Augustine's Boner

[George H. Smith]

This is a partial text of a lecture I delivered around 15 years ago. I am posting it here because of the discussion of original sin at http://www.objectivistliving.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=8203

Please note that this is a quickly written draft that I have not looked at for many years. I have made no effort to revise or correct it, so it doubtless contains typos and other incidental errors. Moreover, when lecturing I typically use a draft like this merely as a framework, while elaborating as I go along. Consequently, you may find some gaps and abrupt transitions. - Ghs

AUGUSTINE'S BONER

George H. Smith

Augustine was born in November, 354, in what is now Algeria in Northern Africa.

Near the beginning of his Confessions, Augustine asks: “Who can recall to me the sins I committed as a baby? For in your sight no man is free from sin, not even a child who has lived only one day on earth.”Augustine could not recall his early behavior, but by observing the behavior of other infants, he surmised that infants sin when they cry or throw tantrums in order to get their way. He concludes that if babies can be called innocent, this is not owing to a lack of will to do harm, but only to lack of strength.

Augustine recalls that, during his early days at school, he would often sin by disobeying his teachers or by goofing off. But the most interesting account of his youthful indiscretions had to do with the theft of some pears. Augustine, along with some friends, stole some pears from a tree in a nearby vineyard. These pears were not fit to eat, so the boys fed them to some pigs. This is what so fascinated Augustine in later life about this incident. This sinful act was motivated not by the desire for pears but by the love of mischief. Our “real pleasure,” recounts Augustine, “consisted in doing something that was forbidden.” He loved, not the object of his wrong action, “but the wrong itself.” He only picked the pears so that he might steal: the act was undertaken so that he might experience “the flavor of sin.”

Hence this act of theft was, for Augustine, a sign of a depraved human nature that cannot be corrected without God’s help. Sinful acts reflect the desire to rebel against God’s law and to take pride in the very act of rebellion. “What a parody of life!” he writes, “What abysmal death! Could I enjoy doing wrong for no other reason than that it was wrong?”

At age sixteen, when he committed this theft, there was another incident in Augustine’s life that would herald things to come. To understand the significance of this incident, you should know that Augustine’s father was a pagan, while his mother was a devout Christian. Augustine recalls that one day, while at the public baths, his father “saw the signs of active virility coming to life in me and this was enough to make him relish the thought of having grandchildren.” Augustine, in other words, got an erection, and his delighted father quickly relayed the good news to his mother. But his fanatically devout mother, far from sharing in the father’s joy, “became alarmed and apprehensive.” Augustine had not yet been baptized, so his arousal might indicate that he was starting down the “crooked path” to a life of sin.

In fact, this is exactly the path that Augustine would take for the next twelve years. At nineteen, Augustine continued his education in Carthage, that “hissing cauldron of lust.” Afflicted with a “sick soul,” Augustine searched for something to love; he was in love with the idea of love, but this craving could not be satisfied with the material things of this life. “So I muddied the stream of friendship with the filth of lewdness and clouded its clear waters with hell’s black river of lust.”

Aside from his sexual escapades, Augustine fell in love with the theater, especially tragedies that evoked sadness and pity in the audience. This phenomenon also became grist for his mill of self-analysis in later life. Why is it that people enjoy watching events in the theater which they would never wish to experience in real life? We seem to enjoy the vicarious experience of sorrow. The more we are pained, the more we applaud. If a play poorly performed does not make us feel sad, we may leave early in a disgruntled and critical mood; whereas if we are made to feel pain, we watch to the end and leave happy.

Clearly, according to Augustine, “sorrow and tears can be enjoyable.” Of course, everyone wants to be happy, but we also derive pleasure from feeling pity, and the theater, by evoking pity, allows us to enjoy the imaginary misfortune of others. This is yet one more indication of a perverted human nature that has become corrupted through original sin. We have a reservoir of friendly feelings, such as sympathy, but we lack a proper outlet for these feelings. Our desires, when separated from their proper object, the love of God, are diverted into the artificial channels of earthly lust, where they can never be satisfied.

