- This topic is empty.
-
Posts
-
Thats a fair point. Maybe we’ve farmed our problems off to other countries as cheap travel has become more widespread. Prostitiution within the UK is definitely less problematic than it was 100 years ago, but maybe useage of it has changed to more ‘legitimate’ escort services and international sex tourism. I would be interested to see some data on useage of these services, but as you said, I bet it would be wildly inaccurate. In general though, the view that the world was a rosy place in the past certainly doesn’t hold. The world changed rapidly in the 20th century and 99% of that change was in the right direction, and to suggest otherwise is a bit misleading.
And we can now sterilize the entire surface of the earth in a matter of hours. That is not an improvement on fifty or a hundred years ago. SamBee wrote:And we can now sterilize the entire surface of the earth in a matter of hours. That is not an improvement on fifty or a hundred years ago.
That’s clearly in the 1%
Thanks for that link Shaun. Very interesting. I was fascinated to read that 40% of first pregnancies in the UK at the start of the Victorian era (c.1830) were to unwed mothers. That is almost exactly the same rate as today.
Got to remember the figure of unwed births today is in an age of easy abortions and readily available contraception… condoms existed in the nineteenth century but were rare and made from animal gut… And in the Victorian age, an abortion didn’t bear thinking of. It was likely to kill the mother.
So the figure now includes carelessness and accidents. Also remember in the Victorian age marriage could be by repute, without a ceremony, which is what we should frankly consider a lot of cohabitation these days. (An unwed mother who lives with the father is not the same as a single 15 year old after a one night stand.) That’s the case for and against.
Ps If Satan wishes to destroy us, the atom bomb is a last resort… germ warfare is another I often wonder if they were inspired by him. If he exists, he must have great knowledge including science.
I think the one thing that has not changed is that every generation thinks the world is going to hell in a hand basket. Religion clings to doom so it can offer hope…I think it is human laziness since it is easier to inspire others to join using this method rather than living your truth, having it being you hit, share with your neighbors with no strings attached, then be happy if they find peace in your truth, or be happy they have found pace in some other truth.
This method asked people to come to truth as they are ready, trend to breed open minded thought, and lasting conversion with a sense of fulfillment…though it doesn’t make for large money donating congregations.
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I727 using Tapatalk 2
The Church has practically no control over poverty and working conditions in China, prostitution in Thailand, or even crime in the US. Where the Church currently has the most influence is simply in the day-to-day lives of individual active members within the LDS sub-culture. It seems that Church leaders like to think of the Church as being some kind of protected environment that is a safe-haven from the world and that living the LDS gospel is a guaranteed one-size-fits-all recipe for success and happiness. My question about all this is does conforming to all these rules and expectations really lead to lasting happiness or not and why? In reality, it probably depends on the individual but for me the Church was actually a major source of stress and almost the exact opposite of cognitive therapy ( http://forum.staylds.com/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=2043 Shawn wrote:There is one aspect of this where am being glass-half-full guy.
Where some others see fearmongering, I see sincere pleas for us to avoid pitfalls that can cause misery.Where some others hear control tactics, I hear invitations to better my life through repentance. Preaching repentance is a core part of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. I have personally suffered much because of my sins. I have a large family and I have seen lives jacked up and it would have been avoided by following what the church teaches about sexual morality and health. That’s the thing, what can happen in the worst cases is not exactly the same as what actually happens most of the time. What about all the Church members that break these strict rules without experiencing any immediate negative consequences as a direct result of their disobedience? The increased popularity and widespread acceptance of pre-marital sex in America mostly coincides with the availability of convenient and effective birth-control (the pill was introduced in 1959), so this is almost certainly never going to change back to the way it was in the 1950s and before no matter how much the Church tries to resist this change and condemn it. It will be even more of an uphill battle to try to eliminate supposed sins like masturbation and porn especially among single men because some of them have already done this so many times without experiencing any obvious problems that it will be hard for many of them to buy into the idea that it is so urgently important to stop now. When you look at some of the examples where members that already disobeyed the Church are still doing fine it becomes fairly clear that avoiding any direct harm or obvious problems is not nearly good enough for most Church leaders because it’s not really about what is in the best interests of individual members in this life as much as unproven assumptions about the hereafter and promised future rewards and punishments. Well how do we know that these aren’t just imaginary rewards and punishments?
kristmace wrote:Thanks for that link Shaun. Very interesting. I was fascinated to read that 40% of first pregnancies in the UK at the start of the Victorian era (c.1830) were to unwed mothers. That is almost exactly the same rate as today.
I don’t think that means nothing has changed.
Quote:Until the Reformation, marriage began at the time of betrothal, when couples would live and sleep together.
