To verify this, look at old National Geographics and try to find gray or white hair among pictures of tribal peoples in the jungle and on the savannah. It will take some work.
It’s not true, and hair color is a poor proxy for age (especially as stress levels vary by culture), but I’m most interested in where are you getting National Geographics from that depict tribal peoples who were unmolested from massive harassment by their national militaries and corporations at the time? There are very, very few examples of 20th-century tribal peoples who weren’t under serious abuse, and those that were in existence at all tended to be the ones on the most unliveable land, the worst spots left that hadn’t been taken from them. Heck, in North America you could hardly… Read more »
So…..the point stands that there’s no utopia of long life there, right? Making it someone or other’s fault doesn’t really change the point — at least not any point that was stated, rather than assumed.
If Pastor Wilson had claimed that tribal people were all naturally peaceful, and Bubba replied, “It’s true, Native Americans haven’t fought a war in over 100 years,” it would be quite silly to pretend that some sort of point had been made with that observation.
I fail to see how your analogy parallels the above situation. The original claim “primitive people didn’t have long life spans” is not false, whereas the original claim of “tribal people are all naturally peaceful” is false. To get a workable analogy, I think at least you’d have to get the truth value of the initial claim correct.
Well first of all, no, that’s not how logic works. An argument with poor logic still has poor logic independent of whether the claim it’s trying to support is true or false. Bubba’s claim of evidence was not evidence. Otherwise, you’ve literally made arguments by analogy impossible, because you would have to agree on the basic truth claim of the end point BEFORE you could agree on whether the analogy was appropriate…and if you already agree on the basic truth claim of the end point, what’s the need for an analogy anymore? Now, I think many primitive people lived past… Read more »
That was not what I meant. What I meant was, you can’t parallel an argument that starts with “the moon is made of green cheese” with one that starts with “the moon is composed of rock” and then refute by analogy an agreement or disagreement with each statement. It is true that people were not long-lived in primitive times. As you know, I’ve already registered my objection to the precise claim that no one lived past thirty, but that’s a matter of detail, it doesn’t take away from the substantive point that people did not live very long, on average,… Read more »
For “national militaries and corporations” to be the cause of poor longevity, you’ve got to be going to nations that have either. Even today, new tribes are being found in Brazil and central Africa.
Nice talking points, but it helps if they are based in reality. Yours are not.
Bubba, are you really trying to be serious about that? What corner of Africa do you think hasn’t been plagued by national militaries and corporations? The nations with the worst national structures (I’m guessing you were trying to refer to Congo?) are the very ones with the WORST harassment, because they not only have their own dysfunctional structures to deal with, but have typically been invaded by everyone else’s as well. King Leopold was destroying the people of Congo in a massive campaign that killed 10,000,000 and destroyed the social capital of the entire country a good 100 years ago.… Read more »
Dead serious. In the colonial era, the Europeans tended to stay near the ocean because they didn’t have resistance to the diseases to be found inland. Same thing with a Depression era article about Tibet that noted that foreigners there without permission would be killed by the Dalai Lama’s soldiers. There are numerous articles in the yellow magazine where the reporters are the first white people to be seen there. It’s fun to “blame whitey” for all that is ill in the world, but sorry, it doesn’t explain why there was so little gray hair among people who had never… Read more »
And it was not tough to find that even the uncontacted tribes still continue to suffer from the exact issues I mentioned: “Remarkable new images have emerged of an uncontacted tribal community in the Brazilian Amazon which environmentalists fear could be destroyed by outside influences.” “Miners have brought diseases such as malaria and polluted Yanomami food and water sources with mercury, according to international NGO Survival.” “The tribe – one of three Yanomami groups in the area that are monitored remotely after shunning approaches from outsiders – were a source of concern after they went missing at a time of… Read more »
Outside journalists know the language of an uncontacted people group? Really?
Reality is that Apolinar Diaz de la Fuente described them….in 1759. Modern contact with them began around 1950 with New Tribes Missions, and the biggest source of male death is….intertribal warfare. Doesn’t have anything to do with those evil miners.
