One of the ways in which the "IVF tends to lead to weaker communities" argument sort of works is to note that religious communities (who are more cautious in their use of technologies like IVF) tend to be stronger and in that sense more human communities than that observed in the wider culture.
My own take on the issue of technology is that I do think Catholics go too far in their anti-technicratic views. Technology can be compatible with nature, in fact technology can enhance existing natural functions. Good use of technology augments and builds on that which is natural instead of destroying it. Instead of uprooting existing technologies, we should be considering how to use/adapt them in a way which helps us live in a truly human way.
Agree! And sounds like exactly what a Christian futurist ought to say. I would say the same for cities. I’ve come to think that cities may be the best place to live the life of tight-knit religious communities. Traditionalism accommodating itself to modernity.
Yeah but the Church isn’t against enhancing things that are “natural” it’s only against things that aren’t “natural.” The confusion here is the Church views human nature as the rational animal whereas some people view “natural” as something that happens that we can describe using biological methods. For example you could take viagra as it is a supplement to help you act according to your nature and reproduce, however you can’t masturbate and stick the seed into your wife because that isn’t actually reproduction
1. Hanania practically says that there are no concrete evidences that supports social conservatives' arguments.
There are lots if one wants to look at it:
Fornication:
- [Only one out of three children born to cohabiting parents remains in a stable family through age 12, in contrast to nearly three out of four children born to married parents.](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4768758/)
- [On average, children living with cohabiting biological parents fare worse on several social, psychological, and educational outcomes than children born to married parents, even after controlling for factors like race, household income, and parental education.](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3091824/)
- [Adolescents of parents who cohabited were at higher risk for externalizing relationship dissolution and relationship instability symptoms 10 years later compared to children of married parents. In addition, cohabiting mothers who stayed with their partner over the 10 years showed significantly greater declines in relationship adjustment over the 10 years compared to married mothers.](https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.746306/full)
- [IN FINLAND, where cohabitation is more common than marriages, Cohabiting parents had more depressive symptoms than married parents. They were also less satisfied with their relationships and expressed less satisfaction with the quality of support they got from their partner.](https://www.mdpi.com/2076-0760/11/4/181)
(This one also debunks his claim that "I don't see much family breakdown in Europe" -> Screw that, the family is deader than dodo in Europe. More people fornicate than marry there)
- [Nearly three decades of research evaluating the impact of family structure on the health and well-being of children demonstrates that children living with their married, biological parents consistently have better physical, emotional, and academic well-being.](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4240051/)
- [(1) couples who have premarital children are more likely to divorce; (2) the higher the number of children, the more stable the marriage, but the marginal effect declines with the increase of the number of children; (3) younger children reduce the risk of divorce more than older ones; and (4) couples who have sons are less likely to divorce](https://journalofchinesesociology.springeropen.com/articles/10.1186/s40711-015-0003-0)
- [Simple cross-tabulations from the 1988 National Survey of Family Growth indicate that women who were sexually active prior to marriage faced a considerably higher risk of marital disruption than women were were virgin brides.... These results suggest that the positive relationship between premarital sex and the risk of divorce can be attributed to prior unobserved differences (e.g., the willingness to break traditional norms) rather than to a direct causal effect.](https://doi.org/10.2307/352992)
- [We find the relationship between premarital sex and divorce is highly significant and robust even when accounting for early-life factors. Compared to people with no premarital partners other than eventual spouses, those with nine or more partners exhibit the highest divorce risk, followed by those with one to eight partners. There is no evidence of gender differences.](https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0192513X231155673#bibr25-0192513X231155673)
- [Early initiators had an increased likelihood of having had multiple sex partners, been involved in a pregnancy, forced a partner to have sex, had frequent intercourse and had sex while drunk or high.](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/11804436/)
- [Structural equation modeling indicated that casual sex was negatively associated with well-being and positively associated with psychological distress](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23742031/)
- [Depressive symptoms were associated with engaging in casual sex differently for males and females. Males who engaging in casual sex reported the fewest symptoms of depression and females who had a history of casual sex reported the most depressive symptoms](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17599248/)
