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What do I tell my kids?
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Fritzo
Lifer
WTF?
1) Again, the Catholic Church does not want condoms used because sex is for procreation, not recreation, with a person you are married to.
2) If "people in Africa" were to follow this rule, there would be no AIDS in Africa.
3) If you're not Catholic, you don't follow the Catholic rules, so it's moot anyway.
Do you honestly think the Pope has some kind of naval blockade trying to prevent condoms from reaching Africa? Thier whole problem is lack of education and poverty, not religious beliefs. They're not Catholic---they don't follow Catholic tradition---so they're doing their own thing. It's not working out very well for them though.
As for "Squashing tribal cultures", I'm not sure I can see a reference there that isn't over 400 years old.
Wow. I'm trying to have a civil discussion about this and you really come off like a smug ass.
Atomic Playboy
Lifer
Ummm... why did you put quotes around "people in Africa?" Are you trying to suggest via sarcasm that there are no people in Africa? I can't stop reading this line trying to figure out what you meant, because everytime I read through it I imagine a frat boy doing air quotes with his fingers while he says "people in Africa," and then a black guy kicks his ass for being racist.
So what was your intention there?
manowar821
Diamond Member
I would teach them that faith is foolish. That in order to figure out life's little mysteries, we cannot be held back by fact-less "truth", because if you cannot prove something, you cannot disprove it either... It gets in the way of facts and logic.
There is no reason to "believe" in anything. If there is evidence to back something up, you can think that it's real, until something better comes along. Everything we know is theory. Everything we "believe" is false.
Tell them that people sometimes spend their entire lives trying to figure out the secrets of the cosmos, and that there is absolutely nothing wrong with saying... "Well I just don't frickin know!"
This is exactly the opposite of what you want to do, don't listen to fools like JS80. The last thing we need is more dogma.
There is no reason to "believe" in anything. If there is evidence to back something up, you can think that it's real, until something better comes along. Everything we know is theory. Everything we "believe" is false.
Tell them that people sometimes spend their entire lives trying to figure out the secrets of the cosmos, and that there is absolutely nothing wrong with saying... "Well I just don't frickin know!"
This is exactly the opposite of what you want to do, don't listen to fools like JS80. The last thing we need is more dogma.
SphinxnihpS
Diamond Member
The answer to the OP's question in contained in the book, The Glass Bead Game, by Herman Hesse.
SphinxnihpS
Diamond Member
The fact that your brain recognizes patterns in seemingly chaotic/random occurences is the crown jewel of evolution, AND the reason why you see evidence for the divine where there is NONE.
zinfamous
No Lifer
again, this is exactly the point. It doesn't matter WHY the Church condemns condom use, b/c the natives don't give squat about the Church's reasons. They'll continue to engage in sex for recreation; moreso than the other millions of Catholics on this planet that dont' give a shit about the Church's official stance on the role of sex. Meanwhile, this criminal policy is largely responsible for the perpetuation of this horrible disease.
The church has no business wiping their hands of responsibility for allowing HIV to run rampant simply b/c they claim that their reasons are unrelated.
that argument is terribly naive.
yours truly
Golden Member
tell your kids, all paths lead to god.
use an example, eg, when they go to school, the road they choose to get there is the right one. but the other children get to school from other areas and take different directions, which is appropriate for them. tell them theres no wrong way
simple... 8)
use an example, eg, when they go to school, the road they choose to get there is the right one. but the other children get to school from other areas and take different directions, which is appropriate for them. tell them theres no wrong way
simple... 8)
NikolaeVarius
Lifer
Anthropic Principle my Friend
Christian Ideology is hamperig Condom distribution, use, and other AIDS prevention techniques in Africa. We refused to fund places that don't promote abstinence, and send over missionaries that say condoms are bad.
NikolaeVarius
Lifer
Shit, Double post
NikolaeVarius
Lifer
Okay, here. Religion affects Africa directly and indirectly. It affects them through normal missionaries saying that Condoms are bad. And it affects US foreign policy toward Africa where we say that our religious ideologies say that Condoms are bad, so we won't give you any, or fund programs.
