Arguments that cannot be used to call BDSM morally acceptable

1) “What you described is abuse, not BDSM:”
Here is a definition of domestic abuse:

“Any incident or pattern of incidents of controlling, coercive or threatening behaviour, violence or abuse between those aged 16 or over who are or have been intimate partners or family members. This can encompass, but is not limited to, the following types of abuse: psychological, physical, sexual, financial, emotional. Controlling behaviour is: a range of acts designed to make a person subordinate and/or dependent by isolating them from sources of support, exploiting their resources and capacities for personal gain, depriving them of the means needed for independence, resistance and escape and regulating their everyday behaviour. Coercive behaviour is: an act or a pattern of acts of assault, threats, humiliation and intimidation or other abuse that is used to harm, punish, or frighten their victim.”

BDSM often include “physical and other forms of violence”. (Participants in this sexual kink may not like the word violence, but per definition it fits.) It is no surprise that it does, because sadism is part of the name of BDSM, and thus a component that may or may not be part of such a relationship. It includes many types of “acts to make a partner subordinate”, it often include bondage which obviously “deprive”, for the time of bondage, “of the means for independence, resistance and escape”. Dominance often amounts to “regulating the sub’s everyday behaviour”. Much of BDSM include acts to “punish”, and many subs describe feeling fear (being “frightened”) during scenes.

Some warning signs of abusers include: Controlling behaviour, “playful” use of force in sex, verbal abuse; rigid sex roles (man above, woman lower); a sense of entitlement (many doms say they “deserve” the treatment the sub gives them); and hierarchical self-esteem (needing to be “better” than another to feel good about himself). Most of these warning signs of potential abuse are present in what I hear of almost every BDSM relationship.

As such, BDSM and domestic abuse are not mutually exclusive. Also note that the idea of consent and non-consent is not part of the criteria for determining if something is domestic abuse. As such, consent in BDSM does not exclude the relationship from being abusive.
I can imagine a relationship with no bondage ( no “depriving of the means needed for resistance and escape”); with discipline or punishments that cannot be called “violent” at all and does not amount to “control” by the dom because the sub has to ask to get it; no dominance that controls the behavior of a partner – but the partner in “submission”  by wanting to generally please and be loyal without there being control; no sadism (violence) or masochism (taking of violence to fulfill needs). But will such a relationship, deprived of anything that counts as domestic abuse, still be a BDSM relationship?

2) Sub: “But I do not see it as abuse”:

Many abuse victims do not know they are being abused. Their communities or the abusers tell them that it is not abuse, that they should be thankful for what they have, etc. To quote one abused woman:

Sometimes it takes time away from “normal” to see that it is indeed not normal after all. After 3 months of separation from my husband, I have new insight as to what normal is. When you are in a mentally or emotionally abusive marriage, sometimes you don’t know that your normal is not normal after all.

 

3) “It is consensual”:

Consent is not enough to make something right. Many employees, for example, choose to keep their jobs even though the boss is a bully, thereby consenting to be treated the way the boss treats them. Treating your workers badly is still not morally right. (And many child molesters get the child to “consent”- but the consent do not count as the child is too young.)

However, I agree that doing something to another without consent would normally be immoral. Consent is probably part of the utter minimum of decent behavior under most circumstances. If BDSM is consensual it avoids one type of very immoral behavior, but so does “we don’t rob money during scenes.”
But even with such a small yardstick, BDSM is ambigious. BDSM acts may exploit and worsen the kind of personality flaw that makes someone consent to things that is not good for him or her.

 
4) “But my relationship is not like that”:

This blog post is not about your relationship. It is about BDSM. For example, one sub could say:

He is very concerned when I have a backache … he likes to cane me during scenes.”

Concern during backaches is not BDSM (Bondage, Discipline, Domination/ Submission, or Sadism/ Masochism). Caning during scenes, however, is one of the many things that counts as a BDSM practice.

