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mrwhoop wrote:Right, right. Like how something is only a 'theory' like it's an idea you're mechanic said might be wrong with your car when a scientific theory is an accepted set of evident laws which in turn is a rigorously tested hypothesis. Idea/observation, hypothesis, law, and then theory. It's a long road and not to be said lightly.

Sort of. Laws are different from theories in that they don't include an explanation for the phenomenon. Thus, the phenomenon of evolution is a law. Evolution via natural selection would be a theory.

I'm not necessarily sure that's true. We don't really know enough about neuroscience and the way in which the brain is affected by its environment in order to say that with any certainty. Particularly given that homosexual behavior, literally the tendency to engage in sexual behavior with members of the same sex, is only ever witnessed amongst social species. At least as far as I know.

I wouldn't precisely call fruit flies social. There's also several genes identified that predispose the flies to such behavior, although of course corresponding genes in humans haven't been conclusively proven yet.

generalgrog wrote:

I heard Sir David Attenborough make the claim that bilateral symmetry in trilobytes "proves" evolution because almost all life has bilateral symmetry. I mean that is his example of actual proof? I actually laughed out loud at the absurdity, when I heard him say that. I mean there was no thought given to the "possibility" that it pleased the Creator to base his creations with bilateral symmetry.

I would be interested to see what assumptions are involved with the common genetic descent theory. I did a quick google but couldn't find much.

GG

edit..fixed Richard to David attenborough

Absurdity?
You're one to talk.
Some people may find it "absurd" that you believe a celestial being looked down at the earth one fine day and said "you know what, this Bilateral Symmetry stuff is rather nice. Think I'll apply it to something. I know, I'll call it life, that's a nice catchy name." I personally find it absurd to think that the Creator of All is as petty and vindictive as he is made out to be; I cannot believe that something that took the time and effort to create the Universe could ever find it within itself to hate minor things about what it had created, regardless of how it turned out, and it is that reason I find myself at odds with some of the more fundamental Religion-practicers.
Perhaps David Attenborough was wrong to state that it is "proof," when it is fact merely evidence. But even then, stating someone's views as more absurd than yours stinks to me of hypocrisy, especially given that all humans, whether of Faith or of rationalism, are at heart remarkably absurd animals, and have done absurd things in the past regardless of their religious outlook.

dogma wrote:And I'm not convinced that they need to follow in that order, excepting the fact that conclusion must be at the end.

I'm convinced that a test must come after a hypothesis. You may be able to derive true conclusions in other ways, but that's not science.

Honestly, I think it is. A lot of times the steps of experimentation and hypothesis formation are conflated; especially in the social sciences. I mean, ultimately observation isn't just looking at something; its looking at something in a manner that presumes more detail than is otherwise common.

If what is done "in science" determines what "science" is we're going in circles.

I mean, Einstein wrote his paper on Brownian Motion by watching small particles moving in containers of water.

That doesn't sound like a scientific conclusion, then.

See, I don't think that's the case. It seems to me that you're falling into the common trap of assuming that a study must produce novel conclusions in order to be worthwhile.

Well, novel information must be gained from them. Even if that information is merely "repeating experiment A gets us the same result".

Simply having a very strong suspicion of correctness such that we can say that we 'know' something does not preclude the possibility of empirically testing that suspicion. Moreover, even if we 'know' that all men have nipples because the study I described had been done before there would still be cause to call repeated experiments scientific despite repetition. After all, maybe all men had nipples before, but there isn't necessarily a reason to presume that they still do.

The problem I have with this is that I don't consider cutting open an eye to be exceptionally scientific itself. Scientific enough to be called science, but not so that scientific that things which are analogous to it are necessarily science.

In essence, I "define" science pretty narrowly. Because the alternative seems to be to make any sensible theory about material world into science. I ate too much ice cream and now I have a headache. My hypothesis is that eating ice cream gave me a headache, which is retroactively tested by the fact that I ate ice cream and got a headache, and yesterday I didn't eat any and didn't get a headache (perhaps I can conduct a poll on myself in which I confirm this if I feel the need for increased formality), and now my scientific conclusion is that eating ice cream gives you headaches. Well, the conclusion is probably correct. And if I were to put this process on one end of a scale and an actually scientific analysis of ice cream headaches on the other I probably wouldn't know exactly where to draw the line that should separate the science from the non-science. So I guess if someone wanted to call it all science I wouldn't try and stop them.

