So what is this toxic masculinity thing anyhow?

[MaxVel]

That’s nice in theory, but in fact until relatively recently women have NOT been accorded equal courtesy and equal treatment in Christianity. They were given no voting rights, were not allowed to own property or hold positions of authority (monarchs excepted) and were expected only to do their duty as home-keepers and mothers.

It's dishonest to equivocate between 'Christianity' = What the New Testament teaches and 'Christianity' = societies that claimed allegiance to Christianity.

As an evolved social species, we all have equal rights. It is the best means to maintain the sort of cohesive society essential for our survival as a species. It’s instinctive for us and for all the social hominids, notably the chimpanzees our nearest relatives.

1) Unsupported assertions don't make an ethical basis for equal rights. You haven't even started to ground your claim that everyone has equal rights

2) No one person is in actual fact equal to any other person in your materialistic world. There are differences in physical ability, health, knowledge, IQ, skills, height/weight/strength/speed/etc, reproductive capacity, age

3) Chimpanzees "have rates of aggression between two and three orders of magnitude higher than humans".

They live in communities No equal treatment for males and females there.

A researcher comments:

"Just as chimps appear to reflect some humanity’s better traits, they also reflect the bad, Silk wrote.

“The behavior of non-human primates, particularly chimpanzees, are often distorted by ideology and anthropomorphism, which produce a predisposition to believe that morally desirable features, such as empathy and altruism, have deep evolutionary roots, whereas undesirable features, such as group-level violence and sexual coercion, do not,” she wrote. “This reflects a naive form of biological determinism.”"

Your claim that equal rights for all are the best means to maintain a cohesive society, and that is instinctive for all the social hominids is empirically shown to be false. Chimpanzees appear to have no concept of equal rights.

Especially when it comes to male-female relations. Chimpanzees become sexually mature at roughly the same ages that humans do, but unlike humans, their communities are arranged in strict male hierarchies in which all females are subservient to all males, and males compete, sometimes violently, for female sexual partners. Chimpanzees mate year-round. Males often commit violence against females or infant chimps in acts of sexual coercion.


All you've produced so far as a basis for equal rights is that we should do what our evolved instincts tell us to do. Chimpanzees do just that, and they don't have anything like equal rights - males live in a dominance hierarchy, and females are subservient and coerced sexual partners.

[Cow Poke]

No need, you have adopted it for your 'signature'.

For the time being, because it's your admission that women are different, and should be treated accordingly.

And, you haven't answered the question. Again: Given that we are agree that children do best with their mothers, do you think there are other important roles for women as well?

I answered this. Apparently, you're just too thick-skulled or ignorant to comprehend what I answered.

[seer]

It's dishonest to equivocate between 'Christianity' = What the New Testament teaches and 'Christianity' = societies that claimed allegiance to Christianity.




1) Unsupported assertions don't make an ethical basis for equal rights. You haven't even started to ground your claim that everyone has equal rights

2) No one person is in actual fact equal to any other person in your materialistic world. There are differences in physical ability, health, knowledge, IQ, skills, height/weight/strength/speed/etc, reproductive capacity, age

3) Chimpanzees "have rates of aggression between two and three orders of magnitude higher than humans".

They live in communities No equal treatment for males and females there.

A researcher comments:

"Just as chimps appear to reflect some humanity’s better traits, they also reflect the bad, Silk wrote.

“The behavior of non-human primates, particularly chimpanzees, are often distorted by ideology and anthropomorphism, which produce a predisposition to believe that morally desirable features, such as empathy and altruism, have deep evolutionary roots, whereas undesirable features, such as group-level violence and sexual coercion, do not,” she wrote. “This reflects a naive form of biological determinism.”"

Your claim that equal rights for all are the best means to maintain a cohesive society, and that is instinctive for all the social hominids is empirically shown to be false. Chimpanzees appear to have no concept of equal rights.

Especially when it comes to male-female relations. Chimpanzees become sexually mature at roughly the same ages that humans do, but unlike humans, their communities are arranged in strict male hierarchies in which all females are subservient to all males, and males compete, sometimes violently, for female sexual partners. Chimpanzees mate year-round. Males often commit violence against females or infant chimps in acts of sexual coercion.


All you've produced so far as a basis for equal rights is that we should do what our evolved instincts tell us to do. Chimpanzees do just that, and they don't have anything like equal rights - males live in a dominance hierarchy, and females are subservient and coerced sexual partners.

Very good Max!

[Cow Poke]

And, you haven't answered the question. Again: Given that we are agree that children do best with their mothers, do you think there are other important roles for women as well? Or do you, like many Evangelicals, think that their god-given role is to raise children and do home-duties...as has been the case in our society until relatively recently?

For the record, and because I know you will incessantly whine and complain about me not answering, here is the answer I already gave:

I'm not the sick control freak you are - women are free to choose their own roles in society.

I expounded on that by commenting that the passage in question refers to married women, and it is the right of that married couple to determine what their respective roles will be within the marriage.

[Tassman]

It's dishonest to equivocate between 'Christianity' = What the New Testament teaches and 'Christianity' = societies that claimed allegiance to Christianity.

1) Unsupported assertions don't make an ethical basis for equal rights. You haven't even started to ground your claim that everyone has equal rights

2) No one person is in actual fact equal to any other person in your materialistic world. There are differences in physical ability, health, knowledge, IQ, skills, height/weight/strength/speed/etc, reproductive capacity, age

3) Chimpanzees "have rates of aggression between two and three orders of magnitude higher than humans".

They live in communities No equal treatment for males and females there.

A researcher comments:

"Just as chimps appear to reflect some humanity’s better traits, they also reflect the bad, Silk wrote.

“The behavior of non-human primates, particularly chimpanzees, are often distorted by ideology and anthropomorphism, which produce a predisposition to believe that morally desirable features, such as empathy and altruism, have deep evolutionary roots, whereas undesirable features, such as group-level violence and sexual coercion, do not,” she wrote. “This reflects a naive form of biological determinism.”"

Your claim that equal rights for all are the best means to maintain a cohesive society, and that is instinctive for all the social hominids is empirically shown to be false. Chimpanzees appear to have no concept of equal rights.

Especially when it comes to male-female relations. Chimpanzees become sexually mature at roughly the same ages that humans do, but unlike humans, their communities are arranged in strict male hierarchies in which all females are subservient to all males, and males compete, sometimes violently, for female sexual partners. Chimpanzees mate year-round. Males often commit violence against females or infant chimps in acts of sexual coercion.


All you've produced so far as a basis for equal rights is that we should do what our evolved instincts tell us to do. Chimpanzees do just that, and they don't have anything like equal rights - males live in a dominance hierarchy, and females are subservient and coerced sexual partners.

[Tassman]

For the time being, because it's your admission that women are different,

and should be treated accordingly.

Not by ushering them out of elevators ahead of you. This does not support the family unit, which we both agree is important for the development of the growing child.

I answered this. Apparently, you're just too thick-skulled or ignorant to comprehend what I answered.

For the record, and because I know you will incessantly whine and complain about me not answering, here is the answer I already gave:

Merely asking a question that you several times evaded is not "whining and complaining". But typically, you try to demean your interlocutor by such dishonest accusations.

I expounded on that by commenting that the passage in question refers to married women, and it is the right of that married couple to determine what their respective roles will be within the marriage.

By this logic, it is the "right of married couples" to determine whether it is the mother or the father who takes the baby and heads for the lifeboats on the Titanic, leaving their partner to drown.

So, you would approve of the law in Australia whereby fully-paid maternity leave OR paternity leave is available.

[tabibito]

Not by ushering them out of elevators ahead of you. This does not support the family unit, which we both agree is important for the development of the growing child.

Until the feminists let loose with their androphobic spin, this was considered a matter of deferring to women, who were also deemed worthy of more consideration than men.

Women who choose to have careers in the commercial/political worlds should of course be free to choose such careers, as also women who choose alternative courses. Remembering the horror and outrage attending my own daughter's expressed ambition "to be a good wife and mother" ... it seems that women are only free to make such choices as are approved of by feminists. (though I must admit, I too was somewhat taken aback by her announcement.) And BTW - the evangelicals who get all the press might believe otherwise, but they are a small minority of all evangelicals - some of whom have expressed dismay and even outrage at the beliefs advanced by that same small minority.

By this logic, it is the "right of married couples" to determine whether it is the mother or the father who takes the baby and heads for the lifeboats on the Titanic, leaving their partner to drown.

Of course not, men should be relegated to death by drowning in an equalitarian world? Again - Your comment seems to refer to deference, and the ("historically") greater importance placed on women in certain circumstances.

[MaxVel]

One can only assess Christianity and the Judeo/Christian culture by how it has acted over its history and it has varied enormously. Medieval Christianity was quite different to say, 18th century Christianity. And throughout, until relatively recently, women have been subordinated by men…often with claimed scriptural support to keep them “in their place.”

Their recent advances were secular in origin, not religious, despite claims to the contrary by some. E.g. the Suffragettes were not throwing themselves under the king’s horse at Royal Ascot in the name of Jesus. It was the demand for emancipation that motivated them.

Still dishonestly conflating what Christianity teaches with what societies have done.

I’m afraid you’ve completely missed the point, Max. The point is that our evolved instincts predispose us, as a social species, to live in community. HOW social species do that varies enormously. The Chimpanzees do it one way and Homo sapiens do it another. And, re the latter, this too has evolved considerably over the millennia. It most certainly has not been dependent upon the dictates of the Christian deity, who is very late on the scene of human history.

There is considerable evidence that for 4 million years our Stone Age predecessors maintained highly structured societies, with rules of right and wrong, and the same is true of archaic humans in the genus Homo such as Neanderthals and Homo erectus.

Humans developed detailed codes of acceptable and unacceptable behavior long before Christianity, e.g. the Code of king Hammurabi. In the modern Age equal rights for all, as per the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, has come to be seen as the best way to maintain social harmony. All with the instinctive goal of developing the most effective means of maintaining the social cohesion essential for our survival a species.

So you're no longer a fan of chimpanzee society as a basis for equal rights for all, huh?

Note that all those 4 million years of societies you claim as support didn't have equal rights for men and women. Your grounding for equal rights for men and women is 'that is what we moderns do' because some think it's the best way to maintain social cohesion. You haven't given any basis for social cohesion (or survival) as the grounds of our ethics. And what when we decide that giving everyone equal rights is bad for social cohesion? You have no basis for objecting to that, and so your basis for supporting equal rights is no more than 'that is what we currently do, and I happen to agree with it'. Despite the empirical fact that men and women are not equal in any measurable sense, despite the fact that no one has any intrinsic value or dignity in your materialistic universe, you hold on to it as an article of blind faith.


Genghis Khan is one of the more successful humans ever:

"In more quantitative terms, ~10% of the men who reside within the borders of the Mongol Empire as it was at the death of Genghis Khan may carry his Y chromosome, and so ~0.5% of men in the world, about 16 million individuals alive today, do so"

His greatest joy: "The greatest joy for a man is to defeat his enemies, to drive them before him, to take from them all they possess, to see those they love in tears, to ride their horses, and to hold their wives and daughters in his arms."


Not much equal rights for women there. Empirical evidence (such as above) suggests that reproductive success is not based on anything like your arbitrary choice of equal rights for all.

[Bill the Cat]

Still dishonestly conflating what Christianity teaches with what societies have done.

It's the best THAT man can get...

[Cow Poke]

You seem incapable of understanding this means they can be treated differently.

Not by ushering them out of elevators ahead of you.

Nobody is saying anything about "ushering them in front of us", you dingbat.

This does not support the family unit, which we both agree is important for the development of the growing child.

Nor does it do anything to harm it.

Charming language, Pastor!

Perhaps you'd prefer "whited wall" or "den of serpents" or "snakes" or "brood of vipers"? When you're being a jackass, I will point that out without reserve.

You're not clear on much of anything having to do with Scripture.

Why don't you mind your own business and allow Christian couples to enjoy their own relationships as they see fit? Why do you have to be such a control freak and tell others how to live?

[Cow Poke]

How bout freeing your cranius from your rectimus and reading what I actually said....

EGGzackly! And since the ripped-out-of-context verses deal with "married couples", I would hope the couple would spend a little time before marriage to cover the "what are our roles" topic. Many successful Christian marriages find the man doing the "home stuff" and the woman pursuing a career.

Our minister of music, for example, has had 5 children with his wife - he stays at home and manages the kids, and they're quite happy with that arrangement. She "submitted" to his desire to stay home and be a Dad, and he "submitted" to her desire to continue a very lucrative career.

Perhaps if you repeat it ONE MORE time, you'll be good?

I'm not the sick control freak you are - women are free to choose their own roles in society.

But, since you'll do the same ol' dishonest "CP didn't my answer question as is typical" lie.... Was it your Anglican Church School that taught you to be such an incompetent bibble skoller and dishonest , Taxxman?

• The verses you took out of context (22-23) come from an Epistle (Paul's letter to the Ephesians) that was WRITTEN TO CHRISTIANS (1:1 ...to the saints which are at Ephesus, and to the faithful in Christ Jesus), and is not expect to be applied to society in general.
• Further, the verses come from a particular section (chapter 5) dealing with "walking in love" -- how to live the Christian life.
• The section dealing with "submission" appears in the section on how Christians are to treat each other, and applies to all Christians referenced (vs 18-21).
• THEN come the verses you snatched out of context (22-23), and they address CHRISTIAN MARRIAGES, not just "women".
• These women came to be followers of Christ voluntarily.
• The passages deals with how these CHRISTIAN women in CHRISTIAN marriages relate to their husbands.
• It ALSO deals with how these CHRISTIAN men love and cherish their wives "as Christ love the Church and gave His life for it".
• The CONTEXT continues to explain the husband's role in verses 28-30 - In the same way husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ does the church, because we are members of his body.

These are instructions to the CHRISTIAN church in general, and to CHRISTIAN married couples specifically, and only a very PERVERTED reading of these passages leads to the conclusion to which you so dramatically and erroneously jumped.

So, other than being a drama queen control freak here because, maybe you have zero authority in your personal or business or marriage life, what's your complaint?

[Joel]

In general, until the women's movement, beginning with the Suffragettes who (shock/horror) demanded the right to vote...

I earlier pointed out that that isn't true (gave the example of education). I think you are also mistaken on this particular point, regarding voting in the U.S. There was a significant movement for women's suffrage through the 1800s. (Remember Susan B. Anthony preceded the Suffragettes by about half a century.) The Republican Party in the 1800s was trying to get women's suffrage passed.

And for much of the 2000 years, there was no voting by the people (Men and women were equal in having no vote).

...hence the feminist movement. And the undeniable gains that have been made were ceded by men reluctantly.

My understanding is that polls in the 1800s and early 1900s showed that the vast majority of women in the U.S. were uninterested in the right to vote. And that the vast majority of advocates for women's suffrage were men.

I think you are just repeating the myth of modern feminism that people in "privileged" classes fight to hold on to their "privileged" positions at the expense of others.

[Women] were not allowed to own property

For a lot of those 2000 years, the vast majority of both men and women were not allowed to own property, due to Feudal laws like Entail. I think that came not from Christian teaching but from monarchs as a means of keeping control over the nobility. (e.g., if you allow a free market in property, then all kinds of people will come to own land, and in greater numbers, making it difficult to maintain control over the set of landowners.)

The chimp angle has been addressed. Now let's talk about humans. As enlightened as the Greek philosophers were, they did not understand equal rights. E.g., Plato in the Republic divides people into classes based on their natural differences, e.g. placing those with the best aptitude for philosophy (wisdom-seeking) as the ruling class. And Aristotle argued that different people are by nature suited to be slaves or masters, so the master-slave relationship is natural and essential to civilized society. The pagan Romans saw some people as being fit for slaughter for entertainment.

The idea of the natural equality of humanity, and of equal rights, came from Christianity.

The idea is "instinctive" for you, because you live in the modern Western Civilization, which is built on that fundamental Christian idea of the natural equality of humanity. It was apparently not instinctive for the pagan Greeks and Romans, or for other ancient peoples, or for most of the non-Western world.

[edited to add]
Is it also strange that you claim both that (a) equality is instinctive for humans, and (b) the movement for equality didn't arise until the 20th century?
[/edited to add]

[Sparko]

[edited to add]
Is it also strange that you claim both that (a) equality is instinctive for humans, and (b) the movement for equality didn't arise until the 20th century?
[/edited to add]

Don't expect sense from Tassman. He also cited Chimps as an example of equal rights and we all know how wrong that is.

Do expect him to just repeat himself, hoping you will get tired and let him have the last word.

[Cow Poke]

Don't expect sense from Tassman. He also cited Chimps as an example of equal rights and we all know how wrong that is.

Do expect him to just repeat himself, hoping you will get tired and let him have the last word.

I am more and more convinced that Taxxman is just a in search of significance.

[Joel]

Our minister of music, for example, has had 5 children with his wife - he stays at home and manages the kids, and they're quite happy with that arrangement. She "submitted" to his desire to stay home and be a Dad, and he "submitted" to her desire to continue a very lucrative career.

This made me think, if a man were really bent on subjecting his wife, wouldn't he stay home and have his wife produce the income? Why should a man provide for his family if he can make his family provide for him?