Being gay isn't anything that can be cured. Based on the gay people I know it seems to make life so much more significantly difficult (even in Massachusetts) that the fact that anyone would "choose" it seems patently absurd. You are what you are.
On talk.origins, whenever some guy would start posting his view that it was a matter of choice, the biologists would ask him when he decided he was going to prefer females.
If the on-iDevice microphone hears you mention Justin Bieber's ass it shows you a pair of tits?
Showing tits to a homosexual man would not get any reaction, or maybe disgust. Ie. it wouldn't work.
An acquaintance reportedly tried it: took off her shirt, climbed on a gay man's lap, and rubbed her fine set all over his face. Got no reaction at all.
Christian theology already admits this. That's the whole concept of original sin. Every human being is condemned for the supposed sins of Adam & Eve. Only when invisible sky dad sacrificed himself to himself was a loophole created. It makes complete sense! It's turtles all the way down!
But AFAIK all mainstream variants have always thought it was a "curable" condition - confess your sins, join the club, behave well from now on, and you're in. But no rejections on the basis of the color of your skin or eyes, short people can go to Heaven, etc.
So yes, there is evidence that sexual preference and gender identity are both something "you're born that way", unlike the people pushing this app, who claim it's a "lifestyle preference."
The Religious Right has a real problem, because the Bible outright condemns homosexuality, and if they ever admit that it's not a personal choice, they have to admit that people can be condemned to Hell by birthright.
Yeah, yer right, the nerve of the West to attempt knock over a ruthless dictator who has supported the worst sort of despots throughout Africa and who decided his people should have no right to self-determination. What were they thinking? What were you thinking?
How come we're not bombing Yemen and Bahrain, who are also using force against their uprisings? Or Saudi Arabia, for lending a hand in Bahrain?
Where were we during the genocides in sub-Saharan Africa? Or when Saddam was gassing his own people, or when he started a war with Iran that got ~900,000 people killed?
Maybe this intervention is a good thing, but let's don't pretend our intervention policy is based on noble motives. We're more likely to jump in bed with a murderous dictator than to bomb him.
Hell, we're even content to let our own people suffer a lack of basic health care, to keep the insurance companies' stock prices high. If we're motivated by humanitarin concerns, we should start by bombing ourselves.
What's the latest word on the possible biological basis for homosexuality? I remember reading 10+ years ago about the discovery of physiological differences between the brains of Gay and Straight men, but I haven't followed the story.
Could someone here that supports intelligent design respond?
I'm a big fan of intelligent design, and a big whinger about not encountering it more often in the stuff I buy.
The way I see it, intelligent design is a conclusion that "magic being(s)" created life or some aspect of life based on the fact that there is something that we cannot yet explain it.
Is there something I am missing in this?
Yes. First, they're careful to avoid mentioning that they think the IDer is magic, and second, they don't limit themselves to stuff we cannot explain yet.
Now I have a hard time reconcilling the gun totting Christian majority that thinks to force one version of extremist religious views on the general public.
And curiously, these are the same people claiming that Muslims are trying to force Sharia on us.
There's a strange self-righteous mindset that thinks it's being persecuted when it can't tell everyone else what to do.
3) To put it in probabilistic terms, consider the world as being a giant casino filled with slot machines, and every time a jackpot is hit in a slot machine, a new species evolves. ID is the claim that someone is interfering with the odds on the machines, evolution is the stance that enough jackpots will be hit without interference.
4) Put in those terms, it becomes statistically falsifiable (to arbitrary levels of confidence). One simply needs to determine numbers for hitting jackpots / speciation and compare them against the record of events. Or even better, going forward, keep track of the genomes of all species on earth, and see if mutation and speciation rates match theory.
How are you going to prove that the odds are being violated by reality, when reality is our only clue as to what the odds are?
Also, falsifying the presumed mechanism doesn't give ID the least bit of support. ID needs some substance before it can count as an explanation for anything, let alone become an explanation supported by evidence.
But that's not on the agenda of the cdesign proponentists who are peddling it. It couldn't be more obvious that it's just a costume-shop lab coat for creationists.
Or, as they used to say on talk.origins, it's creationism with the serial number filed off.
I have a question about 'falsifiability'. How is evolution or the big bang falsifiable in a practical sense. If tomorrow, the LHC finds a particle which thoroughly smashed the standard model and any major competing theories, we wouldn't say "Aha! the big bang is wrong!" We would just retool our theories to meet current data. Or if a fossil shows up in the wrong layer or dates to the wrong time, we wouldn't say "Aha! Evolution is wrong!" We would just retool our theory to fit the current data.
"Retool our theory" can cover a lot of territory. Did Einstein just retool Newton?
And as for the two examples you picked, they have found so much supporting evidence that they're now far beyond the point of easy falsification. We would have to be *really* misunderstanding something for them to be wrong in their essentials.
