God is a pedophile

[Adge]

I, a Christian with ecumenical apocryphal readings variety, believe that pedophilia is not wrong. By Biblical standards, Jesus mother (Mary Immaculate) (PBUH) was only 12, betrothed at 9 and Joseph was in his 60s according to some Catholic encyclopedias and modern interpretations of rabbinic law. If you say pedophilia is wrong, you disrespect not only Joseph or Mary, but GOD himself. Read the Protoevangelium of James.

As for Matthew 18:6, that verse was addressing newcomers to the faith. Read Numbers 31:17-18, Exodus 21:7-11 and Numbers 31:35-40. Also read Leviticus 20:10-21.

10: Don’t lie with another man’s wife.
11: Don’t lie with your father’s wife.
12: Don’t lie with your daughter-in-law.
13: Don’t lie with another man.
14: Don’t take a wife and her mother.
15: Don’t lie with a beast.
16: Don’t let another woman lie with a beast.
17: Don’t lie with your sister.
18: Don’t lie with a woman while she’s menstruating.
19: Don’t uncover the nakedness of your mother’s sister or your father’s sister.
20: Don’t lie with your uncle’s wife.
21: Don’t lie with your brother’s wife.

Pedophilia is mentioned NOWHERE.

According to the Catholic Encyclopedia:

“Joseph married a woman called Melcha or Escha by some, Salome by others; they lived forty-nine years together and had six children, two daughters and four sons, the youngest of whom was James (the Less, the “Lord’s brother”).

A year after his wife’s death, as the priests announced through Judea that they wished to find in the tribe of Juda a respectable man to espouse Mary, then twelve to fourteen years of age, Joseph, who was at the time ninety years old.”

That article on Catholic Encyclopedia obtains it’s information from early Christian writings including Apocryphal writings.

http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/08504a.htm

[Adge]

Mary was 14 when she had Jesus, 12 when she was married/betrothed by Joseph (then in his 90s).

[Not Forever]

Technically, I don't think that counts as pedophilia anyway, in the sense that the ages mentioned are more or less within puberty.

[John_Doe]

Technically, I don't think that counts as pedophilia anyway, in the sense that the ages mentioned are more or less within puberty.

I was going to thank the opening poster and then say something along these lines. I think the opening post might be a better argument for 'hebephilia' than true pedophilia (at least if we're talking about a preference for prepubescent children) which I believe is in some sense factually 'deviant' or maladaptive from an evolutionary point of view (which is not to say bad, unnatural or unhealthy-three different things). I'm not a Christian so this isn't the argument that I would make, but I don't really understand why God would design humans to be sexual at such a young age if he opposed their being sexual on principle (as opposed to just sexual outside of marriage). With sickness and death you could refer to the fall of man or cite it as a consequence of man's sin but by design girls/boys typically become capable of reproduction between 10-14/11-15 and are fully sexually mature by 17/18 (so if a 17-year-old girl isn't an 'adult' the term just has no coherent biological meaning at all. Personally, I think 15/16 is when we should start considering people to be 'adults').

I am really frustrated with the prejudice against age gap relationships between biological adults. It bothers me and I want people to understand and be honest about how stupid the arguments are.

