Notes on “Childhood Sexual Experiences: Problems and Issues in Studying Long-Range Effects”.

“Childhood Sexual Experiences: Problems and Issues in Studying Long-Range Effects” was written by Allie C. Kilpatrick. Below are some notes I made about that text. They are not quotations.

1. Many of the findings in research about sexual relationships in childhood are useless due to methodology problems.
2. Those problems may be rooted on poor definitions, sampling bias or wrong measuring.
3. The author examined 34 studies about long-term effects of child sexual relationships and found out that only 10 had clear definitions, samples that could be generalized and correct measuring.
4. Those 10 studies were in agreement that sexual relationships in childhood don’t follow outcome patterns (the child can react negatively, positively or indifferently to a sexual contact with another child or an adult).
5. The definition problem: there’s no set of words that is “standard” for all researchers, which means that Bruce Rind and David Finkelhor employ the word “abuse” for different behaviors (for Rind, “abuse” should only be used for negative sexual contacts, but, for Finkelhor, a positive contact is also abuse, if the age disparity exceeds five years).
6. Plus, the same word can be used to describe different things in a same work.
7. “Incest”, in a work by Kilpatrick (intercourse between people related by blood), isn’t the same thing as “incest”, in a work by Meiselman (sexual contact between people of the same family, even if unrelated by blood, such as adopted children).
8. That means that “incest” is used to designate different behaviors in different people, depending on the researcher.
9. Depending on the study, a sexual invitation between family members count as incest, even if the person hasn’t approached a blood relative.
10. Depending on the study, a non-penetrative act or even an attempt at seduction already count as incest.
11. If you conclude that incest causes post-traumatic stress, but you also label as “incest” the mere presence of invitation, you are saying that inviting a relative to something sexual causes post-traumatic stress in that relative.
12. It’s a wrong generalization.
13. Other problematic words are “adult” and “child”.
14. How young is a “child“?
15. Some studies take the definition for granted and don’t explain what “child” means, in a way that “child” can be anyone under age 18.
16. That makes the reader draw wrong conclusions.
17. I can’t talk about “effects of sexual contact on children” without saying what is a sexual contact and what is a child.
18. If I say that sexual contact harms children and I call anyone under age 18 a “child”, then I’m saying that sexual contact harms 17-year-olds.
19. The point is that we can’t generalize with such broad definitions.
20. All contacts between adults and children are called “abuse” by many researchers.
21. The term “victimization” often has social roots and has nothing to do with the effects upon the child (if the child was treated well, enjoyed the contact, even in an emotional level, and would do that again, the child is still a “victim” according to this definition).
22. Same goes with the term “molestation”.
23. While there are researchers who reserve those terms only for negative contacts, a sharp line between what’s harmful and what is not may be absent.
24. Harm can be objectively measured, but violation of social norms don’t always result in harm.
25. If we conflate objecitivity and morality, our results will be harmed.
26. Science is an attempt to understand the world as it is, while morals are a set of rules by which we choose to live.
27. Mixing both can lead to mere validation of social standards, which is not science.
28. The definitions used in science must not have moralistic foundation.
29. Some definitions have different meanings depending on the context (legal, moral and psychosocial), but some authors make no context distinction.
30. Is abuse “damage” (objective) or “violation of social norms” (subjective)?
31. Assuming that violation of social norms causes harm is often incorrect (homosexuality was a violation of social norms).
32. Who was the victim: the child or the morals?
33. You can not presume that harm took place.
34. Sampling problems: lack of control groups, generalization from small number of cases, use of clinical samples, combination of age groups and combination of socio-economic groups.
