God is a concept (page 3)

LittleToe

Gary:
Ditto.

"Pray as though everything depended on God. Work as though everything depended on you." - Augustine.

RAF

DB1974 For the record, I dont view Divinity as just being a concept - it goes much deeper than this!
yeah and that's the part I don't really feel to get into because I've reliased that since we don't have the same experiences in the matter it will always looks like something weird to many ... but when only conceptual everybody can see the bases from where things matches and stay coherent and when and if the can understand the concept then they can link whatever related.

Guest with Questions

Madame Quixote: I went to the link you provided.

Unilateral monogamy is not an effective prevention strategy for HIV infection

for women, according to a study of Mexican men.

"We might find men's persistent and widespread participation in extramarital sex to be troubling -- but it's a deeply rooted aspect of social organization, and one that is unlikely to be easily changed," study leader Jennifer S. Hirsch of the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health said in a statement. "Public health programs alone can't stop extramarital sex, so we need to think about how to reduce the risk. Saying that 'be faithful' will protect married women is not true." The study, published in the American Journal of Public Health, found women are infected by their husbands, the very people with whom they are supposed to be having sex and, according to social conventions of Mexico, the only people with whom they are ever supposed to have sex.

In the Mexican study, as well as a similar study in New Guinea, the researchers say labor migration was a major contributor to infidelity. However, many men did not view sexual fidelity as necessary for achieving a happy marriage; they viewed drinking and "looking for women" as important for male friendships.

When I said monogamous relationship or "within the confines of marriage" I meant and wrote that both partners were to be faithful. In this article it clearly shows that the men were not faithful and threatened the safety of both partners.

You wrote:

No, it would not, because it is still an erroneous and ignorant assumption, unproven by any science or fact. It is nonsense. AIDS is a fact, regardless of marriage. The only certain way to avoid AIDS is to avoid sharing ANY bodily fluids, and that would certainly entail not getting married OR having sex, EVER.

This article is contrary to what you stated:

the HIV virus is not spread by saliva, tears, urine, or feces. Still, if the feces, urine or bodily fluids contain any traces of blood, it is possible to transmit the virus.
HIV is not spread by hugging, shaking hands, using telephones or from insect bites, but through blood, semen, vaginal and preseminal fluids, or breast milk. HIV and AIDS are transmitted during unprotected anal, oral or vaginal sex with someone who is HIV-positive; through blood-to-blood contact such as transfusions or sharing a needle with an HIV-positive person; or from a mother to her child during pregnancy, at childbirth or from breastfeeding.

I think your view that we should refrain from marriage and sex altogether to protect ourselves is a bit extreme, paranoid and erroneous. The chance of getting getting infected is pretty remote for someone in a (plural) monogamous relationship. What are the chances: the dentist, being jabbed by an infected needle in the hospital, someone with the virus touching someone’s open cut or sore. So I would say that your assumption that we could protect ourselves if we never got married and never had sex is totally erroneous.

Yes, AIDS is a fact, a reality but it is so because mankind does what he wants to regardless of the consequences and if you think that my view is cruel then look at an AIDS patient’s face: that is cruel. It is not God but man doing it to himself. The sentiment that these are not bad people, just humans trying to live their lives in the face of great challenges and loneliness does not change the fact that AIDS has become so widespread. My heart goes out to anyone with this disease. Yes, it would be wonderful if there was a cure but at this time there isn’t.

Madame Quixote

"Pray for the dead. Work like hell for the living." - Mother Jones

Madame Quixote

"Yes, AIDS is a fact, a reality but it is so because mankind does what he wants to regardless of the consequences and if you think that my view is cruel then look at an AIDS patient’s face: that is cruel. It is not God but man doing it to himself." - GuestWithQuestions

This is the kind of thinking that I question. By what scientific criteria do you suppose that man inflicted AIDs on us? And how do you establish AIDs as cruelty? Nature is not cruel; it is simply indifferent. People have a choice (about indifference). Nature does not.

Again, my point, which you clearly do not understand or agree with, is that disease, suffering, illness is not a moral issue. It is a scientific, health issue, and framing it exclusively withing the context of morality is misleading and dangerous, especially to the naive and undereducated.

The need to blame people for suffering AIDs is just as disturbing as the disease itself. Instead of seeking to blame others for their sickness, why not seek out a cure and provide more accurate information on how to prevent its spread? Why not support condom-distribution and education programs in places where promiscuity will remain rampant, despite religiousity.

Many of the countries where AIDs is most prevalent have very strong religious and social taboos against "unfaithfulness," especially for women; yet women are much more likely to contract AIDs from a man (especially from a husband to whom they are indeed faithful), than men are to get it from women. It's just the mechanics of male-female sex that make it so.

STOP THE BLAME GAME.

Homerovah the Almighty

Putting faith in god is redundant, putting faith in man is pro-active and the results have proven better

Give praise to the humanist........amen

educ8self

If the spiritual is not a concept, then why relate conceptually? The logical thing would be to relate spiritually, which may not involve any concepts remotely religious, or any concepts period. Of course when you're posting you have to use some kind of concept, but it might be about anything - something personal maybe, an interest in the other. And why would it matter if the other holds concepts to the opposite, if it isn't a conceptual issue in the first place? I simply don't see any reason to get our conceptual ducks in a row, disagreement isn't nearly as big a deal as we might make it out to be.

I was remember a scene from a movie, maybe A Beautiful Mind where a woman places the man's hand on her and says something to the effect of "this is real." It's like that. It's not just about the physical contact of course, you touch into something else too.

Homerovah the Almighty

God will always be a segment of human ignorance and will continue to be so..... unless Armageddon comes then I'm redundant

God is a concept

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