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alcibiades
Honorable
Undefeatable Hero
of Gold Dragons
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posted February 14, 2011 05:14 PM |
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Quote:
I see quite a bit of hate has been brought into play by the "tolleralnt" ones.
No need to play the victim just because you're in the minority with your views. And I still think you've failed to address every single post I've made ... but I guess that was convenient.
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What will happen now?
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OmegaDestroyer
Hero of Order
Fox or Chicken?
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posted February 14, 2011 05:22 PM |
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Quote:
Someone has lied to you. God did allow Israel to have slaves although they had to be treated better than they were in the pagan nations. But that does not mean that God wanted slavery to exist. He allowed slavery because of the hardness of the hearts of men which is the same reason Jesus said divorce had been allowed.
More likely, some people thought it would be more convenient to keep slaves in the economy and found a way to endorse slavery in the bible.
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Corribus
Hero of Order
The Abyss Staring Back at You
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posted February 14, 2011 05:30 PM |
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Regarding whether homosexuality is a "defect".
I think, perhaps, that "defect" is a poor choice of words when discussing any kind of phenotype. A defect, after all, implies that there was an intent, or endpoint, to design, which is not really the case with biological organisms. When we speak of defects, it is understood that the item in question was designed to function in some specific way, and, due to some manufacturing malfunction, it does not. The Toyotas with sticking accelerators are defective. Homosexuals are, under the strict definition of "defective", not.
Consider the difference between sickle cell anemia and something like Trisomy 21 (Downs Syndrome). The latter is often caused by a nondisjunction event during chromosome duplication (meiosis); we might get away with calling this a defect, because this is clearly not the way genetic material is intended to duplicate itself - although even here I hesitate to use the word "intend". Trisomy 21 is caused by a process error, which results in a fatal or highly debilitative phenotype. On the other hand, sickle-cell anemia is not caused by any process fault. It's caused by a rather unremarkable point mutation that gives rise to an abnormal hemoglobin molecule in affected individuals. I say "unremarkable" because these kinds of mutations happen randomly all the time, and often either go unnoticed (no phenotypic effect) or cause fatality in utero or shortly after birth. Note that there is no "perfect" hemoglobin molecule; it was not designed to have a specific function or structure. It essentially became the way it is through eons of iterative trial and error. If an individual gets one that is slightly different, this is a rather normal process of mutation. In fact such a mutation may end up giving rise to a "better" hemoglobin. In the case of sickle-cell, it is not "better" for most individuals; however it does confer some immunity against malaria, so the "defect", such as it is, proliferates in regions like Africa, where having the sickle-cell trait confers a selective advantage that it would not confer in regions where malaria is not prevalent. So, then, is it really proper to call it a defect? No, not really.
In any case, what we can reasonably say is that homosexuality is not a "normal" phenotype. As Blizz has correctly pointed out, the biological purpose of organisms is self-proliferation, and I cannot see any obvious selective advantage conferred by homosexuality.
However:
(A) This presumes that homosexuality is completely genetic in origin, which is far from proven. Even a partial environmental cause (social or chemical) renders a heritage argument moot.
(B) In individual, isolated creatures, it is reasonably easy to determine whether inherited traits are helpful or harmful. Longer, sharper talons are helpful and convey a selective advantage, in that they help a predator kill prey more efficiently. But only so far as they do not become too long, sharp or heavy to interfere with, say, flying or running. This is why eagles don't have talons that are seven feet long. 
However, in the case of social creatures, like humans, it is harder to anticipate what traits are likely to give rise to selective advantages. What might appear to be a hindrance at first glance may confer some long-distance advantage that isn't clear. Though a certain trait may not directly benefit the individual, if it benefits society, this still may create enough of a selective advantage for the gene that it is able to proliferate over long periods of time. So, just because a trait doesn't obviously help a gene reproduce doesn't mean there isn't some hidden mechanism that we're not aware of, conferred through the complexity of society.