What are you even talking about? I didn’t say a word about “uncontacted people group”, my whole comment was about an uncontacted tribal community, the exact words the article used. The Moxihatetema were the uncontacted tribal community, Davi Kopenawa Yanomami is a Yanomami but he is not from the Moxihatetema. The Moxihatetema and other uncontacted Yanomami tribes have absolutely no political or relational connections to Davi’s organization and the other Yanomami, they’re only called the same “people group” name because of cultural similarities. In real terms they’re as “uncontacted” as any other tribe. I hope that clarifies your misreading now.… Read more »
Thank you for admitting what an avid reader of National Geographic like myself knows; isolated peoples in the jungle and savanna rarely live long enough to get gray hair. (by the way, National Geographic would count as a pretty good “source”, especially ones older than 30 years old) Now on the blame thing, you’re seriously blaming miners in the 20th century for the intertribal warfare these tribes have been doing (by their own admission in most cases) as far back as they can remember? You’re coming pretty close to claiming that the sin nature arrived with Columbus on the Santa… Read more »
One frustrating thing about this comments section is that I often get in conversations with people who appear to be arguing with an enemy they have created in their own mind, but who has nothing to do with me or my positions. Literally everything you say in that 2nd paragraph has nothing to do with anything I said. Let’s do a quick rundown of what I actually believe, because you have responded to almost none of it. 1) Processed foods have been shown to be detrimental to health. A great number of the chemicals that are placed on our foods… Read more »
Speaking of responses that have nothing to do with what they’re responding to….pot, meet kettle.
Let’s get down to brass tacks. My initial statement was that my reading of 1930s-1960s era National Geographics shows very little gray hair, indicating that a life with low pollution and natural foods does not necessarily make people live that long. You, in turn, tried to blame whitey, to which I pointed out that the biggest killer of their men was the wars they were having with other non-white peoples.
Sorry, bud, but I think I’m keeping on topic pretty well, and you are not.
No, I did not “try to blame whitey”, and your claim that I did proves that you’re still not arguing with me, but some imaginary person in your head.
I laid down what I believe very clearly in my previous comment. Either dispute one of THOSE points, or find someone who actually believes the stuff you want to argue about. I’m not going to defend things I don’t believe and haven’t said.
Yes, claiming it was all due to militarism and corporatism has nothing to do with blaming whitey….sorry, I lived in Boulder for a decade, I know the code.
You know, it strikes me that we have here a golden opportunity to do a little lab work right here on this thread.
I wonder how the name “Bike bubba” colored Jonathan’s impression of Bike bubba, how it informed his reactions, and to what extent he would consider that impression justified by the name?
Knowing Bike bubba and his background just a bit as I do, I think this could be very interesting, if Jonathan is willing to respond.
I believe some serious projection is going on, but why don’t you just check my first responses? Here was my first reply to Bubba in this thread: It’s not true, and hair color is a poor proxy for age (especially as stress levels vary by culture), but I’m most interested in where are you getting National Geographics from that depict tribal peoples who were unmolested from massive harassment by their national militaries and corporations at the time? There are very, very few examples of 20th-century tribal peoples who weren’t under serious abuse, and those that were in existence at all… Read more »
I do not see there that you are making assumptions, nor am I accusing you of doing so. I am asking if you are. My question was not based to any degree on an opinion about how you responded, but about the fact that “Bike bubba” is a moniker that just about anyone might make certain assumptions about. So I was wondering if you did, and if so, what they were. If you made no assumptions based on his moniker, fine. I absolutely and definitively never intended to suggest that you did, still less assumed what they might have been.… Read more »
And…we have the perfect admittance of what I am talking about. My words, apparently, are unimportant. Bike Bubba already knows what I’m talking about, I don’t need to actually express viewpoints, because he’s already assumed what I must be talking about for me.
If I’m talking about Brazilian miners in Brazil and about their national militaries and corporations in Africa, I must be talking about “Whitey”, because, um, Bubba used to live in Boulder.
I clearly said THEIR national militaries and corporations. That isn’t a “code” for whitey unless the “they” in question are white, is it?
I saw Jonathan’s reply to you below. I’d reply to him directly, but Disqus, in its infinite wisdom, is treating my replies to him as spam. Here’s a quote from National Geographic (sorry, you’ll have to google it — trying to keep this out of the spam filter) from Davi Kopenawa, the official spokeshaman for the Yanomami regarding, ahem, Brazilian miners (or, as I like to call them, undocumented resource extraction personnel): “An active gold strike is a mere 18 miles from the village, Kopenawa says. That encampment is supported by an airstrip, complicating efforts to dismantle it and expel… Read more »
Jeb
7 years ago
“There is urgency, if I am to complete the building of the largest and most complex burial tomb in history, in my lifetime”.
