The statistic is pure invention for rhetorical purposes.

@IvoryBlackBishop: "Sexual ethics"

Is nothing safe from ethicists?

waltz to the grave hand-in-hand — god must be atheist

Lovely. I like that.

As of right now, I would honestly prefer playing a video game than trying to 'pick up' a woman at a strip club. — IvoryBlackBishop

One would hope that there are more choices than a strip club or a video game.

I'm 73. I enjoyed both a promiscuous gay sex life for 20 years and a settled gay relationship for 30 years. Both were satisfactory, but in different, and non-interchangeable ways. The pleasure of the hunt, the delight in anonymous sex (anonymous, but not meaningless, not exploitative; call it collaborative), the pleasure in home life with Bob, the mutuality of the close relationship -- it was all good.

Pairing up early in one's life, not having the experience of sharing in a variety of sexual styles, preferences, wishes, wants, etc., seems like an impoverished life.

What doesn't work well is freely having sex with different partners while trying to have a stable, one-on-one relationship. Some people can manage open and settled relationships (they have to be ambidextrous multitaskers) but 94.3% of the population can not manage it. It just doesn't end well, usually.

Bernie — Xtrix

Biden — Xtrix

The problem with both Bernie and Biden is that they are too old. I'm in my 70s; Bernie is 78. He will be 79 before he takes office. Perhaps his health is very robust and he will live to be 100, mentally sharp all the way. Perhaps he will collapse under the strain of what is an extremely demanding job. I like Sanders, I like what he proposes. But he is still too old.

Biden is just a little younger, not enough to make a difference. He is also too old.

Pete, on the other hand, is short on governmental service, and perhaps short on 'gravitas'. I'm glad a young gay guy is running for president, more power to him, but... kind of young and inexperienced.

In the 'good old days' candidates were not put through the kind of demolition derby the Democrats are running. The 'pros' decided who was going to run on the basis of various political factors. The smoke filled back room had a decided downside, but it wasn't all down.

Just because somebody thinks they could run the country is no reason for the party to let them run. Donald Trump is the prime example of what happens when that route is tried.

Who really thinks that a "democratic socialist" can command enough votes? I'm a socialist, but most people are not, and I just don't see a DSA candidate winning.

I have nothing against cat pictures. My preference is for dog pictures. Wasting time is, indeed, a natural human behavior; I have nothing against that either. I have nothing against "private property" as long as we mean "personal property" -- a home, a car, clothing, books, china, etc. Capitalism is about "capital property -- factories, newspapers, rental properties, land rents, railroads--all that stuff from which capital (wealth) is accumulated. That's the source of hard core exploitation (today: in the past other systems carried out exploitation).

One can object to "consumerism" and that becomes a problem for people when it gets out of hand and no longer serves the interests of the person doing the consuming. Buying stuff that doesn't make one particularly happy on credit (with high interest rates) is consumerism against the consumer. Getting people to buy stuff that doesn't and can't make their life better is just exploitation.

True enough: We can use media for our own purposes, but we do well to remember that the owners of media also have purposes, and quite often our welfare isn't one of them.

it "sells" and appeals to emotions over logic — IvoryBlackBishop

Of course. Logic is a fine facility for some kinds of problems, but entirely unsuited for cultural appreciation and participation. The opposite is true as well -- sometimes we really have to try very hard to screen out emotional response.

I just want to emphasize that capitalism exploits everyone in every available venue--work, family life, entertainment, leisure, etc. As Marx said, "Under capitalism, everything is reduced to the cash connection."

Capitalism didn't invent exploitation -- that's been around for millennia. What capitalism does is intensify exploitation and make it ubiquitous--and more efficient.

"People" don't like talking about how capitalism degrades life. They would rather talk about sexism, racism, homophobia, xenophobia, blah blah blah, rather than talking about the herd of elephants in the room. Back in the day when there were 3 networks and nothing else, people spent a lot of time criticizing television. most people didn't realize that the IMPORTANT parts of television programming were the commercials; the programs were just bait.

