June 19, 2009

The two best websites on the AfterLife

I have spoken of Victor Zammit's site, "A Lawyer Presents The Case For the AfterLife," as a primary source concerning the scientific evidence for the Other Side. (see P.S. #3)

You will also want to know about the work of Kevin Williams. He offers much information on this subject, with a slightly different focus - the near-death experience. His web site is fantastic - see it here !   Kevin has some health issues of late and cannot update his site; but, in any case, you'll find a large corpus of data there.

• Editor's note: Some years ago, Kevin, a gentle soul, graciously featured one of my articles on his site. The near-death experience (NDE), over ten years ago, was my first portal-of-entry to the evidence for the AfterLife. I would later come to see this region of knowledge as merely a subset, even a minor one, to the larger core issue of the Spirit Realm. Some of you have suffered under the propaganda that the NDE is merely the oxygen-starved brain gasping out its last hallucinations. Well... Kevin deftly lays to rest such materialistic rubbish with incontrovertible counter-attacks; such as, stories of people born blind, never having seen anything - light, a bird, a person - but undergoing an NDE and reporting their first glimpses of the material world!!  see the Youtube account.  Also, read the NDE reports of very young children, ages 3 and 4 - too young to have been, as skeptics claim, "pre-programmed" and prompted with the knowledge of which they speak! Some of you are already warming up your "D-card response," about to claim that it's all demonism... sigh! ... do you really want to say that these little children were demon possessed? Friend... when I'm able to get to it, I will be preparing an article, with love, just for you... something that Jesus himself talked about after certain ones claimed that he was operating on demonic power ... [smile]

An NDE story for you

Kevin features a small section on "Gay and Lesbian NDEs." Here is an excerpt of one of the stories:

 

And I thought, "But I can't go back because my body is too far gone, it's beyond repair."

 

And I was also afraid that I could never accomplish, with all of my physical limitations, all that I could do as a spirit form, which felt so free and unencumbered.

 

I remember feeling angry and fearful about going back, after being in all of this light - to have to go back to the darkness. And then I felt the presence of Jesus Christ all around me. The feeling of love was completely overwhelming. I felt as though I was swimming in an ocean of ecstasy.

 

And I asked him, "Do I really have to go back?"

 

And his answer was that I was a part of God's divine plan, as is every person, and that my ultimate purpose is to love and serve God and all sentient beings. And I could tell that he understood all of my fear and doubt. And he assured me that I would heal and recover...

Then Christ said that he would send me guardian angels to aid me in my healing, and to guide and protect me...

I awakened to find two men kneeling over me, with expressions of apprehension and concern on both their faces. For some reason I felt that they might be gay men. They both looked to be in their thirties. I couldn't help but notice how handsome they both were, and that they were beautifully dressed in what appeared to be very expensive business clothes. I remember thinking that they might be some kind of executives working for a corporation, which in fact is exactly what they turned out to be. One of the men obviously had some type of first aid training, and had monitored my vital signs. They informed me that an ambulance was on its way and to try to remain still and not speak, which was easy to do, considering the extent of my injuries. They had both taken off their jackets and laid them over me, and I was horrified to discover that the jackets were covered with blood and completely ruined. I remember feeling embarrassed, and yet enormously grateful for the kindness of these two strangers. Their entire presence was completely warm and comforting, and I felt strangely safe and protected.

They waited alongside me until the ambulance came, and then arrived at the hospital to make sure that I was properly attended to. They visited me in the hospital on two separate occasions. I made a somewhat feeble offer to replace their ruined clothes, but they simply laughed it off, and insisted that the only thing that mattered was that I was alive and more or less in one piece. Again their mere presence filled me with a sense of hope and courage. I felt very strongly that both men symbolized what would prove to be a succession of "angels" that Christ had promised to send me. This, in fact, turned out to be truer than I could possibly have imagined...

 

This article... dedicated to my cousin, my friend

I have a cousin whom I've not seen since we were children. I still remember all of us kids playing tag, running through the tall weeds, on his old farm. I understand that he's a professional person in New York today. A long time ago, in order to pursue a different lifestyle, he decided that he needed to leave our small farming community. I left, too, but for different reasons. To the family's detriment, our loss, he never came back.