35. Only 10 out of the 34 reviewed studies used control groups (a group of “normal” people to compare with the people who are being studied in order to know if they really differ and how).
36. Without a control group, it’s impossible to establish causality and to isolate contributing variables.
37. Out of the 34 studies, seven had a sample poll of less than 10 people.
38. 70% of those studies used clinical or forensic samples, which are not representative of the general population.
39. Adolescents and children respond differently to sexual contact.
40. Age groups must be separated in those studies: a sexual contact is perceived differently depending on the tyke’s age.
41. A low-income person had a sexual contact in childhood and develops poor adult functioning, but is that thanks to the sexual contact or thanks to poverty?
42. The problem of measuring: when can an adult be considered “damaged”?
43. Some researchers use the social status as harm measure (an adult is damaged if they didn’t have a family and was unemployed, for example).
44. Others say that the adult is “damaged” if they developed “character disorder”, but no one can explain what that term even means.
45. Another measuring problem is not specifying how much time has passed between the sexual contact and the interview with the researcher: it could be one year or a decade, which means that we don’t know how “long” is the “long-range” effect.
46. If you don’t specify how much time has passed, you risk labelling a short-term effect (sometimes much more intense) as a long-range one.
47. Another problem is employing terms such as “consequence” and “effect”, which imply causality.
48. You better prove that causality.
49. There are reports of damage caused by environment reaction to the act, which means that we should gauge how much damage, if any, was caused by the sexual contact itself and how much damage was caused by society’s reaction (interrogatory, medical exams, forced therapy, parent reaction, shaming and other factors that could cause secondary victimization).
50. Of the 34 studies reviewed, 19 conclude that harm is the usual consequence.
51. The study by Sloane and Karpinsky has sampling problems (only five cases were studied, all incest, all from clinical, low-income population), which render it’s findings questionable (it concluded, from just five samples, that incest leads to serious problems in the girl).
52. Only a handful of researchers used the definition of incest found in the dictionary.
53. If you choose the cases that you will study and generalize the findings, your research is invalid: you can not generalize information obtained by hand-picked samples (the correct procedure would be getting as many random samples from the general population as possible or drop attempts at generalization).
54. We can’t always prove that harm was directly caused by the contact.
55. A study is specially bad if it doesn’t include the minor’s opinon on the act.
56. A study that concludes that you “can only conjecture about” something… ended in an empty conclusion.
57. Clinical population is problematic because it’s like going to a hospital to see how many patients are ill: of course you will get a number close to 100%.
58. However, we can’t generalize that and conclude that 100% of the world population is ill.
59. Furthermore, people who didn’t suffer with the sexual contact don’t seek help for sequelae, meaning that a study using clinical samples closes itself to positive cases.
60. Gross’ study used only 4 samples and had no control group.
61. If we only take in consideration the serious studies that focus on negative outcomes, we can conclude that:
    1. Childhood incest, in low-income families, in which the adult was prosecuted, is associated with harm.
    2. Incest can predispose a person to some kinds of problems.
    3. At least in the forensic population (that is, in the cases reported to the police), children of low-income parents are more likely to suffer even if the experience was not incestuous.
    4. The more times the person has the sexual contact, the more it’s repeated, the longer each session lasts, the higher the frequency, the more negative feelings (shame and pain) are stronger than the positive (adventure and pleasure), then the higher is the chance of maladjustment.
