Rational belief

[DeistPaladin]

Nice video *subscribed*

I agree with everything in there so far, though it really does not stop the argument from primitive interpretation, that being the people who wrote the book were importing their hypothesis into the holy book and attributing it to God.

A Christian can easily claim that this is just primitive interpretation of theistic creation, just as they claim similar phenomenon for the barbaric laws, the incest etc, how would you respond to that?

Thank you.

If I didn't mention it in the video, the order of events is far too incorrect to even be interpreted in a poetic light. Were a deity to relate the big bang to primitive humans, I'd expect it to be something along the lines of "let there be light" followed by the creation of the stars, then the earth, then the plants, etc. Instead, we find what you would expect from primitive humans creating a geo-centric myth, that is first the earth, then the plants, then the sun, then the stars as an afterthought, etc.

And your 'believing heart' is what?

That the natural universe is a machine, that the human mind is not just the result of good fortune and we have a noble destiny as a species.

It seems like this is a view contingent on your initial acceptance of deism, which seems to me to be an emotional reason, unless i am mistaken?

Actually, I learned about evolution in high school. I discovered I was a deist around the age of 35.

Where did the deity tweak? Assuming that such deistic action is necessary you must have an example of a biological process you believe is not accounted for with natural selection?

Setting things up for our more evolved brains and civilization. And it's not so much "necessary" as it is the alternative is to believe we won the cosmic lottery. Sure, it's possible that it all just happened to work out that way on its own but... wow. I know you're going to say "personal incredulity" again, so I hope I just saved you the bandwidth by beating you to it, but I honestly find it incredulous.

And how does this sit with animals that have better respiratory systems?

Better for what purpose? In our case, better for communication that, combined with our opposable thumbs and increased cranial capacity, made our current civilization possible. Other animals may have superior respiratory systems for breathing underwater but that's not necessary for our purposes.

The only attributes we have that seem to be particularly unique are high-level intelligence and social ethics, and the latter could easily be the product of high-level intelligence combined with normal sociality in mammals.

I wouldn't say "only" as this is a decisive attribute. Further, our morality is improving over time, contrary to the claims of theists, so I wouldn't conclude any inevitability that ethics will always grow out of intelligence and normal socialization.

LMAO i'm pretty sure that whole "rectal sweet spot" would be the stimulation of the prostate from beyond the rectal wall.

Yes.

Wow, at first i thought this argument was humor...

Well, call it "kidding on the square" as Al Frankin might say. Yes, it is something I've wondered about and yet it also has the advantage of making the fundies faces turn all kinds of pretty colors. Two birds, one stone.

Natural selection promotes social structures, homosexual families do not violate this beneficial trait, but they don't add anything to it either, in fact the lack of a reproductive ability means that whilst it's not all bad socially, it certainly does not contribute to the continuation of the gene pool.

I would not say it adds nothing. Gay couples can't have children of their own. Het couples will want their own kids if they can have them. The benefit to society is the creation of loving families ready to adopt for their heterosexual counterparts who have died or shirked their responsibility. Additionally, there's a strong correlation between sexual orientation and androgyny. The stereotype of catty gay men and butch lesbians is not just a stereotype. I think this too serves a purpose, allowing gay couples to effectively fill both mother and father roles. Studies in both psychology and zoology have shown that same gender couples are equally capable as parents.

However, as I've said, this benefit to society is indirect. I can't see how a tribe with gays would be at such an advantage over a tribe with no gays as far as which one would survive. Yet, there is benefit. Also, the fact that gays can't have children of their own, meaning it should be, if not an evolutionary dead end, at least an inhibitor. The fact that homosexuality exists not merely in all human societies but also the animal kingdom as well is something that makes me wonder.

This will be why you don't see homosexuality in non-social animals as it would necessarily exclude the ability to reproduce and pass on the genes.

Non social animals typically have more primitive parenting patters. I mean "primitive" in the biological sense of the word, which is to say no family structure. Ergo, your point is moot since such animals don't raise their young and therefore have no need of adoption.

My thinking is that bi-sexuality is what allowed the gene to pass down, in fact it was widely believed to have occurred before homosexuality, and it was just one of the many benign but non-beneficial genes in the lineage of a species.

Current thinking is that homosexuality, in males at least, is the result of the environment in the womb. A woman's later born sons, that is after the first son, are more likely to be gay. Not sure what prevailing hypothesis exists to explain lesbians.

It might be interesting to see studies on whether or not bisexuals are more likely to have a gay child, which would lend weight to your thinking on the subject. Unfortunately, we're going to need to get a lot more comfortable about sexual orientation as a society before such a study is even possible. Finding out how many closeted gays there are in the country is hard enough. It's not uncommon for bisexuals to relate that they didn't find out about their versatile nature until later in life. I surmise that there may be more out there that never find out. What we think of as "bisexuality" may be far more common than anyone suspects, especially since we think of heterosexuality in rather purist terms.