But not every idea garners that much support. Where are N-rays these days? What happened to the overhyped Theory of Everything from a few years ago?
Sec.A51.979. PROHIBITION OF DISCRIMINATION BASED ON RESEARCH RELATED TO INTELLIGENT DESIGN. An institution of higher education may not discriminate against or penalize in any manner, especially with regard to employment or academic support, a faculty member or student based on the faculty member ’s or student ’s conduct of research relating to the theory of intelligent design or other alternate theories of the origination and development of organisms.
Sounds like Dembski is about to get bounced out of another Texas institution.
If scientist came up with a new and more consistent theory regarding our origins more or less all scientists would ditch the old theory (Evolution) in light of the new theory WITHOUT any issues.
More or less, indeed. Last I heard, one prominent advocate of BAND ("birds are not dinosaurs") was still holding out, and of course the MOND people seem willing to re-try forever.
There's some wisdom in the saying that a generation of scientists has to die off before a new idea is fully accepted. Maybe that's for the best; it certainly keeps the proponents of the new ideas on their toes.
So what, is this the Republican version of PC? I'm sorry Creationists but your worldview is wrong. If you can't handle this fact, grow up and get over it. The rest of the world is not obligated to pander to every loony belief that everyone holds.
If you don't like reality, just legislate a new one.
But they're just pandering to people whose jerking knees will make them vote for them, even while they fuck them over on the economy and almost every other issue.
First the Chernobyl clusterfuck turned nuclear power from The Answer To All Our Problems to A Scary Thing, then the non-event of TMI combined with some shitty old movie was enough to scare America off of it forever
Slashdot Mirror
Now, they might be able to cure you of disliking vegetables, if they've got any cooking skills, but that's really a separate problem.
They could start by not serving a plate piled high with broccoli every other time you dine out.
Being gay isn't anything that can be cured. Based on the gay people I know it seems to make life so much more significantly difficult (even in Massachusetts) that the fact that anyone would "choose" it seems patently absurd. You are what you are.
On talk.origins, whenever some guy would start posting his view that it was a matter of choice, the biologists would ask him when he decided he was going to prefer females.
However, that doesn't make homosexuality okay. It perverts the entire point of there being a difference between man and woman in the first place
Then I guess those notorious gay penguins are bound straight for Hell.
If the on-iDevice microphone hears you mention Justin Bieber's ass it shows you a pair of tits?
Showing tits to a homosexual man would not get any reaction, or maybe disgust. Ie. it wouldn't work.
An acquaintance reportedly tried it: took off her shirt, climbed on a gay man's lap, and rubbed her fine set all over his face. Got no reaction at all.
I fail to see the correlation, especially since my ring finger is shorter than my index finger.
It's not possible to see a correlation on the basis of a single example.
Observations has been that more testosterone makes a person more masculine, guy or girl.
He was talking about hormone levels in the womb.
Christian theology already admits this. That's the whole concept of original sin. Every human being is condemned for the supposed sins of Adam & Eve. Only when invisible sky dad sacrificed himself to himself was a loophole created. It makes complete sense! It's turtles all the way down!
But AFAIK all mainstream variants have always thought it was a "curable" condition - confess your sins, join the club, behave well from now on, and you're in. But no rejections on the basis of the color of your skin or eyes, short people can go to Heaven, etc.
Thanks.
So yes, there is evidence that sexual preference and gender identity are both something "you're born that way", unlike the people pushing this app, who claim it's a "lifestyle preference."
The Religious Right has a real problem, because the Bible outright condemns homosexuality, and if they ever admit that it's not a personal choice, they have to admit that people can be condemned to Hell by birthright.
Yeah, yer right, the nerve of the West to attempt knock over a ruthless dictator who has supported the worst sort of despots throughout Africa and who decided his people should have no right to self-determination. What were they thinking? What were you thinking?
How come we're not bombing Yemen and Bahrain, who are also using force against their uprisings? Or Saudi Arabia, for lending a hand in Bahrain?
Where were we during the genocides in sub-Saharan Africa? Or when Saddam was gassing his own people, or when he started a war with Iran that got ~900,000 people killed?
Maybe this intervention is a good thing, but let's don't pretend our intervention policy is based on noble motives. We're more likely to jump in bed with a murderous dictator than to bomb him.
Hell, we're even content to let our own people suffer a lack of basic health care, to keep the insurance companies' stock prices high. If we're motivated by humanitarin concerns, we should start by bombing ourselves.
As for some fmri or similar being able to identify gayness I'm skeptical.
What I read about was actually anatomical. IIRC, some tiny component of the brain was either larger or smaller.
What's the latest word on the possible biological basis for homosexuality? I remember reading 10+ years ago about the discovery of physiological differences between the brains of Gay and Straight men, but I haven't followed the story.
It's funny to read the same people decry Apples appstore censorship appeal to Steve Jobs to remove the app on the basis.
