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Your post gives me the opportunity to clarify a number of points. I was in italics, you were in bold. Boys are not so much "too" hot as they are divinely hot. We find boys attractive. It has nothing to do with any "sky gods". Your use of the phrase "sky God" tells me you don't know what I mean, and what is traditionally meant, by the word "God" in the classical tradition. I can't write an essay about it here, but maybe you can get a feel for it by taking some abstract ideas a little more seriously. They are in no need of our sperm... Who says that we insist on making them consume sperm? No one; I was replying to Pharmakon's line, "Because boys are hot, we want to give them our sperm. The imperatives of biology demand that we do this." I didn't find that statement a coherent way of thinking about any "biological imperative" within boy love. ...not [nor?] do we really need to give it to them. Boys want to know what sex is, and how it works, physically. They are eager for us to demonstrate those things to them. There are various ways for us to do so. Yes, I meant "nor," not "not," thanks. I don't really see the point of your observation; yes, there are many ways to learn about and teach boys about sex, and pederasty is a good one, I think we'd agree. . . . All beauty points to the divine, God has nothing to do with our ability to appreciate beauty. "Beauty is in the eye of the beholder". Beauty is no more "in the eye of the beholder" than Truth or Goodness are. We might fail to see it or experience it, much as we might fail to understand something truth or fail to do what is good. Again, if you knew what classical monotheism has long said about the divine, especially (but not exclusively) in its more Platonist forms, you'd know that to talk about God practically is to talk about beauty, and vice versa. It's part of what the concept of God means. ...but the sexual beauty of women is undergirded by a procreative urge far older than man and shared by all the animals... You obviously have not read this Rind study, which includes animals (who were engaging in "pederastic" activity millions of years before we even evolved): https://greek-love.com/media/PDFs/Rind.Pederasty.an.Integration.pdf ... You should read it. I have read it. I am quite familiar with Rind's work, and it in no way conflicts with what I'm saying here. There is indeed pederastic behavior resembling that of the human, especially in the higher mammals and especially in primates. (Animals are often more anthropomorphic than might first appear!) Such behavior is on the whole associated with more complex and subtle social behavior in male groups. Which into my point: it is a mode of desire that begins, even in animals, to break away from the "brute" need to breed with a fit mate. But in breaking away, it moves beyond even that, given the creative scope of human reason. We see beauty in a way no apes discernably do. I dunno, perhaps adult male bonobo's sit in long contemplation of the beauty of the juveniles who would get it on with them... But I just don't see it. ...while the sexual beauty (aka hotness) of boys points more immediately beyond the reproduction of animal flesh toward something more abstract, something more philosophical and oriented to the soul, toward what must be learned, toward culture, toward virtue. There is nothing "non-virtuous" in engaging in sexual activity. Their is no such thing as a "soul". Cultures vary around the world. I never said "engaging in sexual activity" was "non-virtuous." That would be silly, and it would be sillier still to claim that sexual activity had nothing to do with virtue; surely you're not suggesting that? (I don't know why you throw in a disbelief in the idea of the soul here; it's a complete non sequitur.) In other words, toward distinctly human qualities, what make humans uniquely human: the divine spark, logos, reason, imago dei. Oh, right. Human "exceptionalism". SEE: https://as.nyu.edu/content/dam/nyu-as/environment/documents/Syllabi/fall-2023/ANST-GA_2500.004_Psychology_of_Human_Exceptionalism_Marino_F23.pdf That link is not working for me (perhaps just now, due to today's internet disruptions?). Still, if you don't think human beings are exceptional, you must be living in a cave. On the one hand, every genus of life is "exceptional" in some way, which is what makes it what it is. On the other hand, every culture everywhere has recognized that human beings stand out amongst the animals, especially in being language-oriented, technologically inventive, and morally responsible. That reason that God gives us makes possible the recognition of beauty as a form of truth and a kind of goodness, above and beyond its "merely" reproductive capacity to attract. You know what God thinks? Wow... And humans (along with other higher primates) engage in sexual activity for many purposes other than reproduction. Don't you know that? I think you mis-parsed my sentence. I'm not describing the reason, i.e. the "explanation," for God doing anything. I'm talking about "reason" as Pharmakon did: as something of which human beings are possessed. Again: reason, logos, the divine spark, imago dei. There is no conflict between the myths of evolutionary function and creation by God (contra Edmund). There are elemental facts about human experience, human nature, and reason itself that simply cannot be reduced to evolutionary function. You do understand how human (and other animal) instincts function, don't you? SEE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instinct#In_humans I do indeed. Again, you've missed my point, which I admittedly might have made more clearly, and which I admit is abstract. One especially famous question about "reason" as a human quality is one that Darwin himself was concerned about: namely, that our capacity for reason, if it is to be trusted, cannot be merely the accidental product of the blind evolutionary process of natural selection. If reason has no inherently objective status, and is accidental, then all thought is nothing but words, and neither you nor I are right or wrong about anything. The human is blessed with an instinct toward reason. The divine, sheerly gratuitous beauty of boys is, for me at least, foremost among those facts. Please remember that your superstitious beliefs are not shared by everyone else, even within your own culture. I will, and do, remember that. Please return the favor, though, and remember that your superstitious atheism is not shared by everyone else, even within your own culture. Don't you share, though, a sense of awe at the beauty of boys? Isn't their beauty something that orients you, points you in the direction of what you think is good, of what is good? I do agree with you on one thing, though. Boys Are Beautiful! And great fun, too... ;-) Amen to that! We can all be friends! We are worshiping at the same altar! p.s. A truly excellent essay on what the idea of God amounts to in classical monotheism is The Experience of God, by David Bentley Hart. There is nothing remotely preachy about it. He simply lays out what basic idea is, and how it has been both logically and "experientially" compelling for millennia, from the pagan Greeks to Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. |