert”ed out as someone pretending to be an “expert” when she has no relevant neuroscience expertise but would try to force “science” into the service of her religious belief system http://www.lewischapel.org/spotlight.cfm, but that doesn’t matter to you because you share her religiously-based beliefs. (And Barb, please be honest enough to come back and say that I said/argued that one couldn’t be both a person of faith and a scientist. I have said/argued/implied no such thing, though you suggested I had so you could argue against that strawman.)
June 21, 2010, 4:39 pmMorton Velten says:
Here’s a funny quote to make you smile :)
August 22, 2010, 7:53 pmPentiums melt in your PC, not in your hand. :)