|
Source: (consider it)
|
Thread: I call all homophobes to Hell - especially Russ
|
Boogie
Boogie on down!
# 13538
|
Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Russ:
That's what you seemed to me to be doing. I read your cries of "offensive" as an attempt at substituting social pressure for reasoned argument, an attempt to censor a point of view that is contrary to your prejudices (which is to say the things that you feel to be truebutcannot easily argue for in words).
I know it is true through experience, not argument. I know gay people and have them in my family. They are not disordered.
I am not calling your point of view offensive. I am calling it wrong, cruel, unkind and against everything Jesus stood for. (Kindness, equality etc)
--------------------
Garden. Room. Walk
Posts: 13030 | From: Boogie Wonderland | Registered: Mar 2008
| IP: Logged
|
|
Soror Magna
Shipmate
# 9881
|
Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Russ:
... Seems to me that being argued out of a previously-held viewpoint is an honourable position to be in. It shows that one values truth over the satisfaction of being right.
Conversely, being peer-pressured out of a point of view is dishonourable. It's a betrayal of the value of truth for the sake of a quiet life from one's neighbours. ...
And you can't tell the difference. No wonder you keep spewing shit and get called to Hell.
--------------------
"You come with me to room 1013 over at the hospital, I'll show you America. Terminal, crazy and mean." -- Tony Kushner, "Angels in America"
Posts: 5430 | From: Caprica City | Registered: Jul 2005
| IP: Logged
|
|
RooK
1 of 6
# 1852
|
Posted
quote:
Originally posted by IngoB:
Homosexuality fails to realise the natural / God given complementarity of the sexes, and their unity in intimacy into a greater whole that transcends their sex.
Isn't it odd that your so-called nature / god is so limited as to be unable to allow for intimacy, connection, and love outside the bounds of simple procreation?
Posts: 15274 | From: Portland, Oregon, USA, Earth | Registered: Nov 2001
| IP: Logged
|
|
quetzalcoatl
Shipmate
# 16740
|
Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Soror Magna:
quote:
Originally posted by IngoB:
... Not everybody can see that yin-yin and yang-yang fail to harmonise with the structure of mankind and even the universe in the way yin-yang does. So instead we are reduced to discussing the design of penises and vaginas... That's OK though, the greater design of the universe can also be found there.
That's just too fucking silly for words. It's magical thinking, it's Alistair Crowley's "As above, so below". It's adding indigo to the rainbow so the colours match up with the known planets. It's trying to stuff all the wonders of the universe into one of two boxes, innies and outies. Let me guess, you think stars are yang and planets are yin, and that's why they come in sets, right? But how come one star can have more than one planet? Whoa, Nellie, that's not complementarity, that's polygamy.
The universe is not composed of penetrators and penetratees, although, obviously, not all phallo-phascinated penetrators can see that. Quarks complement each other quite nicely, but they are not male or female, they come in several flavours, and they form a variety of particles by joining up in groups of THREE. There's also tetraquarks and pentaquarks. Why not build a Procrustean bed for human relations based on particle physics instead?
That's a terrific insight. I thought there was something familiar about IngoB's wibble, not sure about Alistair Crowley, but it's like some New Age stuff, all unsubstantiated woo, floating on a bed of wishful thinking. The universe is really made up of male and female energies, which interpenetrate and fuse, to produce the ecstatic union of beings of light who are now ready to fulfill their destiny ... Yawn. It's basically old-fashioned teleology given a kind of spray-job.
--------------------
I can't talk to you today; I talked to two people yesterday.
Posts: 9878 | From: UK | Registered: Oct 2011
| IP: Logged
|
|
orfeo
Ship's Musical Counterpoint
# 13878
|
Posted
quote:
Originally posted by IngoB:
quote:
Originally posted by Gee D:
Russ, Kaplan Corday, Ingo B and all the others limit sexual activity to the genital.
Not at all. Homosexuality fails to realise the natural / God given complementarity of the sexes, and their unity in intimacy into a greater whole that transcends their sex.
Women: never forget that they're not actually people.
--------------------
Technology has brought us all closer together. Turns out a lot of the people you meet as a result are complete idiots.
Posts: 18173 | From: Under | Registered: Jul 2008
| IP: Logged
|
|
orfeo
Ship's Musical Counterpoint
# 13878
|
Posted
I shouldn't shut down the "complementarity" idea so quickly. As I've observed before, it can be an awful lot of fun watching a "complementarist" hang themselves with their own rope.
Because what happens is this: in order to prove that Men can only be with Women and that Women can only be with Men, they start declaring that Men are like X, and Women are like Y, and ascribing qualities to either sex.
And what invariably happens is that straight men and women start popping up and saying "hang on, I'm not like that" or "hang on, I'm like that even though you said that's a characteristic of the opposite sex", and before long the advocate of this complementary idea is bogged down in apologising for all the insults they've created against heterosexuals who don't fit into the two neat little boxes.
And I just sit there with my bucket of popcorn.
--------------------
Technology has brought us all closer together. Turns out a lot of the people you meet as a result are complete idiots.
Posts: 18173 | From: Under | Registered: Jul 2008
| IP: Logged
|
|
Ariston
Insane Unicorn
# 10894
|
Posted
quote:
Originally posted by IngoB:
We find the idea in Plato as much as among the Daoists. Homosexuality, however, requires no encounter with and no accommodation of the "mysteriously other", there is no fundamental gap to be closed there by intimacy.
Where in Plato? I'm assuming you're referencing the Timaeus, as Symposium seems to argue, through the example of Socrates (and the Aristophanes section, but reading from that is problematic), a direct refutation of this view. I assume that, under some interpretive schema (and Lord knows there have been enough over the last 2500 years...) there's a way of reconciling Plato to this view; I'd be interested in hearing of it.
I'm also not sure why gender is The Fundamental Difference, more so than "me/notme," or, well, any other difference we could name. Our encounter with the transcendent and infinite is brought about by any Other, of whatever background; in the end, every not-me person is strange and foreign, without having to privilege one subordinate sort of strangeness or foreignness over all the others.
Why pick gender? Why reduce it to a duality, then enshrine it above all other differences? What's so absolutely special about it that makes "female" more foreign to me than "not me?"
--------------------
“Therefore, let it be explained that nowhere are the proprieties quite so strictly enforced as in men’s colleges that invite young women guests, especially over-night visitors in the fraternity houses.” Emily Post, 1937.
Posts: 6849 | From: The People's Republic of Balcones | Registered: Jan 2006
| IP: Logged
|
|
quetzalcoatl
Shipmate
# 16740
|
Posted
The complementarity argument is also fucked by the is/ought fallacy. Sure, some people are in sexually complementary relationships - so they ought to be? Eh?
"For as this ought, or ought not, expresses some new relation or affirmation, 'tis necessary that it shou'd be observ'd and explain'd; and at the same time that a reason should be given; for what seems altogether inconceivable, how this new relation can be a deduction from others, which are entirely different from it." (Hume, Treatise on Human Nature)).
[ 27. August 2015, 14:52: Message edited by: quetzalcoatl ]
--------------------
I can't talk to you today; I talked to two people yesterday.
Posts: 9878 | From: UK | Registered: Oct 2011
| IP: Logged
|
|
orfeo
Ship's Musical Counterpoint
# 13878
|
Posted
I'd have to consult my fellow Hosts first, but I almost think a fun game could be created where the goal is think up all the bullshit reasons why a male/male couple would be deficient. The more outrageously stereotyped the better. Things like "there wouldn't be anyone to cook dinner".