Nevertheless, genes are supposedly selfish. Meaning they don't "care" about the survival of other genes, even similar ones. They only "care" about their own reproduction. ("Care" being taken to mean thermodynamically driven, not a conscious will.) Human genes use society as a means to benefit themselves, not to benefit other human genomes. Thus, Minion's desperate hand-waving arguments to justify why homosexuals persist in society ring hollow. Sure, there might be some hidden mechanism and he might be right, but if a gene renders it impossible for self-replication, that's equal to a fatal gene, no matter what effect on society it has. In other words, no matter what benefit a gene confers to society, if it's impossible for the gene to replicate itself under any circumstances, then those benefits to society don't matter because genes don't care about helping out other genes. Such a gene cannot thrive under a "natural, competitive setting".
Imagine, for example, a plant which contains a gene that affects its roots in such a way that the ground around the plant becomes incredibly fertile. This is a huge advantage to the plant, as the progeny of the plant will have a much higher likelihood of success. However, if the gene simultaneously renders the plant sterile, it renders the benefit inconsequential. Sure, the ground might become especially nice for other plants, but the plant doesn’t care about helping other plants. Supposing for a second that the plants are communicative (have a society), you might argue that, recognizing the advantage of having such fertile ground, these talkative plants would allow the mutant plants to live in order to create a better environment for everyone (society).* That’s true. It would also create an environment that’s good for the mutant plant, so you might be tempted to argue that the mutant plant, in a round-about way, still manages to give itself a selective advantage and ensure the long-term survival of its genome. If the mutant plant had any reproductive ability, I’d be inclined to agree with you. But the mutant plant can’t reproduce at all.** So it doesn’t make any difference how nice the mutant plant makes the soil – the gene can’t ensure it’s own replication, no matter how powerful the ripple-effects, so it gets weeded out (excuse the pun) by evolution.
Which brings me to:
(C) As has been pointed out before, evolution is, to some extent, rather irrelevant to any sufficiently advanced society. Though modern medicine has performed miracles for humans, it has also allowed individuals with otherwise fatal diseases to thrive and reproduce, passing their "defective" genes on where otherwise they would die out. Modern medicine is not the only human construct to blame for this "anti-evolutionary effect", by the way. Society itself, aided by human capacity for emotion, provides an environment where deleterious genes can reproduce themselves. So, just because homosexuals thrive in modern human society, this really doesn't mean anything as far as whether homosexuality confers any sort of selective advantage to the genome that expresses it. Society permits such genetic encumbrances because the collective network provides a cumulative benefit for the human genome as a whole, and individual human genomes as a result. And the fact that there were homosexuals in antiquity really doesn’t matter. 5-10k years of written human history might seem like a long time to you, but it's a drop in the bucket on evolutionary timescales. There's no way to know whether prehistoric human ancestors exhibited homosexuality in an organized manner, so we cannot really make any conclusions about selective advantages of a putative homosexual gene just because the ancient Greeks tolerated the practice.
So, to sum up:
First, we cannot use the word 'defect' to describe phenotypes resulting from the normal process of mutation. Even in "process malfunctions" it becomes dangerous, because the means by which the malfunction occurs may in itself have a genetic explanation. I.e., mutations in genes responsible for the process may give rise to better or worse processes. There is not “perfect process” or “intended manner of working”, so to call a process error a defect is, strictly speaking, inaccurate.
Second, whether or not homosexuality confers a selective advantage (supposing it's genetic in the first place) really means very little. For one thing, it's impossible to make any conclusion at this time. For another, does it really matter? The whole argument is a red-herring meant to deflect the discussion away from what should be the topic of discussion - should homosexuals have equal rights in society? The answer is, of course, that they should. When you get down to it, it doesn't matter if homosexuality is genetic or environmental, and if it's the former, it doesn't matter whether it confers a selective advantage or whether it's just a fatal gene that is prevented from being discarded through the usual channels of evolutionary processing by the protective effect of human society and technology. Society tolerates anachronisms like religion and a plethora of other "physical abnormalities", so if it turns out that homosexuality is nothing more than a transcription error kept on perpetual life-support, then who cares? And if it comes down to a chemical exposure in childhood or is the result of personal choice: again, who cares? It's amusing to me that the religious among us spend all this time trying to convince everyone that homosexuality is not genetic, and all the homosexuals try to convince everyone that it is, when the question is fundamentally just a point of academic interest. Presuming it could be shown that homosexuality is genetic or that it isn't: would that - should that - change how we are supposed to treat each other?
