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Topic: "Scientists Say" blather (Read 81809 times)

Re: "Scientists Say" blather

Reply #200 –
What a bunch of nonsense and mediocrity. God's concept this, God's concept that... since when you or anybody are able to think a God's concept?
Attributes aren't the same thing as concepts. At the best, you can only grasp the surface of God's attributes. The thinner layer of God's attributes, those that are logically necessary for explaining/justifying existence.

Do you even know what a concept is about? course not and even so you want to apply it to God.
Get on your knees and pray, that's the closest you can get to God.

A matter of attitude.

Re: "Scientists Say" blather

Reply #201 –
You're becoming a mystic, Bel? :) (No; I'm not surprised…)

And, of course, I wonder how you'll connect this to the topic! ( :) Not!)
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"Humor is emotional chaos remembered in tranquility." - James Thurber
"Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts!" - Richard Feynman
 (iBook G4 - Panther | Mac mini i5 - El Capitan)

Re: "Scientists Say" blather

Reply #202 –
Quote from: ersi on
Edit: For example, you cannot define "cat" whichever way you like. There may be a number of ways, but there's always the requirement that the result must be distinct from "dog". This is at the heart of my objection to "same-sex marriage", not some religious whiny sentiments like raccoon suggests.
And yet the definition of marriage has shifted numerous times from many wives, basically purchasing a woman with chattel or other valuables. "Traditional" marriage is not as traditional as people think it is. Or has the purpose necessarily been for procreation. I'm sure I can produce for a whole history marriage if you like. The reason I reject the "natural" objection to same sex marriage remains that empirically homosexuality occurs in nature along with mounting evidence that people are born into a sexual orientation, ie it would be unnatural for a someone biologically programmed to seek a partner of the same sex to seek one of the opposite sex.

So that puts us back to my complaint that the natural philosophers seem to sit in their ivory towers making long discourses on what they consider nature without so much as looking out the window or picking up a scientific paper on the subject. That amounts to mental masturbation and full on circle jerk when they debate about it.

There are theories why, counter-innovatively perhaps, this creates an advantage for a species (ie if it's genetic as, opposed to exposure to hormones in the womb, this is an extra piece of genetic diversity to improve the overall genetic health of a species and the few percent that don't reproduce is more than made up for by it.) I even heard an interesting theory today over dinner with my writer's group. Mind you, I haven't had a chance to check out this study for myself but here goes. In mice, when resources start to get scarce more individuals are born non-reproductive. People such as Belfrager postulate that reproduction (ie heterosexuality) is essential for society to continue. On the face of it, this is true - until a given species (including humanity) faces over-population and its results. At that point, it's more advantageous for the species to reproduce less or even lose population until an equilibrium can be achieved again. Perhaps homosexuality is one of nature's population controls.
“What kind of man would put a known criminal in charge of a major branch of government? Apart from, say, the average voter.”
― Terry Pratchett, Going Postal

Re: "Scientists Say" blather

Reply #203 –
Quote from: ersi on
Anyway, almost four years after this post, two years ago, Keith Parsons had another theological debate. It was with a representative of un-gappy God, so you may want to take a closer look.
A good representative. As I previously indicated, the classical conception of "God" in the tradition of Aristotle, Neo-Platonism, Aquinas and the like is well thought out and has little in common with what one would normally associate with the word (in a Christian nation). For me it remains almost as much a departure as what someone like Kaku might say. My biggest objection to that general conception of God is that I consider it metaphysically unnecessary. Arestotelian realism is the variety I consider most plausible.

Quote from: midnight raccoon on
So that puts us back to my complaint that the natural philosophers seem to sit in their ivory towers making long discourses on what they consider nature without so much as looking out the window or picking up a scientific paper on the subject. That amounts to mental masturbation and full on circle jerk when they debate about it.
You should watch this video so you can stop saying such things about philosophy. :)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YLvWz9GQ3PQ

Re: "Scientists Say" blather

Reply #204 –
Quote from: OakdaleFTL on
You're becoming a mystic, Bel?
Nope, I'm just bored with our atheist and non catholic friends reasoning and "discussing". Therefore I gave them a small lesson on philosophy.
They don't understand and I don't care.