If there are BDSM aspects to your relationship that are morally positive, you are welcome to describe those, so I can add to my understanding. But mentioning the non-BDSM aspects of your relationship to defend BDSM is like saying “He is opposed to stealing TVs and hi-fis” to defend someone who steals computers.
What is more, I have never spoken to a BDSM participant who – if (s)he gives any evidence to study the truth of his claims by – actually speak the truth about their relationships. They will say things like “we have a mutually respectful relationship” – and when I go to their blogs, one of the most recent entries has him calling her a [semen receptacle], and her crying bitterly because she wants to be loved, not a mere [semen receptacle] – and she really believes this is his actual view of her, that she is nothing more to him. If your partner sees you as an object, you are not in a mutually respectful relationship.
Or they will testify things like: “he will never hurt a fly” with the next sentence “he likes to induce pain on me, but I like it” and somewhat further in the conversation “I get punishment beatings which I do not like, and they hurt more than what I like.” If he induces pain, he hurts you. If there are pain in your relationship that you do not like, it is not wholly true that you like the pain he brings into your relationship.

 
5) “But I like it/ crave it”:

1) Desiring something does not make it good. For example, selling heroin is not morally good, even though addicts crave it. It is not morally good, because it destroys the one who gives in to the craving.
2) It is often not true that the sub enjoys BDSM – for example, a punishment to discipline the sub will probably be enjoyed by either only the dominant, or neither of them. Many subs speak of experiencing negative emotions like fear during scenes, and actually likes the feeling of relief from getting out of these negative situations afterwards. None of them actually enjoy pain or will, for example, butt their head against walls for fun.
3) Subs often “want” the opposite of what they want: They actually want kindness, tenderness and reassuring words of encouragement and praise like everyone else, but they feel they will be in a better position to enjoy having these needs met if they start with rough treatment and negative messages. The rough treatment – degradation, insults, etc., is what they “want” but the opposite of what they really want. A man who gives them the bad treatment could certainly make them unhappier. They take that risk, in the hope that a scene, where they live themselves into the bad, will end with the good. When the dom is not good at providing the good part, he can say he did only things the sub “allowed” and even “craved.” But he did not give her what she really enjoys, and he probably did harm her psychologically.
One dom testify that every sub he ever met was conflicted over her wants, with a part of her that finds her BDSM desires deviant. Which make sense, really: Obviously in any sane person, there will be a part that dislike these things. Between those two conflicting and opposite desires of the sub, the dom chooses to give the deviant one. I suggest that this says a lot about the character of the dominant partner.

 
6) “I don’t feel like this is something bad”:

I will quote CS. Lewis on this:

When a man is getting better he understands more and more clearly the evil that is still left in him. When a man is getting worse, he understands his own badness less and less. A moderately bad man knows he is not very good: a thoroughly bad man thinks he is all right. This is common sense, really. You understand sleep when you are awake, not while you are sleeping. You can see mistakes in arithmetic when your mind is working properly: while you are making them you cannot see them. You can understand the nature of drunkenness when you are sober, not when you are drunk. Good people know about both bad and evil: bad people do not know about either.

Perhaps you do not regard something as morally bad, because your soul has become used to the badness in BDSM. If you disagree, show me what positive moral values is encouraged by BDSM.

 
7) But this is safe and sane!:

Safe is free from the possibility of getting harmed or hurt. If you want me to believe that BDSM is safe, you have to convince me that bondage, discipline, domination/ submission, and sadism/ masochism does no damage or pain of any kind to the self image, the body, the interpersonal relationships, the mind, or the acknowledgement of real moral values, of the submissive, or the dominant, or the reader of BDSM blogs and websites.
If you want to tell me it is sane, you have to convince me that there is nothing insane about wanting bondage instead of freedom, domination instead of you and others each getting their will, or pain (I don’t just mean physical pain, but also the mental pain of being degraded and treated as less than) -in yourself or your partner – instead wanting a healthy, non-hurting, autonomous body. mind and heart.
And sane things could still be unethical. I can think of several reasons why a sane man would want to rob a bank, but that does not make bank robbery morally right.

