Supreme Court Legalizes Gay Marriage

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crystal_pidgeot said:
Another thing I should add, in Nature, bad genes die off through natural selection. With humans, we have children at will, no matter the partner. Good and bad genes are passed to the next generation without care of the child. its why deformities and other sicknesses are very common in the human species from birth versus what you find in nature. Bad genes don't die in the human species since survival of the fittest doesn't apply to us since even the sick live full lives.

If we can get rid of these bad gene through gene selection , which is what nature demands anyway, we can also "kill off" bad genes and have good one.
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While I wouldn't called it natural, the truth is that there is a selection occuring nowadays: the western model of societies.
While not a major selection per se, the fact that modern societies look for a pattern of beauty and have their fashion patterns states a selection is occuring, because the ones that follow those are more likely to find a partner and have children. To an extent is the same old thing of cheerleader + sports guy!
Also, let's not forget that people with serious deformities are likely to not finding a partner and not having offspring.
Last but not least, there's abortion!
 
crystal_pidgeot said:
Well, beauty is subjective and while I respect the views people believe in, I feel views that discriminate makes the world bad because we are stilling judging people for uncontrollable factors, which means we are not moving forward as a species. As for DNA modifications, no one would want the same looking babies. Someone might want an artist, another might want a scientist. The good thing about humans is we can be whatever we want but does not mean we can't give them something good to work with from the start.
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While I agree with the first part, I'm not fond of you saying that someone might want an artist and so on and I think you contradict youself by saying that the good thing about humans is to be whatever we want because if the parents are already "forgin" their baby, then where's the freedom? You might have freedom later but if children don't chose to born, why forcing certain features and a possible future on them?

And to not stray away from the thread, I'm far from being knowledgeable about science but if a certain gene was discovered to influence sexual orientation, I'm sure that gene would have lot's of "(un)wanted posters"!
 
crystal_pidgeot said:
Another thing I should add, in Nature, bad genes die off through natural selection. With humans, we have children at will, no matter the partner. Good and bad genes are passed to the next generation without care of the child. its why deformities and other sicknesses are very common in the human species from birth versus what you find in nature. Bad genes don't die in the human species since survival of the fittest doesn't apply to us since even the sick live full lives.

If we can get rid of these bad gene through gene selection , which is what nature demands anyway, we can also "kill off" bad genes and have good one.
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The reason why humans have more genetic defects is because our society doesn't quite follow darwin's survival of the fittest anymore; in the wild, the genes carrying non-favorable genetic conditions are, rather violently, removed from the gene pool, so they just don't have a chance of getting passed; most of the mutations you encounter there will be either beneficial in some way, or spontaneous.
Think about it; how long would a two-headed lion cub survive, outside of a zoo, or the comfy world of lolcats? it would get immediately eaten, often by its own mother; we humans simply don't play by those rules anymore, so we choose, as a society, and by our ethics, that genetic illnesses still don't undo a person's humanity.

Also, genetic manipulation as a whole (to not even mention in humans) is a very thorny subject, with its own problems and greater philosophical, ethical, religious and legal implications than gay marriage; what you seem to be advocating is very close to eugenics.
And those technologies, at that extent, are merely theoretical anyway; there are, now, genetic screenings for unborn children, and the parents can choose to abort if they come up with less than ideal results; that's a positive thing (without getting into abortion discussions, since we already have a thread for that), since it avoids pain before the aforementioned humanity is developed; designing babies, however, is much more dangerous, on a much broader scale, and something greater minds than any of us still can't reach a consensus about, so maybe we should skirt over that topic.
 
Arugula Salad said:
By the by, that's cool that you want to keep it public to help others. I'll roll with it. From our conversation I know that you will respect this question, so I'd like to ask it in response to yours. If there is an omniscient, omnipotent God who created the entire universe and said, "homosexuality is wrong," would you try and tell him he was wrong? I hope and am pretty sure that you will respond with the same honesty I showed. If you do, then you should see that we pretty much come back to a completely different topic than the one this thread is supposed to be about, which is one of the reasons I'd like to move the discussion off. Also, what point were you trying to prove? I just want to clarify.
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If God (I assume the Christian God) did exist, I would tell him that his views are indeed wrong because I believe one shouldn't be treated differently because they are different.

For the second point. I was trying to prove that if not for religion, something like gay marriage wouldn't have been illegal in the first place.
 
Leaf_Ranger said:
While I agree with the first part, I'm not fond of you saying that someone might want an artist and so on and I think you contradict youself by saying that the good thing about humans is to be whatever we want because if the parents are already "forgin" their baby, then where's the freedom? You might have freedom later but if children don't chose to born, why forcing certain features and a possible future on them?