Or a female/female couple. I'm not prejudiced.
[ 27. August 2015, 15:03: Message edited by: orfeo ]
--------------------
Technology has brought us all closer together. Turns out a lot of the people you meet as a result are complete idiots.
Posts: 18173 | From: Under | Registered: Jul 2008
| IP: Logged
|
|
lilBuddha
Shipmate
# 14333
|
Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Russ:
Seems to me that being argued out of a previously-held viewpoint is an honourable position to be in. It shows that one values truth over the satisfaction of being right.
Conversely, being peer-pressured out of a point of view is dishonourable. It's a betrayal of the value of truth for the sake of a quiet life from one's neighbours.
That's what you seemed to me to be doing. I read your cries of "offensive" as an attempt at substituting social pressure for reasoned argument, an attempt to censor a point of view that is contrary to your prejudices (which is to say the things that you feel to be truebutcannot easily argue for in words).
Previously held position = honourable and right? So slavery, women as subservient and children as literally disposable property; those are right and honourable?
We are using social pressure and not reasoned argument?
Your argument is somebody said somebody else said so.
Our is based on research and science.
You appear to have either not read, or be deliberately ignoring, much of these threads.
It is difficult to comprehend a person who can manage to type words into their computer, yet fail so spectacularly to understand what others have written.
You have either turned troll for this discussion or have been playing a very long game. If the latter; well played, sir! I have a fairly good nose for trolls, and I'd thought you just an old duffer with outmoded ideas.
--------------------
I put on my rockin' shoes in the morning
Hallellou, hallellou
Posts: 17627 | From: the round earth's imagined corners | Registered: Dec 2008
| IP: Logged
|
|
Liopleurodon
Mighty sea creature
# 4836
|
Posted
When someone says they're offended, usually what they mean is that what you're saying is hurtful. Sometimes people need to say hurtful things, and that admission is not necessarily a reason to back down. What it is, though, is a reason to stop and think about whether the position you hold is worth hurting people over.
There is a certain kind of person, though, who takes this very admission of hurt or offense as an attack. "How dare you point that out! It's not fair that you're trying to silence me with your hurt feelings!" No. If you're hurting people, the least you can do is own that fact and say that you do think it's worth it. Don't try and make them take the blame for your awkwardness about their feelings.
--------------------
Our God is an awesome God. Much better than that ridiculous God that Desert Bluffs has. - Welcome to Night Vale
Posts: 1921 | From: Lurking under the ship | Registered: Aug 2003
| IP: Logged
|
|
quetzalcoatl
Shipmate
# 16740
|
Posted
Isn't there an interesting clash between deductive and inductive reasoning, in relation to gay sex? I mean that the Alistair Crowley type stuff, 'as above so below', or IngoB's 'ordered to procreation', proceeds theoretically from certain axioms.
Whereas many people who are pro-gay have been impressed by witnessing actual gay people and gay couples, who seem to them to demonstrate love, fidelity, intimacy, and so on.
This is more inductive, empirical, if you like. But the deductivists cry foul, oh no, but we know theoretically that gay is wrong!
Makes me think of old Goethe, 'im Angang war die Tat', in the beginning was the deed, an interesting emendation to 'im Anfang war das Wort'.
--------------------
I can't talk to you today; I talked to two people yesterday.
Posts: 9878 | From: UK | Registered: Oct 2011
| IP: Logged
|
|
IngoB
Sentire cum Ecclesia
# 8700
|
Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Liopleurodon:
Do other people have musical brains? Yes. But my brain is massively overwired for sound, and it tends to overpower my other senses to the extent that I struggle to see or smell things in a noisy environment. That's as a direct result of my ASC.
And how precisely do you know all that? The only part of this that is not speculation is the description of your experience - as it happen, of a negative experience.
quote:
Originally posted by Liopleurodon:
But there is a pattern of occurence which is related to ASC, and I just don't think you can lose the ASC and keep the good stuff.
And how precisely do you know that? Do you have some underlying idea about brain anatomy, physiology, biochemistry and bioelectricity that would support this claim? Do you for example propose that axonal wiring related to your auditory cortex has been increased at the expense of whatever axonal wiring may be behind social skills? And do you have the theory that a cure could not possibly increase the latter wiring without at the same time reducing the former? What would be the basis for such claims?
quote:
Originally posted by Liopleurodon:
There's circular reasoning here: "my view sees ASC as bad. Anything good about it is not due to the ASC. Therefore if you cure the ASC the good stuff will remain. Therefore the ASC was all bad."
That's not "circular reasoning", you just make it appear so. That ASC is a disease that is nothing but damaging is simply one possibility, which we cannot rule out currently (best I know).
It is also important to distinguish here between the effects of a disease and the compensatory capacity of the brain reacting to that disease. People who lose one of their sense can compensate by strengthening another sense (cross-modal neuroplasticity). If something similar is going on in ASC, then indeed it could be that above average performance in some area is the brain's way of compensating for the detrimental effects of the disease. However, even then we would still not know what a cure could do (whether it has to be destructive concerning that compensatory performance). Furthermore, even if a cure would mean trading the above average performance back for the normalisation of ability elsewhere, it still would be valuable to have. You may not wish to make this trade, but other adults can have other opinions about that. And as far as children are concerned, I would consider it immoral to expose them to a detrimental disease in the hope that this will give them "super powers" through the resilience of the brain.
quote:
Originally posted by Liopleurodon:
It all ties in with privilege and the notion of the "default" human being a white, able bodied, neurotypical cis/het man.
Not really, no. In every one of your posts you yourself have described deficiencies of yours as compared to others, and fairly significant ones at that. I assume you are not accusing yourself here of having a supremacist ideology. Well then, kindly do not accuse others of having one just because they can notice just as well as you did that you have some unusual problems.
quote:
Originally posted by Liopleurodon:
A gay person is not a defective straight person and I am sure as hell not a defective neurotypical. There are an awful lot of different ways to be human.
The short-sighted, far-sighted and blind are not in any way deficient in their seeing ability, they are just not seeing-typical. The hard of hearing and deaf are merely not hearing-typical. The lame and quadriplegic are not walking-typical. Those suffering a heart attack are (albeit often rather briefly) not blood-circulation-typical. The suicidal are simply not will-to-live-typical. Quite generally, there is no such things as a "normal" or "healthy" state of mind and body and their functions. There's just a spectrum of completely equivalent ways of being a human. Suffering from the bubonic plague? You are not bacteria-typical.
Trying to impose social dogma by obfuscating language is not sanity-typical.
--------------------
They’ll have me whipp’d for speaking true; thou’lt have me whipp’d for lying; and sometimes I am whipp’d for holding my peace. - The Fool in King Lear
Posts: 12010 | From: Gone fishing | Registered: Oct 2004
| IP: Logged
|
|
IngoB
Sentire cum Ecclesia
# 8700
|
Posted
quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:
No, it's genetic thinking. We see behavior traits or physical characteristics that go together far far far more often than randomness would suggest, and we start to think they are genetically linked. Not sure why this concept is difficult.