The relationship of users to media is basically the same. The POINT of Facebook, Google, Yahoo, et al is to put advertising in front of eyeballs; that's how they make money. I use Google Search all the time and value it highly -- but search is the bait. Sharing pictures of your cat with the world is the bait for Facebook. At least with pornography, the product and the bait are one and the same thing.

Our use of the internet (what we look at, when, for how long, whether we click or not, all that stuff) is the product that is sold to advertisers. Everything we do socially and economically that can be tracked and valued is tracked and valued. That's why your cell phone keeps track of where you are at every moment of the day (assuming you have not disabled location functions): Where you go and when is very useful information to companies that want to sell you stuff. Of course it's also useful for governments which might have an unsavory interest in what you do with your time--when, where, and with whom.

I'm just having a bit of fun at his expense. — Frank Apisa

They also served who were the butt of somebody else's amusement. Carry on.

For me, "atheism" privately means "rejecting the presentation of the God-concept that I grew up with". It isn't that I believe that god(s) can not exist or do not exist or that they may exist but I don't believe it. It is rather that I reject a particular kind of judgmental, picayune meddling deity. I have room to believe in a more distant deity who may be loving, may be all knowing and all that, but who does not intervene on a regular basis. For conventional Christians that is, of course, a heresy. It amounts to rejecting God altogether, from their perspective.

This observation might not be worth much, but "atheist" appeared in print far more often in the early 1800s than more recently. That from Google Ngram, which charts word-in-print frequency over time, usually not further back than 1800. "The term atheism was derived from the French athéisme, and appears in English about 1587. An earlier work, from about 1534, used the term atheonism. Related words emerged later: deist in 1621, theist in 1662, deism in 1675, and theism in 1678. At that time "deist" and "deism" already carried their modern meaning."

Words like "atheist" are usually brought into English by a word-coining author. The 16th - 17th centuries were an active period of word coinage.

by buying the video game, I am indirectly supporting a media establishment that obviously objectifies women in some way to garner a profit. — darthbarracuda

By participating in the capitalist economy, you--we--are supporting an establishment that ruthlessly objectifies and exploits men, women, children, animals--the very earth itself. Media is but a part od the grand scheme.

Sex sells, and humans enhance their market value by whatever tricks in the book are available to them. Back in the day before proper trousers became common, men wore leggings that did not join at the waist. The genitals were not covered, so other arrangements were made. One of the other arrangements was the 'cod piece' -- initially a mere piece of cloth which was developed into a showy cup that made it appear the man had a huge and erect penis. Sexual advertisement and objectification in action--by men.

Women--and men--both engage in sexual advertisement as a form of self-advancement self-enhancement. Given instances might not be quite as obvious as the cod piece or the artfully bared breast. And why would we NOT engage in self-enhancing, self-advancing deployment of clothing or tattoos or bared skin?

BTW, I got a little rush seeing some old names on the first page of the posts, then I noticed that the thread was 3 years old. How time flies!

IvoryBlackBishop, I think Judaka pretty much nailed it. Conformity and non-conformity can both be either principled or unprincipled. Then too, deviation is probably a necessary step on the way to good individuation. Mass-conformity (the cheering crowds at a Nazi rally in Nuremberg for instance, or Trump's fan-base) are a major downside of conformity.

This is a good topic, imho.

"Lag time" between the recognition that resource depletion or population growth might be a problem, and then deployment of effective solutions is our #1 problem. We know CO2 is a extremely serious problem, but changing the energy production system, transportation system, and other systems that produce CO2 is extraordinarily inconvenient to everyone concerned, and it isn't happening, even as the CO2 levels continue to rise.

Contending for the #1 problem title is the tendency of selfish interest to continue being selfish, whatever the future consequences. So it is that oil companies continue to expand infrastructure, auto production rises, highways continue to be built (as opposed to mass transit systems), and so on and so forth.