————–

So please: If you think you have evidence to suggest BDSM is morally better that I give credit for on this blog, please give it. Bring up some actual moral standard, for example kindness or justice, and explain how BDSM, or some aspect of it, is kind or just or whatever moral standard you admitted.

PS: Once again, please do not link to BDSM material in your comments, or to your BDSM blog from your name. The only comments I left unpublished so far on any thread on this topic, are when commenters filled in the comment form with name, e-mail and optional URL by including a BDSM-related URL.

Vox claim #6)  …most women overrate themselves by at least two points because they rate themselves by their hottest-ever hookup rather than by the average of their past romantic record.

If that claim was true, a prostitute who once serviced a rather attractive man in a Mercedes will have a better self image than a married woman, married to the none-too-attractive, just-getting-by-financially man who was her only sex partner.

And the unhappily married woman will have a better self image than the virgin.

Molested girls will have a better self image than unmolested ones, etc.

And then a strange thing happened. From the replaying of these pictures in her mind, she starts to find them … dare I say it? She starts to find them arousing. This is a surprise to her, as previous pain in her life made her somewhat immune to sexual responses.

Now, Louise’s reaction is not abnormal at all. The female body reacts to the possibility of rape by at least making the chances of injury less. Her physical arousal at the thought of sexual violence does not mean Louise wants to be raped, but the opposite: Her body wants to be unhurt.

“So”, she thinks, “I am not that abnormal? I can respond sexually?” She still knows this pornography is degrading and ugly, but  she also know that she responds sexually to it.

Confused, she meets James. Now, Louise have always been too impressionable for her own good, and that have been taken advantage of before. James tell her that she is utterly and completely wrong, and he dismisses her cautions, and argue with her view that BDSM is revolting and ugly.

Or actually, James, who don’t call himself a “dominant” for nothing, is smarter than that. He does not tell her she is wrong. He tells her she is right. At least, he calls the part of her that get aroused by BDSM right and good. James purposefully influences this suggestible young woman away from all her cautions. Because James likes to beat and degrade women, and for that he needs a woman to stay with him for his insults and degradation.

And although Louise is choosing to do what James say, it is not a free choice. Her consent is influenced by listening to one-sided advice from a sadist who stands to gain if she chooses BDSM, not from considering advice by neutral people.

James tells Louise what web sites he want her to look at. The captions next to some pictures talks of kidnapping, rape, and torturing girls who do not want it. Objectively, Louise knows these things are wrong. But hey, the captions are just fantasies, aren’t they? Louise learns to enjoy reading these things. But if she “enjoys” rape and torture, does it not make sense that James should be allowed to do things to her that come ever closer to rape and torture?

James tells Louise to kneel before him and recite these words:

“Master, I am your slave and property. My only purpose for living is to please Master. Every breath I take is granted by You.”

And this re-enforces the thought in Louise’s mind: “I exist to please him. To refuse consent would be to miss my purpose. My purpose in life, regardless of what I want or need, is to think of his wants and needs.” And her capacity to freely choose consent or non-consent is diminished even more.

James talk of himself as deserving her obedience. He also talks of her as deserving punishment when she fails at a task he gives her, or forgets to perform it.

Now, Louise does not enjoy punishment beatings. They would not be punishments if she did. She endures them because she believe she deserves them, and she believes he deserves to give them. Objectively, Louise does not deserve punishment when she fails at a task, or refuse to do what he say. BDSM is supposed to be consensual: She should be allowed to disobey him whenever she does not want to consent. He should not punish her if she disobey, because she is simply exercising her right of non-consent.

But all this talk of “deserving” to be punished diminishes her capacity to resist even further.