In 2003 President Bush Created PEPFAR?the President?s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief? to treat and fight the spread of HIV. Numerous ideological restrictions within the plan undermine its effectiveness
Peter Gill, author of Body Count: How they turned AIDS into a catastrophe, ?How not to banish HIV,? New Scientist, May 6, 2006, p. lexis
What is wrong with the prevention strategy? The flaw is the US government's commitment to a policy of sexual abstinence and marital fidelity. A report by the US Government Accountability Office says that for every dollar PEPFAR spends on condoms to prevent infection, it is spending two dollars on promoting abstinence and fidelity. Much of the money goes to church groups, or to major advertising campaigns. For example, visitors to Uganda are greeted on the airport road with a huge hoarding, paid for by the US, showing a wholesome young woman and the words, "She's keeping herself for marriage. What about you?" This is America's official ABC policy in action: Abstinence, Be Faithful and Condoms, in that order of priority.George Bush maintains that "abstinence works every time". He can hardly be contradicted on that, but the important question is this: is campaigning for abstinence and fidelity, to the significant exclusion of condom promotion, the right way to tackle HIV in Africa? The US position is based almost entirely on the Ugandan experience, where HIV prevalence was brought down dramatically in the 1990s. President Yoweri Museveni, then a charismatic ex-guerrilla leader, did better than any other African leader in warning his people about AIDS and urging them to adopt a "zero-grazing" approach to their sex lives.
But speak to Uganda's senior public health officials and they will tell you that their success had just as much to do with condoms as with "zero-grazing", and that the current situation, where US-funded evangelical groups are marginalising and often condemning the use of condoms, is ruining Uganda's chances of sustaining its success. This is not helped by the Bush administration giving priority funding to American and African evangelical groups, which are allowed to conduct AIDS prevention programmes that do not even mention condoms.The US's moralising attitude does not stop at ABC. Agencies taking US money to work on AIDS have to sign an undertaking "explicitly opposing prostitution and sex trafficking". In other words, they must formally condemn a trade in which many of their most vulnerable clients are forced to work. There's no denying the evil of sex trafficking, but prostitution is a dismaying feature of poverty throughout the developing world, and unless Bush is prepared to eradicate poverty first, this policy is counterproductive.
Another counterproductive policy is the Congressional ban on funding needle-exchange programmes for intravenous drug users, which remains in force at a time when some of the world's worst AIDS epidemics are being driven by drug use. There is overwhelming evidence that "harm-reduction" programmes are effective and do not encourage greater drug use, but for almost 20 years the American "Just Say No" camp has continued to hold the line.In extending their fundamentalist fervour into the area of sexual morality and public health, this lobby has ensured that three years on from that stirring State of the Union speech, George Bush has compromised his often admirable efforts to "turn the tide" against AIDS.
Uganda is often cited as a place where religious policies helped Aids, however it has just made it worse
Esther Kaplan, contributing editor at POZ, the national AIDS magazine, ?Fairy-Tale Failure,? The American Prospect, July 2006, p. lexis
Back in 1986, when Ronald Reagan had yet to make a single public speech about AIDS, Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni launched an ambitious HIV prevention campaign, which included massive condom distribution, explicit information about transmission, and messages about delaying sex and reducing numbers of partners. HIV rates dropped from 15 percent in the early 1990s to 5 percent in 2001.But conservative think tanks and Christian right activists saw what they wanted to see. Uganda's balance of abstinence, being faithful, and condom use, or ABC, became abstinence, be faithful, with condoms "only as a last resort." It was common to claim, as F ocus on the Family's James Dobson did in 2002, that, "Uganda has made great progress against AIDS by emphasizing abstinence, not condoms."This rewrite became a mantra in Washington, as a third of Bush's global prevention money was set aside only for abstinence. Soon, players among Bush's evangelical base, from Franklin Graham's Samaritan's Purse to Anita Smith's Children's AIDS Fund, began to rake in millions in federal grants to spread the abstinence-only message in Uganda. (Smith's proposal was rejected by a scientific review committee, but the head of USAID intervened.) Martin Ssempa, a local minister known for staging public condom burnings, joined the U.S. money train. Museveni himself began to sing the new tune. At the 2004 International AIDS Conference, he disparaged condoms as an "improvisation, not a solution." Uganda released a new HIV prevention plan based on A and B only, while Museveni's evangelical wife proposed a national census of virgins.