This article is dedicated to him... with my best and warmest wishes. And I would like to do what I can, my own small efforts, to remove, from the minds of so many today, the toxic superstitions, and neurotic fears, that surround the issue of homosexuality.

Understanding Homosexuality... just ask any beauty pageant contestant!

This is hilarious, of course. Today, beauty queens rise and fall, are crowned and dethroned, lauded and cast away, depending on how they answer the third-rail questions regarding the gay lifestyle.

You know... there they are, onstage, in all of their sleek, curvacious, and voluptuous glory... first comes the swimsuit competition - strut your stuff, and howd'ya like them ankles; then comes the singing and dancing competition; finally... the crucial test, what all of America really wants to know... how will you perform in the gay-questioning competition?

sigh!

Does anyone else see anything wrong with this picture, or is it just me?

Things I'd like to discuss

Today it's difficult to have a rationale discussion concerning homosexuality.

The Religious Right adamantly vilifies it. The Political Left ostensibly accepts it, an effort to buy its votes.

I would like to touch on two aspects of this heated discussion:

(1) the genetic basis for homosexuality; and

(2) the true reason why the Right so venomously attacks it.

Dick Cheney had it right... "Freedom For Everyone"!

June 1, 2009 news item:

 

Former Vice President Dick Cheney said Monday he supports gays being able to marry but believes states, not the federal government, should make the decision.

 

"I think, you know, freedom means freedom for everyone," Cheney said in a speech at the National Press Club. "I think people ought to be free to enter into any kind of union they wish, any kind of arrangement they wish."

 

Cheney, who has a gay daughter, said marriage has always been a state issue.

 

I agree with Mr. Cheny entirely on this matter.

Civility... the root idea of Civilization

The Nazis would use the phrase "German physics" and how they would not accept "Jewish physics"! Their politics and ideology so poisoned their view of life that it was no longer possible to rationally talk about what should have been clinical, objective, scientific data.

We see this same spirit today in the "global warming" debate - because it's no longer about global warming - it's about politics; about power and control over others.

• Denis Diderot: "There is only one step from fanaticism to barbarism."

And we see this same fanatical, legalistic spirit in the "genetics" debate regarding homosexuality. There are some who will tell you that there is not an iota of biological basis for being gay - that's it's all a matter of "choice"! And since it's a simple choice, those of the gay community are not merely different, and other, but culpable... and worthy of condemnation.

The Gospel According To Mark

Mark is an M.D., my next-door neighbor. Dad would not be pleased at my having stopped a man on his tractor! [smile], but I recently walked across Mark's backyard lawn and flagged-down his riding mower.

I asked his opinion about the "genetics" controversy - I wanted to know how he viewed this subject.

Here's what Mark said, and I paraphrase:

"There are three camps regarding this debate. One says that homosexuality is solely a function of nurture and environment; another says that it is the result of genetics; and a third group takes a middle road, a combination of nature and nurture, with a 'triggering event' that causes unexpressed, latent, genetic material to manifest itself."

I found the "triggering event" comment most interesting, as it conforms to what I have learned from Dr. Gerald Schroeder regarding a larger issue, that of evolutionary species-development.

"And what is your personal view?"

"I lean in the direction of the third camp, the genetics and the triggering event." He cited a study, meaningful to him, concerning twins (see below) with highly suggestive correlative data.

The Genetic Basis For Homosexuality:

It is easy to find the following material on the internet, as there is much discussion. Here is a summary of the primary data supporting a biological basis for homosexuality.

I think the answer to this debate will become clear to you. The following are direct quotes, without reference to the sources.

Genetics:  #1

Studies have been conducted that look at twin brothers rather than brothers of different ages. Bailey and Pillard (1991) did a study of twins that determined a 52% concordance of homosexuality in monozygotic twins, 22% for dizygotic twins, and 11% for adoptive brothers of homosexual men. These results, like Hamer's, provide further support for the claim that homosexuality is genetically linked. Studies very similar to the Bailey and Pillard study have been done both with female homosexual siblings and siblings of both sexes. The results for both of these studies were only off from Bailey and Pillard's by a few percentage points. Putting all of these results together, it seems like genetics are at least 50% accountable for determining a person's sexual orientation.

Compared to straight men, gay men are more likely to be left-handed, to be the younger siblings of older brothers, and to have hair that whorls in a counterclockwise direction.
US researchers are finding common biological traits among gay men, feeding a growing consensus that sexual orientation is an inborn combination of genetic and environmental factors that largely decide a person's sexual attractions before they are born.

