Wednesday, May 15, 2013
BPro: Listen to What the Heyman Said
(www.baseballprospectus.com)
With the Yang-Mills existence problem seemingly solved…we now move on to the Heyman existence problem. Or something.
Read More...And sometimes there isn’t much you can do. I wrote what I did about Hawk Harrelson and The Will To Win because at some point, you have to come to the conclusion that someone isn’t worth talking to anymore. Hawk’s problem wasn’t that he was wrong, it was that he was stuck in a frame of mind that starts from conclusions and will, when it cares to, circle back around to ...
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< 1 2 3 4 5 >If they're legitimately married, yes.
The alternative is unjust. You are consigning an entire class of people to complete and total abstinence, just for being born wired to love someone of the same sex.
Lots of people are consigned to a life of total abstinence under my view (the single, the divorced, married people whose spouse is no longer able to have sex, etc.)
It's only "unjust" if you believe the sexual activity is some sort of right. I don't.
This argument is, of course, quite terrible. But it's all they've got.
Noted and accepted. Still not particularly forgiving, but I get it.
It's only "unjust" if you believe the sexual activity is some sort of right. I don't.
Yikes.
Well, congratulations... it's finally happened... turns out I can imagine a scenario where I might be interested in emigrating to Libertariatopia.
BBC asked a question about the identity of one of the very few ballplayer who has gone on record as having played with a homosexual teammate, and that player's homosexuality being a non-issue. She correctly recalled that this attitude was held by a player known for being a devout Christian (she just got the wrong player).
Neither her question nor my answer was an example of Christian as homophobe. Quite the contrary.
It's pretty standard Catholic teaching. He hasn't said anything unusual (horrible, sure, but not unusual).
Bruce, I do think you came in quick with that one...
Lisa originally brought up the "hyper Christian" reference as a call to how people *should* act.
Superstar or really anything would be good. It's a lot easier to hate the idea of something than to hate an actual guy. Especially if he weren't, y'know, like a total #######. There is so much love and free PR for the first guy to come out, it's amazing to me it hasn't happened yet.
Concur. The position is terrible considered and even more terribly implemented in the world, but that's a problem with the position. I actually find Snapper's honest embrace of the required positions of his religious dogma refreshing. Snapper's error is not in holding the jaw-droppingly awful position on "objectively ordered" sex. That's the error of the Church. Snapper's error is in accepting church dogma without pause.
True story; during college, my best friend and I would refer to our out gay friends as "scrappy, defensive minded middle infielders from San Pedro de Marcoris."
Pretty standard for all traditional religions.
I certainly did not accept it "without pause". I didn't accept it, and certainly didn't practice it for a good chunk of my life.
I accepted it after living the secular position and finding it wanting, studying the Catholic position, studying the teachings of the great theologians, and finding it the only coherent theory of sexuality.
The fact that you need a "coherent theory of sexuality" seems...odd to me.
Really? You don't feel curious about the purpose of life, the concept of "the good", morality, etc.?
There's a lot of liberal posing going on on these threads all the time, but this common sentiment is the kind of sentiment that completely shuts down real change, that denies the humanity of the Ficks and Youngs, both their ignorance and their potential to change. Who the #### are any of us to sit on a high horse and judge when it's not us that will have to deal with the actual nitty gritty of tolerance and acceptance? It's easy to sit on the internet and always be enlightened, a much harder task in real life.
My opinion may come off as unduly harsh, but more STFU is exactly what we DONT NEED.
Catholic Church declining in relevence in the modern world - mystery solved. And if snapper is right this belief is presnet in "pretty much all traditional religions" then it is no surprise the world is slowly turning secular. Newsflash - sex is fun and part of many people's pursuit of happiness.
Anyway, it is a bit late, but my mom is in here late 70s and is very much not bigoted and very open minded. I understand that the percentages skew more bigoted the older the cohort, but I don't like that as an excuse for bigoted behavior. I don't know that any bigoted feelings make one a scumbag, but I don't think age absolves one of responsbility for ones backward beliefs.
1. I don't think life has a purpose, aside from the living of said. I'm not big on teleological wish-casting.
2. I don't need a "coherent theory of sexuality" to be interested in or viably consider "'the good', morality, etc."
Sexuality has no objective order aside from the very rough outline of expressing relationships between two people. There is no "purpose" beyond that. If you must assign a "purpose" to sex, you should stick with "human joy."
It really is not that hard in real life. Take people for who they are. Been there, done that, in real life and not just the internet.
This is not the teaching. You're wrong.
Sure sex is fun, but it causes as much misery as it does happiness.
Think of all the ridiculous behavior people engage in to get sex. We need not be slaves to our animal instincts.
From a biological and psychological standpoint there is a ton more than that, but I know what you are saying.
This has nothing to do with sex per se though. People do ridiculous things to have money, friends, sex, status, and so on. The things they do - no matter how ridiculous - do do suggest the goal is the problem The problem is what people are doing.
If someone is an idiot while trying to have sex, the sex is not the problem (hopefully) it is there idiocy. You are blaming the wrong thing.