Augustine goes on to relate how, after the sudden death of his closest friend had left him on the verge of a nervous breakdown, he experienced a dramatic conversion to Christianity. This is the dramatic climax of his Confessions, a revealing psychological account that makes Augustine look like a poster-boy for Freudianism, even to a non-Freudian like myself. All of the classic elements are there: An overwrought libido that becomes sublimated into other channels.. A troubled relationship with his pious and overbearing Christian mother. An intense interest in the meaning of childhood events. Hints of latent homosexuality. A fascination with the moral significance of his wicked dreams. A pervasive sense of guilt. Excessive narcissism with a fixation on the male genitalia. A dark and powerful Id, or will, that is forever at war with an overdeveloped super-ego, or conscience. A relentless quest for peace of mind. And on and on and on.

Augustine surely ranks as the most sex-obsessed theologian in all of Christendom’s long history. Of great concern to Augustine was the essential irrationalism of human sexual responses, which is most graphically illustrated by the “independent autocracy” of the male erection.

Augustine’s obsession with involuntary erections must be read first-hand (principally in his City of God) to be appreciated, since secondary accounts, though often mentioning his theory of “lust” or “concupiscence,” rarely discuss this matter in the explicit detail that we find in the original. I will first summarize Augustine’s specific (theological) interest in erections and then discuss its significance for his theory of original sin.

Before proceeding, we must understand the fascination of Augustine (and virtually every other early theologian) with the nature of prelapsarian man. This refers to the perfect nature of Adam and Eve before their lapse, or fall, into sin –a sin which transmitted to future generations a corrupted nature that is essentially evil.

Although Augustine uses the term “lust” (or concupiscence) to denote any kind of craving or improper desire, he applies it primarily to “the lustful excitement of the organs of generation.” Sexual lust, as he correctly notes, is not only physical but psychological as well, so “the pleasure which results is the greatest of all bodily pleasures.” Indeed, during the climax of the sex act, the orgasm, “all mental activity is suspended.” This lapse into irrationalism, Augustine maintains, is abhorrent to every friend of wisdom, as is the disobedience of the sexual organs to the volitional control of man.

Hence the basic question that so disturbed Augustine: Why is it that the penis, unlike other members of the body, is not actuated by man’s will but seems to have a will of its own? (I am being a bit more explicit than Augustine, but not by much.) Even those men who delight in illicit sex find that they lack control over their sexual responses. Erections spring up unbidden, often when they are unwanted, while sometimes failing to materialize when most needed – “so that though lust rages in the mind, it stirs not in the body.” Hence, lust, which “fails to obey the legitimate desire to beget offspring…also refuses to serve lascivious lust.” It is this refusal of the genitals to obey the biddings of reason, to subordinate themselves to moral purposes, that makes them shameful.

All this was the direct result of original sin -- the severing of reason and desire, which is most evident in our lack of control over our sexual responses.

Now comes the key question about prelapsarian man. Would Adam, prior to his fall into sin, have experienced these erratic and irrational erections? No, says Augustine, for it is written in Genesis, “They were naked and not ashamed.” This was so not because Adam and Eve were unaware of their nakedness, but “because nakedness was not yet shameful, because not yet did lust move those members without the will’s consent.” Adam, clothed with “the garment of grace,” lived in harmony with his flaccid penis, which did not obtrude itself at inappropriate times. He had no consciousness, therefore, of his member warring against his will.

But all this changed dramatically after the fall into sin. Stripped of God’s grace and in retribution for his sin, Adam began to experience a “shameless novelty” in the movement of his bodily member, and this is what made the nakedness of the first couple indecent. The first unsolicited erection made the surprised couple both observant and ashamed. (One suspects that Eve made the observation, after which Adam became embarrassed, but this is reading more than is warranted into Augustine’s text.)