The moral judgment is another topic (I think the stigmatization of true pedophilia/child-adult sex on principle is inherently immoral in necessarily devaluing the sexual happiness/affection/pleasurable intimacy that pedophiles and children alike could or do feel/experience and there is no attraction that I would ever criticize someone for having, in terms of who they're attracted to. There are no exceptions to this, it's never wrong to be attracted to a specific person. I've mentioned necrophilia in other posts but my issue there isn't with the physical attraction to a corpse so much as the fetishization of death) but one of the things that I can't really come to terms with is the attitude of that there's something abnormal or deviant about an older adult attraction to either young legal adults or minors as a justification for the stigmatization (you could easily say that the attraction is to be expected but it's wrong to act on the attraction, in almost the same way that anger is an emotion that virtually all human beings are going to feel at some point but we have a responsibility to control our anger in a civilized society. That doesn't mean we condemn people for their feelings/instincts as opposed to the choices that they make). I've said this a million times before because it really helps to put things into context for me and I find it really interesting (this would be even longer if I had time to elaborate but I will minimize it, as long as it will still be): males are adapted to fertilize egg cells. That isn't something that correlates with maleness, that is the inherent defining criteria for maleness, that is what makes a male a male (even if he's castrated or has some unusual medical issue that prevents him from doing so; his body is adapted to fertilize women's egg cells and that's what his DNA codes for). There's no conscious intention or agenda behind automatic bodily processes, 'Mother Nature' isn't a mind with a conscious goal that guides natural processes, but in the same way that we would normally talk about the 'function' of white blood cells, red blood cells, the liver, etc. the biological function of sperm cells is to fertilize egg cells. This is a biological function that men cannot perform with either prepubescent children who don't ovulate/menstruate or postmenopausal women.

Considering that men as men are literally adapted to impregnate women who ovulate, shouldn't we expect that average men are going to be attracted to girls/women who look as though they're capable of ovulation? I do not want to be cruel (I wouldn't say something like this to my mother, for example. I have genuinely felt bad over the prospect of expressing ideas that could make people feel badly about their age or conventional attractiveness) but I'm on the defensive in regards to the idea that not only should men in their 20s, 30s, 40s and beyond not act on their attraction to teenagers or women in their twenties and thirties, which could be circumstantially reasonable, but the pretense that it's wildly deviant and stems from some moral failing on their part- at 45, even presumably premenopausal women have a 5% chance of conceiving within one year (and around 53% of pregnancies after 45 will end in miscarriage), at 60 only 1% of women haven't gone through menopause and considering how unlikely it is for 45-year-old premenopausal women to conceive within one year, the chances of a 60-year-old man impregnating a woman in his age group are extremely low (if I'm not mistaken, there are only two known women in their 60s who claim to have conceived naturally at their age and those cases are unconfirmed, not that I doubt them, the oldest confirmed mother to conceive naturally was 59 when she gave birth. The oldest man to father a child naturally was something like 94. It's not a remarkable or Guinness Book of World Records-notable thing when men in their 60s impregnate women. Apparently, many doctors won't even provide IVF services to women over 50 because of the medical risks involved with pregnancy at that age). I'm also under no delusion about the fact that most young women prefer young men, but we should expect men to generally have a stronger preference for youth; as much as I want to avoid evolutionary psychology speculation and logic-ing, again, the literal function of sperm cells is to fertilize egg cells and men typically produce sperm until they die. I don't understand why the expectation would be that men are going to mature out of an attraction to women in their standard reproductive years (most 13-year-old girls menstruate even if they're not fully sexually mature yet, people often note that the average age for menstruation has lowered in contrast with previous generations but once you account for malnutrition I think it will always hover around 12. Menopause before 40 falls under 'premature ovarian insufficiency' or something like that and it's considered early before 45, although being perimenopausal and having inconsistent periods before 45 is normal. So let's just say 15-44 even though you can't draw hard fast lines and there are always exceptions, I am personally attracted to girls/women outside of this age range in both directions. Late teens/early twenties seems to be the best time for women to get pregnant and 30-34 might be the best time for men to father children, from a healthy pregnancy standpoint).

It bothers me that people on principle don't want people to be with people who make them happy (they're not arguing from risk aversion, they oppose age-gap relationships on principle and even just the attraction/fantasy itself) but I've been thinking lately that it's especially disappointing for conservatives to be dishonest about human biology when they tend to take the scientifically correct stance on transgenderism (one minute a real man/woman is someone who's strong, confident, takes responsibility, doesn't show vulnerability or excessive compassion, protects and provides, etc./nurturing, submissive, etc. but the next they'll make a reproduction/biology-based argument for what makes a man a man or a woman a woman).