Liquidrage

Well, you might beg to differ but you didn't back up your case.

Choose to believe the Earth is flat.
Choose to believe that 1 + 1 = 5.

The concept of innate beliefs is bogus, though: where could they come from, we're born as dumb as Dubya

No kidding. That a $1.25 will get you a cup of coffee. Though it has nothing to do with anything I said.

You cannot consciously choose what you believe. It is a manifestation of what you know or think you know.

cricket

'Amen'. I agree w/ Liquidrage.

Oxymoron

The reason I can't believe the Earth is flat is that there is a world out there screaming the evidence at me (ie I've seen it from TV on the shuttle, the shadow on the Moon during eclipses is circular, etc). But there is a flat Earth society out there, still...

The reason I can't believe 1+1=5 is that I have a terrible problem with what 1+4 makes.

Just because the world is informing us that our internal model of it isn't correct (ie we can't make our budgets balance, attempts to fall off the edge of the planet have gone on for much longer than they should) doesn't mean we listen.

Faith and religion = don't listen
Rational = recognise when our internal model of the world are discrepant from reality and adjust accordingly

To restate: belief is choice - to pay attention to how our internal model of the world maps to reality...or not.

Liquidrage

Belief is not choice.

If it was a choice you could choose to believe 1 + 1 = 5 no matter the evidence.

Just becuase not all beliefs are so obvious does not change how they come about.

to pay attention to how our internal model of the world maps to reality

This is just bunk. This would assume that everyone has some innate knowldege of what is truthfull and what isn't. Sorry to dissapoint you but this isn't the case. I've believed many wrong things in the past and I'm sure in the present. It wasn't because I ignored my internal model. It was because the information I had pointed to the wrong conclusions.

If you truely feel that beliefs are choices, give me an example of a belief that we choose.

Oxymoron

It would take a lot of hard work to believe that, granted. That's because I would be insane if I really believed it, unable to function.

Oh no, absolutely not (not in any objective sense, anyway). An individual can believe anything they wish. It's just that if it flatly contradicts reality they may get to know about it in direct or indirect ways.

Example: if I believe I can walk through walls, what happens when I try? Reality politely reminds me that Coulomb forces are alive and well by giving me a bloody nose.

Example: if I believe Jesus could heal my Mum's cancer, and I pray to him to cure her and (surprise) Mum doesn't get any better, what does that tell me about my belief in Jesus?

In either example, I'd be bonkers not to adjust my assumptions about the world.

Er... you've got it the wrong way round. Your beliefs were wrong because your internal model was wrong, you would have been right to ignore it

I fail to see how this is even mildly controversial. Do you dispute that everything we experience takes place in an internal model of the world? That events "out there" enter via eyes/ears/skin/nose/mouth, are filtered and processed? That we interpret the resulting data in terms of the model we currently have? And that we update our model when new information comes in (learning)? What am I missing?

tronvillain

JusticeMachine:
There are a variety of possible mechanisms:

1) A certain degree of homosexuality is simply a quirk of our biology that natural selection is incapable of eliminating ("you can't get there from here).

2) A certain degree of homosexuality is linked to

3) Homosexuality in males is analagous to chicks pushing the eggs of their siblings out of the nest. The first male in the womb sensitizes the mother's immune system so that it prevents the complete masculinization of the brains of younger male siblings, thus decreasing future competition for females.

4) Social conditioning and the desire to reproduce has permitted alleles condusive to homosexuality to spread despite their effects.

And so on...

tronvillain

Justice Machine:
Mathew 21:19 : "And when he saw a fig tree in the way, he came to it, and found nothing thereon, but leaves only, and said unto it, Let no fruit grow on thee henceforward for ever. And presently the fig tree withered away." Perhaps you should consider actually knowing the book that is supposedly the foundation of your belief system.

[ December 07, 2002: Message edited by: tronvillain ]</p>

thebeave

<img src="graemlins/notworthy.gif" border="0" alt="[Not Worthy]" /> That's about the funniest thing I've read in a long, long time. A froggy gay bath house...

abe smith

If Justice machine doesn't know the Incident of Jesus's cursing the FIG-TREE, he's a bit uninformed.

MrDarwin

Bingo. The "norm" for most species might be heterosexual behavior, in the sense that that's what the majority of the members engage in, but we also know that homosexual behavior occurs in a large number of species other than humans. Does that make it "natural"? And is there any "free will" involved? The problem with the "natural" argument, of course, is that all sorts of behaviors we consider unethical, immoral, or just plain unpleasant--cannibalism, incest, infanticide--are quite common in the "natural" world.

Getting back to the "cause" of heterosexuality, I think it's pretty clear by now that there is no single cause. There are probably several different genes involved, as well as several different non-genetic (i.e., physiological differences, upbringing, etc.) influences with the exact combination being different for each and every person. And I think it's pretty much fixed and unalterable at birth, or shortly after--and definitely by puberty.

Maybe some people truly "choose" to be gay; I certainly don't know of any. I do know some people who are either truly bisexual or have only a slight preference towards one sex or the other; so maybe we could say these people "choose" which sex to partner with. But for the vast majority of people the choice isn't whether to be homosexual or heterosexual, the choice is whether to act on one's feelings.