VG,
Are you familiar with the Gish Gallop? It’s technique in which a debater attempts to overwhelm an opponent with a scattergun volley of arguments, assertions etc such that it’s impossible to respond to them individually without taking excessive time and effort. The person using the technique then looks for whatever’s inevitable been missed by his opponent and uses the omission to claim his “victory”. I mention it because we always seem to reach the same point, only in your case the technique is the opposite of the Gish Gallop: you write posts of such overwhelming length that it’s impossible to address them without taking even more space to do it.
If you want to refine your key points and arguments into digestible form I’ll be pleased to respond to them. In the meantime though I’ve skim read your post, and the brief responses to (what I think are your key points) are as follows:
1. Beliefs that there must be “something more out there” seem to me to be fairly obviously on the same continuum as our species’ need to seek patterns and explanations. “Must be” and “is” are not the same thing, and better it seems a conspiracy theory than no theory at all - at least for some.
2. Beliefs can and do change when further and better information is available. They tend to do so less readily though when the beliefs are not evidence-based to start with.
3. All the research I can find indicates that later life sexual orientation is substantially fixed by the time of birth, just as eye colour is.
4. Critiqueing the methodologies of the studies we do have is not the same thing as producing studies with different results. More research being need does not invalidate the only research on the table so far.
5. Of course babies don’t report same sex attraction (or any sexual attraction for that matter). Sexual attraction occurs later in life when hormonal development triggers it, but the studies we have tell us that it’s most likely latent at birth nonetheless. The same is true of eye colour.
6. Your unqualified assertions were about the impact of societal cultures on sexual orientation.
7. The references to environmental factors concern inter-uterine environments rather than societal ones, and even the family issue (the correlation between increased homosexuality and having older brothers) seems to be to do with hormones the mother produces before birth.
As I say though, happy to respond to specific issues if I've missed them.
BHS the evasive hypocrite
Given your unwillingness to respond to specific points, and as you seem to think we are opponents rather than 2 people on a message board having a discussion, clearly there is no sensible discussion to be had with you here so I thought I would channel you in your posts to Vlad, given how similar your above post is to some of Vlad's posts that you take issue with.
It's quite hypocritical of you to castigate Vlad for being evasive and not addressing points made and repeating assertions, when you have done the same thing here. Saying that you are happy to respond to specific issues issues when you have quite clearly not responded to the specific issues I raised just wastes both our times.
Actions speak louder than words. Trying to dress up your evasiveness with references to the gish gallop won't work. I have experienced this before with you - you make vague assertions and when i pin you down you duck out of responding. On another thread a while ago you told me you were a bit busy and would respond to my post later and then kept ducking out of responding when I reminded you.
I think we both know that you are not going to respond to the specific points I raised - either because you are only on here to showboat rather than have an honest discussion, or because you lack the intellectual capacity, and maybe your monumental ego prevents you from having an honest discussion if your assertions are questioned.
Your own links are far more nuanced in their opinions. if anyone reads them they can see that many of your assertions are not as clear cut as you make out. Which makes sense as the people who carried out the studies you linked to are far too intelligent to make the simplistic assertions you make.
Regarding point 6 - if you quote the unqualified assertions about the impact of societal cultures on sexual orientation that you are referring to, I can then assess and respond accordingly. It may be that you misunderstood my point or it may be that I need to refer to links that I interpreted when I formed my opinion. Your own links spoke about the impact of societal cultures.
In any case, my point about sexual orientation being impacted by societal culture has been about the labels people use for themselves, not whether people who are sufficiently developed to experience sexual attraction feel attracted to people of the same sex, the opposite sex, or both.
Regarding the feeling of sexual attraction itself I think there is a psychological component to sexual attraction. This 2018 article linking to studies of animals raises the idea that considering the extensive similarities between primates and humans, it is reasonable to expect that homoerotic alliance formation, and the related social functions of tension reduction and reconciliation, might play a role in human homoerotic behavior
https://psychotherapy.psychiatryonline.org/doi/full/10.1176/appi.psychotherapy.2016.70.3.251The article also links to studies that appear to show that "homoerotic behavior has been noted to increase in same-sex settings including schools, prisons, and religious institutions such as nunneries" though it also supports the genetic component that "it is likely that genetic and early (even prenatal) environmental factors produce a given level of motivation on each dimension that varies between individuals, although research will have to prove this supposition."
