Stephen Fry gives a fairly standard atheist answer to the question, “What would you do if you died and found yourself in front of God?” — exceptionally well-stated, of course, but unsurprising. The best part is to watch the expression on the face of the interviewer in the various reaction shots.
Another factor, to me, is that if their afterlife were true, they expect us to stand before a deity as a supplicant, with a vast power differential, and then essentially grovel. There is no human dignity and no hope in their vision of death — your choice is to submit or suffer. If this god could see into our minds what we were truly thinking, then there is also no point to pretending, and it would know it: this would be a monstrous alien passing judgment on a humanity it regards as corrupt, debased, and wicked, and the only propitiation it could get from us is our terror.
Fortunately, there is no evidence and no reason to think we will continue to exist beyond the death of our bodies, or that there is such a cosmic tyrant, so I’m relieved that I don’t have to worry about a Christian afterlife.
That was lovely. I think for me, one of the snapping points that really made me reject the idea of god was where there was an accident at an airport nearby – the people on the plane were fine but a piece of the structure of the plane broke off, flew out past the boundaries of the airport onto a highway where it crushed a six year old child. There was all this gibber about the miracle that saved the people on the plane and everyone kept ignoring the child (I have always wondered what happened to the mother, who was also in the car and was okay – minor injuries only – but how horrible for her). When I objected to this, what I got was a bunch of “god knows best” and “well maybe that child was going to grow up to be the next Hitler” – what a load of garbage. If god is going to go around dropping airplane pieces on people he needs much better aim. For example – why didn’t a piece of airplane crush the actual Hitler at some point? Anyhow – those arguments were fundamental to my thinking.
The response of the interviewer is irritating – “That’s the longest answer”?? Really? That’s all you can say? Was the question supposed to leave Fry stumped or something?
Gay Byrne
not only an Irish institution but a catholic instruction.
Laughing SO hard at the reaction shots. This was not the “gotcha” he was hoping it would be!
I love Fry. Sometimes we disagree and I am a bit skeeved by his remarkably young fiancé and annoyed by his tone-deaf comments about female sexuality, but I still love him.
Also, this has always been my response to the “what would you say to God if?”
My answer is: “Really, God? Fucking really? Pedophiles raping and murdering children? That’s the best you could do? Don’t give me that fucking free will shit, asshole. You’re omniscient, omnibenevolent and omnipotent. FIX IT! Fix the fucking world that you made, asshole, and beg our fucking forgiveness. I’m not an atheist anymore; I’m an anti-theist. Fuck you and the horse Mohammed rode in on, you fucking bastard.”
It really does take people aback. They sort of expect the “you should have provided more proof” comment.
Absolutely. Bloody. Perfect.
I’ll send the link to anyone who badgers me about everlasting life in a paradise that sounds like North Korea on freaking steroids. I’ll take non-existence and oblivion over groveling to a monstrous tyrant any day.
Bob Geldof had a few choice words as well.
How arrogant, to think he can just scold Gawd for everything Fry don’t like about the Universe. Those eye-eating bugs have an important function that Gawd knows and we don’t. So Frye is just an arrogant bugger, thinking he can just call Gawd names for not being the Gawd Frye imagines as the Perfect Gawd. (*cough* *cough*, alrighty then…)
I was just playacting what I think the goddists would say upon seeing that interview. Sorry to be so arrogant myself. Watching his reply made me reconsider what I thought I would say if such a hypothetical became reality. My first thought was that I would just say, “Sorry to have denied your existence, appears I was wrong. Sorry”. But Frye’s was a much better response, take Gawd to task for all the anti-benevolence of this socalled Perfect Universe for Man(kind). I think I would also ask HIM, “did you really inspire those scribes when they wrote that Bible book, or did they just make up those as stories to tell each other, imagining the flame from above striking their enemies, etc.?”
But then I’d go on even longer than Frye, I prefer his Scolding Gawd for all the bad things in the world that Priests keep telling us is for Gawd’s Mysterious Plans.
Excellently done. Clear, quiet, “civil” (yeah, the whole civility gig is all too often a veil for some nasty shit but sometimes it’s well-used – as here), eloquent, deeply passionate and not. giving. one. fucking. inch.
I don’t always love him either (quite often, but definitely not always) but for these 2 1/2 minutes I certainly do.
The godly like to argue that their morality is not relativistic, while we atheists rely on non-absolute imperatives. It’s actually the reverse: The principles of my atheist ethics, the product of my natural sense of empathy, are actually quite absolute; I simply don’t want anyone to come to any harm. Consequently, as far as I’m concerned, things like rape, genocide, torture, etc. are absolutely wrong and unethical under all circumstances.
The reverse is true for the godly, who are fine and dandy with their god committing any number of horrible acts which they (being human and not totally sociopathic) may find personally revolting. So, who are the ones with the flexible moral principles?
Fry’s condemnation of god is exactly right, judged by ethical standards that are absolute and should apply to anyone’s behavior — especially the acts of a “perfect” being who should know better.
@2: And Fry prefaces his remarks with a brief summary. “I would basically, it’s known as Theodicy” With that sentence, you know exactly what direction he’s going to take. The rest is very eloquent expansion, but there is a concise answer there. The interviewer tries to paint Fry as being long-winded, but it’s not meandering or evasive. He states his position up front and then expands on it in detail.
I think that religionists think this is such a killer question because it’s inherently asymmetrical. There is no converse question of “If there’s no afterlife, what will you say then?” because “you” won’t say anything in that scenario. And there’s nothing that zealots like more than an unfair fight.
That was wonderfully fun to watch.
“Hey, God, so there you are, finally. So being omniscient and all, you must realize that there are two different ways that the human brain can know that something exists: with evidence, or without evidence. And of course you know that virtually all human progress has come from the first kind of knowledge, while a huge amount of human misery, from crusades to jihads to massacres of all sorts to airplanes flying into buildings, has come from the second kind of belief. So what was the big idea in basing our entire chance of eternal happiness on our willingness to indulge ourselves in the kind of crappy thinking that your so-called ‘faith’ makes us use? I would have expected a being capable of creating the physical universe to be a bit more, what’s the word, rational.”
sambarge @ #5
His husband is not ‘remarkably’ young. He is younger than Fry, perhaps significantly (if you care about such things), but he is a nearly 30 year old man. The implications you cast by being ‘skeeved’ are disgusting.
Next time keep your judgmental, skeeved-out feelings to yourself.
_____
Fry gave a really good answer to that really silly question.
Someone should’ve given him a microphone to drop. He came correct with that response.
@5, sambarge
Cut him slack on the relationship front. Sure, the guy is 30 years younger, but it’s not like he’s a teenager. He’s 27, by just about all standards he’s unambiguously an adult. Also, they’re married as of two weeks ago.