BTW, I liked the video. Thanks.

Happiness is an emotional state--not just simply that, but that among other things. Can you choose emotions like love, rage, fear, etc? Here you are, sitting in your comfy chair on a bright, sunny California day. You feel 'ok'. Nothing much is bothering you. Can you, at that moment, decide to feel rage, like throwing a switch? No.

Our emotions don't just pop up, like mushrooms. Circumstances, events, various factors bring them about. If you went to the grocery store and, while there, @unenlightened's mad axewoman entered the Safeway and started whacking people (before she was shot by the security guard), you might very well feel a great deal of fear--assuming you weren't one off the victims, put permanently beyond feeling anything.

Concersely, if, while standing in the checkout line at the mad axewoman-free grocery store, you struck up a fascinating conversation with a really interesting person (not the mad axewoman), and the conversation continued for an hour or so outside the store, you would probably feel contented, happy, or pleased--any number of positive emotions.

There are many things you can choose to do (quit a horrible job, end a horrible relationship, do vigorous exercise, practice the piano, make a chocolate cake...) and some of these acts might contribute to feelings of happiness, at least for a while.

Re-engineering different thoughts and feelings might be a losing proposition. I'm not sure how successful we can be at that game. My guess is that people who are happy are lucky in their arrangement of thoughts, beliefs, habits, and practices, and are blessed with a tendency to feel 'happy'.

Happy when the mad axeman asks you to bare your neck? — unenlightened

Since when does the mad axeman ask first?

Thanks for your passionate post.

What I fear is that, even with the will to save ourselves and the ecology on which we depend, we may be unable to do so. We are too dependent on petroleum and its various chemical derivatives. There is no viable alternative waiting in the wings.

What about wind and solar? Nuclear generation? All good - BUT these sources of power do not deliver the chemical feedstock which coal and petroleum supply. Gasoline is a terrifically convenient, portable source of energy. Its replacement is not just around the corner.

We could, theoretically, abruptly abandon petroleum, the auto, the airplane, coal generated electricity, large-scale mechanized agriculture, consumer-driven industry, and so on, but slamming down the brakes would be to commission megadeath (resulting from the massively discombobulated economy). Massive death may occur anyway, but from omission (doing nothing).

in other words, we are totally screwed--not this week, not next year, but in a matter of decades.

why is it that they don't impose the same exacting standards for their leaders (presidents, senators, governors, etc)? — TheMadFool

One reason is that "leadership" is sort of ineffable. Can you describe for us what traits and features the perfect (or even half-ways tolerable) leader would have? What kind of leader(s) do you want?

I'm not sure to what extent "leaders" are born and to what extent they are made. Then there are their followers. Followers have something to do with the behavior of leaders. So do "stakeholders". Every corporation and rich SOB that makes a big donation to a political campaign has a hook in the elected official. Hitler was financed; he didn't just run things based on his innate charm.

My guess is that certain inborn traits, coupled with playground experiences, life in families, classroom experiences, class-linked experiences, and so on go into making leaders. Then too, different circumstances require different kinds of leaders. A country thrust into a war (like, by being invaded) needs one type of leader; a country suffering from severe economic depression needs another kind of leader, perhaps.

I wish we knew how to get the kinds of leader we need.

No, schools are places to keep children occupied so their parents can work, if any learning takes place it's a bonus, and the subjects are those thought most appropriate to a colonial ideal which are sorely in need of updating, not anything to do with importance, otherwise they would be computing, economics, household maintenance, and organisational skills at the very least. — Isaac

There is, sad to say, a lot of truth in your statement. Schools have been described as management of the masses, regulation of the labor pool, keeping youth off the streets where they might interfere with the gears of capitalism, etc. Two caveats:

a) the children of the elite receive excellent educations, as do some others who will fill positions serving the interests of the elite
b) "school" is less important now than it was in the past (this itself is a dated observation) because 24/7 mass media now shapes people into the kinds of consumers that are needed.