Free Speech hurts doesn't it?
Not as much as selective free speech.
Anyone have a 'Religiousness Cure' app handy that can help people become atheist? Would be fun to watch the reactions when Apple approve that one...
If reading the Bible doesn't turn people into atheists, no app is going to do it.
Maybe this is for the best, but I have a queasy feeling about how it's going to turn out.
Does (in theory) an edict from the UN security council ordering a conflict to end override the chain of command within a sovereign nation?
From what I've read, scholars in international law say the answer is not at all clear.
Texas has gone full retard.
You just now figured that out?
Could someone here that supports intelligent design respond?
I'm a big fan of intelligent design, and a big whinger about not encountering it more often in the stuff I buy.
The way I see it, intelligent design is a conclusion that "magic being(s)" created life or some aspect of life based on the fact that there is something that we cannot yet explain it.
Is there something I am missing in this?
Yes. First, they're careful to avoid mentioning that they think the IDer is magic, and second, they don't limit themselves to stuff we cannot explain yet.
Now I have a hard time reconcilling the gun totting Christian majority that thinks to force one version of extremist religious views on the general public.
And curiously, these are the same people claiming that Muslims are trying to force Sharia on us.
There's a strange self-righteous mindset that thinks it's being persecuted when it can't tell everyone else what to do.
with the Alchemy and Astrology classes too...
No problem; just offer them as origin theories and they'll be protected under this law.
3) To put it in probabilistic terms, consider the world as being a giant casino filled with slot machines, and every time a jackpot is hit in a slot machine, a new species evolves. ID is the claim that someone is interfering with the odds on the machines, evolution is the stance that enough jackpots will be hit without interference.
4) Put in those terms, it becomes statistically falsifiable (to arbitrary levels of confidence). One simply needs to determine numbers for hitting jackpots / speciation and compare them against the record of events. Or even better, going forward, keep track of the genomes of all species on earth, and see if mutation and speciation rates match theory.
How are you going to prove that the odds are being violated by reality, when reality is our only clue as to what the odds are?
Also, falsifying the presumed mechanism doesn't give ID the least bit of support. ID needs some substance before it can count as an explanation for anything, let alone become an explanation supported by evidence.
But that's not on the agenda of the cdesign proponentists who are peddling it. It couldn't be more obvious that it's just a costume-shop lab coat for creationists.
Or, as they used to say on talk.origins, it's creationism with the serial number filed off.
Life exists here, so there must be an explanation for it. ID is just one such explanation.
Only if you count "somebody did something" as an explanation.
I have a question about 'falsifiability'. How is evolution or the big bang falsifiable in a practical sense. If tomorrow, the LHC finds a particle which thoroughly smashed the standard model and any major competing theories, we wouldn't say "Aha! the big bang is wrong!" We would just retool our theories to meet current data. Or if a fossil shows up in the wrong layer or dates to the wrong time, we wouldn't say "Aha! Evolution is wrong!" We would just retool our theory to fit the current data.
"Retool our theory" can cover a lot of territory. Did Einstein just retool Newton?
And as for the two examples you picked, they have found so much supporting evidence that they're now far beyond the point of easy falsification. We would have to be *really* misunderstanding something for them to be wrong in their essentials.
But not every idea garners that much support. Where are N-rays these days? What happened to the overhyped Theory of Everything from a few years ago?
Sec.A51.979. PROHIBITION OF DISCRIMINATION BASED ON
RESEARCH RELATED TO INTELLIGENT DESIGN. An institution of higher
education may not discriminate against or penalize in any manner,
especially with regard to employment or academic support, a faculty
member or student based on the faculty member ’s or student ’s conduct
of research relating to the theory of intelligent design or other
alternate theories of the origination and development of organisms.
Sounds like Dembski is about to get bounced out of another Texas institution.
If scientist came up with a new and more consistent theory regarding our origins more or less all scientists would ditch the old theory (Evolution) in light of the new theory WITHOUT any issues.
More or less, indeed. Last I heard, one prominent advocate of BAND ("birds are not dinosaurs") was still holding out, and of course the MOND people seem willing to re-try forever.
There's some wisdom in the saying that a generation of scientists has to die off before a new idea is fully accepted. Maybe that's for the best; it certainly keeps the proponents of the new ideas on their toes.
So what, is this the Republican version of PC? I'm sorry Creationists but your worldview is wrong. If you can't handle this fact, grow up and get over it. The rest of the world is not obligated to pander to every loony belief that everyone holds.
If you don't like reality, just legislate a new one.
But they're just pandering to people whose jerking knees will make them vote for them, even while they fuck them over on the economy and almost every other issue.
First the Chernobyl clusterfuck turned nuclear power from The Answer To All Our Problems to A Scary Thing, then the non-event of TMI combined with some shitty old movie was enough to scare America off of it forever
FYI, the TMI event was long before Chernobyl.