The magic system and theology present in Dungeons and Dragons Third Edition is very sophisticated. You will forgive me for not thinking that this gives it much merit.
C’mon…EVERYBODY knows that Asians, in general, and Indians, in particular, are like, all so totally spiritual.
All Chinese know kung-fu, too.
Educate yourself on Eastern thought, and see what you think.
I would also recommend the series of books by the Chicago Press authored under the pseudonym “Yogi Ramacharaka,” actually a William Walker Atkinson, a spirtually inclined Baltimore attorney of the early 20th century. A spiritually inclined attorney? Well, I guess it can happen.
Again, I don’t agree with all of it, but it is the attempt to create a coherent and logical account of things ordinarily considered ineffable that so impresses me. Read up, and decide for yourself.
I’m not putting words in anyone’s mouth, but too often in matters of philosophy and esthetics, “sophisticated” = irrational.
I first heard the charge of misogyny from Howard Stern, who relates it as an “I don’t wanna grow up, girls are icky” kind of mindset. I have no clue what it does to society, I suspect this is an experiment in progress.
The Dead Milkmen
Is it substantially different from the “I don’t wanna grow up, other guys are icky” kind of mindset?
I, for one, don’t consider women (or hetero sex) to be “icky,” they’re just not what I’m attracted to. And I can’t take seriously, anyone’s claim that I’m any kind of threat to society. Certainly no more than Howard Stern.
Children have certain requirements that must be met in order to transform them into healthy, responsible adults. If too many children are raised without these requirements, then society will surely collapse. Having the majority of children raised by families organized around a marriage between one man and one woman has been a popular choice in many societies because it meets the needs of children quite well, but it is not the only arrangement that meets the needs of children.
Children need:
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Physical needs met. They mujst have food, water, clothing, housing, medical care, protection from criminals, and so forth.
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Emotional comfort. Somebody to be there and help them through whenever times are tough, such as when they get sick or injured, or have trouble coping emotionally with new experiences.
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Help in growing up. Children will not naturally turn into mature adults. somebody needs to encourage them to do what it takes, to stay in school and devote effort towards their work, to learn how to manage money, to learn how to take care of themselves.
Errmmm . . . you are aware, I hope, that there is absolutely no hard evidence for the existence of “kundalini,” “chi,” or “psychic energy” or “life force” of any kind. It appears, at present, that the only “energy” in living things is biochemical or bioelectric; there is nothing, not even the “Kirlian aura,” that cannot be explained in those terms. See this two-year-old GQ thread: http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=167264
It’s not controversial, it’s merely wrong. If homosexuality was exclusively found among males, then you might have a point. But fact is, you’ve got female homosexuals (those pesky lesbians!) and bisexuals. That’s where your argument falls apart.
How are gays destroying society?
They want to get married and if we let them.
Thems who are already married will divorce
and those who had plannrd to marry won’t.
And of course, you can’t have children if you ain’t married.
And gays can’t have children.
So society collapses.
At no point have I stated or implied that divorce was an indictment of gay marriage. In fact, I wholeheartedly agree with you that what we have here is an overall indictment of marriage as an institution, in general.
We have had an approximately 50% divorce rate for approximately 35 years, at least in the US. It seems like a real bad bet to base a decision that will likely affect the rest of your life, in one way or another, on the flip of a coin. Why gays would be stumping so enthusiastically for that one is beyond me.
Whoa there, the West is also full of writers, thinkers, scientists and Holy Men/Women who have cranked out ream after ream of paper seeking to coherently and logically account for ethics, morals, spiritual development, semantics of communication and also JudeoChristian theology, all laid down with a degree of sophistication that gives philosophy graduate students a headache.
So, sure, “homosexuality disrupts the proper flow of Kundalini/Qi energy and creates an unstable Yang+Yang system” IS more sophisticated than “the Bible says that it is an abomination for man to lie with man”. But the chances of it being right are no better, pending further evidence.
(And at least it’s not as flat-out dumb as “them homos will seduce our children and then we won’t have any grandkids and America will fall ‘cause everyone will be screwin’ in the street”.)
True. My apologies; I totally misunderstood your last paragraph. I feel so…stupid.
If by “hard evidence” you mean something measurable with existing instrumentation, then no, there is no evidence. Not holding my breath that this will be achieved any time soon. We’re not there, yet. Maybe we never will be.
Such concepts are put forth by those capable of feeling their existence, and attempting to document these subtle energies using the ultimately inadequate device of verbal communication.
Electricity, by the way, required the proper instrumentation to “prove” its existence. Before that, anyone could say that there was no “hard evidence” that it existed.
The development of adequate instrumentation has almost always followed intuition/inspiration, even in the hardest of sciences.
I don’t need to have an exact measuring device to “prove” the existence of electricity. I only need to take a fork to my toaster and I’m pretty damn sure it’s there. I may not know how or why, but the phenomenon itself is readily available for anyone to feel and die from. On the flipside, the phenomena of auras and energies and so forth aren’t.
And his methodology involves exploiting women, pseudo lesbians and behaving like a horny 13 year old?
Not the same. Lightning is visible and audible. The sparks of static electricity are visible and audible. Their identification as electricity, as the same thing as the current produced by a Leyden jar, required an intuitive leap (not improved instrumentation, really – see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lightning#History_of_lightning_research), but the lightning was always there and always perceptible. But there is no visible or (except on a purely personal, inner-experiential level) perceptible phenomenon that might be classified as kundalini or qi or The Force.
Furthermore, if the existence of kundalini were proven, it would still remain to be proven that men and women have different kinds of kundalini, or that two people’s kundalini can somehow interact during sex.
It does make some sense. What I don’t see is what would be bad about this in any way, much less destructive to society.
I too am very concerned about our Precious Bodily Fluids.