(October 20, 2015 at 1:25 pm)Drich Wrote: (October 19, 2015 at 12:56 pm)TheRocketSurgeon Wrote: Well, on the one hand, you're right... bisexuality is more common than outright homosexuality,
If this is the case then we can point to 'Choice' (choosing to have homosexual sex) and invalidating the "I can not be aroused by the opposite sex" argument.
(Which BTW is my argument, so thanks for that.)
No. No, no, no. That's not what "more people are bisexual" means.
This is a failure of basic reading comprehension.
SOME people are Kinsey 6, meaning they have no attraction to the opposite gender. SOME are Kinsey 1, meaning they have no attraction to the same gender. Others fall on the scale from 2-5, meaning various degrees of same-sex attraction capacity. ONLY for that third group is there a choice in the matter.
(October 20, 2015 at 1:25 pm)Drich Wrote: Quote:in humans and animals both. It's not a binary solution-set. Look up the Kinsey Scale, if you want to know what I mean.
I'm also glad you refered to the Kinsey scale, because one can very easily argue the whole 'scale' is based on preference/Choice rather than a hard wired response. Which would then make it a "Binary solution-set." Which BTW is what you need for your last post to work, unless have now flip flopped, and looking to validate Homosexuality not from a genetic POV, but a social.
Again, see above. It means nothing of the sort. It means that our wiring ends up with various "settings", following the developmental process that is our sexual awakening during puberty (there is evidence that hormonal environments during the homeobox switching phase, in a process akin to puberty that occurs while the fetus is still in the womb has an impact on the development of these parts of our endocrine system and thus may impact sexuality as an adult, as well).
(October 20, 2015 at 1:25 pm)Drich Wrote: Quote:It is clear by this point that homosexuality is not genetic,
bingo!
Nice, so you cut me off mid-sentence, in order to ignore what I'm actually saying in the very next part of the sentence, following the comma.
(October 20, 2015 at 1:25 pm)Drich Wrote: Quote: but epigenetic, relating to the developmental genes which switch on and off at varying times and durations in order to regulate the hormone environment in which the sexuality-governing regions of our brains (and endocrine system) develop.
If this were true then we could easily identify and map this gene in something like a 'fruit fly'/A Creature who's genetic map is well established and has a fast generational cycle, so that we can manipulate 'turn the gene on and off' to validate the 'gay gene' theory.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/200...094541.htm
Now in the article scientist did biologically manipulate male fruit flies into courting other males, they did this by altering brain function, and not genetics. So again, if their were a 'gay gene' (recessive or not) it should be easy to identify in a lessor creature, and subsequently apply/transfer to more complex ones.
Epic fail. Learn what epigenetics is. Then try again. And what do you think "altering brain function" means? If our development process causes the brain to be "programmed" in a certain way, due to factors like hormone levels in the womb or environmental chemical exposure (or whatever), it still ends up with the same result as if a gene said "make it like this". How can you have such poor reading comprehension skills? You take my "it is not a gene" line out in order to mock it, then pretend in the next sentence that I'm claiming it has to be a gene!
(October 20, 2015 at 1:25 pm)Drich Wrote: Quote: However, it is a "fixed" thing in adults, wherever they wind up landing on the Kinsey Scale, as demonstrated by experiments like the pheromone-detection blind studies.
Validation of pheromone based attraction to the point of it being the deciding factor in copulation puts us on the same reproductive level as the fruit flies in that article. Meaning if we/Humans have to have equal to or less control of our base desires on whom we have sex with than those fruit flies, for this argument to work... Do you really want to go down that path?
Yes, I really do want to go down that path. We do experiments on various animals in order to understand our own systems precisely because we operate the same way they do. I have no control over being attracted to women. Simple as that. I cannot choose to find a man attractive. Would that I could... I get hit on by a lot more men than women, as I'm somewhat more "pretty" than classically handsome (see avatar photo), and it would have made my dating life a lot easier when I was younger if I had the option to choose to like men. I simply don't... it's not part of my personal programming. But my lack of desire had nothing to do with social program, since I've been around gay people my whole life (mom is a theatre professor and the whole family was into acting), and I've never had an issue with homosexuality.
