Casual Sex?

[Ahab]

Shuri Wrote:Yes, and my program also vouches for abstinence from driving before the age of 24, another of America's most deadly killers. There's a difference between natural risk and risk that is incurred by other factors, such as human judgement.

Program, as in Utopian community standards fantasy land?

Shuri Wrote:1. Possibility of bringing life into the world. Pretty serious.
2. You're completely ignorant. Sex is a reproductive activity, not a pleasurable past time, and it's a crime to try and pass it off as one. Humans are not able to have sex because it is pleasurable; sex is pleasurable so that people will have more of it and therefore create more humans. This was naturally developed by humans over time, because our bodies naturally were inclined to have sex. Originally, sex was was just sex. A way to procreate the human race. It has come to the point, however, that birth is far too common for the good of our world. Hell, China is already morbidly overpopulated. So much so that massive numbers of young Chinese girls are being shipped to America and adopted by people they don't look anything like and can't relate to at all, without knowing a thing about their culture or their heritage or where they came from, leading to confusion and sometimes severe depression which can result in suicide or even homicide due to their distraught psychological condition. You're trying to tell me that's not an issue? Because that's the truth of the matter. Meanwhile, no other country is doing that well in birth control or control after birth. Thousands upon thousands of kids lead terrible lives because they were put in an adoption center, and depending on where you live that's certainly no happy valley sing-song fairytale land. And even ones who have been adopted and brought into a great home are going to eventually find out they were adopted, and then wonder who their real parents are, and consequently who they really are, and then there's the psychology of it which I have already described, which can cause them to take drastic measures to alleviate their distress, or simply drive them insane. All of this comes back to sex. Explain to me the "casual" aspect of this. You live in your own little world, using your own few experiences with intercourse as if it speaks for everyone, but I have already explained in great detail why your world is flawed. Becaused your world is not the world. Your experiences count for nothing against the ultimate truth of things, and are no argument against the facts that I have already provided. Why don't you try coming up with something more founded and concrete than opinion before you get back to me?

1. While there is no doubt that sex was intentionally a reproductive tool, if we can have sex other than to make babies, why the fuck not? You're talking about STD's and the side effects of promiscuous sex, but what about the benefits? How many people didn't become mass murderers or twisted individuals because of sex? How many hippies wouldn't have been liberated? Politicians are well maladjusted when it comes to sex, and you can see it by how they're running the country.
2. I don't buy the so called idea of overpopulation. It's a myth. The whole friggin population could fit in the state of Texas. The problems existent in China are due to excess bureaucracy, not excess population density. Hell, its a good example why you don't want to regulate births, because they're in a state of crisis right now over the dwindling amount of females introduced to the population. Honestly, when it comes to adoption, I don't see an epidemic of adopted kids who hate their life because they were adopted. If anything, it makes them stronger as individuals.

Shuri Wrote:Right. I'm sure everyone who's contracted an STD intended to. Don't you think that's kind of the mindset of the general population? Everyone wants to believe they're sensible and rational, or that they can trust any partner they have, but facts show that's an all too common misconception. You're putting an awful lot of trust in the good will of your opposite, and justifying casual sex using your ability to judge things. That doesn't make you any less liable to contract an STD. AIDS can be virtually undetectable for ten to fifteen years. Just because someone tells you they don't have an STD doesn't mean they don't. That just means they don't know that they have one. Think about that. Ten to fifteen years. Who knows how many people they could spread the AIDS virus to before they even find out they had it? For heaven's sake, look at the facts. Look at them. 19 million. That's right. 19 million people who thought they could trust themselves to choose a good person, an honest person. 19 million. That's a lot. Kind of undeniable proof that personal judgement and trust isn't enough to protect you.

Ever heard of the word "condom", by any chance?

When you have sex with a partner with HIV, the chances of infection are around 1 in 3. When you have sex WITH A CONDOM with a person who has HIV, the number goes down to 1 in 500,000. Theres a big difference between those two numbers, and that protection has helped people. Abstinence, on the other hand, claiming to endorse a policy with "good intentions" has probably caused more people to want to have unprotected sex and contract STDs than any pro-safe sex program will ever do. Not offering any alternative is a stupid idea, and not incorporating the teenaged gay community is a pretty bad idea too.

Shuri Wrote:Menstrual cycles stop when a woman gets pregnant. That's how she knows she's pregnant. :/
I've already explained why condoms and birth control pills are only effective in theory. In reality, they're not used enough to be a valid argument against abstinence. If I were to have sex, I wouldn't want to use a condom. So I can sympathize with those who have sex unprotected; for some the idea is just unappealing. I can understand why women wouldn't want to put a chemical in their body that prevented a natural function and the necessary reaction of their reproductive system to a man's sperm. I can understand that. I wouldn't want to, either.
I'm bisexual, too. Big whoop. STDs are still very prevalent factors in sex, whether or not you're of the same gender.

Nonsense.