* In reality (insofar as reality applies to a hypothetical example of talking plants), the plant god probably would have declared such soil-enhancing root-powers as being tantamount to witchcraft and such plants would have been rounded up and slaughtered or, failing that, subjected to hundreds or thousands of years of persecution and intolerance. But let’s pretend that these plants have somehow managed to create a society without religion.
** Of course, homosexuals are fully capable of reproducing, and with modern medicine many of them do. However, this is a relatively recent phenomenon, so from a broad historical (on evolutionary timescales) point of view, it doesn’t really play into the discussion.
EDIT: I knew it was too good to be true. And I'm sure you all know what I'm talking about.
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Salamandre
Admirable
Omnipresent Hero
Wog refugee
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posted February 14, 2011 05:33 PM |
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Quote:
He allowed slavery because of the hardness of the hearts of men which is the same reason Jesus said divorce had been allowed.
Oh snow. So God allows slavery, which is the most cruel thing against human living after crime, but when he heard that two men can love each other (why limit everything to "have sex"?!), within their intimacy and not harming anyone around, he was suddenly veeeeery upset.
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Era II mods and utilities
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JollyJoker
Honorable
Undefeatable Hero
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posted February 14, 2011 05:56 PM |
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Two remarks, Corribus.
Quote:
Of course, homosexuals are fully capable of reproducing, and with modern medicine many of them do. However, this is a relatively recent phenomenon, so from a broad historical (on evolutionary timescales) point of view, it doesn’t really play into the discussion.
I would disagree with this - depending on what you mean with recent.
I would say that every halfway developed society likthe ones we have evdence for, starting sixthousand years before, would have been able to check the relevance of sex between man and women to reproduce, and I'm equally sure that interested parties in these times would have had means and procedures to actually do so.
This is basically te same thing than the other way round - contraception and abortion.
Second remark, yes, of course the discussion is useless, since "defects" matter for equal rights only, when mental abilities are involved.
The question is relevant only when "blame" is introduced into the discussion - and we ll know which side is doing that and why, so that question is relevant only for religious debates.
For the rest, nothing to add - except that it may have been too good to be true, but strangely enough I'm more amused than anything else. It seems all a bit, well, petty, if you know what I mean. Distant.
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Minion
Legendary Hero
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posted February 14, 2011 06:25 PM |
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The point of my earlier post was not to say anything for a fact at all. But to broaden the idea of Blizz that IF homosexuality indeed is only genetic THEN it is a defect for sure. Because we can't know that. So I gave examples in the hypothetical, as to why the issue may not be so simple as it seems.
That being said everyone should read that post of Corribus, it is packed with information 
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"These friends probably started using condoms after having produced the most optimum amount of offsprings. Kudos to them for showing at least some restraint" - Tsar-ivor
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alcibiades
Honorable
Undefeatable Hero
of Gold Dragons
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posted February 14, 2011 07:55 PM |
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Quote:
It's amusing to me that the religious among us spend all this time trying to convince everyone that homosexuality is not genetic, and all the homosexuals try to convince everyone that it is, when the question is fundamentally just a point of academic interest. Presuming it could be shown that homosexuality is genetic or that it isn't: would that - should that - change how we are supposed to treat each other?
I think your post is admirable, but I don't think things are quite as simple as this.
