Christian Fundamentalists Caught Torturing Children to Death

[wolveraptor]

I think there's tremendous irony in the fact that people living in biblical times would NEVER have practiced anything other than demand feeding. Of course, that was back when women would rarely have left the home to do anything else, but that's beside the point.

[Liberty]

I think there's tremendous irony in the fact that people living in biblical times would NEVER have practiced anything other than demand feeding. Of course, that was back when women would rarely have left the home to do anything else, but that's beside the point.

And...*drum roll please*...they didn't even have clocks to tell time by! How the hell were they supposed to schedule feedings every three to four hours without clocks?

[Serafina]

I think there's tremendous irony in the fact that people living in biblical times would NEVER have practiced anything other than demand feeding. Of course, that was back when women would rarely have left the home to do anything else, but that's beside the point.

And...*drum roll please*...they didn't even have clocks to tell time by! How the hell were they supposed to schedule feedings every three to four hours without clocks?

You know, they had those amazing things called water clocks and sundials - good enough for measuring hours. Altough it is questionable wether a bunch of primitives (read: Isrealites) had them.
However, if we are talking about "every three hours", you can make rough estaminates there even without any instruments.
(just pointing it out, your premise is propably quite correct.)

[Liberty]

I think there's tremendous irony in the fact that people living in biblical times would NEVER have practiced anything other than demand feeding. Of course, that was back when women would rarely have left the home to do anything else, but that's beside the point.

And...*drum roll please*...they didn't even have clocks to tell time by! How the hell were they supposed to schedule feedings every three to four hours without clocks?

You know, they had those amazing things called water clocks and sundials - good enough for measuring hours. Altough it is questionable wether a bunch of primitives (read: Isrealites) had them.
However, if we are talking about "every three hours", you can make rough estaminates there even without any instruments.
(just pointing it out, your premise is propably quite correct.)

I'm doubting the Israelites would have seen any reason to have water clocks or sundials, but yes, I am aware they existed. I minored in classical culture in my undergrad. And yes, you can make an estimation, but this method makes a big deal of it being completely regular, on the clock, etc. If the baby cries and it's not the set hour, ignore him. Etc.

[PkbonupePeter_Kcos8]

the Catholic Church advocates a lot of very counterproductive political positions, and uses its leverage over the conscience of its membership accordingly. Which hurts quite a lot of the countries that host it in a way that, say, the publishing industry does not.

Examples? Many countries in the Third World with majority Catholic populaations are actually doing much better than their non-Catholic neighbors. Uganda is a prime example of this.

Besides, many people in the West don't take their religions very seriously anymore. Most Catholics I know use birth control, and are proud to voice their disagreement with the Church over this issue.

Granted, my own personal experiences are hardly representative of the whole population. However, I do believe that such religious apathy is fairly widespread.

Could you provide documentation that this problem is worse than it is in the countries where the "sex industry" is unregulated? Such as, say, the Eastern European and Middle Eastern countries the sex slavers are coming from?

While I'm going to have to do some digging to find you any specifics where Eastern Europe is concerned, the answer to your question with regard to the Middle East should be self-evident. In any case, it has always been my impression that the sex trade tends to move girls from more poverty stricken nations to more wealthy regions of the globe.

http://www.notforsalecampaign.org/about/slavery/

Sex trafficking simultaneously exploits both the best and the worst aspects of globalization. The champions of globalization tout the growing ease of conducting business across national borders. Sophisticated communication tools and relaxed banking laws make it possible to exchange assets internationally with ease. Virtual enterprises can operate everywhere and nowhere, making themselves known only when and where they choose.

Organized crime syndicates take advantage of these tools to create more efficient overseas networks. Although most trafficking originates with local operators, they deftly connect to an international sex industry looking to fill slots in brothels, massage parlors, strip joints, and lap dance bars.

A club owner in Chicago can pick up the phone and “mail-order” three beautiful young girls from eastern Europe. Two weeks later a fresh shipment of three Slavic girls will be dancing in his club. Though a number of quasi-independent traffickers were likely involved in moving the girls, the operation would appear seamless to the Chicago client.

The critics of globalization point out that capital flows wherever it can most easily exploit cheap labor. The owners of capital will abandon a specific location quickly once one of two conditions occurs: (1) the assets it exploits are depleted, or (2) those assets can be obtained more cheaply in other markets.

Sex trafficking also manifests itself in this form. Over the past three decades, the prime area for recruiting sex slaves has shifted rapidly from one zone of economic depression to another. In the 1970s, traffickers targeted girls from Southeast Asia “above all Thailand and Vietnam” as well as the Philippines. After ten years or so of mining in Asia, traffickers shifted their focus to African girls from Nigeria, Uganda, and Ghana flooded the international sex bazaars. In the mid-1980s and spilling over into the early 1990s, Latin American girls from Brazil, Mexico, the Dominican Republic, and Central America (especially El Salvador and Guatemala) became the favored pool.

Traffickers move opportunistically to prey on vulnerable populations. In the 1980s, the trafficking of girls out of eastern Europe hardly registered on the radar screen. Following the economic and political collapse of the Soviet Union, that situation changed dramatically. The International Organization for Migration (IOM) estimates that roughly a quarter of a million females were trafficked within Europe alone “from East to West” since 1991.

Even within eastern Europe, the prime recruitment zones for trafficking shift rapidly to exploit opportunities. In 1992, the vast majority of trafficked victims came from Poland, Romania, Hungary, and Czechoslovakia. By the mid-1990s girls in those markets had been depleted, so traffickers started targeting Russia, Ukraine, Bulgaria, and Moldova. After the turn of the century, the prime recruitment zone shifted to central Asia “Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, and Kyrgyzstan” and Georgia.

Wherever the greatest profit can be extracted, there the traffickers move. In an impassioned speech delivered in Brussels, European commissioner Anna Diamantopoulou aptly characterized the “ruthless efficiency” of these modern-day traders in human property:

“They know their business inside out and respond to changes in the market with a speed unmatched by even the most competitive corporations. Their expertise and ability to exploit the market are surpassed only by their disregard for human life. Women are bought, sold and hired out like any other product. The bottom line is profit.”