The reason theres not the amount of birth control and condoms in circulation is due to a lack of education in safe sex. When I look at such a program as abstinence, which offers no alternatives or sensible realities for most kids, to me thats curbing the use of contraceptives. It's fine to incorporate abstinence into a message, but safe sex, in my opinion, is more important of education for bettering the lives of peoples and reducing STDs.

Shuri Wrote:Oh, jeez. Hilarious. The fact that their brains are not completely developed MEANS that their level of judgement is hindered, at best. An autistic person's brain is underdeveloped; they are incapable of making valid judgements, among other things, that a normally developed brain would be able to. A person's intellectual abilities are practically based on judgement, AKA reasoning abilities and other phsycho-jumbo. It all comes down to judgement, and if your brain is not fully developed, it can not make the same judgements a fully developed brain can. A person of fourteen may be able to make judgements regarding sex, but there's no guarantee those judgements are valid, based on logical reasoning or simply made on a whim of the body and the mind. A person of twenty-four, however, is able to implement their power of reasoning to the fullest, therefore every choice they make is, potentially, safer and more sensible than the choices of the fourteen-year-old.

To base everything from pure reasoning would result in a dull, boring world. If everyone stayed clear, there would be no music, there would be nothing to watch, and there would be very few technological innovations. The desire for pure profit is one which has resulted in a quite reasonable amount of impaired judgement, but the impaired judgement pays off in the end. If a 15 year old can be tried, they have enough judgement to understand whats not allowed and what isn't. Their reasoning may not be fully developed, but they do understand that they do and did have the ability to make a different desicion.

Shuri Wrote:Here's the thing, Kirby, you are being extremely ignorant. You know absolutely nothing about this subject and you try and make up for it with your own pathetic reasoning which is easily and absolutely discredited when you take a look at the facts. When you wake up, go to the doctor's office, and find out you contracted an STD fifteen years from now, I hope you really wake up. Yes, sex is fun. Sure, sex is great. NO, sex is not something to play around with and just assume you'll be safe with. It's dangerous, can be fatal, and should never be taken lightly or without extremely careful thought, preferably with a brain capable of giving the best thought as to what is alright and what is not. And I find it funny that you bring up the word "ignore". I'm hardly trying to ignore sex. I'm just not endorsing unprecedented intercourse had on a single whim of the mind because fiery groins beats fact and reason in the heat of the moment. Knowledge is what people need to protect themselves, and people DO need to protect themselves. People don't have knowledge. People just have silly faith. Whimsy and unreliable faith. Faith in themselves and faith in the people around them. But STDs and pregnancy don't really care about faith, and faith is not going to prevent either. Only knowledge and a certain level of abstinence. Like it or not, condoms and birth control pills haven't made a significant dent. Too bad, so sad, but your little contraceptives and "preventions" are not preventing anything but a handful of births and one or two STD contractions across the globe. This is how it is: women that want to be pregnant should have sex. Men that want to impregnate a woman should have sex. Gay men and women should have sex at their own discretion, with a great deal of forethought. None of these actions should be performed before the age of 21, at the very very very least. As for men and women that just want to pleasure themselves and hope nothing goes wrong? They should stick to masturbation. And before you say anything, I don't support legal restrictions on sex; I support natural human intelligence and the encouragement of people to actually think and know about what they're doing long before they do it.

Human's are generally intelligent. Most adult males aren't walking around with an STD. Theres a big percentage who do, but theres also a big percentage who believes 9/11 was caused by the US Government.

The statement you made I can agree with, to some extent. We need more safe sex. Education of abstinence, however, wont help unless its incorporated with the teaching of safe sex. And the idea you should be an age well through college is absurd. People, generally speaking, aren't going to follow by the books, nor should they. What people should do in order to treat this idea would be to teach at least safe methods. The bible thumpers in Africa and everywhere else tend to ignore this, and justify that marriage is the best time, but the idea that people are going to follow the idea of waiting for full reasoning levels is at best a utopian fantasy.

It's fine if you support education indepdendent of legislation, you very well could and should, but I'm not buying it.

[Guest]

2.5 million more people will be infected by the end of 2007. There are about 19 million people living with HIV they have gotten from sex. There are about 4 billion people between the ages of 14 and 64. Let's be generous and take away a 100 million people to offset the 19 million with HIV. So we have 3900 million people. Let's be pessimistic and say 3/4 of those people didn't have sex in 2007 and the rest only had sex once. We still have 975 million. That means that in 2007, using statistics very biased in your favour, your chances of getting HIV was 0.2%.

Some of that is chance.

But as Ahab said, it comes down to education. If more people got good education about sex there wouldn't be so many problems.

Also, you pointed out one irony in our evolution. We evolved pleasurable sex so that more gene-carriers would be created and we evolved more brain power to be more flexible at survival, but we use that brain power to get pleasure from sex without having children. A big "screw you" to Mother Nature.

Quote:The fact that their brains are not completely developed MEANS that their level of judgement is hindered, at best.