Your ice cream testing is scientific, but if you just stop once you have the basic answer (eating ice cream causes headaches), then you have failed the scientific method. Science goes one. Why is it causing the headache? Are there conditions in which it doesn't cause headaches? Does the type of ice cream matter? Science isn't about one single answer, but creating new questions from the answers we do get. Science doesn't have to be overly complex, but we've been doing it for so long that many of the basic questions are well behind us and the complex ones are here. Stuff that is complicated today will be simple in 100 years and it goes on and on. At least that is what Star Trek teaches us.

Manchu wrote:I don't think that same-sex sexual behavior in giraffes indicates anything about same-sex behavior in dragonflies. Certainly neither has anything do with human sexuality. My point is that the attempt to draw inferences regarding social policy from such observations and comparisons has a strictly literary (at best) value. There is nothing "scientific" about it, at least not in the sense that people use the word "scientifc" to validate their opinions.

There is science in the hypothesis 'humanity is not alone in having members who engage in homosexuality' and then going out and testing that hypothesis by seeing if we are actually alone or if other species also have homosexual practice. That we have observed such doesn't make the practice acceptable automatically*, afterall we've also observed rape and infanticide in the animal kingdom.

But observing sexual practice among animals, and noting where it is similar or different to our own is certainly science.



*It is, of course, acceptable because it is undertaken by consenting adults, and affects no-one outside of those two adults.

Ahtman wrote:Your ice cream testing is scientific, but if you just stop once you have the basic answer (eating ice cream causes headaches), then you have failed the scientific method. Science goes one. Why is it causing the headache? Are there conditions in which it doesn't cause headaches? Does the type of ice cream matter? Science isn't about one single answer, but creating new questions from the answers we do get. Science doesn't have to be overly complex, but we've been doing it for so long that many of the basic questions are well behind us and the complex ones are here. Stuff that is complicated today will be simple in 100 years and it goes on and on. At least that is what Star Trek teaches us.

Star Trek also said we'd have X-Wings by now. We all see how that prediction turned out.

Manchu wrote:When people say that homosexual acts are not "natural," I don't think the language they're evoking is about whether or not such acts are "found in nature." I think there is an unconcious latency in thought process; a throw back to (or half-remembering of) neo-scholastic jargon about morality. Whether or not the ruins of this philiosphical perspetive in the mind of one individual or another consititutes a sound basis for their opinions, pointing at some animals having same-sex intercourse is not a meaningful response.

Honestly, references to something being 'natural' and therefore good, or 'unnatural' and therefore bad, are built with so many in-built assumptions and inherent assumptions (they're generally talking about natural things being good while posting on the internet, for starters...) that they should just be dismissed automatically.

Homosexuality (if we have to call it that) in animals is not the same thing as homosexuality in humans.

Well, sexuality in animals will be very different to human sexuality, more so once you move outside of mammals. But difference does not prevent comparisons being drawn. One should note assume that it is good for our sexuality to mimic that found in other species, but it is still worth recognising where our sexuality is similar to other species, and where it is different.

@sebster: You ought to read about the ants in the article I posted.

Orkeosaurus wrote:Star Trek also said we'd have X-Wings by now. We all see how that prediction turned out.

Also, clone wars were supposed to have happened in the mid-90s. Given they destroyed about a quarter of the Earth's population, I'm pretty sure it would have made the news.

I'm beginning to suspect Star Trek is just something somebody made up.

Except for the lightsabers, right?

Wait...

Jar Jar is gay?


sigh...

GG

Manchu wrote:@sebster: You ought to read about the ants in the article I posted.

I'd opened it but hadn't read it. Having read it, it's just pointing out that other species are very alien to ourselves, but we assign human values for various reasons. Which seems to be exactly what I said earlier, when I posted this; “sexuality in animals will be very different to human sexuality, more so once you move outside of mammals. But difference does not prevent comparisons being drawn.”

You’ll note that the author still makes comparisons to human society in the article, afterall. The point is not that we shouldn’t make comparisons, it’s that those comparisons should be informed by as complete an understanding of the animal species as possible.


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generalgrog wrote:Wait...

Jar Jar is gay?


sigh...

GG

Gay for Kirk, but really who isn't?

I think the point of the article is that we used have the example of ants to propagate certain values. I think this is what is going on when most talk about homosexual behaviors in animals in response to people calling homosexuality unnatural. It's a silly comparison that is not informed by any understanding of any animal.

