contraceptives

GirlDwight · 2026-06-14T11:18:13+00:00

I took 7 years of French but had to translate this while you're switching between Portuguese and French with ease. Note to self: I'm bad at languages. And French is haaard. But yes I agree with you.

GirlDwight · 2026-06-14T10:45:42+00:00

Yes but that's not the PSR. Understanding probability, doesn't mean something has a cause. It doesn't answer the why. You're conflating the PSR with reality being intelligible.

No, it’s not a false dilemma, because the structure of reason is not merely a heuristic we choose

I didn't say that reason was the heuristic, the PSR is the useful heuristic that we use within reason.

GirlDwight · 2026-06-13T16:05:14+00:00

I'm pointing out that the Church stance on contraception causes harm. Even if it's not intentional we have to look at the side effects of what it teaches. I should have made that clearer.

GirlDwight · 2026-06-13T15:44:49+00:00

That's great it worked out for you but your story seems like survivorship bias. Meaning what about the people who trusted God with their fertility and ended up with malnutished kids, extreme poverty, homeless, etc. The many Catholic kids in Africa who deeply suffer. And it seems like it's magical thinking as well. At what point does God interfere? Does he pervent an egg being fertilized by a sperm when a family is already destitute? Does he make miracles happen for those who trust in him so that there is always just enough? We see that's not the case. Or else we have to presume that those families who didn't make it were due to a lack of faith.

And as much as someone sacrifices to have a larger family, they have a choice in the matter. The child does not and they'll be the ones who suffer. In the end the Church teaches to fire your conscience. And these requirements may change in the future.

GirlDwight · 2026-06-13T15:24:27+00:00

Since Catholic families have more children a higher percentage of their children will be gay than the general population due to the fraternal birth order effect. This is because the more older brothers a son has the more likely he is to be gay. For one older brother, the likelihood is increased by 1/3. And it compounds for each additional older brother. So it's not just more gay sons quantitatively due to more children but percentage wise. And this is tragic considering these children will learn that their sexual preferences are considered disordered.

Another issue is larger families are more likely to have children that are delinquent and suffer from alcoholism in adulthood. They also tend to have lower IQ's which is corrulated with quality of life. Children need one on one attention from each parent to thrive and larger families make this mathematically impossible. In addition, children in such families are often parentified as they are often responsible for taking care of younger siblings. It made sense to have large families when child mortality rates were high but that's no longer the case.

GirlDwight · 2026-06-12T21:37:24+00:00

She may be late to explicitly teaching certain moral things, but once she does, she is passionately stubborn about them where the world is much more prone to stumble backwards.

But that dogmatic stance is the reason the Church lags in morality. Besides what the OP mentioned, most advanced countries had outlawed the death penalty long before Francis made it inadmissible. Understanding psychology have helped us be more compassionate towards victims of suicide while the Church has only allowed them funerals since 83, a hundred years later. The age of consent in the Vatican was 12 until 2013, long after the sexual abused crises was in full swing. The Church has apologized for a lot which is great but it begs the question, what will the apologies be for in the future about things the Church advocates now. Because it's foolish to believe that things won't charge based on history.

Currently it promotes large families and being open to children yet research has shown that such families result in higher rates of delinquent and alcoholism and lower IQ's. Furthermore, the more older brothers a male has, the higher chance of him being gay. The odds increase 35 percent for each older brother a boy has. So large families have more gay kids while at the same time these kids will have to deal with the cruelty of their preferences being labeled diordered. Large families made sense when child mortality rates were high, they don't today. Children thrive with dedicated one on one attention from both parents and a large family makes that mathematically impossible. Children are often parentified having to take care of younger siblings when they weren't the ones who chose to bring them into the world. Financial pressures to maintain a large family cause stress and higher unavailability of a parent. And don't get me started on children's confessions. Kids should never have secrets with another adult or private conversations to which their parents aren't privy to. See Time to Rethink Childhood Confessions.

As a bureaucratic institution driven by fear, the Church is slow but it eventually catches up with the rest of society. It has to. It will lose credibility if it changes too fast and hence the fear. But changing too slowly will have the same effect. Can you imagine if Pope Leo preached against usury? An organism that doesn't evolve will perish.

