LogFAQs > #954824416

Scotty_Rogers posted...

Pedophilia is wrong, and I don't condone it, but I think it's too vilified in society; let's get those people help instead of making them out to be devils. Child molestation deserves all the condemnation it gets, though.

I don't know about "too vilified," but many people take more delight in harming a pedophile than they do in protecting children. To me, the latter is superior to the former, morally. I tend to agree that it's worth making a distinction between "pedophile" and "child molester" though. To punish someone before they've committed a crime in my opinion carries a very high burden of proof. Do we have the necessary data to make that decision in the fairest manner possible? I don't know. It may turn out to be justified. This is a question that can be answered with the aid of science, so that's how we should pursue it.

Scotty_Rogers posted...

There is a cure; think for yourself instead of buying into what other people say. Truth is, everything is logically pointless; there are no absolutes. Life only has meaning because we give it meaning.

Oh boy. Hold on tight.

Everything in society is ultimately just a construct.

Humans construct society. Humans, therefore, precede society. Humans are not a construct. Humans are in society. Not everything in society is a construct.

What is the actual, objective difference between a man and a woman? Or a child and an adult? Or a human and an animal? Or law and crime?

I think there's a pretty distinct difference between a two-year-old homo sapiens and, say, a 90 year old one. That's not socially constructed.

Think logically, and you'll find plenty of gray areas, overlaps and anomalies in any code. No one is logically more correct than anyone else. It's all logically arbitrary.

Control yourself.

So, really, if you want to stop being this or that, just tell yourself you're not it, condition yourself to think so and you'll be good. Applies to anything, really; just think whatever you want, and you can certainly do so while following society's arbitrary rules.

That would make for a self-help best seller I'm sure, but that's not really how the real world works. There are personality traits to which individuals are predisposed as expressed through their genes. Sexual orientation seems likely to be that sort of trait. This is why gay conversion therapy, whatever else may be said about it, doesn't work. You can't will your way into different genetics.

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CE's friendly neighborhood rationalist.