I don't see any logical connection there. The fact that the brain has not completely grown does not mean judgement is hindered. Proof would be empirically showing that their judgement is hindered. As you said, youth "can not make the same judgements a fully developed brain can". But that does not mean their judgements are any less valid.

Quote:NO, sex is not something to play around with and just assume you'll be safe with.

I never said you should assume you'll be safe. I never said you should go fuck anyone you want. I said people need to think about what they are doing. All I've been saying is that you are far too negative about the subject.

[thewake]

Shuri Wrote:

Kirby Wrote:Shuri, there is one thing you are missing out on. EVERYTHING is risky. Sure, sex is more risky than eating or drinking but it's just as dangerous as driving a two ton death machine AKA car. People will always make mistakes: they happen.

Yes, and my program also vouches for abstinence from driving before the age of 24, another of America's most deadly killers. There's a difference between natural risk and risk that is incurred by other factors, such as human judgement.

Duude! WTF! Driving is based on experience. Let people get their permit earlier, that's what's needed.

Quote:

Kirby Wrote:Sex is not and should not be serious. You definitely need to think about it but when sex goes from "=D" to "=|" there is no point in even having sex. We have sex because it is one of the most pleasurable things in life. It creates strong bonds between people. The risk of sex is outweighed by the benefits.

1. Possibility of bringing life into the world. Pretty serious.
2. You're completely ignorant. Sex is a reproductive activity, not a pleasurable past time, and it's a crime to try and pass it off as one. Humans are not able to have sex because it is pleasurable; sex is pleasurable so that people will have more of it and therefore create more humans. This was naturally developed by humans over time, because our bodies naturally were inclined to have sex. Originally, sex was was just sex. A way to procreate the human race. It has come to the point, however, that birth is far too common for the good of our world. Hell, China is already morbidly overpopulated. So much so that massive numbers of young Chinese girls are being shipped to America and adopted by people they don't look anything like and can't relate to at all, without knowing a thing about their culture or their heritage or where they came from, leading to confusion and sometimes severe depression which can result in suicide or even homicide due to their distraught psychological condition. You're trying to tell me that's not an issue? Because that's the truth of the matter. Meanwhile, no other country is doing that well in birth control or control after birth. Thousands upon thousands of kids lead terrible lives because they were put in an adoption center, and depending on where you live that's certainly no happy valley sing-song fairytale land. And even ones who have been adopted and brought into a great home are going to eventually find out they were adopted, and then wonder who their real parents are, and consequently who they really are, and then there's the psychology of it which I have already described, which can cause them to take drastic measures to alleviate their distress, or simply drive them insane. All of this comes back to sex. Explain to me the "casual" aspect of this. You live in your own little world, using your own few experiences with intercourse as if it speaks for everyone, but I have already explained in great detail why your world is flawed. Becaused your world is not the world. Your experiences count for nothing against the ultimate truth of things, and are no argument against the facts that I have already provided. Why don't you try coming up with something more founded and concrete than opinion before you get back to me?

As much as I like how you call China "morbidly overpopulated", you need to lighten up. I just need to say:
How the Hell can you being adopted drive you insane? If it does it's rare, at least they have a better home than socialist dictatorship commie scum China!
What the heck does it matter if you are raised by people vaguely described as "don't look like you"? Race doesn't matter! It's something engineered to keep us apart, all there is is minute genetic differences, we are the human race. Live with it or be a Nazi.

Quote:

Kirby Wrote:The risk is almost nothing when there is proper preparation and there is little risk when there is no preparation. (1) I'm not going to have sex with someone with STDs. They aren't going to lie to me because I'm not going to have sex with someone that would do that.

Right. I'm sure everyone who's contracted an STD intended to. Don't you think that's kind of the mindset of the general population? Everyone wants to believe they're sensible and rational, or that they can trust any partner they have, but facts show that's an all too common misconception. You're putting an awful lot of trust in the good will of your opposite, and justifying casual sex using your ability to judge things. That doesn't make you any less liable to contract an STD. AIDS can be virtually undetectable for ten to fifteen years. Just because someone tells you they don't have an STD doesn't mean they don't. That just means they don't know that they have one. Think about that. Ten to fifteen years. Who knows how many people they could spread the AIDS virus to before they even find out they had it? For heaven's sake, look at the facts. Look at them. 19 million. That's right. 19 million people who thought they could trust themselves to choose a good person, an honest person. 19 million. That's a lot. Kind of undeniable proof that personal judgement and trust isn't enough to protect you.

Totally agree, so why not get them tested?

Quote:

Kirby Wrote:(2) Condoms plus birth control pills plus menstrual cycles equals almost no chance of pregnancy. But I'm bisexual so that doesn't even mean anything if I have sex with a man.