- [The enormous losses of savings, property and lifestyle, the emotional tensions based on constant harassment from moneylenders, the threats of suicide by the gambler and the distancing of social networks place family members of problem gamblers in a vulnerable state.](https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/14459795.2012.731422)
- [Findings of the study suggest that gambling addicts suffer various harmful effects, including an increased susceptibility to financial and employment problems, such as debt and accumulated interest, bankruptcy, job loss, and decreased productivity. Participants in the study complained of physiological problems, including headaches, high blood pressure, arthritis, indigestion, a stomach disorder, and rapid weight loss. Common psychological problems reported included symptoms of high-level stress, depression, anxiety, insomnia, and suicidal ideation. For some interviewees who smoked and drank alcohol, consumption of these substances increased in response to their gambling. All participants reported disrupted relationships with their immediate family, relatives and friends.](https://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/BF03342123)
- [Replacing 10% of offline gambling with online gambling increases the likelihood of being a problematic gambler by 8.8-12.6%. This increase is equivalent to 139,322 problematic gamblers and 27.24 million Є per year of additional expenditures in the German health sector](https://www.jstor.org/stable/45156506)
- [The restrictions on gambling led to significant decreases in total gambling turnover, and several studies suggest that they led to fewer gambling and gambling problems.](https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/add.13172)
- [Countries with legalized prostitution are associated with higher human trafficking inflows than countries where prostitution is prohibited. The scale effect of legalizing prostitution, outweighs the substitution effect, where legal sex workers are favored over illegal workers. Legalizing or tolerating it expands the market and creates a surplus of demand that requires even more trafficking in to meet it.](https://orgs.law.harvard.edu/lids/2014/06/12/does-legalized-prostitution-increase-human-trafficking/)
- [Gender, increased sexist attitudes toward women, frequency of pornography consumption, and self-control deficits significantly predicted prostitution myth adherence (myth that prostitution is empowering)](http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0361684318754790)
- [Research on prostitution in 9 countries, 71% were physically assaulted in prostitution; 63% were raped; 89% of these respondents wanted to escape prostitution, but did not have other options for survival. A total of 75% had been homeless at some point in their lives; 68% met criteria for PTSD](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/254381847_Prostitution_and_Trafficking_in_Nine_Countries)
But of course chances are if trads are going to present such concrete evidences it won't matter.
------
2. Hanania also explicitly says that he practically only accepts utilitarian arguments that eventually be boiled down to libertarian moral foundations.
To which it can be said 2 things:
1. They should just go to the jungle since it practically shows libertarians are unfit to talk about anything in society since it only can talks to themselves.
Maximum negative liberty IS solitary hermit in the jungle and maximum positive liberty IS wokeism (with those on the very top of the oppression totempole)
2. Somalia and Afghanistan is the actual libertarian utopia since there's almost no governments there.
The book "A Social History of Afghanistan" and Anand Gopal's "No Good Men among the Living" describes and paints Afghanistan's real situations that are far different than any MSM reports out there.
US failure in Afghanistan is specifically about their complete lack of understanding of rural Afghan life.
Clearly you put a lot of work into these comments. Interesting and worth pondering. Thanks for the effort.
As a semi-reformed libertarian, I feel the pull of arguments from autonomy and personal liberty. Still, at one time in the US, to gamble, you had to either go to Vegas or deal with the mob. Now, there are casinos all over the place, and the states even sponsor lotteries, which are taxes on poor people who are not mathematically inclined. And, what's worse, you can bet on sports on your phone!
>Perhaps the secular arguments Carney provides are not simply cover for religious motivation. What if they are the reason Catholicism makes sense to Carney?<
This is the whole issue distilled in two sentences. Attacking people's motivations is lazy thinking. I could just as easily sit here and accuse Hanania of wanting everything he disagrees with to be motivated by religion so that he can dismiss it out of hand as superstitious nonsense.
To cherry pick one example, Leon Kass really is a weird guy, priggish to the point of being creepy. He objects to Ice Cream Cones, because people lick them like cats. There is nothing more joyful than consuming an ice cream cone, particularly with your family. Seriously, anyone who objects, in principle, to ice cream cones has something very wrong with them.
Ha ha, I’m gonna have to find this Kass essay. Sounds like he went too far in that one.
But his other works, especially The Beginning of Wisdom, are quite stellar. I am a big fan of his work and his approach to teaching at the University of Chicago.
