Well to be fair, it's the State throwing you in jail, not the Catholic church. But if it's Catholics ridiculing you, you have my sympathies.

You're totally welcome! ^_^

Haha, I wasn't arguing against you man. Just hoping to broaden some perspectives.

Even with the whole "penis = Christ's love entering me" thing? Gaaaah... Catholics creep me out too.

Well, according to the ancient historian Polybius, political evolution is cyclical. Barbarism creates kingship, which devolves into tyranny, the nobles overthrow tyranny to create aristocracy, which devolves into oligarchy, which is overthrown by the people to create democracy, which devolves into ochlocracy, which…

Well, no... not machines. There are no "true" modern democracies... at least none that I know of. Maybe there's a tiny one somewhere in an obscure country.

Yeah... in Sparta, they married late - women around late teens (estimated), and men at 30 - they believed healthier, adult bodies produced healthier children. That didn't work out so well for them in the long run - their citizen population went from 9000 to under 1000 in the span of about 100 years (of course other…

Slaves are actually what enable democracy - if not for slavery, Athenian democracy would not have existed. I mentioned this in another reply, but citizenship in Athens is not like citizenship in a "democracy" today. Today we elect people to do things for us in government (republic/representative democracy). In…

That wasn't a problem - it was an enabling feature. Ancient Athenian democracy would have been impossible without a slave class, because being a citizen was a full-time job. You know how people get all upset when they have jury duty? It's like that, but for every single issue that affects the nation. Oh, and…

Haha, word.

Her age is not specified, but it's a pretty good assumption. 13-14 is the age other women in the ancient world were married and began conceiving (e.g., Rome, Athens), with very few exceptions (e.g., Sparta).

All that "Christ-as-a-lover" pop theology stuff really creeps me out.

It is good and brave of you to call them out on this.

Haha, it totally does. Very interesting. I had not realized the link between education and women's agency/control over reproduction, but it totally makes sense, even if it's more tangential to 'education' -> literacy and the sciences were the first thing I thought of instead. The economic bits make sense as well. …

Well, that is very interesting (and completely out of my area of expertise). I have to wonder if the situation for women in 'Less Developed' nations mirrors the experience of women in the ancient world. And while I'm very clear on the correlation, I'm curious as to why education/economic development are tied to…

While the games were being held at Olympia, an old man was desirous of seeing them, but could find no seat. As he went to place after place, he met with insults and jeers, and nobody made room for him. But when he came opposite the Spartans, all the boys and many of the men arose and yielded p415their places.a…

That is certainly perplexing. Off the top of my head, it may have to do with the sheer difficulty of giving birth and not dying, making women not want to do it (I know I wouldn't want to) - and certainly not a whole bunch of times. In other words, ensuring 4-5 births to maintain a stable population may be the reason…

Agreed.

Disconnecting it from gender is exactly what we should do.

Even if you analyze it from an economics perspective, women in antiquity were still more valuable because the rate of mortality was so high. I've heard it estimated that infant mortality in classical antiquity was about 1 in 3 children. That doesn't even include children dying in childhood (which was also quite…