Abstinence Education Program

[framed]

"Why do people need to "vent sexually" before they are mature enough to handle the consequences?"

You guys remember being teenagers right?

I have to say I'm 100% with dong on this one. Its just not realistic to have a social policy of "fight nature". The fact is from the start puberty onward people have a sex drive that gives them a pretty clear mission. Because its convenient for the country to have a policy on how soon babies should be made doesn't mean its convenient for the genetic code of the people involved. A large percentage of people will have sex before they are ready to financially support a child, church or state policy or not. Whats the point of having a policy that denies reality? I thought the church accepted that when the pope finally decided to change one of their 'immutable' laws about masturbation...

 

[Furious George]

I find it a waste of time to listen to anything the Pope, or the Catholic Church says for that matter. I'd rather waste my time talking to a wall.

 

[mamab]

Come now, you're basically saying that we're no better than animals, that we can't control ourselves. I would think that I'm a "little" better than a dog in heat.

 

[Furious George]

There's really no difference between a human and a dog, anatomically. The only thing that is profoundly different is the fact that we have a much more developed brain. No more how developed, or undeveloped, we all have instincts. Nature has programmed us to mate so we can keep our species on the face of the Earth. It just so happened that we got advanced, and developed this neat little thing, called 'discrimination', and now we 'mate' according to looks, status, money, etc.

 

[framed]

Mamab,

I'm sure people have much better impulse control than dogs in heat. That said, better impulse control than a dog is not necessarily good impulse control. People have sex drives that are built into them at the most fundamental levels of their makeup. Societal rules simply aren't going to overcome people's sex drive frequently enough to make that an effective policy. Whether you can agree with that or not, you should be able to agree that it would be easier to find an effective policy that doesn't have to go against natural desires, which is what a safe sex policy does.

 

[dong]

Come now, you're basically saying that we're no better than animals, that we can't control ourselves. I would think that I'm a "little" better than a dog in heat.

I find the motivations behind this thought offensive, but this is mainly due to my hardline, currently unorthodox (but completely justifiable, IMO ) stance with regards to animal philosophy. I won't go the whole rigamarole here, but I will address the barest relevant details:

The only thing that makes us "better" than a dog in heat is that we just happen to have a bunch of strong cultural conventions that govern our actions- to such an extent that for most people who are a part of culture it supervenes on any other imperative. This does arguably have a biological origin- our highly developed neocortex (to put it simply).

But what does this end up implying? The use of the word "better" is purely as determined by human valuation, without recourse to that of other species. And this valuation tends to be in terms of "intelligence". Which is fair enough, but the problem lies in claiming that we are justified in using this intelligence to somehow give ourselves greater leverage in rights-based talk. Which gives rise to the gross ecological irresponsibility of the western cultures (in the broad sense). It's problematic, and I also hold this evaluative practice to be irrelevant. But old habits die hard.

ANYWAY, I should probably censure myself there because it wasn't particularly relevant to the post- so here's my reply: surely you don't think resorting to the extremes is going to hold water for so much as an instant? That's the way sophistry and strawmen go.