(October 20, 2015 at 1:25 pm)Drich Wrote: Quote:And even if there is a gene which has a variant that tends to allow for that epigenetic cascade to occur, it will not necessarily be bred out of a population due to natural selection pressure, due to the "mid-setting" of bi- or pan-sexuality and due to kin selection effects in social species.
Again to make the assumption that their is a 'gay gene' puts you in a realm of faith, not science. You are looking for loop holes for a gene/theory that does not exist in creatures we know everything about. Creatures we can biologically (Drugs) and though gene manipulation (Recreate genetically the same conditions the drugs induce in the creatures brain) to force it into homosexual behavior. Not to mention 20+ years of human Geneome mapping, and ever increasing pressure from society to produce something. yet nothing genetic has ever been produced.
To deny Homosexual tendencies is to live with one's head buried in the sand. The reason so far for these tendencies are not completely understood, but they are there. Is their a biological component? Most likely. Is their a social/psychological component again yes. Are people hardwired to be only be gay to where they have absolutly no choice or say in the matter? no. Again unless you content that humanity has less control over it's base urges than lessor creatures do.
Still not claiming there's a gay gene, only saying that homosexuality is a fixed setting in the brain resulting from developmental genetics. That "fixed setting" may say "either sex", "same sex", or "other sex", but it's still a fixed setting by adulthood.
Again, I'm saying that we have
the same degree of control over our urges that animals do, because we
are animals. That doesn't mean we have to follow our programming. I certainly could choose to have sex with a man, though I doubt I will ever feel an urge to do so.
I have no more control over my urge to have sex with women than I have control over my urge to eat. What I do about that is another matter, entirely. I could starve myself to death, with enough willpower... but why? I could become celibate, as priests do, and abstain from sex despite my desire for women. But that desire would not change one iota. It is programmed into me as surely as any other instinct I have.
(October 20, 2015 at 1:25 pm)Drich Wrote: Quote:With the exception of the ultra-right-wing conservative Christian group the Family Research Council, every serious study on the subject has shown that homosexuality is a fixed trait, and not a choice in individuals who develop as "Kinsey 6" homosexuals.
But, again even if you blindly accept everything Kinsey says, people who register 1-5 are still making a choice when they are going to be gay and when they are not. Leaving "6"-ers being biologically/psychologically forced to have gay sex (appearently those in whom you consider fruit flies of the population.)
Because again if we can eliminate genetics as being the root cause, then the cause for Homosexuality becomes a biological or psychological in nature. Even so 'we' can choose to ignore, control, or even regulate our biological or psychological needs in a number of different ways. If we so Choose to.
The argument or disagreement we have is whether or not we should be made to make that choice.
Blindly accept? I'm going with the mountain of sexual research that has been done over the past 65 years, on the subject, not just with Kinsey's initial findings. I just consider his "scale of sexuality" to be a useful illustrative tool.
I certainly can understand why it's so important for people like you to attack the genetics issue and insist that it's a choice, since without choice you still get to call it a sin. But I have no ideological dog in this fight. I am not homosexual, and have no reason to think one way or the other about it.
(October 20, 2015 at 1:25 pm)Drich Wrote: Quote: Your suggestion that non-reproduction would automatically breed out of a gene pool is wrong for the same reason that childhood cancers don't breed out of gene pools, why warning-alert behaviors that are deleterious to the lookout but not to his kin group don't breed out, and why altruistic behaviors don't breed out.
Not a correct compareson. Genetically predisposed Cancer is still just Cancer, whether it is early on set (childhood) or late on set (After you passed your genetic material to the next generation) we pass the predisposition for cancer on, not when it occours. Cancer triggers is what determines when a cancer takes hold. Granted sometimes the perfect storm does occour when just the right two parents have a child in that one parent passes on a great number of genes that are/can be triggered by other genes passed by the other parent, but those cases are rare. >1% of all cancer cases
http://www.cancer.net/cancer-types/child...statistics
I can't find the article I read last year but Childhood cancer seems to also be heavier is certain regions which indicate either environmental component or a genetic one (perfect storm senerio) But still come out to a fraction of a percent. Why? Because it is all but been 'bred out' of our geneome if infact this was ever an issue over the hundreds of millions of years of our evolution. Point being the numbers of childhood cancer cases (Survival of the fittest) verses the growing number of none reproductive homosexual who supposedly have a hidden gene that no one can find that turns on and off according to soceity's want and will. (Just asking does that only sound silly to me?)
