Quote:

"You can't resolve it with the distribution of condoms," the pope told reporters aboard the Alitalia plane heading to Yaounde. "On the contrary, it increases the problem."

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  http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090317/ap_on_re_af/af_pope_africa

I'm confident the title to this thread is accurate as i can't imagine what else he meant, but feel free to suggest an alternative summation.  I just don't know what "increase the problem" means, relevant to condom usage, except to increase the rate of infection.


After looking into the issue quite in depth in an examination of the church and the bible's position on abortion and birth control for a final project in some class, I'm left to believe that the opposition to condoms is:
a) totally inconsistent with the church's other beliefs and
b) without biblical support (i.e. they just made this shit up)



What do you guys think of this?  BTW, if you know of some way teh objection to birth control can be justified then I'd love to hear it (same with their cooky stance on reproductive health and fertilization).


Wast the pope's statement just him getting carried away  in his anti-condom zealotry or was he serious?

How can condoms "increase the problem" of HIV?  Maybe if the women are constantly pumping out babies they will have less sex and less aids sex or something? 

Maybe... Angola (where the statement was made) has an average 6.2 children born per woman total fertility rate according to the cia factbook.  I dunno....  No condoms needed there (or any other birth control which is banned by the pope, except for the 'rhythm method' which is almost worthless and has no protection against STD's)

Quote:

How can condoms "increase the problem" of HIV?  Maybe if the women are constantly pumping out babies they will have less sex and less aids sex or something? 

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omg,

And what the fuck is the rhyth method? lol. Sounds sexy...

Wiccan_Seeker said:

The poep reasons that if there weren't any condoms. people would practice abstinence.

Thus, condoms promote promiscuous behavior and therefore contribute to the spread of AIDS.



Of course this has nothing at all to do with Reality, but then again he isnt the spokesperson of that is he?

In my humble opinion for such an official stance in the context of the African AIDS tragedy, he should be crucified the moment he sets foot on African soil. Upside down, as to not offend his religious beliefs.

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supra said:

They do use the term 'fornication' in the king james translation of the bible, and in context of it being against got and a sin to your body or 'temple'...but off of that, no definition of fornication is made in the bible, but its thought to mean 'sex out of wedlock'.

I can't find where it is right now, but this is talked about in there somewhere...its a big book and hard to remember back in the days that i used to study it.

peace

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johnm214 said:

supra said:

They do use the term 'fornication' in the king james translation of the bible, and in context of it being against got and a sin to your body or 'temple'...but off of that, no definition of fornication is made in the bible, but its thought to mean 'sex out of wedlock'.

I can't find where it is right now, but this is talked about in there somewhere...its a big book and hard to remember back in the days that i used to study it.

peace

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oh, yeah I forgot about 1 corinthians 6:9, is that what you are refering to?  That fornicators won't inherent the earth?


See does anybody know what the original words were and their meaning?  Its hard to find that given the political reasons to have this be against premarital sex given the lack of support in the bible against this.  So a search just reveals all sorts of folks talking about it but not ever justifying what the original meaning was.


For example another version uses the word "sexualy immoral" rather than "fornicators" and that's just the two i looked at- who knows what it originally said.

Of course the fact that god didn't include this in his comandments despite mentioning adultry (why couldn't he just have said don't have sex unless with your spouse if that's what he wanted?  God isn't good with words I guess) and the fact that it was Paul, not god or jesus who said this, kinda cuts against it being too meaningful for me even if I was to accept the bible.  I just never got how some random guy in the jesus clique got to say things and that was supposed to be the word of god many years later, despite god and jesus doing a bunch of talking in the bible for themselves.



Do you think that really meant sex out of marriage?  Can you find anything in detail explaining the menaing?


And btw, can anyone explain what the rules are as to what parts of the bible your supposed to follow in any of the various chrisitan faiths and why?

PS.  Do the jews have any premarital sex bans in their books?  I know they have a bunch more "traditional law" than the christians, but anything in their books that wasn't just made up by the rabbis?

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Seuss said:

> Maybe it was clearer in the original hebrew, but again, its a dead language,

Better to call Biblical Hebrew a lost language rather than a dead language.  Even then, it is only partially lost.  Modern Hebrew has a lot in common with Biblical Hebrew.

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teeter said:

either way...he has a point....immoral sex could easily have refered to sex with someone u dont really care about....like a hooker or some bitch u picked up at a club....it would make a lot more sense that way

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