62. But that implies that an unreported, non-incestuous act that causes more pleasure than distress won’t cause harm (not to mention that this conclusion doesn’t say much about higher-income families).
63. Of the 34 reviewed studies, 14 had conclusions that focused on neutral outcomes.
64. Some conclusions seem to be pulled from thin air.
65. Research mistakes aren’t exclusive to studies that seek to prove that sexual contact in childhood brings damage; there are also research mistakes in studies that conclude that those contacts make no difference.
66. Some studies have no conclusive evidence.
67. Even studies that are done with no control group and use clinical samples can conclude that sexual experiences in childhood make zero difference for the child.
68. Landis’ study, done with college samples (which have higher generalization factor), with people of medium and upper-class, with control group, concluded that most of the 500 individuals who had sexual contacts in childhood or adolescence had no permanent damage and were perfectly normal.
69. Some studies concluded that there’s no psychological damage without asking for personality details in the interview.
70. Gagnon concluded that, out of the 333 women that he interviewed, only 5% had adjustment problems in adult life, but his findings can not be generalized to lower-income families.
71. Some places tolerate incest, due to cultural reasons.
72. A person may experience incest differently depending on their sexual orientation.
73. Another study by Kilpatrick concluded that only harmful or forced contacts cause damage to the minor.
74. It seems like studies with clear definitions and control group are more likely to conclude that neutral outcomes exist.
75. If we only take in consideration the serious studies about neutral outcomes, we can conclude that:
    1. Middle-class college students who had childhood sexual experiences with adults don’t usually feel negative impacts from those contacts.
    2. It’s also unlikely that middle-class girls who have sexual contact with adults would grow up maladjusted.
    3. Sexual experiences between siblings have little impact in their adult sexual adjustment, when it comes to middle-class families.
    4. Those percentages are even smaller if the child receiving the act is a boy.
    5. Women who had sexual experiences in childhood do not differ from women who didn’t have those experiences, but just as long as the act was not forced or harmful.
76. With that, we can not conclude that childhood sexual experiences will always result in negative or neutral outcomes.
77. Kilpatrick found only one study about beneficial effects of early sexual experiences, but the study had sampling problems and no control group.
78. The ten studies that passed in the “Kilpatrick test” show that the fact of a person feeling harmed by a sexual experience doesn’t depend only on the presence of sex, but also on third variables (such as pain, force and shame).
79. If you eliminate those variables, you eliminate the potential damage.
80. There’s no necessary causality between early sexual experience and trauma.
81. An ideal study about sexual experiences in childhood must have:
    1. Control for variables, such as income, age, sex and race.
    2. Separation between the effect caused by the contact and the effect caused by society’s reaction to the contact.
    3. Separation between the effect caused by the contact and the effect caused by family dynamic.
    4. Control groups.
    5. Samples from general population, rather than clinical or forensic samples.
    6. Sophisticated analytical procedures.
    7. Statistical control.
82. There should be a line distinguishing “sexual offense” (violation of social morals) and “sexual abuse” (harmful act).
83. If you are going to talk about incest, define incest.
84. Who was the sexual partner, what kind of sexual act was done and what was the child’s age?
85. Define “normal adult” before saying that an adult was “harmed”.
86. You should pay attention to the conditions surrounding the act and how the minor felt when the act took place.
87. Did the minor have any problems with the adult’s prosecution (if it happens)?
88. It’s important to note not only the sexual variables, but how the social variables surrounding the act interact with each other as well.
89. If you are going to study long-range effects of any supposedly harmful behavior, do it right; this is not a game, nor a joke.