Menstrual cycles stop when a woman gets pregnant. That's how she knows she's pregnant. :/
I've already explained why condoms and birth control pills are only effective in theory. In reality, they're not used enough to be a valid argument against abstinence. If I were to have sex, I wouldn't want to use a condom. So I can sympathize with those who have sex unprotected; for some the idea is just unappealing. I can understand why women wouldn't want to put a chemical in their body that prevented a natural function and the necessary reaction of their reproductive system to a man's sperm. I can understand that. I wouldn't want to, either.
I'm bisexual, too. Big whoop. STDs are still very prevalent factors in sex, whether or not you're of the same gender.

That's one reason to stick with one partner, you know.
And I would want to use a condom unless I'm keen procreating.

Quote:

Kirby Wrote:You say that brains are not completely developed until the age of 24. I agree because I have seen that quoted before. But you have not given any evidence that people before 24 cannot make judgements about sexuality.

Oh, jeez. Hilarious. The fact that their brains are not completely developed MEANS that their level of judgement is hindered, at best. An autistic person's brain is underdeveloped; they are incapable of making valid judgements, among other things, that a normally developed brain would be able to. A person's intellectual abilities are practically based on judgement, AKA reasoning abilities and other phsycho-jumbo. It all comes down to judgement, and if your brain is not fully developed, it can not make the same judgements a fully developed brain can. A person of fourteen may be able to make judgements regarding sex, but there's no guarantee those judgements are valid, based on logical reasoning or simply made on a whim of the body and the mind. A person of twenty-four, however, is able to implement their power of reasoning to the fullest, therefore every choice they make is, potentially, safer and more sensible than the choices of the fourteen-year-old.

I can make a choice just as good as and 24 year old, I have knowledge and a general lack of bias(relative to most of society).

Quote:

Kirby Wrote:Here's the thing Shuri, you are being an idiot. Sex is fun and sex is great. If you fuck up that sucks but that's life. Sex isn't a big deal but it isn't something you can ignore. Think, but don't be an abstinence-douche.

Here's the thing, Kirby, you are being extremely ignorant. You know absolutely nothing about this subject and you try and make up for it with your own pathetic reasoning which is easily and absolutely discredited when you take a look at the facts. When you wake up, go to the doctor's office, and find out you contracted an STD fifteen years from now, I hope you really wake up. Yes, sex is fun. Sure, sex is great. NO, sex is not something to play around with and just assume you'll be safe with. It's dangerous, can be fatal, and should never be taken lightly or without extremely careful thought, preferably with a brain capable of giving the best thought as to what is alright and what is not. And I find it funny that you bring up the word "ignore". I'm hardly trying to ignore sex. I'm just not endorsing unprecedented intercourse had on a single whim of the mind because fiery groins beats fact and reason in the heat of the moment. Knowledge is what people need to protect themselves, and people DO need to protect themselves. People don't have knowledge. People just have silly faith. Whimsy and unreliable faith. Faith in themselves and faith in the people around them. But STDs and pregnancy don't really care about faith, and faith is not going to prevent either. Only knowledge and a certain level of abstinence. Like it or not, condoms and birth control pills haven't made a significant dent. Too bad, so sad, but your little contraceptives and "preventions" are not preventing anything but a handful of births and one or two STD contractions across the globe. This is how it is: women that want to be pregnant should have sex. Men that want to impregnate a woman should have sex. Gay men and women should have sex at their own discretion, with a great deal of forethought. None of these actions should be performed before the age of 21, at the very very very least. As for men and women that just want to pleasure themselves and hope nothing goes wrong? They should stick to masturbation. And before you say anything, I don't support legal restrictions on sex; I support natural human intelligence and the encouragement of people to actually think and know about what they're doing long before they do it.

You act like you shouldn't have faith in people. I find that disturbing.
And you know what? Masturbation isn't like sex, it's not the same. It's common sense to know that. Even though I've never masturbated. [/quote]

[Shuri]

SoulRiser Wrote:Your program is stupid. I've been driving since I was... what? 18? I've never hit anything, and people tell me I drive well. I've been in a car with older people who seriously SCARE me when they drive.

Again; personal experiences do not provide a valid argument against facts. About 115 people die on a daily basis due to car accidents in the U.S.: about a death every 13 minutes. Drivers age 15-20 accounted for 12.6 percent of all the drivers involved in fatal crashes and 16 percent of all the drivers involved in police-reported crashes in 2005. You're one person that hasn't crashed...yet. That hardly discredits the fact that 115 people do every day.

SoulRiser Wrote:That's just blatant ageism.

No. Ageism is discrimination against a certain age group. Discrimination is, according to Dictionary.com: "treatment or consideration of, or making a distinction in favor of or against, a person or thing based on the group, class, or category to which that person or thing belongs rather than on individual merit". I am not judging people my age based on the fact that they are fifteen; I am making a reasonable argument based on a fact, not a judgement, about that age group.

SoulRiser Wrote:This is the kind of reasoning that leads to laws restricting young people from doing things.

Which, as we all know, is SO VERY effective. I already stated: I do not support laws restricting young people. I'm a libertarian youth activist. I think youth should have rights, but I also think people too regularly mistake a person's right for being the right thing to do. I think youth should have the right to drive or have sex under 21, BUT I discourage it and advocate against them doing it. I don't speak out against the right; I speak out against the wrong implementation of it.