There are several types of cancers that are genetic-only. However, since I'm talking about epigenetics, not just genetics, environmental factors during the developmental stages, particularly in the womb, still count. The genetic versions often crop up when one of the genes we have multiple copies of the same gene... this is called a
Copy Number Variation, or CNV. A few copies of the gene are harmless, but if you get a subsequent extra set of copies, you wind up with cancer.
The real thing you need to realize here is that genetics is rarely about "Gene A says ___ so we get phenotype ____". Usually, several genes have to contribute to producing a physical aspect of the person. If one or two of those genes are variants, it may not do anything at all, but a particular combination might produce a very different result. All my siblings could have various combinations of the genes I have, which do nothing of import because they didn't get the full sequence that causes a problem, but which in me produces schizophrenia or depression, for instance. All three of us will pass the same gene-set on to our kids, and it might be their kids who get the particular combination I got, while my kids harmlessly get combinations that do not include the exact combination that produces the effect.
In that kind of scenario, if we did not know which gene-set we were looking for in me, it would be very hard to pin down what set of genes contributed to my different neural development, especially since it may require another factor (like high stress-hormone levels in my mom, while I was in the womb, for instance) that caused the combination to produce my variant brain, but which doesn't show up in the tests or in my genes directly. See what I say, immediately following.
(October 20, 2015 at 1:25 pm)Drich Wrote: Quote:The first one is an example of a combination of genes that may not be harmful except in a particular combination that results in cancer, while the latter two have deleterious effects in the individual but are helpful to the genes of others who share the same basic gene-set as the individual who has the "deleterious" combination.
That's what I said/meant (Perfect storm)
Quote:Please try to actually understand evolution, rather than bending an oversimplified version to suit your religious prejudices.
You mean like the number of 'Perfect storm" cancer kids (Less than 1%) verses a 5 to 8% of All Americans consider themselves Gay...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT_demog...ted_States
Again, The cancer gene can be a recessive one that is not active unless the conditions of your "deleterious combination"/My perfect storm paragraph are met. which means a great number (all be it a very small percentage of the population) of parents can pass on genetic material that has a chance of reacting badly with another very specific gene set without any ill effect. Thus over millions of years of evolution represent a less than 1% occourance of childhood cancer (+/-15K kids) Short bus evaluation, the childhood cancer genes are all but bred out of the gene pool, but still remain in a small way because people can pass the gene on without cancer automatically happening to every child.
verses the homosexual/gay gene theory, who's on set of homosexuality is supposedly from birth, and stays with the child all his life which means absolutely no chance of reproduction/passing on the gene. which some how equates to 8% of what 400 million (32,000,000) people being gay?!?!?
Dude, take off the blinders.
That fact that the Homosexual community is growing proves it is not a genetic condition, it is a choice people make, which should not be a problem to anyone unless they are ashamed on a deep level of who they are/choices they make. Which I don't understand. Because if people are willing to deny God, who cares what choices they make for themselves? the net result is the same. Be truly proud of who you are and own the choices you make. Stop making excuses about who you are and why you do things.
The exact percent is not relevant to the discussion. It could occur 1% of the time for gays and 20% for children, or vice-versa. They're completely different gene sets. And again, you're ignoring that social factors
do play a role in the success of the "gay-variant", both because of kin-selection and because they appear to play a critical function in small, hunter-gatherer tribes we have studied, which increases the fitness of the group overall despite being a non-breeding member. (And possibly may be a breeding member, if a Kinsey 2-5, meaning that gene set still gets passed on 4/6ths of the time.)
Understanding the developmental epigenetics of human sexuality
is a way for everyone to "Be truly proud of who you are and own the choices you make.", as you put it.
Finally, the homosexual community is not growing. It's just finally free to step out of the closet without fearing harm, so they have become more visible and outspoken. You know the word "faggot" comes from a bundle of kindling? The term was originally a warning to the homosexual that they would be burned alive if they were caught. So they stayed in the closet. There are no more gays now than there have ever been, only more people unafraid to admit their sexuality, and unwilling to hide for the sake of your nice, neat little Christians worldview.
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