The incidence of savant syndrome is much higher in autism than in other learning disabilities or CNS injuries, though it is not unique to autism. About 50% of savants are not autistic. However, I am not aware of a proper statistical comparison of savants with prodigies and geniuses, i.e., "neurotypical" people with exceptional talents and abilities. To not compare apples with oranges there, we would be talking prodigious savants, i.e., those who are not merely skilled in some regard as compared to their own disabilities, but rather as compared to the entire population. Those people are rare, just as prodigies and geniuses are rare. Whether relatively speaking one is rarer than the other I do not know. However, I do know that the theory that all prodigies and geniuses are "somehow autistic" is nonsense, and I also do know that attempts at "historical diagnosis" of some past genius as "autistic" are highly questionable.
Anyhow, while genetic components are possible, so are other explanations. For example developmental ones, or neural compensation, or even theories about a general modularity of the brain which means that some module gets to "run freely" if others are knocked out. I'm not aware that we have found out what is actually going on in savant syndrome. We also do not know how a "cure" of ASC would work. Consequently, we do not know that it would destroy the specialised abilities that have formed. What if such a "cure" would rather turn the savant into a genius? That's just as possible, given the completely speculative nature of such a "cure".
--------------------
They’ll have me whipp’d for speaking true; thou’lt have me whipp’d for lying; and sometimes I am whipp’d for holding my peace. - The Fool in King Lear
Posts: 12010 | From: Gone fishing | Registered: Oct 2004
| IP: Logged
|
|
Russ
Old salt
# 120
|
Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Dafyd:
quote:
Originally posted by Russ:
Do you think that the view that you have been putting forward is true ?
If we weren't already in Hell this sentence would be worth a Hell call in its own right.
You don't get it.
If it's meaningful to say that a proposition is true, it's also meaningful to assert that it's false. And we expect to be able in principle to decide which is the case, on the basis of reasoning and evidence.
I brought to this thread my prejudice, in the specific sense of my not-yet-rigorously-argued but honesty-held belief, that the application of the word "disorder" was factually correct. That belief does not seem to me to have been disproven. But, some of what was said suggests the possibility that neither that belief nor its opposite is capable of being true or false. That what's involved is a value that we bring to the data rather than something that we find there. Which needs a bit of thinking about.
Hence my question to Boogie. Is she arguing that her belief is true and mine false, or not ?
Interestingly, she answered with a statement of value, rather than a statement of fact...
Asserting that the facts of the case must necessarily be a certain way in order to support one's own moral intuitions doesn't seem to me a sound argument.
IngoB once put it as "metaphysics precedes ethics"...
--------------------
Wish everyone well; the enemy is not people, the enemy is wrong ideas
Posts: 3169 | From: rural Ireland | Registered: May 2001
| IP: Logged
|
|
rolyn
Shipmate
# 16840
|
Posted
quote:
Originally posted by orfeo:
........ think up all the bullshit reasons why a male/male couple would be deficient. The more outrageously stereotyped the better. Things like "there wouldn't be anyone to cook dinner".
Or a female/female couple. I'm not prejudiced.
F/F couple . "there wouldn't be anyone to wash the car".
--------------------
Change is the only certainty of existence
Posts: 3206 | From: U.K. | Registered: Dec 2011
| IP: Logged
|
|
|
|
IngoB
Sentire cum Ecclesia
# 8700
|
Posted
quote:
Originally posted by RooK:
Isn't it odd that your so-called nature / god is so limited as to be unable to allow for intimacy, connection, and love outside the bounds of simple procreation?
There is of course intimacy, connection and love apart from procreation, but where these connect to sexuality that is the guiding principle. Furthermore, it is nonsense to call God's choice a limitation on him. You called yourself RooK here, that was and still is your choice. Are you so limited as to be unable to call yourself something else? No, you are not. But you don't, not because of external pressure or internal lack of creativity, but quite simply because you have chosen to be RooK around here.
quote:
Originally posted by orfeo:
I shouldn't shut down the "complementarity" idea so quickly. As I've observed before, it can be an awful lot of fun watching a "complementarist" hang themselves with their own rope. Because what happens is this: in order to prove that Men can only be with Women and that Women can only be with Men, they start declaring that Men are like X, and Women are like Y, and ascribing qualities to either sex. And what invariably happens is that straight men and women start popping up and saying "hang on, I'm not like that" or "hang on, I'm like that even though you said that's a characteristic of the opposite sex", and before long the advocate of this complementary idea is bogged down in apologising for all the insults they've created against heterosexuals who don't fit into the two neat little boxes.
It is indeed interesting to note how incredibly hung up modernity is about the concepts of masculinity and femininity. Basically, we have lost all idea of what it may mean to be a good man or a good woman, other than perhaps their preferred body shape. Frankly, I don't think that the supposed replacement of everybody trying to be a good person is working that well. But that's really a different discussion...
However, while the "spec sheet" approach to telling men and women apart (at least per different ideals) may often fail now for cultural reasons, I doubt very much that the core experience of similarity and difference concerning one's sex has changed much. What hanging with the boys means changes with time and place, but not that it is different from hanging with the girls.
quote:
Originally posted by Ariston:
Where in Plato? I'm assuming you're referencing the Timaeus, as Symposium seems to argue, through the example of Socrates (and the Aristophanes section, but reading from that is problematic), a direct refutation of this view.
I was indeed referring to Aristophanes's Speech from Plato's Symposium.
quote:
Originally posted by Ariston:
Why pick gender? Why reduce it to a duality, then enshrine it above all other differences? What's so absolutely special about it that makes "female" more foreign to me than "not me?"
It's not really a choice, it's just a fact of life. And I don't think that male-female is more profound than me-other per se. But of course, the me-other divide is necessarily self-centred. Whereas the male-female divide is not. You are a man, but so are about 4.5 billion others. Whereas another 4.5 billion people or so are not a man, but a woman. Hence you belong to being a man in a way that you do not belong to being you: for you are you alone, but there are many others that are a man, like you. An many others again that are a woman, unlike you. It is the most fundamental category of human belonging, not just being. Maybe a set of one is mathematically no different to a set of 4.5 billion, but psychologically it is.
--------------------
They’ll have me whipp’d for speaking true; thou’lt have me whipp’d for lying; and sometimes I am whipp’d for holding my peace. - The Fool in King Lear
Posts: 12010 | From: Gone fishing | Registered: Oct 2004
| IP: Logged
|
|
lilBuddha
Shipmate
# 14333
|
Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Russ:
You don't get it.
Holds up mirror Go ahead and look into it, Russ. It will not steal your soul.
--------------------
I put on my rockin' shoes in the morning
Hallellou, hallellou
Posts: 17627 | From: the round earth's imagined corners | Registered: Dec 2008
| IP: Logged
|
|
Boogie
Boogie on down!
# 13538
|
Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Russ:
Hence my question to Boogie. Is she arguing that her belief is true and mine false, or not ?
Interestingly, she answered with a statement of value, rather than a statement of fact...
Your belief is wrong.
Many of our values can't be proved as facts, does that make them less true?
Our whole religion can't be proved as fact, yet we believe it to be true.
For example - you can't prove that murder is evil. While it is possible to demonstrate, for example, that there are terrible effects of murder, you still can't prove it's evil. You can give me facts until they come out of your ears - but they won't refute the moral truth that homosexuals have as much right to have sex and get married as you and I do.
--------------------
Garden. Room. Walk
Posts: 13030 | From: Boogie Wonderland | Registered: Mar 2008
| IP: Logged
|
|
Eliab
Shipmate
# 9153
|
Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Russ:
I brought to this thread my prejudice, in the specific sense of my not-yet-rigorously-argued but honesty-held belief, that the application of the word "disorder" was factually correct. That belief does not seem to me to have been disproven. But, some of what was said suggests the possibility that neither that belief nor its opposite is capable of being true or false. That what's involved is a value that we bring to the data rather than something that we find there. Which needs a bit of thinking about.