But, yeah, his opinions on female sexuality were incredibly clueless. Has he ever walked them back at all? I haven’t heard much about it (and actually had to look it up before I even remembered what it was about)
Loved the bit about the Greek gods. It’s true, if you start from the assumption that there are higher powers responsible for the universe, then the polytheistic viewpoint clearly seems like the most plausible. Ranked in order of plausibility, I’d put the monotheistic deities way down the list, in fact.
@14, Thomathy
Bah! I really wish I didn’t have to write my posts outside of the site then move them in for fear of an auto redirect ad trashing my work, it leads to getting skunked like this.
“What would you do if you died and found yourself in front of God?”
My answer: “You never call, you never write, and NOW you come back and start asking me what I’ve been up to?”
The only relationships that should make people feel skeevy are the ones devoid of informed consent. Anything else is morally/intellectually similar to “I don’t like gay marriage because it makes me feel icky”.
Matrim @ #17, Happens all the time. And I didn’t address the stuff about female sexuality. He was a bit worse than tone-deaf and I don’t think he ever did say anything more on the matter. I do wonder if asked about it what he’d say. He has a good track record on being genuinely apologetic when wrong and on correcting and educating himself, so there’s hope that he’d be contrite and elegantly so.
@sambarge, 5: The horse Mohammed flew in on.
@16, brucegee1962
I think the deistic god is more plausible than polytheism, as a universe with an entirely non-interventionist god would be indistinguishable from one with no god. Polytheism is more plausible, I suppose, than monotheism if you assume the monotheist god is all powerful and all knowing and the polytheistic gods are not. But classifying such things seem like arguing the plausibility of fire-breathing dragons vs Slenderman, a fruitless exercise.
This is just a trivial restatement of Pascal’s Wager.
1. What if you found yourself in front of a humanoid god with a cat head? Bast would probably be asleep.
2. What if you found yourself in front of a god and it was…Allah. Or Odin, What if Brahma didn’t like Pascal’s Wager and sent you back reincarnated as a garden slug.
Embedded in the question is the assumption that there is one god and it is one of the many xian ones, probably in this case Catholic god. We know there are thousands at least of gods and goddesses, all equally real.
That’s the best you could do?
Spina Bifida and Chicken Pox were the best god could come up with. I hear h*’s quite proud of those.
Well, you could ask something like this: if there are no afterlives/gods/souls/etc., what do you say now? (Of course, you could in any event be wrong now about your predicted future outlook or behavior, because we don’t have immutable souls or essences or whatever, nor can our future selves cause us to be a certain way in the present… so it’s more to the point anyway.)
I rarely get good answers from theists about that kind of thing. They certainly don’t seem to be in a comfortable place in the discussion, in my experience at least. The issue usually gets sidestepped with pointless jabbering about not being able to disprove it and so forth. They sometimes also imagine they’ll stop being good people if they disbelieved (although they may not be very good to begin with), but there again it quickly degenerates into utter sophistry.
Anyway, if the game isn’t just to presuppose a bunch of shit (of the form “suppose heaven exists … [lots o’ noise/confusion/people forget what they were talking about] … therefore, heaven exists”), then it can be taken as a fair question . And Fry gives a beautiful answer.
Funny thing is, if heaven were real I’d like to think it would be Stephen Fry greeting me at the pearly gates as a stand-in for St. Peter. Of course, once I get there he proceeds to check over a thick packet with a frightening number of addenda, only to respond, “Oh, I’m terribly sorry, it appears you’re not actually on the list. We should’ve caught this earlier–I mean the things you did just in your twenties are clearly unforgivable by our standards–but I do hope you understand; these mistakes happen. It’s nothing personal.”
That makes no sense. How could that make it more plausible?
who is the sourpuss interviewer who did his best to ignore Fry’s points? I can’t figure it out.
How about (for me): “I’m Pete, who are you?”
brucegee:
One of the more entertaining routes that apologetics take:
Argue that there just HAS to be more to life and the universe. There just HAS to be a supernatural outside of the scope of the universe, and it HAS to contain an entity that caused the universe to begin.
But there is only such entity. Because parsimony suddenly matters at exactly that step in the logical process.
Matrim:
In my opinion, the only way that a deistic or theistic God is indistinguishable from nature and the key way that you can be sure they don’t exist is if you claim they are good entities that care about humanity. The game of life that we play is sick and fucking twisted in many respects. It is not at all consistent with a good creator. Whether God just set up the board and is watching, or whether he also decides to but in occasionally or play alongside us, the claim that the God in question is “good” is completely inconsistent with what we see about reality. Which is when the polytheistic gods make far more sense: multiple entities with multiple conflicting agendas much better explains the messiness of life than one supposedly loving, brilliant and superpowered architect would.
Remove the moral element from the equation and they are all equally (im)plausible.
hexidecima, his name is Gay Byrne.
consciousness razor:
I’ve found that happens a lot too. For some reason, religious folks have a very hard time imagining what the world would be like if their assumptions weren’t true. Difficulty with thought experiments, hypotheticals, assessing their own biases, etc. I find it interesting if not a little sad. I imagine it just has to do with the emotional attachment they have to their worldview. Though some might also have had it drilled into them so much that “Christian worldview = Reality” that legitimately cannot imagine how things work otherwise, like if we were asked to imagine how our personal lives would be if there was no gravity. I really doubt there are many that are quite so far gone, though.
I watched an anime called Fate/Zero a couple months back that had an interesting take on monotheism, devised by a psychotic serial killer. He believes god loves justice, compassion, and courage, but he also loves death, depravity, tragedy and so forth. To have an entertaining story, you need both heroes and villains. God is an entertainer, we’re actors, and everyone, including god, doubles as the audience. That’s why the universe is such an interesting place to live.
Of course, that view is a more generalized form of how believers project their own characteristics onto gods: Humans are a storytelling species, so he created an image of god as a storyteller. Still, it makes a lot more sense than most other monotheistic beliefs I’ve encountered.
I figure most don’t take it as seriously as they claim they do. They just aren’t interested in doing that — it’s too abstract and intellectual and not that interesting — what they want I think is more like being loyal to their group/community/family than anything else. That’s why their gods look so much like them (not just the patriotic white male Jesus shit … but that too). If you asked anybody whether they wanted to die and what would be so bad about that, you will almost certainly find a person who doesn’t actually believe they’ll live forever. They just do not pass the most obvious tests you could give them about it. Of course, it’s tricky knowing what they believe or don’t believe — how do I read their minds? how do they? — well, they at least don’t seem to think that way reflexively, when the premise is just lurking somewhere in the background. But when you bring it to the foreground, then they quickly jump to defend it … very ineptly, apparently because they have no idea what they’re doing or why it’s even supposed to matter to them.
All my opinions (which are all judgmental because that’s what opinions involve, by the way) or just the ones you don’t agree with?