Notes on “Childhood Sexual Experiences and Adult Health Sequelae Among Gay and Bisexual Men”.

“Childhood Sexual Experiences and Adult Health Sequelae Among Gay and Bisexual Men: Defining Childhood Sexual Abuse” was written by Sonya Arreola, Torsten Neilands, Lance Pollack, Jay Paul and Joseph Catania. Below are some notes I made about that text. They are not quotations, but paraphrases.

1. There are studies that conclude that childhood sexual experiences are the cause of a number of negative symptoms in adulthood, such as AIDS, substance abuse, depression and suicide.

2. But the authors of this study point out that the causation between childhood sexual experience and maladjustment can only be surely found if you use “opportunistic” samples, such as clinical and forensic samples, which can not be generalized.

3. Childhood sexual experiences are more common among gay and bisexual men.

4. The purpose of the study is to evaluate how childhood sexual experiences affect the health of those boys after they grow up.

5. Boys and girls respond differently to childhood sexual experiences, meaning that data obtained from female sample polls can’t be generalized to men.

6. Boys can respond to childhood sexual experiences in a variety of ways, but girls tend to repond in a consistently negative manner.

7. When researching childhood sexual experiences, you need to take care about what you are going to label as “abuse”.

8. In the phrase “child sexual abuse”, you need to clarify how young someone needs to be in order to be called a “child”, what acts are considered “sexual” and what constitutes “abuse”.

9. Conflicting definitions result in conflicting studies.

10. If the definition is too broad, a study can conclude that child sexual abuse happens with more than half of the children.

11. A common definition is “any sexual experience between two minors or between adult and minor, as long as the age disparity between the parties exceed five years”, meaning that an experience doesn’t need to be forced, harmful or negative to be labelled as abuse by a researcher who uses this definition.

12. However, other studies reveal that people as young as 12 who had sexual contact with older people didn’t suffer damage in their self-esteem, compared to people who didn’t have those contacts, as long as the acts weren’t forced, suggesting that what causes the damage is the coercion (rape), not the act per itself (willingly engaged).

13. Studies about childhood sexual experiences often fail to distinguish between willing and forced acts, paying attention only to the age disparity.

14. A study ran in Canada concluded that the prevalence of child sexual abuse is 26% when we only consider the age disparity of five or more years, but only 12.5% if we consider the age disparity and the presence of coercion.

15. Generally speaking, minors react positively or indifferently to sexual contacts as long as they are willingly engaged in, but react negatively to forced or coerced sexual contacts.

16. Does it make any difference if the act is forced or willingly engaged, when it comes to risk of HIV?

17. To verify if that’s true, the authors interviewed men who, as teens, had sexual relationships with adult men.

18. You are a heavy drinker if you drink at least five cups of alcohol at once, at least once a week.
19. Unprotected anal sex is considered high-risk sex.
20. Of all interviewed homosexual and bisexual men, 52% had voluntary sex before age 18, 21% had forced sex before age 18 and 27% had no sex before age 18.
21. Rape increases risk of suicidal ideation.
22. But people who had willing sexual contact before age 18 don’t differ from those who had no sexual contacts in regards of emotional stability.
23. On the other hand, the level of well-being was higher among the interviewees who reported willing sexual contact before age 18.
24. To be fair, the interviewees who reported sexual contacts before age 18 were more prone to heavy drinking and substance use.
25. However, in the group of people who had sex before 18, those who were coerced used more drugs than those who were willing.
26. High-risk sex was much more common among those who had forced sex.
27. Rape (forced sex) is a risk factor for psychological distress, substance abuse and HIV transmission.
28. But willing sexual contact, even at such young age, didn’t had no impact in the depression rates and suicide rates.
29. It’s important to remember that the study is about homosexual and bisexual men; the authors didn’t study heterosexuals.
30. Maybe the definition of child sexual abuse as “sex before 18 with age disparity of five years or more” is only useful when studying girls, because it seems like most age discrepant sex with girls is coercive, but that definition simply doesn’t work for boys.
31. If the sexual contact with a minor was positive, it could also be called “initiation“.
32. People who had forced sex may be using drugs as coping mechanism.
33. Strangely, the level of well-being in the forced-sex group and in the no-sex group was the same, with the willing-sex group showing higher level of well-being.
34. That suggests that a positive sexual initiation increases the minor’s self-concept.
35. Human sexuality is too complex for general labelling.
36. Labelling all childhood sexual experiences as abuse and interpreting them as abuse hinders science’s ability to appraise them impartially.
37. What’s the minor’s opinion on the event?
38. The generalization also harms research on HIV transmission.
39. The generalization makes up for unnecessary therapy.

Anotações sobre “Childhood Sexual Experiences and Adult Health Sequelae Among Gay and Bisexual Men”.

“Childhood sexual experiences and adult health sequelae among gay and bisexual men: defining childhood sexual abuse” foi escrito por Sonya Arreola, Torsten Neilands, Lance Pollack, Jay Paul e Joseph Catania. Abaixo, algumas anotações feitas sobre esse texto. Elas não são citações, mas paráfrases, e podem não refletir minha opinião sobre um dado assunto.