FWIW, I never meant this to be an argument about the merits of small government, just about what exactly people mean by that, as illustrated by the argument over UBI I related earlier. — Pfhorrest

"Small government" is code for those who wish to endow government with no capacity to interfere with their particular set of interests. So, those who resent programs of environmental regulation (which definitely interferes with some profit making enterprises), small government has no mandate to regulate use of water, land, and air. For those who resent programs of social benefit (everything from Social Security to Head Start programs, Medicare, Medicaid, welfare, etc.) they would like to see a government too small to be able to raise sufficient revenue to carry out these programs. (In fact, Social Security was resented and suits were launched against it -- as well as against Medicare, Medicaid, etc.)

"Small Government" is usually not called for in the face of military procurement (which benefits corporations in the businesses of supplying military equipment); it usually isn't called for by farmers receiving substantial subsidies.

"That which governs best governs least" sounds attractive, but I think most people usually want government available enough, and powerful enough, to assist them effectively. The population of people who want government to help them includes both billionaires and those who are abjectly poor.

why is damage to the body or satiation accompanied by a qualitative feeling rather than simply being perception — Enrique

It seems obvious enough: We experience sensations with emotions (and 'qualitative' assessment) because our brains have evolved to do precisely that.

The many physical sensations we can experience (pleasure, cold, heat, pain, pressure, hunger, tickling, satiation, etc.) are interpreted in the light of meanings which are assigned. Various perceptions will be interpreted with more or less emotion and qualitative evaluation, depending on the meaning that can be assigned to a perception. A sense of alarm might be registered as you watch the tally on your groceries greatly exceed what you expected. The sensations of desired sexual contact are likely to be received positively. The usually unpleasant sensations associated with a dental drill may be welcome, in the light o the severe toothache which brought you to the dentist.

Fortunately, we do not experience everything with rich emotional or qualitative interpretation. A large share of our perceptions are received quite mechanically. A great deal of perception is utilitarian,. the numbers on gauges in a factory or lab are likely to be perceived in a utilitarian fashion, without feeling.

Presumably some animals with very simple brains do perceive in a very functional S/R manner. A simple worm, for instance, doesn't have enough neurons to do more than a simple SR. I'm not sure what insect brains are like; does a grasshopper feel anything? Could be, don't know. But once we get into larger more complex brains, perceptions become more complex 

What the Trump, Putin, Xi, et al administrations show is that a rather large pile of crap is compatible with the best of all possible worlds formula. What we have here is the most improvable of worlds.

But I am just saying that not everyone who likes living is the village idiot. — simeonz

Of course; I agree. Actually, I rather enjoy living; I don't agree with Schopenhauer1's consistently (and long-time) downbeat view. I used to feel pretty crappy about life-as-we-know-it, and as far as I can tell, life is at least as crappy as it was 20 years ago. But I feel better about life. Why? Don't know, really. I just started feeling better, one year, and it has continued on for the last 7.

But still, even though

In every so many ways, the world is an unsatisfactory place.
Happiness is probably not in the cards.
Nobody asked to be here, but here we are--for a while.
The cosmos doesn't care. — Bitter Crank

I am presently happy. That may change at any time -- bad things can happen that spoil the pleasant garden party.

barring cliched suicide responses — schopenhauer1

Shirley there must be fresh and novel methods!

you do care — simeonz

Who is it that is repeating these lies and slanders about me?

Well, sure, I care--a little bit, anyway; medication helps. But the cosmos definitely doesn't give a rat's ass that I care. The reason is that the cosmos can't care. The spheres are all silent. They spin. End of their story.

if things are that bad, why not just check out. — simeonz

Damned if I know. But I wasn't proposing suicide, anyway. I was merely suggesting one way that one can avoid making the situation worse.

