Your link for the day.
A study says that 95% of Americans have had sex before they were married. And people think that it's normal.
I'm not even gonna get into a discussion or a diatribe about this study. The only comment I will make is that this shows why Western civilization is going down the toilet, and why the 2nd Coming is right around the corner. If the most sacred thing a person can share with someone else is cheapened to the point of normalcy by its casual flaunting and misuse, we are doomed.
Repeat after me..."moral degredation".
Wednesday, December 20, 2006
Again, I can hear the masses saying..."duh".
Posted by Daishi at 9:50 AM
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
12 comments:
A point of clarification: that wasn't a government study, and I'm not sure it's wise to base an appraisal of the status of our society on statistics.
Edited, thank you.
I disagree. I think this is a very good indicator of what is important to people and the lack of morals prevalent in our society.
On what basis are you determining that this study is a "very good indicator" of anything? How many people were surveyed for this study? Who were the people they interviewed? It wasn't everyone. Do the responses received represent your views? If not, why do you believe they are representative of the views of everyone else?
If I ask 10 people who have never had premarital sex whether they've had premarital sex, the result should be 0% responding in the negative. If I ask 10 people who had premarital sex if they've had premarital sex, the answer should be 100% in the affirmative. Which group of answers is representative of anyone beyond the original polling group?
Is it the rate of premarital intercourse that defines the state of our society? Can it also be masturbation and pornography? What about fetishes? How about drug use? Traffic violations and a disrespect for the law? Deceit? Laziness? Sloth? Wrath? Greed? Gluttony? Envy? Hard-heartedness? Tribalism? Nationalism? Pride?
I'm not arguing our society isn't in bad shape. I just don't know how valid that study is, so I don't know to what extent I should be damning everyone to hell. It's one thing to believe something that's correct for the right reasons. It's another to use incorrect or misleading evidence to support a true proposition.
For example, I believe it's true that the earth is round. The reason I believe it's round is because I think God took it in His hands and rolled it up into a ball, like you would with playdough. Is the basis of my belief incorrect? Yes. Is the belief itself (that the earth is round) correct? Yes.
So, in this case, it may very well be that 95% of American adults have had premarital sex. But until I know whether the study making that claim was performed correctly, on what am I basing this belief?
Statistics - especially those based on human responses, rather than purely numerical data - have a tendency to fluctuate and vary over time and from subject to subject, study to study. Remember when Dewey beat Truman in the 1948 presidential election? You don't? That's because he didn't. But exit polls indicated he did, and that's what the papers originally reported.
My point is we don't know whether those numbers are true or false. That is, we don't know if in actuality 95% of the population has had premarital sex. Surveys and statistics use extrapolation to mathematically compensate for the logistical nightmare that would be polling every last person their study aims to quantify. The trouble with humans is we're less consistently predictable, thanks to our agency, than the subject matter of most scientific studies. The numbers could very well be true, despite that, but I just don't know how to know that. Hence the reason I think it unwise to run with it until I do.
"The study, examining how sexual behavior before marriage has changed over time, was based on interviews conducted with more than 38,000 people -- about 33,000 of them women -- in 1982, 1988, 1995 and 2002 for the federal National Survey of Family Growth. According to Finer's analysis, 99 percent of the respondents had had sex by age 44, and 95 percent had done so before marriage."
I think this is a fairly extensive polling sample. I also think that if 99% of the people say they had sex before they were married, that that is indicative of what a large percentage of the population has done/is doing.
It is possible that the data is skewed, but maybe it isn't.
Personally, I think this study shows that sex is not special or sacred to most people, and because it isn't, few things are. Thus, the moral degredation of society.
Of course, sex can be special to someone, and they can still lie, cheat, plagiarize, kill, pilfer, extort and do any other terrible things. I merely find this study to be a good indicator of the direction our society is sliding.