It certainly needs thinking about, but unless I am misreading every single poster on this thread, you seem to have analysed the issues implicit in that summary less clearly than anyone else.
To start with, you need to realise that there is no single definition of "disorder" (or "defect", which is what you started with), and depending on the definition used, the answer to "is there a true answer to 'is this a disorder?'" might be 'yes' or 'no'.
Deafness has been given as an example on this thread. Biologically, it would be hard to argue that deafness is not a defect. As a species we are equipped with organs clearly adapted to receive and process sound information, and almost all humans make use of that faculty most of the time for numerous adaptive strategies. A minority of humans lack an ability that the species as a whole is designed and/or has evolved to possess. Something is wrong. Frequently, a doctor can say in some detail what it is that has gone wrong.
Yet it is also true that many deaf individuals do not see their lack of hearing as a personal defect, to the extent of saying that they would not choose to hear even if they had that option. If their deafness is part of their identity, it seems to me that they have every right to say so. So even if deafness is a defect in the first sense, if you want to know whether a particular person's deafness is a defect in the more important personal sense, there's no way to give a general yes/no answer. It might vary from person to person.
Then there's a question of moral defect. That doesn't really apply to deafness, because the biological function it affects isn't related to morality. But it's important for homosexuality because the biological function it affects (easily becoming sexually aroused by and pair-bonding to a potentially fertile partner) is one that we often regulate morally. We can't conclude that if homosexuality is a 'defect' biologically, then that alone is sufficient for us to say that we are justified in 'curing' it. An analogy might be someone born with the inability to be violently aggressive: even if we could prove that this was due to an identifiable failure of an adaptive, evolved trait, it is not obvious that society, or their parents, would be morally entitled to cure them. At the very least that needs to be argued for.
And you have, of course, failed to prove that homosexuality is a defect even in the biological sense. It's possible. It's also possible that homosexuality inevitably exists because the 'best' (most adaptive) genes or combinations of genes are playing a strategy or variety of strategies on the lines of "be highly sexed, with an interest in both the familiar and similar, and the novel and different" and that strategy inevitably generates the occasional homosexual. That is, homosexuality may be a necessary consequence of a definitely adaptive strategy. Or it could be that there is a direct social benefit on the group selection level to having homosexual members of society, and homosexuality is an adaptive trait on that level. Or any combination of those things (and others) may be true, because there's no reason why all homosexuality has to have a common cause.
So even if the biological question informed the moral one (which, in my view, it doesn't, not in the least) as we don't know the answer and you haven't bothered to argue for one, it doesn't help us at all. And (as the example of deafness shows) it wouldn't even remotely imply that gay people either do or should recognise themselves as having a personal defect, and it would still be bloody rude for you to bang on about them being defective or disordered in an unqualified way, as if you were saying something either important or undeniably true.
[ 27. August 2015, 21:45: Message edited by: Eliab ]
--------------------
"Perhaps there is poetic beauty in the abstract ideas of justice or fairness, but I doubt if many lawyers are moved by it"
Richard Dawkins
Posts: 4619 | From: Hampton, Middlesex, UK | Registered: Mar 2005
| IP: Logged
|
|
Russ
Old salt
# 120
|
Posted
quote:
Originally posted by JonahMan:
Attempting to decide what is 'normal' and 'cure' people who don't meet the criteria strikes me as being not only highly immoral but also highly dangerous.
I'd agree that forcing a cure of any sort on someone who doesn't want it is wrong. Respecting the personhood of a functioning adult human being means they get to choose for themselves.
And I can quite understand why someone who's reached a certain age and been formed by their struggles and accomodations (thinking here of the deaf musician mentioned earlier) might prefer to stick with the challenges they're familiar with.
Seems to me that we're drifting towards a future where we will have at least some ability to choose the characteristics of our children, and having a sound moral philosophy of the rights and wrongs of this would be a good idea. Maybe a topic to revisit in another thread when I'm not busy ducking the rusty farm implements being hurled in my direction...
--------------------
Wish everyone well; the enemy is not people, the enemy is wrong ideas
Posts: 3169 | From: rural Ireland | Registered: May 2001
| IP: Logged
|
|
Russ
Old salt
# 120
|
Posted
Eliab,
Excellent post.
Having said I'm not going to talk about the issue of homosexuality any more, I'll stick by that resolution. But I look forward to seeing if anyone else will take you up on this.
--------------------
Wish everyone well; the enemy is not people, the enemy is wrong ideas
Posts: 3169 | From: rural Ireland | Registered: May 2001
| IP: Logged
|
|
orfeo
Ship's Musical Counterpoint
# 13878
|
Posted
quote:
Originally posted by IngoB:
quote:
Originally posted by orfeo:
I shouldn't shut down the "complementarity" idea so quickly. As I've observed before, it can be an awful lot of fun watching a "complementarist" hang themselves with their own rope. Because what happens is this: in order to prove that Men can only be with Women and that Women can only be with Men, they start declaring that Men are like X, and Women are like Y, and ascribing qualities to either sex. And what invariably happens is that straight men and women start popping up and saying "hang on, I'm not like that" or "hang on, I'm like that even though you said that's a characteristic of the opposite sex", and before long the advocate of this complementary idea is bogged down in apologising for all the insults they've created against heterosexuals who don't fit into the two neat little boxes.
It is indeed interesting to note how incredibly hung up modernity is about the concepts of masculinity and femininity.
![[Killing me]](graemlins/killingme.gif)
You don't get it at all, do you?
All I have to do is acknowledge trends: men tend to do this, women tend to do that, more men than women prefer something, etc etc.
None of that threatens MY world view in the slightest. I'm not trying to argue that a man will never find his perfect match in a woman, or that a woman will never find her perfect match in a man. Indeed, I would expect this to be true over 90% of the time.
But it's YOU who have to deal in absolutes. It's not enough for your argument to say that most men behave a certain way or have a certain characteristic. No, to exclude any possibility that the perfect person for a particular man might be another man, you have to declare that only a woman will have the things he needs. That a male/male relationship is automatically a failure.
I've got no problem with concepts of masculinity and femininity whatsoever. I just don't expect to find 100% of all examples in one gender.
[ 27. August 2015, 23:19: Message edited by: orfeo ]
--------------------
Technology has brought us all closer together. Turns out a lot of the people you meet as a result are complete idiots.
Posts: 18173 | From: Under | Registered: Jul 2008
| IP: Logged
|
|
orfeo
Ship's Musical Counterpoint
# 13878
|
Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Russ:
Seems to me that we're drifting towards a future where we will have at least some ability to choose the characteristics of our children, and having a sound moral philosophy of the rights and wrongs of this would be a good idea. Maybe a topic to revisit in another thread when I'm not busy ducking the rusty farm implements being hurled in my direction...
Or just go and watch Gattaca.
--------------------
Technology has brought us all closer together. Turns out a lot of the people you meet as a result are complete idiots.
Posts: 18173 | From: Under | Registered: Jul 2008
| IP: Logged
|
|
Golden Key
Shipmate
# 1468
|
Posted
Eliab ![[Overused]](graemlins/notworthy.gif)
--------------------
Blessed Gator, pray for us!