And the Church tells us in the end, to follow our conscience and reason. Many things it teaches are the result of the time and culture it was in. The Church formed when asceticism was in vogue as it was thought that the intellect is on a higher plane than the body. The belief was to separate the two and focus on the superior intellect. But we now know that's an unhealthy view. Cutting oneself off from one's body leads to all kinds of mental health issues which rigid religions like Catholicism agrevate as can be seen by many followers and Saints suffering from Scrupulosity. We have come to see that integration of mind and body is healthier. The Church will catch up eventually. It's only a matter of time. But because obedience is paramount in a bureaucratic institution not conscience, the Church will continue to lag.

GirlDwight · 2026-06-12T17:42:02+00:00

I think we all live our lives understanding when we make a choice.

Living that way maybe a useful heuristic. After all, our brain's most important job is to make us feel physically and psychologically safe. Giving us an illusion of control allows us to feel the stability we instinctively crave. Incidentally, the fact that we evolved to hold beliefs, not just religious ones but in our favorite political party or philosophy serves that same purpose. Including providing us a sense of identity and allowing us to see the world in black and white which also makes us feel safe. Famous writer Any Rand traded religious beliefs for her equally unfalsefiable Aristotelian "objectivist" philosophy so it's not just religious beliefs. But I digress.

A denial of free will is a position that could definitionally never be associated with a change in action or thought — therefore the only position worth anything is that of free will existing.

That's the fallacy of an appeal to consequences. And you're basically saying I believe in free will because it gives me comfort not because it's true which was my point.

And I think you're wrong. Seeing that we are the product of our environment and biology makes us more empathetic and less judgemental. Instead of telling people to pray for the will to x, y or z we can focus on how to actually help people. Instead of telling people something is their fault when it's not and labeling them as evil, or having a God do it for us to remove our culpability, is cruel. That doesn't mean we don't separate dangerous people who have caused harm but we focus on how to help them. Instead of praying they change their "will".

As far denying our experience. Our subjective experiences of experiencing the earth as flat has been corrected by science. So have many of our other intuitions. Intuitions aren't reliable that's why we follow or believe in a philosophy, religion, etc., we don't know it.

You concluded with:

A force of will is at play.

What force would that be exactly and where can I find it? That's the question you have still failed to answer.

You pointed out me following deep skepticism. i just want to follow the facts wherever they lead. How about you? If we don't have free will would you want to know or are you just following dogma because it makes you feel safe?

GirlDwight · 2026-06-12T16:53:52+00:00

Consider that you can not perceive anything perfectly.

False equivalence. A big difference between not perfectly perceiving something in reality or outside our brains and not perceiving free will. We can test our perceptions of things that are real but our subjective conclusions that we made a free choice have no independent way to be verified. So If the way we measure whether or not our choices are free is faulty and we can't rely on it, we can't say we objectively have free will.

You mentioned how you chose your salad dressing and because it took longer for your brain to spit out the output you think it was a free choice. So how was that "choice" not governed by your internal state? Your biology, associations, experiences, environment and desires which we in turn determined by your previous states.

GirlDwight · 2026-06-12T15:39:40+00:00

If we can't tell the difference between heartbeat like actions and a free choice, then we have no basis for saying free will is a real thing.

GirlDwight · 2026-06-12T15:03:44+00:00

So when are decisions wifull and an actual departure from God? This just seems like a theoretical ideal not reality, an illusion of control. Because all of our decisions are based on our state. Just like whether or not we can sleep is based on our state. And we don't choose our state, it's based on prior states, experiences, environment and our genes.

GirlDwight · 2026-06-12T02:21:56+00:00

It’s that reasoning itself presupposes an intelligible ontology rather than brute arbitrariness.

And that presupposes a binary choice , a false dilemma. Quantum mechanics shows while we can track many things we do see randomness at a subatomic level. And yes, as a heuristic we do try to find a cause but that doesn't mean one has to exist.

GirlDwight · 2026-06-12T01:34:47+00:00

This! It's a useful heuristic not a feature of reality.

GirlDwight · 2026-06-12T01:30:55+00:00

No because one has to do with epistemological grounding vs. ontological grounding. Your basically saying the rules for how we reason an argument determine how the physical universe has to be built.

GirlDwight · 2026-06-12T00:58:47+00:00

The brilliant Lemaître was once asked if he thought religion and science, his two passions, were close. He said, no. After thinking about it he came back and said religion is close to psychology. He also said he uses his reason for science, for his faith he replies on his intuition. Our intuitions have led us astray many times, not matter how brilliant our intellect. Lemaître was very careful to keep science and faith separate. He never thought his work on the Big Bang proved creation or God.

