Variations of Scientisms and Atheisms

No One World View

When someone claims to be an atheist, it is prudent to inquire exactly what sort of atheist he or she might be.  The reason that this would be prudent is due to the abundance of different types and stripes of atheism.  John Gray, in his book Seven Types of Atheism [London: Penguin Random House, 2018] writes:

If there are many different religions, there are also many different atheisms.  Twenty-first-century atheism is nearly always a type of materialism.  But that is only one of many views of the world that atheists have held.  Some atheists--such as nineteenth-century German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer--have thought that matter is an illusion and reality spiritual.  There is no such thing as 'the atheist worldview'.  [Op cit., p. 4.]

The statement that "there is no such thing as 'the atheist worldview' " is likely to shake up more than a a few modern atheists.  Fast following this discombobulation is the way Gray trims back the pretensions  and claims of many modern, materialistic atheists:

Science cannot replace a religious view of the world, since there is no such thing as 'the scientific world view'.  A method of inquiry rather than a settled body of theories, science yields different view of the world as knowledge advances.  Until Darwin showed that species change over time, science pictured a world of fixed species.  In the same way, classical physics has been followed by quantum mechanics.  It is commonly assumed that science will someday yield a single unchanging view of things.  Certainly some view of the world are eliminated as scientific knowledge advances.  But there is no reason for supposing that the progress of science will reach a point where only one worldview is left standing.  [Ibid., p. 12.]

It would seem that a little bit less arrogant grandstanding and a little more humility would be appropriate amongst the ranks of the so-called New Atheists.

Douglas Wilson's Letter From Moscow (About Laughing Out Loud)

The Darwinian Crack Up Will Be Televised

Douglas Wilson
Blog&Mablog

Thomas Kuhn gave us a good description of how scientific paradigms collapse. He wasn’t really talking about the theory of evolution, but what he said applies to that theory, and applies by the shovelful.

When a new paradigm is adopted, there are a few anomalies that remain unexplained. Think of the new paradigm as a wagon, and of the anomalies as rocks that the wagon has to haul. As time progresses, the anomalies accumulate, which means that somebody is throwing extra rocks into the wagon. But the wagon has been hitched up, it is going down the road, and we just deal with it. Wagons carry rocks, that’s all. But over time, the number of rocks will become a matter of concern. And a little bit past that point, the performance of the wagon starts to suffer. And right after that, the wagon collapses, we buy a new wagon, and head on down the road. The new wagon, remember, has some rocks in it.

When Darwinism was first adopted, when we bought this wagon, our knowledge of the internal workings of the living cell was approaching zilch, nada, nuffin. For all we knew, the cell was a rind stuffed with a gelatinous substance. As our scientific knowledge has exploded, the wagon—still manfully teetering down the road—has filled up with rocks. Boulders. A couple of small mountains. Darwin died in 1882, and the term genetics was not born until 1905.

The more we learn, the more the wagon has to “carry.”

Most Amusing

Modern Cathedrals

Book's like David Berlinski's The Devil's Delusion are a joy to read.  In this particular case, it is also most amusing.  We would recommend it to anyone wishing to make some sense of the sociological structures and forces (the "cathedral", as Berlinski would put it) surrounding evolutionism.

Berlinski's position is that when it comes to particle physics, science has reached its limits.  It is impossible for it to progress further without falling into an abyss of a thousand contradictions, antinomies, and non-sequiturs.  The science of "everything" has thus reached the point where it spends most of its time enforcing itself upon others.  Don't question.  Don't debate.  Just believe.  In Berlinski's metaphor, cosmology has become a cathedral, a monument to something ineffable, unknowable, and mysterious.

All Christians would recognise this position.

Mistakes We Christians Have Made

Calling Out the Dumbcluck

In the conflict between Christian faith and dogmatic secularist science, Christians are often at the mercy of their own credulity.  They are far too willing to believe consensus science to be the truth, based on hard, established fact.  Therefore, when science and the Bible appear to be in conflict, the text of scripture must be adjusted to accommodate hard science.

However, the more one becomes aware of the assumptions and presuppositions of science, the more one becomes familiar with scientific internal debates, the less one is impressed by consensus science.  Science is a helpful servant.  It makes an exceedingly poor master.

The Enlightenment rationalist argued as follows: if a religious doctrine cannot be established by Reason and/or Empirical Inquiry (science) then it must be dismissed as myth or baseless speculation.  On this basis Christianity, the Gospel, and the Bible become discredited and were eventually rejected by Western society in general--which is where we are today.