Additionally, while I'm sure that Europe is no where near as bad as Southeast Asia in terms of sex trafficking abuse, the problem is apparently bad enough that at least some European legislators have considered re-criminalizing prostitution.

http://www.humantrafficking.org/updates/773
http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,,3283530,00.html

Europe Reconsiders Prostitution as Sex Trafficking Booms
June 03, 2008

Trafficking and forced prostitution are on the rise, and the EU countries' complicated prostitution laws make prosecution difficult.

An aid organization has opened its 12th office in Germany to advise women in need. Some 700,000 women are trafficked to western Europe every year, said lawyer Birgit Thoma, who works for Solwodi, or Solidarity with Women in Distress.

Affordable transport and instant communication have led to an increase in trafficking over past 10 years, with the trade now worth an estimated $30 billion (18.8 billion euros) globally, according to a United Nations report.

For many years the focus was on human trafficking from eastern Europe, but when the EU expanded -- mainly to the east and south -- in 2004, the legal status of women in the new member states changed. That's led Solwodi to shift its focuses to African women who are forced into prostitution in Europe.

Thoma said foreigners make up some 70 percent of people in Germany's sex trade. While exact figures aren't available, she estimated that about 100,000 women from Nigeria alone have been trafficked to western Europe.


Women Victimize Women
Unlike tactics used in eastern Europe, African women are often lured with marriage deals. The traffickers don't belong to large mafia gangs, but are organized in smaller, inconspicuous networks.

"Often the criminals are women," said Thoma. "These are the so-called 'mesdames,' most of whom used to be victims themselves." Voodoo rituals are often used to scare and psychologically intimidate the women, she added.

"Priests force them not to say where they're going and what happens to them," Thoma said. "Otherwise something will happen not only to their families, but sickness, death or curses will come over them too."

In 1985, the Catholic nun Lea Ackermann founded Solwodi in Kenya to assist women whose financial desperation had led to a life of prostitution. Three years later, the first Solwodi branch was founded in Germany as a refuge for foreign women who had become victims of forced prostitution or trafficking.


Europe Revises Legal Framework
Prostitution is legal in Germany, which creates obstacles to uncovering and prosecuting cases of trafficking. Since around 30 percent of trafficked women were aware beforehand that they would end up working in the sex trade, it is difficult to collect evidence proving they were forced into prostitution, Thoma said.

However, forced prostitution was redefined in 2005 when EU standards were applied to German law. As a result, human trafficking for the purpose of sexual exploitation is no longer a sex crime but a "crime against physical integrity and against freedom," Thoma explained.

She added that the law's inclusion of robbing people of their freedom was a better description of forced prostitution than labeling it a sex crime. Germany is not alone in rethinking its laws surrounding prostitution. Sweden was the first in Europe to outlaw paying for sex in 1999. Last week, Norway's government proposed to fine or jail clients of prostitutes for up to six months in an effort to counteract trafficking and lower demand.

In Britain, where paid sex is legal but prostitutes aren't allowed to solicit in public, a group of Labour MPs have advocated for replacing criminal penalties for street prostitutes with mandatory counseling programs to get them out of the business.

"We don't criminalize people who sell kidneys, we criminalize the buyer," Labour MP Fiona MacTaggart told Reuters news agency.


Address the Problem at its Roots
The justice system also makes it difficult prosecute traffickers who force women into marriage. Victims of this crime have to prove that they suffered threats or abuse -- not only that they forced to marry against their will. These women also risk penalties if they are shown to have married only to acquire a residence permit.

For those without residence permits, a new law in Germany aims to encourage them to testify against their traffickers. After the initial three-month tourist visa, trafficking victims are granted an additional six months to consider whether to press charges.

"If they don't testify, they're deported," said Thoma. "But if they testify, they get a residence permit for the duration of the criminal proceedings." But ultimately, trafficking needs to be addressed from the bottom up, said the lawyer. That means pulling the women out of poverty and offering them a chance to improve their lives. "We have to create more possibilities for education there and improve the overall living situation for the women," she said.


Adapted from: Sabine Ripperger, "Europe Reconsiders Prostitution as Sex Trafficking Booms." Deutsche Welle 28 April 2008.

In this case at least, it would appear that regulation has only made things worse.

1) That I can point to the problems their positions cause in a way that the ultraconservative cannot. I can point to overpopulation in Third World countries more effectively than the ultraconservative can point to degeneration of the public morals, unless they choose a circular definition of such.

Who's to say that "overpopulation" is even the Third World's major problem, and that incompetent governance and botched economic management doesn't play an equal, if not greater role in the region's ills? The UN's whole (some would allege racist) philosophy of blithely claiming that "the only thing wrong with the Third World is all the brown people in it" and maintaining that the only way we can possibly fix this problem lies in basically "carpet bombing their villages with condoms RAWR" is only one possible solution out of many.

Furthermore, even if you do want to claim that the Church's views on birth control are a problem, you would still have to rationalize away all of the billions of dollars worth of humanitarian aid they spend on the Third World every year.

Why do you disagree with it?

I mean, I disagree with the Marxist interpretation of a number of things, but I'm generally willing to man up and explain why I disagree with them, rather than merely claiming that it is "Marxist," with the implication that it is therefore wrong.

Under normal circumstances I would. I generally despise Marxism with a passion (just kidding there Stas).

However, given the general tendency of even off handed comments to spawn several page long flamewars on this forum, I thought it best just to let sleeping dogs lie.

But, from the point of view of an atheist, a church delivers nothing, or nearly nothing, in exchange for payments of both money and obedience. It claims to deliver salvation, but the atheist does not believe that this thing exists, and therefore ignores it. It claims to deliver social goods, but the atheist often sees it spreading an equal and opposite set of social bads as well.

However, even if you do not believe in the existence of a divine creator, religious institutions can still be viewed as serving a beneficial purpose to believers. They provide a sense of community, a generally relaxed environment in which the "religious" can associate, and (if some studies are to be believed) even benefits to health and longevity (don't dogpile on me over that last one either, I'm just saying that such things have been claimed in the past).

Once again, where religion's tendency to spead "social bads" is concerned, such matters are ultimately subjective.

...Surely profits are the money the industry has left over after paying the costs for continuing to make its own product.