1. Existem estudos que concluem que experiências sexuais na infância estão por trás de um número de efeitos negativos na vida adulta, como AIDS, abuso de substâncias, depressão e suicídio.

2. Mas os autores desse estudo apontam que só é possível provar essa causalidade utilizando amostras “oportunas”, como a população clínica e a população forense, que não podem ser generalizadas.

3. Experiências sexuais infantis são mais comuns entre homens homossexuais e bissexuais.

4. O propósito dos pesquisadores é saber como experiências sexuais na infância afetam a saúde de homens homossexuais e bissexuais, especialmente quando esses meninos crescem.

5. Meninas e meninos respondem à experiências sexuais na infância de forma diferente, o que significa que dados de pesquisas envolvendo apenas meninas não podem ser utilizados para interpretar as experiências dos meninos.

6. Meninos podem responder a essas experiências de variadas maneiras, mas meninas respondem de maneira mais consistentemente negativa.

7. Ao pesquisar experiências sexuais infantis, é preciso cuidado no que você chamará de “abuso”.

8. Na frase “abuso sexual infantil”, é preciso deixar claro o que é “abuso”, o que é “sexo” ou o que é “contato sexual” e qual a idade necessária para que alguém seja considerado “infantil”.

9. Definições conflitantes resultam em estudos conflitantes.

10. Se a definição é muito abrangente, um estudo pode concluir que abuso sexual infantil ocorre com mais da metade das crianças do mundo.

11. Uma definição comum de abuso sexual infantil é “qualquer experiência sexual entre dois menores ou entre adulto e menor, na medida em que a diferença de idade entre ambos é de cinco anos ou mais”, ou seja, a experiência não precisa ser negativa, forçada ou prejudicial para que um pesquisador a rotule como abusiva.

12. No entanto, outros estudos revelam que jovens entre doze e dezessete anos que tiveram contato sexual com pessoas cinco anos mais velhas não tiveram dano de autoconceito em relação a pessoas que não tiveram esses contatos, desde que esses contatos não tenham sido forçados, sugerindo que o que causa dano é a força (estupro), não o ato em si (relacionamento voluntário).

13. Estudos sobre experiências sexuais infantis frequentemente cometem a falta de não levar em consideração se o ato foi forçado ou voluntário, atentando somente para a diferença de idade dos envolvidos.

14. Um estudo no Canadá concluiu que a prevalência de abuso sexual infantil no Canadá é de vinte e seis por cento se levarmos em consideração somente a diferença de cinco anos, mas de apenas 12,5% se levarmos em consideração, além da diferença de idade, a presença de coerção.

15. Geralmente, menores reagem positivamente ou indiferentemente a contatos sexuais voluntários, mas negativamente a contatos sexuais forçados.

16. O fato de um contato sexual na infância ter sido forçado ou voluntário tem influência no risco de HIV?

17. Para verificar isso, os autores entrevistaram por telefone adultos que, durante a adolescência, tiveram relações com maiores de idade.