Manchu wrote:I think the point of the article is that we used have the example of ants to propagate certain values. I think this is what is going on when most talk about homosexual behaviors in animals in response to people calling homosexuality unnatural. It's a silly comparison that is not informed by any understanding of any animal.

It would only apply if people were using homosexual animals as a means of arguing that being natural made it okay, beyond any other consideration. I don't think that's what is happening.

Instead, people are arguing that homosexuality is unnatural, and therefore bad, and in response people are pointing out that it does happen in nature, and therefore the charge that it is wrong because it is unnatural is wrong. That doesn't make it right, as I noted earlier by pointing out rape is also observed in nature.

Really, it'd be like someone saying laziness is bad because it is unnatural, and someone responding by posting that article that states ants spend a lot of time idle. That wouldn't make laziness right or wrong, but it would discredit the argument that laziness is wrong because it is unnatural.

Orkeosaurus wrote:
In essence, I "define" science pretty narrowly. Because the alternative seems to be to make any sensible theory about material world into science. I ate too much ice cream and now I have a headache. My hypothesis is that eating ice cream gave me a headache, which is retroactively tested by the fact that I ate ice cream and got a headache, and yesterday I didn't eat any and didn't get a headache (perhaps I can conduct a poll on myself in which I confirm this if I feel the need for increased formality), and now my scientific conclusion is that eating ice cream gives you headaches.

Well, the conclusion is probably correct. And if I were to put this process on one end of a scale and an actually scientific analysis of ice cream headaches on the other I probably wouldn't know exactly where to draw the line that should separate the science from the non-science. So I guess if someone wanted to call it all science I wouldn't try and stop them.

I don't see how that isn't scientific. I mean, your conclusion falsely generalizes given that the dat set was limited to one person, but that's not really a huge deal in terms of adhering to the method itself.

As far retroactive confirmation of the hypothesis: any hypothesis which cannot account for the observations from which it is drawn is a really bad hypothesis, which is why its important to test against the data that was originally observed. Now, any conclusions that you might derive from that are going to be really badly supported, but that why science always marches on. You don't just account for one observation and call your conclusion true, you keep testing it until you've tested all possible, relevant instances; if such a thing is even possible.

Orkeosaurus wrote:In essence, I "define" science pretty narrowly. Because the alternative seems to be to make any sensible theory about material world into science.

The process undertaken is science, a sensible theory is a theory, the process of arriving at it is the scientific process.

I ate too much ice cream and now I have a headache. My hypothesis is that eating ice cream gave me a headache, which is retroactively tested by the fact that I ate ice cream and got a headache, and yesterday I didn't eat any and didn't get a headache (perhaps I can conduct a poll on myself in which I confirm this if I feel the need for increased formality), and now my scientific conclusion is that eating ice cream gives you headaches. Well, the conclusion is probably correct. And if I were to put this process on one end of a scale and an actually scientific analysis of ice cream headaches on the other I probably wouldn't know exactly where to draw the line that should separate the science from the non-science. So I guess if someone wanted to call it all science I wouldn't try and stop them

No, but there is difference in quality of scientific process being exhibited. For a start, you were ok saying that no icecream one day gave you no headache, and the next day eating it did give you a headache. That's an observation. From this you can form a hypothesis, but that is all. You can't then use that same data set, which is all of couple of results to then claim that they prove the hypothesis. You made the hypothesis from the observations, of course the observations fit them. So that's just circular logic. What you have to do is put your initial observations aside and take your hypothesis and construct a new rigorous experiment to test it.

There are a pile of things wrong in the ice cream experiment that would need to be addressed before hoping to draw conclusions. Firstly you need a large sample group. Because you can't draw any wider conclusions from saying that there was a headache on monday and not on tuesday. That's a fact, you know the days were different. And no two days are the same, it's virtually impossible that the only variable between Monday and Tuesday was eating ice-cream, it could be just a normal headache unrelated to the icecream, it could be the weather or anything. What you want to say is that in general terms, a day when you eat ice cream you get a headache more often than when you don't. If you had two people of different heights and they ran different speeds. You couldn't then claim a 'trend' that people who are taller run faster, which is what you want to be able to claim from the icecream experiment. All you have proven from comparing these two people is that two people are different, and saying that two people are different is worthless. So you would want a huge crowd of tall people and a crowd of short people, or you'd want a variety of sizes and chart height against speed. You want to draw the conclusion by showing a trend, a different between two days is not a trend.

