(September 16, 2015 at 9:15 pm)Dystopia Wrote: Most people here say that race doesn't exist biologically, and I agree - But I was thinking about how we classify non-Human species. Just think about it - Do Golden retrievers exist? What about German Shepherds? Are dog breeds fake? If so, why do we pay so much for breed dogs and confidently assert that certain breeds have X or Y characteristic, are more prone to Z or Q behavior and are smarter/dumber, etc.? Isn't this making a special pleading? We pretty much do this with lots of species. I don't understand how this works. We do the same with cats - Do Siamese cats exist? What about persians?
And if the categorization we do with animals is valid, and the price we pay for them, the worth we attribute to certain breeds and our preferences for some breeds over others (basically "racism"), why do we make an exception for Humans? Are we special?
We say dogs have different breeds, we do not say they are different 'races'. Also as is pointed out to you by Pyrrho, you would need to actually breed humans to create a "breed", an ethnicity is nothing of the sort. There's only one human race - no one who believes otherwise is able to number the "races" they think exist or even categorise them. Is French a 'race'? Is European a 'race'? Is Aryan a 'race'? Well they can't all be - what about French-Canadians are they a 'race'? Which level of categorisation is 'right'?
Ethnic identity has nothing to do with DNA. A genealogist would not be able to identify someone's ethnicity from their DNA.
'Race' is an ancient us-and-them construct. It's primitive. People in ancient times believed the people living 5 kilometres away in a different "city" were literally of a different 'race' (this can even be proven using the Old Testament).
There is only one set of genes positively identified with people from European-decent and that's the lactate-persistent genes. However, they exist in south-east Asian people of no European decent as well - it's just much less common. So even those genes can't tell you if someone is of Mediterranean-decent or south-east Asian decent. Also note that the genes, if you were to use them to 'identify someone's race' exist in a high proportion in a far broader category of people than even "Aryan" covers. So your categorisation of race based on genes alone would be Mediterranean and Middle-Eastern people who of non-Indigenous decent, and everyone else.
For Religion & Health see:[/b][/size] Williams & Sternthal. (2007). Spirituality, religion and health: Evidence and research directions. Med. J. Aust., 186(10), S47-S50. -LINK
The WIN/Gallup End of Year Survey 2013 found the US was perceived to be the greatest threat to world peace by a huge margin, with 24% of respondents fearful of the US followed by: 8% for Pakistan, and 6% for China. This was followed by 5% each for: Afghanistan, Iran, Israel, North Korea. -LINK
"That's disgusting. There were clean athletes out there that have had their whole careers ruined by people like Lance Armstrong who just bended thoughts to fit their circumstances. He didn't look up cheating because he wanted to stop, he wanted to justify what he was doing and to keep that continuing on." - Nicole Cooke
The WIN/Gallup End of Year Survey 2013 found the US was perceived to be the greatest threat to world peace by a huge margin, with 24% of respondents fearful of the US followed by: 8% for Pakistan, and 6% for China. This was followed by 5% each for: Afghanistan, Iran, Israel, North Korea. -LINK
"That's disgusting. There were clean athletes out there that have had their whole careers ruined by people like Lance Armstrong who just bended thoughts to fit their circumstances. He didn't look up cheating because he wanted to stop, he wanted to justify what he was doing and to keep that continuing on." - Nicole Cooke