--"Oh bat bladders, do you have to bring common sense into this?" (Dragon, "Jane & the Dragon")
--"Oh, Peace Train, save this country!" (Yusuf/Cat Stevens, "Peace Train")
Posts: 18601 | From: Chilling out in an undisclosed, sincere pumpkin patch. | Registered: Oct 2001
| IP: Logged
|
|
mousethief
Ship's Thieving Rodent
# 953
|
Posted
quote:
Originally posted by IngoB:
What if such a "cure" would rather turn the savant into a genius? That's just as possible, given the completely speculative nature of such a "cure".
In other words, since you're just making this up, you can make it be whatever you want. You're arguing about smoke. "Well, it COULD be like this!" Sure it could. So what? Is it like that? You don't know. So you are making statements out of air and presuming to use them in an argument. If anybody else did this you'd cut them to ribbons.
quote:
Originally posted by IngoB:
There is of course intimacy, connection and love apart from procreation, but where these connect to sexuality that is the guiding principle.
Says who? And why should we care what they say? Says the RCC? This just comes down to "my church says X, so you are wrong." Which is not an argument. And "X" could be a bare statement about homosexuality, or it could be gas about natural moral law. It doesn't change the irrelevance of what you have accepted on faith to someone else's choices who don't share your faith. Whether your faith is in the moral fiats of the RCC, or in its understanding of natural moral law.
--------------------
This is the last sig I'll ever write for you...
Posts: 63536 | From: Washington | Registered: Jul 2001
| IP: Logged
|
|
mousethief
Ship's Thieving Rodent
# 953
|
Posted
Anyway, IngoB, you missed the point of my post and turned it in another direction.
You said that linking ASD with any positive things that might go away if we "cured" ASD was "rain man thinking" which posited a net-sum situation. It is not. Whether or not it is accurate, people are assuming the two are related somehow genetically, such that if one went away so would the other. Arguing about whether this is actually the case is irrelevant. It proves your assumption was wrong.
You are basically changing the subject to avoid admitting you were wrong. And you suckered me into playing one round of whack-a-mole. Mea culpa. I hate that game. I'm no match for you at it.
--------------------
This is the last sig I'll ever write for you...
Posts: 63536 | From: Washington | Registered: Jul 2001
| IP: Logged
|
|
IngoB
Sentire cum Ecclesia
# 8700
|
Posted
quote:
Originally posted by orfeo:
But it's YOU who have to deal in absolutes. It's not enough for your argument to say that most men behave a certain way or have a certain characteristic. No, to exclude any possibility that the perfect person for a particular man might be another man, you have to declare that only a woman will have the things he needs. That a male/male relationship is automatically a failure.
I'm not discussing the level of matchmaking here. My argument is not "this is the best partner for you", specifically. I'm considering the general nature of things because I believe that there are universal moral laws. Hard cases make bad law, as the legal maxim goes, or here: hard cases obscure the general law we try to discover. Generally speaking, men and women are two distinct ways of being a human. Exactly how they are distinct changes with time and place, but they always maintain a significant distance. Individuals may of course be near anywhere on these dimensions of distinctions, but as a whole men and women remain apart. Imagine two diffuse clouds of 4.5 billion points each in a multidimensional space, which only partly overlap. Now, exactly due to this difference, men and women together provide a much larger space of being human than each of them alone. The two clouds together occupy a much greater volume in the multidimensional space than each on its own.
This is the difference and complementarity between men and women I'm talking about. If we take a specific male and female couple, then we would expect this to be represented to some extent. But obviously, sometimes we would see more of it, sometimes less. That's just how sampling works.
Here comes the actual crucial difference. The question is where we seek for the "universal law". You think it means that now every individual couple, two points in those clouds, should find their best "difference and complementarity". And if, so your argument goes, this optimal other one just happens to be a point in the same cloud (man and man, or woman and woman), then that's just fine. I think the overall setup shows us what God wants. Every individual relationship is supposed to be a specific representation of the grander scheme we can discern. So in matching up two points, one is supposed to capture in a minuscule way these two clouds that span human space. The individual relationship is a representation of the Divine design of humanity. Hence the law is that one should match a man and a woman, two members of the different clouds. Obviously, most of these matches will not represent the cloud in the sense that the male point is exactly in the centre of the male cloud, and the female point is exactly in the centre of the female cloud. Obviously we will find instances where such a matchup happens somewhere in the outmost fringes of the clouds. But on average this will represent the clouds, and more importantly, each individual relationship is then a kind of tiny mirror of the greater structure.
quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:
In other words, since you're just making this up, you can make it be whatever you want. You're arguing about smoke. "Well, it COULD be like this!" Sure it could. So what? Is it like that? You don't know. So you are making statements out of air and presuming to use them in an argument. If anybody else did this you'd cut them to ribbons.
Actually, what I have very insistently said, and repeated, is that we should not speculate about what a cure may do or not do, because we simply do not have much of an idea about that, and because basing any policy on something that vague is just a bad idea. The only reason why I gave "positive" examples of what could be was because Liopleurodon was giving "negative" examples. The point was to show precisely that near anything could be the case right now, and that hence we should not draw major conclusions from any of it. Your accuse me here of just the opposite of what I was in fact doing.
quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:
You said that linking ASD with any positive things that might go away if we "cured" ASD was "rain man thinking" which posited a net-sum situation. It is not. Whether or not it is accurate, people are assuming the two are related somehow genetically, such that if one went away so would the other. Arguing about whether this is actually the case is irrelevant. It proves your assumption was wrong.
The only way "genetic thinking" would be better than "Rain Man thinking" is if there was any proof of a genetic basis. But as far as I know there isn't. Wildly speculating about constraints without knowledge does not get better simply by switching labels. My point was quite simply that there is currently no basis for assuming that a future cure of ASC would eliminate any impressive splinter skills that occur with ASC. Say some accident immobilises your lower body, and you - being very sportive - begin to train your upper body like mad. A year later some doctor finds a magic cure that suddenly restores the mobility of your lower body. Would this somehow change that you now haver an upper body that would make the Hulk proud? Probably not. It may be the case that as you now train up the atrophied lower body you cannot put in enough time to maintain your hulking upper body, But then it may be the case that you can, and if you do, then the net effect of it all is that you will be better than normal. This was simply an analogy for compensatory explanations of these special skills. As long as it is reasonable to assume such alternative explanations, and currently it is, there is no good reason to assume that a cure of ASC will play a zero sum game. It may, it may not, we just don't know.
--------------------
They’ll have me whipp’d for speaking true; thou’lt have me whipp’d for lying; and sometimes I am whipp’d for holding my peace. - The Fool in King Lear
Posts: 12010 | From: Gone fishing | Registered: Oct 2004
| IP: Logged
|
|
orfeo
Ship's Musical Counterpoint
# 13878
|
Posted
quote:
Originally posted by IngoB:
Here comes the actual crucial difference. The question is where we seek for the "universal law". You think it means that now every individual couple, two points in those clouds, should find their best "difference and complementarity". And if, so your argument goes, this optimal other one just happens to be a point in the same cloud (man and man, or woman and woman), then that's just fine. I think the overall setup shows us what God wants. Every individual relationship is supposed to be a specific representation of the grander scheme we can discern. So in matching up two points, one is supposed to capture in a minuscule way these two clouds that span human space. The individual relationship is a representation of the Divine design of humanity. Hence the law is that one should match a man and a woman, two members of the different clouds. Obviously, most of these matches will not represent the cloud in the sense that the male point is exactly in the centre of the male cloud, and the female point is exactly in the centre of the female cloud. Obviously we will find instances where such a matchup happens somewhere in the outmost fringes of the clouds. But on average this will represent the clouds, and more importantly, each individual relationship is then a kind of tiny mirror of the greater structure.
