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Dave: if you get a chance and have time to read the 'pope wears prada' - what do you think? Is he or isn't he?

Eunice,

Personally I have not studied Ratzinger too much, his words yes but his demeanour no. For my own gaydar to work I would need to be in the vicinity to make a judgement based on interaction and body language. Mine doesn't work too well through the TV (Television that is).

So the article leaves us with rabid homophobia and a natty dress sense.

On rabid homophobia he is no worse than Paisley or Iris and I don't suspect they are gay and I certainly wouldn't even speculate within earshot of Paisley. I understand the connection between suppressed homosexuality and the expression of obsessive homophobia to mask it but it is not a reliable indicator as some people are simply misguided rabid homophobes.

On the natty dress sense I can understand the Prada fixation as I once spent $600 in the Prada shop in NYC on a pair of black boots with a red stripe the length of the sole, fantastic !!!! However I know some straight guys who are so vain and clothes conscious that they way outstrip my gay friends (some of whom are slobs lol) so as a stereotype it's not that safe just like most stereotypes.

Bottom line is that the two elements are not enough for me to make a judgement and his sexuality is not important enough to me to speculate on. I think what I mean is that finding out he is a hypocrite on top of everything else would not really lower him in my estimation as he is already rock bottom, I might raise an eyebrow and maybe tut once.

It might be fun to watch the fireworks though if he were outed although on the downside I would have to admit he batted for my team, what a bummer !!!

Cheers Dave - yes - I had a raised eyebrow and a chuckle re the irony of it all but couldn't call it either way .....anything is possible! Sounds like he has a dashing young man helping him each day though.
Ahh NYC and shopping - I understand- having lived there for a year! Maybe you can wear the boots to the blog dinner....if it's still on! :-)

Blog dinner?
That was a long article! Interesting though. One to think about.
I like wearing great clothes but I am straight. I have many close male friends. I have been single for nine years after 21 years of marriage. God knows what people are saying about me.

Just listened to the radio programme: "A secular meaning of life?" listed above. Fascinating stuff.

I was a bit disappointed with the obviously embittered Fergus (middle name: "I've had a lousy experience in the church and I want the whole world to know about it") Stokes, who couldn't raise his game above childish insults and caricatures; his ridiculous and evidence-free explanation for A N Wilson's return to Christian belief rather sums up his level of understanding: "we'd have discussed whether this man ever was an unbeliever or not; I think he was just a kind of Christian who hadn't been to church for a couple of years really, and got some confused ideas going" (ha ha! An inverted atheistic form of the classic Calvinist 'explanation' of why a Christian falls away: "he was never a Christian in the first place". Cleary Mr Stokes is making good use of a few methods picked up during his former career as a Christian!!).

The exchanges between Dr Susan Blackmore and Alan Billings (as well as the input from the presenter) were a bit more mature and coherent. Although, of course, as a Christian, I don't agree with Susan Blackmore's world view, I respect the fact that she was civil and articulate (and also acknowledged the positive influence of Christianity in her upbringing), and was prepared to admit that she didn't have all the answers (contrary to Stokes' ridiculous fundamentalist dogmatism).

However, one of Susan Blackmore's statements intrigued me concerning consciousness, in reply to the theory suggested by the presenter that morality could be hardwired in the brain:

"This seems to me, you know, it always does, this is why I work a lot on the whole problem of consciousness. Such an extraordinary mystery. How can it be that chemicals passing around these tiny cells within the brain can give rise to all of this experience and all these emotions and all these behaviours? But they do. I mean, in science we are a long way from understanding that." [emphasis added]

This is a circular argument. She acknowledges that the material basis of consciousness is a mystery, and yet she asserts that there is indeed a material basis to it. How can she assert that, while at the same time affirming that it is a mystery? She is invoking an a priori philosophical presupposition - a case of 'begging (dodging) the question' or petitio principii: assuming one's conclusion in one's premise. All she should be saying is: "We don't understand, but nevertheless we theorise that there could conceivably be a material explanation, but we don't yet know what it is." And the implication is that she should be open to and respect other explanations, such as accepting the possibility that consciousness constitutes evidence for the existence of a non-material reality.

This comment by Susan Blackmore is an example of what I have often mentioned in various posts. The incessant claim - trumpeted by various contributors on this blog - is that the scientific method ('methodological materialism' or the empirical method) does not involve the application of philosophical assumptions, to which empirical data are made to conform, but is simply a matter of dealing in so-called naked facts rather than dogmatic beliefs. But here we see a striking example, which belies this deceptive and disingenuous claim.

