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Logical Fallacies Anti-Polys love to employ

That article seems problematic on several levels...

White elite men were the only ones in history who did not follow this biologically prescribed tendency.
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The first is that it seems to be reacting to the 'white man bad' culture by extolling the greatness of aristocratic white Europeans who chose monogamy instead of taking advantage of power and position over women. The author denigrates Germanic peoples and never addresses Celts presumably because they don't fit his narrow virtuous white aristocratic male model...

Essentially what the Church did was to instill strong religious norms (about mortal sin and punishment in Hell) in the mental processing of the higher brain centers of aristocratic men, damping down the instinctive appetite of the lower parts of the brain for multiple mates.
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It then strongly supports Catholic rulings which clearly demonstrate that they were operating on their own doctrines and not from Scripture...

What he says though, supports what Aristotle said 2400 years ago: Monogamy is the foundation of the polis.

The article specifically points to monogamy as a move from tribalism to statism.

Christian Collectivism Replaces Kin-Based Collectivism
But how can we say that the same medieval age everyone has characterized as “communal” and “collectivist” was the age in which the individualist tendencies of the West were consolidated? MacDonald is quick to point out that the Church itself took on the role of building in the West “a strong sense of group identification and commitment”. The “collectivism of European society in the High Middle Ages was real,” but it was a pan-European ideological-Christian form of collectivism set up against the in-group biological collectivism of smaller kinship groups.
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God used patriarchy and the required subset of polygyny precisely because Israel was a tribal people. It is how women were to be cared for, why there were to be no poor in the Land.

Until I'm blue in the face, I'll argue that Scripture clearly prophesies the restoration of Israel as a tribal people living in the Land according to God's Torah. See the prophets, especially. This helps understand why there is a global awakening to Torah, a global awakening to polygyny, global unrest as the adversary wars against God's plan....

What we are seeing, the return to God's simple instructions in marriage and living is part of a much bigger picture.

The author of the above article is arguing for the greatness of the Catholic ideals in Europe and the false kingdom that was supposed to create...
 
On the run, so will respond deeper later, but my first reaction is the dejure/de facto aspect of outlawing polygamy. Just by making it the legal/religious expectation, it didn't eliminate the practice. It just went underground, so to speak.
 
Mojo said:
On the run, so will respond deeper later, but my first reaction is the dejure/de facto aspect of outlawing polygamy. Just by making it the legal/religious expectation, it didn't eliminate the practice. It just went underground, so to speak.
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The challenge is proving the extent of the 'unspoken' among the aristocracy...
 
sun said:
I just saw this article and would like people's critique and opinions about it; is it right or wrong about polygamy?

https://www.theoccidentalobserver.n...ividualism-and-the-western-liberal-tradition/
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I would call it a "Shoddy Research" Fallacy, if that were recognized as such. I'll have to look into it. It is sort of like the "Incel" argument that I see pop up from time to time. They usually don't cite their source, but I have read it, and it has all sorts of holes in it.
 
From https://www.oxfordhandbooks.com/vie...dhb-9780199934898-e-031?rskey=yt0sPp&result=1

Since the inception of scientific revolutions, quantitative research methodology has dominated the research literatures in many disciplines. Despite its long tradition in evidence-based research and practice, many fallacies and misconceptions continue to infiltrate the ways quantitative researchers conceive, collect, analyze, and interpret data. This chapter outlines 16 common fallacies and examines in depth 6 of those that are most consequential and prevalent in published quantitative research. The six major fallacies include Contextual Variable Fallacies, Measurement Error Fallacies, Missing Data Fallacies, Significance Testing Fallacies, Statistical Power Fallacies, and Factor Analysis Fallacies. These fallacies span the entire quantitative research process—from research design, sampling, and instrumentation to statistical analysis and interpretation
 
MacDonald acknowledges the importance of Christian ideas in history. The crucial difference is that he wants to know whether these ideas were actually able “to exert a control function over behavior and evolved predispositions”. What stands out for MacDonald about the Catholic Church was its ability to regulate the sexual behavior of powerful White men in a monogamous direction away from the strong inclination of such men for polygamous relations. Essentially what the Church did was to instill strong religious norms (about mortal sin and punishment in Hell) in the mental processing of the higher brain centers of aristocratic men, damping down the instinctive appetite of the lower parts of the brain for multiple mates.
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(Emboldened text not in original)​

Here, the article bleeds out cognitive bias. Who is to say what is to be considered higher or lower parts of a brain?
 
