board77

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn1 ... umers.html

What's interesting in the report is that no matter how you cut it Utah ends up having the highest concentration of internet porn useage in the United States, whether it be total amount per thousand people, total amount per thousand home internet users, total amount per thousand home broadband users, or total difference in subscribers per thousand home broadband users relative to subscription rates predicted based on
demographics.

In each case Utah is the state with the biggest internet porn users and as the article mentioned; eight of the top 10 pornography consuming states gave their electoral votes to John McCain in last year's presidential election – Florida and Hawaii were the exceptions. While six out of the lowest 10 states favoured Barack Obama.

From the New Scientist article:

Quote:

Church-goers bought less online porn on Sundays – a 1% increase in a postal code's religious attendance was associated with a 0.1% drop in subscriptions that day. However, expenditures on other days of the week brought them in line with the rest of the country, Edelman finds.

Residents of 27 states that passed laws banning gay marriages boasted 11% more porn subscribers than states that don't explicitly restrict gay marriage.

To get a better handle on other associations between social attitudes and pornography consumption, Edelman melded his data with a previous study on public attitudes toward religion.

States where a majority of residents agreed with the statement "I have old-fashioned values about family and marriage," bought 3.6 more subscriptions per thousand people than states where a majority disagreed. A similar difference emerged for the statement "AIDS might be God's punishment for immoral sexual behaviour."

"One natural hypothesis is something like repression: if you're told you can't have this, then you want it more," Edelman says.

I am privately amused that churchgoers significantly dip their porn consumption on a Sunday before going right back to it the rest of the week, underlining some of the hypocrisy of social conservatives. Now to be fair, the total amount of porn consumption between the highest consuming states and the lowest consuming states is not great, and the general spread is pretty even, but it does reveal the vast number of hypocrites out there who are more than ready to ban marriage and sexual activity for other folks while privately indulging in all kinds of sins of the flesh that they rail against in public. Especially the champions of 'family values'. Not for the first time that this discrepancy has appeared between social conservative rhetoric and actual reality.

It also reminds me of how Holland, the most liberal country in Europe, had as of two ot three years ago (haven't checked it since then) the lowest rates of teenage pregnancy, STD's and sexual attacks in Europe. Whereas Poland, a very conservative, reactionary catholic nation at the time had amongst the worst in all three areas. A counterintuitive set of facts you might think until you consider that the same phenomenon has consistently appeared in the US with the bible belt versus the rest of the country.

Talking about Holland and Utah reminded me of the first time I went to Amsterdam and shared a train carriage with a bunch of Mormons. They assured me that they were in Amsterdam on "research... to see what the modern Sodom and Gommarah looked like". Based on the research above it might be more likely that they were there to try to turn their internet fueled fantasies into reality.

Well; on that subject:
Societies that have God on their side are worse off

Suppressed and obsessed.

Very interesting. Not surprising, but interesting.

No, not suprising at all.

Nope. Doesn't suprise me.

Another suspicion confirmed.

Well, given that it's often the things that we see (and fear/dislike/can't accept) in ourselves that we most loudly condemn in others, this is utterly unsurprising.

Also, I'm always amused when "sexual moralist" conservatives show up at our (liberal, sinful, San Francisco values) type events, putatively to "learn more about sin." Some of the most detailed, observant NSFW descriptions I've read of San Francisco Pride, the Folsom Street Fair, etc. have come from the Concerned Women for America* or similar sites. Sounds like your Mormons are of the same ilk, demo.

*Side note: many of the CWFA writers are men, which suggests that they are either struggling with their own gender identities or haven't yet comprehended the commonly accepted difference between "men" and "women".

Quote:

haven't yet comprehended the commonly accepted difference between "men" and "women".

Ah, so that's why they're checking porn sites! I knew there had to be a simple explanation.

Well, for the bulk of the population it's a question of pulling down your pants and copping a feel...

But they'd go to hell for doing that.

I knew it.



This also explains Ann Coulter.

Just poping in here to say that I am mormon and live in Utah at the moment.
I dunno,... I'm trying hard not to feel kinda hurt reading these posts, but generalizations about races, politics, and religion (to name a few) tend to do that to people. I'm not looking for responses or anything, but just felt like I needed to say that.

I have only ever judged you for being a Twilight fan.

Look how long that lasted.
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*goes back to sparkling*




*E*

*snerk*:P

Dave_LF's article wrote:

RELIGIOUS belief can cause damage to a society, contributing towards high murder rates, abortion, sexual promiscuity and suicide, according to research published today.