SoulRiser Wrote:I don't care if a person's brain is less "developed", that doesn't mean it's OK to treat them like they have no right to decide for themselves what they want to do.

I never said anything like that. Again, a "right" and the right thing to do are not always corresponding aspects of society. Everyone has a right to decide for themselves, and I would never say they don't; I only remind them that they are incapable of making choices based on the same level of reasoning and rational they would later in life, and discourage them from making decisions that include a great potential of harm, especially when they're doing them for the wrong reasons.

SoulRiser Wrote:Autistic people are different, but they have other advantages. They're better at other things. Same deal with people with down's syndrome. "Normal" people may look down upon them for being "underdeveloped" but so what? They're better at other things.

I have an autistic friend. I know about autism. My mom works in Resource. Nothing you said even put a dent in my argument. They're better at other things because their brains develop differently, but their reasoning is still not up to par with a regular person's. Talent and reasoning are not concurrent.
I've already very clearly explained "so what", by the way.

SoulRiser Wrote:That has nothing to do with the issue here.

Way to opinionate, assume, then avoid the topic at hand by trying to invalidate it. Which is impossible, because it was entirely relevant.

SoulRiser Wrote:Neither was Kirby. I think you misunderstood his post completely.

He was personalizing the issue as if his life were substitutable with everyone else's. Whether or not that's what he intended, that's what he did. I disproved everything he said anyway.

SoulRiser Wrote:Contradictory ideas. If you're going to say you support human intelligence and encouraging people to think, then you can't also give some sort of set age limit.

First of all, I didn't set an age limit. Nature did. Second of all, I never once discouraged rational thought. My entire argument is based on the idea that people should think about what they do before they do it.

SoulRiser Wrote:People think about things whenever they think about things.

Oh? In that case, President Bush was perfectly justified in sending us into Iraq without a method of escape in mind. Surely he just used your logic and figured he would think up an evacuation process later. Because people just think about things when they come to mind.
I don't think any further implications are necessary.

SoulRiser Wrote:I decided when I was 12 that I was going to wait for a really long time until I had sex or even a relationship at all. Then when I was 19-21 I went through a stupid period where I did a lot of things without thinking (which thankfully didn't include sex, but it might have if the people around me were being as stupid as I was). Then when I was ... 23? or somewhere around there my brain took over again, and I'm gonna keep it there.

Personalizations. Again. Don't you realize the statistics defeat you EVERY TIME? How many do I have to post before you actually look at them? I understand that kids do stupid things. That's part of life. But not with everything. There's a difference between taking marijuana (something I could honestly care less about unless accompanied with driving or other hazardous activities afterwards) and having a miniscule chance of something going horribly wrong and you losing your life for it than getting in a car at the age of fifteen when car accidents are the leading cause of death among teens across the nation.

SoulRiser Wrote:You can't set age limits, it will never be the same for everyone.

I think the results for almost 115 people today were pretty much the same.
I think the results for the 19 million people this year are going to be pretty much the same, too.
I think we can safely assume that death is pretty much the same thing no matter what age you are. All I'm saying is that there is a certain age where, naturally, not by my volition, under the given circumstances, death is less likely to occur. The research and the facts both show it. There's no reason to argue against it. I am not advocating the oppression of the youth (where would that get me?). I am simply presenting the facts and trying to help save the youth. I'm not forcing anyone to do anything, either. I'm just disappointed. It's obvious none of you have done your share of research into these subjects, and it shows in that you try to use your biased reasoning to formulate an argument that can't even withstand one sentence of mine, backed up with various facts and resources. :/
We as the youth deserve every right anyone else has. We also deserve to be able to distinguish "rights" from what is intelligent and what is not. The fact that you don't appear to know any of this (or are simply ignoring it entirely) proves that there are too many people out there who are not educated enough to make that distinction by themselves. This is what I'm saying. At least know what you're talking about before you make a choice about it, because you end up looking plain silly when you mess up and can't even justify your own mistake because you didn't know when you had every chance to. This is what my program and I do. We give people the knowledge they need in order to choose wisely. Even if you don't like it, accept it, think about it, and consider it.

****************************************************************************

Captain Ahab Wrote:Program, as in Utopian community standards fantasy land?

Program as in we put on educational plays and tour around our county (and possibly others) giving kids the knowledge they need to protect themselves from various natural and unnatural dangers such as sex and driving. It's relatively new here, but other places have been doing similar things for a while.

Captain Ahab Wrote:1. While there is no doubt that sex was intentionally a reproductive tool, if we can have sex other than to make babies, why the fuck not? You're talking about STD's and the side effects of promiscuous sex, but what about the benefits? How many people didn't become mass murderers or twisted individuals because of sex? How many hippies wouldn't have been liberated? Politicians are well maladjusted when it comes to sex, and you can see it by how they're running the country.