Discomfited by Adam’s pesky erections, the blushing couple found it necessary to sew together fig leafs to cover their privy parts: “Shame modestly covered that which lust disobediently moved in opposition to the will, which was thus punished for its own disobedience.” According to Augustine, this explains the universal practice, which is found in all nations, of covering the “shameful parts” – an instinct so strong that some barbarians even bathe “with their drawers on.”

Whatever else we may think of Augustine’s interpretation, it does explain quite well the account in Genesis. Consider the statement that after Adam and Eve had sinned, “the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they were naked.” This had been taken by some Christians to mean that Adam and Eve were created blind – an interpretation that Augustine curtly dismisses, for Adam needed to see in order to name the animals. Augustine advances the more plausible theory that the previously innocent couple became aware of their nakedness by noticing something new, namely, Adam’s unruly penis that now saluted Eve of its own accord, without Adam’s consent.

Throughout his discussion, Augustine refers to the disobedient members of both Adam and Eve, though he is clearly thinking of Adam’s involuntary erections. Eve’s sexual responses, though involuntary, would not require the concealment of a fig-leaf garment (which Augustine likens to the belted aprons worn by Roman athletes), so we may wonder why it was necessary for her to don that outfit. This was probably deemed necessary to keep Adam from getting excited --hence the portrayal of women, found throughout the history of Christianity, of the female as temptress.

Would sexual intercourse have been engaged in by prelapsarian man, if Adam had not polluted human nature with original sin? Yes, says Augustine. God created two sexes, male and female, and commanded them to increase and multiply. Adam and Eve would have produced offspring through sexual intercourse, even if they had never sinned. But the act would have proceeded rationally, without lust and totally at the will’s beckoning. The means that Adam would have willed an erection when it came time to procreate, just as we voluntarily raise our arms to shake hands when greeting another person.

Thus does Augustine suggest that prelapsarian sex would not have culminated in the pleasure of an orgasm. And in a curious sidebar, he speculates that it might have been possible for Adam and Eve to engage in intercourse without breaking Eve's hymen, thereby preserving her physical virginity.

[This is where the draft ends. I winged the remainder of the lecture.]

[Dragonfly]

Not much fun there in Paradise. Thank God that we were kicked out of that hell hole.

[Jonathan]

Eve’s sexual responses, though involuntary, would not require the concealment of a fig-leaf garment (which Augustine likens to the belted aprons worn by Roman athletes), so we may wonder why it was necessary for her to don that outfit.

I have a friend who dated a woman whom he nicknamed "Niagara." Perhaps Eve's sexual responses were as profuse?

J

[George H. Smith]

Eve’s sexual responses, though involuntary, would not require the concealment of a fig-leaf garment (which Augustine likens to the belted aprons worn by Roman athletes), so we may wonder why it was necessary for her to don that outfit.

I have a friend who dated a woman whom he nicknamed "Niagara." Perhaps Eve's sexual responses were as profuse?

J

Thank you for sharing that information, Jonathan. My day would not have been complete without it.

[George H. Smith]

Not much fun there in Paradise. Thank God that we were kicked out of that hell hole.

On a related subject, Voltaire had this to say about heavenly paradise in an afterlife:

"One of our greatest Italian theologians, Piazza, informs us that the elect will forever sing and play the guitar. St. Thomas Aquinas assures us that the smell of the glorified bodies will be perfect, and will not be tainted by perspiration. This question has been profoundly treated by many other doctors of divinity.

"The resurrection of the dead, according to Saint Paul, will take place to the sound of the trumpet. There will have to be several trumpets, for thunder itself can hardly be heard more than seven or eight miles around. There is a quesion how many trumpets will be needed. The theologians haven't yet calculated the number, but they will."