Whether "perpetuating the system" is a problem in and of itself depends on whether you come to the table assuming the system is wrong. If you decided it was wrong before you did the cost-benefit analysis, of course keeping it around is a cost, rather than a benefit or a neutral thing. But that's doing things backwards.

Don't over analyze my stance here. I'm simply saying that advocating the removal of the Priesthood on the grounds that it "wastes money while giving nothing back" and carries with it "social ills," is somewhat hypocritical when the fact that the AE industry (and several other modern secular industries) do much of the same, and with considerably more vigor.

I know the tobacco industry, for example, is "counterproductive," because it poisons hundreds of thousands of people to death every year with addictive drugs, and the payoffs of smoking are small compared to the high probability of dying horribly from lung cancer. People have proven this. I do not know the same is true of pornography or violent TV shows.

In that case, "prove" that the existence of a priesthood carries with it any objective evils (and no, subjective complaints, such as religion's supposed capacity to make more people "vote Republican" on average, don't count).

My point was that a lot of the "societal ills" we are discussing with regard to the Priesthood really can't be proven.

I don't remember anyone doing that. Perhaps you were mistaken in your "knowledge" that this was going to happen? Or have I missed something.

C'mon now. The whole, "Catholics are pedophiles, hur, hur" schtick might as well be the "Godwin's Law" of debates involving Catholicism! This isn't to say that I don't think that the Church was culpable for the crimes commited in those cases. I simply tend to get sick of bigoted numbskulls parroting "party lines." Afterall, a little originality goes a long way.

I figured that I could dodge the argument entirely by neutralizing Catholic abuses with the far worse abuses of the AE industry in my first post.

[Junghalli]

I think there's tremendous irony in the fact that people living in biblical times would NEVER have practiced anything other than demand feeding. Of course, that was back when women would rarely have left the home to do anything else, but that's beside the point.

I'm actually wondering how close things like the Pearl method are to what would have been typical child-rearing practices in pre-modern societies. Is that just the way parents typically acted toward their children in "the good old days" (if so chalk up yet another reason to be really glad I didn't live then), or is this an extremist backlash against modern society that's, well, extreme compared to historical norms?

I can very easily believe that pre-modern parents would have been a lot more slap-happy, but the idea of systematically breaking the child's will and reprogramming them into obedient little Christbots looks to me like it might have some cross-fertilization with more modern notions of ideological totalitarianism and scientific psychology and social engineering.

[wolveraptor]

I'm actually wondering how close things like the Pearl method are to what would have been typical child-rearing practices in pre-modern societies. Is that just the way parents typically acted toward their children in "the good old days" (if so chalk up yet another reason to be really glad I didn't live then), or is this an extremist backlash against modern society that's, well, extreme compared to historical norms?

I can very easily believe that pre-modern parents would have been a lot more slap-happy, but the idea of systematically breaking the child's will and reprogramming them into obedient little Christbots looks to me like it might have some cross-fertilization with more modern notions of ideological totalitarianism and scientific psychology and social engineering.

Well child-rearing is inherently different nowadays with our comparatively tiny family units. For most of history, there was a bevy of aunts, uncles, and grandparents helping us raise our kids. Richer families would even have servants and wet nurses to care for and feed them.

I think people wouldn't be so concerned with discipline and order if they weren't forced to deal with their children all by themselves. A "broken in" kid may not be emotionally healthy, but they are certainly easier to deal with around the house.

[Simon_Jester]

Examples? Many countries in the Third World with majority Catholic populaations are actually doing much better than their non-Catholic neighbors. Uganda is a prime example of this.

Since Uganda just enacted legislation making homosexuality punishable by death, and which also appears to make protesting against the killing of homosexuals punishable by death... you might want to pick a better example.

In point of fact, Uganda is a prime example of what I'm talking about at least as much as it is a prime example of what you are talking about.

Besides, many people in the West don't take their religions very seriously anymore. Most Catholics I know use birth control, and are proud to voice their disagreement with the Church over this issue. Granted, my own personal experiences are hardly representative of the whole population. However, I do believe that such religious apathy is fairly widespread.

In the developed world, yes, people tend to ignore many of the political views of the Catholic Church when they clash heavily with what is believed to be in the public interest, or in their own interest. In the rest of the world... not so much.

Could you provide documentation that this problem is worse than it is in the countries where the "sex industry" is unregulated? Such as, say, the Eastern European and Middle Eastern countries the sex slavers are coming from?

While I'm going to have to do some digging to find you any specifics where Eastern Europe is concerned, the answer to your question with regard to the Middle East should be self-evident. In any case, it has always been my impression that the sex trade tends to move girls from more poverty stricken nations to more wealthy regions of the globe.

Wait. Self-evident how? How is it evident that sex slavery is less of a problem in the Middle East, a region where slavery had to be suppressed by outside force, than it is in Western Europe, which did the forcing?

Remember: sex slavery isn't just a problem in the country the slaves wind up in; it's a problem in the country they come from. It's also a problem when rich men in the poor country decide they want concubines; I suspect that happens in Saudi Arabia too, though I cannot prove it.

Also, I'm still not convinced that there's a strong correlation between demand for sex slaves and legalized prostitution. I concede that they might both be correlated with national wealth, because most of the countries that have legalized prostitution are also rich, developed nations... where brothel owners can afford to pay the most for sex slaves. But they'd still have a lot of money whether their business was legal or not, you see.

Additionally, while I'm sure that Europe is no where near as bad as Southeast Asia in terms of sex trafficking abuse, the problem is apparently bad enough that at least some European legislators have considered re-criminalizing prostitution.
http://www.humantrafficking.org/updates/773
http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,,3283530,00.html

Do they have satisfactory evidence that this would help?

In this case at least, it would appear that regulation has only made things worse.

Who's to say that "overpopulation" is even the Third World's major problem, and that incompetent governance and botched economic management doesn't play an equal, if not greater role in the region's ills?

Umm... practically everyone who's ever analyzed the problem, ever, anywhere? Including the people IN those countries, who are as brown as anyone?

Seriously, I think you're barking up the wrong tree here. I don't care what color people are; something's going to fall apart when population densities approach 400 people per square kilometer in a country of subsistence farmers- as they did in Rwanda right before the genocide in '94. Industrial economies can sustain that, yes, but they have to reach industrial levels first. Which simply isn't on, not in the near future, no matter how good a government they have.