And to not stray away from the thread, I'm far from being knowledgeable about science but if a certain gene was discovered to influence sexual orientation, I'm sure that gene would have lot's of "(un)wanted posters"!
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For the first part, I was basically saying some parents might want to keep certain traits in the family (drawing, music,etc). This is no different than a parent forcing a child into music or beauty pageant, like others in life may choose a different path in life.

The second part, there is a gene associated with homosexuality. Its called the Xq28 gene. If one day our understanding of gene splicing and manipulation is at a safe level (like 95% safety rate), then the parents will have every right to have that gene removed or if it stays. The reason the gene stays around is because nature rather keep it.
 
professorlight said:
The reason why humans have more genetic defects is because our society doesn't quite follow darwin's survival of the fittest anymore; in the wild, the genes carrying non-favorable genetic conditions are, rather violently, removed from the gene pool, so they just don't have a chance of getting passed; most of the mutations you encounter there will be either beneficial in some way, or spontaneous.
Think about it; how long would a two-headed lion cub survive, outside of a zoo, or the comfy world of lolcats? it would get immediately eaten, often by its own mother; we humans simply don't play by those rules anymore, so we choose, as a society, and by our ethics, that genetic illnesses still don't undo a person's humanity.
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Genes are also passed during mate selection. Female birds like male birds with the most colors and those that are not colorful, might not pass their genes, so the gene pools of the less colorful birds die off. Same for selection based on the environment, but you already know this. Just adding for context. Another example are Barn Owls with Melanistic are killed by the parents in the wild but when allowed to live in captivity, there are the most beautiful things ever.

http://img.thesun.co.uk/aidemitlum/archive/00611/owlmain_611878a.jpg

The black one. Its not a bad mutation or a beneficial one. This is about a one and one million chance to get one. You though the shiny Pokemon you hatched was something, imagine being the guy that hatched this bird!

Also, genetic manipulation as a whole (to not even mention in humans) is a very thorny subject, with its own problems and greater philosophical, ethical, religious and legal implications than gay marriage; what you seem to be advocating is very close to eugenics.
And those technologies, at that extent, are merely theoretical anyway; there are, now, genetic screenings for unborn children, and the parents can choose to abort if they come up with less than ideal results; that's a positive thing (without getting into abortion discussions, since we already have a thread for that), since it avoids pain before the aforementioned humanity is developed; designing babies, however, is much more dangerous, on a much broader scale, and something greater minds than any of us still can't reach a consensus about, so maybe we should skirt over that topic.[/QUOTE]

As for your first point, I do agree with that. I think its something we should explore but this is something thats very weaponizeable. I for one would like the ability to go invisible or have some non-human ability. The only problem I can think of is we create a species of super human and Im sure you know what I'm going to say next. Its something that should not be taken lightly since you'll be adding new genes, that may evolve like any other gene. I think we should avoid survival of the fittest if these new humans would take over but it may be common in the history of humans.
 
crystal_pidgeot said:
Genes are also passed during mate selection. Female birds like male birds with the most colors and those that are not colorful, might not pass their genes, so the gene pools of the less colorful birds die off. Same for selection based on the environment, but you already know this. Just adding for context. Another example are Barn Owls with Melanistic are killed by the parents in the wild but when allowed to live in captivity, there are the most beautiful things ever.

http://img.thesun.co.uk/aidemitlum/archive/00611/owlmain_611878a.jpg

The black one. Its not a bad mutation or a beneficial one. This is about a one and one million chance to get one. You though the shiny Pokemon you hatched was something, imagine being the guy that hatched this bird!

As for your first point, I do agree with that. I think its something we should explore but this is something thats very weaponizeable. I for one would like the ability to go invisible or have some non-human ability. The only problem I can think of is we create a species of super human and Im sure you know what I'm going to say next. Its something that should not be taken lightly since you'll be adding new genes, that may evolve like any other gene. I think we should avoid survival of the fittest if these new humans would take over but it may be common in the history of humans.
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Well, yes, genes are passed in mate selection, but those are the beneficial or otherwise neutral genes; the prejudicial genes take themselves out of the pool; and I imagine the melanistic is a random mutation; if I had to guess, the parents kill them more due to looking different (which is in an of itself one of nature's ways to remove mutations from the pool) rather than they die because the mutation is dangerous, or physiologically inviable.

Well, what you're talking about with that is transhumanism, which is a different can of worms than eugenics, although they share common problematics (beyond the uncontrollable nature of genes); but, and this is what I was talking about, the creation of scientifically superior humans, by whatever means you desire, will inevitably give birth to new types of segregation, hate and discrimination which can, and will, go in either direction; the philosophy of objectively superior beings has been treated by many people, from ayn rand in her works to nietzche's philosophy (particularly thus spake zarahtustra), many superman comics (as superheroes overall), watchmen, brad bird in his films (the incredibles, ratatouille, tomorrowland), Gattaca, the Deus Ex games and more, but then, it's still a bit off topic here, and no less thorny.

