Christianity employs mythology, where Taoism employs aphorisms, but the message is largely the same.

wut?

The Dude abides.

Well, you don't know my ex. Nor did I say whether I sought the advice she offered.

@AlanCliffe I wasn't commenting on your situation. Only my own.

Speaking of broad, sweeping generalizations.

@AlanCliffe Yes. "All religion is bullshit" An accurate, sweeping generalization.

Especially with the video of the Dahlai Lama asking a tiny boy to suck his tongue. What in the actual?

@BufftonBeotch

Video? Link?

@skado

@barjoe

Thanks.

@skado Thoughts?

@barjoe
Looks creepy as hell to me. I don’t know how his culture views it. Acts that are considered culturally taboo aren’t usually performed in front of a live audience with cameras rolling. And the audience doesn’t laugh and clap.

@skado A few people on here adamantly defended him. I guess the Delai Lama gets a pass. If a priest, rabbi, iman, pastor did that on camera? They'd be immediately arrested, rightly so.

@barjoe
That’s probably right.

Agreed. Such practices may be right for certain people, but not most.

No more against human nature than any other aspect of civilization. Civilization is not the environment we were adapted to fit. If we are to continue in this experiment, we should expect to have to suppress some of our natural instincts, at least in certain circumstances.

@BufftonBeotch What brand of celibacy? Voluntary or Involuntary?

@barjoe Celibacy as a requirement for admission to an order. Sliding scale of consent I suppose.

@BufftonBeotch I was joking. Referring to Incels.

If we recall that at the time when those traditions were originally being formed there were no reliable birth control methods, it’s likely the celibacy was aimed at freeing up the monk’s time from family duties so he could pursue monastic duties, than any prohibition of sex. Poverty is not conducive to healthy child rearing, but it serves the monastic aim of diminishing egoic identity. Some Eastern monastic traditions were famously supportive of brothel patronage.

The word celibacy has its roots in the concept of "single" or "unmarried" - not in sexual abstinence. Monastics have used abstinence as well sometimes, but it is a different thing, and definitely not "natural". But celibacy is arguably at least as natural as marriage.

@skado I do not see how someone who isolates themselves from normal human experiences can possibly counsel someone having a relationship or family crisis.

Would you go to a mechanic who had only read a book? The book is on a completely unrelated subject, but they assure you it is an important book.

@BufftonBeotch
Setting aside the fact that in every human profession there are good practitioners and bad, and everything in between... if we are to focus on the ideal - the intended, but only sometimes achieved goal...
For starters, while some clergy are often performing the role of counselor, others may perform mostly administrative functions. Monastics sometimes go for years without interacting with laity or anyone else.

With the exception of the Dali Lama, very few are committed to that lifestyle as a child. They are likely to have encountered plenty of "normal human experiences" before deciding to pursue an ecclesiastic profession, just as any secular counselor or psychologist would have been a "normal human" before receiving specialized training.

And if normal human experience were the ticket to understanding, "normal" folks wouldn't be in need of counseling to begin with. In earlier times, the clerics were the educated members of the community. So if education has any role in preparing anyone to be an effective counselor, they were the ones who had it.

And finally... today, if people need marriage counseling, they most likely go to some secular source, who has been trained in that particular service. If they go to a minister for counseling they are presumably seeking spiritual advice - not practical/normal human advice. And that is what the clergy are trained to provide. They have done a lot more than just read a book. They have most likely studied at university, and have had as many years of experience practicing as any mechanic.

@skado Catholic Church established celibacy to accumulate wealth so that priests had no offspring to bequeath what family wealth they may have had..The Church also cracked down on avuncular bequests. Priests in 13th century willed to their nephews. Nepotistic inheritance is still forbidden in the church. RCC stole everything for almost a millennium. I'm sure every other "faith" has greed motive behind their celibacy as well. Religion is a racket.

@barjoe
Yes, there definitely was an economic side of it. There are both practical needs and some greed and corruption in everything humans do under the guise of acceptable behavior.
That doesn’t mean greed was the only motivating force in the mix.
Not all priests are evil, like not all cops are bad, not all politicians, lawyers, etc. If they were, civilization would cease to function.

@skado I didn't say they're evil. Monks, Nuns and Priests are victims of a greedy, predatory religious hierarchy. Families think it's a great honor for their children make a commitment and the church rips them off. They don't think it's even wrong. It's for their stupid fucking church.

@barjoe
That may be a value judgement, relative to individual values. I don’t know of any objective measurement that says religious hierarchies are predominantly greedy or predatory.

@skado Look at the RCC, look at dickheads like Franklin Graham, Pat Robertson and Joel Osteen. Predominately? Absolutely. More like organized crime.

@barjoe
That’s hardly a majority of the “religious hierarchy”. I wouldn’t even consider Franklin, Robertson, and Osteen, religious hierarchy. They are more like fringe religious flavored entertainers. They are not representative of serious religion in America or the world.

@skado Religions are all about the greed.

@skado As to counseling, religious people have no business in it, Whatsoever. There only concern is to dogma or the religious institution and not the individual r family.
Time after time faith-based counseling will do things such as badgering a woman to stay in a toxic or even dangerous situation. It does not matter whether there is infidelity, addictions or even violence.
The woman will be pressured to stay.
Many times this ends tragically. Where a Mormon man slaughtered hwis entire family. In the case of the FLDS this woman truly had no recourse, in whose communities the police, legal system and supposedly secular counselors and medical community are also going to be overseen by the poser of the Mormon church.
And faith based counseling is also going to be immensely harmful to any youth self-realizing any sexual and gender identity other than cis hetero.

@BufftonBeotch
Is any of this based on any systematic survey (as a scientist would do ) or is it based on personal experience and hearsay?

I don’t doubt bad things happen inside religion, but bad things happen everywhere. What method do you use to systematically measure the good versus the bad events so as to determine which is greater?

@skado Nothing good comes from religion.

Here's the Mormon man that was allowed to slaughter his family by his vile church that refuses to see him as anything but a good man.

[apnews.com]

@BufftonBeotch
Thanks for the article. I was not familiar with the case, and the article fills in some of the details.

Apparently they were not FLDS, they were LDS, and there is a huge difference. LDS does not condone, support, or acknowledge any legitimacy of FLDS.

The woman was not turned down by local authorities - she asked them not to press charges. The decisions made by the police were typical of police everywhere. They can’t take any action against a person just because someone else thinks they are dangerous. A crime has to be committed before the police have any jurisdiction.

As tragic as this is, it happens all the time to people of faith and no faith alike. There is no causal path by which to link this crime to religion, any more than there might be cause to believe religious faith prevents crimes, which we would never hear about because they didn’t happen.

From the article you supplied:
“There is a world in which an entirely secular reading of the case could suffice to explain Michael Haight’s apparent crimes. Domestic violence and gun violence are in no ways unique to conservative religions. In fact, intimate-partner mass killings like this one are more common in the United States than the more high-profile public mass shootings most of us hear about. “A guy who kills his wife and children and sometimes kills himself is the most common type of mass killing,” criminologist James Alan Fox told USA Today as part of a study on mass killings last year.”

If I could remove one thing from this picture it would be guns, not religion. But realistically, there is no way to stop people from killing people. It’s what they do when they become mentally/emotionally imbalanced. There is nothing in LDS doctrine and training that supports or excuses this behavior.