The UN's whole (some would allege racist) philosophy of blithely claiming that "the only thing wrong with the Third World is all the brown people in it" and maintaining that the only way we can possibly fix this problem lies in basically "carpet bombing their villages with condoms RAWR" is only one possible solution out of many.

Name one that doesn't involve birth control, that won't get you laughed out of any competent development planning office in the world, and I'll be impressed.

Furthermore, even if you do want to claim that the Church's views on birth control are a problem, you would still have to rationalize away all of the billions of dollars worth of humanitarian aid they spend on the Third World every year.

Not really; I'd just have to demonstrate that the harm their policies do (by, say, promoting homophobia in Uganda) exceeds the net balance of how much aid they give out after deducting from the donations they get from the countries in question. Which would be a lot simpler, I have to say.

But, from the point of view of an atheist, a church delivers nothing, or nearly nothing, in exchange for payments of both money and obedience. It claims to deliver salvation, but the atheist does not believe that this thing exists, and therefore ignores it. It claims to deliver social goods, but the atheist often sees it spreading an equal and opposite set of social bads as well.

However, even if you do not believe in the existence of a divine creator, religious institutions can still be viewed as serving a beneficial purpose to believers. They provide a sense of community, a generally relaxed environment in which the "religious" can associate, and (if some studies are to be believed) even benefits to health and longevity (don't dogpile on me over that last one either, I'm just saying that such things have been claimed in the past).
Once again, where religion's tendency to spead "social bads" is concerned, such matters are ultimately subjective.

One could argue the same of "social goods," too. Is the sense of community among believers good if it encourages those believers to circle the wagons against, say, criminal charges over issues like child abuse? I mean, check how this thread started, about what the evangelical Protestants have been up to. Things like that shouldn't happen, and if a self-designated community of believers decides they should, something is wrong with that community and it should probably not exist.

Can religions be a net good? Sure. But it should be blindingly obvious why not everyone thinks all, or even most, religions are a net good.

I'm not going to try to demonstrate this one way or the other. But don't be surprised if someone else does, because I'd be willing to bet it's possible to show that quite a number of religions have been net bads, either in recent years or over historic time scales.

I don't remember anyone doing that. Perhaps you were mistaken in your "knowledge" that this was going to happen? Or have I missed something.

C'mon now. The whole, "Catholics are pedophiles, hur, hur" schtick might as well be the "Godwin's Law" of debates involving Catholicism! This isn't to say that I don't think that the Church was culpable for the crimes commited in those cases. I simply tend to get sick of bigoted numbskulls parroting "party lines." Afterall, a little originality goes a long way.

And yet no one actually brought it up until you did. You were the first. I never would have, because to be quite blunt, the main counter to "some Catholic priests abuse children" is a demand for evidence that Catholic priests are actually a significant fraction of child abusers. I suspect that child abuse rates would hardly show a blip if every Catholic priest on Earth vanished into the mist.

And I don't bring up arguments I know can be countered that easily.

I figured that I could dodge the argument entirely by neutralizing Catholic abuses with the far worse abuses of the AE industry in my first post.

And yet... you decided to bring it up why? I mean, I wouldn't have raised it at all, and you only undermined your own case by resorting to a preemptive tu quoque.

I guess the guilty man flees where no one pursues...

[Samuel]

Wait. Self-evident how? How is it evident that sex slavery is less of a problem in the Middle East, a region where slavery had to be suppressed by outside force, than it is in Western Europe, which did the forcing?

Remember: sex slavery isn't just a problem in the country the slaves wind up in; it's a problem in the country they come from. It's also a problem when rich men in the poor country decide they want concubines; I suspect that happens in Saudi Arabia too, though I cannot prove it.

Please, slavery has been illegal in Mauritania since... 2007. Saudi Arabia's abolishment of slavery in 1962 is positively progressive in contrast. It is just the sort of fun topic that makes you ill.

Granted, my own personal experiences are hardly representative of the whole population. However, I do believe that such religious apathy is fairly widespread.

Individuals in poor countries tend to be more religious than those in wealthy ones and people in unstable ones more so than stable ones.

In any case, it has always been my impression that the sex trade tends to move girls from more poverty stricken nations to more wealthy regions of the globe.

Proof? I was under the impression that most stayed in poor countries and were used as free labor.

Furthermore, even if you do want to claim that the Church's views on birth control are a problem, you would still have to rationalize away all of the billions of dollars worth of humanitarian aid they spend on the Third World every year.

If I had the sort of revenue the church did I could duplicate what they do easily.

Under normal circumstances I would. I generally despise Marxism with a passion (just kidding there Stas).

He isn't a Marxist- he is a communist.

They provide a sense of community, a generally relaxed environment in which the "religious" can associate, and (if some studies are to be believed) even benefits to health and longevity (don't dogpile on me over that last one either, I'm just saying that such things have been claimed in the past).

Except these can be duplicate by any widespread social organization.

Once again, where religion's tendency to spead "social bads" is concerned, such matters are ultimately subjective.

Not really. The harm encouraged by religiously sanctioned bigotry can be measured for instance- it is just hard to seperate the secular causes from the religious ones.

is somewhat hypocritical when the fact that the AE industry (and several other modern secular industries) do much of the same, and with considerably more vigor.

They do give stuff back- they just are bad at it compared to their competitors.

In that case, "prove" that the existence of a priesthood carries with it any objective evils (and no, subjective complaints, such as religion's supposed capacity to make more people "vote Republican" on average, don't count).

My point was that a lot of the "societal ills" we are discussing with regard to the Priesthood really can't be proven.

Depends on the preiesthood. In the case of the United States, it has resulted in a regressive voting block of the religious right. Given some of them wish to cause the end of the world we can agree this is a bad thing.

[PkbonupePeter_Kcos8]

Wait. Self-evident how? How is it evident that sex slavery is less of a problem in the Middle East, a region where slavery had to be suppressed by outside force, than it is in Western Europe, which did the forcing?

Please, slavery has been illegal in Mauritania since... 2007. Saudi Arabia's abolishment of slavery in 1962 is positively progressive in contrast. It is just the sort of fun topic that makes you ill.

We were talking about sex slavery, not human trafficking in general. In any case, as far as I am aware, prostitution isn't really a very large cultural phenomena in the Middle East.