I had to look that up - when read in context, it's not "creepy". It's just a throwback to high society manners. Heck, even in France nowadays eating on the streets is considered trashy.
88% of people support IVF including a majority that oppose abortion in all situations.
The only first world country with replacement fertility, Israel, is the world leader in IVF.
Being on the wrong side of this issue is totally discrediting as a worldview. One day nearly all babies will be born of IVF. If I had to choose between IVF and a religion, I’d ditch the religion.
One of the ways in which the "IVF tends to lead to weaker communities" argument sort of works is to note that religious communities (who are more cautious in their use of technologies like IVF) tend to be stronger and in that sense more human communities than that observed in the wider culture.
My own take on the issue of technology is that I do think Catholics go too far in their anti-technicratic views. Technology can be compatible with nature, in fact technology can enhance existing natural functions. Good use of technology augments and builds on that which is natural instead of destroying it. Instead of uprooting existing technologies, we should be considering how to use/adapt them in a way which helps us live in a truly human way.
Agree! And sounds like exactly what a Christian futurist ought to say. I would say the same for cities. I’ve come to think that cities may be the best place to live the life of tight-knit religious communities. Traditionalism accommodating itself to modernity.
Yeah but the Church isn’t against enhancing things that are “natural” it’s only against things that aren’t “natural.” The confusion here is the Church views human nature as the rational animal whereas some people view “natural” as something that happens that we can describe using biological methods. For example you could take viagra as it is a supplement to help you act according to your nature and reproduce, however you can’t masturbate and stick the seed into your wife because that isn’t actually reproduction
Another:
1. Hanania practically says that there are no concrete evidences that supports social conservatives' arguments.
There are lots if one wants to look at it:
Fornication:
- [Only one out of three children born to cohabiting parents remains in a stable family through age 12, in contrast to nearly three out of four children born to married parents.](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4768758/)
- [On average, children living with cohabiting biological parents fare worse on several social, psychological, and educational outcomes than children born to married parents, even after controlling for factors like race, household income, and parental education.](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3091824/)
- [Adolescents of parents who cohabited were at higher risk for externalizing relationship dissolution and relationship instability symptoms 10 years later compared to children of married parents. In addition, cohabiting mothers who stayed with their partner over the 10 years showed significantly greater declines in relationship adjustment over the 10 years compared to married mothers.](https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.746306/full)
- [IN FINLAND, where cohabitation is more common than marriages, Cohabiting parents had more depressive symptoms than married parents. They were also less satisfied with their relationships and expressed less satisfaction with the quality of support they got from their partner.](https://www.mdpi.com/2076-0760/11/4/181)
(This one also debunks his claim that "I don't see much family breakdown in Europe" -> Screw that, the family is deader than dodo in Europe. More people fornicate than marry there)
- [Nearly three decades of research evaluating the impact of family structure on the health and well-being of children demonstrates that children living with their married, biological parents consistently have better physical, emotional, and academic well-being.](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4240051/)
Promiscuity:
- [Sexual and emotional infidelity are positively correlated, Sexual and emotional promiscuity are positively correlated](https://www.athensjournals.gr/social/2017-4-4-3-Pinto.pdf).
