So I’ve decided to bring the “Kathy” series to an end. However, we’ve had some fun in those threads when the conversation has gone off into interesting tangents, so I’d like to keep that part of it going for anyone who’s interested. These new threads will no longer focus on Kathy or the things we were discussing with her. So thanks for your time, Kathy! Take care.
There are no real rules for these threads. But to kick off the conversation, I’ll go back to the discussion on Paul that a few of us were having. Laurie views Deut 13 as a prophecy about Paul, so why don’t we take a quick look at it?
“If a prophet or a dreamer of dreams arises among you and gives you a sign or a wonder, 2 and the sign or wonder that he tells you comes to pass, and if he says, ‘Let us go after other gods,’ which you have not known, ‘and let us serve them,’ 3 you shall not listen to the words of that prophet or that dreamer of dreams. For the Lord your God is testing you, to know whether you love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul. 4 You shall walk after the Lord your God and fear him and keep his commandments and obey his voice, and you shall serve him and hold fast to him. 5 But that prophet or that dreamer of dreams shall be put to death, because he has taught rebellion against the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt and redeemed you out of the house of slavery, to make you leave the way in which the Lord your God commanded you to walk. So you shall purge the evil from your midst.
6 “If your brother, the son of your mother, or your son or your daughter or the wife you embrace or your friend who is as your own soul entices you secretly, saying, ‘Let us go and serve other gods,’ which neither you nor your fathers have known, 7 some of the gods of the peoples who are around you, whether near you or far off from you, from the one end of the earth to the other, 8 you shall not yield to him or listen to him, nor shall your eye pity him, nor shall you spare him, nor shall you conceal him. 9 But you shall kill him. Your hand shall be first against him to put him to death, and afterward the hand of all the people. 10 You shall stone him to death with stones, because he sought to draw you away from the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. 11 And all Israel shall hear and fear and never again do any such wickedness as this among you.
12 “If you hear in one of your cities, which the Lord your God is giving you to dwell there, 13 that certain worthless fellows have gone out among you and have drawn away the inhabitants of their city, saying, ‘Let us go and serve other gods,’ which you have not known, 14 then you shall inquire and make search and ask diligently. And behold, if it be true and certain that such an abomination has been done among you, 15 you shall surely put the inhabitants of that city to the sword, devoting it to destruction, all who are in it and its cattle, with the edge of the sword. 16 You shall gather all its spoil into the midst of its open square and burn the city and all its spoil with fire, as a whole burnt offering to the Lord your God. It shall be a heap forever. It shall not be built again. 17 None of the devoted things shall stick to your hand, that the Lord may turn from the fierceness of his anger and show you mercy and have compassion on you and multiply you, as he swore to your fathers, 18 if you obey the voice of the Lord your God, keeping all his commandments that I am commanding you today, and doing what is right in the sight of the Lord your God.
I can see how one could apply this to Paul. However, I can also see how Jews could have applied it to Jesus as well, especially if he was claiming divinity for himself. And I’m sure this could have applied to lots of people during Israel’s history. Why should we think it’s pointing to Paul specifically, and why wouldn’t it also apply to Jesus?
Finding Truth 
Not to mention, inhumane—cruel.
Well, yes. I’ve already been chastised about “whining” but if this were anyone besides god almighty we would say this was abuse of power. Why, then, would anyone gleefully go along and just accept this kind of abuse simply because…God?
In the real world, even if it takes [some of us] a long time, we walk away from people who do this kind of bullshit.
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I can dig it, William – I’m in a discussion on another site about spanking, which the lady claims comes from “the testimony of god”!
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it would be way too generic to simply say, “I dont have issue with spanking,” because I think it depends on a lot of factors.
Spanking a kid on the bottom is different than spanking a kid on the face or stomach. Spanking a kid on the bottom for accidentally spilling milk is different than spanking a kid on the bottom because the kid keeps trying to pull the TV down on their head or keeps trying to get in the street or something like that.
and i don’t think that all pain and all discomfort are bad or detrimental.
Kids are also the only people we put in the corner. If an employer put a bad employee or one who made a mistake in the corner at work, would we find that acceptable behavior or would we think it’s pretty demeaning to treat and adult like a child? almost like putting diapers on an adult.
I’m not saying everyone should hit their kids, and some should not, but i’m not yet convinced that spanking should all be tossed out. I think it is one tool a parent has, and like most tools, it has a specific purpose and should be used with respect and care, as it can easily be misused.
am I the lone non-believer here on this?
