Donating = Loving
Bringing you atheist articles and building active godless communities takes hundreds of hours and resources each month. If you find any joy or stimulation at Atheist Republic, please consider becoming a Supporting Member with a recurring monthly donation of your choosing, between a cup of tea and a good dinner.
Log in or create an account to join the discussions on the Atheist Republic forums.
Donating = Loving
Bringing you atheist articles and building active godless communities takes hundreds of hours and resources each month. If you find any joy or stimulation at Atheist Republic, please consider becoming a Supporting Member with a recurring monthly donation of your choosing, between a cup of tea and a good dinner.
Donating = Loving
Bringing you atheist articles and building active godless communities takes hundreds of hours and resources each month. If you find any joy or stimulation at Atheist Republic, please consider becoming a Supporting Member with a recurring monthly donation of your choosing, between a cup of tea and a good dinner.
FREE E-BOOKS
Get the book "Why There Is No God" and one more book for FREE!
Sign up below for the Atheist Republic Newsletter to get the books.
Record Your Message!
Record your voice here for it to be aired on the Atheist Republic Voicemails Podcast.
Send us your views and opinions, your personal stories, messages of support, comments on recent news, or any comments you would like to share about your part of the world.
Note : By clicking record you are allowing us to broadcast your message on any of our platforms.
Affiliate Disclaimer
Links to atheist related books, shirts and movies and other atheism related products are affiliate links.
All proceeds will go to keeping the Atheist Republic website up and running; providing resources, advocacy, community tools and encouragement to atheists all over the world.
Wouldn't you say such examples support my OP? If sexual drives are basic, universal and indiscriminatory, and sexual acts are the attempts to satisfy those drives, then identity becomes independent and subjective.
Just like someone can enjoy coffee on occasion or perhaps even regularly, without the need to call themselves coffee-lovers or connoisseurs. Some people satisfy their sexual drives with the same sex, with some of them feeling that it forms part of their identity, and others not so much.
What people chose to adopt as their identity is a subject independed of their drives and actions. So certainly, people can have homosexual acts, without identifying as homosexual. My OP is the simplest way to account for this.
Would said people not call themselves gay or bi is it wasn't demonized by society??
Have you never just smiled at a pretty girl? It's been some time but I seem to remember it worked quite well in identifying whether they had any interest in me when I was younger. It wasn't contrived, it was a natural response to encountering someone I found attractive.
"Peacocks don't have to think." "We have to put thought into our sexuality."
I don't think you're getting the order of evolved traits correct. We think about it because we can, and it helps our chances, if peacocks could think about it they'd probably have more complex courtship habits, but they haven't evolved brains that enable this, we have.
--
I always thought sex wass a composite process in the course of which genomes are diversified by a type of nuclear division called meiosis and a type of nuclear fusion called fertilisation...
That said one could argue perhaps sexuality is a choice in that if reproducing was what allowed us to live, most humans would.
But as it's not vital to the species for opposites of gender to always mate as essential we all die anyway and there is plenty of us to repopulate, we 'chose' not too.
Eitherway though, I find the more pressing point to be, a creatures sexuality should be no one's business but that person's.
"Eitherway though, I find the more pressing point to be, a creatures sexuality should be no one's business but that person's."
I agree, what consenting adults do to and with each other or in groups is their business. as long as no one is being coerced, exploited or forced good luck to them.
Every time I see the title on the OP, I hear k.d. lang in my head.
UPDATE:
Some have asked what hypothesis or prediction my theory makes, and how it can be falsified. I've given it some thought, and came up with one simple and controversial hypothesis that ought to be possible if my theory is true: Changing someone's sexual orientation or attraction.
Historically this has been mostly a failure and has used infamous methods such as Shock Therapy. There are two reason why I believe Shock Therapy was a disaster:
1. The individual hardly ever consented. It was mostly forced.
2. The procedure didn't attempt to change someone’s orientation, it merely punished homosexuality.
Aversion therapies come in a multitude of shapes and sizes, and they're all mostly controversial in psychology. For example, placing vomit-inducing medicine in alcohol, so that alcoholics learn not to drink. Or more mildly, telling children they’re not allowed to watch television, every time they exhibit a certain behavior. This is a flaw with the method, not the ability to change.
My method is different. It's not concerned with making people avoid specific sexual urges. Instead, It would attempt to create new ones. I think it should be possible to take a heterosexual person, and create homosexual urges in them, and vice versa.
@Breezy, I guess for your theory you will take into account studies like the one described in the article I link, conducted in twins, which concludes that though environment may trigger sexual behavior, in 70% of the cases, we can predict sexuality via DNA exclusively. I guess your theory will provide an answer for that statistics. Taking into account that social pressure also influences on people's calling themselves (and acting like) homo/bi/etc., it seems to me like you're trying to take the exception for the rule. If sexuality bias is so conditioned by DNA would be hardly "interexchangeable" later in life as you suggest.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/2016/03/15/homosexuality-may-be-trigg...
P.S. I've never met a homosexual who had become heterosexual later in life. On the contrary, there's millions of "supposedly" ex-heteros who had admitted to be cheating themselves and others and be attracted and love, in fact, same-gender people, but being too afraid to tell. Heteros don't have any social stigma, there's no need to hide heterosexual behavior, no market to become homosexual being hetero, so what you're implying is that it could only be used as a new "aversion" therapy to gay people, just one more likeable to the patient so don't sugarcoat it... What is it with you, Christians, and your obsession on changing who people love and desire? Love who you want, and let others alone with their lives.