My personal view: Only the most insensitive, unimaginative dolt would think this is a wonderful world after a careful perusal of life as we know it. Not just for us, but for everything else. But there is a time to rip off scabs and a time to refrain from ripping off the scabs on our wounds. Schop seems to be a serial scab ripper, if he even leaves his wounds alone long enough for a scab to form.

You're here; we're here. Get used to it. Really, because...

In every so many ways, the world is an unsatisfactory place.
Happiness is probably not in the cards.
Nobody asked to be here, but here we are--for a while.
The cosmos doesn't care.

One can flail away at the unfairness of life's ingravescent inimicalities, but they are not going to go away. So Schop, find a place that is not too awful and endure the bad situation. It will all be over before you know it.

why have resilience and endurance? — simeonz

Because it doesn't make a bad situation worse by figuratively ramming one's head into a virtual brick wall.

Just wondering what this drama is all about. — Frank Apisa

It's not a very good drama. Boooooring,

In order for you to assert that "'this' is the best of all possible worlds" you presumably have knowledge about the rest of all possible worlds. How many possible worlds do you know of?

Is art a mirror for reality, or a hammer with which to change it? Bertolt Brecht asked.

Your report that you feel anxious is a strong indication that you do, in fact, exist. The non-existent feel nothing. They do not engage in this sort of solipsistic word play, either. So you most likely exist -- as much as any of us exist.

Voters themselves are, unfortunately, rather ignorant -- republican or democrat. — Xtrix

Are they actually so ignorant? 99% of the time, voters are being asked to vote for one ruling class candidate against another. They are not being asked whether the local power plant is sending too much CO2 up the stack. They aren't being asked whether neonicotinoids should be sprayed on crops, wiping out tons of insects. They aren't being asked to make specific decisions through voting.

What the electorate is asked to do is to vote for candidates they think/hope/wish will do something good for them (the voter) but which does not happen, much more often than not. Do voters have a lot of stupid ideas floating around in their heads. Sure they do -- but nothing as grandiose and ruinous as the stupid ideas floating around in the heads of the ruling class who are running things.

That "voters are stupid" is something of a class smear. Most voters are working class, by virtue of their composing by far the largest segment of potential voters. Dismissing most people as stupid leaves you with the narcissists, lunatics, megalomaniacs, and manipulating creeps who want to run things.

I prefer the ruling class smear: There is much more evidence at hand to support their bad reputation.

BTW, how do you happen to be exempt from your sweeping generalization?

You might find this interesting:

Quillette has a nice article on some books one should read which will annoy politically correct people--books like Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell or The Good Earth by Pearl Buck. The books the article recommends are all great reads.

So, Celeste Ng writes, “It’s difficult for me to explain how much I hate this book [The Good Earth].” And then she goes on to mention, among other things, “the weirdness that arises from a Westerner writing about a colonized country.” Ms. Ng was born in Pittsburgh, PA, grew up in Shaker Heights, OH, and attended nothing but exclusive American schools, including Harvard University. Ms. Buck, on the other hand, was taken to China by her American missionary parents when she was five months old. She was raised largely by a Chinese nanny, spoke Chinese before she spoke English, and spent most of the first 40 years of her life in China.

Why, then, would Buck not be entitled to write about China?

The author notes that if Gone With the Wind had been written by a man, it would have ended the search for The Great American Novel. Since a woman wrote it, it was consigned to the 'romance' category.

It is a terrific read.

Another anti-human — fishfry

Stop that!

Nobody is longing for mass deaths. The reason for talking about mass deaths is to impress on policy makers minds that action on climate change is long over due. Under ideal circumstances, we could feed, house, and care for a significantly larger population. BUT, Fishfry, and you know this, the circumstances before us are far from ideal and are steadily deteriorating, The chaos of global warming is cutting the ground out from under us.

