Dr Rick

Excellent post, DD
:notworthy

Rick

Baloo

Seconded - very well put.

Nic Tamzek

Yeah. Someone save the thread URL for when this question comes up again in, oh, about 6 weeks.

PS: Although, the one thing I would debate in DD's post is:

IMO there has got to be some relation between human nature (a very specific kind of "is", not any old "is") and what qualifies as "good" for humans. E.g. starvation is bad, food is good. E. O. Wilson's example is that eating feces and slavelike devotion to the hive are good for termites but not for humans, because their natures differ. Humans are pretty clearly "designed" to need certain things, and I don't think that this is an illegitimate inference.

But that is another thread. Interested parties might check out Darwin's version of what I am trying to say however.

Doubting Didymus

For the record, I'm not talking about the 'is' of human nature. Obviously many of the needs humans must fulfill in order to be happy are part of our nature. I'm referring more specifically to what 'nature', evolution in this case, considers 'good'. The case is often made that is is justifiable to discriminate against homosexuals because they are 'flawed' or 'unnatural'.

This is the naturalistic fallacy taken to a dangerous extreme, and can easily be countered by pointing out that, if we were to use the eyes of natural selection to guide our judgement, we would have to kill off anyone who suffers premature ejaculation, and release any murderers and rapists we have lying around the place. Unlike the is/ought of human instinct, the is/ought of nature is blind to any kind of morality, subjective or otherwise.

MyKell

It just occured to me today that sterility would not accomplish the goals of homosexuality that we first proposed. A homosexual male, unlike a steril one, would not compete with a heterosexual for the females and thus the latter's genes are spread without the need for competition. To make a point clear, homosexuality offers a much milder form of population control that would insure a more controlled strategy for keeping population number in check.

Majestyk

Well said.

pz

To the contrary -- think about the pest control strategy of releasing sterile males. Producing sterile males who command the attention of other mother's daughters would, on the face of it, be a better way to get a relative increase in one's own genes than producing a disinterested male who requires investment on your part, but does nothing to diminish the competition.

Doubting Didymus

By sterile, I did not simply mean a male that shoots blanks, I meant a male that does not shoot at all. Unich, celibate, does not go after females at all. Think: drone insects.

zwi

From the very first post in this series

I have not seen a direct answer, good bad or indifferent

I think it is a perfectly simple question, perhaps simpler than some I have asked that seem to have caused rains to fall on my parade

I can imagine, for example, a scenario in which homosexuality is not evolutionary at all; so that if anyone were to argue that it is not evolutionary, I could see that, and when suitably amplified as a possibly full and accurate answer. If you guys want to talk disparargingly and deprecatingly about me, pray do so, but please flesh it out with some details and well expressed ideas

Crudely and simply put, why buggery? and why tribady?

sincerely

Zwi



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3

Doubting Didymus

You're not looking hard enough. Have another read of my post, 10 up from this one. I think I make my opinon quite clear.

That homosexuality is not an evolutionary adaptation at all IS, in fact, exactly the point that many of us have been making. I, for example, said this:


In other words, my opinion is that homosexuality is not a trait that evolution by natural selection is responsible for.