This is just nonsense. You've swung from suggesting that all couples need to be able to procreate, individually - to which I responded that no, it's humanity as a whole that needs to procreate - to declaring that individual couples now need to represent humanity.
It's completely absurd. You've got weird Platonic ideas in your head that I doubt represent even what Plato thought, never mind what anyone born in the last several centuries thought.
And you're talking to someone whose profession is to define things, and classes of things, and people, and classes of people. So I can tell you with great confidence that there is no basis in logic to propose that in order to be a "man" one must like "women", or that in order to be a "woman" one must like "men". It's completely extraneous to a proper, clean definition of the two classes of human beings (putting aside, for the sake of simplicity, the cases where it will be necessary to be very careful in assigning people to one side or other of the notional line).
As has already been mentioned by someone else, what's involved here is a total confusion of "is" and "ought". There is absolutely no logical basis for moving from "men usually like women" to "men ought to like women", without either invoking religious/moral arguments or without going down the previous trail of suggesting that procreation is essential to a relationship - a suggestion already dealt with and refuted.
In short, you use the term "universal law" without having the faintest idea what makes a law universal, and on what basis you can show that it's universal. You are a complete amateur on the subject of categorisation. If you want to divide humanity into two (and only two) clouds, who a person wants to spend their life with is completely and utterly the wrong way to do it. It creates circular definitions and question-begging. You either end up defining me and others like me as "women" because we like "men" (who you've also defined as "women"), or you end up having to deny the reality of same-sex attraction as part of your "proof" that same-sex attraction shouldn't happen.
God made me gay. You might not believe it, but I sure as hell do. It was God who told me to come out. The implication of your claims about "what God wants" is that I am not what God wanted, which is basically a fancier way of mounting Russ' defect argument, and it's no less insulting for being fancier. Nor is it any more logical. There is no logical basis for claiming that God had only ONE design for humans, any more than there is a logical basis for claiming that God had only ONE design for flowers.
Nature provides precisely zero evidence for the sheer lack of imagination you ascribe to God, creating Him in your own image.
[ 28. August 2015, 10:34: Message edited by: orfeo ]
--------------------
Technology has brought us all closer together. Turns out a lot of the people you meet as a result are complete idiots.
Posts: 18173 | From: Under | Registered: Jul 2008
| IP: Logged
|
|
Boogie
Boogie on down!
# 13538
|
Posted
quote:
Originally posted by IngoB:
As long as it is reasonable to assume such alternative explanations, and currently it is, there is no good reason to assume that a cure of ASC will play a zero sum game. It may, it may not, we just don't know.
But we do know that it's a good idea to make the world as easy a place to navigate for ASC people as humanly possible. As with deaf/dyslexic/left handed people. We don't (always) even need a cure - and the condition is not necessarily a disorder (as in left handedness).
Why not do the same for homosexual people?
--------------------
Garden. Room. Walk
Posts: 13030 | From: Boogie Wonderland | Registered: Mar 2008
| IP: Logged
|
|
Dafyd
Shipmate
# 5549
|
Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Russ:
quote:
Originally posted by Dafyd:
quote:
Originally posted by Russ:
Do you think that the view that you have been putting forward is true ?
If we weren't already in Hell this sentence would be worth a Hell call in its own right.
You don't get it.
If it's meaningful to say that a proposition is true, it's also meaningful to assert that it's false. And we expect to be able in principle to decide which is the case, on the basis of reasoning and evidence.
I brought to this thread my prejudice, in the specific sense of my not-yet-rigorously-argued but honesty-held belief, that the application of the word "disorder" was factually correct. That belief does not seem to me to have been disproven. But, some of what was said suggests the possibility that neither that belief nor its opposite is capable of being true or false. That what's involved is a value that we bring to the data rather than something that we find there. Which needs a bit of thinking about.
Well that was all clearly and explicitly expressed in the post I was replying to. I cannot think how I could possibly have missed all that.
Your argument here does not work. 'Disorder' and 'defect' are terms that break the boundaries between fact and value. To call something a disorder or a defect is automatically to apply a normative evaluation upon it. Not necessarily a morally normative evaluation, but moral evaluations are not the only kind of normative evaluation there is. To say that flightlessness in birds is a defect is not purely a factual judgement. (Is flightlessness a defect in ostriches or penguins or kakapo? What about their ancestors?)
--------------------
we remain, thanks to original sin, much in love with talking about, rather than with, one another. Rowan Williams
Posts: 10567 | From: Edinburgh | Registered: Feb 2004
| IP: Logged
|
|
orfeo
Ship's Musical Counterpoint
# 13878
|
Posted
Really Ingo, the shittiest thing about your attitude is that you continue to try and present your position as based on reason when it is based, and can only be based, on a moral viewpoint/interpretation of Scripture that I and many others do not share.
You can have that moral stance if you want, but would you kindly stop kidding yourself that it isn't, in logical terms, arbitrary?
--------------------
Technology has brought us all closer together. Turns out a lot of the people you meet as a result are complete idiots.
Posts: 18173 | From: Under | Registered: Jul 2008
| IP: Logged
|
|
quetzalcoatl
Shipmate
# 16740
|
Posted
orfeo wrote:
God made me gay. You might not believe it, but I sure as hell do. It was God who told me to come out. The implication of your claims about "what God wants" is that I am not what God wanted, which is basically a fancier way of mounting Russ' defect argument, and it's no less insulting for being fancier. Nor is it any more logical. There is no logical basis for claiming that God had only ONE design for humans, any more than there is a logical basis for claiming that God had only ONE design for flowers.
Yes, there are a ton of things which don't fit binary thinking, transgender people, intersex, and all the varieties of sex, gender and orientation.
Somebody referred to the wild and exotic nature of sexual expression in nature as a whole - did God intend exploding genitals and mates being eaten? (Don't try this at home).
Well, the magisterium has declared it thus, so IngoB complies. It's a strange kind of intellectual suicide for an intelligent man.
--------------------
I can't talk to you today; I talked to two people yesterday.
Posts: 9878 | From: UK | Registered: Oct 2011
| IP: Logged
|
|
quetzalcoatl
Shipmate
# 16740
|
Posted
Dafyd wrote:
Your argument here does not work. 'Disorder' and 'defect' are terms that break the boundaries between fact and value. To call something a disorder or a defect is automatically to apply a normative evaluation upon it. Not necessarily a morally normative evaluation, but moral evaluations are not the only kind of normative evaluation there is. To say that flightlessness in birds is a defect is not purely a factual judgement. (Is flightlessness a defect in ostriches or penguins or kakapo? What about their ancestors?)
Yes, I keep thinking about all the by-ways of evolution, such as exploding genitals in some animals, and as you say, flightless birds, blind fish, and so on.
It's as if the 'defect' theorists, in the face of these luxuriant developments in evolution, have to say that humans are somehow exempt from this prolixity. I suppose this is captured by the idea of God's design for humans, involving complementarity in sex, and baby-making.
