Religious People Say They Don’t Watch Porn. Internet Data Says Otherwise. Researchers asked them how they felt about that discrepancy. 07/06/2016 [...] “It would not be surprising for religious individuals to deny or underreport viewing of sexual content, given that this violates their core values,” MacInnis said. Moreover, “psychoanalytic theories suggest that those advocating against a particular behavior are at some level drawn to that behavior.” [...] The researchers also asked participants what traits they believe are linked with pornography use. This time, 252 people participated in the survey. The more religious participants said moral values, race and financial status were more related to pornography use than religiosity. They also expressed more negative beliefs about viewing sexual content online, calling it more problematic than racism and gun violence, MacInnis said. Although a smaller percentage of religious individuals overall said they viewed sexual content online, a subset of them did report doing so. The more religious of these respondents said they felt more negative about this behavior. This finding may be relevant to therapists, MacInnis said. “Therapists and clinicians might be mindful that highly religious individuals may be much more concerned or anxious about about themselves or others viewing sexual content than less religious individuals.” http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/research-porn-religion-study_us_577d1bc6e4b09b4c43c1bfbe [with comments
A new war is on in the Middle East, but the battleground this time is in the fields of archaeology and history. And at the center of the fray is the Bible’s credibility as an accurate history of the region.
In reviewing three books on this subject, it is important to note that none of the authors considers himself to be deeply religious with a belief that has to be protected. William Dever nonetheless approaches archaeology with a missionary zeal. He has given deep thought to the philosophical underpinnings of the subject. Israel Finkelstein is a leading Israeli archaeologist whom Dever would classify as a revisionist or minimalist because he contends that the Bible is a late invention of Hellenistic Jews. David Rohl, on the other hand, is clearly a maximalist—one who believes that archaeology can largely support the historical record of the Bible.
Archaeology and the Bible
In many Western nations the Bible has provided the foundation for society and civility. But its historical accuracy and its value as a source of truth are increasingly coming under fire. Fanning most of the critical flames are minimalists and revisionists.
Enter William G. Dever, author of What Did the Biblical Writers Know and When Did They Know It? Dever acknowledges having been grounded in the Bible as a child: his father was a fundamentalist preacher. Though the younger Dever does not share that fundamentalism, he does admit that some of his father’s approach rubbed off on him: “I can still hear the cadence of his booming voice as he read Scripture from the pulpit; and I suspect that some of my own homiletical style in the classroom and in popular lectures comes from him.”
As a young adult, Dever resisted delving into a critical study of the Bible, primarily because he felt his faith was on the line. Eventually, though, his love of learning prompted him to enroll at Harvard to pursue a doctorate in biblical theology. Upon graduating he spent 11 years in Israel directing various research institutions. He became absorbed in the archaeology of the biblical world and rose to head the Albright School, a respected archaeological institution. He explains, “I began to see how the realia of archaeology could illuminate ancient Israel. And I caught a vision of a dialogue between archaeology and biblical studies.”
Why did he write this book? “Because I had to,” he says, “not only to counter the ‘revisionists’ abuse of archaeology, but to show how modern archaeology brilliantly illuminates a real ‘Israel’ in the Iron Age [which began in the Middle East about 1200 BCE], and also to help foster the dialogue between archaeology and biblical studies that I had always envisioned.”
The first half of the book is devoted to a history of archaeology, the changes it has undergone, as well as the challenges it faces today. Dever compares the challenges of biblical archaeology in Syro-Palestine, or the Southern Levant, to those of Old Testament biblical studies. Both disciplines have lost credibility in nonfundamentalist academia. They have been replaced by literary studies of the Old Testament and by minimalist histories that do a disservice to archaeology and the Bible record alike.
Dever believes that both archaeology and the Bible record have a contribution to make. But, he contends, the archaeological record and the text of the Old Testament need to be subjected to the same interpretive standards so that they can speak to one another. To that end, he sets out to disprove the revisionist view of the history of Israel by using text and artifact together on an equal footing.
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