Factual errors don't make your position better.
If you want to support the humanist position all you need to do is to connect it to the evolutionist data.
YOU need to explain and support whatever position it is that you keep dancing around. I very patiently went through the entire article you posted and wrote in detail why I do not think it supports a case for spanking - the subject of this thread..
Here is our disagreement. The OP is disciplining children, the example chosen in the OP is child spanking. My view.
Your view is that anything other than spanking is not appropriate for the topic discipline for children. Under cover of that narrow view you think you have answered why the article I selected doesn't address child spanking. You haven't.
Child spanking is one of many corporal forms of punishment which you acknowledge with your reference to UN policy which goes so far as to advocate removal of all violent behavior by adults with children, violence being any form of physical disciplining treatment of children including, in my Humble opinion, unwanted touching by adults.
You are sending mixed messages. Is spanking the only behavior you consider or do you consider any behavior you use to answer my presentation, violent shaking, killing, as suitable topic for discussion discipline for children?
The article I submitted goes to the point that humans as evolved beings are suited to use of force, including use of force in training and disciplining children. Use of force is common among animals, some of which is well beyond norms we find appropriate in modern society except when that society is under pressure of starvation or war. Then humans revert back to traditions used as recently the present, selling, killing, children who are a burden on family survival. This illustrated to me as recently as last night by a Law & Order repeat episode where Russian children were 'rescued' from being set out as wolf food in Russia to be sold to Americans who could provide the medical care they needed. Obviously this is not common, but, it is enough for writers to produce a well researched show laying out the entire situation.
Yes I refer to fiction here, but, it illustrates points made as well in japan, China, India, Iran, Brazil, Mexico, etc. where children are murdered or left to die just to keep more food, on the table, increase prestige, for productive family members.
The point of all this. We aren't in a position to attack spanking nor remove violence from child training or discipline. Primarily such is unreasonable, in my view, because we are a violent species with violent predispositions (the reason for my use of that particular article).
I try to guide you off of approaches that are just going to be counter productive, probably just poking sand down a hole. Rather we should doing something that will reduce violence coming from the social top down as it appears that all things that contribute to human cultures becoming a more accepting, less violent seem to come (My reason for providing you with Pinker's book of trends in human violence). Punishing isn't good for anybody. Its bad for children its bad for parents.
As scientists we need to get at root causes that can be addressed so overall violence, the goal of the UN group you mentioned, to which I've been trying to focus you since. The UN approach, seemingly the banning of violent behavior in adults toward children is very wrong headed. One doesn't eliminate bad behavior with bad behavior as a control.
Look at authority. With authority we can have laws, ethics, responsibility, and even democracy, embedded in individuals through training, control (governments, laws, armies, police, social systems, etiquette, implied threat of punishment, and the like. Rather than focus on individuals through law and individual training we can set policy, develop icons of behavior, evoke social trends, enact laws, giving substance to the idea that we are against violent behavior as parents toward children.
Use social pressure rather than force. We should not use violent behavior on parents to suppress their tendencies, instead we substitute positive alternatives and rewards for supporting and motivating children to be accepting and positive toward others. We are encouraged to act a models. We can set models for acceptance that take into account our extreme capabilities for finding difference and tagging such as threat.
If we go after a symptom rather than a goal, parental child spanking instead of using reward for exhibiting shared responsibility for reducing violence and exhibiting positive characteristics as parents to our children, we make accomplishment of our shared goal for a less violent, safer, population more remote.