Dunsworth
7 years ago
I want to like this but I can’t like the contribution to the widespread life expectancy fallacy. So I’ll just register this protest and then continue on, liking it. :-)
Life expectancy is strongly influenced by infant mortality. High infant mortality means low average life expectancy even though many lindividuals ived to an old age.
Yes, the idea that “life expectancy of 30” means “nobody lived past 30.” By definition, if any infants died, which surely many did, then quite a number of people lived past 30. I suspect in very primitive conditions, though, it’s not that common to live past 55 or so.
When I first started doing family history, I was startled by the number of my forebears who lived into their eighties. It seems as if the women (almost all living in English villages) survived childhood and eight or so pregnancies, they had a good chance of reaching old age. But I would have guessed childhood mortality to be running at 30% or so, and I expect it was higher in the cities.
You don’t think Doug jokes strategically? That he hasn’t put an incredible amount of effort into mocking anyone who suggests that more environmentally sound or less corporate means of food production might be better for all involved? It’s quite interesting that I made two comments on this post – one person defended Wilson by saying it was just a joke, the other by claiming his underlying point was true. If Pastor Wilson didn’t believe that jokes had power, he would conduct his online activity quite differently than he does. And if he didn’t believe the false truth to this joke,… Read more »
Even so, sometimes a joke is simply a joke. From the typeface, this looks like a New Yorker cartoon, and I don’t think they would automatically mock people who care about sustainable agriculture.
I think Dougs point has previously been that people who pay more for oganic food should not feel/act smugly superior. What he thinks about modern methods of altering food likely depends on which alterations and what modern means.
This argument has already been done to death in other threads. Pastor Wilson has not only mocked people who “feel/act smugly superior”, but everyone, even well-meaning Christians, who make similar choices in what they do and do not eat at all. He has said something to the effect that if all the Sodomites disappeared, the entire organic food industry would collapse, the Christians who had stupidly been eating such things would realize they were idiots, and this would be a good thing. He has also made the unsupported claim that if it wasn’t for agribusiness and industrial farming, half the… Read more »
“He has said something to the effect that if all the Sodomites disappeared, the entire organic food industry would collapse.” Where did he say that? “He has also made the unsupported claim that if it wasn’t for agribusiness and industrial farming, half the world would starve.” How much of the world gets its food from agribusiness and or industrial farming? “He has attacked anyone who is against overly processed foods on claimed Biblical grounds.” One may have a biblical reason why they themselves don’t eat overly processed foods, but I don’t know of biblical grounds to prohibit overly processed foods… Read more »
“Where did he say that?” If all the foodie people who were living in onoing sexual disobedience had a heart attack one day (because, as it happens, little known fact, tofu causes heart disease), the whole hipster food industry would collapse, and the “stewardship” Christians would find out that their stewardship movement had been subsidized the whole time by moralistic scam artists. And they would further discover that old fashioned stewardship, the kind the Bible talks about, would start looking sideways at the three dollar apples, now that they weren’t deemed cool any more. Because, as it turns out, the… Read more »
“the whole hipster food industry would collapse” Is it the case that Wilson thinks all organic food is hipster food? “You can’t argue necessity from a current trend.” Agreed, but what effect would eleminating agribusiness/industrial farming have on population centers removed from farmland? “That even suggesting to someone else that there might be a better way to get and make our food is unloving of our brothers and sisters in Christ, and that we’re better advised to keep our mouths shut.” I think the issue is not that Doug objects to any dissent twords our food overlords but that he’s… Read more »
Jonathan, let me start by saying I’m with you pretty much all the way here. Smaller farms are better for community life. Fresh fruit is better for you (and more delicious) than fried cornstarch with food colouring and msg. The world would be a better place if more people realised these things. I think some good conversations about changing farming practices to focus on smaller-scale, family-friendly operations would be beneficial. –“Oh, no, I certainly don’t think there are “Biblical” grounds for prohibiting overly processed foods. They’re just awful for your health, and to some degree bad for the environment. I… Read more »
I personally rarely/never buy highly expensive “organic” foods. I buy locally sourced whenever possible, in season whenever possible, choose organic when prices are comparable. I was able to grow a few more things in my previous home but it’s not possible currently. I wish there were far more options available, but it is very difficult the way that agribusiness currently dominates the market and all the government subsidies and land/regulation advantages.