Genetics:  #3

"In the past decade, I think the pendulum has swung more toward biological theory and biological causes," said Richard Lippa, a psychology professor at California State University-Fullerton, who has studied hair patterns and other biological traits in gay men.
Sven Bocklandt, a geneticist at the David Geffen school of medicine at UCLA, is bewildered by the argument that people choose their sexual attraction. He said that virtually every animal species that has been studied - from sheep to fruit flies - has a small minority of individuals who demonstrate homosexual activity. "I really believe the reason most humans are straight is the same reason that most crocodiles are straight, and the same reason most whales are straight," Bocklandt said. "Nature would not leave something so important for reproduction, for the survival of the species, to coincidence."

Less understood is the degree to which sexual orientation is determined by genes or environmental factors, such as hormones or immunological factors that may act on a foetus. What scientists call "the fraternal birth order effect," the fact that each successive boy born to the same mother has a greater chance of being gay, may be due to an increasing immunological response by a mother's body to each male foetus in her womb. Long discredited are theories that parenting - one mid-20th century theory held that boys raised by a domineering mother with a distant father were more likely to be gay - has anything to do with sexual orientation. Evidence of that, said Michael Bailey, a professor of psychology at Northwestern University in Illinois, comes from studies of genetically male infants born with malformed or ambiguous genitals. In many such cases, surgeons would construct a vagina, and instruct parents to raise the child as a girl, with no knowledge of his medical history.
As adults, those prenatally male/postnatally female people were virtually all attracted to women, Bailey said. "If you can't make a male attracted to other males by cutting off his penis, castrating him and rearing him as a girl, then how likely is any social explanation of male homosexuality?" he said.

Women may have more fluidity of sexual expression than men, but that doesn't mean they don't have a specific sexual orientation, said Lisa Diamond, a professor of psychology and gender studies at the University of Utah who studies female sexual orientation. One explanation is that women's sexual behaviour is driven more by relationships. For some women, "your sexual orientation does not provide the last word on the sorts of behaviours and identities you might experience in your lifetime," Diamond said. "Some lesbian women are predominantly attracted to women, but some of them have found themselves becoming incredibly close to their best male friends, sometimes having sex with them. It does not make them straight. It's not, since you had a one-night stand with your male friend, that you can choose to become straight."

... the preponderance of researchers say attraction is dictated by biology, with no demonstrated contribution from social factors such as parenting or other factors after birth.
A host of studies since the mid-1990s have found common biological traits between gay men, including left-handedness and the direction of hair whorls. The likelihood that if one identical twin is gay, the other will be also be gay is much higher than the "concordance" of homosexuality between fraternal twins, indicating that genes play a role in sexual orientation, but are not the entire cause.

Another study done by Simon LeVay focused on the size of INAH3 nucleus of the hypothalamus. He wanted to test whether the areas INAH-2 and INAH3 in the nucleus were different in size not by sex, but by sexual orientation. By proving a difference in size, he could establish that the brains of gay men were similar to that of women's brains. He only found that INAH-2 exhibited difference in sexual orientation. It was two times larger in heterosexual men as homosexual men, and he concluded it was different because of sexual orientation, not because of a difference in sex.

Discussion from others

The following notes were submitted by various individuals. They provide additional information and insight.

Okay. I CHOOSE not to get cancer.... even though it runs rampant in my family's genetics. Wait, how about this. I CHOOSE to avoid the risk factors that can aggravate my GENETIC predisposition to cancer. You see the paradox here? Some homosexuals simply cannot CHOOSE to ignore their make-up. Sure, some who are genetically predisposed to homosexuality can make life choices that steer away from homosexual trigger points, if you will, but that would still require a level of awareness of the disposition, hence the struggle and paradox at hand! You feel what you feel, and you can't CHOOSE to avoid it. Let us not mince words, err, beliefs here. I am a Christian and a very well educated man in the sciences and I do not confuse the facts with the fictions.

