Christian Condoms

I think it is pretty lame but that’s just me. So in the spirit of humor, what would the atheist wrapper say?

WhoWJD? That is great!!

While I appreciate the funny in this, it goes a little too far. I’m definitely in favor of laughing at stupid things christians do…and there are many. But this is a lame attempt to make fun of christians who decide that for the sake of their beliefs they want to abstain from sex. I believe that’s a respectable decision and quite frankly I’m surprised to see this on the friendly atheist blog. There is a line of what is funny and what is offensive…shows like family guy and south park walk that line very well. The christian condom site is over the line.

WhoWJD is a classic.

It does seem like it’s a joke that would wear thin pretty quickly.

Personally, I’d like to know about their QC standards and if they acquire their product from an established manufacturer. Unless as Christian condoms they are designed to break so that the sperm isn’t wasted.

It’s not particularly unfriendly. All that’s being done here is bringing our attention to a rather silly product on sale on the internet. Consider it like investigative journalism, only pointless.

Slightly off-topic, sort of, and with apologies:

Just have a few moments, but since this thread is (in part) about humor, I wanted to share two bumper stickers I’ve seen (though not in a long time, sadly) that I’ve always loved.

The first, a classic quote from Ghostbusters: “Back off man, I’m a scientist.” (Incidentally, I’m not a scientist, but that one always made me laugh, in the movie, and as a bumper sticker.)

The second, “186,282 miles/second. It’s not just a good idea, it’s the law!”

Hope everyone has a nice week. 🙂

No kings,

Robert

However, it’s not just religious people who don’t like the idea of on demand abortion. if you go the official deism website, you’ll find that they say it shouldn’t be done except in cases of rape, incest, or life of the mother (or other extenuating circumstances).

(Deism is a religious belief.)

You can’t write “other extenuating circumstances” into a law. The belief that people get abortions as a result of a light I-wonder-what-I-should-do-today sort of decision is absurd. Every abortion is an extenuating circumstance. Any law we write just makes a terrible decision worse and adds needless technical difficulties by making it harder for doctors to do what they do. Out of compassion, we should respect each individual’s ability to make a choice like this.

In fact, I’ve never quite understood why most pro-choice people think that being pro-life is an inherently “religious” position. Can’t one simply be of the opinion that a fetus is human life and therefore should be protected?

Without having numbers, I doubt that most pro-choice people really think of it that way. I’d say that “traditional religious” is a subset of “pro-life” and not the other way around. That said, I’ve also heard religious leaders arguing in favor of “pro-choice” positions on grounds of compassion, similar to what I’ve mentioned above.

The problem comes when deciding when a fetus becomes a human life. You can’t avoid drawing the line somewhere (unless you want to be against birth control, contraception, abstinence education, and anti-rape laws), so you have to decide what critereon you use to draw the line. And using religious considerations to draw that line at-or-before conception is the modern-day equivalent of using religious considerations to support the flat earth theory, etc. Similarly, you can’t be pro-choice without drawing a line either–there was a time when infanticide was legal, after all.

The labels pro-life and pro-choice are essentially worthless in the long run. We won’t get anywhere until we have a frank discussion on where we set boundaries and why, and making it seem like a binary decision isn’t going to help there. The religious faction is often identified with “pro-life” because they’re typically much more willing to treat it as a black-white issue than the other side is.

Pro-choice people, in my experience, tend to be just as dogmatic and militant about their position as pro-life people. The rhetoric on both sides just seems shrill and angry and totally inflexible these days.

Sorry, I didn’t mean to deny that there is a dogmatic faction on the pro-choice side (typically because of slippery-slope style arguments), as there obviously is. It’s an issue that I really wish I didn’t have to hear about, since there’s so much acrimony on both sides. By the “other side,” I was referring to those basing their opinions on non-religious considerations, and not to the pro-choice side. (That’s what happens when I write comments in a hurry…) This group seems to be split on both sides of the abortion issue, as opposed to the religious, which seems to be much more skewed towards the anti view.

When one side sees murder and the other sees an threat to self-evident freedoms, it’s not surprising that both sides are a tad dogmatic, to put it mildly. 🙂

I know this is off subject, but figured it was a good place to ask. An atheist I spoke to suggested I read some Spinzoa. I looked on amazon and there are so many Spinzoa books I don’t know where to start! Can anyone recommend a good one to start with? Thanks!

That’s a hard one, Maria, at least not without looking at what is listed on Amazon. I do think you will find Spinzoa very interesting though. Let me look on Amazon and see what they have, then get back with you- via email since it is off topic.