While, like many others on the thread, I have my poblems with Steven Fry (the comment about feeling sorry for straight men because women supposedly send such mixed messages in particular), this was a fantastic answer to what was clearly supposed to be a ‘gotcha’ question that spectacularly backfired. The obseverable universe is utterly inconsistent with anything approaching a benign creator. In the immensely improbable event that a creator god somehow does exist, it is cleary a heinously monstrous tyrant, and being omnisicent, if you are a principled atheist it will know that you are aware of its true character, so there is no point grovelling or lying – give the evil arsehat both barrels, and let it do its worst. Oblivion would be infinitely preferable to living on your knees at its whim for the rest of eternity, and as for hell, well you are probably headed there in any case if such a capricious sociopath is the supreme being in the universe, so you still have nothing to lose in any case.
Theists almost always hate any version of the philosophical problem of evil (you just know the more authoritarian ones would dearly love to outlaw it if they could), because it makes it clear that, even if for argument’s sake you grant them their ridiculous Pascal’s Wager hypothetical, any god responsible for the pain, death and suffering of this reality (and even more so the sadistic, patriarchal abomination of the Abrahamic faiths) is utterly unworthy of even the smallest iota of respect, let alone worship. Even when one goes to unreasonable lengths to stack the deck in their favour, theists still can’t make a decent case for religiosity.
sambarge, 35
Certainly the one where you look down upon the relationship between two adults because of an age difference.
The interviewer, Gay Byrne, is a bit of an Irish icon, and was the first and longest-running host of the world’s longest continuously running chat show, The Late Late Show. He was an excellent interviewer, and managed to shine a spotlight on many hypocrisies and corrupt practices within Irish politics and the Catholic church during his time steering the show. He had a knack for getting interviewees to be indiscreet, or of making them comfortable enough that when they put their foot in their mouth he got them them to keep on going. He never seemed to let his own religiosity get in the way of asking hard questions of church figures (including bishops who were revealed to have mistresses, or who tried to influence government policy through coercion), and regularly gave a platform to debates about contraception, abortion, adoption, divorce and homosexuality. He actually did quite a lot to get people thinking critically about the role of the church in Irish life, and promote much needed discussion, though some still despise him for it. He is a fairly devout Catholic all the same, though his piety has increased somewhat in recent years.
PZ:
Yeah, but what about the Mormon afterlife? If you play your cards right in this life, you’ll get a planet.
Regarding Stephen Fry on the subject of women:
Oct 2010: http://www.theguardian.com/media/2010/oct/31/stephen-fry-sex-women-relationships-attitude
A summary of his immediate reaction to the controversy
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/twitter/8100845/Stephen-Fry-hints-hes-quitting-Twitter-over-comments-on-women-and-sex.html
His not-pology: http://www.salon.com/2010/11/05/fry_2/
Fast forward to July of last year:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/womens-life/10966212/Does-Stephen-Fry-ever-think-before-he-opens-his-mouth.html
No, I don’t think he got better.
I love how he leads off the answer with “Bone cancer in children–what’s that about?” There’s no objection Mr. Byrne can raise to that argument without looking as if he supports (or at least accepts) the idea of children having a horrible disease. The standard “Well, we can’t know god’s mind” response would look at best churlish.
anteprepro #32 wrote:
I’ve been told that trying to imagine that God doesn’t exist is just like trying to imagine that they don’t exist. Or like visualizing what “nothing” looks like. Or thinking of a world without the possibility of love.
These are dangerous replies because of what they imply regarding their capacity to reason and how they’re framing nonbelief and nonbelievers. The fact that the religious offer these thought-blocking fallacies as debate-clinchers and positive signals is worrying.
I liked Fry’s reply but had to put it through my own personal filter and retranslate it a bit. He was assuming that God was the God of Abraham and answered accordingly (which was fine, he was addressing a Christian.) I’m more familiar with the nebulous Higher Power of Spirituality and some of the language and concepts needed a bit of tweaking . But the main point still stands.
What will shock the religious the most is that Fry is not meekly asking God a question: he’s castigating It. The idea that anyone is, would be, and should be proud to approach God in high dudgeon and outrage is paradigm-shattering.
What he’s really doing is telling the religious they should be ashamed to not have thought this issue a deal-breaker. And so they should be.
See also this giant blog post which one might anachronistically imagine is Stephen Fry auditioning to play the role of Dawkins in a feature film dedicated to Twitter Fiasco Number Whatever:
http://www.stephenfry.com/2010/11/04/silliness/
“Silliness” as the title of his post gives you an idea of what to expect. It is basically “poor me, dealing with a bunch of people getting OFFENDED, can’t they just take a joke, oh poor me”.
In fairness, he hasn’t gone on to rant about the evils of feminism at length and one of the few substantive things in recent years on his blog was a show of support for Pussy Riot: http://www.stephenfry.com/2012/08/22/supporting-pussy-riot/
So, he isn’t as bad as Dawkins. And isn’t it depressing when you realize that “isn’t as bad as Dawkins” is a low bar?
Err… they are Christians, of course, so that’s presumably part of the deal. They can call each other heretics or whatever the fuck, but please don’t buy into that bullshit.
I call dibs on Earth. Good luck finding another habitable planet, everybody.
Now I’m sort of curious. Does the Mormon god give them a spaceship to travel to their planet, do they have to make their own, or maybe the magic god magically teleports them with magic? Or what? There’s probably some dogma about this. Obviously, I’m assuming they’re actual physical planets somewhere in the universe, not some kind of metaphorical planet or an idea of a planet or whatever — I’m pretty sure that much is settled. They are a sect which thinks we (more like they) will come back as zombies not as ghosts, right?
So, my opinion on the affect of age-difference in the power dynamics of a relationship are invalid because… why again? Oh right. Because you disagree.
Well, too bad. I think a person marrying someone who is young enough to be their child (not even their child from a teenage pregnancy, but a child from an settled, established relationship they entered into after graduating university) is problematic from a power imbalance perspective. When the elder of the partners is established, even revered, in their chosen profession and the younger is a struggling newbie in the same profession, it becomes even more problematic. When that profession is entertainment, it officially trips over into “skeevy” territory for me – regardless of who the entertainer is – because, I think we can all agree, the entertainment industry makes a practice of exploiting youth. That’s my opinion, or judgment, if you will. There is the distinct chance that Fry and his husband are perfectly egalitarian, remarkably well-suited for one another and will make each other happy for all the days of their lives together. Hurrah.
Fry and his spouse are free to do as they pleases (obviously) and I am free to judge as I please and you are free to disagree. Free speech and freedom of thought and all that. Je suis Charlie, right?
Tony #39,
Unfortunately, that deal only applies to men. Women can look forward to being “heavenly wives” at best. Many of the Mormon girls I grew up with did not realize that this doctrine excluded them.
Speaking for myself, when I was probably around middle school age or so, I did really want to die just to get to heaven. I wasn’t depressed or suicidal in any way (I’ve actually had a really good life), but I really believed all the religious teachings I’d been given up to that point, and paradise was just so tempting. It was like the feeling you get as a kid leading up to Christmas, all the anticipation and that weird feeling in the pit of your stomach. The thought of waiting another 80 years or so before I could get there seemed almost unbearable.