Saudi Princes might very well have their harems. However, which do you suppose holds more sex slaves; a Saudi harem or the combined red light districts of all of Amsterdam and Europe?

Proof? I was under the impression that most stayed in poor countries and were used as free labor.

Once again, we are talking about the sex trade, not human trafficking in general. More wealthy countries simply have more money to spend.

Besides, did you not see the site I posted?

He isn't a Marxist- he is a communist.

Except these can be duplicate by any widespread social organization.

So? I never claimed that such traits were unique to religious institutions.

Not really. The harm encouraged by religiously sanctioned bigotry can be measured for instance

Measure it then. Let's see the statistics.

In the case of the United States, it has resulted in a regressive voting block of the religious right.

Once again, this is only subjectively "bad." The fact that you simply happen to disagree with a certain political stance doesn't necessarily make it objectively wrong from an empirical standpoint.

Since Uganda just enacted legislation making homosexuality punishable by death, and which also appears to make protesting against the killing of homosexuals punishable by death... you might want to pick a better example.

They also happen to have one of the most productive economies in Africa and are one of the few African nations to successfully temper the AIDs empidemic.

The anti-homosexual legislation is unfortunate, but it is hardly unheard of in that part of the world. I doubt that even the Church endorses the "kill all gays" line of reasoning.

Also, I'm still not convinced that there's a strong correlation between demand for sex slaves and legalized prostitution.

The simple fact of the matter is that legalized prostitution makes it much easier to hide sex slaves in a country, and makes the industry much more lucrative on a monetary basis. The exact implications of these facts are ultimately debatable, but they are, in and of themselves, more or less undeniable.

Do they have satisfactory evidence that this would help?

I have no idea. I only know that it has been considered, and that sex trafficking in Europe is a rather major problem.

Umm... practically everyone who's ever analyzed the problem, ever, anywhere? Including the people IN those countries, who are as brown as anyone?

Uhhhh...Not quite.

Google Books

If you don't feel like doing quite so much reading, these (ironically socialist) articles do a fairly decent job of summarizing the arguments against the "zero-population growth" model. I might disagree with their economics, but their arguments here actually seem to rather clearly represent simple common sense.

Ten Reasons Why Population Control is Not the Answer to Climate Change
'Population Jusice'--Blaming Third World Women for Global Warming

Additionally, I was also able to locate this article from the BBC discussing the ethical flaws of population control. Its rather long, so I will only quote the introduction.

BBC

In the latter part of the 20th century, people began to put forward the effect of population control upon the environment as a justification for regulation of fertility, independent of economic concerns.

However, many people would have serious moral objections to plans to use contraception in order to control population.

One objection that isn't covered here is that the real cause of poverty and damage is overconsumption by a few, and that if rich nations stopped consuming far more than their fair share of resources there would be no need for population control to be applied unfairly to poor nations.

General objections
There are a number of general objections that can apply to any mass contraception programme.

Imperialism: Both the following can be regarded as forms of imperialism:
rich countries funding contraceptive programmes in the third world
rich countries demanding the implementation of birth control programmes in exchange for financial or other aid
Cultural imperialism: Bringing birth control to a community that has previously avoided it will inevitably change the relationships and power dynamics within that community. It's important to take appropriate precautions to minimise the impact of contraception on cultures to which it is introduced.
Human rights: Mass birth control interferes with a person's right to have as many children as they wish
Eugenics: Mass birth control programmes may be used to reduce the birth rate of certain classes, castes or ethnic groups
Gender bias: The majority of mass birth-control programmes operate by controlling only female fertility. This is because there are long-term female contraceptives such as the pill, hormone implants, and IUDs, but no male equivalents. As a result:
women unfairly bear the burden of population control
female fertility is treated as something dangerous that needs to be controlled
this gender bias operates regardless of the good intentions behind programmes of mass contraception
Objections to the use of bribery or incentives
There are particular ethical objections to birth control programmes that use incentives of money, food or other benefits to reward people who take part:

Coercion: Using incentives to get people living in poverty to practice birth control amounts to coercion and violates the reproductive freedom of poor people
i.e. offering people on the edge of starvation food or money to use birth control amounts to an offer they can't refuse, and so deprives them of freedom of choice
Unfairness: Incentive programmes are only likely to work on poor people - that's unfair
Eugenics: Incentive programmes which only work on poor people will tend to reduce certain classes and castes in society by causing them to have smaller families.
Human dignity: Such programmes offend human dignity by treating children as a commodity - something that people can be paid to do without
Abortion: Such programmes may encourage people to abort foetuses in order to obtain the benefit of small family policies if their birth control method fails

something's going to fall apart when population densities approach 400 people per square kilometer in a country of subsistence farmers- as they did in Rwanda right before the genocide in '94

Proof? It was always my understanding that the Rwandan genocide had little to do with population growth, and everything to do with age old tribal hatreds and general human irrationality.

Likewise, what do you think is the cause of Zimbabwe's problems? Overpopulation, or the ludicrous economic policies of Robert Mugabe?

Name one that doesn't involve birth control, that won't get you laughed out of any competent development planning office in the world, and I'll be impressed.

Just because an idea may happen to be popular, doesn't mean that it is necessarily correct. How do you think history will view our forays into forced population reduction?

You never know...Such things might surprise you. I'm sure that the Imperialists of the 18th and 19th Centuries would be both shocked and appalled by what they would read about themselves in any modern textbook.

Not really; I'd just have to demonstrate that the harm their policies do (by, say, promoting homophobia in Uganda) exceeds the net balance of how much aid they give out after deducting from the donations they get from the countries in question.

You're welcome to bust out the figures if you believe that this is so easy to prove.

I'd be willing to bet it's possible to show that quite a number of religions have been net bads, either in recent years or over historic time scales.

Of course. However, I wouldn't say that the same could really be said about the Catholic Priesthood.

And I don't bring up arguments I know can be countered that easily.

I never said that you would. I simply strongly suspected that someone would get around to dusting off that old gem eventually.

[Anguirus]

The fuck is this shit?

You have twisted a very reasonable proposition--that population growth is too high in the Third World--into implying that we are in favor of forced sterilization and abortion. You, sir, are a fuckwad.