There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.
A matter of attitude.

Re: "Scientists Say" blather

Reply #205 –
Quote from: midnight raccoon on
The reason I reject the "natural" objection to same sex marriage remains that empirically homosexuality occurs in nature along with mounting evidence that people are born into a sexual orientation, ie it would be unnatural for a someone biologically programmed to seek a partner of the same sex to seek one of the opposite sex.
Doesn't cannibalism exist in nature, including the eating of superfluous young? Shouldn't you, then, applaud it? :)

Bel makes his point in a round-about way: More pointedly, he could have said that you reject human exceptionalism…
That puts you in the same logical bind that Jeatson was in, when he argued against free will.
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"Humor is emotional chaos remembered in tranquility." - James Thurber
"Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts!" - Richard Feynman
 (iBook G4 - Panther | Mac mini i5 - El Capitan)
 

Re: "Scientists Say" blather

Reply #206 –
Quote from: OakdaleFTL on
Doesn't cannibalism exist in nature, including the eating of superfluous young? Shouldn't you, then, applaud it?  :)
People often get caught up in you're wrong, and even if you were right you'd still be wrong. This is one of those cases. @midnight raccoon's argument is simply that there's nothing inherently good or bad about the fact that an act is natural, but even if there were, being gay is natural. It's @ersi's rhetorical victory that the discussion drifted the way it did.

Re: "Scientists Say" blather

Reply #207 –
But it's Sang's contention that nature trumps argument…
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"Humor is emotional chaos remembered in tranquility." - James Thurber
"Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts!" - Richard Feynman
 (iBook G4 - Panther | Mac mini i5 - El Capitan)

Re: "Scientists Say" blather

Reply #208 –
Quote from: Belfrager on
Nope, I'm just bored with our atheist and non catholic friends reasoning and "discussing". Therefore I gave them a small lesson on philosophy.
They don't understand and I don't care.
There doesn't seem to be anything adherently Catholic about your arguments. What you've presented is silliness about society breaking down and conspiracy theory, both of which I've seen before and continue to find to be total gibberish. Simply put, you (and Ersi) claim to have taken the high road when you've taken the low road straight to intellectual hell.

The closest I've gotten to a  philosophy lesson is the video Frenzi offered as a rebuke to my comments about philosophy. I find the philosophy against homosexuality to be lacking in the Epistemology and "Physics" components (out of the six) in that it seems to disregard what happens in nature (including human genetics and what happens in womb as far hormones that determine sex and sexual orientation) , so it's still talking out of its ass.

Often, these attitudes stem from much more primitive prejudice and fear what the person doesn't understand and given moral justification by the person's holy book (despite how little the Bible actually has to say on the matter and how much of the rest of the book remains ignored...) At an even more base level, there's the "ick" factor; as if a gay man wouldn't find, say the idea of performing cunnilingus, disgusting. Does that primitive emotion from the reptilian part of the brain give a homosexual the right pass moral judgement on a heterosexual? Of course not. So what gives heterosexuals the right to make judgements like that against homosexuals since, yet again, homosexuals are neither breaking your nose nor picking your pocket?