Nowadays, when I watch movies that take place in a universe with souls and an afterlife, I can’t bring myself to feel all that upset when characters die (or at least, not for the death itself – it depends on their ultimate fate in that universe). I watched an episode of ‘Supernatural’ for the first time the other day, and when one of the characters died, which was supposed to be a sad scene, I commented to someone watching the show with me that, ‘Well, in this universe people have souls that live forever, so he’s not really dead dead.’
The goddist answer I privately gave myself for theodicy, for a long time, was that humans are worthy of Hell.
If we’re worthy of pure suffering for eternity, anything horrible on earth is still less horrible than we deserve, which absolves God of the horrors of his creation and his general inaction. He’s actually being irresponsible by not killing/maiming MORE of us, basically.
If this sounds like an incredibly disgusting, horrifying, and almost purely anti-humanistic line of bullshit to you, you’re right! It’s pure self-hatred on a species level, and a belief in the inherent evil and unworthiness of mankind.
It also falls apart immediately if you have any self-respect or self-esteem concerning your own goodness, or think kids are basically innocent and shouldn’t be punished because of their parents (which is an idea God commands, but very explicitly does not practice, in the Bible).
I think I started seeking some semblance of self-esteem as a self-defense reaction to the pure nihilism and self-hatred caused by answering theodicy this way. The only other alternative was killing myself so I’d go to hell, because then Jesus wouldn’t have died for me and the cosmic injustice of that substitution would be amended.
Fuck cosmic victim-blamer Christianity.
sambarge@45,
Sure, you’re free to be a bigot*, and other commenters are free to ask you to stop expressing your bigoted opinions here.
*Bigot isn’t quite the right word, but I’m not sure how else to describe someone who is biased against a particular type of relationship between consenting adults.
sambarge:
Yes, you’re entitled to your opinion, but you’re sounding a lot like a judgmental asshole who is voicing their opinion on relationships between consenting adults. Not cool.
Doug Hudson @49:
Bigot, while not quite the right word (I think), is close.
After all, look at all the RWAs who condemn same-sex relationships.
If I were making an awesome, powerful, loving God, the last thing I’d do is make it petty enough to demand that we worship it.
Yeah. Bigot is the wrong word, Doug.
sambarge:
By your metric, straight relationships are “problematic” from a power balance perspective. There is in fact a power imbalance, of course, which is certainly something straight men ought to be aware of, no matter what the odds are that they’ll have a happy relationship. But it would be absurd to protest straight relationships on that basis.
If you’re going to make such a judgment, you should do it based on what you actually know about their actual personal relationship, not some superficial feature like the difference their ages. That is, if they are consenting adults and you have no information to suggest there some kind of a problem due to that superficial feature you’ve decided to turn into an issue for them, you’ve got nothing to fucking complain about. If they don’t want to be in a relationship with an older or younger person, they will figure that out for themselves if they haven’t already.
If anyone here planned on terrorizing you or even wanted to restrict your rights, that might have been fucking appropriate. But it fucking isn’t.
You at least gave a (silly) reason, instead of just offering an “opinion” aimlessly. That’s something.
Tony. The Queer Shoop
I don’t know what an “RWA” is (Romance Writers of America? Resident Welfare Association? Short for Rwanda?) but I have no issue with same-sex relationships and you can take your implications back.
Regarding large age differences: I think it is an ethically gray matter, in my humble opinion. Get a large enough age gap and it becomes obvious that there is a massive power dynamic skew towards the older partner. This same difference in power is why we might consider some other kinds of relationship unethical (e.g. boss and employee, teacher and student). The thing of it is, though, that it is virtually impossible to really determine how large of an age gap is too large, how much of a power unbalance is objectively bad, and what mitigating factors might be in play.
It’s an area that probably does have some moral and ethical implications, but that is really a matter to be decided by those within the relationship, given the particulars that only those in the relationship would know of. It is not an area that we can, or even should, police.
(Though once it becomes that there is some abuse and/or coercion going on, that’s another issue entirely.)
This is to say: I sympathize with sambarge’s reaction but I also agree that it is overly judgmental. There is nothing inherently wrong with being 30 years older than your partner, though it could certainly lead to issues, although again it is not clear whether we can accurately judge this from the outside looking in.
And yet all of this discussion occurs in the face of Stephen Fry being a rape apologist (see the last quote in my comment 40). So…….yeah……
RWA = Right Wing Authoritarian.
Also, sambarge, you are digging. Just thought I would help you notice that.
(Shit, consciousness razor’s first half of 54 said what I wanted to say better in my borderline incoherent 56. Such is life at Pharyngula)
Straight or gay doesn’t matter by my metric (age difference, relative wealth and success) but yes, there is an inherent power imbalance in straight relationships and that’s one of the struggles of feminism (you may have noticed). It doesn’t mean that individual couples can’t overcome the imbalance. More likely, it means that couples adjust to the imbalance and convince themselves that it must be that way because that’s how men and women are.
Thanks for letting me know what RWA stands for. Funny thing, I was a subject in a psychology experiment at university and actually skewed the findings with my anti-authoritarian responses.
By the way, anteprepro – thanks for those links on Fry’s comments re. Yewtree. I had no idea he’d come out against it. By far the most disturbing thing I’d ever read about or by him. Too bad.
I said I found it ‘skeevy’. I never said it needed to be policed or not allowed. That’s all. Really. I’ve never thought about it nearly as much as I’ve been forced to today.
And I agree, anteprepro that Fry’s remarks on rape are far more of an issue and I can’t believe people read past that post to bang on about whether or not I have the right to have an opinion on age difference and power differentials in relationships.
That was a great answer, and I loved the faces the interviewer was making.
sambarge
I had never heard of Yewtree, so when I found that and saw the blatant rape apologetics he was spewing, I was incredibly surprised.
Well it makes sense if they view your position as bigoted (or bordering on it).
I think it is a complicated topic, honestly. And I also think it might be best to continue that particular debate in the Thunderdome, but that is on the assumption that it counts as off topic: I think that could be argued either way!
(I’m reluctant to say that it should go to the Thunderdome because I swear I say that a lot, and I sometimes get the impression that when I say it, people view me as an authority. I am certainly not!)
*vigorous applause&stamping*
–
pHred:
Or other tech-level equivalents where appropriate; for Torturemada, for instance—supposedly actually on god’s team; for those running the likes of the Magdalene laundries, and the Indian re-education-and-acculturation schools—ditto.
–
The most frequent answer I’ve gotten to the “Why does god permit evil?” is , which sidesteps a very important point that I’ve never had adequately answered; “Free will for whom?”
Where an individual has freely chosen Evil, where is the free will of their victim? They chose to be raped? Or murdered? Well, but you see, if you’re a Good Christian, none of that really matters; if you are ready for judgement at any time, then if you’re a rapist’s victim, it’s an opportunity for you to , to ; and if you are a murderer’s victim, then you won’t care because it’s straight to heaven with you! Or, it’s all “god works in mysterious ways, and everything happens for a reason; maybe he intended to open your eyes to [fill in the blanks]”.
