Since Del. Dave Albo has made college transgressions fair game in his race against Democratic challenger Greg Werkheiser, I feel I should point out that Dave Albo didn’t once have sex in college. He got nothin’. In fact, he didn’t get any play until the age of — wait for it — 38.
As with Werkheiser’s speeding tickets, this is a matter of public record — Albo is a zealous opponent of pre-marital sex, and didn’t get married until a few years ago. Poor slob.
Ouch, Waldo–Werkheiser has a tough race, but I know he’s far above getting into Albo’s sexual history!
Still, our breakfast analysis today concluded that Albo has opened up his own personal Pandora’s Box. Greg may have received a bunch of traffic tickets in his youth. I doubt if anyone will ever care to withold a vote for that–it’s pretty irrellevant (hmm, was Albo ever late paying his cable bill)? On the other hand, the WAPO article on this shows that Albo has done a tidy little business over the years in helping underage drivers dodge their DWIs. Fast driver or advocate for underaged alchoholic drivers? That consideration by itself is why Albo is going to find that this expose is biting him in the butt (and I don’t give a hoot whatever else went near, around or in it, either now or when Albo was in college)!
Werkheiser has a tough race, but I know he’s far above getting into Albo’s sexual history!
That’s what I like about Greg — he’s a far better man than I. :)
Wow.. Abstinence is now something to be held against you.. [grandma voice]What is this world coming to?[/grandma voice]
Looks like I’m in the same reviled boat as Del. Dave Albo, though I don’t plan to wait that long to get married!
I’m reminded of The Onion’s wonderful “Horribly Awkward First Sexual Encounter ‘Worth The Wait’ For Christian Newlyweds.”
That is so ridiculous and far from reality…
Hans,
You don’t get it. In all likelihood, Albo had premarital sex. Lots of it. We have some mutual friends. I’m too polite to ask, but … He’s a major, major hypocrite. That’s one reason he’s fit in so well in the GA. LOL.
Hans, isn’t that like arguing with a food review for a restaurant you’ve never eaten at? :)
My apologies, saywhat. I don’t know Albo (or any of his friends) and didn’t know this was a sarcastic post.
Waldo, I’m not an idiot as portrayed in The Onion. All of the beliefs (except abstinence til marriage) espoused by the “Christian couple” aren’t held even in my ultra-conservative circle of Amish-Mennonite Beachys (have fun trying to figure out what that is). I don’t know if you are familiar with the Amish-Mennonites (I am one), but you can’t get too much more conservative than us. The actions as portrayed in the Onion are not as I would do. Knowing your way around the internet makes ignorance a pretty difficult thing to accomplish.
The goal here is to lump obsolete/nonexistent ideas* about sex into abstinence to make abstinence look ridiculous. I won’t try to argue for abstinence, because if you don’t believe the Bible and that you should obey the Bible, you have no absolute moral foundation on which to base moral descisions. Any moral guidelines are arbitrary and non-binding.
That being said, abstinence does work. I know thousands (I am not kidding you; we are a very social people) of Amish-Mennonites and I know two couples that are divorced. We tend to have strong marriages that last and that are based on mutual respect and Biblical values. I don’t know if you recall our earlier conversation about abstinence at Commonwealth Conservative, but there I stated that all the students in our (albeit small) school is a virgin. I stand by that. We must be doing something right, eh? Feel free to do some research. We are a small group, but there are resources out there that validate what I’m saying. Unfortuneately, none of the online resources talk about abstinence. The main reason for this is because it is a given.
I’m good friends with an Amish-Mennonite guy who is quite the rebel. (He’s a socialist, for one.) He dyes his hair green, uses black lipstick at times, and plays in a rock band. He remains a virgin as well.
*
“because Linda refused to let me touch her nightgown until the room was completely dark.” [Totally unrealistic from the girls I know]
“blushing, sobbing bride.” [See above]
“we figured out that it would be easier if Linda separated her legs to facilitate entry.” [Totally nonsensical]
“John’s refusal to assist the navigation process by touching himself—an act the Bible strictly prohibits” [simply totally false]
“Linda said it grew gloriously tolerable, describing the experience as “endurable beyond my wildest dreams.”” [Again, unrealistic]
“probably even somewhat erotic in nature.”” [This hardly deserves comment]
“the newlyweds took turns showering.” [Unrealistic]
“maybe try actually touching Linda’s vagina with my hand at some point” [Unrealistic]
“If not, we may be forced to repeat this beautiful experience.” [Extreme baloney.]
Hans,
How would you know if it’s ridiculous? You know, what with your admitted lack of sexual experience. I’m going to explain a few cold, hard truths to you here.
See, what makes it all funny is that men are socially judged to a certain extent by their sexual prowess. So if you are an adult virgin, it’s sort of like being a provisional eunuch. People might say ‘good for you’ from time to time. But really they are all laughing at you behind your back. This is the basis behind the huge box office returns of ‘The 40 Year Old Virgin.’ America is lining up at theaters everywhere to fork over $8 just to spend 90 minutes laughing at people like yourself and Albo.
There’s actually a lot research out there which demonstrates extremely high social pressure for teenagers and young people to experiment sexually. And do you know what we call it when people resist or defy social norms? That’s *anti-social behavior* that you and Del. Albo have both been engaging in, Hans. You are rejecting the mainstream, traditional values of this country. Why do you hate America?
