So let me get this straight (no pun intended). Are you saying that if someone beats you up, you expect the police to charge you as well, as this would be the “standard procedure”?

@ Francis Saliba:

In your opinion, can anything other than conscious agents have intent, or any purpose other than that which conscious agents ascribe to them?

@ Francis Saliba MD:

And by the way, I don’t see where I was being bombastic. On the contrary, I tried to use simple words that even you would understand. But apparently, I failed in that respect. I would suggest a careful re-reading of my original post, since it cannot be any simpler than that.

@ Francis Saliba MD:

1. There is nothing unscientific in my comment. But I eagerly await your demonstrating where exactly I was being unscientific.

2. It is unquestionably an established biological fact that in primates “nature ensures” procreation by a sexual form of reproduction between male and female and that there is no other way to ensure the survival of the species. But that’s hardly the point. My point was that “nature”, not being a conscious agent, has no purposes or intentions. Procreation is simply a lucky by-product of sexual intercourse (in the case of sexually reproducing species).

3. Again, I challenge you to demonstrate where I was distorting incontrovertible scientific facts. As far as I know, it is a scientific fact that “nature” or “natural processes” are not conscious agents or processes. Therefore, “nature” or “natural processes” cannot have intentions or purposes. But perhaps we’ve been reading different science books. I would suggest reading proper ones, and not those with plenty of allegories for children to easily understand, as these sometimes have the unfortunate effect of making people mistakenly ascribe purpose and intent to abstract collective concepts such as “nature”.

It is to be hoped that in the Arriva incident the same procedure will be adopted of charging litigants on both sides of the fight.

That was always the procedure adopted by the police. It is still necessary today to quell the suspicion that homosexuals are acquiring a privileged position in the eyes of the law.

This unfortunate situation has (if I am not mistaken) cost the transport official his job. I think Arriva should reconsider its decision.

No I do not “wish to note” anything as preposterously unscientific as your comment.

It is an established biological fact that in primates nature ensures procreation by a sexual form of reproduction between male and female and that there is no other way to ensure the survival of the species.

It is you who, by your meaningless bombast, are distorting incontrovertible scientific facts to accommodate your prejudices.

You might wish to note that nature has no “scope” for the use of sex (procreation). That would be anthropomorphising nature.

That’s not how “nature” or natural selection works. The advantages gained (in this case, procreation) are almost always a lucky by-product of something else. If we stick to sex and procreation, and we keep in mind that “nature” and “natural selection” are not conscious beings or processes, we will note that procreation (for sexual animals) is only a by-product of sexual attracion.

The reason why sexual attraction spread is because it would only have been animals who procreated who passed the genes for sexual attraction to their offspring. But sexual attraction would necessarily have preceded the will to procreate. That much is obvious.

One gets it all backwards when one says that the purpose of sex is procreation. Procreation is actually only a by-product of sexual attraction, nothing more and nothing less.

Furthermore, one would not sensibly dismiss examples of other species (especially the species that most closely share our common ancestral species) when these examples are given to show that we are not unique in using sex for other reasons than procreation.

Last but not least, one does not sensibly distort science to make it fit with religious texts, that is, if one is to be taken seriously.

Seems to me that playing the victim is the trend among gays, black people etc…

Regardless of respect and who was in wrong and what not, his approach was far from appropriate. He could have looked the other way and handled his temper. It’s useless negativity and hate.

Like you said, people have different values. Imagine the chaos if everyone ran around stirring up fights with anyone who was disrespecting their values with such a diversity of values around.