You raise a very important issue about not consciously encouraging people to obsess about what they eat. Currently eating disorder specialists are debating whether to include a new diagnosis called orthorexia, a new constellation of symptoms of dysfunctional attitudes towards food. They are seeing a lot of this, especially among younger people. The symptoms are described as: “obsessive focus on food choice, planning, purchase, preparation, and consumption; food regarded primarily as source of health rather than pleasure; distress or disgust when in proximity to prohibited foods; exaggerated faith that inclusion or elimination of particular kinds of food can prevent or… Read more »
I said it was “something like” that, then I found it and got the exact quote. I think the basic point was unchanged, if you don’t, whatever.
You spend a great deal of time replying to my comments on this site, and invariably you seem to focus on the “way” I am discussing the issue rather than adding anything to the discussion of the issue. Of that’d just your character, so be it.. but it doesn’t exactly appear to be something you do with an even hand.
Or, it could be, that not altering our food by modern means is not a panacea.
That requires far less extrapolation from the content of the cartoon and is a far more charitable reading, as it is not imputing a rather stupid idea that Doug has never actually expressed.
Oh, not altering our food by modern means is certainly not a panacea.
Of course, it would be ridiculous to think that Pastor Wilson spends his time and energy countering claims that literally none of his readers or congregants have ever, ever made or even considered making, now wouldn’t it?
As I mentioned to Christopher, we’ve beaten around this bush in detail on other threads already. Pastor Wilson’s voice against even advocating for non-industrial or non-processed food, for any reasons at all, has been consistent for a year at least.
And they are not being injected by toxic vaccines made by BigPharma either.
To verify this, look at old National Geographics and try to find gray or white hair among pictures of tribal peoples in the jungle and on the savannah. It will take some work.
Elders must have been a bigger deal when they were more rare.
It’s not true, and hair color is a poor proxy for age (especially as stress levels vary by culture), but I’m most interested in where are you getting National Geographics from that depict tribal peoples who were unmolested from massive harassment by their national militaries and corporations at the time? There are very, very few examples of 20th-century tribal peoples who weren’t under serious abuse, and those that were in existence at all tended to be the ones on the most unliveable land, the worst spots left that hadn’t been taken from them. Heck, in North America you could hardly… Read more »
So…..the point stands that there’s no utopia of long life there, right? Making it someone or other’s fault doesn’t really change the point — at least not any point that was stated, rather than assumed.
If Pastor Wilson had claimed that tribal people were all naturally peaceful, and Bubba replied, “It’s true, Native Americans haven’t fought a war in over 100 years,” it would be quite silly to pretend that some sort of point had been made with that observation.
I fail to see how your analogy parallels the above situation. The original claim “primitive people didn’t have long life spans” is not false, whereas the original claim of “tribal people are all naturally peaceful” is false. To get a workable analogy, I think at least you’d have to get the truth value of the initial claim correct.
Well first of all, no, that’s not how logic works. An argument with poor logic still has poor logic independent of whether the claim it’s trying to support is true or false. Bubba’s claim of evidence was not evidence. Otherwise, you’ve literally made arguments by analogy impossible, because you would have to agree on the basic truth claim of the end point BEFORE you could agree on whether the analogy was appropriate…and if you already agree on the basic truth claim of the end point, what’s the need for an analogy anymore? Now, I think many primitive people lived past… Read more »
That was not what I meant. What I meant was, you can’t parallel an argument that starts with “the moon is made of green cheese” with one that starts with “the moon is composed of rock” and then refute by analogy an agreement or disagreement with each statement. It is true that people were not long-lived in primitive times. As you know, I’ve already registered my objection to the precise claim that no one lived past thirty, but that’s a matter of detail, it doesn’t take away from the substantive point that people did not live very long, on average,… Read more »
For “national militaries and corporations” to be the cause of poor longevity, you’ve got to be going to nations that have either. Even today, new tribes are being found in Brazil and central Africa.
Nice talking points, but it helps if they are based in reality. Yours are not.
