The shocking truth about religious ‘gay cure’ therapy by someone who failed to turn straight

[izquierdista]

3. No, you really can blame religion

What religions ALL have in common is a belief that knowledge is revealed (by a deity or authority figure), not learned by your own efforts. Take the question "why are some people gay?" The religious answer would be to go to the revealed wisdom (in this case Leviticus) where it says that to lie with another man would be an abomination and use that to guide your thinking. The scientific answer only comes after much more questioning and observation: are humans the only species to evidence homosexuality? Is it correlated with race, ethnicity, birth order, astrological sign, diet during the mother's pregnancy, sunspots, background radiation, being left-handed, lack of a father figure? Is there a genetic component? Is there an environmental component? Does it change over time? Can heterosexuals become homosexual and vice versa, or is there a third category that might be designated ambisexual? If it can change, what are the causal factors? What is the evolutionary advantage to homosexuality? Is it contagious? Scientists use math and statistics to quantify the answers to questions like these; religion has no use for mathematics as there is just a right and a wrong, no middle ground.

See, with religion, the answer is known by doctrine and revealed wisdom beforehand, and then what must be done is to fit the world to that view. Science takes the novel approach that ideas should be tailored to fit the world that is observed. I think if you divide your category of "all Jews" into very religious and non-religious, you will find that the former group is the one that is promoting the gay cure crock -- because of what their revealed wisdom tells them to do. And among the latter group, you will find scientists who are actually concerned with finding out what is true. Some of them might even be studying prejudice and how it can be explained.