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regarding male dominance – I do not think that should be the way it is. In fact, I really like all the comments from everyone here (male and female) and my wife and I are equal partners – which is the way i want it.
I asked the question about this from a primitive standpoint. Take away our smart phones, email and debt cards, would we resort back to the stronger making the rules? this doesn’t make it right, but is it what we are when you strip us down?
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Nate, LOVE Louis C.K!! I laugh ’til I cough every time I hear him! 🙂
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I never spanked any of my children William, and they’re all responsible, professional adults, living happy, well-adjusted lives – hard to figure, I know, considering who their sire is —
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oh, not at all. I’ve seen several families successfully raise children without ever spanking them.
I’ve also seen several families successfully raise children while spanking them, but i realize this is in no definitive proof.
I think children aren’t produced with cookie cutters, but are quite different. Some are more stubborn that others, etc. I do not think that spanking are a one size fits all and it would not make up for parent’s lack of nurture and education, example, and on and on.
I dont think it’s black and white and I dont think it’s as easy as “spanking = hitting and hitting = bad.” That’s too simplified to accurately portray the reality i think.
if spanking is bad, why is it bad? I get extremes, so lets talk about this in moderation. If moderate and consistent spanking is bad, why is it bad?
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William, I’ll give that one a go. First of all, I spanked my kids. Yes, hand to diaper-clad bottom if one ran on the road, or wooden spoon on the backside to get their attention. I am not proud that I did that, and of course I can give you all the justification for having done that – I had four babies in six years and my husband was away much of the time. My kids had to mind. I offer this as an explanation, not as an excuse.
I see now that I was wrong to have done that. The reason? My own kids are bringing their own children up using other methods of discipline – ones that I was leery of at first, but now see to be much more effective and acceptable. Granted, it takes much more time to explain things to a 2 year old, but I see that method as giving that child much more respect as a person and valuing the fact that they cannot be expected to be mini-adults. I observe that my own kids really think about their every act with their own kids; that they always consider that the child does not have the same skill set for dealing with frustration and anxiety. I have come to admire the way they deal with the grandchildren, even though it took awhile for me to see the results. So I guess what I am saying to you is this – I think there are other tools that work as well and don’t involve an unfair power dynamic. Do you see what I mean?
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I view spanking as a quick fix to a complex issue – rather than take the time to discuss the problem with the child and trying to get to the core, spankers apply their version of a “solution,” and move on, which has done nothing for the child, or the original issue.
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Well, when I was a child I was spanked. My parents only did this a handful of times. They never spanked me right away – as in, not when they were angry. They always waited and after the spanking they always explained why I got a spanking and had me tell them in my own words what I had done wrong. Then they always made sure I knew they loved me. I didn’t grow up a bitter, deranged, individual, thinking that violence is the answer. That just wasn’t the lesson I learned.
Having said that, were I to have children of my own I wouldn’t spank them. I can see that there are other, more effective, ways to handle discipline.
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“why would war, male dominance and corporal punishment be bad?”
William, I could share hundreds of studies that took me over 10 years to absorb, so I can’t address this question in one comment post.
For one, war can lead to PTSD and further psychological problems and brain injuries, which can greatly affect behavior. War creates orphans and neglect of their emotional and psychical needs. This can cause pons damage (in brain stem) which can lead to attachment disorders, and toxic stress which releases toxic hormones, changing the brain’s architecture and size. Attachment disorders interfere with an individual’s ability to form appropriate relationships and feel safe and secure.
“Behaviors observed include poor peer relationships, hyper vigilance, anxiety, destruction to self or others, superficially engaging phoniness, indiscriminate affection with strangers, extreme measures to gain and exert control, lying, extreme anger, manipulation, violence, poor impulse control, lack of conscience, cruelty to animals, and learning delays or disabilities.”
Regarding corporal punishment, there are vasts amounts of peer reviewed studies showing that corporal punishment on children affects brain development, behavior, and causes toxic stress.
From Harvard — Center on Developing Child
“The future of any society depends on its ability to foster the healthy development of the next generation. Extensive research on the biology of stress now shows that healthy development can be derailed by excessive or prolonged activation of stress response systems in the body (especially the brain), with damaging effects on learning, behavior, and health across the lifespan.
Source—developingchild.harvard.edu/index.php/key_concepts/toxic_stress_response/
I also recommend reading the extensive ACE (Adverse Childhood Development) study by the Center for Disease Control. I’m not going to activate the link as I’m posting multiple links and it may go to moderation. Just copy/paste
—cdc.gov/violenceprevention/childmaltreatment/consequences.html—
I recommend reading the article “Peace Among Primates” by Robert Salposky, showing that alpha males create toxic environments, (rarely share resources) and the more dominant males you have in a society, the greater the instability. Abnormal sex ratio causes many social ills. Chine is very worried. 119 baby boys are born in China for every 100 girls. Also, when has there ever been peace in the Middle East (the hub of 3 major religions) in the last 7 thousand years?