Since, seriously, anyone who is against abortions and also against sex ed and contraception is wearing their opinion pretty heavily: sex is naughty, wrong, and those who dabble in it should be punished. As a human and as an atheist, I want absolutely nothing to do with that kind of repressive worldview.

This is the black/white view I was talking about. Couldn’t have said it better. And let’s not forget that this is the faction that’s against the HPV-vaccine too, so their level of nuttiness is off the charts. I think we’re eventually going to have to reach a compromise on this issue, and people like that are going to be the biggest hinderance in this.

Unfortunately, most of our current attempts at ‘compromise’ (banning IDX, waiting periods/counseling, etc.) just plain suck.

Contraception is not 100% effective. Some women still get pregnant and in some cases it could be hazardous, if not deadly, to their life.

Unfortunately, the only thing that is 100% effective against pregnancy is abstanance. However, you can’t ask a husband and wife, for example, to go without sex, but at the same time they should not be forced to have more children than they can afford- financially, physically, etc. Thus birthcontrol is a necessity- even in marriage.

Tubal ligation or vasectomy is not 100% effective either. There have been some strange case where one or the other had the surgery and the woman still ended up pregnant. Supposedly the surgery undid itself.

miko:

I think we’re eventually going to have to reach a compromise on this issue, and people like that are going to be the biggest hinderance in this.

(cue me being completely negative about humanity) I don’t think its possible to ever reach a compromise between the “abortion on demand” and “abortion is evil” camps. One of my main reasons for believing so is the existence of people who are willing to believe that, somehow, abortion on demand is ok for them but evil for everyone else. The Only Moral Abortion is My Abortion is one of the better resources I’ve read to see that seemingly insane worldview.

Mind you, these are women who have an abortion but continue thinking that abortion is wrong, that all women who have abortions are evil hussies, etc. etc. That amount of self-loathing for women’s / reproductive rights pales in comparison to guys who think abortion is a threat to the patriarchy. If someone really fervently believes that the lives of fetuses are more important than the lives of their mothers, then the best compromise possible might be an agreement that they won’t bomb any abortion clinics.

mriana:

Tubal ligation or vasectomy is not 100% effective either. There have been some strange case where one or the other had the surgery and the woman still ended up pregnant.

And this even happens in our closest living relatives. Weird events like this are part of the reason why I’m for abortion on demand. If a couple seriously cannot afford to raise any more children, or just plain don’t want to, and they go through a (moderately or fairly) expensive surgery to prevent this, but still pregnancy occurs… I just can’t see how it’s a good thing to make a woman carry around a child without any choice in the matter. Making women have no choices just seems so 18th century.

Supposedly the surgery undid itself.

I’ve heard that God works in mysterious ways…

(cue me being completely negative about humanity) I don’t think its possible to ever reach a compromise between the “abortion on demand” and “abortion is evil” camps. One of my main reasons for believing so is the existence of people who are willing to believe that, somehow, abortion on demand is ok for them but evil for everyone else.

You probably have history on your side. In contentious issues like slavery, one side has usually solidly won in the past. But abortion is a more complicated issue. Saying that a few undifferentiated cells are a human being one second after conception is absurd, but saying that a baby becomes a human one second after birth while a fetus one second before birth is not a human is arguably just as absurd.

Keep in mind that I said it was something we needed to do–not something easy to do. For example, there are parts of South America where it’s illegal to abort a fetus which is already dead (which is sometimes necessary for the mother’s health). It’s a small start, but we’ve really got to do something about that level of stupidity. People who think that the ‘life’ of a dead fetus outweighs that of the mother are, well, really going to have to be marginalized in the debate, if we can’t convince them of their foolishness. Otherwise we’ll get nowhere. Of course, the ultra-pro-lifers would like to marginalize everyone but themselves, so that’s going to be easier said that done.

Weird events like this are part of the reason why I’m for abortion on demand. If a couple seriously cannot afford to raise any more children, or just plain don’t want to, and they go through a (moderately or fairly) expensive surgery to prevent this, but still pregnancy occurs… I just can’t see how it’s a good thing to make a woman carry around a child without any choice in the matter. Making women have no choices just seems so 18th century.

Note also that such abortions usually occur fairly early on, at a time when it’s quite difficult to make an opposing argument based on life, humanity, or suffering. Most of the opposition to this is going to come from the absolutists that are opposed to such pregnancy-prevention surgeries in the first place.