- [(1) couples who have premarital children are more likely to divorce; (2) the higher the number of children, the more stable the marriage, but the marginal effect declines with the increase of the number of children; (3) younger children reduce the risk of divorce more than older ones; and (4) couples who have sons are less likely to divorce](https://journalofchinesesociology.springeropen.com/articles/10.1186/s40711-015-0003-0)
- [Simple cross-tabulations from the 1988 National Survey of Family Growth indicate that women who were sexually active prior to marriage faced a considerably higher risk of marital disruption than women were were virgin brides.... These results suggest that the positive relationship between premarital sex and the risk of divorce can be attributed to prior unobserved differences (e.g., the willingness to break traditional norms) rather than to a direct causal effect.](https://doi.org/10.2307/352992)
- [We find the relationship between premarital sex and divorce is highly significant and robust even when accounting for early-life factors. Compared to people with no premarital partners other than eventual spouses, those with nine or more partners exhibit the highest divorce risk, followed by those with one to eight partners. There is no evidence of gender differences.](https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0192513X231155673#bibr25-0192513X231155673)
- [Women who have more premarital sex partners have significantly greater odds of serial cohabiting (indicating that cohabitation is addictive)](https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1741-3737.2003.00444.x)
- [Adolescent premarital coitus has a strong negative effect on the self-reported academic grades and affects negatively the importance placed on going to college among white females](https://www.jstor.org/stable/2786919?seq=19#metadata_info_tab_contents)
- [Early initiators had an increased likelihood of having had multiple sex partners, been involved in a pregnancy, forced a partner to have sex, had frequent intercourse and had sex while drunk or high.](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/11804436/)
- [Premarital cohabitation predicts a substantially higher rate of marital dissolution](https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s43545-021-00146-1)
- [Structural equation modeling indicated that casual sex was negatively associated with well-being and positively associated with psychological distress](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23742031/)
- [Depressive symptoms were associated with engaging in casual sex differently for males and females. Males who engaging in casual sex reported the fewest symptoms of depression and females who had a history of casual sex reported the most depressive symptoms](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17599248/)
- [We found that suicidal ideation and depressive symptoms in adolescence were associated with entrance into casual sexual relationships in emerging adulthood. Furthermore, casual sexual relationships were associated with an increased likelihood of reporting suicidal ideation in emerging adulthood.](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/258145972_Casual_Sexual_Relationships_and_Mental_Health_in_Adolescence_and_Emerging_Adulthood)
Cont in reply to this comment
Gambling:
- [Problems with gambling can lead to bankruptcy, crime, domestic abuse, and even suicide. A single bankruptcy could potentially impact 17 people.](https://harbert.auburn.edu/binaries/documents/center-for-ethical-organizational-cultures/debate_issues/gambling.pdf)
- [Gambling is not only destructive for the individual involved but also others](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8987423/).
- [The enormous losses of savings, property and lifestyle, the emotional tensions based on constant harassment from moneylenders, the threats of suicide by the gambler and the distancing of social networks place family members of problem gamblers in a vulnerable state.](https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/14459795.2012.731422)
- [Yes, gambling is actually a public health issue](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0033350620302468)
- [Parents addicted to gambling makes the kids also more likely to be addicted to gambling](https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0276146717720979)
- [Findings of the study suggest that gambling addicts suffer various harmful effects, including an increased susceptibility to financial and employment problems, such as debt and accumulated interest, bankruptcy, job loss, and decreased productivity. Participants in the study complained of physiological problems, including headaches, high blood pressure, arthritis, indigestion, a stomach disorder, and rapid weight loss. Common psychological problems reported included symptoms of high-level stress, depression, anxiety, insomnia, and suicidal ideation. For some interviewees who smoked and drank alcohol, consumption of these substances increased in response to their gambling. All participants reported disrupted relationships with their immediate family, relatives and friends.](https://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/BF03342123)
- [The societal costs of gambling were more than twice as high as the tax revenue from gambling in 2018 in Sweden.](https://bmcpublichealth.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12889-020-10008-9)
- [Replacing 10% of offline gambling with online gambling increases the likelihood of being a problematic gambler by 8.8-12.6%. This increase is equivalent to 139,322 problematic gamblers and 27.24 million Є per year of additional expenditures in the German health sector](https://www.jstor.org/stable/45156506)
- [The restrictions on gambling led to significant decreases in total gambling turnover, and several studies suggest that they led to fewer gambling and gambling problems.](https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/add.13172)
Prostitution:
- [Legalization of prostitution increase sex trade.](https://www.nzherald.co.nz/world/appalling-truth-about-amsterdams-red-light-district/A4RMWQUM5RWIAY6RNDHKRWJAQ4/)
- [Countries with legalized prostitution are associated with higher human trafficking inflows than countries where prostitution is prohibited. The scale effect of legalizing prostitution, outweighs the substitution effect, where legal sex workers are favored over illegal workers. Legalizing or tolerating it expands the market and creates a surplus of demand that requires even more trafficking in to meet it.](https://orgs.law.harvard.edu/lids/2014/06/12/does-legalized-prostitution-increase-human-trafficking/)
- [Gender, increased sexist attitudes toward women, frequency of pornography consumption, and self-control deficits significantly predicted prostitution myth adherence (myth that prostitution is empowering)](http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0361684318754790)
- [Prostitution is not only a form of male violence against women, it is also a system and an industry that contribute to gender inequality](https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/2455632717744312)
- [Prostitution Harms Women Even if Legalized or Decriminalized](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/240698342_Bad_for_the_Body_Bad_for_the_Heart_Prostitution_Harms_Women_Even_if_Legalized_or_Decriminalized)
- [Countries where prostitution is legal experience larger reported human trafficking inflows](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0305750X12001453)
- [Prostitution legalization opens more human trafficking](https://openworks.wooster.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=8328&context=independentstudy)
- [Research on prostitution in 9 countries, 71% were physically assaulted in prostitution; 63% were raped; 89% of these respondents wanted to escape prostitution, but did not have other options for survival. A total of 75% had been homeless at some point in their lives; 68% met criteria for PTSD](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/254381847_Prostitution_and_Trafficking_in_Nine_Countries)
- [In the Netherlands “trafficking still thrives behind the façade of a legalised prostitution sector.”](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/260493897_The_challenges_of_fighting_sex_trafficking_in_the_legalized_prostitution_market_of_the_Netherlands)
There are much more for porn tbh
But of course chances are if trads are going to present such concrete evidences it won't matter.