So, children too young to have ? Automatically given a pass to heaven? Well, no, it seems not. Created specifically for the purpose of being victimized, in the service of some asswipes ? After all, an omniscient god already knows who is foredoomed to end up as part of someone’s body-count.
In conclusion:
Fuck.
That.
–
Special pleading in 3, 2, 1 …
… Ah, so close, too bad. It turns out, you’re just blabbering.
Uh huh. I have noticed. You’re replying that comment.
Yet somehow your “judgment” was that this is about an individual couple. Is that not the case now? Retracting your original comment explicitly would make the conversation run a bit smoother.
Of course, if you were making a sociological remark, it would not begin with something like “Stephen Fry and his spouse….” But something needs to budge here.
Yet somehow your “judgment” was that this is about an individual couple. Is that not the case now? Retracting your original comment explicitly would make the conversation run a bit smoother.
Ok. I retract my comment.
Yeah, pretty much. If I’m meeting an alien being with unknown powers, motivations and knowledge, I’m not going to bother praising or castigating it until I do some research. (And no, specifying that it’s “the Anglican God” or something doesn’t fix anything. Even within a single sect, believers’ concepts of God are far too vague and self-contradictory. And if you do somehow boil them down to a single consistent description, how am I to know at a glance that the mysterious beast in front of me is a match?)
So: “Who are you? What are you? Are there others like you? What role did you have in creating my universe/world/species/self? What role do you have in maintaining them? Do you consider them successes or failures? What are your future plans for them?”
And if I get a comprehensible answer (rather than “gleeble gleeble florb *orange laser beam*”), then I gotta worry about whether the creature is lying or misunderstood me or I misunderstood it. Somewhere down the line I can probably start forming ethical judgments about it, but it’s gonna be a while.
Oops. Blockquote fail.
Sambarge @61, I think the piece that you may be missing is that there is a long history of branding homosexuals (especially gay men) as pedophiles. So suggesting that Frye’s marriage is “skeevy” isn’t just insulting to the consenting adults in the relationship, but it also (inadvertently, I’m sure) echoes a standard libel against gay men. Again, I’m sure that wasn’t your intention, but it IS a delicate topic, and may provoke harsher responses than you would expect.
Also, suggesting that we can’t talk about your choice of language because Stephen Frye is a rape apologist is a classic “Dear Muslima” tactic–no reason we can’t talk about both!
Anyway, enough of this derail for me.
Doug Hudson:
But….we really haven’t, have we?
Doug Hudson@49
Bigot was the correct choice of word, well done.
sambarge @55:
Right Wing Authoritarian. They’re known for condemning relationships between consenting adults, just as you’re doing.
Btw, you’re infantalizing Fry’s husband. You’re treating him as if he’s not an adult capable of making decisions on his own. You’re treating him like he’s a child. Why are you doing that?
anteprepro@70, true, I deleted a section on that to keep the comment from getting too long. But for me, there really isn’t anything to say about the Stephen Frye links–yes, he is a horrible misogynist and rape apologist. Which sucks. And if posters were defending him on those charges, I’d definitely call them out. But no one is, as far as I can tell.
Now, does the fact that his is a misogynist, etc, devalue the words he speaks in the video in OP? For me, no, because I believe that people’s ideas and words have merit in themselves. Take the Declaration of Independence, for example–a fantastic piece of work that is not diminished because the author was a massive hypocrite.
But other people’s opinions may vary.
Ok. Dropping it. This is a derail. Sorry for my part in it.
Doug Hudson:
I swear we had many people arguing just the opposite just recently. Just remembered what it was: A bit by Mr. Deity. Mirrors this almost exactly: PZ presents a video by him about something not related to women, without disclaimer. Some people remember him being sexist, hope he apologized or something. Once it is confirmed that he actually was still a sexist clod, people wondered why PZ would choose to present something of his without any note saying something to the effect of “This person is an asshole, but they are right on this particular subject”. There was some debate of even doing that much, since presenting their shit shows tacit support for the odious person in question and you could probably find something just as poignant to share that wasn’t from a questionable source.
anteprepro@75,
Oh, I suspect my opinion on judging ideas independently of the “idea-creator” is a minority one. And I don’t argue that my position is the only one–certainly, if people want to write off anything Stephen Frye says, because of his horrible opinions about women, that is their right, and I wouldn’t criticize them for it.
It just explains why I didn’t say anything about the Stephen Frye links–to me, the connection to the OP was unclear and somewhat irrelevant. But I understand that they might be very relevant to other people.
The Mr. Deity/ Brian Dalton thread: http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2015/01/16/somebody-is-a-little-pissed-off-by-the-pope/
An opposite sort of thing also happens. The post just before this one, on Harris’ interview with Shermer, has nothing at all to say about whether they are right about the topic. (I’d say they’re reasonably close, when limited to the vague generalities in Harris’ interview not either of their books.)
The theme of PZ’s post is basically “these guys are bad” while the “don’t believe anything they say” part is kind of left open-ended — an exercise for the reader, perhaps. Maybe it’s even supposed to be understood that you should not disagree with what they’re saying…. but it still makes me wonder why PZ would link (indirectly, via Benson) to those two jokers instead of real moral philosophers who might have something useful to say. (They wouldn’t need to be “authorities”, since that little rhetorical gambit ought to go too.) If you’re going to bring it up at all, assuming it’s a topic you actually consider worthwhile instead of a space-filler or a diversion, why not cite someone who actually has something useful to say? Or how about you don’t bring it up? These shitheads know how to attract attention; they do not need your help.
I guess I’m somewhat glad that PZ doesn’t delve into a topic like that, since he doesn’t know much about it. But content-free sniping isn’t constructive either.
I suspect that half the stuff on Pharyngula are just things that struck PZ’s fancy; expecting all of his posts to be constructive is a hell of a high bar for a blog!
@64 cicely
Yes! All that too! I *loathe* the idea that good children/women/victims are required to forgive abusers. The nasty abuse that you go through if you refuse to forgive someone for doing something terrible to you. HULK SMASH! Institutional evil.
And the phrase “god works in mysterious ways” moves me to almost homicidal rage.
And a just universe would not involve Torquemada living to the ripe old age of 77+. Yep.
Word.
Doug Hudson:
Don’t worry about it. I’m of two minds on the subject myself, personally. There is a line to walk: Between accepting that every human is flawed and even horrible human beings can have a good point once in a while, and avoiding giving support to people who are hateful or immoral just because a thing or two that they said was personally entertaining. I personally do not know whether PZ should have avoided posting videos from sexist atheists #4194567 and #2523157, posted them only with some sort of disclaimer, or just post it without acknowledging it, either with hope that they have/will improve or just to avoid seeming like a person who keeps digging up the past. I don’t know.