Bubba, are you really trying to be serious about that? What corner of Africa do you think hasn’t been plagued by national militaries and corporations? The nations with the worst national structures (I’m guessing you were trying to refer to Congo?) are the very ones with the WORST harassment, because they not only have their own dysfunctional structures to deal with, but have typically been invaded by everyone else’s as well. King Leopold was destroying the people of Congo in a massive campaign that killed 10,000,000 and destroyed the social capital of the entire country a good 100 years ago.… Read more »
Dead serious. In the colonial era, the Europeans tended to stay near the ocean because they didn’t have resistance to the diseases to be found inland. Same thing with a Depression era article about Tibet that noted that foreigners there without permission would be killed by the Dalai Lama’s soldiers. There are numerous articles in the yellow magazine where the reporters are the first white people to be seen there. It’s fun to “blame whitey” for all that is ill in the world, but sorry, it doesn’t explain why there was so little gray hair among people who had never… Read more »
And it was not tough to find that even the uncontacted tribes still continue to suffer from the exact issues I mentioned: “Remarkable new images have emerged of an uncontacted tribal community in the Brazilian Amazon which environmentalists fear could be destroyed by outside influences.” “Miners have brought diseases such as malaria and polluted Yanomami food and water sources with mercury, according to international NGO Survival.” “The tribe – one of three Yanomami groups in the area that are monitored remotely after shunning approaches from outsiders – were a source of concern after they went missing at a time of… Read more »
Outside journalists know the language of an uncontacted people group? Really?
Reality is that Apolinar Diaz de la Fuente described them….in 1759. Modern contact with them began around 1950 with New Tribes Missions, and the biggest source of male death is….intertribal warfare. Doesn’t have anything to do with those evil miners.
Got any more great examples you’d like shredded?
What are you even talking about? I didn’t say a word about “uncontacted people group”, my whole comment was about an uncontacted tribal community, the exact words the article used. The Moxihatetema were the uncontacted tribal community, Davi Kopenawa Yanomami is a Yanomami but he is not from the Moxihatetema. The Moxihatetema and other uncontacted Yanomami tribes have absolutely no political or relational connections to Davi’s organization and the other Yanomami, they’re only called the same “people group” name because of cultural similarities. In real terms they’re as “uncontacted” as any other tribe. I hope that clarifies your misreading now.… Read more »
Thank you for admitting what an avid reader of National Geographic like myself knows; isolated peoples in the jungle and savanna rarely live long enough to get gray hair. (by the way, National Geographic would count as a pretty good “source”, especially ones older than 30 years old) Now on the blame thing, you’re seriously blaming miners in the 20th century for the intertribal warfare these tribes have been doing (by their own admission in most cases) as far back as they can remember? You’re coming pretty close to claiming that the sin nature arrived with Columbus on the Santa… Read more »
One frustrating thing about this comments section is that I often get in conversations with people who appear to be arguing with an enemy they have created in their own mind, but who has nothing to do with me or my positions. Literally everything you say in that 2nd paragraph has nothing to do with anything I said. Let’s do a quick rundown of what I actually believe, because you have responded to almost none of it. 1) Processed foods have been shown to be detrimental to health. A great number of the chemicals that are placed on our foods… Read more »
Speaking of responses that have nothing to do with what they’re responding to….pot, meet kettle.
Let’s get down to brass tacks. My initial statement was that my reading of 1930s-1960s era National Geographics shows very little gray hair, indicating that a life with low pollution and natural foods does not necessarily make people live that long. You, in turn, tried to blame whitey, to which I pointed out that the biggest killer of their men was the wars they were having with other non-white peoples.
Sorry, bud, but I think I’m keeping on topic pretty well, and you are not.
No, I did not “try to blame whitey”, and your claim that I did proves that you’re still not arguing with me, but some imaginary person in your head.
I laid down what I believe very clearly in my previous comment. Either dispute one of THOSE points, or find someone who actually believes the stuff you want to argue about. I’m not going to defend things I don’t believe and haven’t said.
Yes, claiming it was all due to militarism and corporatism has nothing to do with blaming whitey….sorry, I lived in Boulder for a decade, I know the code.
You know, it strikes me that we have here a golden opportunity to do a little lab work right here on this thread.
I wonder how the name “Bike bubba” colored Jonathan’s impression of Bike bubba, how it informed his reactions, and to what extent he would consider that impression justified by the name?
Knowing Bike bubba and his background just a bit as I do, I think this could be very interesting, if Jonathan is willing to respond.
