[The Bacon Guy]

Quote by: Epistemologist I think that there are still confounding factors that ought to be considered. For instance, this observational study conducted by Straus, et al had subjects from within a society where spanking is already viewed as a "taboo." That is, children who are spanked are sympathized with in their societies, which say that they have individualistic rights versus their parents' quasi-oppression. So, of course children in the study wouldn't adhere to the conditioning effects of the physical punishment because they and other biased people who support the charade of the anti-spanking New Age movement would see it simply as abuse and thus pointless violence.

The fact is that it has a very real potential to be harmful. Can you guarantee that spanking a particular child will not result in long term harm?

Quote by: Epistemologist Also, many of the studies that say spanking causes harm don't consider the fact that correlation doesn't necessarily mean causation. So, just because a subject who undergoes spanking treatment is sad doesn't mean he/she is sad because of the spanking. The controls in the studies and experiments are sometimes not sufficient to stop such confounding variables from influencing conclusions.

The confounding variable would have to be one which applied consistently in all studies and for all children studied. I don’t believe in coincidences like that.

Quote by: Epistemologist These imaginative techniques may work some of the time, but they're not as effective as spanking.

Prove it.

Quote by: Epistemologist Simply listing a wikipedia reference that has no references itself isn't sufficient proof per se.

I didn’t link to it as proof; I linked to it so people could educate themselves.

Quote by: Epistemologist I could also list studies that support spanking as not harmful but rather beneficial, such as those by Dr. Diana Baumrind, Dr. Elizabeth Owens, Dr. James Dobson, Dr. Robert Larzelere etc. In fact, a recent study by Baumrind was actually supported by Dr. Murray Straus, who is ironically the first guy you mentioned who did the study on spanking's pseudo-harmful effects.

Baumrind’s study was a criticism of the studies which claimed spanking to be harmful. It does not prove that spanking is beneficial, or even that it is not harmful.

Quote by: Epistemologist See what I said above about these studies. Also, I've mentioned from the beginning that damage may occur when the society the children live in convinces them that spanking is bad. It's not spanking that explicitly causes their harm, its the society per se.

What causes the harm is irrelevant. The harm occurs.

Quote by: Epistemologist Should I go over the basic psychological concept of conditioning? If you apply a negative stimuli to a subject when he/she/it performs a certain action, the subject will soon learn (n.b. be conditioned) not to do this action to avoid that stimuli.

There is no evidence to suggest that this is the case for spanking.

Quote by: Epistemologist Also, real parents could care less about equality when it comes to disciplining their kids and their kids' bona fide interests. As for justice, spanking is teleologically just because it supports the greater good.

Prove it.

Quote by: Epistemologist It's your opinion that spanking is wrong, and that's just as arbitrary and subjective as that of parents. However, parents have a large majority of other pro-spankers with that same arbitrary and subjective opinion in order to make spanking intersubjectively just.

Argumentum ad Populum.

Quote by: Epistemologist I realize that pointless, sadistic beating is wrong. But disciplinary spanking of children particularly in the developmental years should be allowed and is actually the best option for parents to exercise.

Prove it.