18. De um ponto de vista clínico, você está bebendo demais se você toma cinco copos de bebida alcoólica em cada sessão, pelo menos uma vez por semana.
19. Sexo anal não-protegido é considerado sexo de alto risco.
20. De todos os homossexuais e bissexuais entrevistados, cinquenta e dois por cento tiveram relações sexuais voluntárias antes dos dezoito anos, vinte e um por cento tiveram sexo forçado pelo menor uma vez e vinte e sete por cento só perderam a virgindade na vida adulta.
21. Sexo forçado é fator de risco para tendência suicida.
22. Mas pessoas que tiveram relações sexuais voluntárias antes dos dezoito anos não diferem dos que mantiveram sua virgindade até a idade adulta no que diz respeito a estabilidade emocional.
23. Por outro lado, o nível de bem-estar dos entrevistados que tiveram relações antes dos dezoito anos era maior do que nível de bem-estar dos entrevistados que mantiveram a virgindade até os dezoito.
24. Para ser justo, o grupo que confessa ter se relacionado antes dos dezoito anos tinha maior tendência a beber demais e a usar drogas.
25. No entanto, no grupo dos precoces, os que tiveram relações forçadas tendiam a usar mais drogas do que os que se relacionaram voluntariamente.
26. Sexo de alto risco é consideravelmente mais comum entre os que tiveram relações forçadas.
27. Estupro é fator de risco para desequilíbrio emocional, abuso de substância e contração de HIV.
28. Mas contato sexual voluntário, mesmo quando os indivíduos eram bem jovens, não teve qualquer impacto em taxas de depressão e desejo suicida dos indivíduos testados, que nesses aspectos eram perfeitamente normais.
29. Importante lembrar que esses são dados sobre homossexuais e bissexuais e que o artigo não se propôs a estudar relacionamentos heterossexuais.
30. A definição de abuso sexual infantil como “sexo antes dos dezoito anos no qual a disparidade de idade é de cinco anos ou mais” pode até funcionar com meninas, porque parece que a maioria dos contatos sexuais com disparidade de idade envolvendo meninas é mesmo forçada, mas essa definição simplesmente não funciona pra meninos.
31. Se o contato sexual com o menor foi positivo, pode até ser chamado de “iniciação“.
32. Pessoas que tiveram contato sexual forçado talvez usem drogas como meio de lidar com a dor.
33. Estranhamente, o grupo de entrevistados que manteve a virgindade antes dos dezoito e o grupo que teve relações forçadas não diferem em níveis de bem-estar, com o grupo de entrevistados que tiveram relações precoces tendo um nível de bem-estar maior.
34. Isso sugere que uma iniciação sexual positiva tem efeito positivo no autoconceito do menor.
35. A sexualidade humana é complexa demais para definições gerais.
36. Chamar todas as experiências sexuais infantis de “abuso” prejudica a capacidade da ciência de olhar imparcialmente pra essas experiências.
37. Como o menor as julga?
38. A generalização também prejudica pesquisas sobre transmissão de HIV.
39. A generalização leva a terapia desnecessária.

Notes on “Confessions”.

“Confessions” was written by Augustine. Below are some notes I made about his text. They aren’t quotations and may not reflect my views on a given subject.

