I was recently asked by an atheist to watch a video on transgenderism. This isn’t my field of inquiry or one of my interest, but I figured I’ll take a look. I’ll split this up into a few different areas. The issues are the views of Science, Transgenderism, and Ethics. The real issues in this debate are supposed to decide the third in this debate, but often times it is the opposite way around. I’m not a biologist nor a scientist.
1.Science
The person in the video tells us his views on what science is meant for. He goes throughout the video speaking about how he will debunk pseudoscience and demarcate it from actual ‘science’. The first issue is that we have no universally accepted criterion for what dictates science from non-science. So, it is question begging to call other models non-scientific without providing the criterion for what actually constitutes science. The other mistake is right at the beginning in which the video states that science allows us direct access to reality. How does the author know that? For many, the sciences don’t allow us access to reality but rather allows us to make models that better fit our observations. The speaker makes a second mistake in the same breathe as he believes science allows us not only access to the world but unbiased access to it. The truth of the matter is that no field of inquiry is neutral. I’ve covered all these issues before and will provide links to past demonstrations of these principles:
http://spirited-tech.com/COG/2018/02/13/the-myth-of-neutrality/
He constantly reifies science to where this is what science “says”, but science doesn’t say anything. Rather, it is scientists that say things. He brings up Young earth creationism as non-scientific because they start with their conclusions and then investigate. That has two issue: The first being that we all start with our worldviews with intent to affirm the truth of our worldviews. Secondly, many scientists have done science that way. Take these as examples:
Wasn’t Relativity inspired by thought-experiments and mental pictures long before Einstein had empirical confirmation? What about Pauli’s dreams. Or Dirac’s mathematical intuition, based on “beauty”? What about Newton’s bucket and Newton’s canon?
Actually, a basic function of scientific theorizing is to go beyond the available evidence by making predictions. In many cases, a scientist wouldn’t need to make a prediction in the first place if he already had the evidence in hand. Predictions are not simply ways of testing a theory, but discovering new evidence. A theoretical prediction points scientists in a particular direction. They look for evidence where the theory predicts they should find it. Sometimes that confirms the theory, sometimes that discomforts the theory.
Take Bell’s theorem. That was formulated well before the equipment existed to test the theoretical experiment.
Steve Hays~ Do scientists assume their conclusions?
The video operates on a shallow view of the scientific enterprise. At another point, he criticizes some article for not being “peer review” and thus breaking the scientific method. You may have noticed each one of the scientists above me didn’t use the scientific method to come to their conclusions, but rather did thought-experiments or had random intuitions. We haven’t disregarded the theory of general relativity yet. The fact of the history of science is that no scientific method exists and “peer review” is not a foolproof system but rather a circular means of keeping a paradigm popular.
http://spirited-tech.com/COG/2017/08/08/a-start-for-a-philosophy-of-christian-science-part-1/
2. Transgenderism
The video defines its terms as I will try to do as well. I’ll be borrowing these from Dr. James Anderson:
Ontological sex—a (human) person’s basic sexual identity as either male or female. When you are invited to complete a form by checking one of two boxes—‘M’ or ‘F’—you are being asked, in essence, to indicate your ontological sex.
Biological sex—male or female according to chromosomes (XX/XY) and physiology (both internal and external, e.g., genitalia and reproductive organs).[7] Throughout human history, biological sex has been the primary indicator of ontological sex; that’s to say, we identify a person as male or female based on his or her physiology. Nevertheless, it’s important to distinguish the concepts of ontological sex and biological sex for the simple reason that we are more than just biological organisms; there’s more to us than our physiology.
Gender—the psychological, social, and cultural manifestations of maleness and femaleness. This is obviously a much broader category than biological sex. For example, our notion of motherhood goes beyond the merely biological notion of being a female progenitor. It includes other non-biological features such as maternal attitudes and social roles. Some aspects of gender may be culture-relative (e.g., wearing make-up is considered feminine in many but not all cultures) while other aspects are transcultural (e.g., military leadership as a characteristically masculine trait).[8]
Gender identity—how one perceives and experiences oneself as male or female. This is a highly loaded term in contemporary discussions, so we need to be very careful about how we define and deploy it. Arguably the term was coined with the specific purpose of advancing an ideological agenda (cf. ‘sexual orientation’). The use of the word identity here is especially problematic, since it suggests that one’s core identity as a human person is defined in terms of one’s gender.
The trans community has very different beliefs from one another. They are divided on what they are trying to claim. Some are realist about gender and others are antirealist. I use those terms meaning that some think gender is merely one’s choice and other thinks it has a biological correspondent. The former thinks it is a matter of his subjective thoughts and the other an objective fact of reality. These contradictory positions have been very difficult to trace and hard to demarcate as many who are in this movement aren’t very clear.
If you maintain that gender identity is merely subjective, then it reduces to mere opinion and loses any relevance to scientific inquiry. They have reduced ones personal identity to personal whim and at any moment can turn into a deadly attack helicopter. This becomes and incoherent. Why should I care about some crazy person’s silly opinion?