------
2. Hanania also explicitly says that he practically only accepts utilitarian arguments that eventually be boiled down to libertarian moral foundations.
To which it can be said 2 things:
1. They should just go to the jungle since it practically shows libertarians are unfit to talk about anything in society since it only can talks to themselves.
Maximum negative liberty IS solitary hermit in the jungle and maximum positive liberty IS wokeism (with those on the very top of the oppression totempole)
2. Somalia and Afghanistan is the actual libertarian utopia since there's almost no governments there.
The book "A Social History of Afghanistan" and Anand Gopal's "No Good Men among the Living" describes and paints Afghanistan's real situations that are far different than any MSM reports out there.
US failure in Afghanistan is specifically about their complete lack of understanding of rural Afghan life.
Clearly you put a lot of work into these comments. Interesting and worth pondering. Thanks for the effort.
As a semi-reformed libertarian, I feel the pull of arguments from autonomy and personal liberty. Still, at one time in the US, to gamble, you had to either go to Vegas or deal with the mob. Now, there are casinos all over the place, and the states even sponsor lotteries, which are taxes on poor people who are not mathematically inclined. And, what's worse, you can bet on sports on your phone!
I'm not sure this experiment will turn out well.
>Perhaps the secular arguments Carney provides are not simply cover for religious motivation. What if they are the reason Catholicism makes sense to Carney?<
This is the whole issue distilled in two sentences. Attacking people's motivations is lazy thinking. I could just as easily sit here and accuse Hanania of wanting everything he disagrees with to be motivated by religion so that he can dismiss it out of hand as superstitious nonsense.
To cherry pick one example, Leon Kass really is a weird guy, priggish to the point of being creepy. He objects to Ice Cream Cones, because people lick them like cats. There is nothing more joyful than consuming an ice cream cone, particularly with your family. Seriously, anyone who objects, in principle, to ice cream cones has something very wrong with them.
Ha ha, I’m gonna have to find this Kass essay. Sounds like he went too far in that one.
But his other works, especially The Beginning of Wisdom, are quite stellar. I am a big fan of his work and his approach to teaching at the University of Chicago.
I had to look that up - when read in context, it's not "creepy". It's just a throwback to high society manners. Heck, even in France nowadays eating on the streets is considered trashy.
88% of people support IVF including a majority that oppose abortion in all situations.
The only first world country with replacement fertility, Israel, is the world leader in IVF.
Being on the wrong side of this issue is totally discrediting as a worldview. One day nearly all babies will be born of IVF. If I had to choose between IVF and a religion, I’d ditch the religion.
5% according to Google.
Amongst secular Jews I would expect it to be particularly high. Jews have an extra reason for IVF because they have so many genetic diseases.
Secular Jews in Israel have replacement level fertility, the only seculars in the world as such.
https://static.timesofisrael.com/blogs/uploads/2019/09/2-Haredi-fertility-rates.png
Non-orthodox but religious Jews clock in higher then replacement.
IVF certainly helps a bit with births, but it's primarily about eugenics. Possibilities have increased rapidly lately and will only improve.