Ghs

[George H. Smith]

At the risk of starting a flamewar, I should mention that during the remainder of this lecture, I pointed out some similarities between Augustine's theory of sex and that of Ayn Rand. I wasn't referring to similar conclusions, of course, but to the shared concern with the relationship between reason and sex.

Many years ago I attended a lecture by a prominent Objectivist whose name I cannot now recall with certainty, after 35 years. (I think he was Alan Gotthelf, but I'm not absolutely positive.) He had published an article on Aristotle's theory of romantic love, or something to that effect, and the main body of the talk, which was based on his paper, was very good.

But then came the Q&A, and that was a disaster. For example, he defended the view that homosexuality is immoral, because it fakes reality. Why? Because gay sex supposedly mimics heterosexual sex. (I swear that I am not making this up.)

But the worst was yet to come, as he expounded on the theme that one should only have sex with one's "highest value." And if one doesn't ever meet one's "highest value," the only moral thing to do is remain celibate.

It was here that my wife leaned over to me and whispered, "I'll bet he never gets laid." But I wanted to ask a serious question, so I raised my hand.

It seemed to me, I said, that "highest value" could be interpreted contextually; it didn't necessarily mean that there could be only one "highest value" in the full span of a person's life. (I elaborated in more detail, but the point should be clear.)

And what response did I get? This guy engaged in what I call "a psycho-epistemological twist." He berated me, in a sonorous tone and at considerable length, for my failure to understand the Objectivist theory of sex. He argued that if a man were able to get an erection with any woman other than his "highest value," this would be a sure indicator of a perverted psycho-epistemology.

I had asked my question in good faith, but I got annoyed as he droned on. I therefore resolved to respond in a frivolous manner that would provoke laughter from the audience, firm in my belief that some arguments deserve nothing more than ridicule.

Thus, when this guy finished and gave me a victorious Q.E.D. stare, I waited a few seconds and then said: "You know, I believe that your argument is the first philosophical defense of impotence that I've ever heard."

My response provoked a good deal of laughter, and there the discussion ended.

Ghs

[Selene]

Ghs:

Nice touch. Be brief. Especially with that level of condescending mental rigidity, well I guess there always has to be a compensation substitute.

Essentially, he answered questions just like Ayn did. What a shame,

Adam

[Xray]

At the risk of starting a flamewar, I should mention that during the remainder of this lecture, I pointed out some similarities between Augustine's theory of sex and that of Ayn Rand. I wasn't referring to similar conclusions, of course, but to the shared concern with the relationship between reason and sex.

I had similar thoughts when reading your article.

John Galt, AS, p. 1022: "Happiness is possible only to a rational man, the man who desires nothing but rational goals, seeks nothing but rational values, and finds joy in nothing but rational actions."

This statement implies that Rand's "rational man" would perform sex as a 'rational' action.

Imo Rand's theory of sex is no less bizarre than Augustine's.

Edited February 6, 2010 by Xray

[George H. Smith]

Essentially, he answered questions just like Ayn did.

Adam

Yes, indeed. This guy actually began his response to me with, "The very fact that you asked that question reveals...."

The remainder can be completed in various ways, but it usually amounts to "...how fucked up you truly are." This is what I meant by the "psycho-epistemological twist."

Ayn Rand, at least, had the charisma to pull off this stunt, but this guy had the charisma of a marshmallow, so the tactic was pathetic.

Ghs

[Selene]

At the risk of starting a flamewar, I should mention that during the remainder of this lecture, I pointed out some similarities between Augustine's theory of sex and that of Ayn Rand. I wasn't referring to similar conclusions, of course, but to the shared concern with the relationship between reason and sex.

I had similar thoughts when reading your article.

John Galt, AS, p. 1022: "Happiness is possible only to a rational man, the man who desires nothing but rational goals, seeks nothing but rational values, and finds joy in nothing but rational actions."

This statement implies that Rand's "rational man" would perform sex as a 'rational' action.

Imo Rand's theory of sex is no less bizarre than Augustine's.

