Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.1 6/24/83; site utcsstat.UUCP Path: utzoo!utcsstat!laura From: laura@utcsstat.UUCP (Laura Creighton) Newsgroups: net.religion Subject: Re: Laura Creighton's bull... (long message) Message-ID: <1530@utcsstat.UUCP> Date: Fri, 9-Dec-83 02:10:02 EST Article-I.D.: utcsstat.1530 Posted: Fri Dec 9 02:10:02 1983 Date-Received: Fri, 9-Dec-83 09:02:03 EST References: <4208@umcp-cs.UUCP> Organization: U. of Toronto, Canada Lines: 216 real long response to ucmp-cs!speaker. Sorry folks, but if I compress a belief and do not quote it exactly, ucmp-cs!speaker denies that it exists, so I have to quote the whole lot... My argument is that if human beings have not caught on to "sex is for procreation" it is unreasonable to assume that the rats do. Thus the whole idea of... And just WHERE do you see the words "sex is for procreation" in my article? I am getting tired of this. I quoted that the last time, and I will do so again, but you are going to have to learn that direct quotes come in indented paragraphs and idea-blocks often get quotation blocks. this is for the people who get sick of reading direct quotes again and again. they are going to have to suffer this one through (or hit their 'n' key....) Here is your original quote: The animals may very well think that they are procreating and just have their wires crossed. What I am arguing is that this sentence is the purest romantic bull. And this is an expression of the belief 'sex is for procreation'. You may not know that you have been sucked into this belief (in which case you are probably a fool) but that does not make the belief any less obvious. The article that started this (possibly rene's) implied that because rats have natural homosexual tendencies, there's no reason why humans shouldn't. Read my comments on this article again and you'll find that I neither agreed nor disagreed with the statment. Rather, I urged caution in making sweeping judgements. Look at your argument again Laura. Are you saying that something is necessarily unreasonable because humans have not caught onto it? Does this mean that it is unreasonable for rats to eat their young because humans don't? I find this kind of thinking unreasonably anthrocentric. No, no, I am arguing that rats can't remember well enough to reason! Whatever 'reason' (if there is one) that rats have for behaving in any way does not involve them knowing that in 18 days (23days? i forget) there are going to be little rats. Rats do not have 18 day memories. Neither do other animals (well, I am holding out on the dolphins, whales and some primates) which is the classic way to tell an animal from a human. In fact, the burden of proof is upon you for stating that it "doesn't matter from the point of view of the rat *what* he has sex with." This is equivelent to saying that you know *why* rats have sex. No. All I am saying is that you cannot ascribe human memories and 'rational behaviour' to rats. Rats cannot do things for reasons, (though a human being viewing a rat can postulate that a rat had a reason for doing this, ) but the reasoning in this case came from THE HUMAN BEING, not the rat. Thus from the point of view of the rat it really *doesn't matter* -- it only matters to human beings who are used to looking for a cause for every effect. (Why? well, it seems to work, and make the world easier to understand. Why can we understand? Well, we have this wonderful memory. But rats don't. Right, so rats can't reason, so rats do not do things for rat-reasons.) You state that "the rat that thinks it's procreating is a figment of your imagination." What evidence do you have to support your thesis that a rat will ONLY choose to have sex when he wants a little pleasure? You also claim that a rat has a teeny-tiny little brain that probably doesn't know if it's procreating or not. Well I can argue the same about a rat that "decides" to have sex with another rat. Yes. So would I. Note that the rat *does not know that it is procreating* does not mean "that the rat wants pleasure". You do not understand my thesis at all. If you do not get it after this longwinded try, i give up. What it means is that the knowledge of procreation either requires a brain of a sort that the rats do not have or the intervention of some supernatural force. The argument that "the rat wants a little pleasure", while still expressed in human terms, is a lot more plausible than your premise -- for you can train rats to do things for pleasure, while you cannot give them the 18 day memories. And besides... sex has nothing to do with brain size. But memory ability seems to have something to do with it... My claim is that neither homosexual nor heterosexual relationships are founded on this programmed "desire to procreate" for either rats or human beings. I am attacking the idea of "sex is designed for procreation". Fine. You'll have to show that this is true for every species from planaria to man. In fact you won't be able to prove "sex is not designed for procreation" because all of the hardware in question was designed for procreation. I suggest you rephrase your statement to something like "animals do not always f_ck for procreation"... there is a distinct difference between design and usage. No. design implies a designer, which is why I chose to phrse it that way. It is easy to prove that animals do not always fuck for procreation -- you just have to watch them for a while and wait to see when