Of Faith and Facts

[vinnie_tesla]

The most effective argument for atheism (or at least against against religious doctrine) I ever heard is Voltaire's famous "if God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent Him

Comments

[mycrust]

There may also be hormonal and genetic factors that produce gendered behavior. That is an elusive, wispy possibility

Well, it's certainly more than elusive and wispy in the mouse, for example. But make of that what you will.

[vinnie_tesla]

Your evidence doesn't seem to support your thesis, if I understand the link correctly. The article seems to be about how mice decide if they're dealing with a girl or a boy mouse. In particular, male mice who were altered to be unable to detect a particular sex pheromone became enthusiastically bisexual.

Am I missing something here?

[najalaise]

Interesting! Reminds me of how I perceive a fair number of folks to seem to act as though orientation is aversion-based for them, rather than attraction-based. (If you're not receiving any aversion-signals, go for it!)

[mycrust]

Is your complaint that sexual orientation and sexual behavior in a mouse doesn't have much to do with gender?

[dietrich]

Oh MY. I love this.

Mind if I signal-boost?

[psybelle]

Am here through dietrich... For me, the telling factor was always the way some personality traits were assigned to different genders in different cultures (and now, with a little more perspective and subtlety, noticing how different traits seem to correlate/be assigned to different levels of privilege)...

The 1% in this may be that (something we're labeling) "gender" is an essential part of identity; we're just getting the component parts wrong (and drastically so, in some cases).

[moonshadow]

"We know for a fact that there have been millennia of vigorous, often deadly, enforcement of those roles in our culture. People who failed to conform to their neighbors' gender expectations were scorned, ostracized, disenfranchised, or killed. This is beyond any dispute."

Indeed... and if gendered behavior were truly driven by genetics, why would any of that be necessary? Wouldn't we simply all fall in line like marching ants?

[vinnie_tesla]

Precisely. One of the signifiers of the natural is that it doesn't require enforcement.