This was called “the spousals”; it was legally binding. The nuptials – ie the public wedding ceremony – would happen later. Into the mid-1700s it was quite normal and acceptable for brides to be pregnant at the altar.
source
FInally, some of the stories in Don Quixote make more sense! Reading the book, I found it odd when a man would enter a lady’s room and promise to marry her and then she was totally okay with having sex with him even though she was strict in her religion.So couples were actually in a committed relationship after being betrothed. Regardless of whether that was right, wrong, or neither, it is quite different from people today how have multiple sexual partners and then may get married after becoming pregnant.
The Hardwicke Marriage Act of 1753 took some time to change things, which is why the pregnancy at marriage rate was still 40% at the beginning of the Victorian Era.
I really don’t know how true this is, but consider the following from that same wiki article:
Quote:Alfred Kinsey found that American women who became sexually mature during the 1920s were much less likely to be virgins at marriage than those who became mature before World War I. A majority of women during the 1920s under the age of 30 were nonetheless virgins at marriage, however; and, half of those who were not virgins only had sex with their fiances. A 1938 survey of American college students found that 52% of men and 24% of women had had sex. 37% of women were virgins but believed sex outside marriage was acceptable. Prior to the middle of the 20th century, sexuality was generally restricted. Sexual interactions between people without plans to marry was considered unacceptable, with betrothal slightly lessening the stigma. However, premarital sex was still frowned upon.
Beginning in the 1950s, the stigma attached to pre-marital sex diminished. Love began to become enough for a reason to practice sex, instead of marriage or engagement. By 2000, roughly a third of couples in the United States had lived together prior to marriage. Premarital sex has become, if not acceptable, tolerable.
DevilsAdvocate wrote:When you look at some of the examples where members that already disobeyed the Church are still doing fine it becomes fairly clear that avoiding any direct harm or obvious problems is not nearly good enough for most Church leaders because it’s not really about what is in the best interests of individual members in this life as much as unproven assumptions about the hereafter and promised future rewards and punishments. Well how do we know that these aren’t just imaginary rewards and punishments?
When you take the hereafter out of the equation, denying and/or covering up one’s sins seems just as effective as the repentance process…
Reminds me of something I read: There are two groups of people that do well in the LDS church – The saints and the liars!
😆 Roy wrote:When you take the hereafter out of the equation, denying and/or covering up one’s sins seems just as effective as the repentance process…Reminds me of something I read: There are two groups of people that do well in the LDS church – The saints and the liars!
It sounds like you were mostly joking but the sad thing is that the worthiness idea really does put many members in an awkward position where they are basically forced to decide what is more important (being accepted or being completely honest). Maybe taking assumptions about the afterlife and other promised future rewards and punishments out of the equation sounds drastic and unrealistic as if there wouldn’t be much left for the Church to work with and this perspective would lead to complete nihilism. Actually to me it looks more like the spirit (general idea) of most moral “laws” such as a reasonable amount of unselfishness, fairness, honesty, loyalty, and avoiding unnecessary harm naturally appeal to a solid majority of people without really needing to attach extra rewards or punishments to sell them on the idea even if many fail to consistently apply it.
However, trying to come up with specific details to be included in any attempt at fully spelling out the letter of the law that the majority would ever agree on and being extremely strict and unforgiving about it is what is much more problematic and error-prone. Also, in some cases the Church has leveraged (or borrowed against) claimed divine origins and a very specific promised future so much in order to justify heavy present day sacrifices that some of the points of doctrine make almost no sense by themselves without these claims being true. For example, tithing is currently taught as if little or no consideration was ever given to even the possibility that maybe this didn’t really come from God to begin with.
I could see the Church saying it needs some money to operate so any donations would be appreciated to help their cause without depending on the truth of the doctrines, but that’s not what we hear. Instead the focus is mostly on paying a “full” tithe assumed to require exactly 10% of income almost as if there would be no point in donating anything less than that and I have repeatedly heard the suggestion that Church members should just go ahead and pay this much even if they can’t afford to pay their regular bills as if Church leaders are basically counting on divine intervention preventing members from suffering too much as a direct result of this well-intentioned show of faith. This is the kind of thing that can quickly turn completely upside down from good to evil depending on your perspective.