White elite men were the only ones in history who did not follow this biologically prescribed tendency. We saw in Parts 3 and 4 (of my extended analysis of Individualism and the Western Liberal Tradition) MacDonald’s argument that a genetic disposition for monogamy may have evolved among European men back in hunting and gathering times due to harsh environmental conditions in northwest Europe during the last glacial age. In chapter five, “The Church in European History,” which is the subject of this article, MacDonald explains that, while “the Catholic Church cannot be seen as originating monogamy,” this Church was very effective in regulating the sexual behavior of powerful aristocratic men, the ones most inclined to pursue sexual variety.
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False! Elites have always pursued sexual variety. They just don't call it marriage.
 
sun said:
I just saw this article and would like people's critique and opinions about it; is it right or wrong about polygamy?

https://www.theoccidentalobserver.n...ividualism-and-the-western-liberal-tradition/
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Well, please forgive me, but after reading just 3 paragraphs I determined that I have much better things to do with my time than read something that slanted. Premises are presented as unquestionable facts, and I had to get off the train when I read about how the Catholic Church ushered in Western Civilization based on its total respect for human life. I'm a big fan of the RCC's persistent pro-life stance, but being on the right side of things about abortion doesn't negate the fact that the Roman Catholic Church has been massively guilty throughout the centuries of subjugating, oppressing and abusing human beings once they're out of the womb. Its history is rife with examples of terror tactics designed to keep people coming to masses, paying for masses and refraining from questioning the insertion of priests in between the Body of Christ and Christ Himself. Not to mention centuries worth of attempting to destroy the wonderful sexual desires with which our Father endowed us.
 
Come to think of it, it wasn’t only white men.
 
I think this article here identifies quite a few of the fallacies found in articles that present data and reach conclusions that are unwarranted:

https://www.visualcapitalist.com/here-are-15-common-data-fallacies-to-avoid/

I like Simpson's Paradox. This one is often employed when some of our progressive friends try to argue the Sweden and Denmark, are examples of real socialism. Likewise, the article praising the Catholic church, looks only at countries in sub-Saharan African to glean data from, and it ignores the fact that incels occur in China, yet the violence seen in Africa, is unheard of in China. This is not to say that China is by any means, an ideal place to live, but rather, this destroys the notion that when men cannot marry, they resort to violence.
 
I was reading on a Youtube video and a commenter said this anti-poly statement: "Just because it’s going for thousands of years it still doesn’t make it right. Slavery, murder, rape, girl private mutations, cannibalism happened for the same amount of years. Does the length of practice make it okay?"
 
sun said:
I was reading on a Youtube video and a commenter said this anti-poly statement: "Just because it’s going for thousands of years it still doesn’t make it right. Slavery, murder, rape, girl private mutations, cannibalism happened for the same amount of years. Does the length of practice make it okay?"
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That is an excellent example of a "Straw Man", if indeed the person whom they were arguing with, was not trying to use the "thousands of years" argument to prove their point, and I would hope they are not, because there are so many other strong arguments that they could rely on. "Length of practice" can be used to refute some objections, but the "length of practice" is not a determining factor in whether something is OK or not. What makes it OK, is the fact that it occurred and was mentioned several times throughout the OT, without one word of condemnation for its practice. That alone makes it OK. The fact that it was commanded by God, and even approved of, as we know from the story of Abimelech, king of Gerar, and King Joash, who did what was right in the eyes of the Lord, and that God gave David his wives, and that God sided with Moses in the dispute over the Cushite wife, is just the cherry and whipped topping, that adds to the evidence we already have, but it would be sufficient to point out that God never condemned it, in spite of numerous mentions of its practice.
 
