* * *
I suspect it's about control and dogma. Over the millennia, dogs have evolved, courtesy of contact and interaction with humanity, into creatures that are capable of inspiring strong emotional reactions in us. These emotional reactions are the stuff of possible conflict with doctrines that require us to hold dogma immune from competing emotional involvements, including love of pets. Affection for anything other than the tenets of the dogma is an element in competition with the demands of the dogma.
This, I suspect, is why prescriptive religions despise women as well. Love of woman is an element that competes with love of god, and therefore, must be eradicated if at all possible. Yes, this is a male-oriented explanation, but religions tend to be male-oriented, do they not?
But it gets darker. Hold on tight.
The Vatican is in the grips of rampant pedophilia, and we see elements of pedophilia in islam as well. The question to ask, and it is a harsh one, is what the attraction of very young children is for clergymen and prophets. Perhaps it is the same reason virginity is held as having such import - innocence. To state it in a vulgar fashion, the innocent are trainable. Now, I stated that in this vulgar fashion for a reason. There is a complex interaction between male ego (indeed all ego, but male ego in particular) and dogma that seems to need investigation.
Just as no man wants to be compared to other men (perhaps to be found lacking), so too people with emotional investment in dogmas do not want those investments to be subject to negotiation. Now, we need to understand that this emotional involvement is with the content of the dogma as well as the dogmatism as well.
People invest emotionally in dogma, and dogmas have their content designed to inspire emotional involvement. People who benefit from being authorities of the dogma very much like this emotional involvement and will disdain competing emotional involvements.
Sex (and indeed any emotional involvement) with a *partner* requires something antithetical to religious dogma (indeed antithetical to any dogma). It requires negotiation. Shoehorning emotional involvements into dominance-submission structures eradicates negotiation, and negates any possible tempering of dogma that might arise from negotiation arising from human sympathy.
In short, pedophilia is a control situation in which the abuser needn't ever negotiate the relationship. The dogma is held immune to tempering. The same is true of obsessively valuing women as virginal innocents. Hence arranged marriages, child brides, and the obsession with virginity. It turns all relationships into dominance-submission ones. The clergy are drawn to pedophilia because their victims cannot hold them responsible for it (both on personal and doctrinal levels). Pedophilia is "safe" in a tragically inhuman way.
Yes, we even negotiate with pets in an unspoken, but nevertheless real way. We have learned to read and respond to dogs' body language, from "soulful" eyes to wagging tails - and they have been shown to have facial recognition capability as well (dogs can read us!) Dogs are social animals, like us, and we have an emotional affinity for them, especially since we have bred them for characteristics (including emotional ones) we admire. A severe and profound competition indeed for emotional investment in dogma.
A competition unacceptable to those who want all your emotional investment to be in god, all other priorities rescinded.
This, I suspect, is why prescriptive religions despise women as well. Love of woman is an element that competes with love of god, and therefore, must be eradicated if at all possible. Yes, this is a male-oriented explanation, but religions tend to be male-oriented, do they not?
But it gets darker. Hold on tight.
The Vatican is in the grips of rampant pedophilia, and we see elements of pedophilia in islam as well. The question to ask, and it is a harsh one, is what the attraction of very young children is for clergymen and prophets. Perhaps it is the same reason virginity is held as having such import - innocence. To state it in a vulgar fashion, the innocent are trainable. Now, I stated that in this vulgar fashion for a reason. There is a complex interaction between male ego (indeed all ego, but male ego in particular) and dogma that seems to need investigation.
Just as no man wants to be compared to other men (perhaps to be found lacking), so too people with emotional investment in dogmas do not want those investments to be subject to negotiation. Now, we need to understand that this emotional involvement is with the content of the dogma as well as the dogmatism as well.
People invest emotionally in dogma, and dogmas have their content designed to inspire emotional involvement. People who benefit from being authorities of the dogma very much like this emotional involvement and will disdain competing emotional involvements.
Sex (and indeed any emotional involvement) with a *partner* requires something antithetical to religious dogma (indeed antithetical to any dogma). It requires negotiation. Shoehorning emotional involvements into dominance-submission structures eradicates negotiation, and negates any possible tempering of dogma that might arise from negotiation arising from human sympathy.
In short, pedophilia is a control situation in which the abuser needn't ever negotiate the relationship. The dogma is held immune to tempering. The same is true of obsessively valuing women as virginal innocents. Hence arranged marriages, child brides, and the obsession with virginity. It turns all relationships into dominance-submission ones. The clergy are drawn to pedophilia because their victims cannot hold them responsible for it (both on personal and doctrinal levels). Pedophilia is "safe" in a tragically inhuman way.
Yes, we even negotiate with pets in an unspoken, but nevertheless real way. We have learned to read and respond to dogs' body language, from "soulful" eyes to wagging tails - and they have been shown to have facial recognition capability as well (dogs can read us!) Dogs are social animals, like us, and we have an emotional affinity for them, especially since we have bred them for characteristics (including emotional ones) we admire. A severe and profound competition indeed for emotional investment in dogma.
A competition unacceptable to those who want all your emotional investment to be in god, all other priorities rescinded.
* * *
This idea - that religious dogma protects itself - reminded me of Darrel Ray's book The God Virus
where he describes religion as an infection of the mind with characteristics of a living organism. I hope someday a cure is found, or at least a vaccination.
where he describes religion as an infection of the mind with characteristics of a living organism. I hope someday a cure is found, or at least a vaccination.
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