Thus you need to test many days. And the more days you test the stronger it will be statistically, because if you test just a couple of days the result is still nearly worthless, the more days you test the easier it will be to prove a trend, and overcome any freak results. Then you have to query whether your results apply to other people. Even if you prove that icecream and headaches correlate for you, that only really applies to you as an individual, maybe you have a medical condition. You can't apply that to everyone as a trend just because you carry out repeat trials on yourself. So you'd need to repeat it with lots of other people a few times each. Then you have not only carry out repeat experiments but you have trialled a sample of the population. But then you have to be sure that you don't have a bias in that population, for instance you trial 20 people who are all family members related to you or have some other shared characteristic that links them disproportionately compared to the background population. This is why trials on people need to be in the thousands to be high quality statistically...any why these cosmetics adverts where they claim that 70% of people show better skin, but reveal in the small print that they only sample the opinions of 40 people, are suspect.

And then you have to be sure to control as many variables as possible, everyone has to eat the same icecream at the same time of day. We know that when you eat food can affect digestion and the like, and because all icecreams are different you need to control the type and flavour. Because there may be an active ingredient causing the headache, or the temperature, or the amount.

So even if you do find a trend that 100 grams of Walls Vanilla ice cream causes headaches when eaten at midday when tested across a group of 2000 people tested every day for a fortnight, you may decide that it's now safe to conclude "that eating ice cream gives you headaches". Or you could build some variables in, so out of the 2000 people they break down as trying one of four different flavours at one of two times of day, so you have 8 groups of people (250 in each). You could then simultaneously test the overall hypothesis that icecream causes headaches whilst being able to factor in the time of day and the flavour.

So you describe the trend, lay down the statistical significance of the data, describe the effects of icecream in general and the significance of any effect caused by flavour/time, and then make conclusions. And they you'd have to say what the drawbacks, were, any anomalous results, and suggest further avenues of future work, because you still haven't tested a whole load of other things that may influence the results beyond what you have tested.

And that's 'science'. But no experiment is perfect because you run out of time and money, and sometimes it's just impractical. So concessions have to be made. So if there were a sliding scale the icecream experiment as you proposed would be near the bottom. It can still be called 'science' but it's certainly not of a standard where anyone would publish it and in fact does not reach a level where you can draw a decent conclusion. Non-science is where someone does not attempt to follow the scientific method, once following it you are on the scale of 'doing science', but the quality is all important and that scale goes from the highest quality to very poor. But this is only a problem if you try to hang to much on a poor experiment. Just because you have a handful of observations does not mean they have no value at all, they are enough to support a hypothesis maybe someone else has the time and money to do something with them. So it's ok to report them...as observations. What you shouldn't do is attempt to hang great claims on them, such as drawing conclusions that ice cream causes headaches.

ETA: sorry I went on a bit, to summaraise, as long as you follow the scientific method it's science, but the quality is a different matter all together. Orkeosaurus's experiment is 'science' but just of a very low quality.

@sebster: As I've tried to explain, the argument that "homosexuality is wrong because it is unnatural" has nothing to do with whether or not animals exhibit homosexual behaviors. Responding with such anecdotes is silly because it does not actually respond to the argument (however misunderstood it is by those who attempt to articulate it) and in its mismatched application it far overstates what could be, as you have pointed out, but fundamentally is not a valid comparison.

Manchu wrote:@sebster: As I've tried to explain, the argument that "homosexuality is wrong because it is unnatural" has nothing to do with whether or not animals exhibit homosexual behaviors. Responding with such anecdotes is silly because it does not actually respond to the argument (however misunderstood it is by those who attempt to articulate it) and in its mismatched application it far overstates what could be, as you have pointed out, but fundamentally is not a valid comparison.

If that is not what it means, generally, than you haven't given a better alternative to what it actually does mean (when others say it). You aren't telling us that 2+2=4, you are just telling us that 2+2 isn't 11. If the argument, typically made by laymen, not Catholic academics, isn't that it goes against what is colloquially termed as the natural order, than what does it mean? Most of the time I've heard the argument used, it was done so by people who aren't all that bright, and certainly wouldn't know a thing like Neo-Scholastic. Which leads to me thinking we are spending to much time focused on the arguments of idiots and not on ones of substance.

Orkeosaurus wrote:Star Trek also said we'd have X-Wings by now. We all see how that prediction turned out.

sigged. That is spectactular and remarkably on topic.