Well, of course, you can argue that by fiat. God was happy with all the variety of sexual expression in animals, but insisted that humans stick to a binary code. And anyone who diverge from that is defective. Phew, talk about putting your thumb on the scales.
--------------------
I can't talk to you today; I talked to two people yesterday.
Posts: 9878 | From: UK | Registered: Oct 2011
| IP: Logged
|
|
IngoB
Sentire cum Ecclesia
# 8700
|
Posted
quote:
Originally posted by orfeo:
This is just nonsense. You've swung from suggesting that all couples need to be able to procreate, individually - to which I responded that no, it's humanity as a whole that needs to procreate - to declaring that individual couples now need to represent humanity.
Actually, I have never said that all couples need to be able to procreate, and this is not quite the right criterion.
Anyhow, all these recent posts are basically in response to the claim that I only think about penises and vaginas and their mechanics. Well, no, I actually have rather grander visions than that. I consider the world in general, but humans in particular and foremost, as a kind of "holographic" representation of God and God's will, and this is just one example for it. However, as acknowledged from the start, visions are not rational proof. And visions are always easy to trash. Their function is to inspire, not to argue. I have no particular intention to defend my visions against those who try to trash them, and I do not expect them to change minds which are set on achieving certain outcomes. I'm just mentioning all this because it is actually quite sad to discuss only genital function, and one can indeed have more lofty thoughts about all this. But in an openly hostile exchange, where every weakness is immediately exploited, genitals is all we can do...
quote:
Originally posted by orfeo:
As has already been mentioned by someone else, what's involved here is a total confusion of "is" and "ought".
Or rather, there is a systematic disagreement here with the modern idea that one cannot reason from "is" to "ought".
quote:
Originally posted by orfeo:
If you want to divide humanity into two (and only two) clouds, who a person wants to spend their life with is completely and utterly the wrong way to do it.
And, of course, I didn't do that. Nowhere in what I actually said will you find any statement that the difference between men and women is "who a person wants to spend their life with".
quote:
Originally posted by orfeo:
God made me gay.
Maybe, maybe not. But if He did, so what? God made some people blind, others lame, yet others again deaf, ... This is not paradise, this is the fallen world.
quote:
Originally posted by orfeo:
It was God who told me to come out.
Maybe, maybe not. I for one have no particular problem with anyone stating openly that they are homosexual (other than in a general "too much information" sense, I don't normally want to hear about the sexual preferences of anybody but my wife).
quote:
Originally posted by orfeo:
The implication of your claims about "what God wants" is that I am not what God wanted, which is basically a fancier way of mounting Russ' defect argument, and it's no less insulting for being fancier.
God never has a problem with who we are, just with what we do. God has made life harder for you in one particular respect, your sexuality, than He has made it for me. Again, so what? There are literally billions of people in this world whom God has allotted a harder life to than me. And there are millions whom He has allotted an easier life to than me. The same is true for you, incidentally.
And yes, of course I think your homosexuality is a defect of some kind. If that insults you, be insulted. I mean, if you do not want to talk about this, then fine. Let's not talk about it, and you can avoid being insulted in this way. But you do talk about it here. So what exactly would you like me to do then? Lie? Or just plain shut up so that only your opinion about this finds a voice? What exactly are you complaining about here? What precisely is the point of telling me that you feel insulted by this? I don't care. Specifically, I don't care about that here, in this setting, which is supposed to be for discussion of things, and least in Hell, where offending others is a sport. It's a different matter if I came to visit you for tea. Then there's no particular reason to raise the topic, and it would be impolite and inappropriate to go on about it. And even if invited to state my opinion, I would be reluctant due to the setting. But here? You want to bully me into silence with playing the victim card? That's just ... bleh.
quote:
Originally posted by orfeo:
There is no logical basis for claiming that God had only ONE design for humans, any more than there is a logical basis for claiming that God had only ONE design for flowers.
You think that homosexuals are a different species of the human genus, like say a tiger (Panthera tigris) and a lion (Panthera leo) are different kinds of panthers (Panthera)? That's a bit drastic.
--------------------
They’ll have me whipp’d for speaking true; thou’lt have me whipp’d for lying; and sometimes I am whipp’d for holding my peace. - The Fool in King Lear
Posts: 12010 | From: Gone fishing | Registered: Oct 2004
| IP: Logged
|
|
Soror Magna
Shipmate
# 9881
|
Posted
quote:
Originally posted by IngoB:
... Every individual relationship is supposed to be a specific representation of the grander scheme we can discern. So in matching up two points, one is supposed to capture in a minuscule way these two clouds that span human space. The individual relationship is a representation of the Divine design of humanity. Hence the law is that one should match a man and a woman, two members of the different clouds. ....
![[Roll Eyes]](rolleyes.gif)
You've got it backwards. It's pretty obvious that this "grand scheme" was dreamed up by humans generalizing from their own experience. Well, actually mostly from insecure male humans other-ing women to justify their dominance. As they say, it's creating God in one's image. If humans had a different reproductive strategy, our theological fantasies would have been based on that instead.
--------------------
"You come with me to room 1013 over at the hospital, I'll show you America. Terminal, crazy and mean." -- Tony Kushner, "Angels in America"
Posts: 5430 | From: Caprica City | Registered: Jul 2005
| IP: Logged
|
|
IngoB
Sentire cum Ecclesia
# 8700
|
Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Soror Magna:
It's pretty obvious that this "grand scheme" was dreamed up by humans generalizing from their own experience. Well, actually mostly from insecure male humans other-ing women to justify their dominance.
The "grand scheme" I proposed is entirely symmetric concerning the sexes. You can perhaps misrepresent other parts of what I say as being about "male dominance", but how can you possibly see that in the "grand scheme"?
quote:
Originally posted by Soror Magna:
If humans had a different reproductive strategy, our theological fantasies would have been based on that instead.
Except for the word "fantasies", I agree entirely. None of this is necessary, it could have been otherwise. Still, it is what it is, because God made it as He made it.
--------------------
They’ll have me whipp’d for speaking true; thou’lt have me whipp’d for lying; and sometimes I am whipp’d for holding my peace. - The Fool in King Lear
Posts: 12010 | From: Gone fishing | Registered: Oct 2004
| IP: Logged
|
|
orfeo
Ship's Musical Counterpoint
# 13878
|
Posted
quote:
Originally posted by IngoB:
quote:
Originally posted by orfeo:
As has already been mentioned by someone else, what's involved here is a total confusion of "is" and "ought".
Or rather, there is a systematic disagreement here with the modern idea that one cannot reason from "is" to "ought".
How is it a modern idea? And how the blazes can you function as a scientist if you don't understand the basic flaw in trying to transform "common" into "universal"? Science is absolutely built on not rushing towards conclusions that haven't been verified.
[ 28. August 2015, 14:07: Message edited by: orfeo ]
--------------------
Technology has brought us all closer together. Turns out a lot of the people you meet as a result are complete idiots.
Posts: 18173 | From: Under | Registered: Jul 2008
| IP: Logged
|
|
mousethief
Ship's Thieving Rodent
# 953
|
Posted
quote:
Originally posted by IngoB:
quote:
Originally posted by orfeo:
There is no logical basis for claiming that God had only ONE design for humans, any more than there is a logical basis for claiming that God had only ONE design for flowers.
You think that homosexuals are a different species of the human genus, like say a tiger (Panthera tigris) and a lion (Panthera leo) are different kinds of panthers (Panthera)? That's a bit drastic.