I believe some serious projection is going on, but why don’t you just check my first responses? Here was my first reply to Bubba in this thread: It’s not true, and hair color is a poor proxy for age (especially as stress levels vary by culture), but I’m most interested in where are you getting National Geographics from that depict tribal peoples who were unmolested from massive harassment by their national militaries and corporations at the time? There are very, very few examples of 20th-century tribal peoples who weren’t under serious abuse, and those that were in existence at all… Read more »
I do not see there that you are making assumptions, nor am I accusing you of doing so. I am asking if you are. My question was not based to any degree on an opinion about how you responded, but about the fact that “Bike bubba” is a moniker that just about anyone might make certain assumptions about. So I was wondering if you did, and if so, what they were. If you made no assumptions based on his moniker, fine. I absolutely and definitively never intended to suggest that you did, still less assumed what they might have been.… Read more »
And…we have the perfect admittance of what I am talking about. My words, apparently, are unimportant. Bike Bubba already knows what I’m talking about, I don’t need to actually express viewpoints, because he’s already assumed what I must be talking about for me.
If I’m talking about Brazilian miners in Brazil and about their national militaries and corporations in Africa, I must be talking about “Whitey”, because, um, Bubba used to live in Boulder.
I clearly said THEIR national militaries and corporations. That isn’t a “code” for whitey unless the “they” in question are white, is it?
I saw Jonathan’s reply to you below. I’d reply to him directly, but Disqus, in its infinite wisdom, is treating my replies to him as spam. Here’s a quote from National Geographic (sorry, you’ll have to google it — trying to keep this out of the spam filter) from Davi Kopenawa, the official spokeshaman for the Yanomami regarding, ahem, Brazilian miners (or, as I like to call them, undocumented resource extraction personnel): “An active gold strike is a mere 18 miles from the village, Kopenawa says. That encampment is supported by an airstrip, complicating efforts to dismantle it and expel… Read more »
“There is urgency, if I am to complete the building of the largest and most complex burial tomb in history, in my lifetime”.
I want to like this but I can’t like the contribution to the widespread life expectancy fallacy. So I’ll just register this protest and then continue on, liking it. :-)
Is this fallacy the notion that all our ancestors dropped dead at 29-1/2?
Life expectancy is strongly influenced by infant mortality. High infant mortality means low average life expectancy even though many lindividuals ived to an old age.
Yes, the idea that “life expectancy of 30” means “nobody lived past 30.” By definition, if any infants died, which surely many did, then quite a number of people lived past 30. I suspect in very primitive conditions, though, it’s not that common to live past 55 or so.
When I first started doing family history, I was startled by the number of my forebears who lived into their eighties. It seems as if the women (almost all living in English villages) survived childhood and eight or so pregnancies, they had a good chance of reaching old age. But I would have guessed childhood mortality to be running at 30% or so, and I expect it was higher in the cities.
Yeah, at least in the industrial age life expectancy tended to be worse in the cities, due to the more frequent taking of people on both ends of life.
It’s simply false. Chalk this up as yet another case of Pastor Wilson preaching from ignorance in science and history.
Or as a joke, not intended to be taken seroiusly.
You don’t think Doug jokes strategically? That he hasn’t put an incredible amount of effort into mocking anyone who suggests that more environmentally sound or less corporate means of food production might be better for all involved? It’s quite interesting that I made two comments on this post – one person defended Wilson by saying it was just a joke, the other by claiming his underlying point was true. If Pastor Wilson didn’t believe that jokes had power, he would conduct his online activity quite differently than he does. And if he didn’t believe the false truth to this joke,… Read more »
Even so, sometimes a joke is simply a joke. From the typeface, this looks like a New Yorker cartoon, and I don’t think they would automatically mock people who care about sustainable agriculture.
What false truth do you think Doug is preaching/supporting with this joke?
That modern means of altering our food don’t have a negative impact on our health.
There could have been at least three or four other meanings from the cartoon other than the one you settled on.
I think Dougs point has previously been that people who pay more for oganic food should not feel/act smugly superior. What he thinks about modern methods of altering food likely depends on which alterations and what modern means.
