scigirl

Gurdur, I wasn't referring to you! But no by all means post stats and stuff. Plus, it's not really "my" argument, it's fatherphil's, and I think your data seriously undermines part of fatherphil's premise.

scigirl

Duck!

Well. we're fucked here in Ireland then. Alcohol comsumption has reached epidemic proportions. I think that Ireland is currently in the top ten of alcohol consuming nations globally.

I'll try to dig some references. It's not illicit drug abuse that's causing trouble here, it's over the bar drugs like Guinness that cause epidemic levels of violence on town and city streets late at night.

Here we go:
PDF file describing alcohol consumption in EU
As of 2000, Ireland has the 4th highest level of alcohol consumption in Europe. And the highest proption of under age drinks reporting 3 or more binges in the last month goes to Ireland.

I guess Ireland is rapidly going downhill morally. I wonder when the Islamic terrorists while choose us as their next base in Europe.


Duck!

Gurdur

Wrong !
The stats addressed drug abuse, tentative drug use, drug-related crime, and state money spent on combating drug-related crime.
quote]Amsterdam harbors an advocacy journal for pedophilia called Paidika, while mainstream homosexuals in America have utterly repudiated NAMBLA to the point that it is now essentially impotent as a propaganda tool for pedophilia pushers. So while America is indeed rotting from within, Holland is obviously a few years ahead of us.[/quote] This is nothing more than a bad emotionalist argument.
Peadophilia is illegal in The Netherlands; merely because in The Netherlands there is a private organization analogous to NAMBLA, even with its own journal, does not mean anything about The Netherlands as such at all.
Dopes NAMBLA have its own newsletters ? Then your whole so-called argument was nothing but a smear job.

What makes your entire propaganda job so ridiculous is that The Netherlands has stricter laws on public speech than does the USA.

My, my, yguy, this entire effort of yours is exceptionally dismal.

Plus you really made me laugh my guts out with your comment about not being impressed by empirical evidence.
I mean, on one thread (Rachel Corrie/Bulldozers In Israel/Palestine), you insist on relying on empirical evidence to prove your opponents wrong --- but here you insist on trying to evade it because suddenly the facts no longer support your prejudices.

Gurdur

Scigirl,
I was serious --- you've being making the large effort to build up a factual argument, and I could be getting sucked into a derailment job here.
I've now answered the post from yguy, and can safely leave it at that for the moment, and absent myself from this.
I would rather see you continuing your good work in this thread than contribute in any way, inadvertantly, to spoiling it, which is why I made my offer, and why I'll play possum for the time being.

Keep up the good work !

fatherphil

i'm talking about the need to score some pot friday night to insure the weekend will be fun enough. if friday night falls through then the entire weekend may be spent in the frustrating quest of trying to get something from somwhere just to get high.

that need.

also, if you don't know by now, i'm not big into data debates cause i know both side have the ability to decieve (not maliciously) with data. i'm more interested with conversations from folk's personnal pov. but don't let me get in the way of your fun.

scigirl

fatherphil,

You still didn't answer my question. Do they really need the pot in a physical sense, like a diabetic needs insulin? Don't you agree that if the answer is "yes," the moral debate is over? If you need it, you need it.

Or are you saying they think they need it? As opposed to just want it? We have a word for this in the medical community - it's called "addiction." And if you don't have experience with this, thank whatever god you believe in, because it can be pretty awful.

Also, your hypothetical scenario is interesting, but does it even exist? In other words, do most real drug users fit your little friday night scenario? I guess I don't see the point of debating the morality of a situation that doesn't really happen (if many drug users are addicted, or depressed, or in pain, etc, your whole argument for "recreational drug use" is irrelevant.) But. . .irrelevant is ok I guess.

Um, ok. I must admit, I have trouble relating to someone like you, or yguy, who would rather believe someone's unsupported assertions, rather than what is actually going on. But then again, perhaps that's why I'm an atheist and not a christian!
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As a side note, I was thinking of the book Brave New World this morning. In case you haven't read it, I'll explain a bit of it to you. In this book, people are all essentially "cloned," and mind-controlled. If they are feeling the least bit of discomfort, they are encouraged to take a drug called soma, which has no bad side effects but takes all the uncomfortable feelings away. This way, everyone can just be happy all the time, and also ignorant to what is going on around them. A world of people in a delusion.

Do I think this is immoral? Sure I do. It's a topic I think about a lot, since anti-depressants are being prescribed a lot these days. Sure there are people who need them, but there are plenty of people who just need to "buck up" and get over it. The trouble is - we currently don't have a good way to distinguish those who really need the drug because of true chemical imbalance in the brain, from those individuals who just want a quick fix without really trying to get better on their own.

If you could prove to me that the intent of the drug users, and the end outcome of the drug use, was to create a drooling smiling population like in Brave New World, I would quickly join you in a crusade against the said agent. However, in our cowardly old world, it's not nearly that simple. Some people have to take drugs (prescribed or not) to simply feel ok.

In addition, it seems to me that if you are going to indict substances such as pot for being "mind altering" and shielding people from reality, well just understand that this is how I feel about religion. Is it ok for people to live in a deluded fantasy world - that they are going to see their loved ones when they die, and that there is some big fuzzy being up in the sky watching over them and loves them no matter what? Instead of facing the cold hard reality that when we die, that's it. And if we want something good to happen in our lives, we have to get off our butt and do it ourselves. I want to start manufacturing bumper stickers that say, "I don't care if kids pray in schools, but if they want good grades they should also probably study!"

Sure pot smokers might expect the pot to make them feel good on a friday night. But I've never heard a pot smoker ask their pot to help them find a job, a mate, or solve their deep problems. If I hear "God will decide what's right for me" one more time out of my sister's christian friends who just graduated high school, I think I'm going to vomit. One of her friends who got pregnant from unprotected sex with her boyfriend refuses to give the baby up for adoption, even though she is bi-polar, a teen, and not fit to be a mother. Why? Because "God put this baby in me, He wants me to take care of it, and He will help me do it!" Who's delusional now? I've never heard of ANYONE that said, "oh this pot will help me raise a child" or "I'm going to let pot decide what I should do with my life."

You think marijuana is soma, I think religion is the biggest delusional mind-altering drug that was ever invented. Was it Karl Marx that stated, "Religion is the opate of the masses." But I suppose you disagree.

scigirl

fatherphil

i've seen the friday night ritual played out many times so can attest to its reality.

i think the need is more psycological at least in the beginning. it becomes a need because the user has convinced himself that this is what is needed to have fun.

seeing how one rejects religion as an opiate, i question how the same person is indifferent to opium as an opiate.

scigirl

I don't "reject" religion as an opiate, it simply has no effect on me. And I wouldn't know how other drugs affect me since I am a drug virgin (except for underage drinking).

I'm saying that religion acts like a drug for some people, because it distorts their view of reality.

scigirl

fatherphil

is that morally bad, good or nuetral?

Buddrow_Wilson

Is having a delusion something that lends itself to a moral judgment? I think, like drug use, its neutral is a general sense, but how the delusion manifests in the person and the person's actions resulting from the delusion may or may not be immoral.


Does this sound familiar:

i question the morality of the need to use religion just to get through a weekend.