It's easy to deny prejudice and merely feeling icky about gay sexual practices, but these low instincts still exist in many people. These is especially true of people with below average levels of cognitive functioning, since it's been empirically determined that bigots tend to have lower IQs. 
“What kind of man would put a known criminal in charge of a major branch of government? Apart from, say, the average voter.”
― Terry Pratchett, Going Postal

Re: "Scientists Say" blather

Reply #209 –
Quote from: OakdaleFTL on
But it's Sang's contention that nature trumps argument...
So we're using straw cannibals now? C'mon, man. You're disappointing me.
“What kind of man would put a known criminal in charge of a major branch of government? Apart from, say, the average voter.”
― Terry Pratchett, Going Postal

Re: "Scientists Say" blather

Reply #210 –
I log on to Twitter (big mistake, I know) and discovered that evidently it's #heterosexualprideday. Are they fucking kidding?
“What kind of man would put a known criminal in charge of a major branch of government? Apart from, say, the average voter.”
― Terry Pratchett, Going Postal

Re: "Scientists Say" blather

Reply #211 –
Here it's St. Peter day.

Re: "Scientists Say" blather

Reply #213 –
Quote from: Frenzie on
@midnight raccoon's argument is simply that there's nothing inherently good or bad about the fact that an act is natural, but even if there were, being gay is natural. It's @ersi's rhetorical victory that the discussion drifted the way it did.
I thought you were badly wrong just that one day, but it seems to be a bad week for you. @midnight raccoon has been (just like you) explicitly arguing that there's nothing wrong with being gay. Even more, that gay marriage is a right. Are rights something neither good or bad? Are rights defined as merely something where there's no harm?

Being natural in your current sense has not been his argument, nor yours. And couldn't be, because being natural in some indifferent non-good-non-bad way doesn't get you gay marriage, or any marriage for that matter. Or maybe you are just muddying waters here. That would be understandable.

Re: "Scientists Say" blather

Reply #214 –
Quote from: ersi on
And couldn't be, because being natural in some indifferent non-good-non-bad way doesn't get you gay marriage, or any marriage for that matter.
At what point did I say that homosexuality being morally neutral conferred a right? What I said is that it's unconstitutional (read illegal) for the United States to deny same-sex couples marriage because of the equal protection clause of the constitution.  In Europe,  rechtsstaat very similar. This is no accident, since rechtsstaat and the United States itself are both products of the Enlightenment. While the 14th amendment to the American Constitution wasn't passed until after the American Civil war, the founding fathers of the US sought to limit state power from the very beginning.

Homosexuality being natural is merely an answer to you and Belfrager's pseudo-philosophy of "natural law" that ignores nature completely. As noted noted previously, your "philosophical" arguments are missing at least two crucial components of any well constructed philosophy.
“What kind of man would put a known criminal in charge of a major branch of government? Apart from, say, the average voter.”
― Terry Pratchett, Going Postal

Re: "Scientists Say" blather

Reply #215 –
Quote from: midnight raccoon on
At what point did I say that homosexuality being morally neutral conferred a right?
Frenzie said that in your view homosexuality was morally neutral. If it were, you would not have a point to make and there would be no discussion.

Quote from: midnight raccoon on
What I said is that it's unconstitutional (read illegal) for the United States to deny same-sex couples marriage because of the equal protection clause of the constitution.  In Europe,  rechtsstaat very similar.
Marriage is not denied from anyone, never was, except by the definition of marriage. For example, it's "denied" from children. Can you guess why? By your reasoning thus far, you are saying it's unconstitutional to deny it from children...

When people forget the definition of marriage, we come to the situation where we are. You don't know what marriage is. At no point have you even tried to define it, so you are not in a position to say whether it's unconstitutional to deny it from children. Is it unconstitutional to deny a "cross-species equal marriage" (normally called bestiality)? Is it unconstitutional to deny "intergenerational marriage" (normally called incest)? Is it unconstitutional to deny polyamory? You don't have any answers, because you don't have the definition.

The discussion can only become meaningful when we have the definition. Thus far, you have not made a single point.