Though I also know that I am in a privileged position. Some other people might not have a charitable response knowing that sexist atheists #4194567 and #2523157 have been spewing out tropes that justify rape. Even if it was Just One Time, or whatever excuse. And from their position, I can understand being pissed off by the appearance of support for those people, and being pissed off if we let the past die in the name of decorum when that ultimately just lets them skirt by, with people either ignorant of the rape myths that they were trying to spread or acutely aware of it and now imagining that every ignorant person siding with atheists #4194567 and #2523157 must also be supporting those myths.
I don’t know, but I lean towards “avoid giving the appearance of approval to people peddling rape apologia”.
consciousness razor:
That’s an interesting point. I understood that post as simply about the irony of two of the most immoral atheists lecturing about morality (though both have published books on the matter so the observation could have made well before now). Though I’m not sure if we were supposed to dismiss what they were actually saying (from Ophelia’s post, all there really was a quote about the definition of morality, which I had no particular instinct to dismiss as wrong just because Shermer was presenting it). As far as I could tell, it wasn’t about philosophy or morality at all, as much as just about Shermer and Harris. Or I guess I could say, it was an insult rather than an ad hominem (PZ didn’t care enough about the argument being made to worry about whether it was dismissed or accepted).
But that was only my interpretation. Now that I actually sit back and think about it, I realize that even though that was my first, gut reaction reading of it all, I could very well have missed something (wouldn’t be the first time this week).
Who said “all”? Writing about (or vaguely gesturing in the vicinity of) “organized atheism” and “the rapey guy” and “the torture guy” and meta-ethics in general … those are things I take seriously, for different reasons, even in blog form.
Cephalopods? No, not really. Science about them, sure, I guess, be constructive if you really want to…. But I wouldn’t be all that upset if people got the science wrong or treated it like a joke. It wouldn’t ruin my day or anything. Someone else might eventually figure things out, for all I know. But we don’t have someone else to do it, in some other cases.
pHred:
I would like to blame the obsession with Forgiveness on Christianity, but really, it is just the flip side of the coin to victim blaming.
Heads: It’s your fault, you brought this on yourself.
Tails: Sure, it’s his fault, but just let it go already.
It’s all disgusting, quite frankly.
as I understand it from reading here the most important aspect of a relationship is informed consent yes means yes and no means no to say it as short as possible. I do not know anything about Mr. Fry’s relationship other than what I read here which is so close to nothing as to make any opinions I may have more about me than anything else.
age differences happen in human relationships all the time and all over the earth is a fact that they are not all the same is a fact.
Fry’s answer was pretty good and I think it was what the interviewer wanted his surprise I think was in getting such a good answer.
If I was to find myself dead and in front of st. Peter or god I would have to say “OK so what else is this about? as I am clearly not dead yet.” Gods and devils only exist within the mind which creates them.
the other thing I remember when I hear anything Fry’s says He is a comedian and entertainer and truly loves the attention and applause and laughter. He is famous for his witty replies. He is not a political leader nor an academic intellectual.
all jokes are by nature partly experimental some times they do not work for all people all the time. His comments may be interpreted as being about the standard middle class society and its morality as practiced with the exaggeration for comedic effect. At the same time laughing at the “straight” by turning it upside down as if it was the weird. Is he really talking about ideal relationships or is he pointing out that there is a larger power relationship involved in “morality” as practiced ?
uncle frogy
consciousness razor@83,
Sorry, I was being a tad facetious. Although I do think that the posters here sometimes put more thought into the rationale behind certain posts than PZ himself does. Which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it is what it is.
Which is to say, PZ probably just saw a video of Stephen Frye saying cool things and put it up, without much thought of the implications of giving tacit support etc etc.
I could be wrong, but that’s just my experience and impression of how blogs work.
pHred @80:
I wonder if there’s an element of religious thinking behind the idea that one should forgive an abuser (or forgive anyone for that matter)?
Aaaaan then I see anetprepro’s #84, so perhaps my musing had some merit.
PZ has often made a point that there are no heroes. There are no perfect role models that support everything we want in the way we want to see it presented. And, like it or not, we do have to deal with allies who are less than ideal (as we all are). We can say we agree with the ally in this video or announcement, and applaud them for something well done. That doesn’t mean we can’t comment on and criticize their flaws. It just needs to be put into context.
@87 Tony! and @84 anetprepro
I wonder that too. Would victim blaming be so prevalent in society if so many people weren’t trained in the basic concept through religion? Or is it a social thing – it’s easier to turn on the victims who are generally inherently less powerful than to confront the powerful – that got adopted into religious practice ages and ages ago ?
All I know is that as a kid I thought that confessionals were some of the creepiest things in the universe. Dark basements were better.
The whole forgiveness thing – God won’t forgive you if you don’t forgive x – just yuck!
That’s probably about right. But as they say, knowing is half the battle, except that it’s not a battle and “half” is probably way off.
Gah, they never really say that exactly, whoever they are. Not putting much thought into stuff can be a problem, just like it can be when you deliberate about it and do the same thing. Here’s my feeble attempt at putting this thread back on its rails: heaven. Sophistimicated deep-thinking theologians are wrong about it, and so are people who just follow along without putting much thought into it. (Perhaps the theologians are following their lead, but it’s true either way.)
Torquemada, dies age 77 or 78 in a bed, tended to by monks
Idi Amin, dies age 78 in a Saudi hospital having spent the last few years of his life inhabiting the top 2 floors of the Novotel Hotel in Jedda
Josef Stalin, dies age 74, in his own bed
Basil II, dies age 49, peacefully
Pol Pot, dies age 73, in his own bed, of heart failure
Leopold II, dies age 74 in his palace
Chiang Kai-shek, dies age 87, Taiwan announces a month of mourning
…really, there’s no end to tyrants and mass-murderers who went unpunished by a just, loving, omnipotent god.
Stephen Fry, intelligent, erudite and imperfect, a passionate human being.
I knew what I would have said before watching this.
Is he going to say it?
Yep. He said it. Exactly. Damn good show.
Oh oh man those reactions are gold. You can just see him wanting to talk about snakes or apples – but that would be utterly stupid and he knows it deep down.
Note how Fry’s answer makes Pascal’s Wager totally irrelevant. Spending afterlife in heaven is not a reward, it’s a punishment. The rational thing is betting there is no god.
Especially (this in addition to CL @92) when we realize that Auschwitz commander Rudolf Höss according to atonement doctrine got access to heaven. He converted etc. before he died.
Saw the earlier comments about Fry saying something terrible, was worried, looked it up.
Oh, he has misconceptions on female sexuality. Well, yeah, he’s a gay male. I am sure I have misconceptions about gay male sexuality because I don’t think I would enjoy it personally. I just know enough to shut up about it and listen instead of spouting off on it though.
Percentage of twitter users that have said something damn stupid within the past 5 years: approaches 100%
I’m reminded of the Questions that get asked on Inside the Actor’s Studio, one of them being, “You die and stand before god. What would you like him to say?”
My answer: “OK, let me explain….”
