PatrickEklektos wrote:there is polygamy in the OT, however, it's not anywhere stated as a good thing nor encouraged. It seems with the Bible's lack of condemnation with earlier men, it was more tolerated than anything else.
However, in Genesis, we have one man and one woman. Not many.
Also you have one of the prophets (I think it was Nahum but I'm not 100% on his name) who married a loose woman and it is reported that of her three children, two were not said to be his. Finally she left him for a time. All of this was spoken of condemningly in picture of the constantly condemned Israel's Idolatry.
"Shutting Out the Sun" wrote:Japanese, it has been estimated, spend as much in the illicit sex trade as the nation does on its defense budget, and tens of thousands of Thai and Filipino girls are imported to Japan each year on "entertainment" visas to help Japanese men escape the stresses of their joyless lives as sararimen...
The fact is, however that these neon-gilded establishments exist precisely because Japanese find it so difficult to establish casual social relations in situations where money doesn't change hands. Data show that men and women live separate lives, have sex less often than those in other nations, and have little relaxed contact with the opposite sex...
In the traditional social structure of Japan, marriage was nothing less than a corporate merger involving to family empires... The prospective bride and groom had little to say over whom they would wed. Love had almost no bearing on a matrimonial contract.
...Those feudal attitudes toward marriage persisted well into the modern era.... As recently as 1982, three in ten marriages were arranged, government statistics show.
A 2004 Health Ministry survey... concluded that 20 percent of marriages had lacked physical intimacy for one year or more, while almost one-third of married couples had not had sex for at least a month.
Warrior 4 Jesus (post: 1472817) wrote:Far out Midori, how far does your definition of theology stretch?
Indeed it was. In fact, when I posted it was to an old version of the thread I had sitting in a tab (a mistake I make too often), and I hadn't even seen Topaz's post when I submitted my post.shooraijin (post: 1472849) wrote:I believe his comment was meant for Patrick's post.
" wrote:Really? I think it's much more simple than all that. I seriously doubt they're thinking 'this person is perfect because they would provide me with perfect offspring'. It's more likely that they just want to jump each other's bones because they like what they see and it feels good.
The latter is a biological approximation of the former.Warrior 4 Jesus (post: 1472866) wrote:Really? I think it's much more simple than all that. I seriously doubt they're thinking 'this person is perfect because they would provide me with perfect offspring'. It's more likely that they just want to jump each other's bones because they like what they see and it feels good.
sex becomes a positive reinforcement for producing offspring (which otherwise we might choose to avoid). Likewise, when we say we prefer "cute" or "pretty" girls, what we're really saying is "I'm looking for subtle variations in symmetry that would could possibly be a sign of bad genetics - that way my offspring are the combination of two good sets of genes".
Kaligraphic (post: 1472876) wrote:When we read the comment that polygamy is the norm, it's very easy to jump on that as something offensive, but the fact of the matter is, most cultures throughout history have been polygamous - or, to be technical, polygynous. They have allowed for multiple wives to be associated with a single husband. This has actually proven to be both robust and efficient in allocating partners historically. Historically, men have typically had significantly higher mortality rates, from conflict, overwork, and like factors. Also, the greater physical strength and endurance of men meant that they produced more wealth. Given consistently lower population of males as opposed to females, it simply made sense for those males who were strong enough to survive and productive enough to be able to feed multiple women to take on multiple wives. It meant that fewer women died of starvation and populations were able to recover after conflicts, disasters, and other reductions.
Now, I will differentiate for a moment the concepts of adultery and polygamy. Polygamy is a common element of social organization. Adultery is not. Polygynous relationships still preserve information as to both parents. While there may be multiple women in the household, it's pretty hard to be confused about who is giving birth. On the other hand, knowledge of paternity has pretty much required a guarantee of fidelity up until modern genetic testing, especially in relatively undifferentiated populations. Adultery, as it has commonly been understood through history, has typically involved interference with knowledge of paternity. Even in cultures that have treated women as property, the objection to adultery is rooted in this. It is a denial of the husband's ability to reproduce, and a theft of the resources that would have gone to the husband's own offspring. The custom of polygyny was not based around ideas of just trying to sleep around, but was actually quite resistant to gigolos, treating them as thieves.
" wrote:Your statements only make sense in a world where children would be an unavoidable result of sex. There are condoms, birth control pills, and surgical procedures that can reduce or even completely prohibit children from being conceived. Men with vasectomies like sex just as much as men who don't.
Also, where do your statements leave people that are naturally sterile/barren, or have become so over time? I'm pretty sure that people who are physically incapable of having children still like sex, which renders your statements nonsensical.
" wrote:Also, where do your statements leave people that are naturally sterile/barren, or have become so over time? I'm pretty sure that people who are physically incapable of having children still like sex, which renders your statements nonsensical.
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