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From: crm@duke.UUCP (Charlie Martin)
Newsgroups: net.books
Subject: Porn and the evidence -- short, really!
Message-ID: <5286@duke.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 18-Jan-85 15:02:07 EST
Article-I.D.: duke.5286
Posted: Fri Jan 18 15:02:07 1985
Date-Received: Mon, 21-Jan-85 02:31:45 EST
Organization: Duke University
Lines: 37

Well, after THIS I won't post any more...

The reason that many of us on the net have reponded the way we do --
pooh-poohing anything which has Christian in the title -- is because the
people who write books supporting the "Christian" viewpoint seem to very
very often resort to sophistry to support what the evidence doesn not.

The methodological complaints against the "President's Commission"
report are no stronger than the ones against the reports you site (you
meaning Paul specifically, this time).  The utterly simple and
methodologically very strong gedankenexperiment I alluded to in my
previous posting contradicts these studies and supports the "President's
Commission" study, therefore I believe that the PC study is better.

Until you can come up with a better argument than "it causes deviant
behavior", you won't sell me.  Especially since your causal argument is
so weak.

Footnote:  the experiment I mean is this:  the hypothesis is made that
the availablity of sexual material in the US has caused the increase in
the rape rate.  This implies that other countries with easily-available
sexual material will also have a high rape rate.  When we examine other
countries with lots of available sexual material, we find that they do
not necessarily have high rape rates (these figures can be looked up.)
Also, when we examine countries which have severe restrictions on sexual
material, we should see low rape rates.  This doesn't hold either.

The hypothesis is not predictive, and should therefore be considered
false.

Any further argument should go to net.philosophy -- I don't read
net.philosophy.
-- 
		Opinions stated here are my own and are unrelated.

				Charlie Martin
				(...mcnc!duke!crm)