Also, do consider for a while the implications of this, please; it isn't as simple as you put it:
If God (I assume the Christian God) did exist, I would tell him that his views are indeed wrong because I believe one shouldn't be treated differently because they are different.
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Yeah I do see what you mean but no one knows what the future will hold and I'm sure none of us will be around for any of it if they do decide on this type of thing. I know I would love to be born in a much more scientific literate world so I could see these thing but I guess it all starts with us.
 
crystal_pidgeot said:
Yeah I do see what you mean but no one knows what the future will hold and I'm sure none of us will be around for any of it if they do decide on this type of thing. I know I would love to be born in a much more scientific literate world so I could see these thing but I guess it all starts with us.
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Yes, indeed it does start with us. I will try to get the link to an interesting article I read recently. It tells about the fade out of the baby boomers and the rise of the millennial generation, us, and how our views on these topics are shaping a new America in the 21st century.
 
HanusaRadianceElemental said:
Thank you very much for clearing that up for me. I guess that I thought it was a decision you made, rather than a natural urge, for lack of a better phrase.

My main point was, I think as a society, we to need stop arguing so much over these kinds of things and work together to find solutions to other issues. I just wanted to express how happy I am that our leaders were able to reach a satisfactory agreement on this debate. I think it says a lot about the positives to our society.

I am also glad that the majority of us on here can have civil conversations about these things. I think it is good to take breaks from Pokemon once in a while to enrich each other's understanding.

Have a great day!
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Agreed. We finally figured out that debating only gets you halfway there, while decisive action provides a more permanent solution.
 
If we wanna go into genetics here, then professorlight pretty much summed it up when he said that humans don't follow Darwin's laws the way other species do. Take the homosexuality gene that you mentioned: from a COMPLETELY biological point of view, homosexuality is bad because it prevents reproduction. There are examples of homosexuality in the animal kingdom, but they are rare, because in a survival world a gene that basically goes against reproduction will appear only sporadically. On the other hand, humans don't bother as much. They aren't in any danger of extinction (theoretically) and don't take part in a survival of the fittest race, because they are the fittest compared to other animals and have morality to prevent them from killing one another (to some extent at least). But this and the subsequent genetic manipulation are things that shouldn't be discussed in this thread.

More on-topic, I'd also like to hear Blast Runner's explanation of his statement.
 
From a person who see's the country next door shooting eachother but have more of a beef over weather or not people love eachother as an issue, I have to think that your nation is more effed up them mine and were pretty gone but neither of these are problems, just our politicians, entertainers and comedians.
 
Chaos Jackal said:
If we wanna go into genetics here, then professorlight pretty much summed it up when he said that humans don't follow Darwin's laws the way other species do. Take the homosexuality gene that you mentioned: from a COMPLETELY biological point of view, homosexuality is bad because it prevents reproduction. There are examples of homosexuality in the animal kingdom, but they are rare, because in a survival world a gene that basically goes against reproduction will appear only sporadically. On the other hand, humans don't bother as much. They aren't in any danger of extinction (theoretically) and don't take part in a survival of the fittest race, because they are the fittest compared to other animals and have morality to prevent them from killing one another (to some extent at least). But this and the subsequent genetic manipulation are things that shouldn't be discussed in this thread.

More on-topic, I'd also like to hear Blast Runner's explanation of his statement.
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Actually the gene is passed on because its beneficial to the species. I dont remember where I found that at but it pretty much said nature rather a individual have sex often then not at all. I'll link it if I can find it.
 
Chaos Jackal said:
Take the homosexuality gene that you mentioned: from a COMPLETELY biological point of view, homosexuality is bad because it prevents reproduction. There are examples of homosexuality in the animal kingdom, but they are rare, because in a survival world a gene that basically goes against reproduction will appear only sporadically.
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They're not that rare and are observed in more intelligent animal classes where animals form bonds beyond just reproducing.

Besides on a strictly biological basis, it's extremely beneficial for a species with no real natural predators to have some sort of built in population control.
 
More or less, yes. Also, while some of these species face danger from humans, very few among them actually face extinction. For most, you can consider humans just another natural predator.

Also, homosexual behavior (or what has been viewed as homosexual behavior) has been observed in between 1500 and 2000 species. That's not exactly common. It's definitely not unnatural, but it's not an everyday sight the way it is with humans. And its roots are on things like the fact that two males of a species defend their land better than a male and a weaker female, or with diversity through short relationships or bisexual activities rather than strictly homosexual.
 
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