Unfortunately, far too many of us Christians are willing to concede to the authority of science over the Bible.

Science is Anything But Disinterested In The Truth

Hah! We Fooled You

We have spoken of a paradigm shift possibly beginning to occur within the standard materialist view of the universe.  Scientists find themselves at the Osgiliath cross roads, scratching their heads, wondering which way to go.  They remain, however, strongly convinced and adamantly consensual on one quintessentially certain point: there is no way Christian cosmology can, would, or ever be true.

David Berlinski has a sparkling description of the cross roads.

"Scientists," the physicist Paul Davies has observed, "are slowly waking up to an inconvenient truth--the universe looks suspiciously like a fix.  The issue concerns the very laws of nature themselves.  For 40 years, physicists and cosmologists have been quietly collecting examples of all to convenient 'coincidences' and special features in the underlying laws of the universe that seem to be necessary in order for life, and hence conscious beings, to exist.  Change any one of them and the consequences would be lethal."  [Cited in David Berlinksi, The Devil's Delusion: Atheism and Its Scientific Pretensions (New York: Basic Books, 2009), p. 110f.]

How to account or explain this?  What sophisticated theorems could be devised to confuse the average punter?   Aliens might prove useful.

In The Beginning

The Slippery Dance Floor 

Historical debates over beginnings and origins have proved fascinating.  Since the nineteenth century it is safe to say that the overwhelming consensus of scholarship and opinion has been to favour the naturalistic (materialistic) world view.  This has led to a cosmology wherein dwells time, space, matter, and energy alone.  Nothing else.

With these assumptions, the world and the cosmos, had to come into being naturally.  In other words, there is no creator.  A prevailing characteristic of this world view is the need of vast amounts of time in order for "natural processes" to produce the breathtaking complexity and size of the cosmos--namely, billions and billions and billions of years.  What is the latest count?  Sixty-five billion years?  [At this point, we make a confident prediction: within ten years from now the "settled" naturalistic scientific consensus will be engaged in a febrifacient re-dating the cosmos to be a hundred billion years or more.  What's a few billion years amongst friends, eh?]

A curiosity amidst the surging rise of naturalism has been the way so many Christians--both Christian institutions and individual believers--have rushed to accept the prevailing, emergent world view of naturalism and the pseudo-science which attends it.  They have sought to re-interpret the scriptures to "fit in with" the brazen, allegedly undisputed facts of the naturalistic paradigm.

One expects that the reason for this curiosity is the widespread, uncritical acceptance amongst Christians of the prevailing theory of fact--namely, the idea that scientific knowledge is objective, proven, and indisputable.

The Great Petard

Try Harder

It turns out that Clint Eastwood is a profound cosmologist.  The best of the best, one may say.

The real question of the ages for the materialists and secularists is, Why does the universe exist at all?  For the Unbelieving cosmolgist it is a question inside a riddle, wrapped in an enigma.

David Berlinski rings the changes:

Oxford's Peter Atkins has attempted to address this issue.  "If we are to be honest," he argues, "then we have to accept that science will be able to claim success only if it achieves what many might think impossible: accounting for the emergence of everything from absolutely nothing."  Atkins does not seem to recognize that when the human mind encounters the thesis that something has emerged from nothing, it is not encountering a question to which any coherent answer exists.  [The Devil's Delusion: Atheism and Its Scientific Pretensions (New York: Basic Books, 2009), p.95f.]  

How have the materialist cosmologists fared?  About as expected.  The problem is sufficiently complex that the problem itself defies a simple description.  But we will put our materialist hat on and advance one anyway.  Since we know that all being is some sort of combination of time and space and matter and energy and since we know there is nothing else, how did these come into existence out of nothing?

Berlinski points out that physicist Victor Stenger has had a crack at the problem.

A Canard Atop a Mirage

If It Can Be Described, It Cannot Possibly Be True

Darwin and evolutionism are increasingly under fire from secular scientists.  In 1981, a senior paleontologist of the British Natural History Museum was delivering a lecture to his trans-Atlantic colleagues at the American Museum of Natural History.

He acknowledged that Darwinism was being surrounded by an increasing number of doubting-Thomas scientists.  He argued that,

Darwin's theory of natural selection is under fire and scientists are no longer sure of its general validity.  Evolutionists increasingly talk like creationists in that they point to a fact but cannot provide an explanation of the means.  [Phillip Johnson, Darwin on Trial (Downers Grove, Ill.: Intervarsity Press, 2nd ed., 1993), p. 9f.; quoted by Douglas F. Kelly, Creation and Change: Genesis 1:1 -- 2:4 in the light of Changing Scientific Paradigms (Fearn, Ross-shire: Mentor/Christian Focus Publications, 1997), p.24.]