1. It seems like some people can’t function without having a religion.
2. To talk about a god without knowing that god risks you to talk about the wrong god.
3. God punishes.
4. But God also forgives.
5. If God is the wisest being in existence, disagreeing with him is being wrong (that doesn’t exclude the possibility of misinterpretation).
6. A baby can’t have his desires completely fulfilled, because he can’t communicate his needs through words.
7. Is a fetus an being on it’s own or part of the mother’s body?
8. Time is a never-ending “today”.
9. Children aren’t innocent.
10. Children are capable of envy, aggression and other things, which puts the concept of innocence in question.
11. We often don’t remember our childhood, but we sure did a lot of embarrassing stuff as children.
12. How can we care if children are innocent or not, if we often can’t remember a time when we were “innocent“?
13. We are start learning to speak through observation, thanks to need for communication.
14. We can’t punish a child for not being able to learn something if they aren’t mature enough to understand.
15. Coerced work is inferior to really voluntary work.
16. If you want to get someone to accept your ideas, you aren’t supposed to do that by force.
17. An immoderate soul hurts itself.
18. Grammar, obviously, is more important than fiction literature.
19. Learning a second language is hard because you usually have to rely on artificial terms to learn it, while the first language is learned at home in an easy-going manner.
20. It’s much better to learn by curiosity than by being intimated to.
21. At school, you learn a lot of stuff that you won’t ever use.
22. Attributing human vices to gods is an attempt at making humans look less hateful.
23. Bad behavior in adults is the same as bad behavior in children, just in different scale.
24. By saying the the Kingdom of God belongs to children, says Augustine, Jesus is using children as a metaphor for being humble, rather than talking about inherent innocence.
25. Love and lust may present themselves as the same thing.
26. A married person can’t fully commit to other things.
27. A teacher not always cares about your development as person.
28. There’s cultural pressure upon men for libidinous acts.
29. A thief also doesn’t want to have their belongings stolen.
30. A person can commit a crime because it’s thrilling.
31. It’s possible to love “too much”, when your love makes you do bad things.
32. If you commit a crime for a good cause, it’s still a crime, though it’s also more worth being forgiven.
33. Some crimes are easier or more fun to commit if you are in group.
34. Gratuitous (senseless) bad behavior is like tickling: it’s fun, but you don’t know why.
35. Blind love can stimulate us to lie to the loved person, in order to appear to be something that you are not, going out of your way just so they can like you.
36. Loving implies taking the risk of jealousy.
37. It’s disturbing that we tend to like tragedies (when they happen to someone else).
38. Maybe that’s because we feel empathy over those who suffer.
39. Philosophy isn’t always anti-religion.
40. Fiction, as long as it’s seen as fiction, is not something to worry about.
41. “Image and resemblance of God” isn’t at all physical appearance.
42. Evil is lack of good.
43. Absence is an evil.
44. There’s a type of virtue implied in every act.
45. A person can do bad things if they believe it’s a commission from God.
46. The problem of astrology is that people attribute the responsibility of their acts to the stars.
47. People often learn astrology because it’s fun, not because it’s useful.
48. If astrology does something right, it was luck.
49. Don’t place all of your love into something perishable, such as a friend or lover, because you will be devastated if that person dies.
50. Crying is comforting, like a pain-killer, but it can be addictive.
51. A lover must be ready for an eventual death of the loved one.
52. A person can defend an idea that they actually don’t believe in, to be better accepted.
53. It’s unlikely that you would be able to explain God rationally.
54. You can’t run away from God.
55. Religion and science aren’t mutually exclusive.
56. Divine knowledge is more important.
57. A person can speak like a researcher in order to make his lie pass as acceptable.
58. “The letter kills, but the spirit vitalizes” isn’t literal.
59. We often have to believe in things that we don’t fully understand, such as medical prescription, unless we are trained in medicine.
60. How can I know if my parents are really my parents, if I don’t remember anything about the day I was born?
61. Getting drunk may be tempting, but that’s a shameful kind of joy.
62. Nonetheless, it’s better being happy and drunk, than building your happiness onto criminal things, because a drunk person, for a short while, has nothing to worry about, while a criminal is often worried about the police.
63. A lot of people turn to religion for fear of death.
64. If we define God as someone who isn’t incorruptible, then we should verify if an incorruptible thing really exists.
65. Fear is evil, so, if you fear, evil exists.
66. If twins are born under the same astrological configuration, see if their fate or personality traits are the same.
67. Species are put in a hierarchy.
68. Corruption happens due to a disturbance in a person’s “amount of good” (in this case, it could be health).
69. Existence is good, so, if someone is deprived from all good, they disappear (die).
70. The Bible is a text that can be interpreted in several ways, so it’s natural that some seem more logical than others.
71. Paul’s doctrine has similarities with Platonism.
72. Having money and wealth as life goal can make your life tedious.