I find this whole idea of 'gaydar' quite interesting: the notion that because Dave is himself gay he might therefore be in a position to pronounce definitively on Ratzinger's sexuality, a proposition, incidently, Dave does not deny.

A couple of my gay friends claim the same ability and, while it is scarcely scientific to draw conclusions from a sample size of two, I long ago came to the conclusion that a gaydar identification means only one of two things: (1) the person so identified makes Julian Clary look like a macho redneck or (2) the friend fancies the pants of the subject of his observation.

If my observation should prove to be of more general application it follows that all we might safely say is that Dave doesn't appear to fancy Josef...

Parrhasios,

I certainly would not disagree with your final comment he's not my type.

I also agree that the notion of gaydar is interesting, but it is not completely without basis.

The way I look at gaydar is this,

1) everybody, of whatever sexuality, subconsciously reads the body language of everyone else they come in contact with - it is part of how we communicate. Some of that body language is sexual - men check out women, women check out men, men check out men etc etc... We also observe this body language as a third party watching others interact. Some of this is based on the level of attraction, so I agree with he fancying bit, and can involve flirting (subconscious of not) such as lip licking, head inclination, hair playing etc. How people talk about other sexes can be revealing as well in a subtle sense because we as humans simply take more time and effort to study the people of sexual orientations we are attracted to, we notice changes in them, clothes they wear, their moods even our ability to distinguish between them (show me pictures of current top actresses and actors and I will be able to name a lot more of the male ones whatever their orientation). Pheromones may also be involved in this information gathering but the important thing is that all of this applies to all sexualities so we have all got access to the information.

2) Heterosexuals, in the main, assume everyone is heterosexual and have no reason to try and differentiate. It is called heterosexism and is a result of being in the predominant sexuality. When a heterosexual man sees a woman he assumes she is heterosexual so why would he click that she is eyeing up another woman - he is looking for the signs that she is checking him out. If he does not get these signs he assumes she does not fancy him. People of other sexualities do not make that sexuality assumption and so actively try to assess sexuality. In addition non heterosexuals have had to hide their sexuality but still seek out possible partners and so actively use the body language described in point 1 to try and work out the orientation of the other person. In many ways we need to do it to be safe, a man may get a slap from a woman for misreading the signs, the consequences for a gay man making a mistake can be much worse even fatal.

So perhaps gaydar is simply that non heterosexuals need to be able to distinguish orientation and so are more attuned (by learning and practise) to the signals which are available to all of us (see Desmond Morris for more info lol), gaydar is simply using what is available to everyone.

Its not 100% or I am sure even close but it certainly works more times than it doesn't. I would just not claim that it is a special power that only non heterosexuals have. The more interaction the more information gathered helps as well hence TV is not a good medium for determination.

I am not saying all this is scientific proof of gaydar just explaining how I see it working 'in the field'.

BTW the Julian Clary classification method is not 100% either.

Just picking up on VSL's strange post: he seems very exercised over his inability to understand the support of methodological naturalism, and seems to wish to insist that this is derived purely within the system. What he cannot seem to understand is that we can assume methodological naturalism as a *hypothesis* in our data analysis in multiple fields, and see whether the primary hypothesis that we are testing can work within a methodologically naturalistic framework. The *phenomenal* success of the sciences indicates that this assumption seems to be a very reliable one. Even if we could not epistemologically defend every jot and tittle (and I know of few philosophers who think this is a problem - you're a lone voice, LSV!), the fact remains that it certainly *works* in most circumstances. Worse than that (for LSV's petulant protests), it is *productive*, in that it generates new lines of inquiry that open up new understandings.

And *even* worse for LSV, even if we could not defend it *at all*, there is nothing that has *ever* been demonstrated that can't in principle be explained naturalistically. In other words, there is no evidence for anything necessarily inexplicable in a naturalistic context. It is a very very powerful "assumption", and it may very well be *true* in a rigorous hard objective sense.

That should put a few tacks on the comfy chair.

Helio: what you consider to be natural and what I consider to be natural are prob very different. Some of what I consider to be natural you or others may ascribe to the realm of supernatural - thing is it's not supernatural we just haven't been fully aware of what is truly natural! God, soul, spirit etc are all natural in the sense that they are part of our nature, our make up - just how it is - nothing supernatural about it - its only our ignorance that renders such things supernatural in my view.

Eunice, have you read "The Secret"?

Helio: I have not read it - I saw a video once a number of years ago now but it is not where I am coming from in case you think I am. I can't recall all that is on it but I don't agree with it.