"According to Finer's analysis"
Very key phrase there. What is this analysis on which the conclusion is based? Note that they didn't say "99 percent of respondents had had sex by age 44, and 95 percent had done so before marriage" but instead said "According to Finer's analysis, 99 percent of respondents had had sex by age 44, and 95 percent had done so before marriage." This means that someone (Finer) looked over the raw data, interpreted it, and extrapolated conclusions from it.
There are two problems here. The first is that, without knowing any of the details pertaining to the respondents of the survey, we are accepting these published conclusions blindly. This implies we also accept, in ignorance, the analysis of raw data provided by someone we neither know nor know anything about. The second (and more alarming) problem is we then extrapolate and use this certitude to condemn the rest of society.
Yes, 38,000 can be a relatively big number. Let's assume that Finer's analysis is correct - that 99% of 38,000 people had sex before the age of 44, and of those, 95% did so before marriage. That means 36,100 people had sex before they were married. The number who had sex prior to the age of 44 is irrelevant to this discussion because it’s likely most people marry before the age of 44. We still don't know how old the respondents were. If all respondents were under the age of 88 and were married that would increase the odds of a high percentage claiming to have had sex before the age of 44. The closer the average age comes to 44 the greater the percentage that will report having had sex before the age of 44.
As for the question of whether 99 percent of Americans have had sex before marriage, if true it would mean that only .01 out of every 10 people we know has abstained; in other words, we don't know anyone who hasn't at least partially had sex before marriage (if such a thing were possible). Do you believe that? Okay, let's expand the pool. Only 1 out of every 100 people you know has abstained from sex before marriage. Do you believe that? When you go to church and you look around you, do you wonder who the other 2 people are who haven't had sex before marriage? Assuming one is your wife, that means there's only one other person in the congregation that has avoided that mistake. Okay, let's not include the children in the ward. Just the adults. That leaves how many fewer people? And only .01 percent of them avoided premarital sex? That probably rules you (or at least part of you) out. Let's expand it to a stake - 2000 people. Only 20 people in your stake waited.
But wait, we might say - it's different when polling members of the LDS church. Why is that? Are we saying that the results of a survey are highly dependent upon the type of people polled? If that's true, how do we know that the people polled in this survey weren't members of the LDS church? How do we know they weren't a bunch of students just returned from Spring Break in south Florida? Upon what basis are we to believe that members of the LDS church are less likely to engage in premarital sex than, say, Southern Baptists? If 100% of these respondents weren’t representative of 100% of the members of the LDS church, why would they be 100% representative of any other demographic? Given the limited data presented in this short news report, we know next to nothing except someone we don't know looked at a survey of 38,000 people we probably don’t know, and reached certain conclusions about us, collectively.
If I were to infer anything, based upon your reaction to the report, I would say you were already of the belief that society was backsliding and, upon seeing data that would support this belief, you readily grasped it. That's only natural; people do it all the time. I frequently catch myself feeling despair for things I see in society. The only reason I've bothered to say anything on this subject is that the level of contempt and condemnation you leveled at everyone (or at least ninety-nine percent of everyone) was worrisome, given the basis of your hostility is something we don't have all the facts about. This is why I said it was perhaps unwise to run with it.
Imagine God saying this on judgment day: "Sorry but, according to a survey, most people are wicked, so I'm condemning 99% of you to Hell, regardless of how you’ve lived your lives"? Wouldn't you at least want to know that He actually knew everything there was to know about you, and that your condemnation was based on something more than an extrapolated number? Would you want God to select some random person to be representative of how you lived your life?
I’m loath to quote this, but it’s apt:
"Judge not, that ye be not judged. For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again."
I’m asking you to take some of this passion and judgment and direct it inward, where it will do the most good, rather than condemning the rest of us for our imperfections, real or imagined. Sex isn’t the only thing that’s sacred. Virtue is sacred, and that list of weaknesses and foibles I came up with are all acts in defiance of virtue; any one can be taken as evidence that people who commit them don’t find much sacred anymore. But that’s not the point – their agency and their freedom to choose is also sacred, and their relationship to God is sacred, and I have no business judging or condemning the state of such things.