Re: "Scientists Say" blather

Reply #216 –
Quote from: ersi on
Is it unconstitutional to deny a "cross-species equal marriage" (normally called bestiality)? Is it unconstitutional to deny "intergenerational marriage" (normally called incest)?
Obviously. An animal cannot give consent to enter a legal contract and incest is child abuse. 
Quote from: ersi on
Is it unconstitutional to deny polyamory?
You're using the wrong term here. Polyamory doesn't necessarily involve marriage. I think you mean polygamy. And it most likely is unconstitutional since in the US it's usually practiced by cults and cultish subsets of the Mormonism where it isn't consensual. Why is that you think I have answers for these ridiculous strawman situations? If those situations do come up, the courts will look at the facts of the cases and rule. In the meantime, they have nothing to do with two people of the same sex being in love. Thus far, I'm noting a lack of an incestious couple  or a polygamous relationship suing to get married.
Quote from: ersi on
You don't know what marriage is.
I don't believe you've told us exactly what marriage is, either. You also spoke vaguely of "the purpose of marriage" as if there's only purpose for it. As far as the definition of marriage goes....

http://www.dictionary.com/browse/marriage?s=t :

The first five definitions apply:

Quote
marriage

noun
1.
(broadly) any of the diverse forms of interpersonal union established in various parts of the world to form a familial bond that is recognized legally, religiously, or socially, granting the participating partners mutual conjugal rights and responsibilities and including, for example, opposite-sex marriage, same-sex marriage, plural marriage, and arranged marriage:
Anthropologists say that some type of marriage has been found in every known human society since ancient times.

2.
Also called opposite-sex marriage. the form of this institution under which a man and a woman have established their decision to live as husband and wife by legal commitments, religious ceremonies, etc.
See also traditional marriage (def 2).
this institution expanded to include two partners of the same gender, as in same-sex marriage; gay marriage.
3.
the state, condition, or relationship of being married; wedlock:
They have a happy marriage.
Synonyms: matrimony.
Antonyms: single life, bachelorhood, spinsterhood, singleness.
4.
the legal or religious ceremony that formalizes the decision of two people to live as a married couple, including the accompanying social festivities:
to officiate at a marriage.
Synonyms: nuptials, marriage ceremony, wedding.
Antonyms: divorce, annulment.
5.
a relationship in which two people have pledged themselves to each other in the manner of a husband and wife, without legal sanction:
Happy now that the discussion has been reduced to dictionary definitions that we all know already? But you're the silly one that demanded a definition, so enjoy. Oooops, you can't enjoy it because it doesn't agree with your personal definition because the first definition includes the possibility of same sex marriage and the second one notes that it now includes same-sex couples, huh? :(
“What kind of man would put a known criminal in charge of a major branch of government? Apart from, say, the average voter.”
― Terry Pratchett, Going Postal

Re: "Scientists Say" blather

Reply #217 –
Quote from: ersi on
I thought you were badly wrong just that one day, but it seems to be a bad week for you. @midnight raccoon has been (just like you) explicitly arguing that there's nothing wrong with being gay. Even more, that gay marriage is a right. Are rights something neither good or bad? Are rights defined as merely something where there's no harm?
Equivocating different arguments is a cheap trick. I already spelled out the summarized moral argument in favor of gay marriage: it significantly improves quality of life for some people without harming anyone. That (and any other argument in favor) is almost completely unrelated to the argument against your "natural" objection, which is what I was talking about here.

Rights are a legal concept. In morality there is no such thing as rights, merely behavior we have reason to promote and behavior we have reason to condemn. Rights follow from that. For example, the right to freedom of religion follows from the strong reasons we have to promote an aversion to violence against those with a different outlook on the world.

Quote from: midnight raccoon on
You're using the wrong term here. Polyamory doesn't necessarily involve marriage. I think you mean polygamy. And it most likely is unconstitutional since in the US it's usually practiced by cults and cultish subsets of the Mormonism where it isn't consensual. Why is that you think I have answers for these ridiculous strawman situations? If those situations do come up, the courts will look at the facts of the cases and rule. In the meantime, they have nothing to do with two people of the same sex being in love. Thus far, I'm noting a lack of an incestious couple  or a polygamous relationship suing to get married.
I disagree. Polyamory isn't a ridiculous strawman in the sense that e.g. pedophilia is. Morally speaking the question is whether the same applies as with homosexuality (i.e., it improves the lives of some people without harming anyone) or if it's something that we generally have reason to create an aversion to, like incest. In matters of morality we must necessarily deal in fairly broad strokes, meaning we have reason to admonish incest even if there are exceptions thinkable in which no harm is caused.[1] Similarly we shouldn't admonish polyamory just because there are exceptions like Mormonism in which harm is caused. It's the big picture that matters.