If mass death owing to starvation or disease occur, it will be the fault of the capitalist establishment who decided to fuck the world and make as much money as possible in the interim. That part IS in human hands. Once we have wrecked the environment, mass death won't be in our hands any more, and environmentalists sorrow over that hideous prospect.

I view that event as a horrible consequence of corporate and government ostriches sticking their heads up their asses.

If you want to pin the "antihuman" label on someone, hang it on the CEOs of Exxon and other energy companies, the CEOs transportation manufacturers, the oil drillers and coal diggers. Hang it on Donald Trump and his counterparts in many nations who are doing virtually nothing to forestall climate warming.

Overpopulation is a myth. I hope you at least glanced at the two links I gave, which make the case that the real problem is underpopulation. You illustrate the problem I have with many environmentalists. You dream of billions of people dying a horrible death. Environmentalism is literally a death cult. — fishfry

It would be nice if we could support any size population. We can't. We are up against declining marginal returns on agriculture and fisheries.

Nobody wants to see billions of people dying horrible, or even pleasant deaths. If billions die, it won't be because environmentalists wanted that to happen. It will happen because the carrying capacity of the planet failed to produce enough of what the added billions of people need. It isn't in human hands! We will all be subject to nature's culling operation. It won't be just "those people" it will be "us people".

The Chinese program did work -- fewer children. The problem is that it produces a mushroom-shaped population distribution -- a large cap of elderly people supported on a narrow stem of working-age people,

The Chinese program was deliberate, but other countries have ended up with the same problem without imposing any such imitations.

It's just an unavoidable problem of shrinking populations. As young people become more affluent they have fewer children. That's all it takes.

Adaptations can be made. Many people work in jobs manufacturing superfluous products or providing services people can do without. Providing services to elderly people will have to become a more dominant paid job activity.

As for reducing excess population, nature will provide solutions as human capacity to deal with global crises decreases. Remember: Nature bats last.

regardless of the nuance of the thread — Bartricks

Nuance?

how many times a street person gets laid on an annual basis — god must be atheist

I can sympathize. I haven't gotten laid in a long time. Seems like there should be an initiative to provide safe and effective annual visits to a... service provider for under-served populations. Something -- a massage and a hand job at least.

Did the Happy Hooker have a special interest in social services for the homeless? After all, wasn't she a high-end service provider?

The original Jewish messianic myth did not include anything about the forgiveness of sin. — Gnostic Christian Bishop

So?

That may very well be true, but the early church did not adopt the Jewish messianic myth as whole cloth. In the theology and liturgy of the church Jesus became the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world...

Trump, on the other hand, is more like Judas.

We clearly disagree about identity, and what makes a woman a woman and what makes a man a man. That's OK, we don't have to agree.

When I say sex lies deeper, I mean it is defined separately to one's appearance (e.g. hair length, genitals, a particular chromosome or not), in terms of one’s sex itself. — TheWillowOfDarkness

I understand what you are saying, but I can not agree with it.

Chromosomes (which are groupings of DNA) are the basis of sex (as far as I know). The sex-linked chromosomes determine sex. What determines sexuality (gay, straight, fetishist, celibate, whatever) is another kettle of fish. Certain aspects of appearance (certainly NOT hair length) are determined by the chromosomes: ovaries/uterus or testes/penis, and numerous other sex-linked characteristics.

I don't know where the basis of sex could lie, deeper or not, if it was not in the DNA groupings of chromosomes. For all but a small fraction of people (far less than 1%) the XX and XY chromosomes agree with the person's self-conception of their sex (separate from sexuality). "Medical authority figures in the United States most often quote a prevalence of 1 in 30,000 for MtF transsexualism and 1 in 100,000 for FtM transsexualism." (University of Michigan)

That a small number of people's chromosomes do not match their perceived sex does not negate the principles of how sex is determined physically.

