actually the Egyptian religion (paganism/pharaoh worship) was around for several thousand years. Judeo-Christianity has only been around for about 2,700 years. It’s only been a dominant world religion for perhaps 1,700 years.
Judeo-Christianity as an organized religious movement, yes. Given that the Bible doesn’t even pretend that organized religion centered on God has been around forever (the oldest form of it, Judaism, didn’t begin until Abraham), belief in the Judeo-Christian God outside of such religion may have been believed in, on a person to person basis, since the beginning of time for all we know; and the Scripture/Belief System allows, actually, for a time between creation and Judaism when people had forgotten about God altogether. I know that the “for all we know” doesn’t
prove anything; I am simply pointing out, that neither does the youth of the Judeo-Christian organized religion
dis-prove anything, so that it may be established as not being a cause for either triumph (for those who are not Judeo-Christian) or doubt (for those who are Judeo-Christian). That’s not in the context of what you were trying to show, of course, but I just want to be sure than anyone who should happen across it doesn’t get the wrong idea.
for one thing the priesthood is a place where such men can avoid speculation regarding their sexual preference (unlike the protestant ministry); and have access to little boys.
Except that now it is indisputably the one place where people
are going to speculate that they are pedophiles, more than in any protestant ministry, more than any other walk of life, period. It just doesn’t make sense that pedophiles would continue to think it was
the safest place to try to redeem themselves anymore.
I believe this has all been sufficiently dealt with, hundreds of times whenever someone comes along trying to say that priests are especially likely to be pedophiles compared to other people. People love to be able to point fingers at a certain group of people and say that they are “dangerous” just for their station in life, and it has always been exacerbated–claimed to be justified–when any number of people within that station have indeed committed crimes or atrocities; whether that station is race, class, or whatever, I suspect that such evaluation of people in bulk before the individual members are known to be guilty will always persist…
I don’t see that slippery slope as very likely?
…and this manner of bulk evaluation will always conveniently be argued to be somehow more fair than it would be for other groups of people to whom the ones handing it out are less willing to apply it. Such a phenomenon has been happening for centuries, and has found its home in the minds of Christians, Atheists, and people of all beliefs. Why should we expect it to end now?
I like the way the law does it better. A mental institution if they are insane (meaning they lacked the capacity to distinguish between right and wrong). However, if they had the capacity (which is almost always the case) then jail. If they’re so remorseful then they shouldn’t mind a couple decades in jail.
Perhaps you are right. For my part, I want society protected. I am not out to “get even” with a group of people whom, according to you, may desperately want to quit what they’re doing anyway. I wish simply that their crimes are not to be repeated by them, and that no one else be victimized. So long as society is protected from such people–assuming that such people exist as you imply, and that they aren’t all just wicked schemers–I’m satisfied regardless of whether that is prison or solitary confinement in a mental institution.
If they really hate their crimes so much, and know there’s no helping themselves, then maybe suicide would be the most honorable thing they could do (or a surgical procedure to remove their sex organs).
Well, since you posit that not all of them are Atheists or agnostics, neither of those is always a viable option, which I am sure you know.
Gladly submitting to be locked away from potential victims (or at the very least accepting this fate once they are caught) is always such an option, and such submission is not the least bit an “immoral means to reach a moral end” (the phrase within quotation marks being something which many religions, including Catholicism, do not believe to be justifiable) which is why it is perfectly acceptable, no matter what one’s beliefs are. A “religious pedophile,” for instance, may believe that being locked away for life will give him a chance at redemption and heaven. Suicide will not. Even if they
are Atheists or Agnostics, hating one’s
crime, even if with the most intense hatred imaginable, doesn’t always mean one hates one
self enough to snuff oneself out of existence
for eternity prematurely. The self-castration, however, might be a much more justifiable action in the mind of an atheist or agnostic, and I do not pretend to know why they do not, one way or the other.
Blessings in Christ,
KindredSoul
)
).