One last thought, and then I’ll stop flogging this poor dead horse. The article doesn’t say, but I wonder what percentage of respondents to that survey have repented of the mistakes they’ve made, and are trying to do better?
Rather than get pulled into a protracted discussion/argument, I will ask only if immoral promiscuity is more prevalent in society? If so, that is the point of my post. I have not condemned anyone, merely made the observation that moral 'loseness' is one of the reasons for society's decline.
If, also, only 2 people out of a congregation of 200 are able to claim pre-marital purity, then that further proves my claim that very few are exempt. And thus, I am saddened more by that than condemnatory.
Besides, you and I know that I have made horrible decisions as far as these things are concerned. I know better than to judge, but I am certainly allowed to make a comment lamenting the decline of moral standars prevalent in today's society.
I condemn no one, as I have made these sorts of mistakes myself.
There's nothing wrong with a protracted discussion if it produces a good outcome.
I think most, if not all, of the people who read your blog feel that our society is in sad shape. Whether it helps you to know I wasn't arguing that point, please know that I also worry and am saddened by much of what I see.
My argument was solely in regards to using evidence of an uncertain nature to support an argument; no matter how correct the conclusion may be, the premises upon which it is based must be factual. I don't know if only 2 people in a congregation can claim to have abstained from sex prior to marriage - but neither do you, nor does anyone else. That was my point. That you extrapolated such a generalization from a source which you couldn't test or check for its truthfulness or validity was the source of my alarm and concern. Not your conclusion that we're in sad shape.
I suppose I think that the study merely confirms what I already feel to be true. Granted, I can't confirm the study's results for myself, but it feels like it is accurate enough.
I think that if I asked people that I know the same question, and if they would answer honestly, the percentage would approach what the 'study' claims.
I concede that the study is unscientific, but I feel that a large majority of people have been sexually immoral in one way or another, be they in the Church or out of it. This 'study' merely confims, to me, what I already feel to be true.
Of course, there are always exceptions, and perhaps a large percentage of LDS members have not sullied themselves. But I doubt it. I feel like it is an all-pervasive sin. People can repent, but it won't change the past or the poor decisions they may have made, thus contributing to the evidence available for this 'study'.
Again, that's how I feel.
My entire point was that this study confirms to me, albeit unscientifically, that a very large amjority of people are sexually permissive, and that sex is not as sacred as it should be, or seen as a responsibility. The irony is that the evidence is all around us: people sleeping with anyone they want, moving in with each other, rampant pornography addiction, obsession with sex, etc.
All of these point to a lessening of respect for sex and its attendant responsibilities. Whether or not the 'study' is scientific is irrelevant. The facts/evidences are available for any sort of observation and analysis.
Again, this 'study' merely confirms what I feel/know to be true, due to the evidences all around me, and even in my own extremely poor choices, of which you are aware of.
Whether or not the study is accurate is entirely relevant - you're using it as evidence to support an argument. The study and the nature of our society are two wholly separable entities; the one is not contingent upon the other. If a lascivious lifestyle is rampant in our society, that is a fact. If someone comes along and quantifies the percentage of the population engaging in that lifestyle in a study, but their calculations are incorrect, then it cannot make claim to being representative of reality. The fact that society is lascivious remains as a fact, independent of the validity of the study. Optimistically, the study was an attempt at measuring the attitude toward sex in our society. However, it suffers from several fundamental flaws. Again, however, this doesn't mean that 99% of all Americans haven't had premarital sex - it simply means the study fails to prove or confirm this.