In Sapolsky’s article, scroll down to the subtitle “Left behind”
—greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/peace_among_primates—
What happened was, as Sapolsky put it, they created a baboon utopia among the Forest Troop baboons, when 1/2 of the alpha males died from tainted meat. Bullying against beta males decreased, and abuse against females decreased as well. Increased “morality”. This is not to dis alpha males, per se, just understanding what can happen when you live in a society that promotes and glorifies alpha males (note media) — cultures that create alpha male gods. As I shared in my comment to Powell, too much power causes a lack of empathy for others and poor decision making. Sound familiar?
A study was published in the journal Nature on Wednesday. Richard Wrangham, a professor of human evolutionary biology at Harvard, has been working at field sites in Africa since the 1970s. The researchers examined records from chimpanzee communities in Tanzania, Senegal, Guinea, Ivory Coast, the Republic of Congo, Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Uganda.
They found that lethal attacks (among their own species) seem to be more common in crowded communities with lots of males, suggesting that the violence may be an adaptation that helps in the competition for food and mates.
This is just scratching the surface, and no, I didn’t take your question in the wrong way. I appreciate these questions. I think we really need to get to the root of our societal ills and for the most part, they are simply not being addressed. Religions, such as the Abrahamic faiths, exacerbate the problem when they are used as a template, especially for modern society.
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Carmen, I understand you perfectly.
Let me back up, if I may. you make perfect sense too, i just want to clarify a bit more if i can.
My parents whipped me with belts, switches, wooden spoons, hands and the like. They also took time to explain everything after, before and sometimes during the spankings.
I do not spank my kids anything like I was spanked and I spank very sparingly. My wife and I take the time to explain and teach as much as we can. We take parenting very seriously. But we have found with our kids that constant reminders and rational explanations do not always sink in – or impact them enough to change their behavior.
They are not bad kids.
I was raised to do what my parents said. It wasn’t a nazi house, but they had rules and one of them was to be respectful and to obey. I feel the same way, and while I am not as heavy handed, i still want crisp respect and quick obedience. I’m not a task master, and I spank sparingly – nothing at all like the beatings I received, yet I wouldn’t say that my parents were wrong either. I was a stubborn kid, more so than my siblings, and as a result, i got more spankings.
I’ve never spanked my kids because it made me feel good, in fact, i never want to do it – just like I don’t like to see my kids get their shots.
I think spanking are ways to get your kid’s attention very quickly when they arent old enough to fully appreciate reason – especially when reason has been tried or when there isn’t time for a sit down explanation.
does that make sense?
and I know this sounds odd, but why is discomfort and pain bad? Again, the extremes are easy to identify, but i’m taking about where the extremes meet.
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Oops again, I didn’t mean for all that to show up as a link. Left out a bracket some where. Nate, can you fix that, please? I think it may be where I linked the Attachment disorder article. Thanks.
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“Why, then, would anyone gleefully go along and just accept this kind of abuse simply because…God? In the real world, even if it takes [some of us] a long time, we walk away from people who do this kind of bullshit.”
Ruth, I agree. That’s why I brought up Stockholm syndrome, because, IMO, anyone who subjects themselves to such abuse (and teachings), or justifies it (remains in that relationship) must be experiencing some form of it.
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Nate, thank you. 🙂
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Neuronotes, thanks for the links.
And I’m not an alpha male… uh, I was asking for a friend…
seriously, though, I am not.
Good points about war, which brings more questions to my mind, but i wont ask as it would be getting off topic.
I guess I brought up war as a reaction to extreme injustice – like ISIL invading Iraqi villages, etc. We dont live in a perfect world, so when crazy alpha male drunk D-bags come calling, maybe war is justified, if not necessary in defense.
But then if we go to the extremes, like we take all our modern conveniences away, and our tribe is running out of food and babies are dying, but the other tribe has food or maybe we’re competing for the same needed resources, wouldn’t we war over that out of a sense of survival? I guess, maybe the point i’m making is more about whether war is always “bad” or just “leave as a last resort”
but this may be too far off topic too… like drinking urine, no way I’d do that under normal circumstances, but if I were dying of thirst? yeah, disregard the war question.