I'm not saying sex is bad. That's a misunderstanding. But as a teenager or young adult, the relief of sex is hardly necessary in order to keep living your life without going crazy. That's what masturbation is for. Nor do I agree with most politicians I've heard speak about sex. I'm hardly trying to say sex is evil. But it's unnecessary and dangerous before a certain age group. The reason we shouldn't have it if we're not going to have kids is pretty obvious; the dangers far outweigh the aesthetic benefits.

Captain Ahab Wrote:2. I don't buy the so called idea of overpopulation. It's a myth. The whole friggin population could fit in the state of Texas. The problems existent in China are due to excess bureaucracy, not excess population density. Hell, its a good example why you don't want to regulate births, because they're in a state of crisis right now over the dwindling amount of females introduced to the population. Honestly, when it comes to adoption, I don't see an epidemic of adopted kids who hate their life because they were adopted. If anything, it makes them stronger as individuals.

Overpopulation is hardly a "myth". The world can't support 6.6 billion people the way we're going, and it's not going to get any better with 9 billion people in 2050. This site can provide some information you might find interesting, and I do hope it will crack your little "myth" theory.
Whether or not China brought its overpopulation upon itself through birth regulation is irrelevant; the state of things now is what's important. As things are now, overpopulation is a big, big problem, that goes even farther than the 6.6 billion people constituting it.

Captain Ahab Wrote:Ever heard of the word "condom", by any chance?

Did you actually read my post, by any chance?

Captain Ahab Wrote:When you have sex with a partner with HIV, the chances of infection are around 1 in 3. When you have sex WITH A CONDOM with a person who has HIV, the number goes down to 1 in 500,000. Theres a big difference between those two numbers, and that protection has helped people.

And yet, 19 million people are still ending up with an STD every year. I suppose, considering the population, that's not so many. But I don't think that's a number either of us can be comfortable with regardless.

Captain Ahab Wrote:Abstinence, on the other hand, claiming to endorse a policy with "good intentions" has probably caused more people to want to have unprotected sex and contract STDs than any pro-safe sex program will ever do. Not offering any alternative is a stupid idea, and not incorporating the teenaged gay community is a pretty bad idea too.

That's because abstinence is usually portrayed as a religious ideal, something Christians propogandize as part of their faith. Since many teenagers consider atheism to be the "in" thing, the last method of protecting themselves they'll use is one affiliated with religion of any sort. Also, many programs try endorse abstinence in such a way that the age group they're trying to reach would never listen to them, because they're headed by people who have no idea how to actually deal with the majority of a country's youth. Presentation is key in encouraging abstinence.
I never said anything against not offering an alternative, such as safe-sex. But that's what safe-sex is: an alternative, a second-hand resort in case abstinence seems simply impossible (which it isn't). There are going to be kids who have sex regardless. But the major problem here is that too many young adults are having sex because it's cool, or because they feel they have to in order to have a "real" relationship, and so they go ahead and do it without any real sort of real knowledge regarding sexual intercourse. Education is the most important thing there is, and I can say I would at least feel better knowing kids my age are entering sexual relationships knowing what the possibilities are. I wouldn't approve of it, but I wouldn't be here trying to teach people either. Once you've given a person knowledge, the rest is up to them.

Captain Ahab Wrote:Nonsense.

The reason theres not the amount of birth control and condoms in circulation is due to a lack of education in safe sex. When I look at such a program as abstinence, which offers no alternatives or sensible realities for most kids, to me thats curbing the use of contraceptives. It's fine to incorporate abstinence into a message, but safe sex, in my opinion, is more important of education for bettering the lives of peoples and reducing STDs.

Abstinence is the only way to be completely sure. Therefore, it is the choice that should be most encouraged. Not forcedly so, but implicatively so, using the statistics at hand to teach the truth about sex. I absolutely agree. Lack of education is one of the biggest reasons STDs are spreading so quickly and teenage pregnancies are so common. As I said before, guidance and teaching needs to be the focus. For me, before abstinence I fight for education, and I fight for abstinence before safe-sex among teenagers and young adults. Sex is simply not necessary or beneficial at that age, but if they feel they absolutely have to have it, I want them to know the facts about it and do everything they feel they can to protect themselves.

Captain Ahab Wrote:To base everything from pure reasoning would result in a dull, boring world. If everyone stayed clear, there would be no music, there would be nothing to watch, and there would be very few technological innovations. The desire for pure profit is one which has resulted in a quite reasonable amount of impaired judgement, but the impaired judgement pays off in the end. If a 15 year old can be tried, they have enough judgement to understand whats not allowed and what isn't. Their reasoning may not be fully developed, but they do understand that they do and did have the ability to make a different desicion.

I said reasoning was the basis for intellectuality, not the world. That being said, I feel that for all of our good "technological innovations", there are at least a thousand bad ones. There are some things which are unnecessary, but also unharmful, and therefore permittable. Some things, however, are unnecessary and harmful, which leaves it with nothing to justify it. Not only that, but the prices that have been paid in order to "advance" ourselves have been, for the most part, completely atrocious.