73. Not everyone can withstand marriage.
74. When you find something that was lost, the joy is always bigger than the joy of always having something, because, when you find something that was lost, you both feel happy for finding it and experience immediate relief from pain.
75. When important people are converted to a faith, more people feel encouraged to join too, that’s why new religions aim to convert celebrities.
76. Feeling unsure isn’t the same as having two souls or two minds.
77. Life isn’t always a battle between good and evil, because we sometimes have to choose between two equally evil things.
78. The religious chant is a way to push sadness and boredom away, to make meetings more tolerable.
79. A person can be perverted by praise, even if it’s praise coming from friends.
80. Body can resurrect.
81. It doesn’t matter where you are buried after you die.
82. If a person had a good life and died peacefully, there’s no need to feel sorrow; it’s more of a matter of slowly adapting to the person’s absence.
83. We cry a lot over things of less importance, but also are often indifferent to tragedies.
84. You should confess your sins to God, but particularly, not to someone else, in a selected place, like how confession is currently done.
85. It’s impossible to fully know someone else, specially because we often don’t know ourselves completely either.
86. God was here first.
87. There’s a way to escape every temptation.
88. Reason is supposed to interpret what we see, hear or feel.
89. People bow to the things they created, such as money, submitting themselves to it and submitting the next generations as well.
90. Isn’t possible to get close to God without the use of reason.
91. Almost everything that we have in memory came from our five senses.
92. Our memories are interpretations of what we once felt and may not reflect what we actually felt.
93. A sensation leaves an impression, which we can recall even when that sensation is absent.
94. Language depend on memory.
95. The mind can copy concepts that are in another mind, without having experienced what that mind experienced, through means of teaching and learning.
96. We can work with math even when concrete elements are absent.
97. “Spirit” can stand for “memory”, depending on the context.
98. Recalling emotions won’t necessarily make us relive those emotions.
99. Memory is a big mystery.
100. The ability to think is proof that we are alive, because we can’t think if we don’t exist.
101. Memory isn’t exclusive to humans.
102. How can we define something we don’t feel, such as happiness?
103. If happiness as concept exists in memory, then we felt it once.
104. Different people define happiness differently, but what those definitions have in common?
105. It seems like happiness is related to joy, which is something that we feel.
106. If you learn something good, you can say that you learned something divine.
107. Not all pleasures are forbidden.
108. Gluttony is harder to avoid than lust, because you, naturally, eat more often than you have sex, obviously.
109. We aren’t fully aware of our weaknesses, as no one can fully known themselves.
110. A person can do something because they are curious, despite knowing it’s frowned upon.
111. Sensuality, curiosity and pride are three common sources of sin.
112. A person can only enjoy a praise if they are praised for something they want to be praised for.
113. If you claim that you hate boasting, you are already boasting.
114. If nothing exists, then you create.
115. God sees the time as an eternal present, rather than sectioning it into past, present and future.
116. Time can be infinitely divided.
117. If you claim to be able to measure past (which is gone) or future (which hasn’t come yet), then you are claiming that nothingness can be measured.
118. Past and future only exist in the present, as memory and anticipation.
119. Still, speaking about before and after, if it’s needed for communication, isn’t a bad thing to do.
120. Time is the way humans measure movements (in the sense of change from a state to another).
121. Is it possible to know how long the present lasts?
122. While it’s not possible to know how long the present lasts, we can measure how long events that take place in present last.
123. Explaining a discovery is easier than actually discovering something.
124. God’s not in a literal “sky”.
125. God creates the sky twice in Genesis, but Augustine says that the first sky is the Heaven, where God inhabits, with the second sky being the one above our heads.
126. Genesis can not be understood in a single way, so it’s natural that people would arrive at different conclusions about it.
127. “God’s spirit floated over the water”, but there’s no mention in the Genesis about where that water came from (Genesis 1:1-2).
128. To understand creation isn’t the same as understanding what Moses wrote.
129. We can’t verify which interpretation of Genesis is correct.
130. It’s only natural for different people to arrive at different conclusions about the same text.
131. What you conclude from a text can change as you grow older.
132. Even if something can exist without having a shape, you can’t give a shape to something that does not exist.
133. Weight not always pulls an object down (for example, if something is lighter than the air, it will float).
134. God gifts people with abilities that are useful to the community.
135. If you aren’t aggressive, you will likely be loved.
136. You can’t take the Genesis literally.
137. It’s hard for non-intellectual people to appreciate spiritual or intellectual things.
138. A text that doesn’t expresses it’s ideas using time measures (past, present, future) won’t be understood.
139. Worshiping is thanking.