Gays, population growth, the environment, clouds!

[complich8]

... this is getting tedious. Such a ... windy topic.

Science doesn't have an ethical toolkit. Ethics doesn't have a scientific toolkit. However, each is necessary to engage in the other properly (see also: bioethics, various unethical science experiments).


Humans are not obviously deterministic machines. We're continually self-programming. It's theoretically possible that you could construct a turing-model representation of a human being's behaviors and choices, but such a model would be incalculable and ultimately useless, and require omniscience to produce.

If you're going to compare humans to computers, you should learn more about evolutionary computation and self-organizing systems. We constantly change our own code. All life does, actually. We also constantly change our hardware -- growing new receptors, making new neural connections. A simple deterministic computing model just doesn't work for a human being.


As creatures with wills, we can override our instincts, if there's compelling reason to do so (see also: Gom Jabbar). However, when there's not compelling reason to do so, we won't. If our instincts are telling us to eat, and there's food around, we'll eat, unless there's some factor telling us not to eat (like, a knowledge that the food is poisoned, or that we're saving the food for a party tonight, or possibly both).

So, if you want gay people to override their urge to have sex with people of the same sex, you better start coming up with reasons that they'll find compelling. (hint: "god says so" isn't compelling, and neither is "you're responsible for faltering population growth")


Finally, you're faced with a choice. If you believe in a Cartesian or Lockean concept of the mind (qua soul) as separate from the body, you believe that the body is ultimately a puppet for the mind. If you believe in the general view of modern neuroscience, then the mind is a result of those chemical reactions in the brain, and nothing else. This, in itself, determines whether you believe that your mind controls your body or your mind is a function of your body. Clearly, the biggest voices in this thread are not meeting on this fundamental issue, and I am fairly sure this could be considered an intractable conflict.