Ms. Xray:

We all got it.

Rand BAD

Nice speaking with you again Ms. Xray - If you ever have an original thought about Ayn, it would die of loneliness.

Adam

Edited February 6, 2010 by Selene

[Philip Coates]

> this is a quickly written draft that I have not looked at for many years [GHS]

Actually it's quite clear, well-written, non-verbose, and informative (if there are typos I must have rushed past them, so taken was I with the events in Augustine's life). I've had "Confessions" and "City of God" sitting on my bookshelf for quite some time without reading them and your essay seems as if it would have to be a good synopsis of where the original deeply guilt-ridden Catholic soul is coming from.

Even though your essay must give away a lot from the former book, it actually makes me more interested in reading it and seeing inside this man, in part as an exercise in understanding certain types of inner life and because his worldview is widespread (today, probably in the Islamic world . . . much more than in modern, post-Enlightenment Christianity, which is very different from what it was in the Dark Ages . . . Requiescat in Pace, Thomas Aquinas.)

It's interesting how each step of normal, innocent (or acceptable in a child) behavior is given the blackest possible interpretation by him.

My only reaction is "wow!" and a sense of wonderment at what a foolish, foolish, twisted young man...

You should publish this (doesn't really need much if any editing) !!

Edited February 6, 2010 by Philip Coates

[Philip Coates]

> I attended a lecture by a prominent Objectivist whose name I cannot now recall with certainty, after 35 years. (I think he was Alan Gotthelf, but I'm not absolutely positive.) He had published an article on Aristotle's theory of romantic love, or something to that effect [George]

Yes, it would have to be Gotthelf. He had a lecture on love in which he contrasted Platonic Love and Aristotelian. ==>

http://www.aynrandbookstore2.com/products.asp?dept=65 -->

" Love and Philosophy: Aristotelian vs. Platonic (CD)

by Allan Gotthelf

Focusing on the contrasting conceptions of love held by Plato and Aristotle, Dr. Gotthelf maintains that a person's view of love—and his romantic choices—is linked to his metaphysics."

I don't remember other Oists lecturing about Love, except Branden had a whole course entitled the Psychology of Romantic Love.

[George H. Smith]

> I attended a lecture by a prominent Objectivist whose name I cannot now recall with certainty, after 35 years. (I think he was Alan Gotthelf, but I'm not absolutely positive.) He had published an article on Aristotle's theory of romantic love, or something to that effect [George]

Yes, it would have to be Gotthelf. He had a lecture on love in which he contrasted Platonic Love and Aristotelian. ==>

http://www.aynrandbookstore2.com/products.asp?dept=65 -->

" Love and Philosophy: Aristotelian vs. Platonic (CD)

by Allan Gotthelf

Focusing on the contrasting conceptions of love held by Plato and Aristotle, Dr. Gotthelf maintains that a person's view of love—and his romantic choices—is linked to his metaphysics."

I don't remember other Oists lecturing about Love, except Branden had a whole course entitled the Psychology of Romantic Love.

Yeah, that's the paper. It was definitely Gotthelf.

Not long after this lecture, I mentioned Gotthelf's "highest value" argument to Nathaniel Branden. He seemed surprised and assured me that Ayn Rand never defended that position.

Ghs

[George H. Smith]

My only reaction is "wow!" and a sense of wonderment at what a foolish, foolish, twisted young man...

I would not use these words to describe Augustine at any age. As much as I dislike many of Augustine's ideas and deplore the tremendous influence he had on western thought, I find him a brilliant and captivating thinker, and I understand him, especially in his earlier years, in a way that I understand no one else during his era. I can even relate to his internal struggles -- as, I think, can any intelligent and highly complex person. ("Complex" is the operative word here.)

I have read Augustine's Confessions -- the first and probably the greatest introspective autobiography ever written -- at least a dozen times (many more, if you count selective readings that add up), and each time I have found something that I overlooked previously. Augustine is brutally frank about his thoughts and feelings in a manner that few people ever are.