Discussion:  #2

i am a homosexual who is living in an islamic country. i did not chose to be gay, if you just think for one second you will realize how ridiculous it is to chose to be gay in an islamic country, because the punishment of homosexuality in islam is just DEATH. from the very first day of my puberty i realized that i have homosexual desires i was truly terrified, because i did not want to be like this. year after year i understood that its something inside me and i don't have any control over it. you know can imagine how hard it is that you are a gay and you cant change it. now i am 25 years old man, who is a medical student and have many achievements in my life (i'm not saying it as a compliment), but has a very sad aspect of life, which is i am still a virgin because i am gay. and if i find a partner and i be arrested i will be killed. i have no desire for sex with women. and let me tell you another fact: my twin brother is homosexual too. and we were both afraid to tell this truth to each other. you cruel people who think that homosexuality is a choice, is better to go and discuss with gay people. you will find out that we all were born that way. again its soooooooooooooooooo ridiculous to think that i chose to be gay in an islamic country.

Discussion:  #3

I don't know if it is ignorance, religious practices, or selfishness that causes some to believe that homosexuality is a choice. Especially after knowing and reading previous accounts of the hardships associated with being gay. I have a little sister, who I love dearly, and am sad that she has to endure such criticism from people who don't even know her. She has been clearly gay from puberty on. She is a smart, creative beautiful woman who is also a doctor. Those of you are so ignorant to suggest that anyone would live a homosexual lifestyle have already made up your stubborn minds and clearly have issues yourselves. And let me tell you all something, you can't change the fact that homosexuality exists, so you may as well go with the flow. These days, thinking that homosexuality is a choice makes you appear uneducated. I am talking about people who are truly homosexual, not just looking for some attention or satisfying their curiosity.

Discussion:  #4

A great experiment would be to ask any number of homosexuals if they feel as if they chose their orientation or if they feel as if a genetic predisposition played a role in their sexuality.
I'd bet dollars to donuts that 100% of participants say that homosexuality is not something that can be chosen.  I am a young (25), successful and attractive woman and I haven't had/wanted/or even thought about for that matter, any sort of sexual contact with a man in eight years. Being gay is not an easy lifestyle and no one would choose this. Reading posts about the bible and God's will are actually entertaining to me at this point. Hopefully, someday everyone will get it.

Discussion:  #5

Homosexuality is prevalent throughout nature. Petter Boeckman had an exhibit in Norway displaying homosexuality in the animal kingdom. If you need examples of this there are many articles I am uncovering that might help your understanding that homosexuality is definitively NOT against nature:
http://www.news-medical.net/?id=20718
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_animals_displaying_homosexual_behavior
You can check those out. I have been reading a lot of the comments here and it seems that some people are missing a basic understanding of genetics and the roles of genotypes and phenotypes. I don't claim to be an expert but I do understand enough to say that 58% is a pretty good indicator that homosexuality is affected by genetics. In nature many of the animals that practice homosexuality still produce offspring. There are many reasons why homosexuality could be seen as a positive. A couple hypothesis are that homosexuals in a species help more with rearing the offspring than the heterosexual males, this is seen with a lot of primates and heard animals (as stated in the above articles). Another hypothesis is that in herd animals homosexuality helps with a peaceful means of population control. Just because someone is a carrier of a gene that has a potential of building a person this way or that way doesn't make it 100% so. In science nothing is 100% true, any study that will show you otherwise is not scientific. There is always a potential of fallibility. The big question raised in my mind is that if more people were educated to know that homosexuality is not against nature and is about as natural as breathing, what would the next argument be? I would think that if the people that are saying this are implying that God created nature and God's will is infallible then it would be a contradiction to say that god is against homosexuality at all.
 

Discussion:  #6

I sincerely agree with the research. People who are truely homosexual (not just bi or curious or whatnot), but are truely and innately gay DO NOT have a choice. They are born to be gay, just like someone who is heterosexual is born to be that way. Now, if we DO propose that it is due to environmental factors, then why are some brothers or sisters who live in the same household, and grow up with the same influences, opposite in their sexual orientation? As far as the twins argument goes, genes do not play the entire roll when it comes do determining who we are. The human design is so complex that any change in its design can result in dramatic changes. To say that being homosexual is wrong would be like saying someone born with down syndrome is wrong. If you are going to say that homosexuality is a choice, than you must say that heterosexuality is a choice as well, and that we are all born neutral, and deside "I want to be gay or I want to be straight," which is ridiculous. Imagine if someone ridiculed you for being straight, you would think to yourself, "I can't help it," so why should it be any different for someone who is gay?