It is interesting. But this article seems to side with me however: "The finding is highly controversial because it suggests that some men are not born gay, but are turned homosexual by their surroundings" and "Only 20 percent of identical twins are both gay leading researchers to believe that there must be causes which are not inherited."
A word of warning for the future however: correlation is not causation when it comes to genetics. I agree there may be predictive power and it would be valid, but there's no causative power. You cannot conclude that genes cause homosexuality. For example, lets say I'm conducting research on introversion, to find out who has it. If for whatever reason its been found that 70% of introverts prefer cheeseburgers over pizza, that's a valid question to ask. I can create surveys in which I ask participants if they prefer cheeseburgers, and then use that information to predict introversion. However, there's no reason to suspect that cheeseburgers cause introversion.
When it comes to twins, its precisely because they share 100% of their genes, that there should always be 100% connection. Skin color, hair color, eye color, or whatever else, is always perfectly correlated with genetics. But the moment you have things which are 70% correlated. Then we have to ask why? Why isn't it 100%?
@Breezy: A word of warning for the future however: correlation is not causation when it comes to genetics .
Good piece of advice. But 70% is a pretty high rate to suggest that DNA has some sort of correlation, right?
Why isn't it 100%? I don't know, but I'll make some guesses:
a) There's other nucleotide involved in some cases for some rare physiological reason, that it's yet to be discovered.
b) Maybe we just need more surveys for confirmation, but it's really 100%.
c) Perhaps that 30% were indeed gay but because they're devout Christians in the closet, they lied about their preference.
A - Perhaps, but then why aren't those nucleotides found in both twins simultaneously?
B - I agree, because we should always strive for bigger sample sizes. However, if a small sample was already not 100% then no matter how much bigger the sample gets, it will never be 100%
C - Its possible. But psychologists already account for, and attempt to minimize, any effects that might invalidate the study.
Just so we're clear, your link says only 20% of twins share homosexuality. 70% refers to something else.
Because it is not a binary property with a litmus test.
What do you mean?
Why would you want to change a person's sexuality? It's who they are, they are unlikely to want to change that, it is far easier and more moral to change attitudes to those who are prejudiced against gay people for no good reason. Which fortunately is what most decent societies are doing now.
Why would I personally want to change it? Simple, because human behavior falls under my field. Therefore, understanding why things are the way they are, understanding what things can change, and by how much, all come with the territory.
To the contrary, I'm sure plenty of people would like to change. What if we're dealing with a transgender individual? A man that feels like a woman in every respect, but isn't attracted to males? Well they can. Or what about pedophiles? They want to change, we want them to change. Now they can. Did you hear about Louise C.K. recently? Masturbating over the phone, or in front of unwilling victims, is a paraphilia. Sometimes, its the only way they can reach orgasms. We may be able to change that as well.
may i offer another twist using a light piece of evolutionary theory, in that consider if sleeping with the opposite gender allows the multiplicity of our species but, what if sleeping with the same gender offered immortality?
i would hazard a guess in that the number of humans on earth would be dramatically lower and that longevity would be off the charts.
the selfish gene, it is our nature.
I've always said something similar. That there's no reason why genes should benefit from reproduction over longevity. In fact, genes should benefit more from duplicating inside a persons body, regenerating, and healing the person, more than starting over with a new person.
indeed, check mate evolution.
compelling evidence that evolution is not a sentient process, and doesn't plan the outcomes. The speciation we see is the result of environmental pressure and survival of the fittest resulting in natural selection. Animals, like humans for example, that live longer tend to have less offspring and invest longer in parenting them.
"Animals, like humans for example, that live longer tend to have less offspring and invest longer in parenting them."
No. I'm pretty sure mammals in general have less offspring and parent them more, regardless of how long they live. Small rodents live shorter lives, and then elephants live almost as much as we do. In contrast, creatures like tortoises and sea turtles, can live equal to or longer than us, and lay dozens or hundreds of eggs.
Though there are exceptions, most animals tend to follow the model of longer lives, less offspring, more maternal care. The three factors must balance for as species to be successful. These reproductive strategies are called "r" and "k" and are better revealed when you compare among similar species.
No clue what this website is, but look at the list https://www.seeker.com/top-10-longest-living-animals-1765081498.html
I disagree with your model. A better model would be live-birth vs egg-laying. Those that lay eggs, will have more offspring, than those that have live births, irrespective of their life longevity. I'm sure you can even use size. Smaller animals live less, larger animals live longer, irrespective of how many offprings they have.
It is not MY model. It is an accepted fact in biology.
http://www.bio.miami.edu/tom/courses/bil160/bil160goods/16_rKselection.html
Read the selfish gene, Dawkings beautifully explains this (without his atheistic directness). Animals will only procreate to what they can sustain... humans are fairly similar.
*
There is a reason to balance these two things very carefully. Take it to the extreme. Which population has a larger chance to become extinct by a random occurrence, a two-member species who can live forever or a trillion member species were each member only lives for a few days?
I don't know if it matters. I can take a population of a few trillion bacteria, place them in alcohol, and be done with them; or take two mice, dip them in alcohol, and as long as they didn't drink it, they'll be fine.
Evolution doesn't care what does or doesn't go extinct. Clearly.
Be serious, you can take any population, make their planet explode and they all go extinct. In the real world, tortoises or elephants have greater chance to go extinct than bacteria.
Well no, so exposure to alcohol kills bacteria but not rodents. Likewise if we put rats in a sealed can they'll suffocate, whereas some bacteria thrive in such conditions. My point being that there are more important reasons for extinction than how many offspring you have. Sea turtles lay a ton of eggs, but they're always borderline endangered.
Pages