ATA: Wow… You are amazing.. I assume you are liberal… You are showing me in an excellent manner why the liberals have been losing elections.
btw, I am 17 years old.
ATA: Duh, me! I thought you were serious! Lol! You are funny!
Hans Mast said: because if you don’t believe the Bible and that you should obey the Bible, you have no absolute moral foundation on which to base moral descisions. Any moral guidelines are arbitrary and non-binding.
Well thanks a lot, I don’t believe a single bible story and have never received a speeding ticket, been arrested, and am seen as an example in my comunity as a fine and upstanding citizen. Never mind the billions of people in the world who do not subscribe to the bible. Come on.
I did not say that you have no moral foundation or no morals.
What I said was that any moral foundation that you have, apart from the Bible, is arbitrary and optional. You can really come up with whatever you want. The folks at Enron, for instance, obviously had a very relative moral scale.
Oh, and for the record, my views on using speeding tickets against someone in a political race.
What I said was that any moral foundation that you have, apart from the Bible, is arbitrary and optional.
Hans, that’s really pretty arrogant. (And, believe me, I know arrogant. :) For starters, subscribing to the moral foundation offered by the Bible is “optional,” so we can toss that one out the window. And “abritrary”? There are many codes of behavior (literary and otherwise) that are certainly not arbitrary. The Code of Hammurabi is not Biblical (though it is the basis for portions of the Bible), but it’s certainly not arbitrary.
You may believe that other moral foundations are inferior, and there are probably good arguments for that. But “arbitrary and optional”? Definitely not.
I am not trying to be arrogant, honest.
Of course, I see what you are saying: If you don’t believe the Bible, then the Bible seems arbitrary as well becuase you don’t believe in its divine inspiration.
While we’re on the subject, check out the top headline here. *groan and laugh*
Of course the bible is arbitrary, what is more important, thou shalt not kill or thou shalt not have other gods before me? Personally, I think killing is a little worse, but somehow it does not rank as high.
What is arbitrary about a moral code as long as you adhere to it, I cannot tell you how many supposed Catholics I know who were searching for blow jobs every weekend in college. What is arbitrary is how people adhere to their codes.
Amazing how, if the Bible was arbitrary, it was written over a period of thousands of years by tons of different authors (inspired by God of course) and they don’t contradict each other.
Of course it contradicts itself. The first half is all about how you can kill people that wronged you, the second half is all about “never mind that eye for an eye thing — start loving each other.” That’s the mother of all contradictions.
It was all part of God’s two-fold plan for the world’s redemption that was laid out throughout the whole Bible starting in Genesis.
atheist: What non-arbitrary moral code do you follow? What are its origins? Who is the author?
Hans,
The Bible has it’s share of contradictions. And bear in mind that the gospels have been heavily edited over the millennia to clean up anything that made people scratch their heads too much. You’ve got one guy saying that Christ told everyone at the last supper to sell their cloaks and buy swords (which is a fairly major departure from everything else Christ said or did in the Bible) and somehow nobody else saw fit to relate that particular stunning conversation.
To find other substantial evidence for that kind of contradiction in Christ’s life you’ve got to look to the good ol’ Gospel of St. Thomas.
The Bible was written by men. Not by God. Written by men who were relating their experiences with the divine in their own flawed, human way. Then it was copied and translated and edited for political reasons umpteen million times until what we read today is the equivilent of running text back and forth a dozen times through the jive filter. After so many totally abitrary decisions about what words to choose for different translations, the idea of taking this document as a literal truth of God’s will is absolutely absurd.
I’m not questioning Christ’s divinity or the absolute historical fact that the gist of His life story was real. The essence of being a Christian is to seek what Christ sought and to seek it through Him. NOT fetishizing every word of these obviously bastardized texts as if this legalese is going to get you any closer to God.
As far as I’m concerned the entire Old Testament is a punch of pagan crap. 90% of it came from polytheistic pagan traditions that have absolutely nothing to do with the God that you know. Start doing a little linguistic research on ‘Cain’ and you’ll be stunned at what you find. Most of this stuff pre-dates even archaic Judaism. Time and time again, the old beliefs were packaged up with some new political ideas to adjust them to historical changes. Characters that had been worshipped as Gods became kings, demons, angels or men. Taking the Old Testament literally – or even taking it as a Testament at all – is essentially the practice of paganism.
If God has a head to shake, he does it every time somebody suffers for the sake of some pagan passage out of the OT.
By the way, most athiests do follow a moral code. They got it from the life of Christ, although they don’t realize it. Christianity has been such an integral part of Western culture that it’s basic values have permeated the psychology of most everybody – even if they do not consider themselves Christian. It’s not at all an arbitrary code that they just made up. They were born immersed in it. It’s a rare will that can create an arbitrary code and actually follow it.
You can go and say that athiests have no moral compass, but 99.9% of them live honest lives and don’t go out shooting people down in the street. I’ve known plenty of athiests who would never steal or hurt anybody even when they could get away with it and I bet you do, too. So clearly Western athiests DO have a rather effective moral code. The afterlife waiting for them is another debatable matter altogether.
It was all part of God’s two-fold plan for the world’s redemption that was laid out throughout the whole Bible starting in Genesis.
Ah, well, if you want to wave away each contradiction as “part of God’s plan,” I can’t see much a discussion ensuing. :)
The important part of what I said was not the “God’s plan” part. The important part is that all throughout the Old Testament it talks about the changes that will occur in the New Testament.