Discussion:  #7

Scientists have identified genetics as a cause of homosexuality. This has been accomplished through a type of study on people who identify as homosexual (and non-homosexual as a control group) and a region of the genome to identify whether there is a genetic component to homosexuality. Another type of study, "twin studies," uses pairs of non-twin siblings, dizygotic twins, and monozygotic twins, who share between half and all of their genetic information (non-twin siblings-50%, dizygotic twins-50%, monozygotic-100%). One sibling (or twin) is compared to the other one of the pair in terms of their sexuality, and the co-occurrence is measured across the three types of pairs. A higher co-occurrence of homosexuality among monozygotic twins, who share the same genetic information (compared to dizygotic twins and non-twin siblings who share only half), provides evidence of a genetic link to homosexuality. Both of these types of studies, as well as others, have shown with statistical significance that there is evidence of a genetic component to homosexuality. I have provided links to webpages that reference studies on the topic of a genetic link to homosexuality. Here are a few that seem to support the idea of a genetic influence on homosexuality:
http://serendip.brynmawr.edu/exchange/node/1925
http://www.dailyprincetonian.com/archives/2006/10/12/news/16168.shtml
http://www.webmd.com/sex-relationships/news/20050128/is-there-gay-gene

Discussion:  #8

Being truly homosexual is not a choice. I believe genetics play the largest part by far in determining an individual's sexuality. I know this as i have always been attracted to boys and men all the way through my life growing up (i am now 23). When i was very young, even though i couldn't interpret my feelings at the time, i recall having sexual desires for boys my age as early as when i was 4 years old. To me this is all the evidence i need to believe the environment i grew up in was irrelevant in determining my sexuality considering i started having these feelings so early. The only choice to make is whether or not to embrace or suppress your inherant sexual desires

Discussion:  #9

You're right. No one needs to tell anyone what they REALLY need to feel. When I was about 12 or 13 years old, I realized I was attracted to the same sex. The church I attended and society in general (represented in large part by my classmates at school) told me that my feelings were wrong. I believed them, and for most of my teenage years I actively surpressed my feelings, dated women, and prayed fervently that I would become heterosexual. You know what? It made no difference. None of it made men any less attractive to me or women any more attractive to me. It only made me miserable. I was so miserable I nearly committed suicide. Why didn't I? Because of precisely what you said. When I dug deep down, I knew what was really wrong. What was really wrong was that I was denying my fundamental nature. I was trying to live my life according to someone else's definition of what is natural and attempting to ignore nature itself in the process. I was attempting to ignore what I REALLY felt. It was then that I realized that maybe all the people who were telling me homosexuality was wrong were, in fact, wrong themselves. Welcome to that group.

Discussion:  #10

Okay, one major thing to point out: monozygotic twins have completely identical DNA, correct? If so, and if homosexuality is indeed genetic, shouldn't there be a 100% rate of matching sexual orientation? And since there is only a 58% match according to this article, doesn't that immediately disprove the idea? Just a thought.

• reply 
 
I do see were you are coming from, it is a good thought, but monozigous twins are not completely identical many factors such as fingerprints, rates of metabolism,and sexuality are not fully developed untill later on in the womb.

• reply 
 
"Okay, one major thing to point out: monozygotic twins have completely identical DNA, correct?" incorrect
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=identical-twins-genes-are-not-identical

Discussion:  #11

I am left handed, both my parents are right handed- so saying that gays are born to straight parents is a pointless argument is utterly absurd. Are you under the ridiculous assumption that every gene is passed and expressed? Then we would expect our fathers to have breasts, and our mothers to have beards. Just because your parents carry genes does not mean you get and express them. Both parents can have blue eyes, but the children have green. Why? Because the parents possess the green gene, and therefore have the POTENTIAL to have it expressed in their off-spring. Besides, they have already said very clearly that genes can play a part but not the entire answer.

Discussion:  #12

On the other hand, many gays are wary of the genetic hypothesis. It could, they fear, help promote the notion that gayness is a "defect" in need of "fixing." "Any finding will be used and twisted for homophobic purposes," says Martin Duberman, head of the Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies at the City University of New York. "If it does turn out that for some people, there is a genetic or hormonal component, the cry will then arise to take care of that." Indeed, the cry is already rising.

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