Quit being so gay!

This is in response to this video on Think Atheist: http://bit.ly/icTg8g

Right off the bat they make a classic argument from ignorance (how did you get here, very ignorant question given current levels of scientific understandings of physics, chemistry, abiogenesis and evolution) and they fail to discuss these very well-known scientific answers so they are flat out lying to people.

They then go to the Special Pleading for God because the universe couldn't have come from nothing (but God apparently can).

"No basis for right or wrong" is an unsupported position. We clearly do and since they cannot claim any knowledge coming from an actual "god" this is not a valid argument.

Cancer risk has NOTHING to do with being gay (correlation is not causation). Not all gay people engage in anal intercourse and many straight people do. Furthermore, it has more to do with viral and bacterial risks (ever heard of a condom?)

And it completely IGNORES the heterosexual risk factors associated with biblically sanctioned sexual activity even between completely monogamous partners. In biblical times ANAL sex would have been VASTLY safer than vaginal sex due to risk of death due to pregnancy (it's not as bad now thanks to modern medicine but even today pregnancy carries some pretty serious risks to health).

http://www.ajcn.org/content/72/1/241S.full

As recently as 1910-20 in the USA the maternal mortality rate was ~900/100,000 pregnancies! Almost 1 in 1000 women DIED from biblically sanctioned sex. If God hates anal sex he must REALLY hate vaginal sex (and apparently blames Eve for everything).

Jared Loughner & Cannabis

Without fail, some people have seized on the fact that Loughner used cannabis and tried to pin the blame for his actions on his drug use.

Never mind that Loughner's problems seemed to have kicked off when he broke up with his girlfriend and had reported conflicts with his father which led to his ALCOHOL poisoning on May 15, 2006 -- as well as evidence he was bullied at school.

All evidence in cases like Loughner's is that their use of psychedelics are SELF-MEDICATION or Escapist and NOT causative.

As for the link between cannabis and schizophrenia, there is an even STRONGER link between smoking tobacco and schizophrenia (but you don't see that in the reports) But again, it appears to be used for a palliative effect. The Swedish/Stockholm studies from 1987/1989 are often brought up in this context but they never mention this one from 2007:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17462864
Schizophr Res. 2007 Jul;93(1-3):203-10. Epub 2007 Apr 25.
RESULTS: There was no statistically significant effect of cannabis use on the presence of any of the above. There remained however a non-significant trend towards more insight (OR 0.65 p=0.055 for "loss of insight") and a finding of fewer abusive or accusatory hallucinations (OR 0.65 p=0.049) of borderline significance amongst the cannabis users. These were in the hypothesised direction. There was no evidence of fewer negative symptoms or greater family history amongst cannabis users.

CONCLUSION: We found few appreciable differences in symptomatology between schizophrenic patients who were or were not cannabis users. There were no differences in the proportion of people with a positive family history of schizophrenia between cannabis users and non-users. This argues against a distinct schizophrenia-like psychosis caused by cannabis
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Correlation alone is NOT causation (for example, 100% of schizophrenics have consumed water) but it needs to be more forcefully stated because laypersons simply do not understand this in the more subtle cases (especially those where prejudice exists). The evidence is that they seek out cannabis AND TOBACCO because they find relief in the effects.

More Links and Resources:

More details on the story here:

http://abcnews.go.com/US/tucson-shooting-jared-loughner-stopped-authorities-hours-shooting/story?id=12597092

Reports on his drug use:

http://blogs.laweekly.com/informer/2011/01/jared_loughner_salvia.php

Called 'habitual user' despite report he stopped in 2008:
http://blogs.laweekly.com/informer/2011/01/jared_loughner_marijuana.php

and he was BULLIED (who didn't see that one coming?):

http://www.thehollywoodgossip.com/2011/01/jared-lee-loughner-arrest-records-bullying-history-revealed/

Loughner was also the victim of bullying on more than one occasion.

In September 2004, police were called to Mountain View High School after Loughner was "stuck with a pin – a stolen type needle, in the cafeteria," according to official reports.

Mental State: http://www.newsweek.com/2011/01/10/jared-lee-loughner-s-mental-state.html