Took a long time for me to realise that the physical and/or sexual abuse of children can occur whenever men have power over children.
I suspect communities don’t know or don’t want to know the extent of abuse. If the pervasiveness of child abuse became widely known, communities would have to actually do something besides loose their shit as it becomes known, imo.
Imo, it’s usually about power, just as female rape tends to be. I’m aware of the feminist claim that rape is **always ** about power. I’m very suspicious of absolute claims, and usually demand evidence. Have never worked out how such an an absolute claim could be determined.
I am a semi-professional science fiction writer, and have been published in several magazines.
One of my role models (when I was in the earliest stages of learning how to write . . . and yes, I’m still learning) was a brilliant writer named Marion Zimmer Bradley.
She had a major magazine named after her, and she was the chief editor. I sent her a lot of my early work, and–while she never purchased any of my material–her criticisms were always spot-on, and her advice about writing (and getting published) was invaluable . . . and I framed several of her letters, which became some of my most valued keepsakes.
You can’t imagine my disgust and horror when it came out (after she died) that she was a pedophile who sexually abused her own daughter from about 3 years of age, and that she had often–and enthusiastically–helped her pedophile husband obtain access to young boys whom were five and six years old (he was tried for these crimes). She was also involved in a lot of child pornography.
I could go on, but it’s too sickening.
I took all of her letters and burned them, and spent about an hour in the shower trying to scrub away that crawling sensation that made me feel so dirty.
Didn’t men to suggest it was. However, it’s my understanding that the majority of child sex abusers are males. The Australian govt page linked below says 90% of child sex abusers are male.
I should also point out that ‘abuser’ also includes adults who physically or emotionally abuse children.
I had the trifecta:
Sexually abused by a male at age 8
Emotionally abused by my father from age 8 until I left home at 18.
Physically abused by the De La Salle brothers who my parents trusted to teach me, from age 10 to 17. My parents refused to believe me, and later my brother, when we told them. They thought were exaggerating when we claimed we were strapped, often for several days in a row, but seldom less than once a week. The strap took the place of teaching competence.
I think we can only hope to infer an answer, and it seems to me, that wanting to satisfy a sexual urge, and deciding the victims desires can be ignored, is definitely about power.
As a JW, I remember the ole “but who does the scientist represent?”
Worked when I was a religitard.
So, where did the scientist come from? A much higher form of “intelligence” (hahahaha) didn’t apparently “need” a designer, but a few “life blocks” do?
Not only that, but they still don’t have evidence of a “higher being” mixing shit together (uh, like dust and “breath of life” ).
Jesus fuckin’Christ- abuse is way too common. I never trusted anyone around the boys when they were younger- watched them like a hawk. Didn’t accuse, just didn’t trust - didn’t think the worst of them just didn’t trust that I knew their motives were always positive.
I am sorry boomer that you had that experience in life. Sucks shit.
No, except fort a period of 4 years while I was married. But that’s a whole other story.
After I left home, I continued to visit to se my mother. My father died in 2006. I had confronted him about the way he treated me and two of my three siblings. He simply denied it. I think he may have forgotten. I do not posses a single photo of my father.
We discovered dad had PTSD when He was 70. Before that, I had always thought he was a cunt. After learning that I thought he was a cunt with PTSD.
Many years ago the wife and I befriended a single mother of two, who lived in the same building. One afternoon the daughter and son, each about 10 and 8 respectively, came over because mommy wasn’t home. After about 20 minutes I went into the bedroom to watch some sports on the bedroom TV. About five minutes later the 8 year old boy wandered in and started a conversation. After about two minutes of talking the light bulb went off in my head … a 40 year old man alone in a bedroom with an 8 year old boy.
Let’s just say we quickly repaired into the living room with the others.
I would offer this counter: Miller’s experiment was an attempt to replicate early Earth conditions. Nothing was added or changed. It took intelligence to research early Earth conditions, it took intelligence to set up the experiment. But it did not take intelligence to form those organic compounds, that was chemistry and science.
-/and we still keep coming back to the same old, tired arguments about how complex organisms simply couldn’t just appear by chance./–
Strange, I wonder if they ever have been in a relationship. It’s amazing how quickly things can get complicated!
Who made the assertion that anything ever happened by “chance.” What in the F does that even mean? We live in a world of causal relationships. What is exactly meant by chance. It seems if one event can be said to be ‘chance’ all events are equally 'chance." Does the word actually have any meaning? Chance as opposed to what? “Design?” But what if the disign occured just by 'chance." WTF is anyone talking about? Chance is not a valuable concept unless you can define what you mean by it.
Sorry, I don’t know how to make a quote jet. It was what Kevin_Levites wrote. I reacted on that piece of text.
To react on what you write, the mere randomness that makes one genetic variety survive and the other not is what I believe chance means in this context.
I can add a slightly different take on the already posted ideas of units of complexity.
Fractal Dimension.
Benoit Mandelbrot’s masterpiece that has led to much of today’s modern electronics (search fractal antennas for a start).
Fractal Art is truly amazing. This image is from The Mandelbrot Set and shows how a simple formula can produce amazingly complex forms. The formula for this set is Z = Z^2 + C and upon repeatedly iterating it one gets infinitely complex images such as this. One can “zoom” into it without end and it just gets more and more complex.
Here is the problem with complexity is, it means different things in different fields.
In computer science it is related to the change in time required to complete a task, when you alter the number of items in the task. For example: it isn’t hard to imagine that sorting a deck of 2 randomly ordered cards requires far fewer steps than sorting a deck of 52 randomly ordered cards.
In 5 seconds I found the following video. It isn’t exactly rigorous, but it explains the concept of complexity in this topic, explains the notation to express complexity, explains how to to calculate the complexity, what the rules are, and goes though a few instructive examples of calculating the complexity of a few simple functions. It is enough for you to calculate the compelxity of simple stuff, to check that what you were told is correct.
But when I ask the apologists for whatever they mean by complexity, I typically get something more or less like this:
As far as I can tell, there is no way to verify these claims. Basically putting you into the position of rejecting/ignoring it, or accepting it based solely on the word of the speaker. All I can say is no thanks.
That video is just a rehash of the old irreducible complexity canard. Irreducible complexity has been thoroughly refuted many times, with specific examples, including the bacterial flagellum and the human eye. It seems that no matter how thoroughly or how often creationist arguments are refuted, they keep on raising them. These arguments aren’t fooling any legitimate scientists, but they sure do fool the creationist base, which I think is the whole point.
I’ve come to the conclusion that some well-meaning apologists can feel good about misrepresenting facts because it’s for a “good reason” . . . rather like someone’s mother lying to a child about what they’re eating for the purpose of providing a more diversified diet.
I get profoundly irritated with such people, because it becomes impossible to have an honest conversation.
What has surprised me is theist misrepresenting themselves as agnostic or even atheist. It’s not like this site bans them and their own “holy book” doesn’t seem to think well of liars and the untrustworthy. Do they really think that clearly theist opinions will hold more weight if spouted by someone claiming to be agnostic/atheist? They lose all credibility with their “the ends justifies the means” mentality.
Sometimes I’ve seen theist express the very strange notion that since some atheist somewhere said X; that the rest of us atheists will just accept X as true, simply because it was said by an atheist.
).
just didn’t trust that I knew their motives were always positive.