The only respectable position is that of being a realist about this subject. That is that you believe we have objective measures for detecting one’s gender. The classical view is that gender is grounded in God’s creation. He made them male and female. It seems like everyone that goes this route will ground gender in something biological but the difficulty is in which biological fact ought to determine our gender? Some think it is contained in our genes, development, or in our brain structures. This video presents the “Wrong Brain” view. The person has the brain of the opposite gender than their biological sex. The argument is certain structures that the trans person corresponds to the biological they believe they were supposed to be.
i) The test are inconclusive and we shouldn’t jump to radical conclusions. They are a test of a few people and more data is needed for more conclusive evidence. For example, in one of the studies named “Regional gray matter variation in male-to-female transsexualism” the author notes this:
Further research needs to resolve whether the observed distinct features in the brains of transsexuals influence their gender identity or possibly are a consequence of being transsexual. Alternatively, other variables may be independently affecting both the expression of a transsexual identity and the neuroanatomy in transsexuals that led to the observed association between both. Some possible candidates include genetic predisposition, psychosocial and environmental influences, hormonal exposures, or most likely an interplay between these variables. In support of the influence of genetics and environment, multiple cases of transsexualism occurring within families have been reported (Green, 2000) as well as studies on heritability in twins (Coolidge et al., 2002) and preliminary findings on specific genetic variations in MTF transsexuals (Hare et al., 2009; Henningsson et al., 2005). Furthermore, both genes and environmental demands have been demonstrated to determine brain anatomy (e.g., regional gray matter) (Draganski et al., 2004; Thompson et al., 2001). Finally, hormones have been shown to affect brain development (Arnold and Gorski, 1984), and neuroanatomical alterations in MTF transsexuals (Kruijver et al., 2000; Zhou et al., 1995) have been detected in cerebral structures shown to significantly change in response to hormonal exposure (Del et al., 1987; Guillamon et al., 1988). The MTF transsexuals of the current study had no history of hormonal treatment. Thus, we can exclude the potential effects of administered female hormones as a confounding factor for our findings. Moreover, it has been demonstrated that naturally circulating hormones in adult MTF transsexuals at baseline do not differ significantly from hormonal levels in male control subjects (Goodman et al., 1985; Meyer, III et al., 1986; Spijkstra et al., 1988). However, it remains to be established whether pre-, peri-, or postnatal hormonal effects in early childhood could foster transsexualism. Further studies will need to resolve the degree to which genetic variability and environmental factors influence the development of gender identity (Schweizer et al., 2009), possibly (but not necessarily) via affecting brain structures.
ii) The difficulty in many scientific situations are that other causal explanations are possible. It is possible that Pornography lowers the grey matter in male brains, alcohol consumption can play a part in white matter in the brain, or being a musician compared to a non-musician. We often treat our brain as something static and unchanging from our experiences and life activities in these conversations, but that isn’t granted by everyone. Here is a quote from Carlos Flores:
Indeed, it should not come as a surprise to find out that our daily activities shape our brain-states or alter the way our brains behave. After all, it is more or less common knowledge that says, the process of learning to play an instrument has the effect of establishing new neural pathways, thus causing a change in brain-states. Thus Dr. Norman Doidge comments: “Now we know the brain is ‘neuroplastic,’ and not only can it change, but that it works by changing its structure in response to repeated mental experience.”
iii) Steve Hays notes another important observation in regards to our investigation and on these articles:
On the face of it, the studies are viciously circular. How do researchers know that they are examining transgendered brains in the first place? Unless they already know that the test-subjects are transgender, and that neurological differences are what distinguish gendered from transgendered brains, they are assuming what they need to prove.
How do they recruit test-subjects? Are these test-subjects who “self-identify” as transgendered? But whether or not that has a basis, in fact, is the very issue in dispute. Researchers can’t take that as a given.
They need independent physical evidence to distinguish gendered from transgender test-subjects before they can compare and contrast their brains.
iv) It lacks any adequacy in explaining sexual attraction on this perspective people are attracted to the same sex on the basis they have the wrong brain or wrong bodied depending on how you look at it. But brains are inadequate to explain attraction in the first place. For example, people are attracted to animals and children, but they don’t have the brain of a dog or a baby. How exactly does the biology incorporate the issue of attraction?
3. Ethics
Is God condemning us for who we are? This answer is yes and no. Surely God is punishing us for who we were born. We are fallen sons and daughters of Adam and deserve the wrath he acquired for us in the garden. We receive our God-given nature and desires from him. So, in a sense, we are born that way(sinners of course). Now, does God punish us for our attractions we have because of our biological circumstance? Possibly, I don’t know whether the attraction is the result of merely our biological circumstances. It is obviously related and that can be seen at puberty. I suppose we receive the punishment for the deeds we are attributed. The only way to fix that is to repent and turn to God to forgive us of our sins. To prop up transgenderism as a competitor to God’s design is to disrespect his works and commands. Furthermore, as an atheist, you have no basis to complain that God has been unjust. That is because of atheism no objective moral standard exists. Why ought we care about transsexualism?
Further Suggestions:
Triablogue:
Eurek Alert:
The Council 