gdp's Comments

Hooking Up Smart : Divorce American Style

Wed, 17 Mar 2010 22:41:27 +0000

Honestly, Susan, for the majority of history, marriage has been the privilege (curse?) of the upper classes. Have you ever read "The Way We Never Were" by Stephanie Coontz. If not, please get to the bookstore with all due haste.

Hooking Up Smart : Divorce American Style

Wed, 17 Mar 2010 22:26:21 +0000

Here's a really good article I just found while searching for stuff about "how to keep a man happy." I know you and I have talked several times about what women can do besides sex to keep a man committed (and hopefully married), but honestly, the happiest men I know are the ones whose girlfriends/wives do at least three of the five things in this article: http://www.cheatingways.com/alternatives-to-cheat... Here's the gist of the article: All that shit in Cosmo about fulfilling men's fantasies? It's projection. Women care about giving hand jobs with panties and throwing rose petals all over the bed and bathing in chocolate syrup. Men want blowjobs and spontaneous sex. Here's his list, reduced to the essentials: 1. Unexpected, non-reciprocal oral sex. Often. 2. Thinking about you with another woman. Men love to hear about this in bed. It doesn't even have to be true. Just indulge in the fantasy with him. 3. Make him think you're constantly thinking about him sexually. Even if you're not feeling sexy, send sexy texts or naughty photos. 4. Roleplay "pickup" situations. Flirt with another guy at the bar, then ditch him for the "stranger" (who happens to be your husband). Take him into the bathroom, give him a blowjob. 5. Anal sex. I'm not going to claim that this list is the end-all and be-all of making a man happy for the long term, but it's got the right spirit. The emphasis on blowjobs is important. All men like blowjobs, and they want more than they're getting. Even if they tell you otherwise. If they say they don't like it, either you really suck at... um... sucking, or they're lying. Not all men are into anal sex, but a lot are. I know I can live without it in a relationship, but it's been a nice bonus whenever it's been an option. The main idea, though, is that men want to feel like they are sexually desired, and that you really, really like pleasing them sexually. And the proof is in the pudding... or the putting... out.

Hooking Up Smart : Divorce American Style

Wed, 17 Mar 2010 21:00:56 +0000

Hmm... First, in the spirit of one blogger to another, I'm finding this comment system difficult to navigate. Especially in the threads with a hundred comments, I'm really having a tough time figuring out who's talking to who. It's kind of like reading a hundred random comments. Am I missing something about how these comments fit together? I mean, your response to someone is the top comment, and I had to scroll down to figure out what you were talking about. Also, it's got a nasty habit of telling me I'm not logged in when I'm clearly logged in. And with that said, on to divorce and marriage. I think Matt's triangle is an appropriate illustration of just about everything in relationships. You can generally get one or two things you want, but you can never get everything you want. If you want to protect women as much as possible, you need to make it very easy for them to divorce. If you want otherwise good marriages to last through the bumps in the road, you have to make divorce very difficult to get. You don't get to have both. And as you say, there's something to be said for protecting men. Prenups are nice, but courts can overturn them on a whim. High quality men are more and more wary of the financial obligations of divorce, and well they should be. It sucks that women still make 70 cents on the dollar compared to men in many industries, but it evens out in divorce court. In other words, a divorced man makes significantly less than a divorced woman in the workplace. It takes a little retroactive thinking, but maybe this will make it easier. Suppose I work for ten years at 50k a year. Suppose after living expenses, I have a net worth of 250k, or 50% of my earnings. Now, suppose I get married and divorced, and lose 125k of my net worth. That's the equivalent of 12.5k a year, which effectively drops my yearly earnings for ten years to 50-12.5 or 37.5K a year. 37.5K is 75% of 50K. Now, consider a woman who has been working for ten years at 37.5K doing the same job as the man making 50K. She marries him and then divorces, netting herself 125K in the process. Now who's making more in the workplace? Furthermore, if there are children, a man's income effectively goes down by as much as 33% in many states. Certainly children need to be taken care of, but let's not kid ourselves about this. Not all child support goes into the bellies of children. Many women treat child support as punishment for being a bad husband, and accept more money than they actually need. Of course there are a lot of women who really do need all of it, but we're talking about male perceptions here, right? What men believe about marriage? Men clearly believe that if they come out on the wrong end of a divorce, they'll lose their income both retroactively and going forward into the future. This is a strong disincentive to marry. And of course, this conversation is a continuation of the value conversation. It seems there's a disparity between what women want, what men want, what men are offering, and what women are offering. It really comes back to the central question: If it isn't about children, why would a man get married? Taking common law divorce out of the equation, it's much simpler for a man to simply cohabit with a woman, keep separate bank accounts, and break the relationship off cleanly and without legal involvement if things go south. And since divorce is so common, there it is. Why marry? Women and men both want relationships. It's tempting to think of men as sex machines who want nothing more than twenty holes to fill, but most men want the stability of a relationships, and the friendship that goes with it. But they can get that without marriage. So, we're back to the question. What can women offer that will get them what they want?