2. I don't need a "coherent theory of sexuality" to be interested in or viably consider "'the good', morality, etc."
Sexuality has no objective order aside from the very rough outline of expressing relationships between two people. There is no "purpose" beyond that. If you must assign a "purpose" to sex, you should stick with "human joy."
That's not a coherent purpose, since sex causes as much misery as it does joy.
And, I don't see how you can completely ignore the procreative nature of sex. If we're just smart animals (i.e. nothing exists that transcends the material world we experience), then procreation is the only purpose of sex. Any enjoyment is just an accident.
I do not believe this is true.
Enjoyment is built in to encourage procreation. They are linked evolutionarily in humans.
If someone is an idiot while trying to have sex, the sex is not the problem (hopefully) it is there idiocy. You are blaming the wrong thing.
I disagree. They behave idiotically because they raise the object (money, friends, sex, whatever) to the status of an idol; it becomes their "god".
The fixation on these false idols, rather than some coherent concept of "the good" (need not be Christian or Deistic, Aristotle and Plato had them)is the root cause of the idiocy.
CEOs that get caught cooking the books to get even richer are not wrong b/c they are bad at stealing, they're wrong because they raised wealth to a status above moral behavior.
More correctly, hangups about sex and getting strung out by pointless guilt afterwards causes misery. Generally speaking, consensual sex is pleasurable for all parties as a *thing.* Some, moreso than others, I suppose.
You can use your hands to kill an animal for food. You can use your hands to rock your child to sleep. It's almost as if your hands have no objective purpose, per se. Procreation is one thing you can do with sex. Relationship building is another. Just straight up pleasure is a third.
I don't have time to say more, but this is just insane.
The only way this can be true is if human beings are fundamentally irrational - in a deep and neurotically pervasive fashion. If you think that God designed us to be Freud's worst nightmares, then I don't really see how you can hold out hope that embracing our 'rational' higher minds is supposed to be a pathway to anything productive.
I think this is a pretty big overstatement. It can cause either, but AS MUCH misery? Now, religion--religion is something that one could reasonably argue has caused as much misery as joy.
Or, alternatively, if you think the misery and joy of sex balance out, perhaps you've just been doing it wrong.
Nope. Most animals don't need any pleasure in sex to procreate, the urge is sufficient. Enjoyment is built in to link the couple to each other, to encourage stable relationship to raise the children.
The unique feature of humans is the need for massive investment in young children; human babies are uiquely underdeveloped. It is very difficult for a human mother to raise a child alone, unlike most any other animals. Therefore the need is for the father to provide support and protection.
That's why humans get pleasure from sex, and why women are interested in sex outside of the fertile period. To bind the couple together and keep the man around.
Or, alternatively, if you think the misery and joy of sex balance out, perhaps you've just been doing it wrong.
It's all joy for me at this point, but in the past there was significant misery, breakups, cheating, etc.
There's also all the STDs, marriages broken by adultery, the economic and social problems caused by single motherhood. The ledger is far from one sided.
Man, you must have had some really bad sex.
I don't disagree with any of those aspects of sex. You're the one that limited it.
1. How do you know other animals don't experience pleasure from sex?
2. Humans aren't the only species that couples to raise offspring.
Huh? How's that again? My position is that sex is not objective ordered, nor objectively disordered. Rather, the concept of an 'objective' to sex and human relationships is categorically false to start. How is that limiting? You're the one saying sex is "for procreation."
I guess you missed the part when I said it was linked in humans? Cats have barbs on the junk to help with procreation. But I wasn't talking about cats, I was talking about humans, and in humans it is linked along with all the other sexual differences we have with many animals, including other primates. Human women don't go into 'heat' like dogs or many animals do, but so what? Our secondary sexual characteristics are much more "on display" than in many species (and less than others", similarly our sexual dimorphism exists but is not as extreme as some species.
None of the is relevent to my point that pleasure in sex is not in any way shape or form (excepting perhaps the original mutation) an accient any more than any other genetic trait is.
Why you think pleasure in sex relates to pairbonding and shared child rearing I honestly have no idea, but since there is nine months between sex and the arrival of the little bundle I really doubt the linkage.
You're conflating a lot of disparate parts into one thing and calling it "sex," just to fit your preferred social model of a "good."
I guess the priests never heard about providing gift baskets later.
What? You example suggest you agree with me and that can't be right. I am saying it is not the sex that is the problem it is people's behavior towards sex and that seems to be what your CEO example is saying also. It is not the money or even trying to get money, but what exactly the CEO does. Similarly it is not the sex or trying to have sex, it is what some people do - which is not an indictment of sex.
Right. It is not the sex, but the uneducated unprotected sex and its consequences. But I am pretty sure snapper is against enjoyable, safe, protected sex with none of those negative consequences (including breakups and so on) outside of marriage. Which tells me it is the sex and not the consequences at the root of it for him.
The irony here is that you are the one presuming that we are slaves to our animal instincts, that we can't so much as engage in sex outside of procreative acts between married men and women without having sex take over us and turn us into mad beasts of the savanna. I propose that that is a false concern.
People also behave "idiotically" when they raise God to the status of an idol. Should you be blaming god for that idiotic behavior the same way you blame sex?
I believe 40 Year Old Virgin made a similar point.
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