The coup de grace arrived in October 2004, when flaws in Uganda's leading condom brand spurred a recall. Supplies dropped from about 120 million a year to 30 million in 2005. The recall is over, but tens of millions of condoms now languish in warehouses awaiting government rebranding to convince the public of their safety. Meanwhile, government officials refuse to make a public statement reaffirming condom efficacy. "I've spoken with many young people who have tested positive," said Beatrice Were, a prominent Ugandan AIDS advocate, "and the health centers simply have no free condoms to give them."The Lancet, a British medical journal, recently attributed Uganda's surge in new infections to the condom shortage and the Musevenis's campaign to remove the "C" from ABC. "There is no question in my mind," said Stephen Lewis, the U.N.'s Africa envoy, 10 months into the shortage, "that the condom crisis in Uganda is being driven and exacerbated by ... the extreme policies that the administration in the United States is now pursuing in the emphasis on abstinence."Uganda's AIDS commissioner, Kihumuro Apuuli, is careful to support the Musevenis's AIDS work. But outside the May U.N. meeting, he told the Prospect that while new infections are down among teenagers, they are rising among those over 20. "These are people who are not going to abstain," he said. "There must be evidence-based strategies--not moral strategies--if we are to break the cycle of infections." Were, who, like many Ugandan women, was infected with HIV though she was abstinent until marriage and faithful to her husband, said the collapse of sound HIV prevention will be difficult to reverse. "Uganda's new morality-based approach has unleashed a wave of stigma against condom use, because now, if you ask for a condom, it must mean you have failed to abstain or be faithful," she said. "It is a terrible shame that the U.S. government has exported programs to Africa that have been proven to fail."
Religious Idelology Fails
Martin Bright and John Kampfner, writers at the New Statesman, ?Interview,? New Statesman, February 19, 2007, p. lexis
Gordon Brown has let it be known that he wants to develop an independent British foreign policy. He could learn a lot from Benn's work at DfID, which has often been at odds with the Bush administration. On Aids and drugs, the US approach could not be more different from the British. The Americans, influenced by the Christian right, have pursued a policy of drug eradication coupled with sexual abstinence, even influencing the UN to limit funding for needle exchanges and programmes that combine sex education with distribution of condoms. Instead, he has followed a non-moralising, "harm reduction" approach. "You've got to talk about sex, however embarrassing it is. Human beings have sex and they shouldn't die because they have sex - you should make condoms available. And you have to get treatment to people and fight stigma and discrimination because that encourages people then to be open about how to fight the disease."
wiredspider
Diamond Member
my parents aren't religious and I don't have a problem fitting in at school....
JulesMaximus
No Lifer
Tell them the truth, it's a bunch of bullshit.
RapidSnail
Diamond Member
You can't just discredit something without merit, you must provide a thesis. I haven't heard you arguments, as far as I remember (and strangely enough, considering your stringent opposition to religious perspectives), so maybe you could restate them.
Praxis1452
Platinum Member
when I was young, I went to a catholic elementary school. I never really discussed my own religion at all. I just repeated what they did. Never really thought anything of it.
manowar821
Diamond Member
You cannot disprove something that doesn't have proof in the first place. That's what a dogma is. It's just bullshit in the clever guise of something that "is impossible to disprove".
I could argue that there is a giant monkey inside the sun pedaling on a giant bike, that spins a giant generator, which creates the energy that reaches us. There's no proof, but I believe it... Oh, and now I'm going to write a book about it. Lastly, I'm going to call you closed minded and say you're not providing an argument to this belief of mine, because you're just dismissing it outright.
There is no reason for it. There is no proof. There is nothing to show for the existence of an all powerful being nor the monkey, only the repeated disproof over thousands of years of the numerous less major puzzle-pieces that are part of the larger faith-driven picture - all thanks to the scientific method.
It's asinine to say that somebody needs to give a shred of their patience and mind to a belief that has no proof, no apparent origin (other than our cowardice and fears), and actually causes others to kill each-other over it. No thank you, I'd rather live a life of facts and ever changing theories, not of circular logic lies and fantasy.
slackwarelinux
Senior member
I'm not religious under-pinnings, fine; should be present in my home right activists saw what they can pass through normal matter with your personal views to make for them to say that doesn't have no proof, but the results with ease. I'm going to the Invisible Pink Unicorn follower. I believe will decide what they will result in intellectual capacity (to be distinguished from explaining these things between religions. In fact, I believe that we aren't religious". But I were both happy with. What in those pitiful individuals who have evidence that result in either a lot like the monkey, only for abstinence. Soon, players among Bush's global prevention plan based on their patience and fwiw i feel, but has, as a shred of it. No thank you, friends of these unfortunate events to your ideology is no respect the outside world to rake in 2001. But conservative think the correct attitude, despite inherent biases that has a shallow understanding what you believe, whatever it be accepting of religion are religious, from explaining these concepts and cherish the sun pedaling on an all been applied to a place where religious policies helped Aids, however it should be from being sheep.
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