You think that the only differentiation between different "designs" of animals is at the species level? That's a bit ignorant.
--------------------
This is the last sig I'll ever write for you...
Posts: 63536 | From: Washington | Registered: Jul 2001
| IP: Logged
|
|
mousethief
Ship's Thieving Rodent
# 953
|
Posted
quote:
Originally posted by IngoB:
The only way "genetic thinking" would be better than "Rain Man thinking" is if there was any proof of a genetic basis. But as far as I know there isn't.
I'm not saying it's better. I'm saying that's what they're doing, not rain man thinking, as you foolishly suppose. Sheesh fucking sheesh.
--------------------
This is the last sig I'll ever write for you...
Posts: 63536 | From: Washington | Registered: Jul 2001
| IP: Logged
|
|
IngoB
Sentire cum Ecclesia
# 8700
|
Posted
quote:
Originally posted by orfeo:
How is it a modern idea?
It's Hume's guillotine, articulated in 1739.
quote:
Originally posted by orfeo:
And how the blazes can you function as a scientist if you don't understand the basic flaw in trying to transform "common" into "universal"? Science is absolutely built on not rushing towards conclusions that haven't been verified.
Name a natural phenomenon of interest that is not obscured by other effects and confounds. Name a natural law not derived from data with errors, systematic and random. Most real scientists chase after effect sizes that are minuscule compared to the male-female split. Anyway, we are not even doing (modern) natural science here, so if you could kindly step off my lawn?
--------------------
They’ll have me whipp’d for speaking true; thou’lt have me whipp’d for lying; and sometimes I am whipp’d for holding my peace. - The Fool in King Lear
Posts: 12010 | From: Gone fishing | Registered: Oct 2004
| IP: Logged
|
|
IngoB
Sentire cum Ecclesia
# 8700
|
Posted
Anyway, this entire discussion is so 20thC. The real moral frontier is elsewhere (link SFW other than by topic, best I can tell).
--------------------
They’ll have me whipp’d for speaking true; thou’lt have me whipp’d for lying; and sometimes I am whipp’d for holding my peace. - The Fool in King Lear
Posts: 12010 | From: Gone fishing | Registered: Oct 2004
| IP: Logged
|
|
RooK
1 of 6
# 1852
|
Posted
So you're saying that your anti-rights hateful stance is based on statistical review of double-blind studies with respect to the sense of commitment, fulfillment, love, and connection between couples of various sexual orientations?
No, you're not. You're arguing to justify an arbitrary position, regardless of reality. Your lawn is covered in dogma shit.
Posts: 15274 | From: Portland, Oregon, USA, Earth | Registered: Nov 2001
| IP: Logged
|
|
orfeo
Ship's Musical Counterpoint
# 13878
|
Posted
quote:
Originally posted by IngoB:
Name a natural law not derived from data with errors, systematic and random.
Given your ability to describe all kinds of things as "natural law", ranging from elements of physics to elements of morality, this challenge is completely pointless.
So no.
EDIT: I have a science degree, by the way. It's not your lawn. And was the science you studied even biological?
[ 28. August 2015, 15:51: Message edited by: orfeo ]
--------------------
Technology has brought us all closer together. Turns out a lot of the people you meet as a result are complete idiots.
Posts: 18173 | From: Under | Registered: Jul 2008
| IP: Logged
|
|
Tortuf
Ship's fisherman
# 3784
|
Posted
quote:
Originally posted by RooK:
Your lawn is covered in dogma shit.
Classic.
Posts: 6963 | From: The Venice of the South | Registered: Dec 2002
| IP: Logged
|
|
no prophet's flag is set so...
Proceed to see sea
# 15560
|
Posted
It is easy to argue from biological generalities, such as a general sexual differentiation between male and female. While the pattern generally holds, as does fur on mammals and hair on primates versus other external coverings (skin and blubber, scales and other armour like coverings) it is hardly reasonable to argue that because non-human animals have something that humans necessary must also.
Stephen Jay Gould wrote a couple of lovely essays a number of years ago discussing the clitorae** of female hyenas which resemble penises, being so enlarged. He also discussed the maturing of male fish, frogs, barnacles, among some others, which grow up to become female (is there a lesson there, if you insist on the other?). Other authors have discussed the male mounting male behaviour as 're-motivation' for aggression and otherwise cementing the bonds between males who need to get along in the group, and the mutual stimulation of genitalia among all members of a group because it enhances cohesion. We might then argue from biology that orgies, group masturbation and circle jerks are models for human behaviour. The lesson from this all of course is that humans cannot derive ideas nor standards for morality and behaviour from the natural world, inasmuch as we do cruelly torture and toy with each other unto death as cats do with mice, and if we were flexible enough we'd probably all happily lick our genitals all day long and stop being such clitorasses and scroti*** to each other.
**(unless the plural is clitorasses, which might helpfully additionally describe some of the fucking blow jobs who have posted on this thread.)
***(The plural of scrotum is scroti?)
--------------------
Out of this nettle, danger, we pluck this flower, safety.
\_(ツ)_/
Posts: 11498 | From: Treaty 6 territory in the nonexistant Province of Buffalo, Canada ↄ⃝' | Registered: Mar 2010
| IP: Logged
|
|
IngoB
Sentire cum Ecclesia
# 8700
|
Posted
quote:
Originally posted by RooK:
No, you're not. You're arguing to justify an arbitrary position, regardless of reality. Your lawn is covered in dogma shit.
Your reading comprehension suffers from a severe bout of confirmation bias. I just explicitly stated that we are not doing (modern) natural science here...
quote:
Originally posted by orfeo:
Given your ability to describe all kinds of things as "natural law", ranging from elements of physics to elements of morality, this challenge is completely pointless.
That's just wilful misunderstanding of the point I was making. Anyway, name a law from physics, chemistry or biology then.
quote:
Originally posted by orfeo:
I have a science degree, by the way.
That's cute.
--------------------
They’ll have me whipp’d for speaking true; thou’lt have me whipp’d for lying; and sometimes I am whipp’d for holding my peace. - The Fool in King Lear
Posts: 12010 | From: Gone fishing | Registered: Oct 2004
| IP: Logged
|
|
orfeo
Ship's Musical Counterpoint
# 13878
|
Posted
quote:
Originally posted by IngoB:
quote:
Originally posted by orfeo:
How is it a modern idea?
It's Hume's guillotine, articulated in 1739.
I do, think, Ingo, that you ought to back away from the strange magic box that projects words on a screen, pick up your rusty pitchfork and toddle off home before the evil spirits come for your soul.
I hear there's a jousting tournament on this weekend. You'll enjoy that. You like a good bit of ritualised combat.
[ 28. August 2015, 15:59: Message edited by: orfeo ]
--------------------
Technology has brought us all closer together. Turns out a lot of the people you meet as a result are complete idiots.
Posts: 18173 | From: Under | Registered: Jul 2008
| IP: Logged
|
|
Leorning Cniht
Shipmate
# 17564
|
Posted
quote:
Originally posted by no prophet's flag is set so...:
clitorae
Should you have occasion to simultaneously address multiple instances of the organ in question, and want a latinate plural, I think "clitorides" is the word you're looking for.
PS. The plural of "scrotum" is "scrota".
[ 28. August 2015, 16:01: Message edited by: Leorning Cniht ]
Posts: 5026 | From: USA | Registered: Feb 2013
| IP: Logged
|
|
|
Thread closed
Printer-friendly view