There were some different developments related to the recurring evil world theme that I noticed in the last General Conference, including the following comments. L. Tom Perry wrote:One problem is that much of the media and entertainment that the world shares does not reflect the priorities and values of the majority. For whatever reasons,
too much of our television, movies, music, and Internet present a classic case of a minority masquerading as a majority. Immorality and amorality, ranging from graphic violence to recreational sex, is portrayed as the norm and can cause those who have mainstream values to feel like we are out of date or from a bygone era.In such a media and Internet-dominated world, it has never been harder to raise responsible children and to keep marriages and families together…Despite what much of media and entertainment outlets may suggest, however, and despite the very real decline in the marriage and family orientation of some, the solid majority of mankind still believes that marriage should be between one man and one woman.They believe in fidelity within marriage, and they believe in the marriage vows of “in sickness and in health” and “till death do us part.”…marriage and family are still the aspiration and ideal of most people and that we are not alone in those beliefs. It has never been more of a challenge to find a practical balance between employment, families, and personal needs than it is in our day. As a church, we want to assist in all that we can to create and support strong marriages and families… We want our voice to be heard against all of the counterfeit and alternative lifestyles that try to replace the family organization that God Himself established.We also want our voice to be heard in sustaining the joy and fulfillment that traditional families bring. We must continue to project that voice throughout the world in declaring why marriage and family are so important… One interesting thing about this to me is that it sounds like he is basically directly contradicting the general idea of the conference talk he gave just two years ago because now he is citing a supposed moral majority that shares his views and blaming the media for supposedly mischaracterizing “mainstream” values held by the majority as outdated. Also, both Elder Oaks and Perry quoted Catholics in this conference and Perry pointed out that the LDS proclamation on the family was quoted by a Muslim scholar from Iran at the colloquium on marriage and family he attended at the Vatican last fall as if that was something to be proud of. To me it seems like they feel so threatened and powerless to stop the onslaught of secularism and liberalism/progressivism that now they are starting loosen up somewhat on the us-versus-them mindset of dividing faithful Mormons from everyone else and some of them have expanded “us” to include traditional religious believers and various conservative hardliners as if it was no longer enough to have the support of the Church, scriptures, etc. behind them and they wanted more outside validation that they were not alone in their views.
Well even if the majority of people view “traditional marriage” as the ideal for them that doesn’t necessarily mean that they will think it is fair or right to try to oppress and discriminate against minorities. In fact, it looks to me like many if not easily Romney’s infamous estimate of 47% of American prospective voters are bona fide bleeding-heart liberals that will typically sympathize with minorities and the disadvantaged, and there are probably even more people that feel that way in other places like Canada, Australia, and many Western European countries. Personally I don’t see how many people that live together without being married are any less of a family just because they didn’t go through an official ceremony recognized by the state. Also even if you want to assume that gay sex acts are a sin I don’t see how much of a difference fighting gay marriage is going to make if trying to discourage sin is the goal because it’s not like they need to be married to do this and live together anyway.
Most of all, it looks to me like the single biggest threat to what Church leaders are calling traditional marriage “between a man and a woman” and families is not gay marriage or even cohabitation at all but quite simply divorce. Even most people that haven’t ever experienced divorce themselves will typically know many that have because it is so commonplace nowadays. Well what have Church leaders done or said recently that is likely to reduce the rate of divorces? Personally I don’t see it. Complaining about the media, gay marriage, etc. is not going to help the situation much if at all when the actual reasons people typically get divorced are fights or lingering resentments about money, different interests and priorities, abuse, infidelity, etc. If Church leaders really think family and marriage are so important then it seems like they would say something to discourage Church members from considering divorce as a reasonable reaction to their spouse losing faith in the Church. As it is, with all the emphasis on priesthood, being worthy, temples, etc. it makes perfect sense why many Church members will seriously consider divorce even if the top Church leaders don’t directly approve of this idea. But as always so much of what we hear at Church has no relevance to real life while some of the real day-to-day problems are completely overlooked and we are left to deal with them entirely on our own.
As I understand it unwed couples often slept together without having sexual relations. There was something called bundling in some parts of Europe where the couple were wrapped in bed sheets in such a way they couldn’t move their arms or legs much or have intercourse. Returning to the matter of evil, I definitely see it out there or hear of it. People trafficking and slavery are alive in the west, but most of us don’t have contact with them. The drugs trade globally is also rich, virulent and deadly.
Shawn mentioned television. Yes I think he’s right. Base emotions are pandered to by violent films, reality TV, music videos. In sexual terms, it’s not the gays who are the threat, it’s the encouragement of sex without affection, the idea of it as a commodity, and the unspoken assumption that if you’re not getting it you’re ugly or awkward. The biggest threat to family life is the business environment, not gay marriage. Many offices discourage women from pregnancy.
I think it is safe to say that Elder Perry’s talk was one that nobody here would rate as anywhere near their favorite. 
The biggest threat to marriage today is bad marriages and their effect on marriage – meaning actual bad marriages, the divorces that occur as a result, the divorces that DON’T occur that should, the infidelity that occurs from bad marriages, the negativism and cynicism toward marriage of the children raised in bad marriages, etc.
The biggest threat to marriage, imo, is heterosexuals who are lousy spouses and parents.
It’s easier, however, to blame others for our problems than to see, recognize and fix our own problems – so we tend to blame others and not realize that “an enemy from within hath done this”.
It does seem to me that many talks (especially in GC) often talk about how bad the world is deteriorating. I like this post By Common Consent – the world is not going to hell in a handbasketIt troubles me that they don’t talk much about some of the real serious issues – like human and child sex trafficking. I feel that for many the world is getting better – better health (minus obesity in the US), less wars and threats of war and crime, less government corruption, etc. I wish the church would turn a bit of attention on some substantive issues – like allocating more time for our missionaries to give no-strings-attached Christian service to others.
- You must be logged in to reply to this topic.