What you say makes perfect sense and is perfectly true from an academic point of view. However, we should remember that not all people experience things from an academic point of view - in fact, even though people of the opposite kind seem to be in the minority here, in real world things are probably quite the opposite: Only a small part of the total population actually think strictly academically. Most will be coloured by various cultural and/or religious influences through their surroundings and society.
Problem, as I see it, is not for people like me - like you say, when all comes to all, I don't give a flying fart (excuse the language) what people like Elodin think about homosexuality, as long as I have my legal rights. However, there are a larger number of people who are taken hostage by such views, and many of them in the most evil way possible, namely through their own judgement of themselves caused by their moral imprint from upbringing.
I think it's disgusting and infuriating how people like Elodin - and this is not a personal assault, but an assault at the whole group he represents - come forth with their "facts" and "proofs", and use this pseudo-science as a way to proove their righteousness and judge the others - thus making them judge themselves. This is why I think it's important to send the message that no, these are *not* facts, and no, they are no more right than anybody else in their beliefs. If there's anything there's a sin in my point of view, it should be to make people dispise themselves and what they are from some self-righteous crusade that has no root in facts.
(And just to stir the waters, I cannot help to repeat myself: Like I said previously, this pretty much sums up my oppinion on people that bash other people with their religion (and again, don't press the link if you're religious and has no sense of humour).)
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What will happen now?
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Elodin
Promising
Legendary Hero
Free Thinker
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posted February 14, 2011 08:20 PM |
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Quote:
I think it's disgusting and infuriating how people like Elodin - and this is not a personal assault, but an assault at the whole group he represents - come forth with their "facts" and "proofs", and use this pseudo-science as a way to proove their righteousness and judge the others - thus making them judge themselves. This is why I think it's important to send the message that no, these are *not* facts, and no, they are no more right than anybody else in their beliefs. If there's anything there's a sin in my point of view, it should be to make people dispise themselves and what they are from some self-righteous crusade that has no root in facts.
(And just to stir the waters, I cannot help to repeat myself: Like I said previously, this pretty much sums up my oppinion on people that bash other people with their religion (and again, don't press the link if you're religious and has no sense of humour).)
Interesting. You seem to think it is quite ok for atheists to bash Christianity as you have never to my knowledge made one comment about the anti-theists here who can't put two sentences together without bashing Christianity. It is the anti-theists among us who shove their religion down our throats.
Of course, as usual, "the other side" has nothing but lies and personal insults. I have not been on a crusade nor have I been judging gays.
I entered the discussion purely because of the slander of religion. Anti-theists calling Christianity evil and immoral. Hypocrites who lie and say religious people are the bashers while they are parrots of the anti-theist Dawkins and vomit forth his hate rhetoic.
I could care less if you sleep with five men, two pigs and a goat every night.
If you actually cared about what my position you would see I have said ALL people have sinned. I have never said I am superior to any gay person.
I am quite busy these days. For those of you wish for me not to get involved in discussinons because you are unable to defend your own statments then stop saying things like Christianity is evil. Christianity is immoral and ohter Dawkinite hate rhetoric. That is what I find disgusting. I am apt to step in and defend Christianity against your lies.
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Doomforge
Admirable
Undefeatable Hero
Retired Hero
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posted February 14, 2011 08:26 PM |
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Forgive Christians. We're not all like that.
<facepalm>
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We reached to the stars and everything is now ours
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Vlaad
Admirable
Legendary Hero
ghost of the past
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posted February 14, 2011 08:45 PM |
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Edited by Vlaad at 20:46, 14 Feb 2011.
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Nobody thinks you're all like that. 
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JollyJoker
Honorable
Undefeatable Hero
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posted February 14, 2011 08:53 PM |
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Elodin, you are not tiring to explain that those people who are doing what "the atheists" bash upon are no Christians.
Which means that, according to you, we would "bash" those who you are bashing as well, calling them are liars and people who just CLAIM to be Christians - wolves in sheep furs.
So how come you seem to be on the liars's side?
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VokialBG
Honorable
Legendary Hero
First in line
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posted February 14, 2011 08:55 PM |
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Damn. You still discuss it. Hey, it's Valentines day! Elodin, aren't you a catholic? Do you have a wife, or someone you love?
Alci, you have a special someone I'm sure.
Corribus... I don't know about you...
You can selabrate St. Trifuan as well, you can just drink some wine (lot of) with a friend...
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Doomforge
Admirable
Undefeatable Hero
Retired Hero
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posted February 14, 2011 09:16 PM |
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Corribus is happily married, iirc
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We reached to the stars and everything is now ours
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bixie
Promising
Legendary Hero
my common sense is tingling!
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posted February 14, 2011 09:41 PM |
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Quote:
I could care less if you sleep with five men, two pigs and a goat every night.
It's COULDN'T care less, you self-entitled wobblebottomed pile of Blurgek!
If you're going to insult someone, at least have the common decency to use the correct terminology rather than gaily butchering your mother tongue like a drunk illiterate writing slash fiction!
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Love, Laugh, Learn, Live.
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Baklava
Honorable
Legendary Hero
Mostly harmless
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posted February 14, 2011 09:54 PM |
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It's, uhm... actually a valid term...
*embarrassing situation*
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"Let me tell you what the blues
is. When you ain't got no
money,
you got the blues."
Howlin Wolf
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Adrius
Honorable
Undefeatable Hero
Stand and fight!
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posted February 14, 2011 10:02 PM |
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*facepalm*
Bixie... just... hahahaha. Does it feel worth it to you? I mean, right now? 
Don't degrade yourself man.
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bixie
Promising
Legendary Hero
my common sense is tingling!
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posted February 14, 2011 10:12 PM |
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damn you baklava...
*walks up to castle tower, amid thunderstorm, puts on long green cape and metal face mask and screams at the heavens*
BAKLAVAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!!
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Love, Laugh, Learn, Live.
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Corribus
Hero of Order
The Abyss Staring Back at You
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posted February 14, 2011 10:18 PM |
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Edited by Corribus at 22:19, 14 Feb 2011.
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@JJ
Quote:
I would disagree with this - depending on what you mean with recent.
Having read what followed the quoted line, I'm not sure I understand what you are disagreeing with. Care to elaborate or clarify?
@Alci
Quote:
I think your post is admirable, but I don't think things are quite as simple as this.
That's nice of you to say, but I don't see your point of contention either, and I don't disagree with anything you wrote in your post.
@Doomfore
Quote:
Forgive Christians. We're not all like that.
I know, but unfortunately the minority is disproportionately loud. Most of you benignly follow your delusions. 
Quote:
Corribus is happily married, iirc
Indeed. Sorry, ladies. Oh wait, no ladies here.
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I'm sick of following my dreams. I'm just going to ask them where they're goin', and hook up with them later. -Mitch Hedberg
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mvassilev
Responsible
Undefeatable Hero
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posted February 14, 2011 10:26 PM |
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Quote:
It's, uhm... actually a valid term...
*embarrassing situation*
Quote:
When one usually states "I could care less", they usually mean "I could not care less".
So yeah.
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Eccentric Opinion
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alcibiades
Honorable
Undefeatable Hero
of Gold Dragons
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posted February 14, 2011 10:51 PM |
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Quote:
Interesting. You seem to think it is quite ok for atheists to bash Christianity as you have never to my knowledge made one comment about the anti-theists here who can't put two sentences together without bashing Christianity. It is the anti-theists among us who shove their religion down our throats.
Frankly, you don't really earn my pitty with your behaviour. You have a very passive-agressive attitude, and even if you don't say the words directly, I think you're intelligent enough to be fully conscious about the buzz you create when you constantly poke the bee hive.
If you want to keep blindly charging into the battle discussion with no regard for or interest in what others mean and argue, and with the sole intend to promote your own oppinions and beliefs, that's your choice - but don't complain about whatever bruises it will earn your afterwards.
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This thread is pages long: 
