Quote:

The fact that one is addicted to a substance does not mean that he/she is not making a choice to continue using the substance to which he/she is addicted. Breaking an addiction is difficult, and most people do not enjoy withdrawal symptoms from any substance, but that doesn't preclude a conscious choice to continue using a substance.

So then we must ask how much of the speaker is the addiction, and how much is the person?

Quote:

Actually, the brain restructures its response to nicotine after a certain period of use to cause the pleasure centers of the brain to be stimulated by nicotine moreso than in those who don't or rarely smoke. This is the general mechanism behind any addiction.

I didn't know that, but it makes sense. Things like this kind of make smoking seem dishonest to me. Again it brings for the question how much of the speaker is the addiction, and how much is the person.

 

Quote:

Other than that, smoking may be pleasurable in other ways--personally, it's the physical act of smoking that I enjoy. Others enjoy the stimulant effects. I don't think that anybody "forces" themselves to start smoking. Either you enjoy it or you don't. So, you continue or you don't.

 

I didn't put that statement forth as some kind of arguementative judgement on smokers, i was just curious because when i started smoking, thats how it happened.

Quote:

Personally, I support the legalization of drugs for multiple reasons. But as to your point, do we let people drink coffee because they enjoy it? Caffeine is highly addictive. How many coffee drinkers don't want to stop drinking coffee just to stave off withdrawal symptoms? Caffeine has negative side effects and long term consequences as well.

That is a good point, however there is nothing more than increased blood pressure risk involved with too much caffene. With ciggarettes there is direct evidence linking it to lung cancer. As for the legalization of drugs? I have mixed opinions, and thats a totally different discussion.

 

Quote:

It is clearly rational to do that which gives you pleasure as long as that doesn't involve harming another individual. Why do you have sex? I bet you've done it just because it is pleasurable and not solely for the purposes of procreation.

In the end in the western world it does come down to personal choice, and due to the abilities and freedoms that i personally have, i realize that at this moment in time, i can't have my cake and eat it too. If you wish to shorten your life and limit your chances to do things physically, that essentially is your choice.

Quote:

Nobody here who smokes thinks that it's good for you. We aren't engaging in wishful thinking--we are choosing to do something that we know is damaging despite that fact because we enjoy the activity. Lots of activities are potentially dangerous, and yet people do them.

There is a difference between: "Known cause for terrible suffering and death" and potential danger.

Quote:

As far as the "responsible reality" comment, I don't even know what that means. Reality is neither responsible nor irresponsible. It's not my job to make other people's choices for them or be the bastion of "responsibility".

I meant to say "thinking." I think i was distracted at the end of this post and didn't read it over heh. That being said your statement is a little hypocritical considering your profession of "rationally responding to irrational thinking etc." You raise yourself up as a bastion of rational thinking.

To be honest your post seems to bring across a message of "it's my life i'll do what i choose just because i have the right to. So what i was asking is "Even though we have the "right" to willfully put poison into our bodies and let them manipulate our internal chemistry to further the "pleasure;" knowing the consequences why would you be willing to shorten your life and your ability to live on this world for a 10 dollar high, when there is so much to learn about the world? Wouldn't your rational and intellectual drive to become greater push you beyond the need for a cheap physical gratification at the cost of your own life?

Of course it is your own choice, and feel free to excercise that, but you shouldn't really get angry or upset when people question the validity of your rational and "fullfilling" stance on intellectual clarity and quality of life through atheism when you openly embrace compromising your life for a cheap high.

I think one of the best quotes on this issue that sums up my thoughts on smoking would be this:

"We are going to die, and that makes us the lucky ones. Most people are never going to die because they are never going to be born. The potential people who could have been here in my place but who will in fact never see the light of day outnumber the sand grains of Arabia. Certainly those unborn ghosts include greater poets than Keats, scientists greater than Newton. We know this because the set of possible people allowed by our DNA so massively exceeds the set of actual people. In the teeth of these stupefying odds it is you and I, in our ordinariness, that are here.

Moralists and theologians place great weight upon the moment of conception, seeing it as the instant at which the soul comes into existence. If, like me, you are unmoved by such talk, you still must regard a particular instant, nine months before your birth, as the most decisive event in your personal fortunes. It is the moment at which your consciousness suddenly became trillions of times more foreseeable than it was a split second before. To be sure, the embryonic you that came into existence still had plenty of hurdles to leap. Most conceptuses end in early abortion before their mother even knew they were there, and we are all lucky not to have done so. Also, there is more to personal identity than genes, as identical twins (who separate after the moment of fertilization) show us. Nevertheless, the instant at which a particular spermatozoon penetrated a particular egg was, in your private hindsight, a moment of dizzying singularity. It was then that the odds against your becoming a person dropped from astronomical to single figures."

- Richard Dawkins (excerpt from Chapter I, "The Anaesthetic of Familiarity,"
of his 1998 book Unweaving the Rainbow)

 

I do not hold anything against those who smoke, I just think it's irrational to give up some of your life for something so materialistic, and then to plug your ears and ram it under the guise of "freedom of choice" when there is a lot of information that points to smoking changing the chemistry of your body to accomadate the pleasurable high that it gives you, while at the same time slowly killing you.

 

...and now for the last point: "Smoking does no harm to anyone but myself, and that shoudl be the way people look at it."

That is just flat out wrong. What about the people who love and care for you? Right now my girlfriend smokes and it breaks my heart that she is addicted to this habit because if she lets it go on too long it will rob her of the chance to experience and live life and enjoy all of it. She is already at a stage where it's brutal coughing and spitting in the morning. She has decreased physical stamina, and has a problem focusing and thinking things through when those infamous "cravings" start.

Now you can justify it under freedom of choice etc, but there has to be a line drawn where there is a distinction made between freedom of choice, and being exploited for a dollar. There has to be a line drawn where you are actively choosing to kill yourself, and you are ruled by your addiction.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

AbandonMyPeace wrote:

V1per41 wrote:

I would still probably say that smokin is dumber than believing in ID as the former costs more money

I dont even know what ID means for sure. 

ID = Intelligent Design