(July 6, 2011 at 2:22 am)BethK Wrote:(July 6, 2011 at 1:29 am)Rayaan Wrote:(July 6, 2011 at 1:21 am)Minimalist Wrote: Grapes are good....wine is much, much, better.
I don't think so.
The dangers of alcoholic drinks greatly outweigh the benefits. It is known that coordination starts to drop in a person, before he is even 'drunk', and he is actually unaware of his own state. There is a reason countless people die in alcohol-related accidents despite the fact that the driver things he is capable of driving.
Also, if you talk to people who say that they drink "in moderation", even they will tell you that at some point in their life (at least once) that they have had too much to drink when they are not fully in control of their actions.
Count me in as one atheist who agrees 100% with Rayaan. The reasons to avoid alcohol have nothing to do with religion, although some religions prohibit it. The possible benefit from drinking red wine is offset by the problems caused by alcohol, and the severe problems that it CAN cause. For instance, in the United States of America alone, more people die each and every month from traffic accidents caused by drunk drivers than who died in 9/11. According to the World Health Organization in http://www.who.int/violence_injury_preve..._child.pdf 32% of child abuse cases in Germany had the offender under the influence of alcohol at the time. Other countries are difficult to get from this report, as they combine being under the influence of (illegal) drugs and being under the influence of alcohol alone.
Alcohol is implicated in a great many cases of domestic violence. 2/3 of the victims of domestic violence report that their partner had been drinking. http://www.marininstitute.org/alcohol_po...olence.htm According to a study cited in the New England Journal of Medicine, http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJ...ctober& The risk for violence and injury is highest when the (male) partner has been drinking. This exceeds the risk for someone who has been doing illegal drugs or for former or estranged husbands and boyfriends. BTW, there are studies showing that female partners who get drunk also instigate domestic violence, but d
o it less frequently than do males - it's still unacceptable.
What, precisely, does "drinking IN MODERATION" mean? Does it mean that you only get drunk and pass out at home? Does it mean that you only get drunk once a week? Does it mean that you only get drunk with friends? Actually, there are as many answers to that as there are people who say they drink in moderation.
Here's another reason for an atheist to not imbibe. Many of us value our minds, our ability to reason, the ability to think things out for ourselves. Most of us find it abhorrent to just hand that ability over to some religion or other. Why do we so willingly hand it over to a chemical?
Only losers derive much joy from things not dangerous when carried to excess. Not much lasting ever came out of studious moderation, except a long life suffered through purely out of the fear of dying.
