Re: Peace will come when it’s gone

bill.sloman@xxxxxxxx wrote in news:1b32a290-b3da-4da4-9a39-
8cfb9aa37dcc@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx:

On Sep 21, 7:55 am, John Larkin
<jjlar...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
[snip]

If everyone abstained before marriage, and was monogamous after, as
the Pope recommends, there would be no AIDS.

And if wishes were horses beggars would ride. Abstinence and fidelity
don't seem to be accessible to a significant proportion of the
population, and thye are th people who spread AIDS.

In all fairness, JL merely pointed out that "If X, then Y".

The main point of contention IMO is "as the Pope recommends", becasue teh
fact is that *most* Eurasian cultures tend to frown upon premarital and
extramarital sex. (I don't know enough about early NAticve American
culture to make any inteligent statement about them, so I won't.) The only
cultures I know of which are fairly casual re: sex are a few Polynesian-
based island cultures that were isolated from Eurasia and therefore had no
exposure to, hence no experience with, Eurasian diseases, or IIRC even
lice, until the Europeans brought them. I can't recall teh refernces now,
but these Eurasian diseases evolved as humans began domesticating animals,
and increasing numbers of humans and animals were living in very close
proximity. (The reason that new flu strains so often erupt in China is due
to the degree to which the Chinese peasantry still live in intimate
proximity with domesticated fowl. Look it up if you doubt me.)

So, rather than only stating "the Pope", John should have said "most
leaders of religions which have their roots in Eurasia".

THe eoor most peopel make today is in assuming that, simply becasue ancient
people had no cell phones or cars, they were stupid. They weren't, and
probably had to be much smarter to survive than do today's coddled masses.
So no, they did not know what 'vibrio cholerae' was, but they could
certainly observe that someone ate oysters ro clams, and developed a elthal
case of the shits - *and* they could observe that there was no way to tell
*which* shellfish were deadly (becuase tehre is no way to visually discern
which are or are nto infected). So, being smart, they said, "Hell, *I'm*
not gonna eat that stuff, and neither is my family!"

THings such as the laws about what can be planted, and when, and wher, were
rooted in observation; laws about not eating meat with dairy were to
pervent waste in an unforgiving environment; laws re: what to use for
weaving cloth could have ben related to observing what made forstronger
cloth versus weaker cloth.

Same goes for sex. Even aside from issues of human jealousy and questions
of who will suport kids (i.e. paternity questions), the same principles of
observation applied to the spread of STDs.


THe problem is that cause-and-effect aer not always observable, leading to
errors in discerning what causes something. So, if soemone spat over his
left shoulder during a hunt, and then narrowly missed getting gored by a
wild boar, he might decide that he escaped harm becaus ehe spit over his
left shoulder. That is part of the cause behind religious errors.


Many religious rules were
probably evolved as methods to reduce communicable diseases.

That probably needs to be put the other way around; the religions that
had adopted sexuall restrictive rules prospered because fewer of their
followers suffered from sexually transmitted diseases; evolution
dictated which religions were successful rather than the rules that
they adopted.

Sorry, but that's simply not the generally-accepted thesis. Observation of
effect, followed by a "don't do that, it's dangerous" rule also just makes
a lot more sense.

John is right on this one.


Sex/drugs/rock-and-roll spread sixty or so nasty viruses and at least
a dozen unpleasant bacteria, all of which are working on their drug
resistance.

Rest and recreation - in the military sense - does just as well. Check
out the epidemiological consequences of the US tropps onrest and
recreation in Australia during the Vietnam war.


Same difference. Casual intimate physical contact is risky. Not only due
to STDs, but also because it's the fastest way to spread *any* communicable
disease, from impetego to TB to the flu, as well as the vectors of disease,
such as head lice and body lice.

My major was in Bacteriology, and I worked as an Epidemiological
Microbioligist for the State of South Carolina for a few years, and then
worked in a Medical microbiology lab - and then, working in the gov.t, I
learned about horrifically nightmarish stuff that nobody ever ought to have
to learn about. So it's not like I'm just making this all up.

People are disease vectors. Having sex with people you don't know well
enough to be certain they're free of communicable disease is risky.
Period. No morality about it because there is no morality to disease -
bacteria, parastes, viruses, all are doing what any other organism does -
trying to survive. Personally, tho', I don't want them using *me* to
survive, so I've never been, and never will be, much of a proponent of
casual sex, for the same reason that I'm not a proponent of sticking one's
hand into the garbage disposal and turning it on.







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