Here’s some interesting data on sexual orientation of sheep that, if it holds for humans as well, would seem to confirm my thesis (actually, a better exposition of it is found here):

A bare majority of rams turn out to be heterosexual. One in five swings both ways. About 15 percent are asexual, and 7 percent to 10 percent are gay.

That seems, to me, empirically to be about right for humans as well.

Does anyone here really believe that there are Freudian explanations for this among sheep? Well, I think the ones for humans are just as bogus.

And the potential consequences?

The more likely path is gentler. Science will gradually convince us that sexual orientation is innate, more like the color of your skin than like the content of your character. Condemnation of homosexuality as a sin will subside. Freed from the culture wars, we’ll turn to the biological differences between race and sexual orientation: Homosexuality defies the aspiration to procreate with your mate, and it’s easier to isolate and alter in embryonic development. Resentment will give way to pity. We’ll come to view homosexuality as a kind of infertility

I mean, they are two digit numbers.

Like Instapundit, I’m unsurprised. The friends of those promoting global warming often do their cause little good.

Iain Murray comments on the latest IPCC summary:

…gone from the Summary is the icon of the Third Assessment Report

Why chicks don’t dig the singularity. It’s a long, but interesting read.

Why chicks don’t dig the singularity. It’s a long, but interesting read.

Why chicks don’t dig the singularity. It’s a long, but interesting read.

The new, guaranteed, stop-smoking-instantly kit. Consisting of a hammer and ice pick.

Did the anthropogenic climate-change era start thousands of years ago?

Michael Novak writes about prayer. His example of Sartre is just more evidence for my thesis, I think. If I’ve ever prayed in my life, it was only as a very young (pre-school) child, and then only because I was told I was supposed to. I don’t ever recall any sense that there was anyone home when I did so, and I haven’t done so since the age of five or so.

As Jean-Paul Sartre wrote, he tried hard all his life to be a serious atheist, but even he felt himself breaking out in thanksgiving to God for certain beautiful days, certain stunning events. Of course, he then withdrew these “prayers,” but he quite recognized the naturalness of the impulse in himself. He wrote that being atheist is in practice much harder than many let on. One needs to stay on watch at every moment against little surrenders. The world so often seems “as if” there is a God.

Despite the fact that he reasoned himself into atheism, he was a natural-born believer. I’ve never felt an impulse such as that he describes, and the world has never seemed “as if” there is a God to me.

[Update a few minutes later]

Oh, and just to make clear, nothing in either of these two posts should be construed as an argument either for, or against, the existence of God. If God exists, He does so entirely independently of my, or anyone else’s beliefs about Him.

Errrr…unless, of course, you think that God exists for those who believe, and doesn’t for those who don’t. Which may actually be the closest thing to the truth.

Razib over at Gene Expression has an interesting interview with Heather McDonald on faith and conservatism, and her disillusionment with much of what conservatism seems to have become. I disagree with her that George Bush hasn’t damaged the cause of conservatism. While I agree that he’s not a conservative, and that his policies shouldn’t do so, the popular mythology is that he is a conservative, and so they will.

But more interesting to me is this tangent, brought up by the Derb:

I don’t want to rain on Heather Mac Donald’s parade, especially after the sweet compliment she paid me in that Q&A Ramesh linked to, but consider the following: