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[Dannyboy]

EB,

Except the only reason you find the term so "broad" is due mostly to YOU inflating it to include almost anything. Unlike you I find the two terms "natural" and "healthy" to be far more specific and narrow. Of course the crux of the issue is that in admitting that there is a narrower standard for how things should be, admits to a design or at minimum intent. Which is awkward for an atheist and so to be resisted.

Well, we've spent quite a lot of time on my understanding of the concept of Natural, so how about you give me your definition?  And while i am obviously less receptive to arguments which invoke the concept of design than some of your fellow churchgoers, i am capable of simply examining their internal consistency.  i could just as easily say that admitting homosexuality is natural would be very awkward for you and must therefore be resisted.

"Why?  Just because i consider the category of "natural" (in so far as it means anything concrete) to be value neutral, i can't say anything further about inclusion or exclusion from it?  That doesn't make any sense."

Sure it does. If you're going to hold "natural" is neutral then it does no good to even bring it up. As such what would have been consistent behaviour from you is to just shrug and concede the claim that homosexuality is "not natural" but it's still "ok".

But homosexuality's alleged "unnaturalness" is the central plank of many anti-gay arguments for it being a bad thing, so even though i don't think that being "unnatural" is necessarily bad or good, it is still legitimate for me to address the premise.  No doubt some people would tell me that my relationship with my wife is "unnatural", because she is African and i am European.  In taking issue with that it might be profitable to start off with an examination of their concept of "natural", even though i would also have disagreements with some other points of their logic.

Examining the internal consistency of someone else's argument is not the same thing as saying you agree with its premises.  If you make a good argument for your concept of Natural then i might do exactly as you suggest – shrug and agree that homosexuality is unnatural, but i still think it's ok.  However, since you have not done that yet, i see no reason why i should automatically respect the first step of your argument.

But this entire time you've argued vehemently for homosexuality to be included in the catagory. And that tells me some part of you recognizes it's more sensical and significant than you care to outwardly admit.

Not at all.  Many people do see "natural" as being synonymous with "good", as you apparently do, so its use can be powerful – but only because we think it is.  That to me is a good reason to argue against its inappropriate use.

And this "Natural=Good" thing is getting ridiculous by the way.  I have made my position abundantly clear on the subject – natural is value-neutral and homosexuality's inclusion in the category of natural (in my opinion) is entirely independent of me considering homosexuality to be ok.  Move on.

But I didn't realize I even needed to make a case. I'm just "critiquing" yours. 

I have noticed.  Maybe it's time for you to put your money where your mouth is.  It's a large enough target, after all.

Again, the self-evidency of sexual organs being a means of reproduction just as the digestion system is a self-evident means of digesting food makes things clear what is natural sexual behaviour. And "perversion" is not so subjective when one isn't under the notion that "natural"  is so broad as to include practicly any behaviour.

Ok, so make your case for a different definition of natural then.  And since most heterosexual sex is clearly not about reproduction, it is obvious that there is another important purpose to sexual behaviour, which is pleasure.  Whether that means using methods of contraception or engaging in sexual behaviour which cannot lead to pregnancy, the vast majority of sex happening on the planet is non-reproductive.  Homosexual behaviours fulfill the criteria of pleasure, along with heterosexual behaviours.  The fact that they do not fit the criteria of reproduction seems to be of dubious relevance since most heterosexual behaviours also do not do so.

I don't recall the biblical stance on oral sex.  Presumably you think it is a terrible abomination.  Your loss.

"As for animal behaviour, i have not and would not claim that it is in any way binding, but it gives those of us who believe in common ancestry at least some useful data to compare with human behaviour."

Now you really are franticly trying to dump out water to save your sinking argument. If it's not in any way binding, then it's not in any way useful.

*Yawn*  In my worldview, animal behaviour provides a reference point for where certain human behaviours may have come from, and help us to understand our evolutionary drives.  It does not provide any moral guidance, and i have not suggested that it does, except apparently in your imagination.

And some didn't consider it abhorrent to enslave others of their own species or carry out mass extermination. If you yourself don't consider those people's opinion on such things at all relevant, I don't see why I need to consider other's opinions on this subject. Especially when MY worldview holds opinions as irrelevant to issues of "good" and "bad".

You are comparing consensual homosexuality with slavery and mass murder.  This is actually ironically symbolic of our whole difference of opinion here.  You claim Divine support for your position that all three of those things are wrong, despite the fact that the Bible is fairly positive about slavery, and ambiguous on the subject of mass murder.  However, the one behaviour on that list which harms no one, it strongly condemns.  Since i have primary concern for the avoidance of suffering and promotion of happiness in my moral calculations, i am diametrically opposed to the Bible's stance here, being anti-slavery and anti-mass murder, but pro-homosexuality.  You are the one who seems to be stuck in the middle here, divine law as written in the Bible not really supporting your moral intuitions about slavery and genocide.  Must be difficult for you.

As far as your example of choice is concerned, well, why does anyone steal or murder where the penalty is long years in prison or even death? I have sin and rebellion that's in all people as an answer for all of it (and the idiotic notion that one can get away with it), but what do you got?

It's difficult to get accurate crime rates for countries that enforce Sharia, because the data tends not to be collected.  The same goes for homosexuality, so it's hard to know if the harsh penalties make much difference to the prevalence.  My take on it would be that people will still steal if they're hungry, whatever the penalty, and will still kill if they or something they love is threatened.  But if homosexuality, according to you, is nothing more than thrill-seeking behaviour by people who see no distinction between different types of sex, then it seems strange to me that they would still carry out such behaviour when the penalties are so severe.  It's almost as if they had an emotional need for relationships with people of the same sex.

"Are you suggesting that there is a remotely conceivable set of social or cultural circumstances in which it would be the right thing to do to stone a woman to death for not being a virgin on her wedding day?"

The same alleged commandments were given under an alleged circumstance. And are you suggesting such things would be "wrong" as if there is some transcendant objective standard between "right/good" and "wrong/bad"?

Yes, i absolutely am suggesting that.  I am suggesting that anyone who justifies honour killings (As the verse which you feebly defend in Deuteronomy 22 does) under any circumstance is ignorant of the most basic principles of morality.  Isn't it strange that i, an atheist, know this, but your God apparently does not?

It would be irrelevant if there was no meaning to the issue of 'sin' itself. No, what it shows is that those social groups are guilty of sinning just as homosexuals are. And with STDs noted, they are guilty of a particular sin that goes to the heart of homosexuality - sexual immorality.

Ok, so by the standard of STDs and promiscuity, you have no way to separate Homosexuals from African-Americans in moral terms.  i'm glad we've cleared that up.  And i have yet to be convinced that any behaviour which harms no one can coherently be called "immoral".

Risks don't stop at anal sex and include oral-sex, sadism, fisting, and any other concevable physical approach for homosexuality.

This is once again irrelevant because heterosexuals often practice the same behaviours.  If you can point to homosexuals en mass and say "look, they do these things, therefore they as a group are bad", then i can do exactly the same with heterosexuals.  You're getting nowhere with this "risk" line.

That some risked are shared by heterosexuals who practice the same behaviour just goes to show further how appropriate sexual behaviour is narrower than you advocate.

What it shows is that, as a standard by which to assess a population, these behaviours are useless to you, because they are not confined to any one population, nor are they practiced uniformly by any one population.

And Lesbian sex is less documented than homosexual males due to males recieving the lions share of AIDS. Also a factor is that women are just generally less sexually aggressive than men. But they are just as much at risk of HPV, hepatitis, bacterial vaginosis, crabs, herpes, etc.

You appear to be just making stuff up now.  Lesbians have just the same risk of catching HPV and hepatitis?  Please feel free to stun me by producing a credible source for that little pearl of misinformation.

"If a woman was choosing her sexual behaviour on the basis of least risk, as you seem to be advocating, she'd probably become a monogamous lesbian.  Do you not see this as a problem for your analysis that "STDs are simply a risk for homosexuality in it's entirety"?"

Nope, because as said above lesbians have their problems too. And you are misconstruing my arguement. It being STDs are simply a risk for any sexual practice outside a monogamous heterosexual relationship.

STDs are a risk for any sexual practice full stop EB.  You have no grounds to claim that a monogamous homosexual relationship is more at risk of them than a monogamous heterosexual relationship because of the diversity of sexual practices which exist in all populations.  Basically all you've got is innuendo and sexual xenophobia.

Which you seem to feel no hesitation in mocking to suit your own prejudices despite your own explicit admittance of recognizing homosexuals as largely more promiscuious.

Some are, yes.  So, on average, are African-Americans, so what have we proved here?  Incidentally, you have already touched on one of the reasons for higher rates of promiscuity in homosexuals.  Male homosexuals do not have the moderating effect of women's (generally lower) sex drive to content with in determining the speed of their relationships ("women are just generally less sexually aggressive than men").  That makes their relative promiscuity not a direct effect of evil homosexuality, so much as a practical result of an absence of women from their relationships.

Frankly if you don't see the choice in the matter of behaviour no matter if it's genetics or environmental I don't see how you can justify even arguing with those who oppose homosexuality.

Again, i have already made this distinction for you at length, but one more time – homosexuality (the state) is not a choice, but homosexual behaviour is a choice.

"Showing an individual a variety of gay and straight pornography while he is in a Functional Magnetic Resonance Imagining (fMRI) machine is a quite reliable way to tell whether he or she is hetero or homosexual.  This study is an example of such an experiment."

No real difference than seeing how tight the pants are getting. At least for men.

Sure there are some physiological responses (i'd go for pupil dilation as being both unisex and less embarrassing to measure).  But the point is, since hetero and homosexuals exhibit differing brain activity when exposed to the same stimuli, it is reasonable to suppose that the structure of their brains would also be different in subtle ways, which is indeed what recent studies have shown.  Still early days, but this leads us to the likelihood that a brain scan might soon be able to reliably determine someone's sexuality in a resting state.  No behaviour required.

Would that not qualify ones sexual orientation as a state?

Quite frankly if everyone in the world chose a life-partner of the same sex, I think the fact that the human race would die with that generation shows a pretty self-evident non-dogmatic reason why the heterosexual behaviour is the "natural" way to go.

There are plenty of things that if everyone in the world chose to do them exclusively would create a population crash.  Following your logic i suddenly realise the evils of contraception.

Seriously, the conclusion of total homosexuality leading to extinction, while total heterosexuality leading to the race continuing on is enough to blow your argument of homosexuality being in any way "natural" out of the water.

If "natural" meant "that which best assures continuation of the species when practiced by the majority", then yes.  Is that your definition?

It's not so fixed that a person can't help it even if there is a genetic component. Societal pressure is just an influence in making that choice. Seeing how homosexuality was and still is largely a minority, if no one had a choice in the face of societal pressure homosexuality would not exist in the West as much as it does today, and blacks would still be farm equipment.

Well, according to Aristotle, some people are "natural" slaves.  Seems that your holy book agrees with him, despite the fact that he was so very, very gay.  Anyway, as i have said ad nauseum, homosexual behaviour is a choice – how could it be otherwise?  But if homosexuality is indeed a state, as the neuroscience (not to mention the testimony of any gay person you might ask) suggests it is, then banning homosexual behaviour would be the equivalent of someone telling you that you could only ever have a relationship with a man, never with a woman.  How happy do you think you would be about that?  It is only a choice, after all.

Again, as pedophila and homosexuality is ultimately the same act/behaviour, if homosexuality hurts no one and would make some people happy, then it stands pedophilia should be supported under the same reasons.

Except for the fact that such behaviour would hurt people, mostly children.  That is so blindingly obvious that it makes the above statement a really quite worrying indictment of your reasoning skills.

Ultimately all behaviour and acts are a choice. And if you can be 'fine' with the "state" of pedophilia as long as one doesn't perform pedophilia  , I don't see an issue with me objecting to homosexuals putting their inclination into practice regardless of "state".

Well a primary issue you ought to focus on is that this line of argument is making you look really foolish.  That alone would seem a good reason to abandon it.  Consensual homosexuality is in an entirely different category from pedophilia, which cannot by definition be consensual.  Children are clearly put in danger by being exposed to sexual activity before they can fully understand the consequences that it may have.  Adults on the other hand should be capable of making choices which are in their best interests, and so i support their right to make themselves happy in any way which doesn't hurt anyone else.  This is really not complex.

Though I guess if no pedophilia or homosexuality is performed they wouldn't be pedophiles and homosexuals then, would they?

Only from a strict behaviourist point of view.  I would say that the neuroscience, as well as the most elementary introspection, strongly suggest that being of a particular sexual orientation is a state which still exists in between episodes of sexual stimulation.  Changes in your brain structure don't go away when you're asleep.

[End Bringer]

Well, we've spent quite a lot of time on my understanding of the concept of Natural, so how about you give me your definition?  And while i am obviously less receptive to arguments which invoke the concept of design than some of your fellow churchgoers, i am capable of simply examining their internal consistency.  i could just as easily say that admitting homosexuality is natural would be very awkward for you and must therefore be resisted.

Given your own innate inconsistency, I'd find your claim of capable examination dubious at best. You could easily say admitting homosexuality is natural would be awkward  for me because it is "awkward" under the Christian worldview. Or to put another way 'just plain wrong'. "Natural" in the context of homosexuality for me is in accordance to what is proper or appropriate which is in accordance with God's design of the world. Again I note the example of driving in the direction that is proper for either side of the road as something "natural". Or using a screwdriver on a screw would be "natural" rather than a chisel or hammer. And you'll find such examples consistent because each denotes a design of how things work and are meant to work a certain and particular way. As such homosexuality will always be the equivalent "unnatural" act of driving in the opposite direction on either side of the road. With the very obvious consequences to go right along with the example.

But homosexuality's alleged "unnaturalness" is the central plank of many anti-gay arguments for it being a bad thing, so even though i don't think that being "unnatural" is necessarily bad or good, it is still legitimate for me to address the premise.  No doubt some people would tell me that my relationship with my wife is "unnatural", because she is African and i am European.  In taking issue with that it might be profitable to start off with an examination of their concept of "natural", even though i would also have disagreements with some other points of their logic.

Also the central plank of many pro-gay arguments. And your argument here doesn't really hold up given your whole issue with 'natural doesn't equal good'. So like I said, you could have just conceded the point and argued the whole issue as irrelevant to being good or bad as you've done so many times in this argument. But you wanted to have your cake and eat it too.

Examining the internal consistency of someone else's argument is not the same thing as saying you agree with its premises.  If you make a good argument for your concept of Natural then i might do exactly as you suggest – shrug and agree that homosexuality is unnatural, but i still think it's ok.  However, since you have not done that yet, i see no reason why i should automatically respect the first step of your argument.

True it isn't the same. But seeing how what you have been doing has been making your own positive argument of homosexuality being "natural", it doesn't really apply to you. Even less so given your only "examination" was to point towards animal behaviour then chop your own legs off when you said what's natural for animals isn't for humans.

Not at all.  Many people do see "natural" as being synonymous with "good", as you apparently do, so its use can be powerful – but only because we think it is.  That to me is a good reason to argue against its inappropriate use.

Except you've been saying this entire time that "natural" isn't synonymous with "good" so there's no reason to argue against it at all. Just telling people 'unnatural can be good' would have been the consistent thing to do, but you didn't.

Ok, so make your case for a different definition of natural then.  And since most heterosexual sex is clearly not about reproduction, it is obvious that there is another important purpose to sexual behaviour, which is pleasure.  Whether that means using methods of contraception or engaging in sexual behaviour which cannot lead to pregnancy, the vast majority of sex happening on the planet is non-reproductive.  Homosexual behaviours fulfill the criteria of pleasure, along with heterosexual behaviours.  The fact that they do not fit the criteria of reproduction seems to be of dubious relevance since most heterosexual behaviours also do not do so.

I believe I already addressed this issue. People's intent when having heterosexual sex may not be about reproduction at times, but there's no question that sex itself is largely for that very purpose. I ,again, point to evidence of needing birth control methods to combat this obviously consequential function. Any sexual behaviour that doesn't lead to pregnancy, yet doesn't make use of contraception, is obviously using body parts that aren't designed as sexual organs. Given that some of them also leads to higher risk of STDs I'd say such behaviour could reasonably be termed "unnatural" right along with homosexuality. Standards of "pleasure" being as outdated as the 60s, as life isn't about what makes us momentarily feel good like drug addicts.

I don't recall the biblical stance on oral sex.  Presumably you think it is a terrible abomination.  Your loss.

I think "be fruitful and multiply" may give a hint, but the stance on homosexuality is pretty obvious.

*Yawn*  In my worldview, animal behaviour provides a reference point for where certain human behaviours may have come from, and help us to understand our evolutionary drives.  It does not provide any moral guidance, and i have not suggested that it does, except apparently in your imagination.

Well then which is it DB? It's binding or it's not? What's natural for a swan is natural for humans or it's not? Your fickle inconsistency may be par for the coarse, but there comes a point where you have to pick one and let go of the other.

You are comparing consensual homosexuality with slavery and mass murder.  This is actually ironically symbolic of our whole difference of opinion here.

You bet, given the only distinction you give is personal opinons of 'it hurts so it's "wrong"' or 'it feels good so it's "right"'. It's ultimately all the same to your reasoning and world view.

You claim Divine support for your position that all three of those things are wrong, despite the fact that the Bible is fairly positive about slavery, and ambiguous on the subject of mass murder.  However, the one behaviour on that list which harms no one, it strongly condemns.  Since i have primary concern for the avoidance of suffering and promotion of happiness in my moral calculations, i am diametrically opposed to the Bible's stance here, being anti-slavery and anti-mass murder, but pro-homosexuality.  You are the one who seems to be stuck in the middle here, divine law as written in the Bible not really supporting your moral intuitions about slavery and genocide.  Must be difficult for you.

Heh. Your dodge of finger pointing just proves me right. Since you clearly don't give a flip about other people's opinions on such subjects of slavery and mass murder, you're a bit hypocritical to demand I give a flip about anyone's opinion, but mine. At least for the cases of the Bible which you so greatly misconstrue like every atheistic 12 year old, those have nominally different circumstances to differentiate them (and doesn't concede homosexuality is "harmless"). Opinion is all your world view has to make such determination. And it all seems to only come down to the opinion from the god of self. Well, your opinion on avoidance of suffering and promotion of pleasure (not necessarily the same as "happiness" as some people would be perfectly happy with slavery and mass murder), is just your opinion. And meaningless under your own world view in the face of 6 billion other god's of self.

It's either "abhorrent" because it objectively is that no opinion can change, or because I say so under your own world view. Seems a lose-lose for you either way.

It's difficult to get accurate crime rates for countries that enforce Sharia, because the data tends not to be collected.  The same goes for homosexuality, so it's hard to know if the harsh penalties make much difference to the prevalence.  My take on it would be that people will still steal if they're hungry, whatever the penalty, and will still kill if they or something they love is threatened.  But if homosexuality, according to you, is nothing more than thrill-seeking behaviour by people who see no distinction between different types of sex, then it seems strange to me that they would still carry out such behaviour when the penalties are so severe.  It's almost as if they had an emotional need for relationships with people of the same sex.

Maybe you missed the part of "idiotic notion that one can get away with it". And yours is an incredibly naive take on the world then, since I didn't make it limited to any particular country, and people are motivated by far less 'noble' motives no matter where they're from. Don't underestimate the simple human tendancy to rebel against any authority above them.

Yes, i absolutely am suggesting that.  I am suggesting that anyone who justifies honour killings (As the verse which you feebly defend in Deuteronomy 22 does) under any circumstance is ignorant of the most basic principles of morality.  Isn't it strange that i, an atheist, know this, but your God apparently does not?

*think Jabba the Hut laughter* And where does this transcendant objective standard of moral law come from? A transcendant moral Lawmaker! Seems a logical mess you've found yourself in to hold an objective standard that only can come from God while being an atheist who rejects God's very existance. And all so you could make a petty argument from outrage! Hope it was worth it. 

Ok, so by the standard of STDs and promiscuity, you have no way to separate Homosexuals from African-Americans in moral terms.  i'm glad we've cleared that up.  And i have yet to be convinced that any behaviour which harms no one can coherently be called "immoral".

Depends on what you view as "harmful" as your avoidance of this issue when addressing pedophilia shows. And no, what I have is no way to seperate homosexual behaviour from promiscuous behaviour, which I've never done anyway. And I don't think either is exclusive of any one race; as race is what one is while the other involves a behaviour/ act any can do. Your appeal of both being a "state" being meaningless as even you note their's a behavioural aspect of sexual orientation that doesn't exist for "states" like race.

This is once again irrelevant because heterosexuals often practice the same behaviours.  If you can point to homosexuals en mass and say "look, they do these things, therefore they as a group are bad", then i can do exactly the same with heterosexuals.  You're getting nowhere with this "risk" line.

And as I've noted previously it makes even what's appropriate behaviour for even heterosexuals narrower than what you think. I don't recall ever saying heterosexuals had carte blanche just for being heterosexuals anyway.

What it shows is that, as a standard by which to assess a population, these behaviours are useless to you, because they are not confined to any one population, nor are they practiced uniformly by any one population.

Not at all, since your use of finger pointing doesn't disprove a thing (and I've even gone a step further and accepted them). I think I've shown that I can hold the standard and all the facts consistently quite well if I do say so.

You appear to be just making stuff up now.  Lesbians have just the same risk of catching HPV and hepatitis?  Please feel free to stun me by producing a credible source for that little pearl of misinformation.

Your already clear prejudice against the basic fact would seem to make the effort of refrencing the source meaningless as you'll no doubt just blow it off. But here you go anyway.

STDs are a risk for any sexual practice full stop EB.  You have no grounds to claim that a monogamous homosexual relationship is more at risk of them than a monogamous heterosexual relationship because of the diversity of sexual practices which exist in all populations.  Basically all you've got is innuendo and sexual xenophobia.

Heh. So since you couldn't make an argument that no risk is involved (monogamous or promiscuous) for homosexuality, your tact is to say 'it's all equal'. Nope, I think if homosexuality and promiscuity were to a more nonexistant level, STDs would be a significant (and telling) rarity. All your denials meaning nothing.

Some are, yes. So, on average, are African-Americans, so what have we proved here? Incidentally, you have already touched on one of the reasons for higher rates of promiscuity in homosexuals.  Male homosexuals do not have the moderating effect of women's (generally lower) sex drive to content with in determining the speed of their relationships ("women are just generally less sexually aggressive than men").  That makes their relative promiscuity not a direct effect of evil homosexuality, so much as a practical result of an absence of women from their relationships.

Heh. Well, that's more than likely the reason in prison, but ultimately not being able to woo a woman (or find one) is just reason to keep looking rather than an excuse. Or shockingly just not have sex at all.

Again, i have already made this distinction for you at length, but one more time – homosexuality (the state) is not a choice, but homosexual behaviour is a choice.

I don't concede one can be the "state" without performing the behaviour. Though I could just say "anti-gay" is a "state" also.

Sure there are some physiological responses (i'd go for pupil dilation as being both unisex and less embarrassing to measure).  But the point is, since hetero and homosexuals exhibit differing brain activity when exposed to the same stimuli, it is reasonable to suppose that the structure of their brains would also be different in subtle ways, which is indeed what recent studies have shown.  Still early days, but this leads us to the likelihood that a brain scan might soon be able to reliably determine someone's sexuality in a resting state.  No behaviour required.

So you ARE making the argument genetics is destiny. And your example of brain waves doesn't really give a distinction as my example (I thought medical practitioners weren't so concerned about modesty) as it's just physiological responses as well. But no, I don't concede that anyone who has never once performed homosexuality is a homosexual no matter what a brain scan tells you. Some "stimuli" may be influenced by a biological factor, but that's no more a reliable determination than when looking to see when one is 'stimulated' to steal money at a certain time while others aren't. One isn't a thief till one actually steals something.

Would that not qualify ones sexual orientation as a state?

No, it qualify's as one having an impulse just as any other temptation. Not that it matters seeing how you've distinguished that the choice of behaviour is the central issue rather than if one is in a "state" or not as you did with pedophilia.

There are plenty of things that if everyone in the world chose to do them exclusively would create a population crash.  Following your logic i suddenly realise the evils of contraception.

It wouldn't bother me overly much to include that with homosexuality as well (though the fact it doesn't always work may put a cramp in your example), but we are talking about an over-all behaviour. If you hold homosexuality as "natural" and there being no reason beyond the "dogmatic" why anyone can't practice it, then taking it further to have everyone doing it exclusively seems logical. The fact that the human race can't live without heterosexuality as it can homosexuality, is just another fact for you to deny.

If "natural" meant "that which best assures continuation of the species when practiced by the majority", then yes.  Is that your definition?

Practiced by all seems to fit better, but that's not my definition of "natural" so much as a way to determine what is. The fact that your evolutionary beliefs should hold such a definition true as well is just a bonus.

Well, according to Aristotle, some people are "natural" slaves.  Seems that your holy book agrees with him, despite the fact that he was so very, very gay.  Anyway, as i have said ad nauseum, homosexual behaviour is a choice – how could it be otherwise?  But if homosexuality is indeed a state, as the neuroscience (not to mention the testimony of any gay person you might ask) suggests it is, then banning homosexual behaviour would be the equivalent of someone telling you that you could only ever have a relationship with a man, never with a woman.  How happy do you think you would be about that?  It is only a choice, after all.

Would that sentiment hold true for pedophilia as well? Seems not. But it seems you can't get it through your head that life doesn't revolve around what makes people happy. Especially as making everyone happy is an impossibility anyway. And as I hold we were naturally made for relationships with women (not just in physical terms) I think many homosexuals (and everyone) would indeed find more happiness doing it God's way. The promiscuity that plagues homosexuality certainly indicates "some" homosexuals are finding things wanting anyway.

Except for the fact that such behaviour would hurt people, mostly children.  That is so blindingly obvious that it makes the above statement a really quite worrying indictment of your reasoning skills.

Hurt how? It's the same physical act (and we're keeping it in under the context of 'consent'). Perhaps you haven't heard, but sex is great. I know my reasons for objecting to pedophilia, but I'm wondering if you have any under your own reasoning. All you seem to have so far is an assertion that doesn't really give a distinction on how homosexuality and pedophilia are supposedly so different under your own reasoning.

Well a primary issue you ought to focus on is that this line of argument is making you look really foolish.  That alone would seem a good reason to abandon it.  Consensual homosexuality is in an entirely different category from pedophilia, which cannot by definition be consensual. Children are clearly put in danger by being exposed to sexual activity before they can fully understand the consequences that it may have.  Adults on the other hand should be capable of making choices which are in their best interests, and so i support their right to make themselves happy in any way which doesn't hurt anyone else.  This is really not complex.

Your only distinction so far is a No True Scottsman. All you sight is decrees from 'bigoted dogmatic sexual xenophobes' that children aren't mature enough to understand the consequences and ambiguous assertions of 'hurting' others without really saying how. Who said understanding the consequences is even necessary for consent? Basic consent is all one needs to not be rape. It doesn't have to be 'informed' or 'understood' consent. All one has to do is decry adults who desire to practice homosexuality aren't mature or compitant enough to understand the consequences by definition, and homosexuality becomes the same as pedophilia. As the two are the same in evey other form of reasoning you invoke. But your continued support for the express behaviour of one while flimsi reasoning to deny the other (which is sounding more and more like a half-baked excuse), just shows how utterly inconsistent you are under your own arguments and reasoning.

Only from a strict behaviourist point of view.  I would say that the neuroscience, as well as the most elementary introspection, strongly suggest that being of a particular sexual orientation is a state which still exists in between episodes of sexual stimulation.  Changes in your brain structure don't go away when you're asleep.

Changes in activity does. Which is how the neuroscience makes such determinations rather than saying 'the genes there' like one can do for traits and race. And that left-handed example shows even genetics are by no means set in stone.

[Dannyboy]

EB,

Time to condense the debate a little i think.  Let me know if you think i've left anything out.

"NATURAL"

We seem unlikely to find agreement on the concept of natural, since our definitions are so dissimilar and in each case dependent on other things which we respectively believe and don't agree about either.  You believe that "Natural" relates to things being "in accordance with God's design of the world", which obviously presupposes theistic beliefs, just as my definition of the same concept presupposes evolution.  Analogies of driving on the wrong side of the road in themselves prove nothing (anymore than analogies that i might make from my perspective about different flavours of ice cream would provide evidence for my beliefs on this subject).

i remain puzzled by your suggestion that because i happen to think that "natural" is value neutral then i can logically say no more on the subject of other people's beliefs about it.  Whether or not i believe that it is genuinely pejorative, i still think that the statement "Homosexuality is unnatural" is false, and can be seen to be so (in an evolutionary paradigm) by examining studies of animal behaviour.  Your statement that this commits me to accepting all animal behaviour as morally prescriptive for humans ignores the fact that "natural" and "good" are not the same thing for me.  It is also not inconsistent to say that certain animal behaviours (i.e. homosexuality) which are widespread across different animal groups, including humans, are therefore "natural" for humans, whereas other behaviours which are limited to animals living in certain environmental conditions, or animal groups not including primates, may not be natural for humans.  Again, this is ascribing far too much significance to the word "Natural" in my opinion, but i see no reason to let your ever-opportunistic accusations of inconsistency on my part pass unchallenged.

THE PURPOSE OF SEX

People's intent when having heterosexual sex may not be about reproduction at times, but there's no question that sex itself is largely for that very purpose. I ,again, point to evidence of needing birth control methods to combat this obviously consequential function. Any sexual behaviour that doesn't lead to pregnancy, yet doesn't make use of contraception, is obviously using body parts that aren't designed as sexual organs.

Assuming the concept of design for a moment, human women (in common with most species) have apparently been designed to not be fertile at all times, but actually for quite a small period of each month, yet (unlike most species) both men and women maintain sexual interest in each other, and engage in sexual activity for pretty much the whole month - most of which therefore fits your definition of sexual behaviour which doesn't lead to pregnancy but which does not need to employ contraception to not do so.  Since we have been designed this way, i can only assume a purpose for sex other than reproduction on the part of a designer.  What might that be?

OBJECTIVE MORALITY

i thought this might come up

*think Jabba the Hut laughter* And where does this transcendant objective standard of moral law come from? A transcendant moral Lawmaker! Seems a logical mess you've found yourself in to hold an objective standard that only can come from God while being an atheist who rejects God's very existance. And all so you could make a petty argument from outrage! Hope it was worth it.

   Impressive gloating EB, also kudos for radically altering my mental picture of you in a single sentence (i'd always imagined you being a little on the skinny side).  You do remember what happened to Jabba don't you?

A non-theistic objective moral standard (i'm ignoring the word "transcendent" because it conveys nothing meaningful to me) is entirely logically consistent, and can be derived from the recognition that the well-being and suffering of sentient beings are changeable states, and there are objectively-knowable facts about how we can move, and help others to move, between those states.  You acknowledge this, even though your morality is still underdeveloped in the sense of seeing right and wrong as being independent of well-being.  For example, your interpretation of the Old Testament is rooted in your moral intuition, not in the OT itself.  When you read a verse stating that it is right to kill a woman who turns out to not to be a virgin on her wedding night, you recognise it as incompatible with contemporary morality and explain it away (weakly) as being appropriate in the context, but when you read - in the same book i think - that you should love your neighbour (unless she's a non-virgin bride presumably), you accept that as an important piece of moral wisdom.  Where does that differentiation come from?  From you, not the text.

You are in a difficult position in claiming that there is an objective moral standard put in place by the creator of the universe AND that the Bible is the authoritative word of that same God.  It is easier to explain some of the things written in the Bible if you don't maintain both those beliefs, since they are inconsistent with each other.  If God literally authored the Bible then why does it contain so much that violates what most people - including you - would like to claim is His sacred moral code?  Just think how good a book would be that had genuinely been written by an omniscient and omnibenevolent being.  By contrast, there is nothing in the Bible which could not have been written by a human being - in the case of most of the book a fairly unenlightened one by our standards.  From the point of view of knowledge, it could have taught us about DNA, the size of the universe, public health measures which could have saved millions if not billions of lives over the last two and a half thousand years.  From the point of view of morality, it could have been an ethical text which still astonished and inspired moral philosophers to this day, instead of being a mixture of barbarism, misogyny and only the occasional (for the time) radical moral idea.  The fact that ostensibly the most perfect book in existence (according to you) does not do any of these things that it could have done argues fairly d--ningly against its divinity.  Our moral intuition, informed by the facts of human well-being and suffering, tell us this, which is why you have to tie yourself in knots to explain away genocide and slavery happily supported by the alleged author of all morality.

So please, explain to me what context legitimizes honour killings?  Throw your lot in with the radical Muslims on this issue.

Opinion is all your world view has to make such determination.

There are objectively-knowable facts about what will increase the general well-being and happiness of either a person or a population.  That is a great deal more than "opinion".

HOMOSEXUALITY, PROMISCUITY AND STDs

It is becoming clear that STDs and promiscuity in the homosexual community are rather a side issue for you, since you would consider a gay person who had only one loving, monogamous and faithful relationship and engaging in no risky sexual behaviours to be just as morally deficient as the most promiscuously careless homosexual stereotype imaginable.  To paraphrase you, why even bring it up if it is irrelevant to your views?

However, so long as you did bring it up, i still feel it important to challenge the innaccurate elements.

"You appear to be just making stuff up now.  Lesbians have just the same risk of catching HPV and hepatitis?  Please feel free to stun me by producing a credible source for that little pearl of misinformation."

Your already clear prejudice against the basic fact would seem to make the effort of refrencing the source meaningless as you'll no doubt just blow it off. But here you go anyway.

  Wow, a superficially well-referenced and scientific-looking article.  i am moderately impressed EB.

Since it's kind of a long piece, i will just concentrate on the part relating to "Female Homosexual Behaviour".  The first sentence is not promising.  He says that "Lesbians are also at higher risk for STDs and other health problems than heterosexuals", and references a Gay and Lesbian Medical Association Press Release which you can read here.  Now i invite you to read through this short piece and try to find any mention of STDs at all.  It lists ten things that Lesbians should discuss with their Healthcare Provider (so it's a public health initiative aimed at Lesbians - hardly surprising that it focuses on problems which they may encounter), and specifically notes that many of these problems - substance abuse, alcoholism, obesity etc - stem from the psychological consequences of the stigma which Lesbians experience from much of the rest of society.  It also notes that in certain areas, Lesbians have lower incidence of health problems than heterosexual women (the example given is domestic violence).  Does that mean a tick in the plus column for Lesbians as far as you're concerned?  Of course not.  Your mind is already made up, and all this focus on the consequences of behaviour is just profitable muck-raking as far as you're concerned.

So, distortion of a source in the first sentence.  Not a very credible start.  Another of his major references for Lesbians' negative health behaviours and their consequences exemplifies two problems of bias which his work displays.  One is convenience sampling and generalising the results to an entire population which they are unlikely to be representative of.  Whether or not this occurs to you, attenders at an STD clinic (where this study was conducted) are more likely to be representative of promiscuous hetero and homosexuals than the general population.  Therefore using the results of such a study to comment on all Lesbians is intellectually dishonest and (probably deliberately) misleading.  The other problem with this study is a definitional one.  Actually i shouldn't implicate the researchers - it is the author of your source who makes the mistake.  The study compares "women with any history of sex with a woman" with "women who denied ever having sex with another woman".  In his interpretation of the results, your source refers to the first group as "lesbians".  Well, some of them may have been, but this group would clearly include bisexuals and women who are simply sexually experimentative.  Gosh, i wonder if such a composite group might be expected to have higher rates of all sorts of risky behaviour and STDs.

The author uses these complicated results to state confidently that "Lesbians" are more likely to have sex with HIV positive men, and to engage in prostitution, drug abuse and promiscuity.  In fact he is generalising massively from an unrepresentative convenience sample of women who have ever had sex with another woman.  Although it invokes the air of objective science, this article is a heavily biased and ideologically-driven attack on homosexuals as a group.  The fact that you use it (some of it, i notice, verbatim) to support your views does little to raise your credibility on this issue.

So, to get to the support for your claim that Lesbians are "just as much at risk of HPV and hepatitis", none of the references in the section relating to these diseases makes any comparison between Lesbian and male Homosexual rates of these diseases, so your confident statement of equivalence is unfounded.  The author does note, uncontroversially, that IV drug abuse is higher among Lesbians than in the general population, which is a known risk for transmission of Hepatitis B.  He also continues the mistake of conflating all women who have ever had sex with another woman as being "Lesbians", when in fact this group includes many bi-curious and experimental individuals who are likely to be more promiscuous and at risk of these diseases.

This leads on to a question which you seem disinclined to address, except with sneering faux-sympathetic "awww"s.  If a particular minority population is treated a certain way by the rest of society, and health problems are the result of this treatment, do we lay these health problems at the feet of the minority or the wider population?  It would not surprise me to learn that Christians in Muslim countries have lower life expectancy and more psychological problems than their neighbours.  What does that mean for Christianity?  i would suggest nothing.  Black people in the US had terrible life expectancy 100yrs ago.  So?

Likewise, the fact that Gay people suffer more from anxiety and depression, and as a consequence alcoholism, substance misuse and obesity, to me says nothing about being Gay, because their pathologies can be traced back to society's treatment of them rather than anything intrinsic to their sexuality.

All your denials meaning nothing.

To you, i'm sure.

HOMOSEXUALITY - STATE OR BEHAVIOUR?

I don't concede one can be the "state" without performing the behaviour.

So, you are taking a radically behaviourist approach to this issue.  The implications of this are a little absurd, for example to say that a person is not right-handed, or schizophrenic, or a genius when he is asleep, of someone who demonstrably is any of those things when awake.  All these "states" are reducible to biology and can be changed at the level of the brain, making the actual behaviour merely an expression of an internal reality.  The same goes for sexuality.

This is not, as you seem to think, to take an entirely deterministic approach.  i don't have to form relationships with women just because i am attracted solely to them, but the fact that i am attracted to them developed independently of any conscious control or choice on my part.

I don't concede that anyone who has never once performed homosexuality is a homosexual no matter what a brain scan tells you.

That is as ridiculous as saying that you are not heterosexual if you're a virgin.  Unless you're using a rather broad definition of "performed homosexuality".  Does feeling attraction towards a member of the same sex, with whatever attendant physiological responses may occur with that attraction, count as "performing homosexuality" in your book?

HOMOSEXUALITY AND PEDOPHILIA

"But if homosexuality is indeed a state, as the neuroscience (not to mention the testimony of any gay person you might ask) suggests it is, then banning homosexual behaviour would be the equivalent of someone telling you that you could only ever have a relationship with a man, never with a woman.  How happy do you think you would be about that?  It is only a choice, after all."

Would that sentiment hold true for pedophilia as well?

The question would be equally applicable to a pedophile, but the considerations would be slightly different since (as we both know but you disturbingly refuse to admit) children do not have the capacity to consent to sexual acts and are therefore liable to have their well-being, possibly for the rest of their lives, impacted on by being forcibly or otherwise involved in them.  Since adult romantic relationships can, and therefore should, be truly consensual, they exist in a different category than adult/child relationships, which are by definition abusive.

But it seems you can't get it through your head that life doesn't revolve around what makes people happy.

i disagree.  Actions which create a positive balance of happiness in the world are almost always the 'right' action to take.  You may argue that it would make the pedophile happy to have sex with a six year old, or that it made the Hutu militias happy to butcher their Tutsi neighbours with machetes, and i am not disputing that, but what i am saying is that the suffering created by those actions far outweighs the good feelings that morally undeveloped people might get from performing them.  The Dalai Lama says "If you want others to be happy, practice compassion. If you want to be happy, practice compassion", and i wouldn't disagree.  Do you really imagine that you are making the world a better place by demonising gay people?

I know my reasons for objecting to pedophilia

What are they?

All one has to do is decry adults who desire to practice homosexuality aren't mature or compitant enough to understand the consequences by definition, and homosexuality becomes the same as pedophilia.

So you're saying that all it takes is the acceptance of a classic "No True Scotsman" fallacy for homosexuality and pedophilia to be the same under my worldview?  Do you have any non-fallacious reasons to object to what i have said?

Ok, so i didn't do too well on condensing the thread, but i did at least organise it a bit (plus i can always sneakily blame you for the extra length since you cited that terrible article which forced me to spend so much time taking it apart). 

[End Bringer]

EB,

Time to condense the debate a little i think.  Let me know if you think i've left anything out.

"NATURAL"

We seem unlikely to find agreement on the concept of natural, since our definitions are so dissimilar and in each case dependent on other things which we respectively believe and don't agree about either.  You believe that "Natural" relates to things being "in accordance with God's design of the world", which obviously presupposes theistic beliefs, just as my definition of the same concept presupposes evolution.  Analogies of driving on the wrong side of the road in themselves prove nothing (anymore than analogies that i might make from my perspective about different flavours of ice cream would provide evidence for my beliefs on this subject).

Well when it comes to this subject, facts in themselves seem to prove nothing with you.

i remain puzzled by your suggestion that because i happen to think that "natural" is value neutral then i can logically say no more on the subject of other people's beliefs about it.  Whether or not i believe that it is genuinely pejorative, i still think that the statement "Homosexuality is unnatural" is false, and can be seen to be so (in an evolutionary paradigm) by examining studies of animal behaviour.  Your statement that this commits me to accepting all animal behaviour as morally prescriptive for humans ignores the fact that "natural" and "good" are not the same thing for me.

If you remain puzzled it's seems because you can't recognize logical consistency. Throughout this entire debate, and even now, you remain set on the idea whether something is "natural" or not is neutral and irrelevant to issues of "good" or "bad". So it's indeed inconsistant for you to argue as much as you have done for a point in which by your own admission has no barring on the issue. Which does suggest the issue is more important than you care to outwardly admit, your denials notwithstanding. The fact that what evidence you can site for homosexuality is consistent in every evolutionary aspect for all other types of behaviours found in the animal kingdom while your own personal attitude towards each is inconsistent just goes to further show the irrelevancy of the issue, and that the central driving component comes down to your personal whimsical opinion.

It is also not inconsistent to say that certain animal behaviours (i.e. homosexuality) which are widespread across different animal groups, including humans, are therefore "natural" for humans, whereas other behaviours which are limited to animals living in certain environmental conditions, or animal groups not including primates, may not be natural for humans.  Again, this is ascribing far too much significance to the word "Natural" in my opinion, but i see no reason to let your ever-opportunistic accusations of inconsistency on my part pass unchallenged.

It's inconsistent. Your ad hoc cherry picking simply showing...well...ad hoc cherry picking. You simply abandon your own standards on the drop of a hat, simply because you personally don't like where they lead.

Assuming the concept of design for a moment, human women (in common with most species) have apparently been designed to not be fertile at all times, but actually for quite a small period of each month, yet (unlike most species) both men and women maintain sexual interest in each other, and engage in sexual activity for pretty much the whole month - most of which therefore fits your definition of sexual behaviour which doesn't lead to pregnancy but which does not need to employ contraception to not do so.  Since we have been designed this way, i can only assume a purpose for sex other than reproduction on the part of a designer.  What might that be?

Heh. I didn't say reproduction was the only purpose. Just obviously the main one. I refrained from arguing that sex is also designed to bond men and women together in union under God for the rather self-evident biasness and low persuasiveness such an argument would have to a homosexual supporting atheist. Sex is still seen like magnets where the north pole attracts the opposite south pole, while homosexuality tries to have both north poles fit with north poles and south poles with south poles.

OBJECTIVE MORALITY

  Impressive gloating EB, also kudos for radically altering my mental picture of you in a single sentence (i'd always imagined you being a little on the skinny side).  You do remember what happened to Jabba don't you?

Ugh, let's not go any further with this, as picturing you in a metal bikini makes me want to stab my mind's eye.

A non-theistic objective moral standard (i'm ignoring the word "transcendent" because it conveys nothing meaningful to me) is entirely logically consistent, and can be derived from the recognition that the well-being and suffering of sentient beings are changeable states, and there are objectively-knowable facts about how we can move, and help others to move, between those states. You acknowledge this, even though your morality is still underdeveloped in the sense of seeing right and wrong as being independent of well-being.

*yawn* You still aren't addressing where such a standard comes from or is based on. Nor even a basis to care about well-being of others under atheism which holds human life is just randomly thrown together cosmic junk whose existance didn't matter a billion years ago, and won't matter a billion years from now. Really. Why should I care what state a person is in? Because YOU say so?

For example, your interpretation of the Old Testament is rooted in your moral intuition, not in the OT itself.  When you read a verse stating that it is right to kill a woman who turns out to not to be a virgin on her wedding night, you recognise it as incompatible with contemporary morality and explain it away (weakly) as being appropriate in the context, but when you read - in the same book i think - that you should love your neighbour (unless she's a non-virgin bride presumably), you accept that as an important piece of moral wisdom.  Where does that differentiation come from?  From you, not the text.

You presume far too much in your argument. I root my interpretation of events like stoning a woman under the circumstances such incidents are described under along with such acts. As well as the statements as love your neighbour (and I don't see any inconsistency between killing and loving, as one doesn't need to hate someone in order to kill them).

You are in a difficult position in claiming that there is an objective moral standard put in place by the creator of the universe AND that the Bible is the authoritative word of that same God.  It is easier to explain some of the things written in the Bible if you don't maintain both those beliefs, since they are inconsistent with each other. If God literally authored the Bible then why does it contain so much that violates what most people - including you - would like to claim is His sacred moral code? Just think how good a book would be that had genuinely been written by an omniscient and omnibenevolent being. By contrast, there is nothing in the Bible which could not have been written by a human being - in the case of most of the book a fairly unenlightened one by our standards.

DB, I consider your knowledge of the Bible to be as flimsi as Stahei's, and thus any denouncement of consistency by you just as weak. Not the least of which is because the only basis for your "objective moral standard" under your atheism is your own personal ego-driven opinion. I have no misgivings whatsoever that those instances where God is said to have proclaimed something, is perfectly in keeping with what is objectively good.

From the point of view of knowledge, it could have taught us about DNA, the size of the universe, public health measures which could have saved millions if not billions of lives over the last two and a half thousand years.  From the point of view of morality, it could have been an ethical text which still astonished and inspired moral philosophers to this day, instead of being a mixture of barbarism, misogyny and only the occasional (for the time) radical moral idea.  The fact that ostensibly the most perfect book in existence (according to you) does not do any of these things that it could have done argues fairly d--ningly against its divinity.  Our moral intuition, informed by the facts of human well-being and suffering, tell us this, which is why you have to tie yourself in knots to explain away genocide and slavery happily supported by the alleged author of all morality.

*yawn* This just further adds to your low standing on Biblical knowledge. Maybe that would be what the Bible should look like in an atheist's eyes, but an atheist's eyes are fairly blind. The Bible's not a science book, or a 'feel-good for dummies' self-help book. It's a historical testimony for salvation. I actually take the fact that it's fairly 'ugly' to actually be a point in it's favor. If anything is telling you on such points where you aren't simply flat-out wrong in your assesment of what the Bible actually says is just being told by your ego rather than moral intuition DB.

So please, explain to me what context legitimizes honour killings?  Throw your lot in with the radical Muslims on this issue.

I'm still waiting for you to explain what basis objective morality can come from under an atheist's belief system. Your assertion of well-being under an uncaring guideless universe, being rather weak. The main difference between the Biblical context and the radical Muslims being that the Bible acknowledges such acts were under God's direct and unquestioned supervison of a single nation, and even then didn't tell Israeli's to subjegate the world.

There are objectively-knowable facts about what will increase the general well-being and happiness of either a person or a population.  That is a great deal more than "opinion".

That one need even care about general well-being and happiness of other people or a population is itself mere opinion. Not that such a standard isn't utterly flimsi any way as "general well-being and happiness" can only be objectively held by the majority and in such cases as Nazis Germany, genocide and persecution WAS the majority view. But again, it doesn't hold up under an atheistic worldview that holds human beings are the universal equivalent of roaches. So despite all your ranting DB, objective morality can ONLY come from an objective moral Lawmaker, which is a theistic position.

It is becoming clear that STDs and promiscuity in the homosexual community are rather a side issue for you, since you would consider a gay person who had only one loving, monogamous and faithful relationship and engaging in no risky sexual behaviours to be just as morally deficient as the most promiscuously careless homosexual stereotype imaginable.  To paraphrase you, why even bring it up if it is irrelevant to your views?

Heh. Just because you can point to a singular act of joy-riding on the opposite side of the road to not have resulted in a crash, doesn't validate what generally occurs if millions were to do it all the time. It's just serves as more evidence of the unnaturalness of homosexuality in general because it produces largely such negative consequences more often than not.

Since it's kind of a long piece, i will just concentrate on the part relating to "Female Homosexual Behaviour".  The first sentence is not promising.  He says that "Lesbians are also at higher risk for STDs and other health problems than heterosexuals", and references a Gay and Lesbian Medical Association Press Release which you can read here.  Now i invite you to read through this short piece and try to find any mention of STDs at all.  It lists ten things that Lesbians should discuss with their Healthcare Provider (so it's a public health initiative aimed at Lesbians - hardly surprising that it focuses on problems which they may encounter), and specifically notes that many of these problems - substance abuse, alcoholism, obesity etc - stem from the psychological consequences of the stigma which Lesbians experience from much of the rest of society.  It also notes that in certain areas, Lesbians have lower incidence of health problems than heterosexual women (the example given is domestic violence).  Does that mean a tick in the plus column for Lesbians as far as you're concerned?  Of course not.  Your mind is already made up, and all this focus on the consequences of behaviour is just profitable muck-raking as far as you're concerned.

And? Seems the article just supports the assertion of other health problems than heterosexuals. And I again, point out the fact that singular incidants don't validate general consequences.

So, distortion of a source in the first sentence.  Not a very credible start.

An inability for basic reading on a single sentence. Makes your position on what a more comprehensive and complex text like the Bible actualyl says more suspect.

Another of his major references for Lesbians' negative health behaviours and their consequences exemplifies two problems of bias which his work displays.

You realize give very long winded responses for just confirming what I said what your response was going to be from the start, right?

This leads on to a question which you seem disinclined to address, except with sneering faux-sympathetic "awww"s.  If a particular minority population is treated a certain way by the rest of society, and health problems are the result of this treatment, do we lay these health problems at the feet of the minority or the wider population?  It would not surprise me to learn that Christians in Muslim countries have lower life expectancy and more psychological problems than their neighbours.  What does that mean for Christianity?  i would suggest nothing.  Black people in the US had terrible life expectancy 100yrs ago.  So?

Heh. We lay them at the feet of the individual who chooses how he/she personally behaves and acts. That people have psychological problems doesn't excuse turning to substance abuse or such. Consequences happen, and if a people aren't willing to accept the consequences for their own individual behaviour/acts in the face of society then they probably shouldn't do it to begin with. That's what seperates such people like the civil right's refomers who willingly went to jail in droves, and your homosexuals. And it's disingenuous if not outright dishonest to equate life-expectancy from acts that can be traced to the individual like taking drugs, to life-expectancy where people were directly killed by others and such.

Likewise, the fact that Gay people suffer more from anxiety and depression, and as a consequence alcoholism, substance misuse and obesity, to me says nothing about being Gay, because their pathologies can be traced back to society's treatment of them rather than anything intrinsic to their sexuality.

*shrug* That's only for you, and it's been a little clear now that your bias against the Christian position extends so far, that homosexuals can do no wrong in your eyes. Not that it makes a lick of difference seeing how STDs homosexuals suffer from can't be caused by anxiety and depression.

So, you are taking a radically behaviourist approach to this issue.  The implications of this are a little absurd, for example to say that a person is not right-handed, or schizophrenic, or a genius when he is asleep, of someone who demonstrably is any of those things when awake.  All these "states" are reducible to biology and can be changed at the level of the brain, making the actual behaviour merely an expression of an internal reality.  The same goes for sexuality.

And if we take that to it's logical conclusion any and all acts would be "an expression of internal reality". Making very much for a deterministic approach. Of course you misunderstand that my position is that the act or behaviour must be observed all the time. I consider a murderer to be a murderer based on a singular occuring act that only happened at one point in time. As such the person is a murderer regardless of being awake or asleep.

This is not, as you seem to think, to take an entirely deterministic approach.  i don't have to form relationships with women just because i am attracted solely to them, but the fact that i am attracted to them developed independently of any conscious control or choice on my part.

Don't really buy that. Or rather I don't buy that it's completely out of your ability to conciously change if you really wanted. But the issue would seem to be that under your view you'd be heterosexual irregardless if the only sexual behaviour you ever had was homosexual ones. Which I take as an absurdity. It would be equivalent to saying everyone in the world is a homosexual regardless of outward sexual behaviour, as the only way for a person to know how one truly feels is first-person internal knowledge barring some observable physiological 'tell'.

That is as ridiculous as saying that you are not heterosexual if you're a virgin.  Unless you're using a rather broad definition of "performed homosexuality".  Does feeling attraction towards a member of the same sex, with whatever attendant physiological responses may occur with that attraction, count as "performing homosexuality" in your book?

Would you be a thief if all you did was feel tempted to take money off the parent's table? Strictly speaking if internal "attraction" is all one is limited to, then yes, I'd consider someone to still be fairly "neutral" or still developing at least. I consider kids who have no sexual inclination whatsoever to be such. Though I consider "performed homosexuality" to not be so narrow as just sex.

The question would be equally applicable to a pedophile, but the considerations would be slightly different since (as we both know but you disturbingly refuse to admit) children do not have the capacity to consent to sexual acts and are therefore liable to have their well-being, possibly for the rest of their lives, impacted on by being forcibly or otherwise involved in them.  Since adult romantic relationships can, and therefore should, be truly consensual, they exist in a different category than adult/child relationships, which are by definition abusive.

Oh to be stigmatized by society despite being a "natural" state they have no control over......wait a minute. If you find my reasoing disturbing DB, just look in a mirror as all the reasoning I'm using comes from you.

You STILL don't go into how kid's are supposedly so "impacted" despite that sex is the same act at any age. I probably know what it is, but you won't say it as it could be said to apply to homosexuals. And your defense seems to be one of mere assertion about consent being restricted to your own dogmatic choosing. Which given your insults flung at those who are against homosexuality, would make you a dogmatic pedophobic agist by your own assesment. So it's as I said before - you are truly inconsistent even to your own standards and reasoning. All your objections regarding pedophilia to be hypocritical to homosexuality as age is as arbitrary a quality as gender.

i disagree.  Actions which create a positive balance of happiness in the world are almost always the 'right' action to take. You may argue that it would make the pedophile happy to have sex with a six year old, or that it made the Hutu militias happy to butcher their Tutsi neighbours with machetes, and i am not disputing that, but what i am saying is that the suffering created by those actions far outweighs the good feelings that morally undeveloped people might get from performing them.  The Dalai Lama says "If you want others to be happy, practice compassion. If you want to be happy, practice compassion", and i wouldn't disagree.

Every single statment a mere opinion as you give no basis to care about about suffering or not to enjoy inflicting it, and by your own standard of happiness would seem to fit. And you can't even say it objectively "outweighs" anything if those suffering are a notible minority to the majority. But that's ultimately why I say that basing morality on subjective happiness is utterly absurd for the simply reason that it's impossible for everyone to be happy.

Do you really imagine that you are making the world a better place by demonising gay people?

Heh. You seem to think so in "demonising" pedophiles.

I know my reasons for objecting to pedophilia

What are they?

It's a sin. Seriously though, my position that sex is only good in a very specific context is quite consistent with pedophilia as it is for homosexuality.

So you're saying that all it takes is the acceptance of a classic "No True Scotsman" fallacy for homosexuality and pedophilia to be the same under my worldview?  Do you have any non-fallacious reasons to object to what i have said?

Not when I'm using your own reasoning.

Ok, so i didn't do too well on condensing the thread, but i did at least organise it a bit (plus i can always sneakily blame you for the extra length since you cited that terrible article which forced me to spend so much time taking it apart).

Yeah, I obviously held a gun to your head. You saying 'It's bias and wrong!' would have been a MUCH shorter equivalent.

[Dannyboy]

EB,

"Analogies of driving on the wrong side of the road in themselves prove nothing (anymore than analogies that i might make from my perspective about different flavours of ice cream would provide evidence for my beliefs on this subject)."

Well when it comes to this subject, facts in themselves seem to prove nothing with you.

   So your answer is to fall back on analogies?  i don't see that working.  Why not offer more facts?  Actually, why don't you try offering any facts?  So far all you've given me are unsupported assertions, partisan diatribes and distortions of actual science masquerading as objectivity.  In other words, your beliefs about homosexuality appear to be based on little more than your unquestioning acceptance of Iron Age morality.  That's fine (if such intellectual laziness doesn't bother you), but don't expect anyone who aspires to base their beliefs in reality to be impressed by your theatrics.

Throughout this entire debate, and even now, you remain set on the idea whether something is "natural" or not is neutral and irrelevant to issues of "good" or "bad". So it's indeed inconsistant for you to argue as much as you have done for a point in which by your own admission has no barring on the issue.

   Your persistence on this issue was once impressive in its pigheadedness, but now it's just tiresome.  If you don't understand the idea of arguing from someone else's point of view then i wouldn't want to distress you by explaining it.  Clearly too complex.

Your ad hoc cherry picking simply showing...well...ad hoc cherry picking. You simply abandon your own standards on the drop of a hat, simply because you personally don't like where they lead.

Yet strangely you are unable to point out any specific instance of me doing so which is not wholly attributable to your either misunderstanding or misrepresenting my original position.  i guess when you exhaust your (always small) supply of reasoned argument, random unsupported accusations are a good fallback position.

I didn't say reproduction was the only purpose. Just obviously the main one. I refrained from arguing that sex is also designed to bond men and women together in union under God for the rather self-evident biasness and low persuasiveness such an argument would have to a homosexual supporting atheist.

There you see - you do understand the idea of arguing from another person's point of view!  Notice how i am not using your concessions to my viewpoint to impugn your ideological consistency?  Watch and learn.

So, reproduction is just one of the purposes of sex.  Another is bonding partners together - i don't disagree with that, only with the artificial exclusion clause you want to add in.  Another surely is pleasure.  Already we have three purposes of sex, two of which homosexuals can participate in just as fully as you or i.  And while i'm not denying that the reproduction one is important, we have already established that most sex which occurs in the world is non-reproductive in nature, so it seems that the other two purposes (pleasure and pair-bonding) have a more pervasive resonance.  Do you deny that sex could serve a pair-bonding function for homosexuals?

You still aren't addressing where such a standard comes from or is based on. Nor even a basis to care about well-being of others under atheism which holds human life is just randomly thrown together cosmic junk whose existance didn't matter a billion years ago, and won't matter a billion years from now. Really. Why should I care what state a person is in? Because YOU say so?

No.  If you truly don't care what state another person is in - and there are plenty of people like that out there - then there is nothing that i can do about that except to label you disfunctional and potentially dangerous and move on.  However, most humans are motivated by compassion to some extent, because we recognise that our pleasures and pains are also experienced by other persons, and that more of the former and less of the latter makes the world a better place.  Your cosmic junk argument is truly circular, since it assumes your interpretation is correct.  The fact is that we are, in varying degrees, motivated to care about our fellow humans.  Whether there is a God or not, that remains the case.

I root my interpretation of events like stoning a woman under the circumstances such incidents are described under along with such acts.

Which you refuse to explain or justify, i suspect on the basis that you secretly know they are pathetic.  Why not just come out with "God works in mysterious ways" right now, since you clearly have no better explanation for why a teenage Israelite woman who got raped by her uncle as a child should be stoned to death when her lack of virginity is discovered by her new husband.  The idea that this represents anything but the nadir of morality is absurd.  i feel genuinely embarrassed for you.

I have no misgivings whatsoever that those instances where God is said to have proclaimed something, is perfectly in keeping with what is objectively good.

i see.  So it would be wrong now, but it was right then - is that it?  Even though you can't explain why.  And that is supposed to satisfy precisely who (over the age of ten)?

The Bible's not a science book, or a 'feel-good for dummies' self-help book. It's a historical testimony for salvation. I actually take the fact that it's fairly 'ugly' to actually be a point in it's favor.

Congratulations on hermetically sealing your worldview off from falsifiability.  Or is there a level of "ugliness" (your word, not mine) that the Bible could theoretically attain beyond which you would find it impossible to consider it inspired?  And, given the amount of barbarity you are apparently prepared to stomach, what would that level be?

That one need even care about general well-being and happiness of other people or a population is itself mere opinion.

i didn't say that we "must", i said that in general, we do.  Why we do may be up for debate - you and i will clearly have different explanations for the phenomenon of compassion - but its existence as a motivating factor for human behaviour is not in doubt.  i also do not take it as controversial, or requiring any explanation beyond the phenomenological, that pleasure/happiness is good and pain/suffering is bad.  Taken that way, morality can be seen as a domain of expertise which has the potential to improve human lives, rather like medicine or science.  There are some who are better than others at perceiving what "moral" thing to do, and in doing it benefitting others and themselves.  i consider your innability to correctly perceive the happiness/suffering balance in the case of homosexuality to be an example of moral ignorance, but i don't hold it against you personally.  i have hopes for your personal growth.   

Not that such a standard isn't utterly flimsi any way as "general well-being and happiness" can only be objectively held by the majority and in such cases as Nazis Germany, genocide and persecution WAS the majority view.

Ah, our old friends the Nazis.  Godwins Law really means nothing at all to you does it.  Still, since you bring them up, i should mention that many of your pronouncements on the subject of homosexuality could be minimally paraphrased quotes from various senior Nazis on the same subject.  "Unnatural", "against God's plan", "be fruitful and multiply", i could go on.  You are the ideological inheritor of a theology which has been at the heart of racial discrimination and slavery for centuries, and conservative Christians are still more likely than other demographic groups to hold racist attitudes towards African-Americans and other ethnic groups - more likely to oppose mixed marriages, more likely to disagree that racial differences in standardised testing are due to inequalities in education, etc.  Source here.  How amazing that you should oppose the next inevitable increment of equality - Gay marriage - when so many people of virtually identical beliefs to you have stood against similar struggles for equality in the past using virtually identical rhetoric ("overthrowing God's established order" was one of the key messages of those who opposed the civil rights movement for religious reasons).  So, let me return the favour for all those "slippery slope to the deathcamps" arguments you threw at me in our abortion debates - it is you in this instance who needs to be careful in aligning himself with theological and totalitarian oppression in regulating other people's sex lives.  The Christian Right already has a fine pedigree of racial intolerance, so why should i think that after you've finished locking away and "re-educating" homosexuals you wont be coming for those promiscuous African-Americans?

So despite all your ranting DB, objective morality can ONLY come from an objective moral Lawmaker, which is a theistic position.

More assertion.  Ignored.

Back to that article you posted.  Since i spent a good long while reading it, hunting up the references, reading the references and then cross-checking what they actually said with what the author claimed they said, i am not too impressed with your "Lalalalalaaaaa-canthearyou-lalalalaaaa!" response to my analysis of its bias and poor science.  Clearly you can't back off your only vaguely credible source for all the "facts" you've been spouting - that would show unacceptable levels of humility - but to simply ignore the problems i have pointed out looks a little closed-minded.  Once again, you make it look rather like on this issue the facts prove nothing for you.

You realize give very long winded responses for just confirming what I said what your response was going to be from the start, right?

Again you show remarkable skill at insulating your worldview from reality.  i assure you that if you had referenced a nonpartisan source i would have taken it seriously.  It seems that the best you've got is a source that pretends to be nonpartisan, which again is not majorly credibility-enhancing for you.

That's only for you, and it's been a little clear now that your bias against the Christian position extends so far, that homosexuals can do no wrong in your eyes.

   You are sorely mistaken if you think that you embody the "Christian position" on this issue.  i'll let this guy say it for me:


And "homosexuals can do no wrong" for me?  Please.  i actually have a fairly standard heterosexual male disgust reaction to the idea of male homosexuality, and a fairly standard heterosexual male curiosity about female homosexuality.  Unlike you, i am able to see past my cultural upbringing to try and focus on what is fair and right.

"So, you are taking a radically behaviourist approach to this issue.  The implications of this are a little absurd, for example to say that a person is not right-handed, or schizophrenic, or a genius when he is asleep, of someone who demonstrably is any of those things when awake.  All these "states" are reducible to biology and can be changed at the level of the brain, making the actual behaviour merely an expression of an internal reality.  The same goes for sexuality."

And if we take that to it's logical conclusion any and all acts would be "an expression of internal reality". Making very much for a deterministic approach. Of course you misunderstand that my position is that the act or behaviour must be observed all the time. I consider a murderer to be a murderer based on a singular occuring act that only happened at one point in time. As such the person is a murderer regardless of being awake or asleep.

That is not a good comparison.  The category of "murderer" is one that people are put into on the basis of a single action, whereas it is perfectly possible for a genius to exhibit (intentionally or otherwise) stupid behaviour, for a left-handed person to write with their right hand, and for a homosexual man to have sex with a woman.

But the issue would seem to be that under your view you'd be heterosexual irregardless if the only sexual behaviour you ever had was homosexual ones. Which I take as an absurdity.

i'd still be right-handed even if i learned to write with my left.  My right-handedness could be identified on an MRI scan of my brain.  Likewise, if i had only homosexual experiences (let's say i grew up in prison), that would not change my heterosexuality (although it would make it hard to get good at it).  i don't see how that is absurd.  Let's take you again, and assume once again that you're a virgin.  Let's say a gang of militant homosexual anarchists broke into your house (you know how those gays are!) and held a knife to the throat of the person you love most in the world, and told you that they would kill him or her if you didn't have sex with one of them.  Let's say that you do it - purely to save that life.  Does that make you unalterably homosexual for the rest of your life, even though you know, and have always known, that you are attracted to women?  That, for me, would be an absurdity.

You STILL don't go into how kid's are supposedly so "impacted" despite that sex is the same act at any age. I probably know what it is, but you won't say it as it could be said to apply to homosexuals.

Young children are neither physically nor emotionally prepared to deal with sexual intercourse, and so it is best to protect them from it.  i am not saying that there isn't a blurring of the boundaries in teenage years, but that isn't really what we're talking about here is it.  i once, at the tender age of 19 got hit on by a very attractive girl at a wedding, who i presumed to be about my own age.  We started dancing together and i couldn't work out why people seemed to be giving me such filthy looks.  Then it occurred to me to wonder how old she was, and it turned out that she was fourteen.  that didn't make me a pedophile - quite young teenage girls can display quite adult sexual signals.  A pedophile is someone who is attracted to children.  Now, if you need me to spell out why sex with an adult male is bad for a six year old, then i think you need to pick up a basic biology textbook.

All your objections regarding pedophilia to be hypocritical to homosexuality as age is as arbitrary a quality as gender.

 

"Do you really imagine that you are making the world a better place by demonising gay people?"

Heh. You seem to think so in "demonising" pedophiles.

You're just playing tit-for-tat now, regardless of the amount of sense you are (not) making.  i have not demonised pedophiles, i have even been quite sympathetic to those who struggle to control their urges on the basis of the harm that would be done by expressing them.  i am equally prepared to admit that some people may have violent tempers, through no fault of their own, but still hold them responsible for any harm they do to another person with behaviour that they were capable of controlling.  If they control it, then they have my admiration.  Being beaten up is demonstrably harmful and few people request such treatment.   However.  Since homosexual sex is consensual and not significantly more harmful than heterosexual sex, there is no reason why homosexuals should have to control their behaviour simply because you don't like it.

[End Bringer]

  So your answer is to fall back on analogies?  i don't see that working.  Why not offer more facts?  Actually, why don't you try offering any facts?  So far all you've given me are unsupported assertions, partisan diatribes and distortions of actual science masquerading as objectivity.  In other words, your beliefs about homosexuality appear to be based on little more than your unquestioning acceptance of Iron Age morality.  That's fine (if such intellectual laziness doesn't bother you), but don't expect anyone who aspires to base their beliefs in reality to be impressed by your theatrics.

I've given plenty of facts along with those analogies. Not the least of which were the facts of your inconsistency in similar behaviours that fall under your own standards. All you dismiss on the basis of 'biasness' or assert as irrelevant, because when it all comes down to it the only deciding factor for you seems to be pure personal opinion that no amount of facts or logic will change. Like everything else under atheism.

Yet strangely you are unable to point out any specific instance of me doing so which is not wholly attributable to your either misunderstanding or misrepresenting my original position.  i guess when you exhaust your (always small) supply of reasoned argument, random unsupported accusations are a good fallback position.

  I see the long delay in posting has effected your memory, as your inconsistency in behaviours of infanticide which was in the beginning of this argument to pedophilia which was in the last post (each and all justified by the same standards you use with homosexuality) have been noted almost throughout the entire discussion. Are you so backed into a corner that you need to make denials of your own posts that a 5 minute rereading of the thread will easily disprove (not that it won't be the first time), or does the discussion even need to continue as you seem to hit the point of just dissmissing and mocking rather than actually arguing?

There you see - you do understand the idea of arguing from another person's point of view!  Notice how i am not using your concessions to my viewpoint to impugn your ideological consistency?  Watch and learn.

That's not arguing under another person's point of view. That's knowing when some points from mine won't work with an audience that dissmisses it's very basis. It actually proves further what I said that if you truly dismiss the very basis of 'natural=good' you wouldn't take so much time to try to argue homosexuality is 'natural', just as I didn't vehemently follow my previous tact of arguing homosexuality as unsustainable in an evolutionary pardigm.

So, reproduction is just one of the purposes of sex.  Another is bonding partners together - i don't disagree with that, only with the artificial exclusion clause you want to add in.  Another surely is pleasure. Already we have three purposes of sex, two of which homosexuals can participate in just as fully as you or i.  And while i'm not denying that the reproduction one is important, we have already established that most sex which occurs in the world is non-reproductive in nature, so it seems that the other two purposes (pleasure and pair-bonding) have a more pervasive resonance.  Do you deny that sex could serve a pair-bonding function for homosexuals?

I believe I already mentioned pleasure was the underlining motivator of homosexuality before (and you took issue with it too). To go back to those analogies you so love DB joyriding may be a legitimate purpose to modern transportation, but that doesn't override what is clearly the overriding purpose of getting from point A to point B. And your constant appeals of an individuals intent over the self-evident purpose of the system itself has been addressed every time you use it. That homosexuality serves only two of three purposes at best while you admit heterosexuality serves all three (I don't care an iota what people intend) just goes to further prove how homosexuality doesn't fit the natural function and context of sex. It will always be using the transportation system for no other purpose than joyriding. And even then it's in the context of being on the wrong side of the road.

No.  If you truly don't care what state another person is in - and there are plenty of people like that out there - then there is nothing that i can do about that except to label you disfunctional and potentially dangerous and move on.  However, most humans are motivated by compassion to some extent, because we recognise that our pleasures and pains are also experienced by other persons, and that more of the former and less of the latter makes the world a better place.  Your cosmic junk argument is truly circular, since it assumes your interpretation is correct.  The fact is that we are, in varying degrees, motivated to care about our fellow humans.  Whether there is a God or not, that remains the case.

Heh. Most humans are motivated by compassion due the image of God that's in all Mankind as that's the only reason human beings solely have compassion in the animal kingdom. It's humorous that the best you can do is name calling when people act more like all other animals under an evolutionary/atheistic standard where human beings are just another animal. It just goes to show your contradicting beliefs in wanting what is purely a theistic attribute under an atheistic context.

Which you refuse to explain or justify, i suspect on the basis that you secretly know they are pathetic.  Why not just come out with "God works in mysterious ways" right now, since you clearly have no better explanation for why a teenage Israelite woman who got raped by her uncle as a child should be stoned to death when her lack of virginity is discovered by her new husband.  The idea that this represents anything but the nadir of morality is absurd.  i feel genuinely embarrassed for you.

For one thing, I'm not going to be dragged too far into an off-topic discussion simply because your failing arguments and reasoning forced you to resort to grade-school finger pointing. Another is that your rather frothing-at-the-mouth strawman rants (that are getting wilder and wilder) makes it clear you're not interested at all in what the Bible actually says. I think you have been corrected on numerous points many times before (though I'm not 100% sure) on issues like "the Bible supports slavery", book burning, stoning, etc. etc. I don't think you care as at most it would give you less reason to justify your hatred, or at minimum your criticisms. So like I said, when it comes to Biblical knoweldge, you're no more credible than Stathei.

All of which does not keeping me from noting the fact that the only "nadir of morality" is determined by the god (insert name here), as morality is subjective under atheism. As such to say stoning and rape is objectively "wrong" under an atheistic worldview is just sheer arrogance.

i see.  So it would be wrong now, but it was right then - is that it?  Even though you can't explain why.  And that is supposed to satisfy precisely who (over the age of ten)?

Even though I've said numerous times about the context that give those events for you to criticize. A rather glaring one being God was personally present in directing the nation so the standards of conduct were much higher. I take it as highly indicative that you bring up singular incidents from the Bible, but the whole context with which such are presented seems to never be acknowledged by you DB.

Congratulations on hermetically sealing your worldview off from falsifiability.  Or is there a level of "ugliness" (your word, not mine) that the Bible could theoretically attain beyond which you would find it impossible to consider it inspired?  And, given the amount of barbarity you are apparently prepared to stomach, what would that level be?

Falsifiability would concern me if I claimed my view was "scientificly proven" like evolution. Perhaps the word "historical" went over your head. I simply acknowledge that the truth is not subjected to what makes us feel good about ourselves, and if something seems wholely tailored for that then that should raise some flags. As I'm fairly cynical and not so timid this appeals to me.

i didn't say that we "must", i said that in general, we do.

Except those who don't. And I would venture that less would if they weren't taught that they "must". In any case if no one "must" then it just goes to further show your "objective moral standard" is just personal opinion. It's not "wrong" so much as "I personally don't like it", and no one need care what you personally prefer.

i also do not take it as controversial, or requiring any explanation beyond the phenomenological, that pleasure/happiness is good and pain/suffering is bad.

Predicted immediate abandonment of standard and rationalization when pointed to incidents of vaccine shots and drug use in 3....2....1....

Taken that way, morality can be seen as a domain of expertise which has the potential to improve human lives, rather like medicine or science.  There are some who are better than others at perceiving what "moral" thing to do, and in doing it benefitting others and themselves.  i consider your innability to correctly perceive the happiness/suffering balance in the case of homosexuality to be an example of moral ignorance, but i don't hold it against you personally.  i have hopes for your personal growth.   

Except by your own admission you have no basis for anyone to take morality that way. At all. Which makes it less of an objective standard and more like a subjective opinion. Also a glaring flaw is that many atrocities could still be justified under such a view.

Ah, our old friends the Nazis.  Godwins Law really means nothing at all to you does it.  Still, since you bring them up, i should mention that many of your pronouncements on the subject of homosexuality could be minimally paraphrased quotes from various senior Nazis on the same subject.  "Unnatural", "against God's plan", "be fruitful and multiply", i could go on.

Heh. Just shows even a broken clock is right twice a day.

You are the ideological inheritor of a theology which has been at the heart of racial discrimination and slavery for centuries, and conservative Christians are still more likely than other demographic groups to hold racist attitudes towards African-Americans and other ethnic groups - more likely to oppose mixed marriages, more likely to disagree that racial differences in standardised testing are due to inequalities in education, etc.  Sourcehere.

*yawn* Historical and ideological ignorance at it's finest.

How amazing that you should oppose the next inevitable increment of equality - Gay marriage - when so many people of virtually identical beliefs to you have stood against similar struggles for equality in the past using virtually identical rhetoric ("overthrowing God's established order" was one of the key messages of those who opposed the civil rights movement for religious reasons). So, let me return the favour for all those "slippery slope to the deathcamps" arguments you threw at me in our abortion debates - it is you in this instance who needs to be careful in aligning himself with theological and totalitarian oppression in regulating other people's sex lives.  The Christian Right already has a fine pedigree of racial intolerance, so why should i think that after you've finished locking away and "re-educating" homosexuals you wont be coming for those promiscuous African-Americans?

  Oh! Oh for shame! Truly this ignorantly asserted and hate filled argument has touched me. How wrong I was. How I see now that liberal evolutionary secularism can do no wrong and when done so by individuals does not reflect on their worldviews. Yes, truly I must never say "you shouldn't do that", simply because of past incidents done by other people may cause others to call me names. Everyone should be free to do anything and everything they want. Never to refrain! Those poor poor persecuated pedophiles. HOMOSEXUALS!....I meant homosexuals.

Back to that article you posted.  Since i spent a good long while reading it, hunting up the references, reading the references and then cross-checking what they actually said with what the author claimed they said, i am not too impressed with your "Lalalalalaaaaa-canthearyou-lalalalaaaa!" response to my analysis of its bias and poor science.  Clearly you can't back off your only vaguely credible source for all the "facts" you've been spouting - that would show unacceptable levels of humility - but to simply ignore the problems i have pointed out looks a little closed-minded.  Once again, you make it look rather like on this issue the facts prove nothing for you.

DB, you couldn't even get the first sentence you quoted right. Ranting about a condition that DOES plague lesbians and causes problems that doesn't effect heterosexuals in the same aspect irregardless if you think other people are the cause simply because not everyone shuts up and smiles on command. I did read your argument. I found the same issue of facts that homosexuals ARE largely promiscuous and not as sexually restrained as heterosexuals you've ranted about throughout the entire discussion, assertions of denials, laughably taking issue of what constitutes being a "lesbian" (technically as many self-indentified "homosexuals" have had sex with the other gender there are actually very few homosexuals that exist), and trying to pin every problem homosexuals and lesbians face on other people. Exactly what in all this, is even WORTH addressing?

  You are sorely mistaken if you think that you embody the "Christian position" on this issue.  i'll let this guy say it for me:

Heh. I don't recall Jesus ever going amoungst the people saying 'There there. That's all right.' 'Go, and sin no more.' was the main theme of advice to everyone he visited. Seems to just show more basic Biblical ignorance. And given your now bi-polar view of 'it's barbaric intolarance' and now 'tolarant acceptance', I honeslty don't think you'd know the "Christian position" if it hit you over the head.

And "homosexuals can do no wrong" for me?  Please.  i actually have a fairly standard heterosexual male disgust reaction to the idea of male homosexuality, and a fairly standard heterosexual male curiosity about female homosexuality.  Unlike you, i am able to see past my cultural upbringing to try and focus on what is fair and right.

That notion of it all being motivated by rebellion just keeps getting stronger. But I take your denials with the same weight I always do.

That is not a good comparison.  The category of "murderer" is one that people are put into on the basis of a single action, whereas it is perfectly possible for a genius to exhibit (intentionally or otherwise) stupid behaviour, for a left-handed person to write with their right hand, and for a homosexual man to have sex with a woman.

Though if the homosexual does and the consequences are observed, you suddenly take issue of him being homosexual at all, right?

i'd still be right-handed even if i learned to write with my left.  My right-handedness could be identified on an MRI scan of my brain. Likewise, if i had only homosexual experiences (let's say i grew up in prison), that would not change my heterosexuality (although it would make it hard to get good at it).  i don't see how that is absurd.

You confirm my statement. If a behaviour is constantly observed, but has no baring then you might as well say everyone is a homosexual irregardless of behaviour. You can't put everyone in an MRI, and as I don't concede birth has as much to do with the condition as environment, I think the evidence would be misleading at that point. But I don't consider your examples persuasive at all. If one only utilizes one hand over the other then for all intents and purposes they are left/right handed regardless of what tendancy they may have had at birth (at best being ambidextrous). And as you seem to care pedophilia not be performed despite one's "state of being", if the behaviour is never once observed, then for all intents and purposes people aren't pedophiles. Same with homosexuality. If the underlining behaviour is seperate and controllable as a matter of choice, then it's all a behaviourist aspect.

Let's take you again, and assume once again that you're a virgin.  Let's say a gang of militant homosexual anarchists broke into your house (you know how those gays are!) and held a knife to the throat of the person you love most in the world, and told you that they would kill him or her if you didn't have sex with one of them.  Let's say that you do it - purely to save that life.  Does that make you unalterably homosexual for the rest of your life, even though you know, and have always known, that you are attracted to women?  That, for me, would be an absurdity.

heh. Not really as your example would just show I'm not a virgin and a rape victim. Just as murder is in the context of intentionally killing another human unlawfully rather than just killing in any context, I don't consider "homosexuality" to be without a certain willing context as well.

Young children are neither physically nor emotionally prepared to deal with sexual intercourse, and so it is best to protect them from it.

*snort* I can say homosexuals are not physically or emotionally prepared with homosexual intercourse so should kept from it. I think it was actually Freud who took the tact of homosexuality being a product of immaturity in adults that never grew up. Since the only basis for being "prepared" you give is 'when I say so' and you still don't say how they are so impacted, you still can't sperate it from homosexuality in any meaningful nondogmatic way.

i am not saying that there isn't a blurring of the boundaries in teenage years, but that isn't really what we're talking about here is it.

Seems to be actually. Pedophilia is sex with an underage minor. Since the only issue is age, one has to wonder what basis you have to say it's not a year earlier than it's current standard. Or a year earlier than that, or a year earlier than that, etc. Especially when sex is pleasurable and bond-forming and pedophilia is such a "natural state", just like homosexuality.

You're just playing tit-for-tat now, regardless of the amount of sense you are (not) making.  i have not demonised pedophiles, i have even been quite sympathetic to those who struggle to control their urges on the basis of the harm that would be done by expressing them.  i am equally prepared to admit that some people may have violent tempers, through no fault of their own, but still hold them responsible for any harm they do to another person with behaviour that they were capable of controlling.  If they control it, then they have my admiration.  Being beaten up is demonstrably harmful and few people request such treatment.   However.  Since homosexual sex is consensual and not significantly more harmful than heterosexual sex, there is no reason why homosexuals should have to control their behaviour simply because you don't like it.

*shrug* I haven't "demonised" homosexuals. Since the only basis it seems to be used is when someone says "That's wrong.", it seemed more than reasonble to hold you to that same standard. But I forgot consistency is such a minor thing with you, so it's probably more along the lines when anyone but you says "That's wrong." I say homosexuals (everyone really) should control their urges on the basis the harm that would be done by expressing them (not just the proven physical). That you think no harm is done is meaningless, as I'm sure there are plenty who would argue with you and advocate no real harm is being done by pedophilia. And at the rate societies are morally degenerating, I wouldn't be surprise if 50 years from now pedophilia isn't openly trumpeted under 'tolerance' with the self-same attitude and arguments advocates for homosexuality are using now. Because no matter how much you deny it "I personally like/dislike it" is the only standard you use.

[Dannyboy]

EB,

I've given plenty of facts along with those analogies.

i've just read back through the entire thread (most of which you spent tediously nitpicking around the edges of my statements), and here are the "facts" about homosexuality you have presented:

"Because the fact is homosexuality IS more at risk and receptive to STDs than a monogamous heterosexual relationship. Which is indicative of the act being "unnatural" for humans..." Reply #6 on: August 18, 2010, 04:32:18 PM (also repeated in later replies)

 - This may indeed be a fact but it is clearly an irrelevant one, since comparing all homosexuals to monogamous heterosexuals is a loaded comparison with the intent to negatively stigmatise homosexuality.  Not only is your comparison bogus, but your conclusion also makes little sense.  Why would a higher STD rate be indicative of "unnaturalness"?  That would make unprotected sex less "natural" than sex with a condom.

"homosexuality is indeed an unnatural act that perverts the self-evident purpose and design of sexual intercourse" Reply #17 on: September 04, 2010, 07:01:02 PM

 - This is a statement of opinion backed up by your assumed knowledge of the intentions of a designer God whose existence we disagree about.  From the homosexual male point of view, you also have the prostate gland to explain.  That might seem pretty self-evident to some people.  What was God thinking?

"homosexuality with any amount of partners is simply more receptive to STDs than monogamous heterosexual relations" Reply #17 on: September 04, 2010, 07:01:02 PM

 - This is a false statement based on your assumptions about the respective kinds of relationships that you are comparing.  Many homosexuals do not engage in risky sexual practices and are monogamous.  Many heterosexuals do engage in risky sexual practices and sleep around, either currently or in the past.  There are many many different risk factors for the transmission of STDs, none of which are specifically related to sexuality, so your generalisation is totally inaccurate.

"Again, the self-evidency of sexual organs being a means of reproduction just as the digestion system is a self-evident means of digesting food makes things clear what is natural sexual behaviour" Reply #19 on: September 08, 2010, 02:11:27 AM

 - Ignoring inconvenient details is not indicative of a strong argument.  Is the penis a waste-disposal organ, or one intended for reproduction and pleasure?  Or is it both?  Wouldn't that be unnatural?!  Your insistence that sex is only about reproduction just shows your tendency to think that you can win an argument through controlling the definitions.  Sex is clearly about much more than just reproduction, but since it doesn't suit your preferred conclusions to admit this, you try to define your way out of the problem.

"But [Lesbians] are just as much at risk of HPV, hepatitis, bacterial vaginosis, crabs, herpes, etc [as homosexual men]" Reply #19 on: September 08, 2010, 02:11:27 AM

 - In support of this "fact" you presented a pseudoscientific attack on homosexuality, which itself did not contain anything supporting your assertion that the risks are equal for Lesbians.  The risks that the article did point out in the lesbian community are likely exaggerated because of the author's fondness for studies undertaken in STD clinics, which necessarily focus on an unrepresentatively at risk subgroup of homosexuals.  In other words, i am still waiting for you to provide any meaningful support for this article of faith.

"as many self-indentified "homosexuals" have had sex with the other gender there are actually very few homosexuals that exist" Reply #25 on: September 21, 2010, 03:45:39 AM

 - Again, this is a mistake of definition.  A homosexual is defined as someone having an orientation or tendency to be sexually attracted to members of the same gender - this says nothing about behaviour.  i'm an atheist who sometimes goes to church - does that mean i'm not really an atheist?

So, of the "facts" that you have presented, some are true but irrelevant, some are distortions of the truth for ideological ends, and some may or may not be true, but are definitely unsupported as yet.  Clearly you have more work to do in this matter.

I see the long delay in posting has effected your memory, as your inconsistency in behaviours of infanticide which was in the beginning of this argument to pedophilia which was in the last post (each and all justified by the same standards you use with homosexuality) have been noted almost throughout the entire discussion.

Both of which are based entirely in your misunderstandings or distortions of my position.  From the very start, it has been your assertion that natural=good, not mine, so your insistence that i must advocate infanticide if i believe homosexuality not to be unnatural is based on the flimsiest of strawmen as i have repeatedly demonstrated.  And your suggestion that i have no way of condemning the behaviour of pedophiles if i support homosexuality is similarly unfounded.  You kind of proved my point here.

It actually proves further what I said that if you truly dismiss the very basis of 'natural=good' you wouldn't take so much time to try to argue homosexuality is 'natural', just as I didn't vehemently follow my previous tact of arguing homosexuality as unsustainable in an evolutionary pardigm.

But that would be a perfectly logical way for you to persue this debate.  Obviously i disagree with your analysis, but there's no reason why we couldn't have continued down that road.  i really don't see what you're getting at here.

Most humans are motivated by compassion due the image of God that's in all Mankind as that's the only reason human beings solely have compassion in the animal kingdom.

i think you're letting your beliefs determine the facts for you there.  Acts of compassion have been observed many times in primates.

http://www.valuesineducation.org.au/pdf/goodall.pdf
http://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/the_evolution_of_empathy/
http://www.livescience.com/animals/070625_chimp_altruism.html

I think you have been corrected on numerous points many times before (though I'm not 100% sure) on issues like "the Bible supports slavery", book burning, stoning, etc. etc. I don't think you care as at most it would give you less reason to justify your hatred, or at minimum your criticisms.

   i wont bother to cite chapter and verse (although i will if you would like me to).  i don't particularly hold it against the Bible that it tacitly endorses slavery and various other things which we now find abhorrent, because it was written by people of its time.  My point really is, to thrive as a society we need to be able to have a conversation about morality, and we have a far better chance of surviving our destructive technologies if we make it a 21st Century conversation, not a 5th Century BCE conversation, or a 1st Century conversation, or a 7th Century Conversation (as apologists for Judaism, Christianity and Islam respectively would advocate).

All of which does not keeping me from noting the fact that the only "nadir of morality" is determined by the god (insert name here), as morality is subjective under atheism. As such to say stoning and rape is objectively "wrong" under an atheistic worldview is just sheer arrogance.

i am not saying that these things are wrong as an atheist, anymore than i am saying that they are wrong as a "non-astrologer", or a "non-fairy-believer".  i am saying that they are wrong according to an objective weighing of suffering vs wellbeing, which is what lies at the base of most moral calculations, whether or not that is recognised by people such as yourself who grandiosely imagine themselves to be in possession of an absolute moral code, which strangely enough always seems to be very concerned with the enforcement of small-minded social conventions, such as the proper obscuring of women's bodies or whether all consenting adults can claim marriage benefits.  Perhaps you would like to support your allegedly non-arrogant objective position by giving me the Bible verse which explicitly condemns stoning or rape?

Even though I've said numerous times about the context that give those events for you to criticize. A rather glaring one being God was personally present in directing the nation so the standards of conduct were much higher. I take it as highly indicative that you bring up singular incidents from the Bible, but the whole context with which such are presented seems to never be acknowledged by you DB.

Ok, let's assume that to be true.  The punishment still makes no sense.  Why is the woman to be killed for a loss of virginity which could have been against her will?  Why is the man's virginity not an issue?  Why, in fact, does the whole setting so closely resemble the barbarities of pre-modern people with no God watching over them or intimately involved in their lives, as you suggest?  You say that an omnipotent omnibenevolent God couldn't have found a better way to operate - i say that you are seriously blinded by faith and/or lacking in imagination.

"i didn't say that we "must", i said that in general, we do."

Except those who don't. And I would venture that less would if they weren't taught that they "must".

Seems unlikely, as children as young as two have been shown to emotionally experience other peoples distress and to engage in behaviour aimed at relieving it.  Family pets do the same, so although moral education is undoubtedly useful, the empathy on which i base my morality seems to be hardwired.  If anything, it takes education of the wrong sort - teaching that certain groups of people are inferior, physically or spiritually, and not deserving of our concern (whether on the grounds of religion, nationalism or pseudoscientific racism) - to undo our innate morality as social creatures.

In any case if no one "must" then it just goes to further show your "objective moral standard" is just personal opinion. It's not "wrong" so much as "I personally don't like it", and no one need care what you personally prefer.

   And how is that different to your moral code?  Virtually every jackass who claims authority from God in his or her (but usually his) moral intuitions disagrees with all the other jackasses, so why should anyone consider your personal morality binding to them?  To say that something is a sin is to convey no factual information beyond "i don't like it", and as you say, no one is automatically obliged to care about your preferences.  You simply asked me for an objective (i.e. not based on my subjective feelings) morality and i have laid it out for you - wellbeing and suffering are quantifiable.  But neither of our moral codes compels acceptance by others.  You seem to be arguing against yourself here.

"i also do not take it as controversial, or requiring any explanation beyond the phenomenological, that pleasure/happiness is good and pain/suffering is bad."

Predicted immediate abandonment of standard and rationalization when pointed to incidents of vaccine shots and drug use in 3....2....1....

   If the overall effect of vaccine shots was not to demonstrably increase wellbeing (reducing the spread of disease, etc) then we would not give them, and would be right not to.  If you artificially limit the wellbeing/suffering calculation to the here-and-now then you have a recipe for hedonism, but to be clear - you imposed the limit.  i did not.  And the jury is still out on drug use, as far as i am concerned.  The harm done by many drugs is far below what would justify our response to them as a society, and some of our most harmful drugs are legal.  Again, these are social conventions which have been fossilised as "morality".

"i should mention that many of your pronouncements on the subject of homosexuality could be minimally paraphrased quotes from various senior Nazis on the same subject.  "Unnatural", "against God's plan", "be fruitful and multiply", i could go on."

Heh. Just shows even a broken clock is right twice a day.

Interesting.  So the Nazis were right about homosexuals in your view?  Maybe they were also right about the disabled, or the gypsies?

"conservative Christians are still more likely than other demographic groups to hold racist attitudes towards African-Americans and other ethnic groups - more likely to oppose mixed marriages, more likely to disagree that racial differences in standardised testing are due to inequalities in education, etc.  Source here."

*yawn* Historical and ideological ignorance at it's finest.

You didn't read the link then.

Truly this ignorantly asserted and hate filled argument has touched me.

What is it with you and hate?  i disagree with you in oh so many ways, and i doubt that we'd be friends if we met, but i don't hate you.  Your adolescent victimhood is leading you astray here (like every teenage blogger who rants nonsense and then refers to people who point this out as "teh haters").  My wife, my parents and many other people i love are Christians of one sort or another - none quite like you, i admit - so i don't "hate" Christians either.

DB, you couldn't even get the first sentence you quoted right.

EB, if i say that Christians have higher incidence of sexual disfunction and domestic violence than non-Christians, and in support reference a church leaflet telling Christian men about the problem of impotence, you would be right to be critical of my academic integrity.  The fact that you have no complaint when someone does the same thing in the service of discrediting homosexuals just shows how thoroughly your biases cloud your objectivity in this matter.

I honeslty don't think you'd know the "Christian position" if it hit you over the head.

i know that you are not it.  i can confidently state that from polling data, which shows that something in the region of 50% of the population of your extremely Christian country support equal legal recognition of homosexual partnerships.  In the UK it's more like 60-80%.  By contrast, when the Supreme Court legalised interracial marriages in 1948, 90% of Americans opposed them, and this figure only crossed the 50% boundary in the early 1990s.  So, as i said, you do not embody the Christian position on this issue, so don't try to claim it.

If a behaviour is constantly observed, but has no baring then you might as well say everyone is a homosexual irregardless of behaviour.

Behaviour is our best clue, but it doesn't provide infallible insight into someones orientation, since other factors are at work.  You could have been forced to write left-handed as a child, and continue to do so now, but that wouldn't mean that you were left-handed.

If one only utilizes one hand over the other then for all intents and purposes they are left/right handed regardless of what tendancy they may have had at birth (at best being ambidextrous).

   Ok, different example.  If i went to church every Sunday, would that make me a Christian?

Just as murder is in the context of intentionally killing another human unlawfully rather than just killing in any context, I don't consider "homosexuality" to be without a certain willing context as well.

Excellent.  So despite all your distractions, you do recognise that homosexuality and pedophilia are quite different in their behavioural expression.

"Young children are neither physically nor emotionally prepared to deal with sexual intercourse, and so it is best to protect them from it."

*snort* I can say homosexuals are not physically or emotionally prepared with homosexual intercourse so should kept from it.

Yes, but that would be stupid (and a No True Scotsman).  We don't discriminate against children only in matters of sexuality, but in all areas of life.  Children can't vote, drive, join the army, consent to medical treatment, carry concealed weapons, etc.  Homosexuals adults are recognised as being able to consent to any activity that another adult can, except (according to you) to have sex with the consenting person they feel attracted to.  You are going nowhere with this "argument".

Pedophilia is sex with an underage minor.

   *sigh*  No.  Pedophilia is a state characterised by sexual interest in pre-pubescent children.  Really, look it up.

Since the only issue is age, one has to wonder what basis you have to say it's not a year earlier than it's current standard. Or a year earlier than that, or a year earlier than that, etc.

Sex with someone who is fifteen and a half does not count as pedophilia.  Sex with a minor, yes.  Puberty is the distinction made in the definition.  Do you find these irrelevancies entertaining?

I say homosexuals (everyone really) should control their urges on the basis the harm that would be done by expressing them (not just the proven physical). That you think no harm is done is meaningless, as I'm sure there are plenty who would argue with you and advocate no real harm is being done by pedophilia.

Yes, but there are objective reasons to argue against such people, in the form of the multiple experiences of sexually abused children and their documented subsequent health and psychiatric problems.  That is somewhat different from the disputed health consequences which you attribute to homosexuality, because of the pivotal issue of consent.  i have a bad knee from running - does that make running bad?  Of course not.  If however i had a bad knee because as a child i was forced to kneel for hours at a time, then that would be bad.

[End Bringer]

- This may indeed be a fact but it is clearly an irrelevant one, since comparing all homosexuals to monogamous heterosexuals is a loaded comparison with the intent to negatively stigmatise homosexuality.  Not only is your comparison bogus, but your conclusion also makes little sense.  Why would a higher STD rate be indicative of "unnaturalness"?  That would make unprotected sex less "natural" than sex with a condom.

And this is a highly transparent denial that indicates no interest in facts at all. If the facts show homosexuality generally leads to negative consequence then by golly, homosexuality is going to be viewed negatively. Just like when every other behaviour is examined. Are you going to say 'well the fact pedophilia causes harm to children is irrelevant simply because it negatively stigmatises pedophilia'? Pleeeeeeease. 

"homosexuality is indeed an unnatural act that perverts the self-evident purpose and design of sexual intercourse" Reply #17 on: September 04, 2010, 07:01:02 PM

 - This is a statement of opinion backed up by your assumed knowledge of the intentions of a designer God whose existence we disagree about.  From the homosexual male point of view, you also have the prostate gland to explain.  That might seem pretty self-evident to some people.  What was God thinking?

It's a statement of fact. Supported by the rather self-evident complexity of the process for which the continued existence of life is dependant on. Reproduction being dependant on two seperate beings with two individualy complicated organs that fit together along with most of the animal kingdom possessing is very strong evidence for ID. Your denial is simply due to dogmatisim as technically the identity of the 'Designer' isn't automaticly construed. It'd just be hard (irrational) to imagine anyone else, but irrelavent for the purposes of this conversation.

- This is a false statement based on your assumptions about the respective kinds of relationships that you are comparing.  Many homosexuals do not engage in risky sexual practices and are monogamous.  Many heterosexuals do engage in risky sexual practices and sleep around, either currently or in the past.  There are many many different risk factors for the transmission of STDs, none of which are specifically related to sexuality, so your generalisation is totally inaccurate.

This is sheer assertion and denial. As the amount of promiscuous homosexuals does make "monogamous" homosexuals a rarity more than a commonality no matter how much you whine and rail against the fact. And even many  considered "monogamous" by homosexual standards are in fact promiscuous by any other definition. I'll gladly concede many heterosexuals are promiscuous as well, since I've always made clear that what I'm advocating is monogamous heterosexuality, I'd use the same argument for promiscuous heterosexuals as I do with homosexuals.

- Ignoring inconvenient details is not indicative of a strong argument.  Is the penis a waste-disposal organ, or one intended for reproduction and pleasure?  Or is it both?  Wouldn't that be unnatural?!  Your insistence that sex is only about reproduction just shows your tendency to think that you can win an argument through controlling the definitions.  Sex is clearly about much more than just reproduction, but since it doesn't suit your preferred conclusions to admit this, you try to define your way out of the problem.

Heh. DB, you could deny anything and everything with the rationalizations you give. Especially since your entire review of the given facts shows a habit of "ignoring inconvenient details". Also an ignored detail is that I've already given an explicit response that I never held sex is only about reproduction. It's simply a self-evidently main one, for which any others does not diminish and homosexuality can never achieve.

- In support of this "fact" you presented a pseudoscientific attack on homosexuality, which itself did not contain anything supporting your assertion that the risks are equal for Lesbians.  The risks that the article did point out in the lesbian community are likely exaggerated because of the author's fondness for studies undertaken in STD clinics, which necessarily focus on an unrepresentatively at risk subgroup of homosexuals.  In other words, i am still waiting for you to provide any meaningful support for this article of faith.

And all you did was go on a ranting tirade in response. Which amounted to just more denial. Though the idea of investigating STDs must be looked for anywhere, but an STD clinic is rather funny.

- Again, this is a mistake of definition.  A homosexual is defined as someone having an orientation or tendency to be sexually attracted to members of the same gender - this says nothing about behaviour.  i'm an atheist who sometimes goes to church - does that mean i'm not really an atheist?

Actually you brought up this definition in the above mentioned rant.

So, of the "facts" that you have presented, some are true but irrelevant, some are distortions of the truth for ideological ends, and some may or may not be true, but are definitely unsupported as yet.  Clearly you have more work to do in this matter.

Not really. As this review shows that any facts, irregardless of being true or distortion, is simply going to be met with a response to the effect of 'Nuh-uh'. Showing clearly that your support of homosexuality is being based on something other than facts, let alone rationality.

Both of which are based entirely in your misunderstandings or distortions of my position.  From the very start, it has been your assertion that natural=good, not mine, so your insistence that i must advocate infanticide if i believe homosexuality not to be unnatural is based on the flimsiest of strawmen as i have repeatedly demonstrated.  And your suggestion that i have no way of condemning the behaviour of pedophiles if i support homosexuality is similarly unfounded.  You kind of proved my point here.

Actually in the beginning you tried to squirm your way into getting out of what constitutes being "natural" as well and even do so up to now as I'll show. Saying what's "natural" for one animal doesn't necessitate being "natural" for human beings. You may have changed your tune a little (only to change it back) when it was shown how you basicly chopped your own legs out from under you, but that's irrelevant. Because regardless of whether natural=good the fact is the arguments and rationalization used to justify homosexuality in any sense equally applies to things like infanticide, pedophilia, etc. The issue of being "good" has been shown to simply come down to a personal opinion of some balancing scale between pleasure and pain that exists only in your head, with pleasure being prefered (and in pedophilia's case hasn't been shown to not fit your habit of calling pleasure=good as well).

So no, your blamming me of strawman isn't going to fly, and I can easily point to the singular quote that got this whole line started:

It is also not inconsistent to say that certain animal behaviours (i.e. homosexuality) which are widespread across different animal groups, including humans, are therefore "natural" for humans, whereas other behaviours which are limited to animals living in certain environmental conditions, or animal groups not including primates, may not be natural for humans.  Again, this is ascribing far too much significance to the word "Natural" in my opinion, but i see no reason to let your ever-opportunistic accusations of inconsistency on my part pass unchallenged.

There's no "strawmen" to it DB. You even try to justify your ad hoc reasoning, or will this be another "inconvenient detail" to ignore? The truth does seem to be getting rather inconvenient for you.

i think you're letting your beliefs determine the facts for you there.  Acts of compassion have been observed many times in primates.

http://www.valuesineducation.org.au/pdf/goodall.pdf
http://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/the_evolution_of_empathy/
http://www.livescience.com/animals/070625_chimp_altruism.html

I think your letting your beliefs determine your interpretation for you. As motivations of "compassion" can only be known if it's revealed, and as I doubt apes and such can talk, you don't know for a fact compassion was the motivating intent rather than something else, and are simply personifying. Though such acts of seeming altruism do hurt evolutionary theory of 'survival of the fittest'.

  i wont bother to cite chapter and verse (although i will if you would like me to).  i don't particularly hold it against the Bible that it tacitly endorses slavery and various other things which we now find abhorrent, because it was written by people of its time.  My point really is, to thrive as a society we need to be able to have a conversation about morality, and we have a far better chance of surviving our destructive technologies if we make it a 21st Century conversation, not a 5th Century BCE conversation, or a 1st Century conversation, or a 7th Century Conversation (as apologists for Judaism, Christianity and Islam respectively would advocate).

Oh you very clearly "hold it against the Bible". Your derision makes that obvious. And as I don't concede mankind has changed an iota from 5th Century BCE to 21st Century your "point" is pretty much moot.

i am not saying that these things are wrong as an atheist, anymore than i am saying that they are wrong as a "non-astrologer", or a "non-fairy-believer".  i am saying that they are wrong according to an objective weighing of suffering vs wellbeing, which is what lies at the base of most moral calculations, whether or not that is recognised by people such as yourself who grandiosely imagine themselves to be in possession of an absolute moral code, which strangely enough always seems to be very concerned with the enforcement of small-minded social conventions, such as the proper obscuring of women's bodies or whether all consenting adults can claim marriage benefits.  Perhaps you would like to support your allegedly non-arrogant objective position by giving me the Bible verse which explicitly condemns stoning or rape?

Take a breath every now and then DB. Your ranting will last longer. Oh I agree an objective morality exists irregardless of personal belief, though it's highly arrogant that you think you know what goes on in everyone's mind as "proof" of your standard. I'm saying as an atheist you don't get to claim having one and be consistent. Not the least of which is because an objective moral standard can only come from an objective Moral Lawmaker which is problematic to an atheist. You've never once answered what your standard is based on as I asked.

Also in a universe devoid of any guidance or interest in us personally the standard of our suffering (made even singular as it doesn't seem to apply to anyone but humans)  or well being means even less than squat. As such even your "objective" standard is just subjective opinion, made even more obvious by the fact by your own admission no one must care about other people's state of being. Tell me as an atheist exactly what's the point of refraining from doing "wrong" if one is able to get away with it till they die of old age or natural causes? Any consequence beyond death that's nominally different for a person doing "good"?

Like I said, under atheism it's all determined by the god of self. Unfortunately for you we have 6 billion little gods who don't agree.

Ok, let's assume that to be true.  The punishment still makes no sense.  Why is the woman to be killed for a loss of virginity which could have been against her will?  Why is the man's virginity not an issue?  Why, in fact, does the whole setting so closely resemble the barbarities of pre-modern people with no God watching over them or intimately involved in their lives, as you suggest?  You say that an omnipotent omnibenevolent God couldn't have found a better way to operate - i say that you are seriously blinded by faith and/or lacking in imagination.

I imagine the stoning was due to consentual sex. Your use of rape is just your wild ranting. I'd actually say read the whole book and see if stoning both parties isn't a given or if there is not in fact some option of repentance to avoid it. But regardless the Bible's clear from begginning to end the consequence of sin is death. Doesn't matter if God "could" find another way, being equally holy and just He wouldn't. It takes a special kind of evil to go against the creator of all things when His existance and direct administration is not in doubt. Your outlook of OT passages regarding Israeli law is simply due to self-imposed ignorance, arrogance of being nearly 3,000 years removed when people weren't so pansy about things, and your love of sin.

Seems unlikely, as children as young as two have been shown to emotionally experience other peoples distress and to engage in behaviour aimed at relieving it.  Family pets do the same, so although moral education is undoubtedly useful, the empathy on which i base my morality seems to be hardwired.  If anything, it takes education of the wrong sort - teaching that certain groups of people are inferior, physically or spiritually, and not deserving of our concern (whether on the grounds of religion, nationalism or pseudoscientific racism) - to undo our innate morality as social creatures.

You don't have kids do you? Or you must have ignored their outright rebeliousness against you and equal parts bad behaviour to go along with that empathy. It actually just futhers the Biblical belief that human beings are born with inherent knowledge of good and evil. As an evolutionist if you truly think bad behaviour is only brought on by the previous generation, you are going to have a hard time explaining where it came from to begin with as there comes a point there was no previous generation.

  And how is that different to your moral code?  Virtually every jackass who claims authority from God in his or her (but usually his) moral intuitions disagrees with all the other jackasses, so why should anyone consider your personal morality binding to them?

Because it's not my personal morality. Since objective morality is only possible under a theistic pardigm that's something I can consistently say and atheists can't. I think you'd actually be disturbed at how I would personally want things to be done.

To say that something is a sin is to convey no factual information beyond "i don't like it", and as you say, no one is automatically obliged to care about your preferences.  You simply asked me for an objective (i.e. not based on my subjective feelings) morality and i have laid it out for you - wellbeing and suffering are quantifiable.  But neither of our moral codes compels acceptance by others.  You seem to be arguing against yourself here.

*yawn* This just shows a complete lack of understanding between morality under theism and morality under atheism. Morality under theism means "sin" is conveyed as being a transgression against God. It's grounded on His very existance (at least under Christianity). It doesn't matter what people accept. Atheism on the other hand grounds morality to the prefrences of the individual, and gives no meaningful reason that such prefrences be the same. So nice, try DB. But your tact of trying to use my reasoning against me isn't going to work like I can use yours against you. Becasue mine is more rationally thought-out and consistent.

  If the overall effect of vaccine shots was not to demonstrably increase wellbeing (reducing the spread of disease, etc) then we would not give them, and would be right not to.  If you artificially limit the wellbeing/suffering calculation to the here-and-now then you have a recipe for hedonism, but to be clear - you imposed the limit.  i did not.  And the jury is still out on drug use, as far as i am concerned.  The harm done by many drugs is far below what would justify our response to them as a society, and some of our most harmful drugs are legal.  Again, these are social conventions which have been fossilised as "morality".

See? You did abandon it. You don't object to suffering so long as it leads to greater well being later, and even (potentially) justify drug use because it's pleasurable aspect outweighs the rather obvious consequences in your head. Now how many atrocities have been justified and are being argued for in order to 'save the world' and such? Seems to fit well within your personal standard.

Interesting.  So the Nazis were right about homosexuals in your view?  Maybe they were also right about the disabled, or the gypsies?

Apparently "even a broken clock is right twice a day" is too complicated for you to grasp. Perhaps you would change your tune about pedophilia if Nazis showed to be against that as well, is that it?

What is it with you and hate?  i disagree with you in oh so many ways, and i doubt that we'd be friends if we met, but i don't hate you.  Your adolescent victimhood is leading you astray here (like every teenage blogger who rants nonsense and then refers to people who point this out as "teh haters").  My wife, my parents and many other people i love are Christians of one sort or another - none quite like you, i admit - so i don't "hate" Christians either.

What's with you and thinking those who oppose homosexuality do so out of bigotry, insecurity, and fear? And I never said you hated me. But you do hate Christianity or at least a lot of it's stand on issues, which may not be fully represented by those you know given many Christians in this day and age.

i know that you are not it.  i can confidently state that from polling data, which shows that something in the region of 50% of the population of your extremely Christian country support equal legal recognition of homosexual partnerships.  In the UK it's more like 60-80%.  By contrast, when the Supreme Court legalised interracial marriages in 1948, 90% of Americans opposed them, and this figure only crossed the 50% boundary in the early 1990s.  So, as i said, you do not embody the Christian position on this issue, so don't try to claim it.

Heh. Then you truly don't know what the "Christian position" is. Especially since you seem to base your view off any erroneous source, rather than the only one that truly matters. You know, the one Christianity is entirely based on.

Behaviour is our best clue, but it doesn't provide infallible insight into someones orientation, since other factors are at work.  You could have been forced to write left-handed as a child, and continue to do so now, but that wouldn't mean that you were left-handed.

Behaviour is the only clue that matters. Since the existance and influence of any other factor is entirely nebulous. If I write left-handed then I'm left-handed.

   Ok, different example.  If i went to church every Sunday, would that make me a Christian?

I laughed when I saw this example earlier and I'm laughing now. What exactly gave you the idea all one has to do is go to church to be a Christian? You'd be a church-goer by the very definition, but do you even know what the requirment for being a Christian is, or do you think the only requirement for being a government employee is to walk into any government owned building?

Excellent.  So despite all your distractions, you do recognise that homosexuality and pedophilia are quite different in their behavioural expression.

Not at all. As pedophilia is certainly a willing practice at least by one party, and your example made clear I would be forced to engage in homosexuality rather than willing.

Yes, but that would be stupid (and a No True Scotsman).  We don't discriminate against children only in matters of sexuality, but in all areas of life.  Children can't vote, drive, join the army, consent to medical treatment, carry concealed weapons, etc.  Homosexuals adults are recognised as being able to consent to any activity that another adult can, except (according to you) to have sex with the consenting person they feel attracted to.  You are going nowhere with this "argument".

As is yours a No True Scottsman. We may discriminate against children in many matters of life (and adults too in issues of rape and such), but by your own standard of pleasure=good you have no basis for matters of sexuality. Your appeals to "harm" has always been dodgy at best, and given your above admittance that even temporary "suffering" is ok makes your reasonign against pedophilia even more ambiguous. And if we have established that discrimination against practices for adults is accepatable, I don't see what basis you have to object to discriminating against homosexuality, when the effects of homosexuality and pedophilia can't be seperated under your standard.

Sex with someone who is fifteen and a half does not count as pedophilia.  Sex with a minor, yes.  Puberty is the distinction made in the definition.  Do you find these irrelevancies entertaining?

What basis do you have to say puberty is the differential line? Why not when the child understands the consequences of sex (since that seems to be the only basis you give for 'consent')? If that occurs at 10, why not allow them to have sex at 10.

Yes, but there are objective reasons to argue against such people, in the form of the multiple experiences of sexually abused children and their documented subsequent health and psychiatric problems.  That is somewhat different from the disputed health consequences which you attribute to homosexuality, because of the pivotal issue of consent.  i have a bad knee from running - does that make running bad?  Of course not.  If however i had a bad knee because as a child i was forced to kneel for hours at a time, then that would be bad.

And some people would just dismiss those facts as irrelevant ones. Loaded comparisons with the intent to negatively stigmatise pedophilia. Or accuse such studies as being distortions for ideological ends, and assert counter "proof". Seems not that different to the issue of homosexuality at all.

[Dannyboy]

EB,

"This may indeed be a fact but it is clearly an irrelevant one, since comparing all homosexuals to monogamous heterosexuals is a loaded comparison with the intent to negatively stigmatise homosexuality.  Not only is your comparison bogus, but your conclusion also makes little sense.  Why would a higher STD rate be indicative of "unnaturalness"?  That would make unprotected sex less "natural" than sex with a condom."

And this is a highly transparent denial that indicates no interest in facts at all. If the facts show homosexuality generally leads to negative consequence then by golly, homosexuality is going to be viewed negatively. Just like when every other behaviour is examined. Are you going to say 'well the fact pedophilia causes harm to children is irrelevant simply because it negatively stigmatises pedophilia'? Pleeeeeeease.

This answer bears little relation to what i wrote.  Whether you understand this or not, you cannot compare homosexuals with monogamous heterosexuals and expect to draw valid conclusions about the differences between homo and heterosexuality.  If i compared all heterosexuals with monogamous homosexuals then i might find that the heterosexuals had a higher rate of STDs.  But that would tell me little about the differences between the two sexualities, because i would be making a loaded comparison (possibly with the intent to negatively stigmatise heterosexuality, by golly!).

And homosexuality being linked to a higher rate of STDs (something you have yet to provide any solid evidence for, by the way) is a world away from your statement that "homosexuality generally leads to negative consequences".  You are developing something of a track record of massively exaggerating the facts.  Driving a car is more dangerous than flying, but that doesn't automatically translate as "car driving generally leads to collisions".  Clearly the level of danger that an activity poses is not the only criteria on which we evaluate its advisability, and it certainly has little or nothing to do with its "naturalness", as you originally suggested it did.

Let me just lay this out for you (in my role as a medical professional).  In terms of STD transmission:

Unprotected anal sex - very risky (some male homosexuals do this, as do some heterosexuals)
Unprotected vaginal sex - pretty risky (plenty of heterosexuals do this)
Anal sex with a condom - still some risk (male homosexuals and heterosexuals)
Vaginal sex with a condom - still a bit of risk (heterosexuals)
Unprotected oral sex - small risk (heterosexuals, gays and lesbians)
Protected oral sex or non-penetrative sex in general - low risk (heterosexuals, gays and lesbians)

Do you see why i might not be convinced that all homosexuals are necessarily more at risk?

This is sheer assertion and denial. As the amount of promiscuous homosexuals does make "monogamous" homosexuals a rarity more than a commonality no matter how much you whine and rail against the fact.

Bluster and exaggerate all you like EB.  Since you have refused to draw the same conclusions about other more-promiscuous-then-average social groups, you demonstrate that this matter is actually irrelevant to your condemnation of homosexuals.  Yet you continue to air your ill-informed prejudices on the subject.  i repeat, none of the major risk factors for acquiring STDs are related to sexuality.  Certain non-sexuality-specific behaviours are high risk, and i would join you in urging people not to engage in those behaviours.  i will not be joining you, however, in condemning an entire group of people because some of them are promiscuous and foolishly careless when it comes to using protection.  Some people in every group do that.

i think you would be wise to quit throwing out random reasons to disapprove of homosexual sex, or to consider it unnatural, and just stick to whatever you consider to be solid ground.  Your contention that homosexuality subverts the self-evident design of reproductive systems ignores, as i mentioned, that the penis is both an organ of waste disposal and reproduction.  On that basis, why shouldn't the anus be used as an organ of pleasure (not my thing really, but if other people consensually enjoy it then why not).  Also, the majority of heterosexual couples practice oral sex, which has no reproductive purpose.

And all you did was go on a ranting tirade in response. Which amounted to just more denial. Though the idea of investigating STDs must be looked for anywhere, but an STD clinic is rather funny.

It is funny that my methodically pointing out, as someone who reads scientific papers for reasons other than to bolster their prejudices, the various inaccuracies and mis-attributions in the link you gave somehow translates in your brain to a "ranting tirade of denial".  Your inability to understand that an STD clinic, while a marvelous place to study STDs, is a very bad place to assess STD rates in the general population (because cases will be unrepresentatively clustered there) is a little worrying.  Look, here's an example:

This large study by the UK's Office for National Statistics has just been published giving some interesting data about Gay people in Britain.  It is discussed a little more readably here.  What are the main findings?  Well, it gives a surprisingly low percentage of the UK population identifying as homosexual or bisexual (1.5%).  Previous studies have suggested something more like 6%.  However, the way this study was conducted was largely by face-to-face doorstep interviews, so it could be understood that some people might have reservations about disclosing their sexuality to a stranger in this way.  If you notice, roughly 4% of people refused to answer that question.  Now (pay attention), although it would fit my preexisting beliefs to assume that all of that 4% were homosexual, the facts do not support that conclusion.  They may or may not have been.

Another interesting finding for me, in the context of this discussion, is that the percentages of straight and gay respondants who said that their health was "good" was near-identical.  But what can we reliably infer from that?  Does someone saying that their health is good necessarily mean that it is good?  What about the (hypothesised) gay people who refused to answer the sexuality question?  Is it likely that not being able to publicly acknowledge your sexuality might correlate with more risky sexual behaviour and therefore poorer health?  Maybe.  Is the question just too vague altogether to yield meaningful results?

You may also notice that 45% of the homosexual respondants were cohabiting (i.e. with a partner), rather than living alone.  That seems to provide counter-evidence to your suggestion that monogamous homosexuals are a "rarity".  But how many of those established couples are faithful?  We can't tell from this data.

That is the way that i would really like you to approach research studies on this subject - with a questioning attitude.  Not with the i'll-accept-and-then-defend-to-the-death-any-study-that-makes-gays-look-bad attitude which you have displayed thus far.

Actually in the beginning you tried to squirm your way into getting out of what constitutes being "natural" as well and even do so up to blah blah blah it was shown how you basicly chopped your own legs out from under you blah blah rationalization used to justify homosexuality in any sense equally applies to things like infanticide, pedophilia, etc.

Ok.  This is the last time i go through this for you.

i have not justified homosexuality on the basis that it is "natural".
i think homosexuality is natural, but that's not why i think it is ok.
i agree that infanticide is also natural in some circumstances.
At no point did i say that everything that any animal does is therefore natural for humans.

There's no "strawmen" to it DB. You even try to justify your ad hoc reasoning, or will this be another "inconvenient detail" to ignore? The truth does seem to be getting rather inconvenient for you.

Deliberately or otherwise, you are just talking nonsense here.  Your continued accusations of inconsistency are invariably based on totally obvious strawmen which you justify with these rambling taunts about my supposed mendacity.  You quote things i have said which actually demonstrate me trying to correct your apparently uncorrectable misunderstandings of my position.  If you were an idiot this would be more excusable.

I think your letting your beliefs determine your interpretation for you. As motivations of "compassion" can only be known if it's revealed, and as I doubt apes and such can talk, you don't know for a fact compassion was the motivating intent rather than something else, and are simply personifying. Though such acts of seeming altruism do hurt evolutionary theory of 'survival of the fittest'.

   You seem to want to have it both ways there.  As for your suggestion of unjustified anthropomorphism, i would say that just as potentially dangerous would be your apparent stance of anthropo-denial - the position that behaviour on the part of non-humans can never be interpretted in a "human" way.  Apes can't talk, you are right, but chimps have been shown in experimental conditions to literally starve themselves if the only way of getting food (pulling a certain lever) caused pain to another chimp (electric shocks delivered to a chimp in another cage - i didn't say these were very ethical experiments).  Now if you have an interpretation for that behaviour other than a morality based on compassion then i would love to hear it, but it seems patently obvious to me that the most reasonable explanation for this, and many other examples of apes behaving in selfless ways, is that they share our empathy for one another.

And no, acts of altruism do not hurt the idea of "survival of the fittest".  Educate yourself on the subject of kin selection.

And as I don't concede mankind has changed an iota from 5th Century BCE to 21st Century your "point" is pretty much moot.

You don't think the way we treat each other (on average) has improved at all?

I agree an objective morality exists irregardless of personal belief, though it's highly arrogant that you think you know what goes on in everyone's mind as "proof" of your standard.

   Where did i say that?

I'm saying as an atheist you don't get to claim having one and be consistent. Not the least of which is because an objective moral standard can only come from an objective Moral Lawmaker which is problematic to an atheist. You've never once answered what your standard is based on as I asked.

Just repeating yourself does not an argument make.  Nor does selective blindness, since i have explained what my objective moral standard is based upon - wellbeing vs suffering.  The interesting thing here is that if you were having this kind of conversation with a Muslim, you might both agree that an objective moral standard exists, but disagree about whose was right.  You would say that he was mistaken in his belief that he had access to the objective moral standard, and he would say likewise to you.  Your conversation would therefore be unlikely to go any further, because it would come down to both of you asserting "my god's real, and yours isn't", because that is all that your supposed objective standard is based upon.  My objective moral standard, on the other hand, is based on real mental states, some of which it is good to promote, others which are less desirable, rather than being contingent on the outcome (not likely anytime soon) of the theological battle for supremacy between the myriad competing religious certainties in the world, yours being only one.  So try not to get too sniffy about my failure to invoke a deity to prop-up my morality.  It's actually a strength rather than a weakness.

As such even your "objective" standard is just subjective opinion, made even more obvious by the fact by your own admission no one must care about other people's state of being.

And in your worldview, must other people care?  And if they don't, what can you do about it?  And how is your morality so much better than mine again?

Tell me as an atheist exactly what's the point of refraining from doing "wrong" if one is able to get away with it till they die of old age or natural causes?

Depends what you mean by "wrong".  i have done things in the past which i consider to be "wrong", and i would avoid doing them in the future because of the consequences they had for me and others around me.  Some of the things which you consider to be "wrong" i enjoy very much, since they hurt no one and bring pleasure and happiness to others, i hope to go on doing them until i die of old age.

Like I said, under atheism it's all determined by the god of self. Unfortunately for you we have 6 billion little gods who don't agree.

Wellbeing and suffering is quantifiable, and is independent of the selfishness which you attribute (with some justification) to all human beings.  You asked for an objective standard.  i gave you one.  Ignore it if you wish.

I imagine the stoning was due to consentual sex. Your use of rape is just your wild ranting.

Again, you are trying to take something from the text which does not appear in it.  Here is the relevant text:

If any man take a wife, and go in unto her, and hate her, and give occasions of speech against her, and bring up an evil name upon her, and say, I took this woman, and when I came to her, I found her not a maid: Then shall the father of the damsel, and her mother, take and bring forth the tokens of the damsel's virginity unto the elders of the city in the gate: And the damsel's father shall say unto the elders, I gave my daughter unto this man to wife, and he hateth her; And, lo, he hath given occasions of speech against her, saying, I found not thy daughter a maid; and yet these are the tokens of my daughter's virginity. And they shall spread the cloth before the elders of the city.  And the elders of that city shall take that man and chastise him; And they shall amerce him in an hundred shekels of silver, and give them unto the father of the damsel, because he hath brought up an evil name upon a virgin of Israel: and she shall be his wife; he may not put her away all his days.

But if this thing be true, and the tokens of virginity be not found for the damsel: Then they shall bring out the damsel to the door of her father's house, and the men of her city shall stone her with stones that she die: because she hath wrought folly in Israel, to play the whore in her father's house: so shalt thou put evil away from among you.

A woman who cannot prove that she was a virgin on her wedding night, by showing the bloody sheets from her deflowerment, is liable to be stoned to death if her husband makes an accusation against her.  How she lost her virginity does not appear to be a cause for concern, only the fact that she cannot prove her "purity".  That is what it says.

Your outlook of OT passages regarding Israeli law is simply due to self-imposed ignorance, arrogance of being nearly 3,000 years removed when people weren't so pansy about things, and your love of sin.

   Not so pansy about stoning young women to death?  Yeah, i do get a little squeamish about that - it's a major failing of mine.  The truth is that your "chosen" people under the direct supervision of God behaved no better than the most ignorant fundamentalist communities in the Middle East today, which neither of us would credit with having divine guidance.  Duck and dodge all you like.

You don't have kids do you? Or you must have ignored their outright rebeliousness against you and equal parts bad behaviour to go along with that empathy. It actually just futhers the Biblical belief that human beings are born with inherent knowledge of good and evil.

That the empathy exists independent of it being taught, was my point.  We obviously find different explanations for that phenomenon compelling.

Since objective morality is only possible under a theistic pardigm that's something I can consistently say and atheists can't. I think you'd actually be disturbed at how I would personally want things to be done.

But your "objective morality" is not the same as other people's "objective morality".  Just like your God is not the same as other people's God.  Ultimately, the only sensible thing to do in this situation, with everyone basing their conflicting morality on metaphysical claims, is to find an objective system of morality which is grounded in the real world.  Pain, suffering and happiness are all real things.

Morality under theism means "sin" is conveyed as being a transgression against God. It's grounded on His very existance (at least under Christianity). It doesn't matter what people accept.

So precisely what use is it in a conversation with a non-Christian (who, may i remind you, are in the majority)?  Not to mention the vast array of differing Christian positions about what exactly God wants and requires of us.  As i said, to say that something is a sin is to convey zero factual information beyond "i don't like it".  Your preferences, in other words.

See? You did abandon it.

You are a moron.  Sorry, that's unfair - you're behaving like a moron.  i was abundantly clear that i had not limited the assessment of wellbeing/suffering resulting from an action to the period immediately after it is performed.  i abandoned nothing, and you were so predictable in your pathetic little "gotcha" that it kind of hurt to watch.

You don't object to suffering so long as it leads to greater well being later, and even (potentially) justify drug use because it's pleasurable aspect outweighs the rather obvious consequences in your head. Now how many atrocities have been justified and are being argued for in order to 'save the world' and such? Seems to fit well within your personal standard.

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.  For instance, if someone like you tells me that it is necessary to stone a woman to death, with all the unimaginable pain and suffering that entails, in order to prevent God from throwing a hissy fit about unpunished prenuptial fornication and zap the entire world into dust, then i would require some pretty compelling argumentation to convince me of that necessity on a balance of wellbeing vs suffering basis.  If, on the other hand, someone shows me studies that marijuana has no fatal dose (unlike alcohol), is not clearly linked to acts of violence (unlike alcohol) and doesn't kill a good proportion of its users with cancer later in life (unlike tobacco), then i see little reason - since alcohol and tobacco are both legal (and i agree that they should be) - for marijuana not to be legal also.

"So the Nazis were right about homosexuals in your view?  Maybe they were also right about the disabled, or the gypsies?"

Apparently "even a broken clock is right twice a day" is too complicated for you to grasp. Perhaps you would change your tune about pedophilia if Nazis showed to be against that as well, is that it?

Your broken clock analogy doesn't seem to apply, since the Nazis objected to homosexuality in near-identical terms to you.  If they had objected for some other reasons then i might accept the idea that there was no common ground between you.  However, since you seem to find the suggestion upsetting, perhaps i should say that i hear they also made the trains run on time, and i do like punctual public transport.  Is that better?

I never said you hated me. But you do hate Christianity or at least a lot of it's stand on issues, which may not be fully represented by those you know given many Christians in this day and age.

Hating Christianity would be like you hating Narnia.  It's just a story - what's to hate?  i strongly dislike some fundamentalist interpretations of Christianity, based on the negative effect that they have on the world.

Then you truly don't know what the "Christian position" is. Especially since you seem to base your view off any erroneous source, rather than the only one that truly matters. You know, the one Christianity is entirely based on.

More of this "i'm right and everyone else is wrong", as if that meant anything to anyone except you.  You do not represent the majority Christian viewpoint, which is something quantifiable, as opposed to your claim of theological excellence, which is not.

"If i went to church every Sunday, would that make me a Christian?"

I laughed when I saw this example earlier and I'm laughing now. What exactly gave you the idea all one has to do is go to church to be a Christian? You'd be a church-goer by the very definition, but do you even know what the requirment for being a Christian is, or do you think the only requirement for being a government employee is to walk into any government owned building?

Man, it's like pulling teeth.  So, if behaviour alone wouldn't make me a Christian, how come behaviour is all that it takes to define a homosexual in your eyes?  Especially since being a Christian is entirely environmentally determined, whereas homosexuality has a demonstrable genetic component.

...by your own standard of pleasure=good you have no basis for matters of sexuality. Your appeals to "harm" has always been dodgy at best, and given your above admittance that even temporary "suffering" is ok makes your reasonign against pedophilia even more ambiguous.

i would say that a raped child was one of the clearest possible examples of "harm", both physical and psychological.  And temporary suffering can only be justified if there is a reliable later (and greater) resulting benefit.  What are you suggesting the positive byproduct of being raped as a child might be in your skewed little world?

What basis do you have to say puberty is the differential line?

The definition of pedophilia.  Did you not look it up like i asked you to?

Why not when the child understands the consequences of sex (since that seems to be the only basis you give for 'consent')? If that occurs at 10, why not allow them to have sex at 10.

Gosh that's an interesting question.  i have an idea along the same lines - why don't we individually assess young people to see when they're ready to handle the consequences of drinking alcohol?  No more of this authoritarian line drawing, maybe some people can deal responsibly with beer at eighteen, sixteen, or even twelve.  Or is there perhaps a good reason for having a dividing line, before which some may be competent to decide for themselves, but after which hopefully most of them will be.

And some people would just dismiss those facts as irrelevant ones. Loaded comparisons with the intent to negatively stigmatise pedophilia. Or accuse such studies as being distortions for ideological ends, and assert counter "proof". Seems not that different to the issue of homosexuality at all.


You appear to have nothing.  That's certainly the impression i am getting.

[End Bringer]

This answer bears little relation to what i wrote.  Whether you understand this or not, you cannot compare homosexuals with monogamous heterosexuals and expect to draw valid conclusions about the differences between homo and heterosexuality.  If i compared all heterosexuals with monogamous homosexuals then i might find that the heterosexuals had a higher rate of STDs.  But that would tell me little about the differences between the two sexualities, because i would be making a loaded comparison (possibly with the intent to negatively stigmatise heterosexuality, by golly!).

You give nothing but pure speculation to justify pure assertions of denial. If there was anything to the comparison of lesser STDs in "monogamous" homosexuals compared to heterosexuals it would be mostly due to monogamous homosexuality itself being a rarity.

And homosexuality being linked to a higher rate of STDs (something you have yet to provide any solid evidence for, by the way) is a world away from your statement that "homosexuality generally leads to negative consequences".  You are developing something of a track record of massively exaggerating the facts.  Driving a car is more dangerous than flying, but that doesn't automatically translate as "car driving generally leads to collisions".  Clearly the level of danger that an activity poses is not the only criteria on which we evaluate its advisability, and it certainly has little or nothing to do with its "naturalness", as you originally suggested it did.

You've established facts of any sort don't matter even when conceded as true. You just excuse and rationalize away which only shows a biasedly closed-minded  motivation. Actually more car crashes then plane crashes DO lead to the conclusion car driving generally leads to collisions over planes. That's simply logical conclusion, but I see such is lost on you.

Let me just lay this out for you (in my role as a medical professional).  In terms of STD transmission:

Unprotected anal sex - very risky (some male homosexuals do this, as do some heterosexuals)
Unprotected vaginal sex - pretty risky (plenty of heterosexuals do this)
Anal sex with a condom - still some risk (male homosexuals and heterosexuals)
Vaginal sex with a condom - still a bit of risk (heterosexuals)
Unprotected oral sex - small risk (heterosexuals, gays and lesbians)
Protected oral sex or non-penetrative sex in general - low risk (heterosexuals, gays and lesbians)

Do you see why i might not be convinced that all homosexuals are necessarily more at risk?

I'd say go back to medical school. Espicially if you think "protection" actually lowers risk an iota.

Bluster and exaggerate all you like EB.  Since you have refused to draw the same conclusions about other more-promiscuous-then-average social groups, you demonstrate that this matter is actually irrelevant to your condemnation of homosexuals.

And deny all you like DB. I haven't refused the conclusion on any social group. I've just cut your complaint off at the feet, by extending it to all social groups equally.

i think you would be wise to quit throwing out random reasons to disapprove of homosexual sex, or to consider it unnatural, and just stick to whatever you consider to be solid ground.  Your contention that homosexuality subverts the self-evident design of reproductive systems ignores, as i mentioned, that the penis is both an organ of waste disposal and reproduction.  On that basis, why shouldn't the anus be used as an organ of pleasure (not my thing really, but if other people consensually enjoy it then why not).  Also, the majority of heterosexual couples practice oral sex, which has no reproductive purpose.

I consider everything I've said to be very solid ground. The fact you simply rant and give empty denials just makes me think it's more solid. Your admitance that all homosexuality is good for is pleasure, just confirms what I've always said homosexuality is about. And your standard and reasoning is as outdated as cocaine usage in the 60s.

It is funny that my methodically pointing out, as someone who reads scientific papers for reasons other than to bolster their prejudices, the various inaccuracies and mis-attributions in the link you gave somehow translates in your brain to a "ranting tirade of denial".

I already addressed issues with your rant. You simply dropped my response.

That is the way that i would really like you to approach research studies on this subject - with a questioning attitude.  Not with the i'll-accept-and-then-defend-to-the-death-any-study-that-makes-gays-look-bad attitude which you have displayed thus far.

DB, you've already established no amount of facts or proof is going to move you. If I wasn't already wary before about producing links and studies before when by your own admission you were simply looking for whether or not I could produce them, then I'm even more so now.

Ok.  This is the last time i go through this for you.

i have not justified homosexuality on the basis that it is "natural".
i think homosexuality is natural, but that's not why i think it is ok.
i agree that infanticide is also natural in some circumstances.
At no point did i say that everything that any animal does is therefore natural for humans.

Which is it DB? You didn't actually try to justify it on the basis of being "natural" at all, or you did as simply an argument 'from the other's point of view'?

But it doesn't matter, because you again show that it all comes down to an ad hoc.

Deliberately or otherwise, you are just talking nonsense here.  Your continued accusations of inconsistency are invariably based on totally obvious strawmen which you justify with these rambling taunts about my supposed mendacity.  You quote things i have said which actually demonstrate me trying to correct your apparently uncorrectable misunderstandings of my position.  If you were an idiot this would be more excusable.

More empty denial. All you do is cry 'strawman' at the drop of a hat. Your response I quoted and the one above don't demonstrate any "correction". They just further prove what I've been saying about it all coming down to cherry-picking. If "everything" an animal does doesn't constitute being natural for humans except what behaviour you personally choose, then that's a clear cut case of ad hoc cherry picking and inconsistency as it gets.

  You seem to want to have it both ways there.  As for your suggestion of unjustified anthropomorphism, i would say that just as potentially dangerous would be your apparent stance of anthropo-denial - the position that behaviour on the part of non-humans can never be interpretted in a "human" way.  Apes can't talk, you are right, but chimps have been shown in experimental conditions to literally starve themselves if the only way of getting food (pulling a certain lever) caused pain to another chimp (electric shocks delivered to a chimp in another cage - i didn't say these were very ethical experiments).  Now if you have an interpretation for that behaviour other than a morality based on compassion then i would love to hear it, but it seems patently obvious to me that the most reasonable explanation for this, and many other examples of apes behaving in selfless ways, is that they share our empathy for one another.

Ignorance in not being able to figure out it won't hurt the individual pulling it, self-interest in not wanting to hear the other's screaming, can't say for sure, because of the whole inability to communicate. Again. Till it's somehow bridgible (which will probably be never), it will remain unknowable as a fact, and thus can't be used as one.

And no, acts of altruism do not hurt the idea of "survival of the fittest".  Educate yourself on the subject of kin selection.

Oh right, evolution is unfalsifiable. Sorry, thought we were talking about actual science for a second.

You don't think the way we treat each other (on average) has improved at all?

Nope. Only thing that changes is the way it's all expressed.

I agree an objective morality exists irregardless of personal belief, though it's highly arrogant that you think you know what goes on in everyone's mind as "proof" of your standard.

   Where did i say that?

...saying that they are wrong according to an objective weighing of suffering vs wellbeing, which is what lies at the base of most moral calculations...

You'll obviously say 'strawman' cause you can't help yourself, but basic reading isn't that complicated.

Just repeating yourself does not an argument make.  Nor does selective blindness, since i have explained what my objective moral standard is based upon - wellbeing vs suffering.

And you've never said what wellbeing vs suffering is grounded on at it's base as indicative by the fact even you say no one 'must' follow it. Not that it matters as it's just personal prefrence for one over the other when both are just two sides of the same coin.

The interesting thing here is that if you were having this kind of conversation with a Muslim, you might both agree that an objective moral standard exists, but disagree about whose was right.  You would say that he was mistaken in his belief that he had access to the objective moral standard, and he would say likewise to you.  Your conversation would therefore be unlikely to go any further, because it would come down to both of you asserting "my god's real, and yours isn't", because that is all that your supposed objective standard is based upon.  My objective moral standard, on the other hand, is based on real mental states, some of which it is good to promote, others which are less desirable, rather than being contingent on the outcome (not likely anytime soon) of the theological battle for supremacy between the myriad competing religious certainties in the world, yours being only one.  So try not to get too sniffy about my failure to invoke a deity to prop-up my morality.  It's actually a strength rather than a weakness.

A lot of imaginative speculation here. That's flat out wrong. As Muslims are theists I would never say they don't have access to an objective moral standard. I would simply say what is wrong is wrong irregardless of personal belief. Yours on the other head is based on a standard that's may be observable but the scale of which is purely imaginative, and has no objective basis whatsoever (and in many cases are inconsistent within an evolutionary paradigm) as it comes to personal prefrence of one over the other (at least in prefrence in caring about wellbeing of anyone, but self). Yours just shows sheer arrogance, which is not something to be proud of.

And in your worldview, must other people care?  And if they don't, what can you do about it?  And how is your morality so much better than mine again?

Mine actually says there will be lasting consequences beyond death. Which can't be weaseled out of.

Depends what you mean by "wrong".  i have done things in the past which i consider to be "wrong", and i would avoid doing them in the future because of the consequences they had for me and others around me.  Some of the things which you consider to be "wrong" i enjoy very much, since they hurt no one and bring pleasure and happiness to others, i hope to go on doing them until i die of old age.

Dodge. If someone does "wrong" even by your warped standard, but doesn't suffer any consequence than people who do "good", then exactly what's the point under atheism?

Wellbeing and suffering is quantifiable, and is independent of the selfishness which you attribute (with some justification) to all human beings.  You asked for an objective standard.  i gave you one.  Ignore it if you wish.

I'd actually disagree with it being "quantifiable". "Observable", but not "quantifiable". It seems in no way independant of selfishness as your concern for others seems to be based on what personally pleases you. Like some faux Freudian-esque reasoning of 'hurting others hurts you' nonsense. If the suffering of others pleased you, you'd change your tune. Because like I said it's all still subjective prefrence under atheism.

But if this thing be true, and the tokens of virginity be not found for the damsel: Then they shall bring out the damsel to the door of her father's house, and the men of her city shall stone her with stones that she die: because she hath wrought folly in Israel, to play the whore in her father's house: so shalt thou put evil away from among you.

A woman who cannot prove that she was a virgin on her wedding night, by showing the bloody sheets from her deflowerment, is liable to be stoned to death if her husband makes an accusation against her.  How she lost her virginity does not appear to be a cause for concern, only the fact that she cannot prove her "purity".  That is what it says.

Yeah, because the clearly explicit issue of it being a case of promiscuity is never mentioned. Talk about taking from the text that doesn't appear in it. You're ranting about what's produced by your own biased imagination. As Deuteronomy are verses of case-laws, if the case is presented in the context given, then it only applies in the given context, rather than in whatever you can imagine. If such was actually the case, it would be mentioned. It's even further made moot by the fact most violations at the time actually did allowed for multiple chosen punishments.

  Not so pansy about stoning young women to death?  Yeah, i do get a little squeamish about that - it's a major failing of mine.  The truth is that your "chosen" people under the direct supervision of God behaved no better than the most ignorant fundamentalist communities in the Middle East today, which neither of us would credit with having divine guidance.  Duck and dodge all you like.

Actually you seem to be 'pansy-ish' about capital punishment in itself irregardless of the crime. At least that's the impression from your Ideological Introduction post. And like I said, your views is just based on sheer ignorance as Israeli was nothing like other nations. At least initially. Guess that questioning attitude doesn't extend very far.

That the empathy exists independent of it being taught, was my point.  We obviously find different explanations for that phenomenon compelling.

That the rebelliousness and bad behaviour exists independantly of it being taught was mine.

But your "objective morality" is not the same as other people's "objective morality".  Just like your God is not the same as other people's God.  Ultimately, the only sensible thing to do in this situation, with everyone basing their conflicting morality on metaphysical claims, is to find an objective system of morality which is grounded in the real world.  Pain, suffering and happiness are all real things.

Actually no, the only sensible thing to do is figure out which theology is correct independant of issues of morality.

So precisely what use is it in a conversation with a non-Christian (who, may i remind you, are in the majority)?  Not to mention the vast array of differing Christian positions about what exactly God wants and requires of us.  As i said, to say that something is a sin is to convey zero factual information beyond "i don't like it".  Your preferences, in other words.

No, that's an atheists position. In mine someone would ultimately be right and someone wrong regardless of personal like or dislike, and justified by the proof supporting the theology with other non-Christians. With Christians it would simply be a case of correctly reading the common authoritive source to settle the issue.

You are a moron.  Sorry, that's unfair - you're behaving like a moron.  i was abundantly clear that i had not limited the assessment of wellbeing/suffering resulting from an action to the period immediately after it is performed.  i abandoned nothing, and you were so predictable in your pathetic little "gotcha" that it kind of hurt to watch.

Your abandonment was temporary then, but abandon it you did. If you recognize sometimes suffering is a good thing, then it shows a violation of your 'pleasure=good pain=bad' standard. It simply allows for it under the notion of being 'good' at a later date which may be as imaginitive as factual.

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

Sheer assertion I deny, and a nebulous standard of what constitutes "extraordinary".

For instance, if someone like you tells me that it is necessary to stone a woman to death, with all the unimaginable pain and suffering that entails, in order to prevent God from throwing a hissy fit about unpunished prenuptial fornication and zap the entire world into dust, then i would require some pretty compelling argumentation to convince me of that necessity on a balance of wellbeing vs suffering basis.  If, on the other hand, someone shows me studies that marijuana has no fatal dose (unlike alcohol), is not clearly linked to acts of violence (unlike alcohol) and doesn't kill a good proportion of its users with cancer later in life (unlike tobacco), then i see little reason - since alcohol and tobacco are both legal (and i agree that they should be) - for marijuana not to be legal also.

Dodge. By your own admission pain and suffering are ok if it leads to greater wellbeing later. So would it not follow that many atrocities that have been done and are being advocated today would fit perfectly under your standard, correct? As such if wiping out a minority betters the majority, it should be fine with you, correct? And if it's justified as killing others to "spare them" suffering so much the better, right?

Your broken clock analogy doesn't seem to apply, since the Nazis objected to homosexuality in near-identical terms to you.  If they had objected for some other reasons then i might accept the idea that there was no common ground between you.  However, since you seem to find the suggestion upsetting, perhaps i should say that i hear they also made the trains run on time, and i do like punctual public transport.  Is that better?

That's how the analogy applies, because the Nazis were right about homosexuality, but wrong in everything else. I was joking about it being too complicated before, but maybe it actually was. I notice you don't address the issue of pedophilia either.

Hating Christianity would be like you hating Narnia.  It's just a story - what's to hate?  i strongly dislike some fundamentalist interpretations of Christianity, based on the negative effect that they have on the world.

I could go all Freudian and say some part of you recognizes it as true, but more reasonable would be to say issues of fact or fiction are irrelevant in producing actual emotion. Are the tears you cry in watching the movie Up fake simply because the story or characters don't exist in the real world? By your reasoning what's to even "strongly dislike"?

More of this "i'm right and everyone else is wrong", as if that meant anything to anyone except you.  You do not represent the majority Christian viewpoint, which is something quantifiable, as opposed to your claim of theological excellence, which is not.

More denial and willful ignorance. I didn't say I represent the "majority Christian viewpoint", I said I represent the "Christian position" (at least on this issue) which is knowable to those possessing basic reading skills. The two are nominally different as many Christians ARE wrong in their view of things. 

Man, it's like pulling teeth.  So, if behaviour alone wouldn't make me a Christian, how come behaviour is all that it takes to define a homosexual in your eyes?  Especially since being a Christian is entirely environmentally determined, whereas homosexuality has a demonstrable genetic component.

Due to the two being nominally and catagorically different. One is a behaviour. The other is an ideology. I've never conceded homosexuality has a demonstrable genetic component. That a genetic component exists may indeed be influential, but on the other hand it may have as much influence as a cup of water influences the ocean level. Especially as the behaviour can't be seen till one is environmentally exposed for some time.

i would say that a raped child was one of the clearest possible examples of "harm", both physical and psychological.  And temporary suffering can only be justified if there is a reliable later (and greater) resulting benefit.  What are you suggesting the positive byproduct of being raped as a child might be in your skewed little world?

"Rape" would be only in the statutory sense (and some people would probably argue against "harm" at that age as well), as I have narrowed it down to an issue of the child being willing. You just disregard whether actual consent is present or not. Your use of "harm" is still ambiguous assertion as you don't go into how. And I can think of the line of 'sexual education' many people are using to justify teaching sex to kids at ever younger ages. Not to mention it would certainly "benefit" the pedophile. Seems a catch-22 for you as one party gains great benefit while the other supposed "harm", and as such are 'balanced' under your standard.

The definition of pedophilia.  Did you not look it up like i asked you to?

*shrug* I reject the definition as I reject yours for homosexuality. But again, what basis do you have to use puberty as a differential? Why not be a 'child' till 21, or an 'adult' at 12?

Gosh that's an interesting question.  i have an idea along the same lines - why don't we individually assess young people to see when they're ready to handle the consequences of drinking alcohol?  No more of this authoritarian line drawing, maybe some people can deal responsibly with beer at eighteen, sixteen, or even twelve.  Or is there perhaps a good reason for having a dividing line, before which some may be competent to decide for themselves, but after which hopefully most of them will be.

A dodge wraped in sarcasm.

You appear to have nothing.  That's certainly the impression i am getting.

Heh. This from the guy who's response has largely been 'Nuh-uh' the whole time.

[Dannyboy]

EB,

Unfortunately what is being exposed in this debate is your laziness and willful ignorance about subjects on which you pretend great certainty.  You provide the most ideologically slanted of links to support your case, and when i dissect their biases and inaccuracies, you act as if i'm being totally unreasonable and use the fact that your "evidence" hasn't stood up to scrutiny as an excuse not to provide any more.  You completely ignore data which doesn't fit your beliefs (such as the ONS study which shows 45% of Gays cohabiting), which makes it seem almost futile to present any more, however, since i have either more patience or more evidence on my side than you do, i'll have another go.

Here is a piece that i wish you would read in detail.  It is a Christian perspective, but one which actually recognises standards of evidence in this matter.  It gives examples of several studies comparing homosexual and heterosexual behaviour (which you should surely be interested in, being so focused on the "facts"), and analyses them with the questioning attitude which i advocated to you.  It also notes, from the example of higher rates of imprisonment in African-Americans, the inadvisability of deriving the appropriate treatment of entire societal groups from the behaviour of an unrepresentative subset of them.  Please feel free to critique any aspect of the evidence it presents if you feel that it contains errors or inaccuracies.

If there was anything to the comparison of lesser STDs in "monogamous" homosexuals compared to heterosexuals it would be mostly due to monogamous homosexuality itself being a rarity.

That would not affect the rate of STDs, only the number.  And please, since you repeat this "monogamous homosexuality is a rarity" claim ad nauseum, i beg you to find some small measure of intellectual integrity and actually provide some evidence to support it.

Actually more car crashes then plane crashes DO lead to the conclusion car driving generally leads to collisions over planes. That's simply logical conclusion, but I see such is lost on you.

i think we might be having a language problem here.  It's the same later with the word "justified".  To say that "car driving generally leads to collisions", or "homosexuality generally leads to STDs", or just "x generally leads to y" is the same as saying that "in most cases, y follows x".  That is clearly not the same thing as saying that "y follows x more often than it follows z".  Your "logical conclusion" is nothing of the sort, much as if i said that "EB makes more spelling mistakes than DB", i would not be justified in further concluding that "EB spells most words incorrectly".  That kind of leap of logic would require the sort of evidence which you have yet to produce in the matter of homosexuality.

"Do you see why i might not be convinced that all homosexuals are necessarily more at risk?"

I'd say go back to medical school. Espicially if you think "protection" actually lowers risk an iota.

i see.  This is the new EB absurdity - barrier contraception does not alter the risk of STD transmission in any way, is that right?  i guess you should tell the CDC, who state that "Overall, the preponderance of available epidemiological studies have found that when used consistently and correctly, condoms are highly effective in preventing the sexual transmission of HIV infection and reduce the risk of other STDs".  Perhaps you would like to rephrase your statement and scavenge back a small measure of credibility.

Your admitance that all homosexuality is good for is pleasure, just confirms what I've always said homosexuality is about.

While it is flattering that you look to me for confirmation, i did not actually say that.  Homosexual sex is good for all the things that heterosexual sex is good for, barring one.  That means pleasure, expressing love, pair bonding, comfort, etc.

I already addressed issues with your rant. You simply dropped my response.

Since you still refuse to admit that sampling in STD clinics gives unrepresentative data, i can't help feeling that this is the pot calling the kettle "gay" (since we're discussing the socially acceptable replacement for racism here).  Please go ahead and re-post any significant bits that you think i missed.

Which is it DB? You didn't actually try to justify it on the basis of being "natural" at all, or you did as simply an argument 'from the other's point of view'?

EB, do you know what the word "justify" actually means?

1. to show (an act, claim, statement, etc.) to be just or right: The end does not always justify the means.
2. to defend or uphold as warranted or well-grounded: Don't try to justify his rudeness.
3. Theology . to declare innocent or guiltless; absolve; acquit.
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/justify

Which of those have i done for homosexuality on the grounds that it is natural?  None of them.  i have argued against the idea that homosexuality is "unnatural" because it is a stigmatised concept, and apparently a key plank of your objections to it.  i have repeatedly explained that this is entirely separate from any argument i might make about it being a good thing.  When i have justified homosexuality, it has been on the grounds that it produces more happiness than suffering in those who have that inclination, and harms no one else in the process.  Do you see the difference?

If "everything" an animal does doesn't constitute being natural for humans except what behaviour you personally choose, then that's a clear cut case of ad hoc cherry picking and inconsistency as it gets.

  i actually gave some pretty clear reasons why a particular behaviour might or might not fit the (loose) definition of being natural for humans.  You ignored them, true to form.  It seems futile, but just to go over it one more time - if a behaviour is found throughout the animal kingdom and in humans (e.g. homosexuality), then it could be considered natural for humans.  If on the other hand, a behaviour was found only in a few animal groups not including humans (e.g. hibernating for seven months of the year), then it doesn't seem a great stretch to say that it isn't natural for humans.  If you choose to call that ad hoc cherry-picking then you are entitled to your selective blindness.

Ignorance in not being able to figure out it won't hurt the individual pulling it, self-interest in not wanting to hear the other's screaming, can't say for sure, because of the whole inability to communicate. Again. Till it's somehow bridgible (which will probably be never), it will remain unknowable as a fact, and thus can't be used as one.

Why assume that humans have compassion, if you're going to apply such a high standard of proof to the matter?  Because they tell us that they do?  Sure, there's no reason why they should lie about such a thing is there.  The bottom line is that we can never know the mind of another creature, human or animal, but it is reasonable to infer from repeated unequivocal examples of selfless behaviour.  And sure, the chimp choosing not to pull the handle might just be distressed by the expression of pain by the other chimp, but what is that except compassion?  Again, if you choose to close your eyes and ears about this, then there's nothing i can say to change your mind.

I agree an objective morality exists irregardless of personal belief, though it's highly arrogant that you think you know what goes on in everyone's mind as "proof" of your standard.

   "Where did i say that?"

"...saying that they are wrong according to an objective weighing of suffering vs wellbeing, which is what lies at the base of most moral calculations..."

You'll obviously say 'strawman' cause you can't help yourself, but basic reading isn't that complicated.

Very well done, shame you only apply your basic reading skills sporadically.  Saying that most moral calculations are based on considerations of wellbeing vs suffering is not quite the same thing as saying that i know what goes on in everyone's minds.  As i said above, i can't know for certain what goes on in other peoples minds, anymore than you can, but i can infer from studies of human (and ape) behaviour as to what the common shared motivating factors are.

And you've never said what wellbeing vs suffering is grounded on at it's base as indicative by the fact even you say no one 'must' follow it.

No one must follow any moral code.  Why do you keep repeating such idiotic statements?  Just because you pretend that people who don't follow your moral code will be punished after they die does not mean that anyone else is obligated to agree with you.  If i linked my moral code into the Hindu idea of Karma and reincarnation, so that those who led a life which increased the general wellbeing of those around them would be rewarded in their next life, would you say that i had overcome the problem of people not being compelled to comply with my code?  Because that is all that you are doing.

No one must follow your moral code.  i certainly don't, and i feel pretty ok about it.

Yours on the other head is based on a standard that's may be observable but the scale of which is purely imaginative, and has no objective basis whatsoever

Not true.  Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) can identify which areas of the brain show activity during happy or sad moods, or when someone is in pain.  Granted it is not feasible to shove people into an fMRI scanner to measure the precise amount of happiness they are feeling at a particular moment (their reaction to being kidnapped and strapped to a table would probably dampen their mood in any case), but the fact is that brain states, which are what happiness and suffering ultimately reduce to, are measurable, quantifiable and objective.  Knowing that, we can find more practical ways to quantify them - i do not consider it controversial, for example, to say that a child which has a leg blown off will suffer enormously, and that is information i can use in balancing the case for and against the use of landmines by military forces.  It isn't necessary for me to prove this by putting an amputee 10yr old into an fMRI scanner.

Mine actually says there will be lasting consequences beyond death. Which can't be weaseled out of.

Yes.  But, and i can't stress how important this is, those consequences are imaginary.  At best, they are unproven, and as such cannot be entered into a debate as reasons why your moral code is better than mine.

If someone does "wrong" even by your warped standard, but doesn't suffer any consequence than people who do "good", then exactly what's the point under atheism?

   Heh, i can see that the idea of morality without the threat of a smack on the leg from the invisible sky-daddy if you're naughty is genuinely troubling you.  Does the idea of rules and penalties enforced by society ring any bells?  i know it's not perfect, but it's the only reliable system we've got.

"A woman who cannot prove that she was a virgin on her wedding night, by showing the bloody sheets from her deflowerment, is liable to be stoned to death if her husband makes an accusation against her.  How she lost her virginity does not appear to be a cause for concern, only the fact that she cannot prove her "purity".  That is what it says."

Yeah, because the clearly explicit issue of it being a case of promiscuity is never mentioned.

How can something be "explicit" without once being mentioned?     Are we having a language problem again?  Regardless of that, you have no basis to say how the hypothetical woman in this case lost her viriginity (or, more accurately, failed to bleed on her wedding night, since the hymen can be broken in a variety of non-sexual ways).  Your denials here are entirely empty, since you cannot argue that a woman who had been raped, or who had failed to bleed for some other non-sinful reason, would have been treated mercifully in this situation - the only criteria they used to establish the death sentence was a lack of bloody sheets.  Still, close your eyes and ears.

...your views is just based on sheer ignorance as Israeli was nothing like other nations. At least initially. Guess that questioning attitude doesn't extend very far.

Nice equivocation, but taking an investigative attitude to the claims of articles and studies is a little different from accepting any half-baked rationalisation you might give for the barbarities advocated in your holy book.

Your abandonment was temporary then, but abandon it you did. If you recognize sometimes suffering is a good thing, then it shows a violation of your 'pleasure=good pain=bad' standard. It simply allows for it under the notion of being 'good' at a later date which may be as imaginitive as factual.

i have repeatedly stated that it is the overall balance of wellbeing vs suffering which is the important thing.  What precisely did i abandon then?

By your own admission pain and suffering are ok if it leads to greater wellbeing later. So would it not follow that many atrocities that have been done and are being advocated today would fit perfectly under your standard, correct? As such if wiping out a minority betters the majority, it should be fine with you, correct? And if it's justified as killing others to "spare them" suffering so much the better, right?

Wiping out a minority (let's take the Rwandan genocide as an example) invariably causes an enormous amount of suffering - suffering which continues for the survivors.  What benefits were gained for the majority, in your view?

And as for killing others to spare them suffering, i assume you are talking about euthanasia, which i do support in some situations.

That's how the analogy applies, because the Nazis were right about homosexuality, but wrong in everything else. I was joking about it being too complicated before, but maybe it actually was.

No, i was just interested in how far you thought they were right.  Just right in their attitude, or also right in the action that they took regarding homosexuals?

I didn't say I represent the "majority Christian viewpoint", I said I represent the "Christian position" (at least on this issue) which is knowable to those possessing basic reading skills. The two are nominally different as many Christians ARE wrong in their view of things.

How many times have you accused me of arrogance in this thread?

"So, if behaviour alone wouldn't make me a Christian, how come behaviour is all that it takes to define a homosexual in your eyes?  Especially since being a Christian is entirely environmentally determined, whereas homosexuality has a demonstrable genetic component."

Due to the two being nominally and catagorically different. One is a behaviour. The other is an ideology. I've never conceded homosexuality has a demonstrable genetic component. That a genetic component exists may indeed be influential, but on the other hand it may have as much influence as a cup of water influences the ocean level. Especially as the behaviour can't be seen till one is environmentally exposed for some time.

We can quantify exactly how much influence the genetic component of homosexuality has, despite your feigned uncertainty on the subject, by referring to twin studies.  The monozygotic (identical) twin concurrence rate for homosexuality is around 50%, compared with around 20% for nonidentical twins, 10% for regular siblings.  That holds regardless of adoptions, different environmental influences etc.  So, the genetic influence is pretty strong, but not the end of the story.  That to me argues for a great deal more of an internal dimension to homosexuality than to Christianity, which you insist i could not achieve by simply behaving like you.  You are seriously contradicting yourself here.

"Rape" would be only in the statutory sense (and some people would probably argue against "harm" at that age as well), as I have narrowed it down to an issue of the child being willing. You just disregard whether actual consent is present or not.

Because children cannot be said to truly consent to sexual activity.  Just like they can't be said to consent to medical treatment.  There are valid and objective reasons, which you affect ignorance of, why we don't let children take independent decisions which have the potential to seriously impact their future options.

I reject the definition as I reject yours for homosexuality. But again, what basis do you have to use puberty as a differential? Why not be a 'child' till 21, or an 'adult' at 12?

Why not say the sky is green EB?  If you reject the dictionary definition of pedophilia simply on the basis that your own idiosyncratic one allows you to continue this rambling tangential attack on my beliefs, then i say good luck to you, but don't expect me to do anything other than delete those bits of your posts.  i'm not interested in supporting your delusion that you can win an argument by redefining everything in your favour.

[End Bringer]

EB,

Unfortunately what is being exposed in this debate is your laziness and willful ignorance about subjects on which you pretend great certainty.  You provide the most ideologically slanted of links to support your case, and when i dissect their biases and inaccuracies, you act as if i'm being totally unreasonable and use the fact that your "evidence" hasn't stood up to scrutiny as an excuse not to provide any more.  You completely ignore data which doesn't fit your beliefs (such as the ONS study which shows 45% of Gays cohabiting), which makes it seem almost futile to present any more, however, since i have either more patience or more evidence on my side than you do, i'll have another go.

Mostly because your definition of "scrutiny" seems to be ranting denial and dismissal. And when it comes down to it, you've shown evidence of any kind that doesn't fit your own biases are dismissed as "irrelevant". But here's more from even more websites including your current favorite.

Here is a piece that i wish you would read in detail.  It is a Christian perspective, but one which actually recognises standards of evidence in this matter.  It gives examples of several studies comparing homosexual and heterosexual behaviour (which you should surely be interested in, being so focused on the "facts"), and analyses them with the questioning attitude which i advocated to you.  It also notes, from the example of higher rates of imprisonment in African-Americans, the inadvisability of deriving the appropriate treatment of entire societal groups from the behaviour of an unrepresentative subset of them.  Please feel free to critique any aspect of the evidence it presents if you feel that it contains errors or inaccuracies.

Seems from the very start it says any amount of statistical study is all, but useless one way or another (begging the question of why you demand them in the first place). Which as some studies appear to just say 'well they're promicuous, but just not as much as heterosexuals', doesn't really help your objections all that much. Heck, I could take your tact about dates of tests and conclusion and spend a whole paragraph on how they're all taken nearly 20 years ago. Not that it matters an iota on the issue of homosexuality in itself.

i think we might be having a language problem here.  It's the same later with the word "justified".  To say that "car driving generally leads to collisions", or "homosexuality generally leads to STDs", or just "x generally leads to y" is the same as saying that "in most cases, y follows x".  That is clearly not the same thing as saying that "y follows x more often than it follows z".  Your "logical conclusion" is nothing of the sort, much as if i said that "EB makes more spelling mistakes than DB", i would not be justified in further concluding that "EB spells most words incorrectly".  That kind of leap of logic would require the sort of evidence which you have yet to produce in the matter of homosexuality.

Yes, I understand the logic is a bit different when dealing with a comparison. However saying "EB makes more spelling mistakes than DB" is also an implicit acknowledgement that incorrect spelling does occur. And problems do occur with homosexuality.

i see.  This is the new EB absurdity - barrier contraception does not alter the risk of STD transmission in any way, is that right?  i guess you should tell the CDC, who state that "Overall, the preponderance of available epidemiological studies have found that when used consistently and correctly, condoms are highly effective in preventing the sexual transmission of HIV infection and reduce the risk of other STDs".  Perhaps you would like to rephrase your statement and scavenge back a small measure of credibility.

I believe they said differently 10 years ago or so. Seems to just demand it's inconclusive pending further study. That whole 'rinse and repeat' aspect to science.

I know many public health institutions advocate "safe sex", but I think the fact STDs continue to mount despite years of advocation is more indicative. Not everyone who has "unsafe sex" gets infected, and those who use "safe sex" do. But ok, I'll accept you're right on this issue (bet you never thought I'd say that  ) about lower risk. What does that prove? By your own logic it seems abstinence would provide 100% protection, yet is no where near as advocated as "safe sex" is. And doesn't effect the issue of homosexuality much, as there is simply no getting around anatomical problems. For instance how would protection from STDs effect aneroctal trauma from fisting?

So yeah, there's just no getting around the issue of design.

While it is flattering that you look to me for confirmation, i did not actually say that.  Homosexual sex is good for all the things that heterosexual sex is good for, barring one.  That means pleasure, expressing love, pair bonding, comfort, etc.

  Which all boils down to pleasure as I said. Whether physical or emotional it's all self-gratification, which is largely what intices people to sin. Sadly for you that it's motivated partially by the same thing as heterosexuality isn't good enough. As I'm sure you would admit when pointed out pedophilia may have the exact same motive as homosexuality. Wanting to have money to see to various wants and needs may be fine, but getting it by robbing a bank is not the same as earning it through honest work.

Since you still refuse to admit that sampling in STD clinics gives unrepresentative data, i can't help feeling that this is the pot calling the kettle "gay" (since we're discussing the socially acceptable replacement for racism here).  Please go ahead and re-post any significant bits that you think i missed.

Heh. Seeing how you yourself cast any data like with survey's in doubt and post a link that openly admits statistics are sketchy at best, I think posting any "data" is useless. And when it comes down to it, I don't really need to. I have all of human history to flesh out the model of a single man and a single woman. That beats the stuffing out of any modern study you want to use.

EB, do you know what the word "justify" actually means?

2. to defend or uphold as warranted or well-grounded: Don't try to justify his rudeness.

Which of those have i done for homosexuality on the grounds that it is natural?  None of them.  i have argued against the idea that homosexuality is "unnatural" because it is a stigmatised concept, and apparently a key plank of your objections to it.  i have repeatedly explained that this is entirely separate from any argument i might make about it being a good thing.  When i have justified homosexuality, it has been on the grounds that it produces more happiness than suffering in those who have that inclination, and harms no one else in the process.  Do you see the difference?

Even if I buy your objections that you didn't really hold 'natural=good' in the beginning of this discussion (which I don't), it seems to just be the latter - justifying it being 'natural'.

i actually gave some pretty clear reasons why a particular behaviour might or might not fit the (loose) definition of being natural for humans.  You ignored them, true to form.  It seems futile, but just to go over it one more time - if a behaviour is found throughout the animal kingdom and in humans (e.g. homosexuality), then it could be considered natural for humans.  If on the other hand, a behaviour was found only in a few animal groups not including humans (e.g. hibernating for seven months of the year), then it doesn't seem a great stretch to say that it isn't natural for humans.  If you choose to call that ad hoc cherry-picking then you are entitled to your selective blindness.

Heh. And I'll go over MY responses one more time as you don't seem to understand them - if a particular behaviour is found throughout the animal kingdom just as homosexuality is, then it seems "natural" for humans as well. Are we clear here, because this is just as you say. Now what you don't seem to follow is that things like interspecies killing, infanticide, and such are EXACTLY like homosexuality - behaviour found throughout the animal kingdom. All you do is give a very weak admittance to being "natural" too, though you always add "in a certain context" as if that's suppose to be in any way meaningful. Your example of things like hibernation is a bait-and-switch, as hibernation isn't a behaviour, but a specific act of expressing the behaviour of rest. A shark may kill by biting and riping with it's teeth that would be odd for a human, but the behaviour of killing food no matter methodology is the same. And as under atheism/evolution humans are no different than any other animal on the planet it is certainly an ad hoc to demand humans refrain from the "natural" behaviour found in all other animals.

Why assume that humans have compassion, if you're going to apply such a high standard of proof to the matter?  Because they tell us that they do?  Sure, there's no reason why they should lie about such a thing is there.  The bottom line is that we can never know the mind of another creature, human or animal, but it is reasonable to infer from repeated unequivocal examples of selfless behaviour.  And sure, the chimp choosing not to pull the handle might just be distressed by the expression of pain by the other chimp, but what is that except compassion?  Again, if you choose to close your eyes and ears about this, then there's nothing i can say to change your mind.

If it's distressed out of ignorance on not figuring out there's no personal danger, then it's distressed out of it's own personal survival, not over the other's pain. That's not compassion at all. Like I said we can't know for a fact with animals, so it can't be stated as a fact. That the behviour is selfless doesn't necessitate that their inner motives are selfless (yet would still be evidence against evolution either way). With humans, we have the benefit of observation, communication, and more significantly since we know what we ourselves feel have first-person knowledge as evidence.

Very well done, shame you only apply your basic reading skills sporadically.  Saying that most moral calculations are based on considerations of wellbeing vs suffering is not quite the same thing as saying that i know what goes on in everyone's minds.  As i said above, i can't know for certain what goes on in other peoples minds, anymore than you can, but i can infer from studies of human (and ape) behaviour as to what the common shared motivating factors are.

Which is tantamount to saying you know what goes on in everyone's mind concerning how people (and now animals) make moral calculations. Of course I don't agree morality is so much a 'mental' thing at all as much as a 'soulish' thing.

No one must follow any moral code.  Why do you keep repeating such idiotic statements?  Just because you pretend that people who don't follow your moral code will be punished after they die does not mean that anyone else is obligated to agree with you.  If i linked my moral code into the Hindu idea of Karma and reincarnation, so that those who led a life which increased the general wellbeing of those around them would be rewarded in their next life, would you say that i had overcome the problem of people not being compelled to comply with my code?  Because that is all that you are doing.

If no one 'must' according to you, then there is no basis and thus no objective moral standard. Frankly the same problem exists for the Hindu method on just what their morality is grounded on as well. Objective morality by it's very nature has an obligation to it. Your criticism of Christianity seems to miss the fact that 'agreement' doesn't enter into it, as the entire system hinges on obligatory consequences for both right and wrong. And that is why objective morality is evidence for basic theism as obligation is held between two personal beings; with only God being able to hold obligation over the entire human race. If you deny no obligation exists, then you deny objective morality. As such your standard of 'wellbeing vs suffering' simply comes down to your subjective opinion that no one is obligated to follow.

No one must follow your moral code.  i certainly don't, and i feel pretty ok about it.

For now.

Not true.  Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) can identify which areas of the brain show activity during happy or sad moods, or when someone is in pain.  Granted it is not feasible to shove people into an fMRI scanner to measure the precise amount of happiness they are feeling at a particular moment (their reaction to being kidnapped and strapped to a table would probably dampen their mood in any case), but the fact is that brain states, which are what happiness and suffering ultimately reduce to, are measurable, quantifiable and objective.  Knowing that, we can find more practical ways to quantify them - i do not consider it controversial, for example, to say that a child which has a leg blown off will suffer enormously, and that is information i can use in balancing the case for and against the use of landmines by military forces.  It isn't necessary for me to prove this by putting an amputee 10yr old into an fMRI scanner.

No. That you can observe brain waves is no more quantifiable, measurable, or objective then determineing sadness by seeing someone cry and measureing the volume of tears. Frankly the studies themselves show emotions are only a first-person knowledge that must be revealed for scientists to make any sense of what is being observed. Made even further clear by issues of how people can sometimes enjoy experiencing pain and such. Yours is just a materialistic outlook, that reduces everyone to robots. A bit contradicting to your earlier statements avoiding the conclusion of 'genetics=destiny'.

Yes.  But, and i can't stress how important this is, those consequences are imaginary.  At best, they are unproven, and as such cannot be entered into a debate as reasons why your moral code is better than mine.

And I can't stress how important this is - those consequences are very real and apply to all. Though I never said they entered into mine being 'better' than yours. Just that it shows yours is merely opinionated despite your claims of objectivity.

  Heh, i can see that the idea of morality without the threat of a smack on the leg from the invisible sky-daddy if you're naughty is genuinely troubling you.  Does the idea of rules and penalties enforced by society ring any bells?  i know it's not perfect, but it's the only reliable system we've got.

Another dodge. You truly can't bring yourself to look at the gaping hole in your beliefs, can you? Your appeal to societal rules is utterly laughable not only due to how so many societies differ and change within themselves, but can't even hold everyone accountable by your own admittance. Which is the point!

How can something be "explicit" without once being mentioned?    Are we having a language problem again?

Take basic reading classes DB -...to play the whore in her father's house... - or as I went to the trouble of bolding it previously, perhaps get your eyesight checked.

 

Regardless of that, you have no basis to say how the hypothetical woman in this case lost her viriginity (or, more accurately, failed to bleed on her wedding night, since the hymen can be broken in a variety of non-sexual ways).  Your denials here are entirely empty, since you cannot argue that a woman who had been raped, or who had failed to bleed for some other non-sinful reason, would have been treated mercifully in this situation - the only criteria they used to establish the death sentence was a lack of bloody sheets.  Still, close your eyes and ears.

Heh. I have an explicitly stated case as shown above. Again. If anyone doesn't have any basis to cry rape or whatever wild speculation, it's you. Closed eyes and ears indeed. It really just confirms what I said about you having no interest in learning what is actually being said so you can hold on to your prejudices.

Wiping out a minority (let's take the Rwandan genocide as an example) invariably causes an enormous amount of suffering - suffering which continues for the survivors.  What benefits were gained for the majority, in your view?

If you didn't abandon your standard before, there's no question you do here. If your whole quip is all about "balance" then by definition if a majority's wellbeing is benefited by the suffering of a comparable minority then the "balance" inherently tips in favor to the majority. I could say it's as simple a benefit as more resources available to the majority (food, services, etc.). As YOU are the one claiming it's all quantifiable, then your claims of "enormous amount of suffering" are just weak protests to avoid seeing how your own beliefs can be prone to a bit of 'barbarism' itself.

And as for killing others to spare them suffering, i assume you are talking about euthanasia, which i do support in some situations.

And yet, contradictingly not where clearer-cut genocide is concerned. Of course euthanize 100 a day, and at the end of a year you do have a minority that's been genocide.

No, i was just interested in how far you thought they were right.  Just right in their attitude, or also right in the action that they took regarding homosexuals?

I think the fact that despite your portrayal of people who oppose homosexuality, you can't offer ONE instance where I genuinely say 'they should be burned at the stake' or such, would speak to that issue. Seriously, I dare you to try and find such an instance.

How many times have you accused me of arrogance in this thread?

Several. And your continued dithering on this issue hasn't changed my mind. Because I think your use of any source but the one that matters, indicates you know I'm right. The Bible's clear in it's attitude regarding homosexuality (and other manners of lust). To say otherwise, is to argue that 'black' is 'white'.

We can quantify exactly how much influence the genetic component of homosexuality has, despite your feigned uncertainty on the subject, by referring to twin studies.  The monozygotic (identical) twin concurrence rate for homosexuality is around 50%, compared with around 20% for nonidentical twins, 10% for regular siblings.  That holds regardless of adoptions, different environmental influences etc.  So, the genetic influence is pretty strong, but not the end of the story.  That to me argues for a great deal more of an internal dimension to homosexuality than to Christianity, which you insist i could not achieve by simply behaving like you.  You are seriously contradicting yourself here.

*snort* Not at all. As there are many differing environmental factors for homosexuality as well, so it's not that clear-cut a case as you make either. But as I already said regardless of just how much the genteic influence is the behaviour is controllable as we both agree. And that's the only thing that matters, just as being born ill-tempered doesn't mean one can simply lash out and commit murder or as you put it being 'born' with pedophilia tendencies let's one act upon them. It all boils down to choice. And in that case, it DOES have a commonality with being a Christian. 

Because children cannot be said to truly consent to sexual activity.  Just like they can't be said to consent to medical treatment.  There are valid and objective reasons, which you affect ignorance of, why we don't let children take independent decisions which have the potential to seriously impact their future options.

No True Scottsman. I can concede medical treatment would go over children's head (and many adults for that matter), though it does bring up an issue on why consent is needed if it's all done for their 'wellbeing'. But for sex, it's not that complicated to understand (especially as one get's older but not at the 'adult' line). Your use of 'harm' in pedophilia can be said to be due to dogmatic prejudices as the physical act and motives are all the exact same as homosexuality. You dismiss any 'harm' I sight regarding homosexuality as imaginitive, and people can do the same to you in regards to pedophilia. So it truly is a case of you being inconsist, if not outright hypocritical.

Why not say the sky is green EB?  If you reject the dictionary definition of pedophilia simply on the basis that your own idiosyncratic one allows you to continue this rambling tangential attack on my beliefs, then i say good luck to you, but don't expect me to do anything other than delete those bits of your posts.  i'm not interested in supporting your delusion that you can win an argument by redefining everything in your favour.

Dodge. You gave YOUR definition on such things, and I gave MINE. That I view pedophila and homosexuality largely as I do theft, lying, and murder, would just behoove me to be consistent and thus approach them accordingly. None of which has any baring on your evasion of why the standard is at one age and not another. Or why even at age, and not ability to comprehend or perform a task and such.

[Dannyboy]

EB,

It seems clear that you are monumentally unconcerned about the quality of "evidence" you give in support of your paranoid homosexual demonology - your only criteria of inclusion is whether or not it backs up your beliefs.  The first new link you provided (here) starts out by referencing a whole bunch of hyperbolic claims to the catholiceducation.org article which, as i have already demonstrated, contains significant amounts of misleading information.  You understand that this is not just a competition to see who can post the most links, right?  The quality of the links has some bearing on the credibility of your argument, so your continued appeals to these kind of hyper-partisan fact-phobic screeds is taking you into minus figures.  You'll perhaps notice that i have avoided providing any "Pink Pride"-type links, because i personally prefer my evidence untainted by ideology.

The second link you provided is from the Family Research Council.  Let's pass over the fact that FRC is a rabidly-biased Christian Nationalist organisation with links to white supremacists (what are the odds that such an organisation might impartially examine the evidence and publically state that gay people are not as bad as they thought?), and just look at the first few claims that this article makes in support of its thesis:

"The research ... indicates that male homosexual relationships last only a fraction of the length of most marriages"

Do i need to point out to you the problem with this kind of comparison?  Apparently i do.  Comparing all male homosexual relationships (which in most parts of the world cannot include anything resembling marriage) with heterosexual marriages is not a like-for-like comparison.  Marriages are (hopefully) relationships which have already stood the test of time, and in which the two people involved have made a longterm commitment to each other, so most casual heterosexual relationships are automatically excluded.  Comparing that level of relationship with all homosexual relationships, no matter how casual, is meaningless.  The fact that the FRC make such a comparison indicates that, like you, they are not interested in the facts as much as they are in justifying their prejudices.

On promiscuity within relationships they are equally misleading, comparing studies of fidelity within marriage to studies of fidelity within homosexual relationships in general.  Added to that, the studies that they use to denigrate the level of homosexual infidelity suffer from the same problems of unrepresentative samples generalised to the entire community which i have already highlighted.  The first one they use is a study of newly-infected HIV positive gay men (do you still not understand that if i did a study on HIV positive heterosexuals i would be wrong to generalise their likely very high average levels of risky health behaviours to the entire heterosexual community?).

The authors of the second reference used by the FRC themselves admitted that their study was not generalisable to the wider homosexual community, as their samples were mostly taken in places where homosexual men go for casual sex: "It should be pointed out that reaching any consensus about the number of homosexual men or women exhibiting this or that characteristic is not the aim of the present study. The non-representative nature of other investigators' sample as well as our own precludes any generalization about the incidence of a particular phenomenon even to persons living in the locale where the interviews were conducted, much less to homosexuals in general. … We cannot stress too much that ours is not a representative sample." - Bell & Weinberg, "Homosexualities: A Study of Diversity Among Men and Women. (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1978).

The third study they reference is not a bad attempt to quantify male homosexual behaviour, but again its authors state that "There is no way of enumerating the population of homosexually active men. Participants were necessarily volunteers. Recruitment sources included sections of the organised gay community (radio, venues, gyms, businesses, publications); places of sexual contact within, outside, and marginal to organised gay communities (gay brothels, sex shops, beats, saunas); health centres frequented by gay men; and pornography outlets.".  Honest readers of such a study would recognise the limitations of this kind of methodology, and see that a sample collected in this way is probably not representative of the gay community as a whole.  Dishonest readers, for example the Family Research Council, would prioritise the ideological crutch obtainable by out-of-context quote-mining over considerations of academic integrity.

Do i really need to go on with this?  You are a total hypocrite for accusing me of dismissing any evidence which doesn't fit my biases as irrelevant, when you and the writers who you uncritically reference are masters at ignoring the true scope of the studies you quote while generalising them to the whole homosexual community.  By contrast, i actually read the studies referenced and actually think about their applicability to the argument.  You continue to show yourself to be entirely driven by the conclusions inherited from your fundamentalist ideology rather than any objective search for truth, and all the while slandering me as being guilty of your most obvious faults.  As i said, a hypocrite.

I know many public health institutions advocate "safe sex", but I think the fact STDs continue to mount despite years of advocation is more indicative.

Not when such efforts have been diluted by the Bush Administration's enthusiasm for "Abstinence Only" programs, which have been demonstrated to increase the incidence of unprotected sex among participants.  So much for faith-based public policy.

But ok, I'll accept you're right on this issue (bet you never thought I'd say that  ) about lower risk. What does that prove? By your own logic it seems abstinence would provide 100% protection, yet is no where near as advocated as "safe sex" is.

Abstinence would provide total protection from STDs, just as 100% careful driving would be a failsafe way to avoid the injuries caused by road traffic accidents.  However, in the real world i think we can both agree that it makes sense to encourage seatbelt use, and not just trust that everyone will drive perfectly.

And doesn't effect the issue of homosexuality much, as there is simply no getting around anatomical problems. For instance how would protection from STDs effect aneroctal trauma from fisting?

It wouldn't.  But unless you can demonstrate that such risky sexual behaviour is solely characteristic of homosexuality, then it is not relevant to a discussion of the risks of homosexuality.

We can both agree that high-risk sexual behaviours, especially in conjunction with promiscuity, are a bad idea.  That there is a subset of the homosexual community which disproportionally engage in such behaviour is something that i do not deny, but i do not see that as a reason to condemn homosexuality as a whole, especially when the same could be said about almost any other community.

Even if I buy your objections that you didn't really hold 'natural=good' in the beginning of this discussion (which I don't), it seems to just be the latter - justifying it being 'natural'.

Your personal disbelief (when backed up by nothing else) is not a compelling argument.  And "justifying it as being natural" makes no sense if "natural" is value neutral, as i have repeatedly affirmed that it is.

I'll go over MY responses one more time as you don't seem to understand them - if a particular behaviour is found throughout the animal kingdom just as homosexuality is, then it seems "natural" for humans as well. Are we clear here, because this is just as you say. Now what you don't seem to follow is that things like interspecies killing, infanticide, and such are EXACTLY like homosexuality - behaviour found throughout the animal kingdom.

You suggest that this illustrates an inconsistency on my part.  Actually, i would never argue against inter-species killing or infanticide on the grounds that they are "unnatural", so i am being entirely consistent with my statements about homosexuality.  i have not argued that homosexuality is good because it is natural, only that it makes little sense to condemn it as "unnatural" when it exists so widely in the animal kingdom.

And as under atheism/evolution humans are no different than any other animal on the planet it is certainly an ad hoc to demand humans refrain from the "natural" behaviour found in all other animals.

Humans may be another kind of animal, but that doesn't imply that we are "no different" from any other animal.  Your fondness for this kind of blanket denial of the possibility of any diversity within categories is deeply simplistic, and somewhat at odds with your statements about the varied beliefs falling under the heading of "Christianity" (yours, needless to say, being the only correct ones).

Like I said we can't know for a fact with animals, so it can't be stated as a fact. That the behviour is selfless doesn't necessitate that their inner motives are selfless (yet would still be evidence against evolution either way). With humans, we have the benefit of observation, communication, and more significantly since we know what we ourselves feel have first-person knowledge as evidence.

Well if we can't know for a fact whether some animals feel compassion then you cannot state (as you did in a previous post) that human beings are the only creatures to have that emotion.  There seems to be just as much hard evidence for ape compassion as there is for humans, since you clearly place a low value on first-person testimony about internal mental states (when it comes to sexuality at least).  And i actually agree with you - the way that humans describe (or even experience) their own mental states is not necessarily a good guide to the truth of the matter.  Split brain experiments have shown how good we are at retrospectively (and apparently unconsciously) concocting explanations for actions which we actually performed without conscious control.  Our post hoc rationalisations of our "moral" behaviours may have little to do with our genuine subconscious motivations.

I don't agree morality is so much a 'mental' thing at all as much as a 'soulish' thing.

Unless the soul is sensitive to magnetic currents (and it is difficult to see why that would be the case), then you are once again flying in the face of the available evidence.  Morality, like every other facet of our identity, can be disrupted or altered at the level of the brain.  The soul is a vehicle of wish-fulfillment with no evidence supporting its existence.

If no one 'must' according to you, then there is no basis and thus no objective moral standard. Frankly the same problem exists for the Hindu method on just what their morality is grounded on as well. Objective morality by it's very nature has an obligation to it.

You are just inventing standards now.  i will grant you that moral statements by their nature contain an element of "should" or "ought", but not "must".  The fact that Christianity posits postmortem consequences to bad behaviour is not evidence in favour of its truthfulness (i could make up something very similar without materially affecting the quality of my moral reasoning).  And on what basis do you reject the Hindu version of postmortem consequences?  Entirely circular reasoning.  Objective morality as you envisage it is a fantasy, and an even bigger fantasy if you think it can be reliably derived from the Bible (a book which gets one of the easiest moral problems - slavery - totally wrong).

Yours is just a materialistic outlook, that reduces everyone to robots.

Taking issue with a position because you don't like where it leads is hardly the definition of objectivity.  i might wish that the person i am was more than simply the product of a brain and body that will eventually die and decompose, extinguishing me entirely, but my wishes do not affect the available evidence.  Since there is no part of my identity which cannot be disrupted at the level of the brain, i can reach no other conclusion without deceiving myself.  "Robot" is your choice of words, but if all primates are "robots" by your definition, then i am happy to be one.

You truly can't bring yourself to look at the gaping hole in your beliefs, can you? Your appeal to societal rules is utterly laughable not only due to how so many societies differ and change within themselves, but can't even hold everyone accountable by your own admittance. Which is the point!

Again, your desire for a total system of morality independent of human wellbeing or suffering is beside the point.  We are all there is, and our societal rules are collective efforts to codify our internal moral drives.  Sometimes we get them badly wrong, producing societies (like Afghanistan under the Taliban) which demonstrably increase the amount of suffering of their citizens.  The point is, that from a perspective of balancing wellbeing and suffering, the Taliban's approach to morality (which has much in common with yours, by the way) can objectively be said to be wrong.

Take basic reading classes DB -...to play the whore in her father's house... - or as I went to the trouble of bolding it previously, perhaps get your eyesight checked.

Again, you are taking something from the text which is not there.  The suggestion that she has "played the whore in her father's house" is the conclusion derived from the lack of evidence of her virginity on her wedding night.  It is not demonstrated by any other evidence, so your suggestion that this proves that execution by stoning was the moral thing to do is laughable.  Did i mention how much you have in common with the Taliban?

If your whole quip is all about "balance" then by definition if a majority's wellbeing is benefited by the suffering of a comparable minority then the "balance" inherently tips in favor to the majority. I could say it's as simple a benefit as more resources available to the majority (food, services, etc.). As YOU are the one claiming it's all quantifiable, then your claims of "enormous amount of suffering" are just weak protests to avoid seeing how your own beliefs can be prone to a bit of 'barbarism' itself.

   If you are so simplistic as to suggest that there is no difference in degree between some states of happiness or suffering, then i think you need to get out more.  On the suffering side, the convention against torture would be useful reading for you, the Bush Administration's caveat of pain "equating to organ failure" would be a step up from what that allows, and i think most people would agree that death by machete would be right up there at the top of the list of things they would rather not happen to them.  No amount of mild pleasure for the majority at not having to wait in line at the Post Office anymore is likely to outweigh that.  Feel free to continue to misunderstand this, but i'd advise against the pretence that this constitutes any kind of serious challenge to my position.

I think the fact that despite your portrayal of people who oppose homosexuality, you can't offer ONE instance where I genuinely say 'they should be burned at the stake' or such, would speak to that issue. Seriously, I dare you to try and find such an instance.

Easy tiger.  You've been very free with Nazi comparisons in previous discussions, so it would be bad form to get too steamed up when they are directed back at you.  So what is the solution to the problem of homosexuality in your ideal society (a theocracy, as i recall)?  What would the penalty be?

I already said regardless of just how much the genteic influence is the behaviour is controllable as we both agree. And that's the only thing that matters, just as being born ill-tempered doesn't mean one can simply lash out and commit murder or as you put it being 'born' with pedophilia tendencies let's one act upon them. It all boils down to choice.

Of course the behaviour is controllable, that is not the issue.  The point is that the behaviour is not the whole story, as you pretend.  Homosexuality is a non-volitional partly genetically determined state of being attracted to people of the same sex, and while gay people do not have to act upon their innate tendencies, the real question is, why shouldn't they?  i presume that you find the issue of homosexuality as a state theologically difficult, which is why you keep dodging the issue.  Your position that homosexuality is "just a behaviour" whereas Christianity is so much more than that is ridiculous.

I can concede medical treatment would go over children's head (and many adults for that matter), though it does bring up an issue on why consent is needed if it's all done for their 'wellbeing'.

Consent is not always needed, especially in emergency situations.  Parents in general consent for their children, but in cases where parents refuse to provide consent for lifesaving treatment they will generally find themselves overruled on the exact grounds of the child's wellbeing.

But for sex, it's not that complicated to understand (especially as one get's older but not at the 'adult' line). Your use of 'harm' in pedophilia can be said to be due to dogmatic prejudices as the physical act and motives are all the exact same as homosexuality. You dismiss any 'harm' I sight regarding homosexuality as imaginitive, and people can do the same to you in regards to pedophilia. So it truly is a case of you being inconsist, if not outright hypocritical.

Pedophilia is the state of being sexually attracted to prepubescent children.  This is not a case of my definition versus your definition - this is what the word means.  If you are talking instead about sexual activity between minors and adults, of which behaviour stemming from pedophilia would be a small subset, then why don't you say so?  As usual, the issue is far more complicated than you pretend in your relentless efforts to show me to be inconsistent.

The fact that the "physical act and motives" are the same whether someone is homosexual, heterosexual or a pedophile is strictly irrelevant.  The important point, which makes the difference between sex and rape, is the consent of both parties.  Maybe a fourteen year old can be mature enough to give informed consent to the act of sex, and maybe not.  Maybe some twenty year olds are not really mature enough, but from a public policy point of view we have to draw the line somewhere.  Now is that clear enough, or should i get a translator who speaks fluent Moron?

[Dannyboy]

That last line is a favourite quote of mine from Scrubs - not intended to be quite as harsh as it sounds.  i'm away for about a week now by the way, so take your time composing a cutting reply.

[End Bringer]

EB,

It seems clear that you are monumentally unconcerned about the quality of "evidence" you give in support of your paranoid homosexual demonology - your only criteria of inclusion is whether or not it backs up your beliefs.  The first new link you provided (here) starts out by referencing a whole bunch of hyperbolic claims to the catholiceducation.org article which, as i have already demonstrated, contains significant amounts of misleading information.  You understand that this is not just a competition to see who can post the most links, right?  The quality of the links has some bearing on the credibility of your argument, so your continued appeals to these kind of hyper-partisan fact-phobic screeds is taking you into minus figures.  You'll perhaps notice that i have avoided providing any "Pink Pride"-type links, because i personally prefer my evidence untainted by ideology.

If we're talking about "evidence" at all DB, you've shown just as little concern for any that doesn't support your own liberally outdated 'feels-good-do-it' attitude. You decry the methodology as 'misleading', but acknowledged that your own prefered means of investigation don't necessarily show people the truth either, and rather just cry 'bias' every chance you get. And what you DO acknoweldge as fact you flippantly dismiss making 'evidence' all but irrelevant.

"The research ... indicates that male homosexual relationships last only a fraction of the length of most marriages"

Do i need to point out to you the problem with this kind of comparison?  Apparently i do.  Comparing all male homosexual relationships (which in most parts of the world cannot include anything resembling marriage) with heterosexual marriages is not a like-for-like comparison.  Marriages are (hopefully) relationships which have already stood the test of time, and in which the two people involved have made a longterm commitment to each other, so most casual heterosexual relationships are automatically excluded.  Comparing that level of relationship with all homosexual relationships, no matter how casual, is meaningless.  The fact that the FRC make such a comparison indicates that, like you, they are not interested in the facts as much as they are in justifying their prejudices.

Except, the position doesn't rest on the observable. It just helps.

And you seemed to miss the fact that the study was directly in response to a Time's news article. But the comparison is not as meaningless as you think, given divorce rates show marriages aren't always as lasting. And unlike casual relationships, can be publicly recorded. Since there is nothing preventing homosexuals from making a long-term commitment themselves regardless if society recognizes it as "marriage", the comparison isn't totally without merit as you imply, especially when it's not 'heterosexuality' in general being advocated, but a monogomas heterosexual relationship expressed through marriage that IS.

But I could concede that may be more indicative to a problem with society advocating 'sex, sex, sex, sex,' 24/7 than necessarily homosexuality specificly even if it's homosexual-supporting organizations that help advocate it.

On promiscuity within relationships they are equally misleading, comparing studies of fidelity within marriage to studies of fidelity within homosexual relationships in general.  Added to that, the studies that they use to denigrate the level of homosexual infidelity suffer from the same problems of unrepresentative samples generalised to the entire community which i have already highlighted.  The first one they use is a study of newly-infected HIV positive gay men (do you still not understand that if i did a study on HIV positive heterosexuals i would be wrong to generalise their likely very high average levels of risky health behaviours to the entire heterosexual community?).

Same old denial. The thing you don't seem to understand in the comparison DB, is that studying STDs DOES give grounds to generalize the behaviour be it homosexual or heterosexual. I've made it very clear that I have no qualms about using the same info to decry heterosexuality outside it's appropriate context. So your continued usage of comparing the two isn't going to work. Frankly you show the same behaviour as you've explicitly said your stance on promiscuity specificly is the same. You just deny homosexuals aren't as singularly promiscuous and reject problems with homosexuality in itself.

The authors of the second reference used by the FRC themselves admitted that their study was not generalisable to the wider homosexual community, as their samples were mostly taken in places where homosexual men go for casual sex: "It should be pointed out that reaching any consensus about the number of homosexual men or women exhibiting this or that characteristic is not the aim of the present study. The non-representative nature of other investigators' sample as well as our own precludes any generalization about the incidence of a particular phenomenon even to persons living in the locale where the interviews were conducted, much less to homosexuals in general. … We cannot stress too much that ours is not a representative sample." - Bell & Weinberg, "Homosexualities: A Study of Diversity Among Men and Women. (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1978).

And perhaps there's isn't in isolation.

The third study they reference is not a bad attempt to quantify male homosexual behaviour, but again its authors state that "There is no way of enumerating the population of homosexually active men. Participants were necessarily volunteers. Recruitment sources included sections of the organised gay community (radio, venues, gyms, businesses, publications); places of sexual contact within, outside, and marginal to organised gay communities (gay brothels, sex shops, beats, saunas); health centres frequented by gay men; and pornography outlets.".  Honest readers of such a study would recognise the limitations of this kind of methodology, and see that a sample collected in this way is probably not representative of the gay community as a whole.  Dishonest readers, for example the Family Research Council, would prioritise the ideological crutch obtainable by out-of-context quote-mining over considerations of academic integrity.

And perhaps that were true again when taken in isolation. But when studies in isolation get added up it paints a wider picture. But, again, I don't think any amount of study or evidence that goes against your own prejudices would matter. As it would just be dismissed as "not representitive" in favor of your own outlook. Frankly given your ideology and rationlizations I wonder how your even able to decry promiscuity itself.

Do i really need to go on with this?  You are a total hypocrite for accusing me of dismissing any evidence which doesn't fit my biases as irrelevant, when you and the writers who you uncritically reference are masters at ignoring the true scope of the studies you quote while generalising them to the whole homosexual community.  By contrast, i actually read the studies referenced and actually think about their applicability to the argument.  You continue to show yourself to be entirely driven by the conclusions inherited from your fundamentalist ideology rather than any objective search for truth, and all the while slandering me as being guilty of your most obvious faults.  As i said, a hypocrite.

You seem to be under some false impression my outlook hangs on such studies. It doesn't. While they certainly help to show people can't do willy-nilly with sexual behaviour and show observable consequences when one tries (no matter if it's generalized behaviour or not), it's ultimately irrelevant to the issue.

Not when such efforts have been diluted by the Bush Administration's enthusiasm for "Abstinence Only" programs, which have been demonstrated to increase the incidence of unprotected sex among participants.  So much for faith-based public policy.

Now here is a clear case of hypocrisy. By your own reasoning (and just common sense) if sexual behaviour contains risk than restriction of such behaviour would seem to remove risk completely. But that's never what gets advocated. And I wouldn't decry such efforts when they're done in society's that advocate 'do it like they do in Discovery channel' in so many aspects of the culture.

Abstinence would provide total protection from STDs, just as 100% careful driving would be a failsafe way to avoid the injuries caused by road traffic accidents.  However, in the real world i think we can both agree that it makes sense to encourage seatbelt use, and not just trust that everyone will drive perfectly

Ha! This comming from a guy who promotes gun restriction/removal. Sadly in this analogy, I'm the one promoting usage safely and in correct accordance to road laws. You may promote seat belts, but you advocate ignoring speed signs and direction of traffic and just hope that nothing will happen.

It wouldn't.  But unless you can demonstrate that such risky sexual behaviour is solely characteristic of homosexuality, then it is not relevant to a discussion of the risks of homosexuality.

*snort* I don't need to show if the behaviour is solely characteristic of homosexuality if I'm only promoting a specific context in expression of sexual behaviour. And what do you know, I am! Showing again the self-evident anatomical design of sex and that problems arise when ignoring that context.

We can both agree that high-risk sexual behaviours, especially in conjunction with promiscuity, are a bad idea.  That there is a subset of the homosexual community which disproportionally engage in such behaviour is something that i do not deny, but i do not see that as a reason to condemn homosexuality as a whole, especially when the same could be said about almost any other community.

Well again, given your reasoning I don't know what you have to decry even promiscuity as you rationalize everything else away. Perhaps that just crosses the line from being simply irrational and being completely insane. And of course you miss the fact that what I'm advocating is a very specific behaviour which does condemn heterosexuals as equally as homosexuals. For homosexuality as a whole I have other arguments and reasoning.

Your personal disbelief (when backed up by nothing else) is not a compelling argument.  And "justifying it as being natural" makes no sense if "natural" is value neutral, as i have repeatedly affirmed that it is.

And I continue to explain the disbelief is backed up by the vehemence and attitude you showed in making (initializing really) the argument. That seems to constitute 'something', because as I said if you really thought it was "value neutral" before I called on your reasoning with the same argument of animal behaviour used on every homosexual supporter who advocates homosexuality as "natural" (and do believe it has value), you wouldn't have made it into the issue you did.

You suggest that this illustrates an inconsistency on my part.  Actually, i would never argue against inter-species killing or infanticide on the grounds that they are "unnatural", so i am being entirely consistent with my statements about homosexuality.  i have not argued that homosexuality is good because it is natural, only that it makes little sense to condemn it as "unnatural" when it exists so widely in the animal kingdom.

Again we can look back and see that you actually did try when arguing behaviour being natural for a goose isn't natural for humans. You wouldn't have made such an argument for any other reason. You just changed gears in your argument when I pointed out how you basicly destroyed your own advocacy for homosexuality being "natural" as well. Now you try to make it more into specific behaviours regarding non-primate species. But as I showed earlier in the discussion "natural" and "unnatural" aren't as loosely defined or as value neutral when dealing with a Creationistic or ID context.

And it's your very denial about what is 'natural doesn't equal good' that's the inconsistency. Since there is no objective standard for 'good' under atheism, being 'natural' would seem to fit a loosely defined 'good' under an evolutionary standard. All you have to condemn inter-species killing and such is a subjective opinion rather than the beliefs you adhere.

Humans may be another kind of animal, but that doesn't imply that we are "no different" from any other animal.  Your fondness for this kind of blanket denial of the possibility of any diversity within categories is deeply simplistic, and somewhat at odds with your statements about the varied beliefs falling under the heading of "Christianity" (yours, needless to say, being the only correct ones).

If humans are just another kind of animal then humans are inherently "no different" in any way that's meaningful. You can't have it both ways DB. There comes a point where "diversity" reaches the point of becoming "inconsistency". A concept I know you have trouble with.

Well if we can't know for a fact whether some animals feel compassion then you cannot state (as you did in a previous post) that human beings are the only creatures to have that emotion.

*shrug* The only creatures we know to have that emotion then.

Unless the soul is sensitive to magnetic currents (and it is difficult to see why that would be the case), then you are once again flying in the face of the available evidence.  Morality, like every other facet of our identity, can be disrupted or altered at the level of the brain.  The soul is a vehicle of wish-fulfillment with no evidence supporting its existence.

Or the soul is indeed susceptible to physical influence due to having a link with the physical body. No less suprising given it's always been advocated death is an influence on the soul. Actually I find your denouncement of rape to be in a predicament if you are so keen to dismiss the existance of the soul. Rape and consenual sex are physically the same thing. The only factor being free-will which is at it's bottom immaterial. So how do you rationalize that violating free-will is harmful when physical acts are the same no matter if consent is given or not? Or could you be the one ignoring evidence and trying to rationalize it to fit your ideology?

You are just inventing standards now.  i will grant you that moral statements by their nature contain an element of "should" or "ought", but not "must".  The fact that Christianity posits postmortem consequences to bad behaviour is not evidence in favour of its truthfulness (i could make up something very similar without materially affecting the quality of my moral reasoning).  And on what basis do you reject the Hindu version of postmortem consequences?  Entirely circular reasoning.  Objective morality as you envisage it is a fantasy, and an even bigger fantasy if you think it can be reliably derived from the Bible (a book which gets one of the easiest moral problems - slavery - totally wrong).

It's that very nature of "should" and "ought" that gives the obligation of "must". Of course the crutch of your criticism is that Christianity bases it's truthfulness on a postmortem consequence. Tell me DB, have I advocated it's the basis of truthfulness? And all you have is denial and willful ignorance.

And further inconsistency as shown here.

Again, your desire for a total system of morality independent of human wellbeing or suffering is beside the point.  We are all there is, and our societal rules are collective efforts to codify our internal moral drives.  Sometimes we get them badly wrong, producing societies (like Afghanistan under the Taliban) which demonstrably increase the amount of suffering of their citizens.  The point is, that from a perspective of balancing wellbeing and suffering, the Taliban's approach to morality (which has much in common with yours, by the way) can objectively be said to be wrong.

Dogmaticly driven assertions. There is no standard of "right" and "wrong" under atheism (which is why most societies where founded with other ideological beliefs). So to decry anything (or at least what doesn't happen to you personally), is ultimately inconsistent. Nor does personal suffering or wellbeing matter an iota in a billion year old universe that doesn't care about our existence. Yours is just self-delusion to hide from the depressive bleakness of life inherent to your beliefs.

Again, you are taking something from the text which is not there.  The suggestion that she has "played the whore in her father's house" is the conclusion derived from the lack of evidence of her virginity on her wedding night.  It is not demonstrated by any other evidence, so your suggestion that this proves that execution by stoning was the moral thing to do is laughable.  Did i mention how much you have in common with the Taliban?

As opposed to you taking nothing from the text that rape is involved as a fact or that in a closed-knit society people would not know if a woman was raped? And would that commonality with the Taliban extend to Stalin's very atheistic/evolutionary regime of oppresion and gulags?

  If you are so simplistic as to suggest that there is no difference in degree between some states of happiness or suffering, then i think you need to get out more.  On the suffering side, the convention against torture would be useful reading for you, the Bush Administration's caveat of pain "equating to organ failure" would be a step up from what that allows, and i think most people would agree that death by machete would be right up there at the top of the list of things they would rather not happen to them.  No amount of mild pleasure for the majority at not having to wait in line at the Post Office anymore is likely to outweigh that.  Feel free to continue to misunderstand this, but i'd advise against the pretence that this constitutes any kind of serious challenge to my position.

Apparently all you have is more denial, inconsistency, and rationalization. YOU are the one advocating it's all quantifiable, remember? We're all just brains and body parts, right? Don't try to hide behind "degree in some states" just because you are taking issue with a position because you don't like where it leads when it's your own position. Doesn't matter if the "pleasure" that comes from not having to wait in line of at the Post Office anymore measures only '2' and the pain of a matchete measures '10'. If it's only one guy who dies while compared to 10 people at the post office, then such an act would seem to fit perfectly within your standard of balance. But it just confirms further that your so-called 'objective standrad' is anything but. It all comes down to 'What DB is comfortable with.'

Easy tiger.  You've been very free with Nazi comparisons in previous discussions, so it would be bad form to get too steamed up when they are directed back at you.  So what is the solution to the problem of homosexuality in your ideal society (a theocracy, as i recall)?  What would the penalty be?

Couldn't find one, could you?

Of course the behaviour is controllable, that is not the issue.  The point is that the behaviour is not the whole story, as you pretend.  Homosexuality is a non-volitional partly genetically determined state of being attracted to people of the same sex, and while gay people do not have to act upon their innate tendencies, the real question is, why shouldn't they?  i presume that you find the issue of homosexuality as a state theologically difficult, which is why you keep dodging the issue.  Your position that homosexuality is "just a behaviour" whereas Christianity is so much more than that is ridiculous.

Hmmm, controllable by what? Can't be the brain or body, because those are the one's inducing one to behave in such a way? Now where else does that leave in your materalistic outlook?

And I have been very clear in my reasoning on why they shouldn't - It's wrong and violates the natural design of sexual behaviour, and will cause harm to others and themselves as a consequence. You simply don't agree any harm is caused or will come. But that same denial can be easily reflected by those who would support pedophilia which you advocate against for the same reasons.

Consent is not always needed, especially in emergency situations.  Parents in general consent for their children, but in cases where parents refuse to provide consent for lifesaving treatment they will generally find themselves overruled on the exact grounds of the child's wellbeing.

So why needed at all for anyone? Though that again raises issue for your idea of 'balance' when euthenasia is implamented to minorities (or at least minorities that you personally don't think should be included). Seriously, your objection above about "suffering" of a minority only reflected in comparing with a violent death, but you advocate for abortion and euthenasia on grounds of 'not feeling pain'. What grounds of objection do you have if genocide is conducted in ways of people just falling asleep and never waking up?

Pedophilia is the state of being sexually attracted to prepubescent children.  This is not a case of my definition versus your definition - this is what the word means.  If you are talking instead about sexual activity between minors and adults, of which behaviour stemming from pedophilia would be a small subset, then why don't you say so?  As usual, the issue is far more complicated than you pretend in your relentless efforts to show me to be inconsistent.

Dodge. And again - why should sex be restricted from prepubescent children or why is prepubescency the line to define one as a 'child'?

The fact that the "physical act and motives" are the same whether someone is homosexual, heterosexual or a pedophile is strictly irrelevant.  The important point, which makes the difference between sex and rape, is the consent of both parties.  Maybe a fourteen year old can be mature enough to give informed consent to the act of sex, and maybe not.  Maybe some twenty year olds are not really mature enough, but from a public policy point of view we have to draw the line somewhere.  Now is that clear enough, or should i get a translator who speaks fluent Moron?

Oh so the physical act and motives are all the same, but you who deny the immaterial aspect of human beings appeal to immaterial free-will? That's rich! Made even more so by the fact 'consent' in regards for pedophilia is only subjected to other people's consent rather than the child him/her-self. As such 'rape' is only in the statutory sense. And given the inherent meaninglessness of life and no objective standard under atheism you really have no grounds to say a line "must" be drawn....anywhere.

[Dannyboy]

EB,

Whole first response swallowed by the ether.     *Deep breath*  Ok, let's do this again.

So, you've been critiquing homosexuality on the basis of its consequences, which you are apparently unable to demonstrate.  You respond to my exposure of your "evidence" as an assortment of good science misrepresented and bad science overgeneralised as me "crying bias" and dismissing anything which doesn't fit my prejudices (ironic, that).  Then you say that your position "doesn't rest on the observable".  Well, clearly not, but i am confused about why you have spent around half this thread producing evidence for allegedly observable consequences of homosexuality if this is the case.

You also confuse, probably deliberately, my position that morality reduces to the balance of wellbeing vs suffering with one of undiluted hedonism.  My "liberally outdated 'feels-good-do-it' attitude", as you call it.  Given your treatment of evolutionary theory i suppose this mistake is not surprising.  This is why you don't understand how i can object to promiscuity, even though it is clear and obvious that things which feel good in the moment may have a severe negative impact on your wellbeing later on, and promiscuity is one example of a behaviour where that can happen.

You just deny homosexuals aren't as singularly promiscuous and reject problems with homosexuality in itself.

i have seen no evidence that there is any more than a small minority of homosexuals who are extremely promiscuous.  It's not a case of denying that homosexuals en masse are more promiscuous, but just not allowing you to assert it as fact without rigorous supporting evidence, which you have so far been unable to provide.

But when studies in isolation get added up it paints a wider picture.

Lots of bad studies add up to convincing case do they?  If that were the case i could "prove" to you that HIV patients are better off taking vitamins than anti-retrovirals, like this guy.  Bad science plus bad science does not magically equal good science.

You seem to be under some false impression my outlook hangs on such studies. It doesn't. While they certainly help to show people can't do willy-nilly with sexual behaviour and show observable consequences when one tries (no matter if it's generalized behaviour or not), it's ultimately irrelevant to the issue.

That's a very convenient position for you to take after i've demolished all of your thus-far presented studies.  Seems like we could have saved ourselves a lot of time if you hadn't made those unsupported assertions about homosexual behaviour which you now claim were irrelevant to your argument.  But ok, proceed with the rest of your d--ning argument.

"Not when such efforts have been diluted by the Bush Administration's enthusiasm for "Abstinence Only" programs, which have been demonstrated to increase the incidence of unprotected sex among participants.  So much for faith-based public policy."

Now here is a clear case of hypocrisy. By your own reasoning (and just common sense) if sexual behaviour contains risk than restriction of such behaviour would seem to remove risk completely. But that's never what gets advocated. And I wouldn't decry such efforts when they're done in society's that advocate 'do it like they do in Discovery channel' in so many aspects of the culture.

Why is it hypocrisy?  i am all in favour of ABC education - Abstinence, Be faithful, and use Condoms.  Abstinence is obviously the best defence against STDs and unwanted pregnancy, but focussing on it to the exclusion of all other information that a sexually curious teenager might need to know is a demonstrably ineffective method of preventing these problems.  This is the sort of disconnect that tends to occur when you mix ideology and policy.  Some teenagers are going to have sex, whether or not they've been threatened with hellfire and brimstone, and when they do, they are much more likely to avoid the potential negative consequences if they have been taught about contraception.

...what I'm advocating is a very specific behaviour which does condemn heterosexuals as equally as homosexuals. For homosexuality as a whole I have other arguments and reasoning.

Yes, i understand that you are advocating strict heterosexual monogamy which makes me (in the past) just as much of a sinner as a homosexual in your eyes.  Well, i wouldn't describe myself as ever having been promiscuous, but i don't object to sex before marriage.  Still waiting for your arguments and reasoning about homosexuality, most of what has gone before just having been declared irrelevant.  By you.

Since there is no objective standard for 'good' under atheism,...

i have shown you an objective moral standard which entirely compatible with atheism.  Continuing to assert that it doesn't exist may count as an argument in your little world, but is unlikely to convince anyone else.

If humans are just another kind of animal then humans are inherently "no different" in any way that's meaningful. You can't have it both ways DB. There comes a point where "diversity" reaches the point of becoming "inconsistency". A concept I know you have trouble with.

Under such reasoning there can be no "meaningful" difference between Mormons and Catholics.  They're both just another kind of Christianity, right?  No meaningful difference between a Humvee and a Model T Ford.  No meaningful difference between a whale and a mouse.  Truly, your logic is impeccable as always.

"Well if we can't know for a fact whether some animals feel compassion then you cannot state (as you did in a previous post) that human beings are the only creatures to have that emotion."

*shrug* The only creatures we know to have that emotion then.

How do we know that other humans have compassion?  In the exact same way that we know that some primates do - by their behaviour.  Yet you assume the existence of the emotion in other humans but deny it in primates, based on your beliefs about how very different and special we are.

I find your denouncement of rape to be in a predicament if you are so keen to dismiss the existance of the soul. Rape and consenual sex are physically the same thing. The only factor being free-will which is at it's bottom immaterial. So how do you rationalize that violating free-will is harmful when physical acts are the same no matter if consent is given or not? Or could you be the one ignoring evidence and trying to rationalize it to fit your ideology?

Hmm, i don't know.  Do you think that rape victims might suffer any negative after-effects?  Even in cases where no violence is used (at gunpoint say) i could tentatively hypothesize that a rape victim might not feel at his or her best for a short while afterwards.  What do you think? 

And further inconsistency as shown here.

Could you be a little clearer about what the inconsistency is?  It's not leaping out at me, i must admit.

Nor does personal suffering or wellbeing matter an iota in a billion year old universe that doesn't care about our existence.

i don't expect you to be able to grasp this, but in a billion-year old uncaring universe, suffering and wellbeing are the only things that matter.

Yours is just self-delusion to hide from the depressive bleakness of life inherent to your beliefs

   You sound positively offended that i'm not a suicidal depressive.

As opposed to you taking nothing from the text that rape is involved as a fact or that in a closed-knit society people would not know if a woman was raped?

EB, this is pathetic.  You are just scrabbling around for post hoc rationalisations for something that needs no rationalisation unless you commit yourself to the loony premise that a book lacking internal consistency of either style or substance was authored by an all-powerful god.  If your close-knit Old Testament society was as omnicogniscent as all that then there would have been absolutely no need for the routine with the "tokens of virginity".  If they would necessarily know that a woman had been raped then surely they would also know that she was messing around with Elijah the stableboy before her wedding and could have stoned her to death there and then.  Feel free to continue inventing stuff that minimises your cognitive dissonance on this issue, but don't expect anyone with even a minimal grip on reality to accept it.

Still, i think it probably speaks well of you that these verses bother you enough to carry on with this parade of lame excuses.  Congratulations on being a more moral individual than the writer of Deuteronomy (which ought to tell you something).

And would that commonality with the Taliban extend to Stalin's very atheistic/evolutionary regime of oppresion and gulags?

Did Stalin's political policies cause a net increase or decrease in human wellbeing?  And could this have been predicted before they were enacted?  There's your answer.

Don't try to hide behind "degree in some states" just because you are taking issue with a position because you don't like where it leads when it's your own position.

i've been over this with you already.  If you don't understand that the sadistic pleasure of a torturer is not equivalent to the physical and mental suffering of his victim then there's no (legal) way that i can help you to get it.

Couldn't find one, could you?

Wasn't looking for one.  And you didn't answer my question: What is the solution to the problem of homosexuality in your ideal society?  What would the penalty be?

"Of course the behaviour is controllable, that is not the issue.  ...while gay people do not have to act upon their innate tendencies, the real question is, why shouldn't they?"

Hmmm, controllable by what? Can't be the brain or body, because those are the one's inducing one to behave in such a way? Now where else does that leave in your materalistic outlook?

Because brain and body are a united whole which never try to drag us in opposite directions?

And I have been very clear in my reasoning on why they shouldn't - It's wrong and violates the natural design of sexual behaviour, and will cause harm to others and themselves as a consequence.

So here we have the crux of your argument:

"It's wrong" = you don't like it.
"It violates the natural design of sexual behaviour" = you think God doesn't like it.
"It causes harm to themselves and others" = the only objective plank of your case against homosexuality, which you have been unable to provide support for and have just declared to be irrelevant anyway.  So i guess we're about done here then.

What grounds of objection do you have if genocide is conducted in ways of people just falling asleep and never waking up?

That would be better than violent deaths, there's no denying that.  But the individuals personal suffering is not the only detriment to human wellbeing when someone is killed, is it.

And again - why should sex be restricted from prepubescent children or why is prepubescency the line to define one as a 'child'?

Too tedious for words EB.  Why should i repetitively articulate things which we both believe to be true in order to satisfy your insane desire to find an inconsistency in my views?  You can play that game by yourself.

Oh so the physical act and motives are all the same, but you who deny the immaterial aspect of human beings appeal to immaterial free-will? That's rich!

Why is free will necessarily immaterial?  i think you're begging the question here - assuming your position to be correct for the purposes of criticising mine.  If there is such a thing as free will, in my worldview it is a product of the physical brain, just like any other psychological state.

And given the inherent meaninglessness of life and no objective standard under atheism you really have no grounds to say a line "must" be drawn....anywhere.

Repeating your Sunday School talking points ad nauseum does not make an argument.  Which is a pity, because it did you would win by a mile.