Andy's Blog
We have been on the radio for three years now. I have decided that unlike men, all opinions are not created equal which means not everyone deserves to have an opinion. For now on, I am going to require a simple, but apparently difficult, logic test for all people before they share an opinion. Ready...
True or false:
If A implies B.
Then B implies A.
Simple enough right? Think you know the answer? Read on...
The inspiration behind this post is an email we received last night from Lucida on our topic "Man's Best Friend Has Become Man's God". She writes: "From a factual standpoint: It has been well studied and documented that animal cruelty is associated with crimes against human beings." The implication. Those that are cruel to animals are just destined to become murders.
Now the study she is referring to is true. It has been proven that those who have committed serious crimes had shown a propensity towards animal cruelty before acting out on humans. But does the inverse ring true as well?1
Another classic statement I hear is that studies have shown that serial rapists were also pornography users.
Well duh! Of course those who are rapists are going to have an abnormal view of sexuality. But does the inverse run true? Are those who struggle with porn one image away from becoming a rapist?
When I was in high school, I took an Introduction to Philosophy class at Huntington University. As I later realized, it was less a class on classic philosophy and more a class on logic. The above test was essentially day one of the class.
Let's take the murders and rapists and alphabet letters2 out of the equation and put it in more simple terms.
If it is raining the streets are wet. The streets are wet, therefore it must be raining. Wait a minute, something is right about that statement.
And now we are back to my test. Why doesn't that sound right? Because logic that assumes since a implies b, therefore b implies a is false. The streets could be wet because of a fire hydrant or because a dam break or thousands of other reasons.
If you answered true to the test above, you would be wrong, and no longer deserve to have an opinion as there is something fundamentally wrong at the core of your logic.
If you have an opinion, be sure to leave it in the comment box below.3
Almost like using a leading indicator to demonstrate what is happening in the economy presently. HA thats for you non-mathematical (actually it economics but oh well) types.
As Benjamin Disraeli said, and good ole Mark Twain popularized, "There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics."
??
For example:
If 2 + 4 Equals 3 + 3
Then 3 + 3 Equals 2 + 4
Or....
If 3 / 4 Equals 6 / 8
Then 6 / 8 Equals 3 /4
There are probably examples where numbers would falsify the statement, but I am too lazy to figure it out.
I LIKE THAT ONE!
I think we all agree that for philosophical/moral/etc that if you believe "a implies b - then b implies a" you are a moron.
This is irrelevant as it offers no comparison to population at large. Most people in the US are pornography users including almost all men.
If rapists don't use pornography any more frequently than non-rapists the above sentence is as useful as remarking that serial rapists also ate bread.
Well duh! Of course those who are rapists are going to have an abnormal view of sexuality.
Of course you need to show why pornography is an example of an "abnormal view of sexuality". Merriam-Webster defines "abnormal" as "deviating from the normal or average; unusual, exceptional". And here are some statistics on pornography use:
http://familysafemedia.com/pornography_statistics.html#anchor7 (note that this is an anti-porn website but it does feature extensive stats)
If the adverse were true (serial rapists more likely to use porn) then you would be right: the reverse would not necessarily apply.
But I say that just because serial rapists like to use porn it does not follow that they use porn any more than the rest of us. As a matter of fact, porn might well lead to less sex crimes, reversing the correlation:
http://www.law.stanford.edu/display/images/dynamic/events_media/Kendall%20cover%20+%20paper.pdf
Oh, and your "struggle with porn" is an interesting turn of phrase. I would guess that if one is "struggling with porn" because one has been raised to believe it is evil and sinful, he or she is more likely to suffer negative psychological consequences than those of us who watch porn guilt-free because we don't see anything wrong with it. I have no proof of this; it is just a hunch.
You can go back and reference all my (many) posts on pornography. Porn wasn't the purpose of this post. Logic was. Porn was just example of how people (especially Christians) misuse logic.
I wasn't talking about you specifically, just about Christians in general. Of course there are always exceptions - no need to get your panties in a twist over it though. :)
Right, but in using porn as an example you implied that rape and pornography were comparable "abnormal views of sexuality".,
You also implied that "most x do y" is somehow a significant statement, when it is completely meaningless unless you compare to to the prevalence of y in the general population of the same demographic.
Hence my comment.