Outside of Scripture the length of practice, not by itself but, as in reality, in conjunction with who and how and where, is actually a very strong argument. The thing is, things like slavery have gone on in evil cultures, but have also been criminalised for thousands of years in righteous cultures. Polygyny however, as far as I know, was accepted in all cultures, including righteous cultures that condemned slavery, murder, etc., from the beginning.

Polygyny was probably not significantly criminalised anywhere until the tyrannical, pagan, and sexually filthy Greco-Roman culture arose and cast its vile influences like a plague over the earth. When that collapsed, the pagan monster's deformed child the Roman Catholic "church" took up the infernal torch, their evangelists threatening with Hell any who did not follow the Roman customs. It is indeed laughable how the ubiquitous pictures of Christ depict him as a European, but it is not surprising. After large portions of people were coming out from under the fear of this spawn of Rome, what comes next but racist bigotry sprung straight from Roman thinking. The argument in America for criminalising polygyny was not that it is forbidden in the Bible - the ham-handed attempts to say the Bible forbids it are made after the fact to justify a pagan culture that cares nothing for Scripture, earning its scorn and shaming the Word of God. The purpose of criminalising polygyny was to curb the power of the Mormon cult, and was made simultaneously with financial laws that were for the same purpose. The justification used at the time was that polygyny was a "vestige of barbarism", "barbarian" being the very word used to describe a non-Roman. It was the pride of the "enlightenment", which has led us to the extremely refined, dignified, reasonable, civilised, highly educated, level-headed, and mentally stable generation we have today (seething with sarcasm there).

The point being that for thousands of years polygyny has been accepted by all except one culture on earth, which in the whole scheme of things has arrived fairly recently, is by no means the best culture, and is probably the most conceited culture to ever exist. Whereas the best cultures, in the various pockets where they survive, have always had some acceptance of polygyny from the beginning of time to the present day.
 
OK, then, if you were trying to use that argument, and someone came back with that response, you could identify it as a Fallacious comparison, or an Apples to oranges comparison. Evil things like rape, cannibalism, and mutilating girl's private parts, have indeed gone on for thousands of years in unrighteous cultures, but not in righteous cultures, at least not without consequences. Slavery has transpired in righteous cultures, but not for thousands of years. Then of course, it becomes necessary to qualify the statements made regarding polygamy going on for thousands of years, that indeed those cultures where it has existed, are indeed righteous. So to rephrase, I wouldn't simply argue that polygyny has gone on for thousands of years, without the qualifier that it has gone on for thousands of years in righteous cultures, and then list some of the cultures that come to mind.
 
Jeff Ray said:
Concubines at least had rights. Mistresses don't have anything.
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Reminds me of something a SW once said: "If someone asks me who I am to my husband if I say I'm his second wife they call the police but if I say I'm his mistress they mind their own business."

So sad that our society approves of an immoral relationship and disapproves of a committed relationship. :(
 
The ancientness of the practice, it's long history, and the fact the super-majority of human societies practiced polygamy aren't points for proving it is ok but for putting the context in practice.

We falsely think monogamy is normal. For the non-Christian you can safely call it the evolved normative human practice. For the Christian you can point out we think it's right, not because of any actual argument, but because of a 'that's just the way we do it and always have' cultural bias. And it's basis is in Roman culture, not Christian theology, as you can state by pointing out the early church and even Popes refused to condemn it, not to mention the long practice of polygamy in non-Roman Celtic and African Christianity.

When presented with such facts many will retort that Europeans are historically monogamous (i.e. not like those horrible Arabs and Africans) and it is what made Western Civilization possible. You can just call them racist at this point. Or you can go the logical route and reply that most European peoples were not monogamous until the Catholic church forced monogamy (we're not Catholic are we? solo scriptura and all that) There were many great and powerful polygamous European civilizations (like the Northern Celts and the Vikings whom the Romans could not conquer) and it was the polygamous Celtic Christianity which nursemaided European civilization through the fall of the Roman Empire making everything to come possible.
 
I just read in the monthly Texas Wildlife magazine that birds mating for life is a huge myth.
 
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