What I'm picking on is the word "confirm" - something can only confirm something else if it's factual. Since we can't know the study is factual, it can't confirm anything. All people, of all backgrounds, have a tendency to take anything that supports their existing notions and beliefs as confirmation of those notions and beliefs. We tend to gloss over or ignore potential weaknesses, flaws, and unknowns if it will help us feel more secure in the ideas we hold to (see George W. Bush, supporters of). It takes a lot of effort to catch ourselves doing this. Sometimes the new bits of evidence stand up to the scrutiny. Sometimes they don't. But they always need to be scrutinized. The alternative is the propagation and continuation of ideas that have never undergone any sort of rigorous examination, and may ultimately be false.
We all engage in a bit of extrapolation - we project our experiences, beliefs, habits, and practices onto the world to make sense of it; I feel that being mocked is uncomfortable, and I extrapolate that all people feel this way. I feel secure in the belief that everyone feels the way I do about this topic. But I could be wrong. Nevertheless, it allows me to operate around others in such a way that I don't spend large chunks of my time trying to figure out how I should behave around them; I think being mocked is unpleasant, and so I reflexively avoid mocking anyone I meet. It's efficient. That's why we generalize. The trick is in knowing when our generalizations reach their logical limits and must be discarded.
Returning to an earlier analogy I presented, I believe it's true that the earth is a sphere. There are many reasons to believe this. Now suppose someone comes along with a study that claims the reason the earth is round is because God rolled it up in His hands to make it that way. Could I claim that confirms my belief that the earth is round? No, and the fact that the earth is round is independent of the conclusions of this study. As nice as it would be to have yet another piece of evidence supporting my idea, it's not true, so it doesn't support my idea. It doesn't invalidate it, either. Let's change that a bit - suppose that it is true. How could I know? Aside from prayer, and an epiphany to boot, I couldn't.
You've said that you believe the study represents society accurately, and that there are many evidences to support it. But what are these evidences, and what is the basis? There's a lot of filth and garbage on the TV, in the movies, and on the Internet. We read stories in the news about terrible acts being committed by people. Those are all evidences that there's evil in society. But what evidence is there that this small percentage of the population is representative of the majority of the population? Everywhere I've lived, and I've lived in quite a few places, I encounter people lamenting, just as you are, the decadence and crud that permeates the airwaves. That's a lot of people, in many places, with various backgrounds. And yet - I've only met a small percentage of the population - a microscopic percentage. I can either extrapolate that the microscopic percentage of people I know are representative of everyone, or I can extrapolate that the microscopic percentage of people making the news, in entertainment, etc., are representative of everyone. Or, I can assume a little of each and take every person I meet as agents unto themselves, free to make choices that will fall somewhere along the sliding scale between decadence and virtue, and not project the sins of others onto them.
I've made some terrible mistakes in my life too, Jordan, and I know the despair and hopelessness that comes from it - especially when I remember how extremely difficult it was for me to face up to the nature of my choices and get my act together. When you remember how difficult it was for yourself, you struggle to have hope for others. This is a fundamental lack of confidence in other people, and in their ability to do right. I'm extremely guilty of this failing - I've never known a greater cynic than myself. But there must be hope, or there can be no change or improvement.
I suppose that I have very little hope or confidence in humanity's desire to choose anything other than carnal and self-gratifying pleasures.
I also said that the 'scientific' accuracy of the study was in question, NOT its relevance. Something can be accurate, yet not be done scientifically.
Why can't 'circumstantial evidence' be applied to this study? Why do we have to know the profiles of the respondents in the study in order for it to be relevant? Isn't it enough to know that 95% of the 38,000 people queried said that they had had pre-marital relations? Surely this represents a sizeable fraction of the respondants. Is it also possible, possible, that this also can represent a correspondingly large fraction of the general populace?
I realize that the nature of our society and a non-scientific 'study' are contingent only in one way. But, is that not proof in and of itself, that the study points to the state of our populace?
To use your metaphor, if someone claims the Earth is round because God rolled it up in his hands, and cannot provide proof, I question their assertion, and even their sanity.
In the study's assertion that 95% of people said they had had sex before they were married, is that not proof enough? Why is the data invalid, even allowing for religious reasons for abstaining?
