Dear Joe,

«Some maybe, but 'most'?»

Relief, curiosity, profit, obligation, manipulation, guilt, gratitude, health, rebellion, boredom, status, rarely even love and caring - look at this long list: http://psychcentral.com/blog/archives/2007/08/01/237-reasons-to-have-sex

If you wish to look at it from a metaphysical point of view, the desire for sex comes from the Brahma-Granthi ("the creator's knot"), which includes the first three chakras: Muladhara, Swadisthana and Manipura. Of these, only the second, Swadishthana, generates the desire for physical pleasures. In contrast, Muladhara is preoccupied with the desire for physical survival, including procreation while Manipura is preoccupied with power, fame and social influence. All three further the purpose of creation, but they are in fact an obstacle which does not further one's own purpose.

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Dear Phanto,

«Why? Don't you ever choose what is pleasurable or do you deliberately always choose that which is not pleasurable?»

We all have bad habits, but I'm sure that you too can point to instances in your life where you refrained from something pleasurable because you knew that it is not right and would hurt others.

«The highest pursuit you can have is to live life to the full.»

It may seem so, but looking deeper into it, one (consciously or otherwise) wants to live life to the full because they believe that then they won't miss anything and thus won't need to come back to earth ever again. While tempting, it's a false solution.

«there is nothing stopping them from loving someone of the same sex.»

True, but do they? When you truly love someone, you don't need to express it sexually.

«Why would such a designer design a world where you are not meant to follow the designs?»

The designer may want you to follow, but you have the capacity to resist and not follow their design; and you should indeed use this capacity when the designer is of a dubious character.

Hi Yuyutrsu,

Your comment on my comment:

«Some maybe, but 'most'?»

"Relief, curiosity, profit, obligation, manipulation, guilt, gratitude, health, rebellion, boredom, status, rarely even love and caring - look at this long list: http://psychcentral.com/blog/archives/2007/08/01/237-reasons-to-have-sex

"If you wish to look at it from a metaphysical point of view, the desire for sex comes from the Brahma-Granthi ("the creator's knot"), which includes the first three chakras: Muladhara, Swadisthana and Manipura. Of these, only the second, Swadishthana, generates the desire for physical pleasures.

"In contrast, Muladhara is preoccupied with the desire for physical survival, including procreation while Manipura is preoccupied with power, fame and social influence. All three further the purpose of creation, but they are in fact an obstacle which does not further one's own purpose."

Yeah, but still I've always liked it. End of :)

Cheers,

Joe

Hmmm .. AJ, when you speak of legally safeguarding the Virginity of Daughters a number of different cultures come to mind. Do you speak of Australia specifically or Common Law countries more broadly perhaps?

But by virtue of the fact that "we" needed to make a law to safeguard ripe young females from other family members tends to again make me think that there is no primitive evolutionary function that repulses us from incest, but rather it is the newer structures which provide us with the conscious ability to choose from refraining from certain behaviours on reasonable grounds, and that being from knowledge that we have aquired which is again of the counter-intuitive kind as you previously mentioned.

For example, thinking of street dogs, I believe they are not so well equipped visually but rather rely far more heavily on highly optimised olfactory sensors. And, it seems to these mutts the smell of a ripe female is the smell of a ripe female and smells good and is sexually arousing even if it is the dogs own mother or sister.

So, with people, if double blinded and they didn't know, sexual pheremones would likely still have the same effect in terms of their ability to arouse regardless of the source

(don't think I'll bother trying to find a human study to try and support that one ;-).)

But as discussed there are other more compelling reasons for us not to indulge in these kind of behaviors even though it runs counter-intuitive to our primitive senses.

..

Maybe that's part of the problem with some homophobes in that they haven't got the intellectual capital to override their primitive sensors which are instinctively repulsed by the thoughts of other than hetero sex.

For one bi-sexual mate (as I recall his words) the first kiss with another guy almost made him spew. But in the aftermath, he expressed feelings of euphoria and liberation.

//Not really because all you need to know is some basic physiology.//

I do. What are the essential differences between male and female oral cavities, in your opinion?

//It is not hard to work out where the nerves are in the human body which lead to pleasure//

No, it isn't. They're in the brain. Everybody has them, regardless of their sexual orientation.

//and how the coming together of male and female sexual organs stimulate that pleasure in a way that is not possible in heterosexual behaviour.//

I assume you meant homosexual in that last sentence. But I can see how you'd get these things confused ;)

Anyway, I don't see what stops gay people having oral sex, which is definitely the most pleasurable sort of sex when performed with skill. And before you say anything about it only providing pleasure to one party in the oral sex, I'd like to point out that my maths teachers taught me that the positive integers go past 68.

The male and female oral cavities are pretty much the same, as far as I know. So I don't see why blowjobs would be necessarily less pleasurable because they are homosexual blowjobs rather than heterosexual blowjobs. How would you tell the difference in the dark?

And of course things have been known to happen in the dark ..

..

And I believe that there is most likely considerable variance in those aspects of our physiology that define sexuality between individuals, spanning one extreme to the other with a "rainbow" of different combinations in the twixt.

So, it would not surprise me at all to learn at a future point from legitimate science that indeed some people are hard wired (at least at an instinctive level) to be attracted to individuals of the same sex. Conversely, I have met people who even though they are hard wired hetero, have chosen to Love homo.

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder and in the absence of societal stigmatism, I suspect that there would be a lot more sexually active individuals who are not exclusively hetero.

..

As for what the author refers to as the "moral agency" I think that it is clear that what any one individual has as a moral agency depends entirely on the combination of their genetics and the sum of their environmental experience. That is to say that it is programmable and accordingly we really ought consider programming greater levels of tolerance and the reasons why we do not wish to coerce children of other Gods to become entirely as we are.

Cobber the hound, Wednesday, 10 August 2016 8:45:00 AM;

"Love will win"

You have summarised the intent and purpose of the Cowen article with insight, wit and brevity. it's regrettable that a similar observation cannot be made of Cowen and his supporters without doing irreparable violence on truth, integrity and fellowship.

Mention has been made on the prevalence of same-sex affinities throughout the animal kingdom. It would be a singularly fortuitous event for christians if humans, rejoicing in membership of that proud realm, were to be entirely free of such affinities. What a wonderful and powerful indicator of our divine origins it would have been. That an omnipotent, omniscient, ubiquitous and universally loving god failed to provide for such an indicator surely must be an unkind commentary on the esteem which he holds for his creation.

Humans are animals, are members of the natural order of the biosphere of planet Earth and as such are a fundamental but nonotheless parasitical element of nature. We are of and within the Laws of Nature and as such can only act within nature. It follows with an elegant inevitability then that nothing humans do is "unnatural", however strange or counter-intuitive it may seem.

It arouses a sphinctre-loosening fear in the faithful when faced with the reality that if humankind disappeared from the Cosmos, there's nothing to mourn our passing.

Why all the Saints and Sages who discuss'd
Of the Twin Worlds so wisely - they are thrust
Like foolish Prophets forth; their Words to Scorn
Are scattered, and their Mouths are stopt with Dust.

......The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam XXVI