BBC Radio 4 Moral Maze

[joe king]

That Matthew bloke asked an interesting question.
Can you remember what it was?

[Mysteryman]

Joe, if you go to the Radio 4 website and find the Moral Maze, you can hear the whole prog again.

[Mysteryman]

OEJ, I can see where you are coming from, but then defeat isn't always inevitable in the face of seeming overwhelming odds!

Organised religion, as opposed to faith in a deity, has ruined many lives and guilt is a major tool in the armoury of control.

One question to ponder. If sex is sinful, why is it pleasurable? Man didn't suddenly decide it should be so.

The ceremony of "churching" which took place, and in some religions still takes place, 40 days after giving birth was based on the Jewish rite of purification to put the mother back in good standing after having had sex which produced the child. Whilst most churches now claim the rite is a celebration of thanksgiving for a safe birth it was, and still is, practiced after a still birth or even a miscarriage, harking back to the original use of the rite.

That rite was and is a perversion of the understanding of nature. I wonder how the religious anti brigade explain away the function of the clitoris?

[andy ide]

I've just listened to the programme. Twenty-five years ago they would have been banging on about video nasties. You can see those movies quite freely now, along with their gorier remakes, and no-one gives them a second thought because it's since become transparently clear to anyone who might have thought otherwise that they had no psychologically damaging effects whatsoever on the people who watched them.

I'm tired of hearing these moral guardians go on about how they know what kids are thinking and how they're behaving. They latch onto a few examples of poor behaviour and think it's the end of the world but surely kids are as different from one another as adults are, a mix of nature and nurture. Some boys are going to get into violent porn, some are going to get into all that great lesbian Girlfriends stuff, and some are going to realise that they're hooked on feet a whole lot earlier than they would have done 20 years ago. That's what it's about -- 'a whole lot earlier', bringing access to explicit hardcore pornography in line with sexual awakening (and with it, let's face it, the automatic objectification of women on the part of boys that's always there anyway with or without smut). It's all ebb and flow. Two hundred years ago they were sending kids up chimneys. Talking to them today about the birds and the bees gets to be a bit more colourful and complex but that's not an insurmountable challenge for a responsible parent.

The Moral Maze won't be talking about it in another 25 years time and internet porn will be just as prevalent.

[joe king]

Interesting ...



velly interesting

[mark cremona]

more interesting stats.

http://www.economywatch.com/world-indus ... ustry.html

http://internet-filter-review.toptenrev ... stics.html


I was asked by a friend who works at the Beeb to be on this show but declined, after reading this thread I feel I should have perhaps made an effort.

[mark cremona]

clickable, sorry.

[one eyed jack]

"If sex is sinful, why is it pleasurable?"

There are those who think God is this big old friendly white guy with a white beard. If i didnt know better I'd think he was a psychotic looking geek and we were just his experiment in a petri dish