Imperialism: Both the following can be regarded as forms of imperialism:
rich countries funding contraceptive programmes in the third world
rich countries demanding the implementation of birth control programmes in exchange for financial or other aid

Why is it wrong to fund a contraceptive program? This "ethical objection" is presented devoid of any justifying logic. I skimmed the rest of the article and it does repeatedly conflate contraception under sterilization and forced abortion all under "birth control." This is self-evidently false, and just because other people have done horrible things in the past does not mean that educating (real education, not Catholic education) people about birth control and encouraging its use is morally wrong.

Cultural imperialism: Bringing birth control to a community that has previously avoided it will inevitably change the relationships and power dynamics within that community. It's important to take appropriate precautions to minimise the impact of contraception on cultures to which it is introduced.

Ok, I can deal with this.

Human rights: Mass birth control interferes with a person's right to have as many children as they wish

It's got to be pretty fucking stupid for me to be tempted to use the term "stupidest fucking thing I've ever heard" on the INTERNET, but this has got to come close.

BIRTH CONTROL IS NOT FORCED STERILIZATION, YOU FUCKING TWIT.

How about you ask a real life woman whether she thinks "mass birth control" interferes with her right to have children?

It is the LACK of birth control (availability, education) that results in women being forced to choose between virginity and motherhood.

You stupid fuck.

Eugenics: Mass birth control programmes may be used to reduce the birth rate of certain classes, castes or ethnic groups

You know which ethnic group has been the most "reduced" by mass birth control? Oh yeah, RICH WHITE WOMEN. They've been reducing the birth rate of their "caste" with great enthusiasm, apparently.

We in the US live in a country that has many millions more people than available jobs. Can you imagine what this would be like without condoms, the Pill, and legal abortion?

To reiterate, contraceptives are not sterilization.

Gender bias: The majority of mass birth-control programmes operate by controlling only female fertility. This is because there are long-term female contraceptives such as the pill, hormone implants, and IUDs, but no male equivalents. As a result:
women unfairly bear the burden of population control
female fertility is treated as something dangerous that needs to be controlled
this gender bias operates regardless of the good intentions behind programmes of mass contraception

Here's a brilliant concept: BIOLOGY IS NOT OUR FUCKING FAULT. You feeling guilty? Get your tubes tied. Frankly, I'm starting to think you shouldn't reproduce anyway.

And as a matter of fact, it is often men who bear the "burden" of using a condom in our own cosmic horror-state of mass birth control.

Christ Almighty, I've never seen anyone miss the point this badly before. The gender inequity in the Third World (speaking in very broad strokes, and about the real shitholes in, say, Africa) is because women have no political or legal power to resist being raped and enslaved, birth control or no birth control, compelling them to enter marriages for their own safety.

Birth control is one part of the large and complex problem of exporting feminism to the cultures of these nations. As long as women are forced to choose between marriage and rape, they will never be free. As long as women are forced to choose between virginity and motherhood, they will never be free.

Objections to the use of bribery or incentives
There are particular ethical objections to birth control programmes that use incentives of money, food or other benefits to reward people who take part:

Jesus Christ, again with the failure to distinguish between forced sterilization and contraceptives. This tars charities that pass out food and condoms with the same brush as countries that practice ethnic cleansing. I am violently opposed to the violation of anyone's human rights, but you have to understand that that does not mean that there is not a PROBLEM.

Really dude, you need to get your head up out of your ass and read about a guy named Malthus. Where the fuck do you think food comes from, anyway? We put it off and put it off but one day, there's going to be a die-off of the human population because there won't be enough fucking food. Hell, this would have already happened if not for Norman Borlaug. The only way to avoid a famine of unprecedented proportions is to STOP GROWING SO FUCKING FAST. EVERY species has a carrying capacity. We have been staving off the Malthusian limit with breathtaking innovations in agriculture...of which the inevitable result has been fucking up the nitrogen cycle and killing who only knows how many species and populations of organisms off. We are constantly pushing the limit and even our current production may not be indefinitely sustainable in the best of circumstances.

There may very well be nothing we can do about it, but people like you are actively fighting a war of rhetoric to make the time of reckoning worse. And I'd wager that if you're well-off enough to be posting on the Internet right now, then you are isolated from it. It is THEM who are going to die. You are fighting to make sure that there are more people to suffer and die in war and disease and the ultimate famine and it makes me sick.

And don't you dare try try to weasel out of these words because someone else wrote them and you just ordered it up on Google. You can't even write your own screed.

God, just...fuck you. Don't pretend to care about these women while fighting for their "right" to have as many children as their husband convinces or forces them to, you dumb shit.

[K. A. Pital]

He said nothing of the sort, but rather claimed (correctly) that europe, where prostitution etc is legal and regulated, has large problems dealing with the trafficing of humans out of russia and the middle east. The ugly side of having those industries legal is that it is possible to hide one's sex slaves within the very legal infrastructure designed to protect them.

I thought he was talking about adult film industry (re: adult entertainment industry). My bad.

In the US we dont have that problem with sex slaves as bad

Yeah. I think that the US is still a major human trade "destination" point. Richer nations tend to stand as "customers" whereas the poor ones as "suppliers".

Still, I do not see how that is relevant to religiosity; is Netherlands (off-hands where prostitution is legal) a leading human trade destination? Or are there other nations, with prostitution not legal, that are in the same category, the same scale of incoming slaves (possibly even measured on a per capita basis)? This is what I think one needs to look at.

I don't see anyone on here clamoring for the end of the sex industry on these grounds. Why the priesthood?

Well, I am most certainly not a supporter of the sex industry; if you mean prostitution. If it were within the means of a nation-state to bring an end to prostitution, I would welcome it. Then again, growing up in a society where prostitution was something like a tall tale, and then ending up in a society where prostitution is ubiqutous might have had some impact on me.

I was mistaken, because I took the phrase "adult entertainment industry" for the adult film industry. Which is hardly relevant to prostitution.

[Channel72]

Once again, where religion's tendency to spead "social bads" is concerned, such matters are ultimately subjective.

I'm not going to try to demonstrate this one way or the other. But don't be surprised if someone else does, because I'd be willing to bet it's possible to show that quite a number of religions have been net bads, either in recent years or over historic time scales.