This argument has already been done to death in other threads. Pastor Wilson has not only mocked people who “feel/act smugly superior”, but everyone, even well-meaning Christians, who make similar choices in what they do and do not eat at all. He has said something to the effect that if all the Sodomites disappeared, the entire organic food industry would collapse, the Christians who had stupidly been eating such things would realize they were idiots, and this would be a good thing. He has also made the unsupported claim that if it wasn’t for agribusiness and industrial farming, half the… Read more »
“He has said something to the effect that if all the Sodomites disappeared, the entire organic food industry would collapse.” Where did he say that? “He has also made the unsupported claim that if it wasn’t for agribusiness and industrial farming, half the world would starve.” How much of the world gets its food from agribusiness and or industrial farming? “He has attacked anyone who is against overly processed foods on claimed Biblical grounds.” One may have a biblical reason why they themselves don’t eat overly processed foods, but I don’t know of biblical grounds to prohibit overly processed foods… Read more »
“Where did he say that?” If all the foodie people who were living in onoing sexual disobedience had a heart attack one day (because, as it happens, little known fact, tofu causes heart disease), the whole hipster food industry would collapse, and the “stewardship” Christians would find out that their stewardship movement had been subsidized the whole time by moralistic scam artists. And they would further discover that old fashioned stewardship, the kind the Bible talks about, would start looking sideways at the three dollar apples, now that they weren’t deemed cool any more. Because, as it turns out, the… Read more »
“the whole hipster food industry would collapse” Is it the case that Wilson thinks all organic food is hipster food? “You can’t argue necessity from a current trend.” Agreed, but what effect would eleminating agribusiness/industrial farming have on population centers removed from farmland? “That even suggesting to someone else that there might be a better way to get and make our food is unloving of our brothers and sisters in Christ, and that we’re better advised to keep our mouths shut.” I think the issue is not that Doug objects to any dissent twords our food overlords but that he’s… Read more »
Jonathan, let me start by saying I’m with you pretty much all the way here. Smaller farms are better for community life. Fresh fruit is better for you (and more delicious) than fried cornstarch with food colouring and msg. The world would be a better place if more people realised these things. I think some good conversations about changing farming practices to focus on smaller-scale, family-friendly operations would be beneficial. –“Oh, no, I certainly don’t think there are “Biblical” grounds for prohibiting overly processed foods. They’re just awful for your health, and to some degree bad for the environment. I… Read more »
Yeah, I’m with you there.
I personally rarely/never buy highly expensive “organic” foods. I buy locally sourced whenever possible, in season whenever possible, choose organic when prices are comparable. I was able to grow a few more things in my previous home but it’s not possible currently. I wish there were far more options available, but it is very difficult the way that agribusiness currently dominates the market and all the government subsidies and land/regulation advantages.
You raise a very important issue about not consciously encouraging people to obsess about what they eat. Currently eating disorder specialists are debating whether to include a new diagnosis called orthorexia, a new constellation of symptoms of dysfunctional attitudes towards food. They are seeing a lot of this, especially among younger people. The symptoms are described as: “obsessive focus on food choice, planning, purchase, preparation, and consumption; food regarded primarily as source of health rather than pleasure; distress or disgust when in proximity to prohibited foods; exaggerated faith that inclusion or elimination of particular kinds of food can prevent or… Read more »
Jonathan, do you think there is only one way to be in bondage to sexual sin?
no
Then your paraphrase of Wilson is inaccurate to the point of misrepresentation.
I said it was “something like” that, then I found it and got the exact quote. I think the basic point was unchanged, if you don’t, whatever.
You spend a great deal of time replying to my comments on this site, and invariably you seem to focus on the “way” I am discussing the issue rather than adding anything to the discussion of the issue. Of that’d just your character, so be it.. but it doesn’t exactly appear to be something you do with an even hand.
Or, it could be, that not altering our food by modern means is not a panacea.
That requires far less extrapolation from the content of the cartoon and is a far more charitable reading, as it is not imputing a rather stupid idea that Doug has never actually expressed.
Oh, not altering our food by modern means is certainly not a panacea.
Of course, it would be ridiculous to think that Pastor Wilson spends his time and energy countering claims that literally none of his readers or congregants have ever, ever made or even considered making, now wouldn’t it?
As I mentioned to Christopher, we’ve beaten around this bush in detail on other threads already. Pastor Wilson’s voice against even advocating for non-industrial or non-processed food, for any reasons at all, has been consistent for a year at least.
Posting a cartoon making fun of an obviously silly idea is not spending his time and energy countering a claim, so your argument goes nowhere.
Is Wilson the only person who’s not allowed to post cartoons making fun of obviously silly ideas?