runner...

"Kind of destroys the evolution myth that we are evolving into more moral creatures. Bible proves itself right again and again."

Firstly, you need to read The Better Angels of Our Nature: The Decline of Violence in History and Its Causes by Steven Pinker. By all accounts, conflict and crime has been in decline throughout humanity. Do we conduct witchhunts or burn heretics at the stake or stone adulterous women or support slavery or support racial segregation or cane children any more? Clearly this 21st century is a far more moral time than a century ago, let alone the times of the Bible was written.

Secondly, evolution is not at all myth. I actually have a degree in evolutionary biology and ecology, and I can tell you without a doubt that Darwin's theory of evolution of natural selection is fact. If you deny evolution then you deny fact.

Thirdly, what I meant in my statement that "Our society is getting more and more selfish and incidentally unhappy" is that in neoclassical/neoliberal capitalist postindustrial western societies we are indeed selfish. Go to any hunter gatherer society and you will find a far more egalitarian and peaceful group of people.

Lastly, give me proof that any statement in the Bible is the literal truth and is not meant to be allegorical or as a metaphor. From the mathematical value of Pi to the physical properties of stars to the movement of the sun to the anatomy of insects to the formation of the universe to talking snakes to the single origin of language - the Bible is full of scientific errors. If you take the Bible to be true than you must deal with the immensity of its flaws and immoralities.

Dr. Albert Wallace,

"Our society is getting more and more selfish and incidentally unhappy. The countries with some of the highest levels of GDP also have some of the highest rates of clinical depression. The reason why people are getting eating disorders is because in this neoclassical and neoliberal capitalist culture we value superficial looks and selfishness."

There you have it - well put.

Btw, you'll have you work cut out trying to convince runner of the validity of the theory of evolution.

...It is not helpful to the development of the maturity of the human psychology, to institutionalise children into adulthood. Frontiers and challenges to survival that test the childs concepts of self and its true position in society, are the most critical in the developmental path to full and confident maturity. It should be asked, why our children are excluded and discouraged from involvement and participation in the workforce and confined to the institutionalised and overprotected school system, as a substitute to the greater reality of social involvement in the workforce?

...For the answer to this, we need to look back at least two decades into our industrial history, and discover a pattern developing as Australian industries began their migration to Asia. It makes sense to deduce the connection to this event, and to the rise in the age of school children exponentially to the migration of industry. Society ceased to offer alternatives to longer periods in school for our children.

...The pinnacle of the inevitable failure of the phenomenon exposes itself in the rise in negative mental health outcomes of adolescent immaturity, exposing itself in self-perception misconceptions. I don’t argue against the opportunity the education system offers to children as a “choice”, but rest the argument on the flaw exposing itself when forcing, by lack of alternative, children to remain institutionalised in a school system through the lack of job prospects. One could argue a range of causes for mental disorders in children, including eating disorders, but the therapy offered by workforce placement, is the cheapest answer to the problems caused by institutionalisation, and in the long term, the most successful and productively sustaining of all mental health therapies: In short, teach children at an early age to stand upon their own two feet, and face-off to the world "at large"!

Yes Dr. Albert, Susie, my understanding is that eating disorders are primarily a factor of people’s body image being influenced by their social environment – which I was quite surprised to find out recently at a seminar given by a children’s hospital in Sydney. It seems counter-intuitive because I think earlier theorists had done a pretty good job of convincing the world that it was associated with abuse, neglect etc, but the doctors who made the presentation made the point that a number of studies had found absolutely no correlation between childhood trauma and the development of anorexia, and only a very small correlation for bulimia. The did say however that certain personality types were more susceptible, especially those who had high anxiety or obsessive compulsive disorder – which are understood as largely genetic in origin. The way I interpret things, it seems like there is a “tipping point” between disordered eating behaviours and the development of a full-blown eating disorder in which the person’s perceptions of reality become distorted. However at this point scientists apparently haven’t identified exactly what this consists of in a neurological sense.

I have to take issue with the idea that appearance is “superficial” however. I think people have a deep-set need to express themselves to the outside world, and it seems to me that young people often don’t have the communication skills or the confidence, even the financial means, to do this to their satisfaction. I don’t think you can make assumptions to the effect that individuals don’t think hard about their choices, because subjectively the issue of a person’s perception of their own place in the world has a lot of significance.