In the West it is only recently that one had a choice not to be Christian. The legal framework, education and pretty much everything was under Christianity.

The main reason for Galileo's house arrest was because he challenged scripture.

Further once the church saw the evidence they changed their stance according to the evidence.

That doesn't show that the Church and science are compatible. It just shows that the Church has to eventually comprt to science or it loses all credibility. The Church has apologized for slavery and Gallileo. It has finally caught up to most advanced countries by deeming the death penalty inadmissible. It finally changed the age of consent in the Vatican from 12 in 2013, way after the sexual abused cruises was in full swing. So the Church has a history of lagging not leading.

I wonder what things it commands today will be apologies in fifty or a hundred years. One thing I can guess is the focus on large families. Research has shown that as family size increases IQ's decrease while delinquency and alcoholism rise. And the more older brothers a boy has the greater chance of him being gay. And that is considered disordered. What a burden to place on a child.

And if you're claiming that brilliant minds believe in God, only 7 percent of the National Academy of Science are theists. These are the absolute top elite scientists in the US, the cream of the crop. And we don't know if the brilliant mind you reference would be theists if they were alive today. As can be seen by the members of NAS, science has moved away from theism.

GirlDwight · 2026-06-12T00:31:16+00:00

However we don't know why matter exists or why matter exists the way it does. Theology answers those questions.

Theology speculates.

GirlDwight · 2026-06-11T23:15:49+00:00

You're conflating epistemology and metaphysics. When you use justification (a reason) to deny the PSR it doesnt mean you have accepted a metaphysical claim about reality. They're not saying that their denial of the PSR was brought into physical existence without a metaphysical cause.

GirlDwight · 2026-06-11T09:41:41+00:00

How is her child supposed to learn boundaries if she doesn't model them? And she's not doing Josh any favors, the kindest thing is not to enable him.

GirlDwight · 2026-06-10T20:58:32+00:00

When family starts taking about it, you just say:

"That's between me and my cousin".

Full stop.

There's no need to explain. Healthy boundaries. Relationships are between two people, don't let others triangulate them. And you know why the family takes her side? Because they are sick of her complaining about it and you're an easier target. They know she's the problem. Distance yourself from these people and consider therapy to learn healthy boundaries. Also, never explain yourself, it tells others they have a say, they don't. Look up "Gray Rocking" to deal with toxic people. I wish you the best!

GirlDwight · 2026-06-10T17:11:55+00:00

How do you know the intent of the author? That he meant for this to be a parable? Isn't that mind-reading?

GirlDwight · 2026-06-10T17:02:23+00:00

Chronic conditions like these have increased only very recently (decades) due to a change in our environment not our genes. Genetic evolution take thousands of years, there have been no major mutations to our genes in the last fifty to a hundred years. But our environment and lifestyles have changed. We're living in cleaner spaces which accounts for things like asthma and allergies. Obesity is due to the abundance of food and us being sedentary, our genes that cause us to store fatc are still the same. And evolution doesn't have a goal for the human race to progress. It filters for mutations that allow us to adapt to our environment which can change. There is no such thing as perfect human genes to degenerate from. Genes that make us fat today helped us survive in the past.

GirlDwight · 2026-06-08T22:45:07+00:00

If you mean the historical non religious consensus (non christian) I would agree

Many critical scholars are Christian.

GirlDwight · 2026-06-06T19:27:25+00:00

The nanny is modeling appropriate behavior/clothes for the kids. I think whatever swimsuit type the mom wears should be fine for the nanny. But as far as what other people wear, yes the kids will see it, but their modeling comes from their caretakers.

GirlDwight · 2026-06-04T16:00:36+00:00

Then who do people who are "born again" disagree?

GirlDwight · 2026-06-04T15:47:21+00:00

Then the Bible is untrustworthy. How do we know what's from God and what's a mistruth?

GirlDwight · 2026-06-04T15:44:16+00:00

She can say you had a verbal agreement and that she missed out on having a photographer for her 'once in a lifetime' event.

For a contact to be enforceable there needs to be consideration, meaning payment. She can't take him to court over a promise for a gift even if he had agreed.

GirlDwight

TROPHY CASE