Atheist Revolution : To What Degree Is Atheism Voluntary?

Sat, 20 Feb 2010 16:54:46 +0000

This post highlights a really common misconception about how brains work in general, and why Christianity fails before it even gets out of the starting gate. The simple fact of the matter is Free Will doesn't exist. We humans cannot help but believe what makes the most sense to us, and we can't help but perceive what we perceive. This fact pretty much destroys Christian theology. If there is no free will, then nobody can *choose* to believe in Jesus. That being the case, either God was so stupid that he hinged his whole plan on an impossibility, or he is an evil, despicable being, or the whole thing is just made up bullshit. If anyone's interested, I've spelled out the Free Will thing in much greater detail on my blog: http://hambydammit.wordpress.com/2009/11/12/free-...

End Hereditary Religion : Science vs. Religion: Ideology and Methodology

Sun, 16 Aug 2009 22:04:19 +0000

"If one takes the varying populations of the different Christian denominations properly into account, the result is that only one in eight of all Christian marriages, 12.5 percent, end in divorce." According to who and what? Source, please? Methodology please?

Life Without Faith : Weekly Rant: Billy Graham says atheism is a fad for fools

Thu, 9 Jul 2009 16:00:19 +0000

I always wonder where these atheists are. I've been to lots of conferences. Most of my friends are atheists. In over a decade of atheist activism, I've probably met a few thousand atheists. I've not once met an atheist whose dismissal of the existence of God was based on the evils committed in God's name. Not once. Could you point me in the direction of a couple of these folks? Do they happen to all be 18? Seriously. I don't think you've talked to too many atheists, or maybe you're still in high school? I dunno.

End Hereditary Religion : Religion is Not about Tolerance

Wed, 8 Jul 2009 04:25:53 +0000

I'm actually rooting for those folks. If enough people blatantly abuse church-state separation, we might have some luck in calling for a serious overhaul of the church's tax-exempt status. I wonder how many people have thought about just how much tax revenue the government would generate if it charged even a modest income tax on churches.

End Hereditary Religion : Children afraid to tell their parents

Tue, 7 Jul 2009 18:56:34 +0000

I wish I hadn't heard this story a hundred times before. Hell, it's part of my story, except I have been brutally honest with my family, and it didn't turn out very well. One thing that you didn't mention is the horrible dilemma a parent would feel even if they knew for certain what would happen in the future. I wonder, if my mother had known with certainty that religious indoctrination would eventually lead to a nearly complete split between the two of us, what would she have done? Would she have converted to atheism to save our relationship? I doubt it. Instead, she would have faced a hard, painful decision -- do what she herself was indoctrinated to do and knowingly lose a son, or go against her own indoctrination and feel guilty for "letting god down." It's a horrible catch-22, and there's probably nothing that can be done for this generation of atheists who are facing their own horrible choices.

Life Without Faith : Weekly Rant: Billy Graham says atheism is a fad for fools

Sun, 5 Jul 2009 22:00:41 +0000

The more time I spend responding to theists, the more I realize that pretty much every theist argument against atheism or atheists is really just a projection of what's wrong with theism and theists. Billy Graham is a fantastic example. As you say, it's not that BG is popular or that he promotes his own ideas. Hell, that's what it's about. If you've got something you want people to buy, you have to put it out there. It's just damn ironic that every charge he levels at atheism and atheists is at least as true of theists! Sure, Dawkins, et al, are trying to promote their books, but let's do a count at any Barnes and Noble, and see how many Christian books there are versus atheist. Yes, atheism has been around a long time -- much, much longer than Christianity, ironically. No, neither atheism nor theism is the same as it was even a hundred years ago. The thing is, every time science proves another tenet of religion wrong, theists have to adjust their conception of god. Hmmm... I would say that it goes the other way too, but it doesn't. There hasn't been a single tenet of scientific materialism/atheism that has been disproven by theists. Not one. Anyway, great rant. Damn, I wish I had more time to write these days. Keep up the good fight, Brother Richard.

End Hereditary Religion : The Morning After Pill and the Religious Agenda

Sat, 4 Apr 2009 00:54:50 +0000

James, isn't it awful that so many people don't know this? In all honesty (and this opens up a whole new line of discussion) you have to wonder how a nation full of journalists didn't bother to ask a single scientist what the pill actually does. Instead, they asked politicians.

End Hereditary Religion : Quiverfull -- A real and growing danger

Fri, 20 Mar 2009 17:03:07 +0000

I really hope we don't take these four years of a non-theocrat in office too lightly. There's a lot to be done and not much time to do it.

AnAtheist.Net : One of the worst arguments against atheism - ever

Fri, 20 Mar 2009 05:37:49 +0000

Actually, I think Francis Collins argument was pretty damn bad. "See, there's this science, and evolution, and the human genome project... and then I saw a waterfall. Therefore, God."