He lets her do things in public that makes it harder to look people straight in the eye, head held upright. He isolates her from friends. Increasingly, the only validation people-pleasing Louise gets is when James tell her things like: “You know, [objectifying expletive noun deleted], you are so beautiful to me when you take a whipping like that willingly.”

Later, Louise is “consenting” to things she used to find disgusting to even read about. And she tells herself that she allowed it, that James loves her because of the “you are so beautiful …” comments. While her true natural reaction to these things were horror when she first encountered it, James convinced her that their lifestyle is “giving in to her true nature.” Louise gradually replaces all her dreams with dreams of pleasing the woman beater who dominates her.

That is my problem with consent in BDSM. Most every components of these lifestyles seems to be about weakening the resolve of someone who is too submissive to start with:

> One-sided messages whereby BDSM people refuse to acknowledge disgust as a valid moral reaction to some of the things pictured in BDSM, but only validates positive reactions to their lifestyle. (Before you tell me that disgust with violent pornography is wrong because the content is consensual, the captions on much of BDSM porn imply kidnapping, rape and physical abuse the victim did not want. To that you may or may not add the complaint in this blog entry.)

> “No” and “stop” not working as safe words, suggesting to the submissive that the dominant likes to continue when asked to stop.

> Actions like kneeling, the submissive having to say things which put her lower than the “master”, the “master” using sexually objectifying terms for the slave.

> Dishonest terms like how the master “deserves” worship or the slave “deserves” punishments. The slave learning to write of Him (capital letter) and i (no capital), the master to write of Me and My slave and O/our relationship.

> Slaves being isolated from, or embarrassed in front of other people, so that the “master”could have less competition for their heart and mind.

And in between the constant barrage of heavy-handed messages (the part of you that dislike this is wrong/ saying “no” or ”stop” is useless/ you ought to obey/ you deserve punishment when you do not obey/ you exist to do what he say/ you are pretty when you suppress your need to get away from pain/ no other relationship should be important except the one with the sadist/ you are a sex object/ you wanted this/ you belong on your knees below him) there seem to be just enough “but you can say no if you want to” to keep the very impressionable submissive from running straight to the police with multiple rape and assault complaints.

If BDSM was really all about sane consent to things the submissive also enjoy, no submissive would allow a punishment beating.

—————————————————

PS: The writer is aware that not all submissives are female or all dominants male. This piece was written with “he” for dominants and “she” for submissives for the sake of simplicity.

Once again, please do not link to BDSM material in your comments, or to your BDSM blog from your name.

I don’t hurt anyone. I do not want to hurt anyone. So I am a good person.

I previously argued that this approach to moral goodness is less than adequate, but that is not today’s topic. Point is, someone who does not want to hurt others – physically, emotionally, economically, etc. is regarded, by almost any set of values including the purely secular, as superior to those who want to hurt others. And that simple baseline idea of morality: “Do not hurt others” is a fairly good start for a moral conscience. Per extention, hurting others on purpose is the baseline standard of moral evil.
Where does that put people who like sadistic or masochistic acts? (Warning: Violent sexual graphics in link.)

Are people who condone this as moral as those who oppose this?

A sadist hurts people. A masochist finds sadistic behavior – hurting others – acceptable, something (s)he encourages and defends in a partner. This hurting could be physical pain, or it could be humiliation , insults and degradation.
The BDSM community may say that their standard of morality is “safe, sane and consensual.” In my opinion, that is automatically a lower standard than not hurting people:
>    To safely hurt people – in other words, hurting them emotionally and physically, but not to such an extent that their life or health is in danger – is a lower moral standard than not hurting them. It is also nonsensical. Part of the definition of “safe” is “free from hurt” and “protected from being hurt”. As such, anything or anyone that causes hurt is, per definition, unsafe.