According to the study, belief in and worship of God are not only unnecessary for a healthy society but may actually contribute to social problems.

That is only one part of the picture. I deal with people in need every week with my volunteer job on a crisis line. (The crisis line is not religion based, by the way.) And I am grateful for all the resources available from the Salvation Army, Catholic Social Services, Episcopal Services, Lutheran Services, Jewish Family Services, various Baptist Churches, and a host of other religious groups.

You can say a lot of negative things about religious groups, including the fact that they are full of imperfect people, but some of them are very good at rallying their people to help others in need. Granted there are government organizations for disaster relief, unemployment, food stamps and welfare, and there are non-religious groups for seniors and people with various disabilities and diseases. (Though these tend to be populated by the people who have a vested interest in their particular cause.) But for the pariahs of society who fall through the cracks, due to chronic mental illness, drug abuse, bad relationships or bad choices, you will find that the preponderance of help for them comes from organized religions.

We can thank them for non-profit hospitals that serve the uninsured, homeless shelters and transitional housing, drug rehab centers, soup kitchens, and clothing distribution in this country (USA), as well as basic support like medical services, school construction, and clean water sourcing in other countries.

I could be flippant and say that I don't know of any humanitarian efforts specifically by groups of atheists, but that misses the point. The point is that it takes a powerful motivator to get a group of people together to help other people. The morality of helping - saying that you should help the less fortunate because it is the right thing to do - is something that religious groups seem to do better than other social groups.

Laureanna, in a society which is very secularized like the more or less atheist societies in Western Europe, this goes generally along with a working social system where you need less private groups to help people because less people fall through the social network.

I prefer that. I prefer a working social system where you'll get help without any special ideology.

So, no there are no atheist help groups, but atheist societies tend to hold the entire society rather than the individual for responsible and thus invest at the base more in the social system. Within a society with is in its religious (like is imho the US) religious groups are necessary and have a purpose, even a good one, like church had for centuries the role of perpetuating culture and knowledge. Only, in a seculare society, anybody an perpetuate culture and scripture and again, I prefer that.

Don, I'm sorry if you feel hurt. I am rather anti-religious and think that religion is per se a danger, so I must say I am glad to find evidence which confirms my view of the world and I think this is a very human relfexe - like I am glad to read that not all divorce children end up with screwed lives, because it confirms me in my life choices.

Donernilwen wrote:

Just poping in here to say that I am mormon and live in Utah at the moment.
I dunno,... I'm trying hard not to feel kinda hurt reading these posts, but generalizations about races, politics, and religion (to name a few) tend to do that to people. I'm not looking for responses or anything, but just felt like I needed to say that.

I can understand that and am also slightly annoyed at some of the responses here. Wow. What a big surprise. People do wrong things. People sin, regardless of whether they're Christians or not. People are hypocrites. The spirit is willing but the flesh is weak and all of that jazz. Yep. Should they feel ashamed of their hypocrisy? Sure. I'll bet some of them even do--if they even think pornography is wrong.

I'm sure Jesus will be shocked to discover all of this.

If this poll is even to be trusted or believed. So there's a slightly elevated (a fact that is reiterated time and again in the article) level of porn consumers in "conservative" states? Um, okay. Was it a direct comparison of political affiliation to porn consumption? Or religious affiliation to porn consumption? No:

Quote:

To get a better handle on other associations between social attitudes and pornography consumption, Edelman melded his data with a previous study on public attitudes toward religion.

That could mean all kinds of things. Why not say, "Well, all of the Democrats who exist in that state are obviously the ones buying the porn." I mean, even if a state is mostly conservative, it's not entirely conservative. So is it the Republicans or the Democrats buying the porn?

How about Democratic Christians vs. Republican Christians? Atheists vs. Christians? Perhaps the numbers are coming from all of the atheists or non-Christians in a given state. ??

I'm not buying any of it. You can warp statistics to say whatever you want them to say to promote your agenda. That goes for anyone of any agenda.

I never really got the anti-religion thing, just because all humans are capable of amazing deeds as well as fucking up terribly. It is how we are programed.




*E*

There aren't atheist charities simply because atheists aren't a group. There are certainly Humanist charities and not-for-profits, which I could look up and list later if anyone wants me to.

I am suspicious of this particular study for a variety of reasons, but a correlation between degree of religiousness and various social ills has been pretty well demonstrated.