End Hereditary Religion : The Utilitarian argument is dead

Sun, 15 Mar 2009 01:47:43 +0000

I suppose it would be a mortal sin for anyone to divulge that information. They'd probably be excommunicated, or something...

End Hereditary Religion : What is indoctrination?

Tue, 10 Mar 2009 01:43:06 +0000

Personally, I can't find any functional difference between "cults" and Christianity. The only difference I can see is quantitative. Christians are the majority, so they denounce other indoctrinating religions as cults. If mainstream Christianity were magically transformed into a small minority, and say, Mormonism was the dominant religion in America, Mormons would call Christians cultists. The ultimate difference between indoctrination and critical thought is this: Given a method and facts, a person (child or otherwise) can go into a room by themselves and derive the correct answer. Indoctrination takes external reinforcement to mold someone into the "correct" way of thinking despite any inclinations otherwise.

End Hereditary Religion : Theists in Foxholes

Sat, 28 Feb 2009 05:52:13 +0000

James, it's always been a mystery to me that Christians are opposed to abortion because of very similar logic. If (as most Christians believe) there is an age of accountability, and after a child reaches that age, it can be sent to hell for dying without saying the magic words, AND if a fetus is a human with a soul (as many Christians believe) then the most kind thing a Christian can do is have an abortion. The fetus cannot yet sin, but has a soul... so, it's not going to hell.

End Hereditary Religion : Want to shake off your faith? Try reading your Bible...

Fri, 27 Feb 2009 16:52:30 +0000

Wow. Lots of hubbub about bible verses! I have to admit, I'm not a big fan of arguing against Christianity from the Bible. It's like trying to argue for quantum physics using only novels by James Joyce. The Bible is such a bizarre hodge podge of myths, redactions, errant history, and bald faced lies that I worry for anyone who can say with a straight face that it's inerrant. Better to argue about whether the street lamps in Manhattan are made of cream cheese than try to convince a Biblical literalist of anything at all. That, in my opinion, is why religious indoctrination is so very dangerous. It creates followers who can literally look reality in the face and not see it.

End Hereditary Religion : Escaping the Threat of Hell

Fri, 20 Feb 2009 04:53:19 +0000

Right. The quality of "forgiven" is, for all intents and purposes, beyond the bounds of relevance to the human condition. That is, our knowledge of our state of "forgiven" is contingent on our ability to rely on the word of God, and as we have already seen, that word is logically impossible to establish as reliable. We can no more believe that we are "forgiven" than we can believe that God has told us the truth about how to avoid hell.

End Hereditary Religion : Secular societies enjoy better quality of life

Wed, 18 Feb 2009 22:31:03 +0000

Geez. Even the Templeton Foundation can't find (to my knowledge) any supporting evidence that religiosity and societal health are positively correlated.

End Hereditary Religion : Kin Selection and Favoritism

Wed, 18 Feb 2009 17:06:49 +0000

I'll have to double check this, but I am led to believe by social worker friends that adopted children are statistically the most likely to be abused, if that means anything. I haven't had the time to try to dig for verifiable stats, so you'll have to treat that as heresay for the time being. The bit about genes vs. animals was regarding the paradigm shift caused by the notion of the selfish gene. Dawkins didn't come up with the idea, but his book made it much more apparent to the biological community. That was in the 70s. Before then, it was largely held that organisms were the "primary unit" of evolution, and that genes were what organisms "used" to carry themselves on into the next generation. While this is true from a certain perspective, it is an artificial perspective, and not very useful for making predictions. What the selfish gene theory did was flip that paradigm on its head. (It also ruffled a lot of feathers in the religious and philosophical community!) Essentially, it says that genes are the primary unit of evolution, and organisms are elaborate "gene survival machines" whose sole purpose is to give the genes a competitive advantage. I'm sure you can see that this notion would cause waves among those who believe that humanity is a "special creature." The thing is, explaining things from the point of view of a gene makes sense of a lot of behavior that was completely baffling to evolutionists who were trying to explain adaptations in terms of the interests of organisms. So, instead of thinking of ourselves as animals passing on our genes, the correct scientific perspective is one of genes building new generations of survival machines.

End Hereditary Religion : When Parents Call God Instead of the Doctor

Tue, 17 Feb 2009 18:52:22 +0000

In a rational debate, we would expect the group asking for special dispensation to provide evidence for their status and its exemption. Instead, we get threats, ridicule, and outrage. This treads on dangerous territory. In the article I just posted on kin selection, we can see that the evolutionary urge for parents to jealously protect their children is NOT necessarily the most logical of all situations. In fact, it's not hard to imagine that it's sometimes quite harmful. Hell, we only need to turn on the TV to see the truth of it. No, parents don't get special treatment because they're parents. Any guy and any girl can get together and make a baby. It doesn't take any magic, and there's nothing special about it. Life has been reproducing for billions of years. If our intelligence is worth anything, we can use it to examine our emotions and determine that they're not always in our best interest. Just because their genitals worked properly, it doesn't mean they will be good parents, or that they have a right to do anything they want to their children.