they make what would be 'a mistake' if they were always fucking for procreation. What I am attacking is quite specific -- the idea that all of the hardware in question was designed for procreation for you do not have a design without a designer (whose existance i doubt) and it makes as much sense as saying that "my mouth was designed for eating" thus ignoring that i can breathe and talk and do other things with it as well. It also ignores all the evidence of evolutionary adaptation. And where in my original article do you see the words "desire to procreate" or "sex is designed for procreation" anyway? This is why you aren't being objective. You've decided in your own imagination which side of the fence I'm on. No. I do not know what side of the fence you are on. But you are spouting bad science. You have several choices now. you can continue to misunderstand me. you can redefine what you mean by: The animals may very well think that they are procreating. you can say nothing. you could even apologise. you can abandon the biological evidence that organs are not "designed". Since this is rather well documented, you had better justify this one (start with the Panda's 'thumb' since it is well known). Since this is a large chunk of the evidence for evolution, you will be in good company, but definitely on one side of the fence. If you want to do this, will you let Larry Bickford do the 'against evolution' arguments? He is a lot better at it than you, and a lot more fun to argue with. We have been arguing for (i think) almost a year and a half now, and have agreed on very little but so far he has managed to keep from swearing at me. You don't sound like you are having any fun at all. Yes. the rat that thinks it's procreating is a figment of your imagination. Or it is a figment of some teacher of yours' imagination. This great myth has long standing in classrooms, but that does not make it any less a myth. This "teacher of mine" exists in your own imagination. This "great myth" does too. Before criticizing my background and making more sweeping judgements I suggest that you get to know more about what you are talking about. Especially me, if you want to talk about my background. Since when did you become an expert on my beliefs? I am rather well aquainted with the great north american myths, and you presented that one. Now it is possible that you developed this one independantly, but it is statistically unlikely, since it is a very common belief. I have been collecting widely believed ideas for a very long time. What do you think that a religion and philosophy major does? Note, i could have picked another one -- the principle of sufficient cause. This one goes "nothing arises unless it was caused by another". In short, this is the 'there must be a reason for this' belief. This one is even more widespread than your "reasoning rat with memory enough to believe that it is procreating". For instance, Gary Samuelson used it in his response to Richard Rosen, when he argued that either the universe always was, or something (someone?) had created it. And you expect me to use it to explain that the reason rats have sex is for pleasure. I doubt that you were ever taught that belief explicitly, but it is not a world-wide belief -- try Buddhist or Taoist philosophy for another one. (Actually, I think I will write a short article in net.religion about that one) While you are at it you might want to look up the word "repressed" since you do not seem to understand its meaning. My, aren't WE on our high horse tonight?! No, i am getting tired of arguing with a fool. You may think that you can pepper your prose with words like 'repressed' and get away with the attack value, but this will not work here. Calling my hatred for certain Christian beliefs 'repressed' shows that you do not understand the word. I wonder how many other one you have been using which you do not understand. perhaps you do not understand the phrase "think he is procreating" or "designed" either. In that case, I know where the problem is, but you need to read a dictionary, not talk to me. yes, but this is long after I have proposed that "natural" expressed as a "programmed to procreate" is a remnant of Genesis teaching. If it is not, then you are left explaining where it came from, but if it is, then the whole word "natural" should be replaced by "moral" since that is the real topic of discsussion. I am left doing neither since I never proposed that procreation be the only use for sex. The difference between natural and moral is indeed the topic of discussion and I suggest that you pursue that line. You'll find that the word natural drops out of the argument and that the question of "is homosexuality okay" is a moral one. At this point i begin to wonder if anybody ever reads what I write or if they just use it as an excuse to flame back? I have been saying that "is homosexuality ok" is a moral argument over this net for more than 2 years now. So presumably either the articles have been lost, or ucmp-cs!speaker has not read them, or cannot read them, or cannot comprehend them. If there are any of you out there who remember me saying that "is homosexuality ok" is a moral question, do you think that you could post a followup to this saying that you remembered this? I am sorry, but if this is indicative of most people's attention span then it is time for net.has.memory for those of us who can do better than that. laura creighton utzoo!utcsstat!laura