Mormons love to use this quote A LOT pertaining to exmos saying show us some history.

Flip this around about homosexuality. True - the medical profession has not isolated a gene that determines sexual preference. But :

Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.


What say you?

Absence of evidence that should be there is evidence of absence.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/09/2010 09:46AM by ozpoof.

Right, if the evidence is weak for a gene making one more predisposed toward homosexuality, and they want to put the burden of proof on science before changing the word of god...

Then the less than 3/10ths of a percent chance of middle-east/lamanite DNA ever being found is even weaker, so the burden of their outlandish BoM claims is on them.

I think the same logic should be used with regard to evidence of the civilizations of Narnia and Middle Earth. The evidence is there, we just haven't found it yet.

...so it is helpful to note when there is no evidence where we would expect some.

Usually there is other related evidence that explains why we are not likely to find certain things.

In the case of homosexuality, the known evidence leads us to believe there is more to it than one gene. Look at examples in biology for example where gender is determined according to environment, the role the organism needs to perform, or food availability. The genes are complex to drive all these factors. I don't think we should expect to find a simple gene in humans.

As usual, people often take a cliche and apply it to things in science that are much more complicated. No evidence can be evidence in itself but the kind of evidence that is missing has to be viewed in terms of what the other evidence presents. Religion tends to cherry pick evidence and ignore evidence that does not fit their story.

That which can be presented without evidence can be dismissed without evidence

What it is not is *proof* of absence.

If a thing is truly absent, then one bit of evidence for that absence will be a lack of evidence that it exists.

Absence of evidence for a thing is a necessary, but not sufficient, condition to prove its absence.

CZ (pedantic admin)

by now Book of Mormon evidence; Cities, bones, etc. This absence of evidence that should be there by now is to me evidence of absence.

People love to hide behind that "you can't prove it isn't" B.S. After a certain amount of time these things that should be there and are not (I am refering to Book of Mormon proofs) are for me evidence of their absence. We would have seen the Easter Bunny by now.

I haven't read up on this in some years, but in college I was presented with a scientific work about homosexual men and how they have hypothalamuses (hypothalamii?) that are larger....the same size as women's. And that was tentatively used as a starter point for theorizing on some sexual attractions/behaviors.

Everyone's so uppity about genes these days, a lot of us forget there are many other things in our bodies that could effect perceptions/behaviors. (Like frontal lobe damage leading to mood swings/violence where there was none before, and tumors that cause sexual insatiability).

I wonder if there's a gullibility/religion gene?

If someone wants to claim that item "X" exists, it is up to them to show the evidence that shows "X" does indeed exist. Until the evidence is shown, there is no reason to believe in the existence of "X".

Karl Sagan, "Cosmos"

And mormonism is full of them.

Of course most religions are...