Ahtman wrote:

Manchu wrote:@sebster: As I've tried to explain, the argument that "homosexuality is wrong because it is unnatural" has nothing to do with whether or not animals exhibit homosexual behaviors. Responding with such anecdotes is silly because it does not actually respond to the argument (however misunderstood it is by those who attempt to articulate it) and in its mismatched application it far overstates what could be, as you have pointed out, but fundamentally is not a valid comparison.

If that is not what it means, generally, than you haven't given a better alternative to what it actually does mean (when others say it). You aren't telling us that 2+2=4, you are just telling us that 2+2 isn't 11. If the argument, typically made by laymen, not Catholic academics, isn't that it goes against what is colloquially termed as the natural order, than what does it mean? Most of the time I've heard the argument used, it was done so by people who aren't all that bright, and certainly wouldn't know a thing like Neo-Scholastic. Which leads to me thinking we are spending to much time focused on the arguments of idiots and not on ones of substance.

Originally labelling homosexuality unnatural is derived from religious prejudice where 'natural' means 'in a state of gods grace.' But still, most people these days labelling homosexuality unnatural are not doing so in that context, and so yeh...you can tell them about queer goldfish.

Why more educated people insist on arguing at the level of less educated people is a great mystery to me. Or rather, it should be in the better world you've accused me of preferring.

"Nature" in the neo-scholastic sense does not refer to biology of humans but rather to the ontology of humans, especially in a moral sense. The concept is used in the sense of the phrase "the nature of God" rather than in the sense of the phrase "found in nature."

@whatwhat: You're getting closer but no, "natural" is not merely a stand in for the relationship of grace to humans (which Aquinas and his imitators would have talked about as supernatural).

Manchu wrote:@whatwhat: You're getting closer but no, "natural" is not merely a stand in for the relationship of grace to humans (which Aquinas and his imitators would have talked about as supernatural).

Come again? In gods grace, as in: in gods vision, preferable by god etc. Most homophobic views are inherent from hundreds of years of religious dominance where nature was generally thought as as what god has created, hence something heretical to the religion (homosexuality for example) could be described as unnatural.

But again most people these days Manchu really aren't thinking that laterally when they call homosexuality unnatural.

I agree, whatwhat. Most people who call homosexuality "unnatural" have a very confused idea of what that word means. I've also come to the conclusion that people who claim it is "natural" are just as confused.

That's giving them too much credit. There are certainly some people who do recognise the current common definition of "natural" and are genuinely arguing that homosexuality is not natural by that definition.

When people say that homosexuality is unnatural, they seem to be making a moral judgment. That does not indicate that they are merely thinking about what does or does not occur "in nature," that is, among various species of animals.

Some maybe but some (in this very thread for example) are actually arguing on that 'it does/doesn't happen in nature' level.

For example I have heard people before bring up evolution and how if everyone were homosexual it would not happen and the species would be extinct etc. in an argument that homosexuality is unnatural. That was certainly not brought up to back an argument that homosexuality is unnatural as in it is immoral.


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As for homosexuality being immoral Stuart Lee says it best...

You mean, there are people who say "homosexual behavior does not occur in animals and thus it is wrong for humans to exhibit homosexual behavior." The first premise in that argument is equivalent to saying "grass is not green." What can be said in the face of this? Nothing. Best to ignore it. (Just like the idea that God created fossils to fool scientists.) Moreover, what animals are doing or not doing has nothing to do with human morality.

Manchu wrote:You mean, there are people who say "homosexual behavior does not occur in animals and is thus it is wrong for humans to exhibit homosexual behavior." The first premise in that argument is equivalent to saying "grass is not green." What can be said in the face of this? Nothing. Best to ignore it. (Just like the idea that God created fossils to fool scientists.) Moreover, what animals are doing or not doing has nothing to do with human morality.

Well yes there are people that biggoted and stupid. But no not really what I mean is there are people who say homosexuality is unnatural, which does not necessarily mean it doesn't not occur in animals yet still is in the context of the modern definition of 'natural'.

Moreover, what animals are doing or not doing has nothing to do with human morality.

This is in response to something I said?

So why is it necessary to bring up homosexual behaviors in animals to counter that argument?


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whatwhat wrote:This is in response to something I said?

No, this is a repitition of my response to Howard.

All this talk about what is or isn't natural.

Trying not to get X-rated here...but what is the purpose of the Human colon and or rectum? To process human fecal material and defecate? Or to procreate? What is the purpose of the Human penis? To discard urine and procreate? or to be jammed up someones rectum?

GG