Good answer. I’ve also always liked Dick Cavetts answer when asked the same question on Inside the Actors Studio…”It depends on how good his apology is…”
I liked the answer.
I wonder what I would do/say in such a case. Probably the following.
Pull out a blaster and shoot him dead.
Than blink, realise I just killed the most evil, wicked, disgusting, demanding outragious being everybody knows and than feel a pang of guilt, because I do believe killing someone is wrong. Even such a being like that. How’s that for a moral compas?.
Exodus 20:5: “I the Lord your God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children to the third and the fourth generation of those who hate me.”
The standard Xian answer to why there’s so much suffering in the world is that Adam & Eve sinned and thus rendered themselves unfit to live in a perfect world. Yes, this means we all suffer for things our remote ancestors did. After all, gawd freely admits that he punishes people for their ancestor’s sins.
In the interview I got the feeling that Gay wanted to mention this to Stephen, but then thought that would just unleash another criticism of gawd’s screwed up morals.
I love Stephen Fry.
markd555 @96:
That’s a good idea. And something Fry should have done. Don’t know something about a subject and you find yourself commenting on it? Either educate yourself or just don’t comment on it. If you’re going to comment and it turns out you said some ignorant shit, how you respond to being corrected on these misconceptions is important. Instead of admitting error, and promising to listen and learn more, Fry tried to rationalize his views and offer a justification. He *should* have simply said “I’m sorry. I will try to educate myself on this subject matter before I speak on it in the future.”
Re #40, in Fry’s defence, the police have since said they have no reason to bring charges against Fry’s friend and 9 other people they publicly arrested over charges of pedophilia, apparently because they were accused by someone in the wake of the Jimmy Savile investigation (Project Yewtree). With a 3-for-13 conviction rate and the seriousness of this kind of accusation being put into the public sphere the way it was, apparently groundlessly in several cases, saying the police seem to have been overzealous appears to have been a defensible position. Terry Gilliam said much the same thing at the time.
joel @100:
It’s not as though Byrne is exactly your standard Xian or Catholic apologist.
Is 60 years enough of a gap?
A 35 year old marries a 95 year old. It is OBVIOUS that the 95 year old enjoys a huge power imbalance in their favor. Right?
That’s what drives me to distraction about the notion (and all too common practice) of petitionary prayer.
With regards to Fry and his opinions on female sexuality & rape (and the topic of heroes in general): I don’t think we need heroes, but I do think we need fewer influential people with bad ideas. When people lament otherwise useful/entertaining/intelligent/powerful/etc. people for having backward ideas their inevitably comes the talk of there being “no heroes” or having “no need for heroes.” I think this is kinda beside the point. We need largely decent people, and it’s honestly not that high a bar.
@27, consciousness razor
Because a completely non-interventist god is, at least in theory, more possible than one that breaks the laws of the universe on a routine basis. But, as I said, it’s all thoughtwankery.
If I died and were suddenly face-to-face with God, I would probably hit on Her.
No, actually, I wouldn’t, but that’s what I’m going to answer anyone who asks me that question.
NitricAcid #107
Really? A sexist non-sequitur is something you want to show to us? Ugh.
My slide to atheism was accelerated by the realization that there were billions of people out there that believed different things than I did.
I’d want to ask the interviewer what he’d do if he died and found himself standing before Hel or Hades or some supernatural being even man has never imagined. How would he answer for himself having worshiped the WRONG God his whole life?
Sorry, Odin wanted you to die in battle. You don’t get to enter Valhalla.
Gay Byrne is the spitting image of Malcolm Muggeridge.
It’s uncanny.
“What would you do if you died and found yourself in front of God?”
Ask: “Well, what are your excuses?”
Matrim:
First, “plausible” and “possible” are not synonyms.
Anyway, “more possible”? You’re either not impossible or you are. I have no idea why there need to be any “laws” or what you think those are, but there’s no contradiction if they’re broken, so what’s this problem with possibility again? I simply have no clue what theory you’re talking about or why anyone should believe it.
On the other hand, if you meant to write “plausible,” meaning something like believable or reasonable, then you’re suggesting that it would somehow be helpful if you were not even capable of having evidence for the existence of a thing, since it’s claimed (on the basis of what?) to be “non-intervening.” Do I need to say anything else at this point, except to rearticulate your claim in different words? I’m not seeing the reasonableness in that.
Of course, I do think there’s something incoherent (or intellectually dishonest) about an “impersonal god” generally, as well as a personal one which doesn’t exist in spacetime (and conveniently has a knack for hiding from us and all of our questions and criticisms). Whatever flavor of deity we’re talking about, they still don’t stand up to any scrutiny at all. But you’re giving one line of thought too much credit I think, even while dismissing it as wankery.
I don’t think when talking about whether polytheism or monotheism is more xxxxx, that “likely” or “plausible” are the right concepts. We don’t have our religions because they are plausible (at least we don’t keep them because they are plausible); we have our religions because they give philosophical meaning. It’s a basic assumption that if there are gods they somehow are fair and just because if they were every bit as capricious as the physical world then “what would be the point”. (Surely God won’t send you to hell just because you stuck your finger in a light socket while standing in a puddle? That’d be unfair! Sure, you can die by doing that and that’s unfair but that’s the real world and it’s okay for the real world to be unfair, but God has to have a reason, doesn’t He?) Those born and inunduated within 600 years of European philosophy (as I am) are likely to think monotheism “makes more sense” because polytheism would seem (to us) to be confused, chaotic, disorganized and capricious. But then that is probably cultural immersion.
As for which is more plausible? C’mon!…. *look* at the world! Really?
anteprepro @ 40;
Wow – Fry’s comments were worse than I realised. Writing off pretty much all women as anhedonic, sex hating prudes who only have sex in order to manipulate men as a means of getting something, and so close their eyes and think of England/babies/a new kitchen/a big rock on a ring/*insert preferred misogynistic slur* until it is over, is one of the oldest and nastiest of sexist lies, and plays into the even older and incredibly dangerous notion that men are always the active party in heterosexual congress, whereas women are always passive – tht sex is something fundamentally done by men to women, and all the toxic baggage that goes with that. That Fry not only uttered this poison on multiple occasions, but also never really walked back on it at all, and instead issued a passive aggressive not-pology, really is unforgiveable.
Firefox, Adblock.
No, asexual… as I’d have expected from a fundie preacher somewhere in the US. It’s really astounding how he apparently never considered that lots of women just don’t dare to behave like he describes gay men.
David Marjanović @ 155;
Good catch – a slight vocabularly malfunction there. And as you say, behaving in the fashion Fry describes would if anything be even more dangerous for a straight woman than it already is for a gay man
Fry’s comments on female sexuality read like someone who learned about sexuality from sitcoms. His ridiculous comments are the premise of better than 2/3s of American sitcoms.
Grewgills #117
Exactly. Spot on.
I am seeing someone casually (I also consider him a friend) and he’s 29 years older than I am. There is no “power difference”. I’m a 33 year old adult woman, for fuck’s sake.