Captain Ahab Wrote:Human's are generally intelligent. Most adult males aren't walking around with an STD. Theres a big percentage who do, but theres also a big percentage who believes 9/11 was caused by the US Government.

I would like to agree with this, but sadly I can't. Most humans seem to have lost their ability to use common sense in everyday life (of those, most have had it torn away from them), and therefore are only as smart as they are educated, and since compulsory schooling seems to be the central source most people have come to "learn" from, humans are now generally unintelligent. We are simply under the pretense that a PhD document makes someone superior in intelligence to someone without, when in fact it only shows they have survived the schooling system, but throw that person out in the jungles of Africa, and you'll notice that their ingrained survival instincts rarely actually kick in. Because, guess what. The real world doesn't care if you're a professor. That leapord will slit you open anyway.
Going off on a slightly unrelated tangent, I do believe 9/11 was planned and carried out by the US Government. I don't claim to know, but I've seen enough proof in favor of the theory, and nothing credible to argue it, to say it's my honest opinion that 9/11 was a big facade put on by the American government.

Captain Ahab Wrote:The statement you made I can agree with, to some extent. We need more safe sex. Education of abstinence, however, wont help unless its incorporated with the teaching of safe sex.

I disagree. I believe that the endorsement of abstinence can be successful without safe-sex education to accompany it. We just need people advocating abstinence that can actually reach out to the youth of the world; like, oh say, other youth. Like me and my program. We're reaching people. We do, however, teach safe-sex as an alternative because we want to do everything we can to help. If someone doesn't like the idea of abstinence, maybe they'll accept a condom. It's better than nothing.

Captain Ahab Wrote:And the idea you should be an age well through college is absurd. People, generally speaking, aren't going to follow by the books, nor should they. What people should do in order to treat this idea would be to teach at least safe methods. The bible thumpers in Africa and everywhere else tend to ignore this, and justify that marriage is the best time, but the idea that people are going to follow the idea of waiting for full reasoning levels is at best a utopian fantasy.

Wow. My culture must have been practically perfect, then. Before the invasion of the Europeans, we had practically no issues with unintended teen pregnancy or STDs, and we didn't have condoms or birth control pills. Nor were we grossly overpopulating the world. Funny.
Treating it like an impossible fantasy makes it nothing but an impossible fantasy. People are entirely capable of waiting, as my own background proves. All it takes is a little bit of self-control and common sense, plus education.

Captain Ahab Wrote:It's fine if you support education indepdendent of legislation, you very well could and should, but I'm not buying it.

Because you think it's impossible, because you're basing your reasoning on the general mindset of the world, which is that sexual desire is some irresistable force that can not be overcome. But it can be. Males don't have to have sex. You can love someone and never have sex with them. You just have to open your mind and see the world for what it is. Sex is just one bodily desire. You can hold back the urge to pee, can't you?

[Ahab]

I came in overwhelmed having to supply a response to every one of your absurd claims, but thank god you're repeteitive.

Shuri Wrote:Overpopulation is hardly a "myth". The world can't support 6.6 billion people the way we're going, and it's not going to get any better with 9 billion people in 2050. This site can provide some information you might find interesting, and I do hope it will crack your little "myth" theory.
Whether or not China brought its overpopulation upon itself through birth regulation is irrelevant; the state of things now is what's important. As things are now, overpopulation is a big, big problem, that goes even farther than the 6.6 billion people constituting it.

Way to go, bashing people for being ignorant and then not providing any proof to your claim other than what youve been taught by cynics.

With the way genetic engineering is going, the entire population could be fed by the time 2050 hits. Norman Borlaug did enormous research on genetic engineering and it did not come to no avail. He's not a man you should bash. He saved one billion lives and his innovations will continue long after he is dead. He pretty much saved the agriculture industry of Mexico, Pakistan, and tons of other places. Unfortunately, due to overpopulation naysayers and cynics, he's had difficulty getting his crop to African countries.

Want more shit to back up my claim? Well, here we go. The places where people tend to starve the most have far lower population density than Manhattan or San Francisco. In fact, they have some of the least in the world. While there are exceptions such as India and China, these issues are due not to overpopulation but as I said (and you kindly ignored), corrupt bureaucracy which favors liberal, social democratic idealist goverments which end up being ran by corrupt undemocratic leaders bent on self interest.

Shuri Wrote:And yet, 19 million people are still ending up with an STD every year. I suppose, considering the population, that's not so many. But I don't think that's a number either of us can be comfortable with regardless.

And yet you fail to see that what should be educated is safe sex, not moral judgements or "facts" as you claim them to be with plenty of junk science statistics to support your complete utter propoganda for abstinence. If condoms can curb that, then we need to teach more, not come up with a ridiculous message which does more bad than good in the name of "helping educate." Obviously, junk food is bad, but you don't see a ton of Jack LaLanne's out there enforcing a calvinist doctrine on themselves into their 90s. No, the answer does not come from saying to get rid of it, but rather to educate a more moderate desicion which does not go to either extremes.

