<p>Don’t plan to. But you never know. :p</p>
<p>Our society is steadily growing more liberal. And once our generation comes into power, I’d like to believe that hypothetical policies like that would be totally unacceptable anyways.</p>
<p>Luckily we’re way past the point of laws on premarital sex.</p>
<p>Yeah. To be honest, this entire thread has just strengthened my resolve and I don’t get the whole premarital sex thing AT ALL…and it seems to be favored only by very religious people (yes, I know this is not a representative sample).</p>
<p>Agreed. The debaters arguing for the side of waiting until marriage have not presented any convincing arguments for me at least. Although it’s understandable, because it’s hard to get a non-religious person to believe in something religious-y… hahaha.</p>
<p>I’m pretty firmly opposed to premarital sex, but I’m also opposed to drinking and drug use. There are policy reasons, but those are mostly justifications for a general standard of decency that has no basis except in what I think the world should be like.</p>
<p>I don’t get it either, but I don’t care if people believe in it as long as they are respectful of others opinions and don’t condemn the “sinners” to Hell or whatever. I think it’s cool as long as it’s a personal decision (as opposed to “God says premarital sex is wrong”).</p>
<p>There were a few religious people on this thread who weren’t “preachy” which goes to show that not all people of a certain religion are intolerant because most religions do teach the fundamental tenets of understanding and respect. A small minority don’t believe in premarital sex, but not all of them think premarital sex is wrong or the mark of a savage. I’m just baffled at how there are so many who do on here.</p>
<p>^^ I like you.</p>
<p>^^Yes, it seems many of us are “savage beasts” who will be condemned for hell for “slutting around.” The language got out of control.</p>
<p>I just looked at OP’s post. I wonder. If you decided to have sex, how would you tell your parents about it? Would you tell your parents? Do you think your own parents would let you?</p>
<p>But if you want policy reasons, here you go:
- The HIV incidence of people who don’t have premarital (or extramarital) sex or do drugs is pretty close to zero. All that money spent on AIDS treatment and research could be spent on curing inherited diseases or conditions for people who didn’t do anything wrong.
- Surgical abortion is exceedingly rare following sober sex by married couples. I view the destruction of anything with a complete human genetic code and the ability to develop into a full human being if left undisturbed as murder. Therefore, abstinence decreases the incidence of murder.
- Promiscuous sex constitutes a movement away of the idea of sex as a level of monogamous bonding (which, being a biological imperative, it ultimately is) which weakens the institution of marriage. This promotes infidelity, which creates legal costs for divorce, trauma for any children who might be in the picture, as well as economic inefficiency in transfer payments between divorced spouses.
- Acceptance of premarital sex undermines the virtues of discipline and self-restraint; both are valuable but increasingly scarce.</p>
<p>I’ll probably remember more later. I would say that my opposition goes like this:
Greatest Evil -> -> -> Least Evil
Premarital Sex -> Illegal Drugs -> Alcohol -> Lying -> Sloth, Gluttony, etc.</p>
<p>I think a lot of people have the integrity and character to not engage in “promiscuous” sex and infidelity.</p>
<p>A strong person’s virtues will stand, with or without sex.</p>
<p>Hahaha, I think number 2 of yours is going to add 40+ pages to this thread. I’m not going to say anything about it now. Thanks for sharing your views!</p>
<p>I agree with number 4 of yours to an extent. Although I do believe premarital sex is okay, I do agree with that.</p>
<p>Also, I don’t believe premarital sex necessarily means promiscuous sex. But still, do agree that promiscuous sex could lead to those things.</p>
<p>Like I said, I operate under an assumption. If you disagree with that assumption, it’s a whole other story.</p>
<p>So what was the overall purpose of the thread?
There are going to be opposing beliefs and values, especially with controversial issues such as premarital sex.</p>
<p>And some are clearly wrong. That must always be said as well.</p>
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<p>Which is why you will not be able to have a productive conversation with an absolutist of any sort until your mindset changes.</p>
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Remarkably my rating would be almost exactly the reverse.</p>
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I’m not looking to “convert” anyone. I meant that I don’t care if other people make personal decisions as long as they don’t try to force them upon me.</p>
<p>My mindset is that I have my personal values and beliefs, and other people have their own. They may not agree with mine, but I don’t consider differences to be incendiary. And I’m not really inclined to changing my mindset arbitrarily; it’ll evolve over time.</p>
<p>Nor did I claim as such.</p>
<p>I’m confused. I didn’t say that you were claiming anything. </p>
<p>I was remarking on your comment about my mindset, and I attempted to clarify.</p>
<p>Don’t be making a mountain out of a molehill now</p>
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<p>Simple probablility would indicate that, given the likelyhood of a harmful versus a beneficial mutation, we should expect a vast number of partially evolved populations before one of them happened to hit all the right mutations in the right order.</p>
<p>It’s interesting that nobody proposed the punctuated equilibrium theory until the fossil record utterly fail to show and transitional forms. This is how that sounds to me:</p>
<p>Darwin: “For evolution to have occured, there must have been vast numbers of transitional forms.”</p>
<p>Other Guys: “Yeah, great, let’s go dig them up and see if the theory is right!”</p>
<p><em>dig</em></p>
<p><em>insert grant money, academic reputations, and lots of research papers</em></p>
<p>Guys After Darwin Died: “Huh, we have all these fossils and no transitional forms. <em>casts ‘summon statistics major’</em>”</p>
<p>Statistics Major: “It appears that the ratio of transitional forms to fully developed forms is extremely small.”</p>
<p>Scientists With Lots Riding On Evolution: “That’s weird… We KNOW that all those trasitional forms MUST have existed, so since the ratio is so small the population must be REALLY big to make up for it. But since we have only found so many fossils, the chance of something being fossilized must be REALLY small.”</p>
<p>That’s called making predictions after the experiment, and it’s not good science.</p>
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<p>Once again you throw around big words… I call your bluff: How does any of those things contribute to the emergence of new alleles, rather than simply recombine existing ones?</p>
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<p>You basically just repeated what I said: Unless they have an actual effect, the next step is just as likely to be backwards as forwards. There’s nothing for natural selection to select until a mutation manifests itself as a change to the species. To not be lost, a mutation has to be good enough to become widespread in the population. Otherwise there’s a good chance of it being destroyed early on.</p>
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<p>My point exactly. See objection #2 in my original post. Generous estimates give you 150 million years to turn reptiles into the vast diversity of mammals and birds we have now. There is simply not enough time.</p>
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<p>I don’t know, but more than a few. Take feathers: If you can say they were one mutation with a straight face you should quit your job and make a killing at poker. And they are only one of a very large number of new traits required to make a bird from a velociraptor. Then that bird has to mutate… Just look at the differences between existing species, divide by two (assuming they evolved in opposite directions from their common ancestor) and divide the number of years since their supposed common ancestor’s time and you get the rate at which useful mutations must occur and stick.</p>
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<p>I wonder why you don’t care about the cleanerfish. It doesn’t take a biology major to see my point.</p>
<p>My alternative hypothesis:</p>
<p>At some point in the past a population of different species existed, which contained all alleles currently present in all species in the world. Through natural selection, speciation has occured, splitting the original relatively small number of homogenous species into the vast number of diversified species we have today.</p>