Consider this powerful passage where Augustine talks about the unexpected death of his closest friend:

"My heart grew somber with grief, and wherever I looked I saw only death. My own country became a torment and my own home a grotesque abode of misery. All that we had done together was now a grim ordeal without him. My eyes searched everywhere for him, but he was not there to be seen. I hated all the places we had known together, because he was not in them and they could no longer whisper to me 'Here he comes!' as they would have done had he been alive but absent for a while. I had become a puzzle to myself, asking my soul again and again 'Why are you downcast? Why do you distress me?' But my soul had no answer to give. If I said 'Wait for God's help,' she did not obey. And in this she was right because, to her, the well-loved man whom she had lost was better and more real than the shadowy being in whom I would have her trust. Tears alone were sweet to me, for in my heart's desire they had taken the place of my friend." (Penguin Classics ed., trans. R.S. Pine-Coffin, pp. 76-77. This is the most readable translation I know of.)

There are times when this passage has brought tears to my eyes, and anyone who has lost a close friend can surely relate to it. Moreover, any person who could pray to God, "Give me chastity, but not yet," is bound to be highly interesting.

I am about to leave for Decatur to hear Roger Bissell, so I need to stop here. There is more I want to say, so I will pick this up later.

Ghs

[Philip Coates]

George, my comments about foolish and twisted is based only on the ideas and reasoning you excerpted in "Augustine's Boner". Remember that I haven't read him firsthand yet.

> "Augustine is brutally frank about his thoughts and feelings in a manner that few people ever are."

This is valuable...and rare, especially when what one is admitting is embarrassing or negative.

And the passage of great loss you quote is powerful.

I wouldn't agree that any intelligent and complex person would necessarily have had the kind of inner conflicts, at least to such a tortured degree, that he had. You really can't generalize that widely about a wide range of people. For some life is a passage of relative serenity that intelligence aids or shows the way to. For some it is a brutal gauntlet, run underneath the cudgels of deep conflicts.

Edited February 7, 2010 by Philip Coates

[Selene]

My only reaction is "wow!" and a sense of wonderment at what a foolish, foolish, twisted young man...

I would not use these words to describe Augustine at any age. As much as I dislike many of Augustine's ideas and deplore the tremendous influence he had on western thought, I find him a brilliant and captivating thinker, and I understand him, especially in his earlier years, in a way that I understand no one else during his era. I can even relate to his internal struggles -- as, I think, can any intelligent and highly complex person. ("Complex" is the operative word here.)

I have read Augustine's Confessions -- the first and probably the greatest introspective autobiography ever written -- at least a dozen times (many more, if you count selective readings that add up), and each time I have found something that I overlooked previously. Augustine is brutally frank about his thoughts and feelings in a manner that few people ever are.

Consider this powerful passage where Augustine talks about the unexpected death of his closest friend:

"My heart grew somber with grief, and wherever I looked I saw only death. My own country became a torment and my own home a grotesque abode of misery. All that we had done together was now a grim ordeal without him. My eyes searched everywhere for him, but he was not there to be seen. I hated all the places we had known together, because he was not in them and they could no longer whisper to me 'Here he comes!' as they would have done had he been alive but absent for a while. I had become a puzzle to myself, asking my soul again and again 'Why are you downcast? Why do you distress me?' But my soul had no answer to give. If I said 'Wait for God's help,' she did not obey. And in this she was right because, to her, the well-loved man whom she had lost was better and more real than the shadowy being in whom I would have her trust. Tears alone were sweet to me, for in my heart's desire they had taken the place of my friend." (Penguin Classics ed., trans. R.S. Pine-Coffin, pp. 76-77. This is the most readable translation I know of.)

There are times when this passage has brought tears to my eyes, and anyone who has lost a close friend can surely relate to it. Moreover, any person who could pray to God, "Give me chastity, but not yet," is bound to be highly interesting.