When I say sex lies deeper, I mean it is defined separately to one's appearance (e.g. hair length, genitals, a particular chromosome or not), in terms of one’s sex itself. It is not a status obtained by having one sort of appearance or another, but a substantial feature itself. — TheWillowOfDarkness

If that works for you, fine. To me it sounds non-sensical. In my experience, men who look like men (general physical characteristics, specifics of penis, testicles, beard, body hair, manner-of-being-in-the-world) also act and identify as men. The same (different features) goes for women. Not 100% of the time, but more than 99%. Maybe I hang around with an unusually conventional group of people, but I don't think that is the case.

It IS the case that men and women can perform many roles traditionally assigned to the opposite. Men can be effective nurses, women can be effective soldiers (so reports have it, anyway). Some men are homebodies, and some women are out carousing all night. But female soldiers and all-night carousers generally think of themselves as women. Male nurses and homebodies continue to them of themselves as men.

Were society organized differently (in other cultures it has been) men and women occupy roles which in the US are oppositely assigned. For instance, women in many countries do heavy outdoor work, not exclusively, but consistently.

It is my impression that you are NOT talking about gender-linked occupational roles -- like only men get to be bricklayers and only women get to be nurses.

I do think you understate the mental issues of the homeless — Hanover

I may not have emphasized the severity of mental illness in my response, but MI certainly is a factor in helping homeless people. The point of housing first programs is that the assistance which can be provided seriously mentally ill patients is much more effective IF they live indoors. Like most people, the mentally ill do better if they have a secure, fixed place to live, everything else being equal. It is very hard to provide service to people who are living on the street (because of the stresses involved in homelessness and because of their movement from place to pace.

The same goes for addiction; the same goes for homeless people who do not have the complicating factors of MI or CD.

You're describing today's extended stay hotel — Hanover

True, lots of people are living in motels--which even if it is a ratty, run-down operation is still a relatively expensive option. There were a few SROs in Minneapolis, up to... maybe 20 years ago, when the last of them were converted back to upscale operations or torn down, and yes, they had bathrooms. But I've read of SROs in NYC, for instance, where they didn't have baths. These were, obviously, old buildings and the dates of operation were a while ago.

The question is what do you do for those who can't do for themselves? The answer is that you hope there's someone to do for them, which is in best case a family member, but usually an underpaid, overworked, and maybe not fully qualified government worker who is herself one paycheck away from eviction. — Hanover

Indeed! Housing with services isn't a cheap option. Housing costs money, and adequate staffing (in terms of pay and qualifications) is also expensive. If you are going to have one staff per 100 homeless, MI/CD clients, you might as well not bother, even if that one staff is a combination of Florence Nightengale, Mother Teresa, and Wonder Woman.

Then how did it become a part of Christian teachings? — BrianW

Well, people like Irenaeus and St. Augustine (and numerous others) were intimately involved in building up the Christian community, and teaching what the Gospels and St. Paul meant. Christianity didn't spring from Jesus' head like Athena did from Zeus's head. It was built up on a gospel foundation, and it was taught to people, and teaching involves elaboration. It wasn't created in a vacuum; there were various varieties of Christian thinking, some of them doctrinally incompatible with each other. There were also influences from the culture in which Christianity was developed.

narrative of salvation despite having been designed outside of original scriptural literature — BrianW

Well, I don't think its fair to say "outside of original scriptural literature". Rather, it was based on the scriptural literature. Look, the crucifixion was 'scandalous'. Here you have this man, Jesus, getting nailed up and killed. The scandal is that Jesus was thought to be God incarnate, (an idea worked out after his death), so an extraordinary scandalous event requires an extraordinary explanation, The solution was the Lamb of God sacrificed (like lambs were sacrificed in the temple) to redeem a sinful world.

All this may be frustrating, because people tend to think there was a straight line from Jesus to the Church as they know it. There is a line, but it isn't all that straight forward.

Over time, the Church elaborated its theology. That's what normally happens in religion -- theology is developed over time.

Some people like esoteric theology; some people like origami.