Naturally, it's incredibly hard to quantify all this. It would be nice if we had some sort of equation derived from historical data which included the number of deaths directly or indirectly inflicted by the Church, from victims of the Inquisition to villagers suffering in modern Uganda from backwards social policies. This would need to be weighed against the number of lives saved through the vast network of Catholic medical facilities, charities, etc. I'll be honest; it's probably a close call. It might even demonstrate a significant net-gain.

Nonetheless, I strongly believe that Catholicism, and to a larger extent, Judeo-Christian monotheism, is an overall net-loss to human civilization.

The Catholic church does a lot of good yes; but there's nothing intriniscally Catholic or even Christian about any of their good deeds. They set up hospitals, they organize charities, they provide relief for the poor. There are so many organizations on Earth which do similar things, it's absolutely preposterous to suggest that if the Church never existed these sort of charitable activities would be scaled down. (Consider how much money/resources/manpower was sent to Haiti from secular sources alone.) Whereas, the harmful aspects of the Church are intrinsically Catholic. If the Church never existed, large-scale charities would almost certainly exist anyway, but specifically Catholic teachings about birth control, homosexuality, etc., which are outright harmful to society, would be gone.

And really, it's almost impossible to measure the long-term, societal-wide negative effects that Catholic indoctrination has had on Western civilization. For over a millenium the Church has consistently fought against anything that undermined their authority, even if it meant severely retarding social or scientific progress. If a more tolerant institution had held sway over Europe for the last 1600 years, we may have kicked off the Industrial Revolution centuries earlier.

Finally, and most obviously - the Church has set itself up as the absolute authority over the fate of mankind, and yet their entire belief system is founded on the notion that Jesus of Nazareth was a supernatural being who rose from the dead; an idea for which there is no evidence whatsoever beyond the say-so of his early anonymous followers. So even if the Church is doing some good, they're still leading billions of people to believe false information, which has caused incalculable scientific and philosophical setbacks over the centuries.

[PkbonupePeter_Kcos8]

You, sir, are a fuckwad.

YOU FUCKING TWIT.

You stupid fuck.

Here's a brilliant concept: BIOLOGY IS NOT OUR FUCKING FAULT. You feeling guilty? Get your tubes tied. Frankly, I'm starting to think you shouldn't reproduce anyway.

Just to clear one thing up here, you do realize that I didn't write this thing, right? Take it up with the BBC.

I cited the article precisely because it summed up many of the arguments which have been brought against population control in a succinct and straightforward manner which any idiot could understand without being becoming bogged down in semantics, not because it was nobel prize winning material.

Why is it wrong to fund a contraceptive program?

Nothing in and of itself. I think the article was trying to make the point that the West trying to "impose its will" upon the Third World in the form programs essentially designed to make it so that there are "fewer brown people to beg on our doorsteps" is viewed by some as being a form of Western-centric Imperialism.

I skimmed the rest of the article and it does repeatedly conflate contraception under sterilization and forced abortion all under "birth control."

Do you deny that forced sterilization programs have been utilized in both the West and the Third World? Do you deny that such practices are still be utilized in countries like China today?

BIRTH CONTROL IS NOT FORCED STERILIZATION, YOU FUCKING TWIT.

Once again, no, its not. However, this doesn't change the fact that "population control" advocates have used such measures in the past.

We in the US live in a country that has many millions more people than available jobs. Can you imagine what this would be like without condoms, the Pill, and legal abortion?

Exactly the same as it is now with only a few minor differences? Who knows, with a larger labor force, maybe we wouldn't be forced to outsource manufacturing jobs to the Third World to begin with.

[K. A. Pital]

Please explain to me how the adult movie [=adult entertainment] industry and prostitution became one and the same? How the fuck are they even connected - at all? The US does not have legal prostitution, but has legal adult entertainment. It does not pose a problem to separate one from the other, does it now?

I want an explanation from PkbonupePeter_Kcos8. Besides, people here have called for measures to reduce the harm done by prostitution. We might disargree on the methods (legalize it and crack down on illegal activities, or just illegalize everything) and which might be the greater harm or good, but quite certainly I haven't seen people here state that prostitution is okay or harmless stuff.

[PkbonupePeter_Kcos8]

Please explain to me how the adult movie [=adult entertainment] industry and prostitution became one and the same? How the fuck are they even connected - at all?

I was categorizing all "adult" forms of entertainment under a single umbrella term. In this case, the "Adult Entertainment Industry." Considering the fact that the term can basically be used to describe prostitution as well as more traditional pornography in Nevada as well as in various locations across Europe (and some individuals actually defend such measures as being justifiable), it seemed to be as good a decision as any at the time.

Porn + Internet Sites + Legalized Prostitution + Strip Clubs + etca + etca = the "Adult Entertainment Industry"

[K. A. Pital]

I was categorizing all "adult" forms of entertainment under a single umbrella term

That is wrong. Prostitution is markedly different from other forms of "entertainment". You could go further in this idiocy and classify together boxing and legal sports together with blood sports, illegal murder and other "entertaining" activities as "sport". That would be fucking nonsensical.

Considering the fact that the term can basically be used to describe prostitution as well as more traditional pornography in Nevada as well as in various locations across Europe (and some individuals actually defend such measures as being justifiable), it seemed to be as good a decision as any at the time.

No, it can't. I have not heard prostitution described as "adult entertainment".

Porn + Internet Sites + Legalized Prostitution + Strip Clubs + etca + etca = the "Adult Entertainment Industry"

Murder Rings + Legal Sport Rings + Olympics + etca + etca = Sports.

You are a fucking moron, aren't you?

[PkbonupePeter_Kcos8]

No offense, but what is with you people and semantics around here? If you don't like the term, don't use it. I don't see any need to get offended and go into all out grammar nazi mode over it.

In any case, if prostitution is legal in certain countries (with some advocates claiming that it should be legal in many more), why can't you include within the adult entertainment industry? It would simply be another form of business related to "adult" interests.

[K. A. Pital]

No, really - answer the example about sports.

Do you believe that the advance of sports inside a nation also gives rise to the expansion of blood sport and illegal murder sport? And if not, explain why then the adult movie industry should be somehow connected to prostitution.

[PkbonupePeter_Kcos8]

Do you believe that the advance of sports inside a nation also gives rise to the expansion of blood sport and illegal murder sport?

No, I don't.

not, explain why then the adult movie industry should be somehow connected to prostitution.

Maybe because the prevalance of the adult film and pornographic industries empirically have been connected to such developments as the legalization of prostitution in countries like Germany and the Netherlands?

Believe it or not, there are people out there who see absolutely no problem with prostitution whatsoever so long as the girls are "well cared for."

[ray245]

not, explain why then the adult movie industry should be somehow connected to prostitution.

Maybe because the prevalance of the adult film and pornographic industries empirically have been connected to such developments as the legalization of prostitution in countries like Germany and the Netherlands?

Care to explain more about the connection?

[Samuel]

However, which do you suppose holds more sex slaves; a Saudi harem or the combined red light districts of all of Amsterdam and Europe?

Given the massive population disparity something like per capita would be more relevant. Wiki (using the UK socialist party as their source) quotes a fifth of the population were slaves before emancipation- do you have any comparable levels for Europe?

Once again, we are talking about the sex trade, not human trafficking in general. More wealthy countries simply have more money to spend.

Besides, did you not see the site I posted?

It says 27 million slaves- it doesn't say how many are sex slaves.

So? I never claimed that such traits were unique to religious institutions.

Except if it is required than there is no reason to have religious institutions. Thats not forgetting well designed secular alternatives would be inclusive.

Measure it then. Let's see the statistics.

How do you want me to seperate out religious from secular rationales?

Once again, this is only subjectively "bad." The fact that you simply happen to disagree with a certain political stance doesn't necessarily make it objectively wrong from an empirical standpoint.

The US only started teaching evolution again because the USSR looked like it was overtaking us. I'd consider a movement that actively sabotages the educational system bad. Do you need more examples?

The anti-homosexual legislation is unfortunate, but it is hardly unheard of in that part of the world.

It is rare. Only 3.5 other African nations have the death penalty for being gay... and Uganda is the only one where helping people or attempting to change the law is also illegal.

The simple fact of the matter is that legalized prostitution makes it much easier to hide sex slaves in a country,

Why? If brothels are required to be registered and are regularly inspected, how can you hide as easily as when there is no supervision and the slaves stay silent for fear of being kicked out of the country?

and makes the industry much more lucrative on a monetary basis.

If the industry is illegal, can't they charge higher prices?

Proof? It was always my understanding that the Rwandan genocide had little to do with population growth, and everything to do with age old tribal hatreds and general human irrationality.

The source would probably be Collapse by Jared Diamond.

If you don't feel like doing quite so much reading, these (ironically socialist) articles do a fairly decent job of summarizing the arguments against the "zero-population growth" model. I might disagree with their economics, but their arguments here actually seem to rather clearly represent simple common sense.

Common sense isn't so common. There is also the minor problem that we are providing for much of the population by spending through natural captial which is a bad idea.

Nothing in and of itself. I think the article was trying to make the point that the West trying to "impose its will" upon the Third World in the form programs essentially designed to make it so that there are "fewer brown people to beg on our doorsteps" is viewed by some as being a form of Western-centric Imperialism.

So it is imperialistic... because it makes problems easier for those who are being helped so they have less need for handouts in the future?

Exactly the same as it is now with only a few minor differences? Who knows, with a larger labor force, maybe we wouldn't be forced to outsource manufacturing jobs to the Third World to begin with.

Europe has even more people than the US and has also outsourced manufacturing jobs. Care to try again?

[K. A. Pital]

Maybe because the prevalance of the adult film and pornographic industries empirically have been connected to such developments as the legalization of prostitution in countries like Germany and the Netherlands?

Show me. In volumes of movies made, per capita porn stats, etc? Does Germany rank higher, in terms of adult industry development, than the USA? Does Netherlands? Does Germany have a record level of per capita human slaves imported?

I keep hearing about this empirical correlation. Perhaps you'd care to show it to me?

[PkbonupePeter_Kcos8]

Care to explain more about the connection?

What needs explaining here exactly? A lot of European nations carry very liberal attitudes towards sexual behavior and pornography, and this has translated into very liberal attitudes towards prostitution.

We might be losing something in translation here. What exactly is the controversy you guys are seeing in these statements?

[K. A. Pital]

Care to explain more about the connection?

What needs explaining here exactly? A lot of European nations carry very liberal attitudes towards sexual behavior and pornography, and this has translated into very liberal attitudes towards prostitution.

Then you can show it in statistical correlation. Is Germany leading by porn actresses or porn actors per capita? By porn movies per capita, or by bulk porn movies made - which would show the consumption of porn - relative to other nations?

Either show some hard proof behind these statements, or stop speculating.

German law is very strict about hardcore pornography, especially when compared to very liberal laws about softcore pornography, prostitution, and sex shops. Providing hardcore pornography to a person under 18 is illegal, and shops selling it must keep people under the age of 18 from entering their premises. If only a part of the shop is dedicated to pornography, it must be completely closed off from the rest of the premises. Alternatively, shops may choose not to display their goods or advertise that they sell them, in which case minors may be admitted. Websites hosting pornographic material within Germany must comply with very strict rules about verifying that viewers are over 18.[6]

Germany has a very broad definition of child pornography, which includes images of all real or fictional people who either are under the age of 18 or who appear to be below 18 to an "average viewer". Distribution of such material is prohibited, although possession is only banned if the material shows a real person below 18. Pornography involving violence or bestiality may not be produced or distributed, but is legal to possess.

Publication of hardcore material is only illegal at the federal (national) level if it meets the Miller test of obscenity, which is rare.

So there's actually a reverse correlation - German law is harder or hardcore porn, and yet more liberal on prostitution.

Way to go, Peter - perhaps you should have tried your point against someone who can't read.

On the other hand:

According to toptenreviews.com, the countries with the largest revenue from the porn industry (in 2006) include China ($27.40 billion), South Korea ($25.73 billion), Japan ($19.98 billion) and the US ($13.33 billion).

Japan, South Korea and USA have a large porn demand in the population (excluding China for bulk population size factor). Neither nation legalized prostitution, IIRC.

Germany is twice more populous and probably more wealthy than South Korea; yet it consumes less porn. The "porn correlates with prostitituion" is bullshit.