I am about to leave for Decatur to hear Roger Bissell, so I need to stop here. There is more I want to say, so I will pick this up later.

Ghs

Mr. Smith goes to Decatur[now there is at least an essay in that title]:

I am also one who finds the North African philosopher/theologian intriguing. I will hope to learn more from someone who has read so much of him and is as intrigued as I was with what he was actually confessing to.

Most think it was his worldly pleasures.

This piece from the passage you quoted, why the female references with God?

But my soul had no answer to give. If I said 'Wait for God's help,' she did not obey. And in this she was right because, to her, the well-loved man whom she had lost was better and more real than the shadowy being in whom I would have her trust.

Glad to have your input to this forum.

Adam

[jeffrey smith]

This piece from the passage you quoted, why the female references with God?

But my soul had no answer to give. If I said 'Wait for God's help,' she did not obey. And in this she was right because, to her, the well-loved man whom she had lost was better and more real than the shadowy being in whom I would have her trust.

Glad to have your input to this forum.

Adam

Presenting the soul as female uniting with God as male is a very traditional set of imagery in Western spirituality, starting with the traditional interpretations of the Song of Songs (Oh, that he would kiss me with the kisses of his lips!) which picture the believer as the female partner and God as the male partner/King Solomon. It goes far beyond Augustine, and pops up in places that you don't necessarily look for it--for instance, several of Bach's cantatas contain duets or sequences of arias in which the soprano represents the believer and the basso/baritone represents God answering her or partnering her.

Jeffrey S.

[Selene]

Thanks Jeff:

City of God

http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/120101.htm

Book I

http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/120119.htm

Book XIX

It has been a long long time since I read this man.

Adam

[9thdoctor]

I feel like being a bit contrary here. I’ve read parts of the Confessions and concur about their literary quality, but if I had a TARDIS and no compunction about changing history, I’d make a mission of joining up with the Arian Vandals and torching this bastard’s library back in 430 AD. Wipe out all his major works. 800 years of Western history would have been much better for it. He was a book burner himself, fair’s fair. Before anyone suggests knocking him off in the 380’s instead, note that The Doctor isn’t a killer; even with fantasies you have to stay in character.

Augustine was referenced by Nancy Pelosi not too long ago, on the subject of abortion. She’s Catholic, and noted that he claimed that the soul enters the fetus after 90 days. She was criticised by bishops etc. for bringing this up, and a funny detail is that Augustine in fact claimed that the soul enters the fetus at 45 days in case of males, and 90 days for females. Great source to turn to for perspective on a contemporary issue!

[George H. Smith]

George, my comments about foolish and twisted is based only on the ideas and reasoning you excerpted in "Augustine's Boner". Remember that I haven't read him firsthand yet.

Point taken.

I don't want to leave the wrong impression. My personal interest in Augustine is confined mainly to his Confessions. His other great work, City of God -- a massive, sprawling work written to refute the pagan charge that decadent Christian values were responsible for the fall of Rome in 410 -- is interesting historically, but that's it.

Ghs

[George H. Smith]

Wipe out all his major works. 800 years of Western history would have been much better for it.

Counterfactual history is always tricky, but I can't really disagree with your statement. As I explained in "Philosophies of Toleraton" (in Atheism, Ayn Rand, and Other Heresies), Augustine was the premier theorist of religious persecution in the history of Christendom. The only thing in this area that can be said in his favor is that he opposed putting heretics and schismatics to death, which makes him comparatively better than Thomas Aquinas many centuries later.

Ghs

[BaalChatzaf]

I can no longer overcome the urge to add this to the saga of Augustine's Boner.

The archeologist, Phinius Thostle

Found a most intriguing fossil,

From the way it was bent

and the knot near the end,

twas the penis of Paul the Apostle.

Sowwy.

Ba'al Chatzaf