>    To sanely hurt people – hurting them while staying in control of your emotions, while doing nothing that the BDSM community will regard as crazy, is a lower standard than not wanting to hurt people. It is also a contradiction in terms. Mental health professionals regards both sexual sadism and sexual masochism as mental disorders.*

>    To hurt consensual people is a lower standard of morality than not hurting people. A similar example will be selling cocaine only to consensual buyers – of course, that is morally worse than not selling cocaine at all. But the similarities goes further: Drug sellers not only want to sell to consensual people, but they do what they can to enslave their customers further, so they can sell more drugs and make more money. Likewise, sadists encourage their consensual submissives to consent to worse pain and worse humiliation than before. And both drug sellers and the BDSM community push their product because they want to enslave new customers.
Anyone who is involved in BDSM (I am not speaking about the ropes and blindfolds part here, but pain and humiliation) have rejected the simplest basic human value of “it is wrong to hurt people.” Can you reject this value, and still be a good and trustworthy member of society, safe for those around you to be with? I do not think so. I believe this will spill over into the other human interactions of the BDSM participant.
I do not expect to make any BDSM participant en ex-participant with this post. I want to tell “vanilla” (non-BDSM) people to not regard these people as normal people who just have different sexual needs. This is not in the same class as, say, a fetish for high heels or even a preference for your own gender. This is a direct rejection of the most basic value of how to treat humans. To the degree you start to  find sadism/ masochism in pornography and literature acceptable, you reject the most basic moral standard that is written on normal human hearts. To the degree you watch that kind of pornography, you encourage and even fund cruelty.

(Edit, added about 12 hours after this post first appearing: I should have asked this before, but please do not link to BDSM/DD web sites or blogs in the comments, including the place where you optionally fill in your blog name after your name and e-mail address. Thank you)

Those interested in this blog entry may also be interested in:

Why consent is not enough in BDSM 
——————
Note*

The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders regards both sexual masochism and sexual sadism as mental disorders. Because of, among others, pressure from the BDSM community, consensual masochism or sadism is only regarded as a mental disorder nowadays if it causes “clinically significant distress or impairment in important areas of functioning.” It appears humiliation and degradation is prone to cause significant distress for the person subjected to it, and I expressed the opinion that letting go of the “hurting people is wrong” standard will dause impairment in social functioning.

Even when all sadism and masochism was considered mental disorders, BDSM people already called “sane” one of their values.

How could God punish homosexuals? Homosexuality is not a choice” – Argument from many homosexual apologists.

I will start by agreeing on this: I do not believe people should be punished for acts they did not choose.

Some gay apologists try to change the Christian opinion on gay sexuality by telling us the Bible was translated wrong all these years. My problem lies in what they try to change the meaning to. A side effect of the understanding in much of gay apologetic material, is that God rejects child (boy) rape victims for being victims.

Here are the verses they re-interpret, with the Greek words they dispute un-translated:

Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived. Neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor [malakos], nor [arsenokoitai], nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners will inherit the kingdom of God. And such were some of you. But you were washed, but you were sanctified, but you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus and by the Spirit of our God. (1 Cor 6:9-11)

Knowing this, that the law is not made for a righteous man, but for the lawless and disobedient, for the ungodly and for sinners, for unholy and profane, for murderers of fathers and murderers of mothers, for manslayers, for [pornoi], for [arsenokoitai ], for manstealers, for liars, for perjured persons, and if there be any other thing that is contrary to sound doctrine; (1 Ti 1:9-10)

Arsenokoitai is translated in most Bibles with words like homosexuals or sodomites . Therefore, gay apologists will obviously try and tell us it means something else. One of their favorite answers is to call it a rapist of slaves or children.

According to some of them, (and the Jerusalem Bible translation) malakos – meaning soft when used as a pronoun, but used as a noun here- mean a child slave kept for sexual purposes, and arsenokoittai is the pervert who uses a boy prostitute. But the problem with that understanding, in my eyes, is that it claims a victim of rape will not inherit the kingdom of God.