Quote from: midnight raccoon on
Happy now that the discussion has been reduced to dictionary definitions that we all know already? But you're the silly one that demanded a definition, so enjoy.
That is, unfortunately, the ersi way. :)
1 To make it abundantly clear what I mean, consider a drunkard swerving the roads being hit by a car, surviving unscathed, and changing their life around completely. Should we therefore advocate hitting people with cars?↵

Re: "Scientists Say" blather

Reply #219 –
Quote from: Frenzie on
That is, unfortunately, the ersi way.
And, of course, he answers me in the other thread. :rolleyes:
“What kind of man would put a known criminal in charge of a major branch of government? Apart from, say, the average voter.”
― Terry Pratchett, Going Postal

Re: "Scientists Say" blather

Reply #220 –
So it goes. I think it's fair enough, but for anyone's reading this in the future for some reason, let's include this link for their convenience.

Re: "Scientists Say" blather

Reply #221 –
Has DnD become an homosexual propaganda forum?
A matter of attitude.

Re: "Scientists Say" blather

Reply #222 –
No, Bel. It simply hosts some posters who are propagandists for the "life style" — some, for personal reasons and some for bad philosophy… :)

Note that both views tend to accept the blather that is reported about what scientists say: That homosexuality is determined by ones genes. (There is no credible science that contends let alone "proves" such. Just people grasping at straws. No pun intended, but you can make up your own. :) )
进行 ...
"Humor is emotional chaos remembered in tranquility." - James Thurber
"Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts!" - Richard Feynman
 (iBook G4 - Panther | Mac mini i5 - El Capitan)

Re: "Scientists Say" blather

Reply #223 –
That makes some sense. There's no reported genetic connection to bullshit, if you catch my drift.
"Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts!"
===========
"Scientists have found even more evidence that sexual orientation is largely determined by genetics, not choice. That can undermine a major argument against the LBGT community that claims that these people are choosing to live "unnaturally."
That's at least according to a new and groundbreaking study recently published in the journal Psychological Medicine, which details how a study of more than 800 gay participants shared notable patterns in two regions of the human genome - one on the X chromosome and one on chromosome 8.
While many previous studies have looked into potential genetic drivers of homosexuality, these studies often boasted a significantly smaller sample size or lacked common controls. This is the first study of its kind to boast such a robust sample size and also be published in a scientific peer-reviewed paper.
Most stunningly, the team who conducted this study comes from the scientific community that has been hesitant to acknowledge the claims of previous studies, not because of their own opinions, but because of a lack of conclusive data.
The study detailed an in-depth analysis of blood and saliva samples taken from 409 pairs of openly gay brothers, including non-identical twins, from 384 families. The only common characteristic shared by all 818 men was being gay."
http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract;jsessionid=602647FA2BD5AE560C8641777A6E0E20.journals?aid=9625997&fileId=S0033291714002451

Re: "Scientists Say" blather

Reply #224 –
A question to the gay gene argument[1] proponents: If there be identified a pedophile gene, would you fight for pedophile rights to be themselves? If not, why not? Would a pedophile gene affect your attitude towards the gay gene argument?

And a question to peopes knowledgeable in gene stuff: Genes are stuff that transfer from parents to offspring, right? Gays, being gays, don't beget offspring. So, supposing there is such a thing as the gay gene, it came about and is sustained how exactly?
1 The gay gene argument is that gayness is in the genes, not a choice, therefore natural and good and right and proper.↵