I will check out the studies on spanking for sure. I’m very curious to see how the studies were conducted and how they reached their conclusions.
thanks.
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Absolutely. That’s what I get out of Divine Command Theory. The notion that God is God and as such can do with his creation whatever he pleases, in whatever way he pleases, up to and including genocide simply because he’s God and then has the right to expect gratitude and love in spite of that is actually quite ludicrous.
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I agree that spanking can often work quickly, where other forms of discipline might take more time. My wife and I used to spank our children, but we stopped several years ago. There are several ways in which children misbehave. If one tries to run out into the street, that’s a behavior that needs to be corrected. But does spanking work better in that instance than explanation? No child wants to be hit by a car, and they can understand the reasoning behind being cautious around traffic. If they’re too young to understand that reasoning, then they’re too young to be left that unsupervised near a street anyway.
If a child hits their sibling, does it make sense to spank them afterward? I’m afraid that may teach them “might makes right” or “only the strongest can hit.”
If a child is being disrespectful, that’s irritating. But I’m okay with playing the long game on that.
If a child is being stubborn, that can also be irritating, but is it really an awful thing? We often admire adults who have conviction, and there’s often a subtle line between those two things. I am not always as assertive as I wish I were, and I think some of that might be due to the spankings I had as a child. My parents were not abusive, and I never doubted their love — but I know I reached a point in childhood where I was sometimes too afraid to be honest with them about things. And that carried into my life as an adult as well.
I really identified a lot with Carmen’s and Arch’s comments on this…
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William,
Speaking as a parent, I know that it’s possible to raise respectful children without resorting to violence or threats of violence, by modeling the behavior you want them to adopt. Monkey see, monkey do applies here. Want them to be polite? Then be polite to them and others. (That includes not cussing out the SOB who just cut you off in traffic.) Want them to be neat and tidy and put their stuff away? Then show them by being neat and tidy and putting your stuff away…. etc.
And a number of studies have shown that corporal punishment is detrimental to long-term development: not only does it increase aggressive behaviour in children—it also lowers their IQ.
Here’s some recommended reading all parents or potential parents:
Mothers’ Spanking of 3-Year-Old Children and Subsequent Risk of Children’s Aggressive Behavior
Physical punishment of children potentially harmful to their long-term development
Children Who Are Spanked Have Lower IQs, New Research Finds
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well, everyone is making good points, and I dont disagree. I think many things swing both ways – except for me.
Stubborn can be bother good and bad depending on it’s manifestation.
Nate made a good point about being by the street, etc. and I do know that there are many wasy to instill the same things in children without spanking.
I rarely spank anyways and dont recall the last time I did it, but still, i find it hard to say it is out and out wrong or bad.
I can relate to nate about spankings making you more timid (my word not his). I dont think i am a timid person, but I can see where others may. I cannot deside if my own personal reservations are from being spanked or being told about hell or being told to make wise decisions.
Ultimately, I dont think my folks were wrong in spanking me. and they spanked me. It often resemble beatings, which I do not think is at all necessary, i just dont see it as wrong
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Neuronotes, any thoughts on why some soldiers don’t get PTSD and others do? or why some people dont feel like spankings were detrimental and others do?
Some people exercise a lot. They push their bodies through significant pain and discomfort. Do they suffer the same negative effects as those who are spanked? or is it not the pain that produces these ill effects?
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Ron, thanks for the links. I will read them after reading Neuronotes’.
Aggression? would competitive sports promote aggression too and are they also bad?
I and my siblings were all spanked more than other kids i know, but my parents also seemed to take more time in explaining things and setting good example in other areas. We werent violent children.
Aggressive? maybe in sports. boy risk takers, but not bully-ish at all – quite the opposite.
I will review the research and compare it with my own.
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What’s wrong with sipping a little urine from time to time? If the gods can do it, what makes you so special?
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RE: “Divine Command Theory” – this, Ruth, was one of Kathy’s primary defenses to our complaints about the savagery of the biblical god.
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Yes, I remember. Stockholm Syndrome is the only explanation I could come up with.
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Some people exercise a lot. They push their bodies through significant pain and discomfort. Do they suffer the same negative effects as those who are spanked? or is it not the pain that produces these ill effects?
I don’t think this is the same thing. The pain of pushing your own body to the point of discomfort is a choice. It’s self-inflicted. And, for people who do this, seemingly necessary. It isn’t violent. I’m not a neurologist but I would suggest that it’s the pain inflicted accompanied by the fear of a much bigger, more powerful, authority figure that would produce these ill effects. Like Carmen mentioned, a severe imbalance of power.
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