1 Ti 1:10 likewise contain arsenekoitai, in this case preceded by pornoi(translated as whoremonger, adulterers, fornicators, immoral persons or immoral persons, depending on the Bible translation). In this case, some gay apologists translate pornoi as the victim with no choice in the matter, the arsenokoitai as the user of the kidnapped slave, and manstealer as the person who kidnapped him. Should I really believe that the victim is on the same level as his kidnapper and his abuser, and should be mentioned with them in a sin list? I don’t.

Now, some of the very people who tell us “How could God punish homosexuals? Homosexuality is not a choice”, tell us God will punish people for things that are not a choice. But not the gays. Other people. And not always other people either. At least some gays were sexually abused as children.

Compared to that, the common Christian belief that God will punish people not for being homosexual, but for homosexual intercourse (but of course, it can be repented and forgiven by Christ), looks positively benign to me. Please note that I am not teaching you how you should understand the Bible on this. I am no Bible translater. I am only rejecting one suggested meaning as incompatible with the character of the Christian God, in my view.

As long as gay apologists claim the Christian God is so unjust that he will reject people for being rape victims, I have to conclude that gay apologetics obviously cannot be right about this. Re-interpreting the Bible responsibly is one thing. Believing God excludes people from the Kingdom for the crimes of another is not.

—————————-

PS: Here I ask New Testament scholar and Bible translator Craig Blomberg in two comments on how that should be understood, and he answers.

The article seems to be in a: “Wow, am I not wonderfully pro-life, praise me” vein. Not one thing said: “My poor daughter!”  She say: “After the police called me to tell me she’d been found, the officer asked me to meet him at the clinic and be reunited with my daughter. When I arrived, I was led to the Gloria Steinem Conference Room.  I’m not kidding;  that alone almost made me pass out.”

Serious? She is waiting to get reunited with her missing, mentally handicapped daughter, and her thoughts are not “How is my daughter?” but “Yuck, I am in a room named after someone I dislike!” Personally, if I was on my way to a loved one who was attacked, I would not mind (at that moment) if it was the Joseph Stalin Conference Room.

It is not in the interest of a molested child to get identifying details mentioned in the media, yet she has a daughter who functions on the level of a child, and she gives her name, which makes her daughter pretty identifiable.

And here I thought being pro-life is about caring about humans. Okay, I admit my rant may not be fair, and Elise Hilton probably cut all the non-abortion-related bits from her story. But it made me wonder about where the line should be drawn. This may get some flak, but so be it.

I am pro-life. I value the life of the unborn and the already-born.

I know trying to save babies in ectopic pregnancies are way out of line. The chances, currently, of killing the mother is much bigger than saving the baby. A big chance of killing a woman, through inaction, for the microscopic chance of a miracle baby is not pro-life. After all, the mother’s life is a life, and to be pro-life would be to want her to live. That much is clear.

But where is the line? Some birth control methods has the first purpose of preventing ovulation. But sometimes, that same contraceptive may (according to them) cause a conceived blastocyst to not get implanted. As such, anti-abortion campaigners sometimes speak out against these contraceptives .

Now, strictly speaking, if life begin at conception, to prevent a conceived blastocyst from implanting would be roughly like not allowing a living human being the environment he needs to survive.

But to what extend do we, in other things, avoid anything that has other purposes, but may take a life?

>   We get into cars. Cars have the main purpose of getting us from point A to point B, but sometimes cars are fatal.

>   We get into high buildings and take people there, although some people have died falling from balconies and windows far above the ground.

>   We have pills in our homes, although suicidal people and small children have died from pill overdoses.

>   We buy homes with swimming pools, leave the home, cross streets, and talk to people, without stopping it to think someone’s child may drown, we may be abducted, ran over by a car, or pick up an contagious disease that may kill someone in our family with a bad immune system.