I can take care of myself. Thanks for the concern trolling, but you can stop it now, thanks!
Please remember that these people in relationships are real people and their lives aren’t like yours. Your judgments are fine for your personal self. and you certainly don’t need to date or marry someone who is much older or younger than you if you don’t want to, I really don’t give a fuck, but can you hold off on judging the relationship between two consenting adults whom you do not know?
My first “adult” “relationship” was with someone 10 years older.
Me 19; other 29.
Total fucking disaster.
solely because of the age difference
Not sure what that has to do with any other relationship. When I was 24, I dated a man who was 44. We met when I was 19 and had many mutual friends. But then he moved out of state for work, and we decided to end it. It was amicable. We are still friends.
But certainly, the judgement tossed toward non traditional relationships in general doesn’t always make for a friendly or healthy environment. Maybe that’s part of the fucking problem.
Also, I don’t see the ending of someone’s first “adult” relationship as very noteworthy. My first “adult” relationship also ended. We were nearly the same age. He was also very abusive. It was awful. Did not know what consent was.
My current older guy, and the one I dated when I was 24, are by far two of the most respectful men I’ve known. My current older guy is all about communication. Super sweet.
My anecdotes are better than your anecdotes.
I’ve never been on an actual “date”.
I married a woman 18 years my senior, and after 27 years together I can confidently state that the age difference doesn’t matter. Shared values and above all a shared love of cats helped cement our relationship.
Okay? I’m just really tired of this really gross, negative attitude toward consenting adults because they happen to be in non-traditional relationships with varying age differences. It’s incredibly paternalistic and ironically creepy. I was trying to bring some humanity and personal experience to a subject that I often feel like I get spoken to ABOUT, rather than people have an actual conversation about it with me, considering I have experience in the area. So much, “Man, the power differences! How skeevy!” — I just wanted to bring some balance to the discussion.
My over all point, however? Anecdotes don’t really mean shit, and in the end, it’s no one’s fucking business. You can shove the “BUT POWER DIFFERENCES!” talk. It’s seriously out of line.
I am an adult, and I don’t need people talking about my relationships with such disdain and paternalistic concern.
The above poorly written comment that I didn’t proof read was directed at chigau.
I’m with Lofty.
My partner is four years younger than me and we grew up in the same queer, geeky social circle, only becoming romantic about five years ago. There were clear differences in this social circle (and I hardly knew or interacted with the younger people in that group while growing up, just sort of vaguely aware of them). Then, when Mr Monkey was in his twenties, suddenly those age differences didn’t matter any longer and the younger side of the social circle and the older side of the social circle freely mingled, because we were all adults. My partner and I actually got to know one another for the first time as equals, fell in love, and so it went. What would have been a horrible age difference as teenagers was a non-issue for two adults.
Relative issues of power and imbalance need to be considered in relationships between consenting adults, but having to consider those things and be sure no one is being hurt or taken advantage of is not a sign that a relationship shouldn’t happen. It’s simply how life should work, to protect all parties involved.
I showed this video to a friend yesterday. He’s not of any particular religion, but did grow up in a historically Catholic society, and is “definitely not atheist”. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that he didn’t really listen at all to what Fry was saying, but jumped right to the old “everything’s not exactly the way you want it, so there must not be a god” crap. He also pulled out the free will thing, but since when does free will cause parasites? Are we at fault for being born where we’re born? Are we responsible for choosing the best time to enter the world? If we’re alive before treatments/vaccines/cures exist, are we responsible for our own health problems? No answers to any of those questions, of course.
Maybe the explanation that a supposedly loving god would allow or cause suffering as a sort of “tough love” is accepted because it gives people an excuse to do it themselves. Gotta follow that divine example. If my god doesn’t care, why should I?
In support of marilove, I had a relationship when I was 40 with a 25yo woman. It went well, we broke up amicably when she met someone she wanted to marry. She was mature for her age, had already been through a 3 year relationship living together.
Right after, I met another young woman, same age as J, but who had never had a relationship of any kind (immigrated from a very homophobic country). With her, I felt a bad power differential, so I chose not to become involved with her.
The age difference was the same in both; the difference was the life experience of the two women, which led to a very different maturity.
Point being, it’s not the age, it’s the person.
My longtime relationship with Her Ex-Cellency (we broke up nine years ago) showed me that a generational difference could be bigger than age. She was the child of Depression-era parents, five years older than me, but from a quite different generation. My parents were Boomers, classically so: both were born within a year of VJ Day, and I the poster child for GenX.
That five years made a huge difference in a lot of small things, values and experiences, that we discovered as we went along for 11 years.
So yeah, screw the judgey bullshit about what the fucking calendar says. People need to be allowed to find their own happiness, and frankly it’s none of our fucking business, so long as they’re happy in it. And there is no way to tell happiness by comparing birth dates.
marilove, *fist bump of solidarity*.
This is absolutely correct, except that the two (or more!) consenting adults actually in the relationship should be the ones considering all of this (and more) — and not outside people who do not know the two in question. I and the rest should be left to the CONSENTING ADULTS. Note that I’m not talking about obviously abusive situations, here (but even then, there’s only so much one outside the relationship can do or say).
Relationships end. Not all relationships are healthy. Sometimes they end amicably, sometimes they don’t end so amicably. Sometimes this may be because of age differences that for whatever reason caused problems, or it may be because of totally unrelated things even if there is an age difference.
Oh and: It actually makes sense for me to date older in some cases, because I do NOT want kids, and it’s really hard to find people I’m interested in dating in around my age range who do not want kids, particularly men who are in their late 20’s or early 30’s. The benefit of dating older men or women is if they do have kids, they often don’t want anymore. If they don’t, there is a good bet that they’ve decided not not have kids or are okay going either way. It still takes PLENTY of honest, open communication, because it’s sort of surprising how many people will *claim* they don’t want kids, but aren’t really telling the truth, and are only saying it because they think that’s what I want to hear, and because they really like me. Which is really frustrating and tends to cause too much hurt all around. But older men especially who already have kids, especially if they are divorced, seem to be less interested in having additional kids, and are generally able to be more communicative and honest about the discussion in general, because they have the life experience.
Also, I’ve been living on my own since I was 19. I’m 33. I’m a fucking adult. It does not feel strange at all to me to have a boyfriend 20 years my senior. We get along great. We have a lot of the same interests, but enough differences between us to make it interesting.
His ex wife was about 10 years younger, and after their divorce and before he met me, he dated several women right around his age, so it’s not as if he’s just going after much younger women.
It’s just REALLY creepy, paternalistic and not-okay for people to *constantly* assume really terrible shit about our relationship and friendship all because of some perceived power differences all due to age when **you do not fucking know me or him or our relationship**.
So fucking stop it.
And thanks, CaitieCat, I appreciate it. :)
The condescending, paternalistic bullshit that I’m reading in this thread, and that chigau is so insistent about is really god damned annoying and uncalled for.