You claim alternatives should be "alternatives", and yet the argument is rather flawed. You're still endorsing an 80% abstinence only doctrine that would not work when it comes to educating teenagers and the people at risk for STDs. The safe sex aspect should be the main focus of attention as people are not going to follow you if you start out in a rant about abstinence. And no, abstinence is not the only way to be sure. You can contract HIV/AIDS from other factors.

Shuri Wrote:I would like to agree with this, but sadly I can't. Most humans seem to have lost their ability to use common sense in everyday life (of those, most have had it torn away from them), and therefore are only as smart as they are educated, and since compulsory schooling seems to be the central source most people have come to "learn" from, humans are now generally unintelligent. We are simply under the pretense that a PhD document makes someone superior in intelligence to someone without, when in fact it only shows they have survived the schooling system, but throw that person out in the jungles of Africa, and you'll notice that their ingrained survival instincts rarely actually kick in. Because, guess what. The real world doesn't care if you're a professor. That leapord will slit you open anyway.
Going off on a slightly unrelated tangent, I do believe 9/11 was planned and carried out by the US Government. I don't claim to know, but I've seen enough proof in favor of the theory, and nothing credible to argue it, to say it's my honest opinion that 9/11 was a big facade put on by the American government.

And I can understand why you may be misled to believe this. I'm all for cynicism and nihilism, but humans do have the tendency to use common sense. If they know the mindset of "don't hurt people", theyre pretty intelligent if you ask me. And thats a good chunk. This is not to say their intelligence is untapped in some areas, but theres reason to be apathetic. The number that has understanding is ever increasing, and its hard to be utterly pessimistic.

[SoulRiser]

Quote:Again; personal experiences do not provide a valid argument against facts. About 115 people die on a daily basis due to car accidents in the U.S.: about a death every 13 minutes.

Okay, so 115 people die every day, alright, so does that mean you can jump to conclusions and say it's because of people who are driving before the age of 24? The number '115' doesn't tell me anything about their ages.

Quote:Discrimination is, according to Dictionary.com: "treatment or consideration of, or making a distinction in favor of or against, a person or thing based on the group, class, or category to which that person or thing belongs rather than on individual merit". I am not judging people my age based on the fact that they are fifteen; I am making a reasonable argument based on a fact, not a judgement, about that age group.

No, you're basing it on statistics, not fact.

Quote:I only remind them that they are incapable of making choices based on the same level of reasoning and rational they would later in life, and discourage them from making decisions that include a great potential of harm, especially when they're doing them for the wrong reasons.

And you say this to everyone regardless of the fact that you'd be wrong at least some of the time. You can't go around telling complete strangers that they are incapable of anything if you don't know that individual person. It's quite frankly insulting.

Quote:First of all, I didn't set an age limit. Nature did.

No, your statistics did.

Quote:My entire argument is based on the idea that people should think about what they do before they do it.

Which is a brilliant idea, but insulting people's intelligence is hardly the way to do it.

Quote:

Quote:People think about things whenever they think about things.

Oh? In that case, President Bush was perfectly justified in sending us into Iraq without a method of escape in mind. Surely he just used your logic and figured he would think up an evacuation process later. Because people just think about things when they come to mind.
I don't think any further implications are necessary.

Where did that come from?

Quote:Don't you realize the statistics defeat you EVERY TIME?

Statistics don't defeat anything because statistics mean nothing on their own. If a statistic says that [insert random percentage] of a sample group of people's brains were underdeveloped before the age of 24, it means exactly that, and nothing more. People are the ones who draw conclusions from statistics, and that's where all the errors come in.

Quote:At least know what you're talking about before you make a choice about it, because you end up looking plain silly when you mess up and can't even justify your own mistake because you didn't know when you had every chance to.

Absolutely agreed, so why the hell is it even necessary to bring age into the equation at all? You should be advocating that stuff for people of all age groups, because everyone screws up. Which, ironically, is the best way to learn. If it doesn't kill you, that is, which is what the driving issue is all about, but then this topic was about casual sex to begin with, which is a helluva lot less likely to kill anyone.

Quote:But as a teenager or young adult, the relief of sex is hardly necessary in order to keep living your life without going crazy. That's what masturbation is for.

I agree it's not necessary, but neither are most things. People are going to do it anyway, no matter how much you tell them that their brains are not fully developed. If you're gonna tell people not to do something that they want to do, you have to give them good reasons and good alternatives. Or just totally unbiased information, I'd vote for that any day.

Quote:But it's unnecessary and dangerous before a certain age group.

It's unnecessary and dangerous to do it with random people no matter what age group you're in. If you actually make sure you and whoever you're doing it with are fully tested (for STD's and whatnot) and prepared (birth control and mentally), most of the danger goes out the window and then you're just left with "unnecessary".