Or is the better comparison this, seeing that it is more akin to making a hostile environment than to killing:

>   We refuse to take some poor person into our home, who could die of malnutrition and disease if we do not, in order that we could better live our life, care for our family, etc.

Because we all do that. Even the most hospitable family in the world do not take in all the poor and needy.

To what extend should we avoid things that have a side effect that it may be deadly for someone?

I read the blog yesterday of a guy who calls himself a “dom”, on which there was a recent post by Allie, a woman who allows herself to be abused by him.

After work, she quickly entered a shop to buy a magazine. He found out about it. For that reason, she was, and is still, sadistically, painfully punished. I would not go into the sexually explicit details of humiliation and punishment, but it is clear from her writings that she has a terrible self-image (she calls herself i, not I), cried of both pain and frustration today, and she is getting more and more disconnected from her feelings. (“Don’t ask me how i feel. He decides what i feel.”)

She claims she begged him to take charge of her.

Now don’t get me wrong. I believe there are “submissive” people in the world with a healthy self-esteem; who play rough but know that they are valued and valuable and not just an object; who can and do make many decisions of all sorts most of the time, but like time off when they leave decisions to the dominant partner; who still have several healthy human relationships. What they do in the bedroom is their business. But this woman is not one of them.

She may have started out saying something like:

I am a consensual adult. I choose to play rough.

But now she says:

 I i am a consensual adult an object. I i feel can’t say how i feel. I choose to play rough. He chooses for me.

This is not consensual. Whatever words the supporters want to coax it in, she went so far down the road that she, in her own words, is not a consensual adult any more. Her mental health is such that she needs protection. Exploiting a woman like that should fall in the same category as sexually abusing a child, or a mentally handicapped person. There ought to be a law against it.

By the way, the mental health article I link to also mention “learned helplessness” as a factor that can compromise mental and emotional health.

People like Allie (apparently an intelligent woman, by the way she can verbalize her thoughts on the internet) are mentally ill to a level that need intervention. And someone who would exploit someone so clearly not accountable for her own actions, and break her down further, deserves jail time. The same way that there are laws against sexually using the seriously mentally handicapped, women like this need that past consent to some lifestyles should not count, when you no longer are allowed to have a say. Perhaps this should, like child abuse is in some countries, a mandatory reporting crime for those who know about it?

———–

PS: Comments that link to BDSM or DD sites will not be published. On this site, I am the “dom”, and your comments are submitted to me.

(After the Seafarer comment, small edits were made to emphasize that this should not be regarded as consensual.)

Who is right? Both are, probably. The statement “you cannot be good without God” does not mean what the atheist, or non-atheistic member of the public, think it does.

Philosophers ask: Can people be (objectively) good without (the existence of) God?

The atheist answer: People can be good (according to society’s majority opinion of good) without (believing in) God.

The atheist gives a red herring answer: “Without God” and “without believing in God” are not synonymous.

The real question, for better minds than mine, is: “If no higher being exists, is their anything/ anyone that can objectively be called good? Or would that mean the sadist’s subjective standards of good is as valid as the standards of the philantrophist, because no arbiter higher than the sadist and philantrophist can say which standard is right?”

You cannot answer that one by being a respectable atheist. But then, the atheist who understands the question don’t have to feel offended. This is no more a slur on the atheist than on the believer: If no higher being exist (so say this idea), neither the (falsely believing) religious nor the atheists can be objectively good.

All jokes aside, if you like the posts on topics like gender equality or patriarchy on this blog, please drop in at my new one, which is now open. (Posts that were copied to Biblical Personhood will soon be deleted from this one.)

I got more half-finished posts on this than will ever be worth finishing. My new blog, which will be solely about these themes, will be up as soon as I succeed in importing posts from this blog to that one. When the Biblical Personhood blog is up, you will be invited. Meanwhile, I am praying that God will use my words, and that I will not mislead in what I blog.