I have only made a statement of feeling/opinion that this 'study' points to a moral decline in society, and to a further loosening of the moral fiber of society. I agree that 38k people doesn't represent the entire world population, only that the study points to a dregarding/decaying situation in which a whole LOT of people are sexually...'loose'.
If the study asserted that 95% of Americans had a third eye, how can that be proof? An assertion is not proof. That was the point of my analogy - it doesn't matter what is asserted by anyone; it only matters if it's true. As yet you have provided no evidence supporting the argument that Finer's analysis of this study is true. I assume this is because no such evidence was provided to you; CNN merely alerted us to the existence of the study. As for circumstantial evidence, do you understand what that is? If we go off of circumstantial evidence, the survey is laughable on its face because my experience (circumstantial) has led me to believe that more than 1 out of every 10 people I know has abstained from sex prior to marriage.
Why would my neighbor claiming to have had sex before marriage be proof that I had sex before marriage? If you can't apply it to yourself, or even to many of the people you know, why do you feel so certain you can apply it to 6 billion other people? The study's assertion is that of the 38,000 people they polled, 99% claimed to have had sex before marriage. That's fine. That's also only 38,000 people out of 300 million - a very tiny fraction (that's roughly .000127 of one percent). Yes, now you're saying that you're not applying it to everyone else in the world, but you can't simultaneously say that the survey is representative of the state of the population at large and therefore evidence and yet say that you're not extrapolating the findings to be representative of the population at large. Either the survey is accurate, or it's false. It can't be both, or neither, or a combination of the two.
A study cannot be proof if it is inaccurate, or if we cannot analyze how it arrived at its conclusions. If it is inaccurate, how can it be relevant? Assuming Finer's analysis is correct, you know that there are 37,620 people who had premarital sex. That's it. Yes, that's a lot of people, but taking our population at large, that leaves another 299,962,000 who did not answer to the survey, and therefore we do not know what their answer would be. To say that the 38,000 are representative of the other 299,962,000 is not only unfair, but highly suspect. You do not know what criteria were used in the selection of respondents, where they are from, what their backgrounds are, what questions they were asked or how they were asked, etc..
We keep going in circles - I tell you that I'm not disagreeing that a sizable percentage of our population is promiscuous, only that I find the survey suspect, to which you reply that you are certain a sizable percentage of our population is promiscuous, and because the survey makes a claim of that sort, you believe it to be true, to which I reply I'm in agreement that a sizable percentage of the population is promiscuous, but the survey doesn't prove that, to which you reply that despite what I say, you are certain a sizable percentage of our population is promiscuous, etc., ad infinitum. The only evidence you've provided to support the validity of the analysis of the survey is that it confirms your admittedly negative view of humanity. What am I missing?
If you're saying that the fact that someone could conduct a survey and receive so many positive responses to a question of whether the respondents had engaged in premarital sex is indicative of sexual promiscuity existing in our society, then we're in agreement. But we were in agreement long before this survey came along and attempted to speak for more people than it had authority to do so. You've said that you didn't speak by way of contempt or condemnation, but I can assure you that I wasn't the only person who misunderstood it that way. I'm glad to know you weren't trying to condemn anyone, and I apologize for misunderstanding.
Ben has been changed to...anonymous?
Like I said, I hadn't wanted to get into a protracted discussion about this, as I thought it might turn into a circular argument.
I don't know what I am missing, or what you may be missing...I've tried to explain my reasons for finding validity in the study, but you then present evidence as to why it is invalid. So, I'm not sure what to do.
"If you're saying that the fact that someone could conduct a survey and receive so many positive responses to a question of whether the respondents had engaged in premarital sex is indicative of sexual promiscuity existing in our society, then we're in agreement."
OK, then we are in agreement. Isn't that what I was saying all along?
Or is it that I used the study to make an opinion that a large percentage of people are immoral, by extension? Why can't I not make that opinion, based on that study?
Post a Comment