Others are more blunt.  Take, for example, Lynn Margulis, Professor of Biology at the University of Massachusetts:

She shows that molecular biology has as yet been unable to demonstrate the formation of a single new species by mutations, and concludes that neo-Darwinism is "a minor twentieth-century religious sect within the sprawling religious persuasion of Anglo-Saxon biology." [Kelly, ibid.]

Ouch.  A "minor twentieth-century religious sect"!  Could you put the matter in a less equivocal manner, Professor?

Myths Which Dominate Our Culture

Living the Good Life

Scientism is the belief that the only existing reality is matter, time, space, and waves.  One can learn truths and make discoveries about matter by means of physical sciences.  There is no other way to truth and knowledge.  

All materialists are expositors of the philosophy of scientism, or when inconsistent with the hard, brute realities of scientism, they become mere sentimentalists.  Imagine the materialist scientist professing his devotion and love to a female who has caught his eye.  "Why do you want to shack up with me?", she inquires.  "Will your love be exclusive, permanent--the love of lifelong fidelity--or will it be the passing moment of a biological urge?"

"Ah, my dearest, I love you," he breaths fervently.  But as materialists both the breather and the one breathed upon know that he is lying and his words are mere vanity.

Self-Destruction on a Grand Scale

Holding On to the Grenade Too Long

David Hume was (and is) the enfant terrible of modern philosophy.  His scepticism was (and is) like an acid which corroded much of what went before and came after.  By putting up a barrier between the mind (rational thought) and the senses, such that there is no necessary connection between the two, he scared Western philosophers so profoundly they all got a bad case of the heebie jeebies.  Empiricism devolved into scepticism.  

The way a good many of his successors dealt with his scepticism was to ignore it.  Actually, Hume ended up ignoring it for a large part of his output.  He could not help himself.  He retreated to the  more positive, safer realm of championing empiricism--the championing of knowledge through the application of our senses to the world around us.  But he had to assume there was a connection between rational thought and empirical observation.  He also had to assert there was a connection between cause and effect that held whether empirically observed or not.

He dismissed non-empirical philosophy in a grand manner:

. . . if we take in our hand any volume; of divinity or school metaphysics, for instance, let us ask, Does it contain any abstract reasoning concerning quantity and number?  No.  Does it contain any experimental reasoning concerning matter of matter of fact and existence? No.  Commit it then to the flames: For it can contain nothing but sophistry and illusion. [An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding.]

 Beware the universal acid--that acid so corrosive it cannot be contained and which in the end destroys all.  As Berlinski pointed out, with respect to Hume:

Analytical philosophers have been eager to commit books to the flames ever since [Hume], rather an odd vocational choice, all things considered.

What Is a Dawkins?

An Appearance of Atheism

Douglas Wilson
Blog&Mablog

I saw on Facebook that Richard Dawkins had summarily dispatched the God of the Bible. Not only so, but he did it in under three minutes. I found out about this feat of legerdemain because Ken Ham’s answer to this elegant business showed up in my feed, and so then I went and checked it all out. Now I must admit that watching this kind of thing does make me want to have a go at it myself, but nothing here should be interpreted as finding fault with Ham’s response. It was a good sturdy response to Dawkins, albeit somewhat solemn.



So I rise to contest the first thirty seconds or so of Dawkins’ homily.

First, Dawkins announced that the burden of proof is not on the atheist, but rather on the theist. Actually, the burden of demonstration lies with whoever makes a dogmatic claim — and this is not really dependent upon whether the claim is positive or negative. If I state dogmatically that there is gold in Alaska, I may, without being insulted, be asked for my reasons. If a man goes in the other direction, and insists that there is no gold in Alaska, the same thing is going to happen to him. There will be a Q & A.

And in such a time, an interlocutor might go so far as to mention to our no-gold-in-Alaska dogmatist that proofs of universal negative claims are a bit harder to come by. A positive claim might be vindicated by the first venture of panning in the first brook you came to. But to vindicate a negative claim, one would have to dig up all of Alaska, all the way down.

This is why shrewd nonbelievers, among whom we do not count Richard Dawkins, usually retreat to a form of agnosticism.

No Other Good At All

Fearsome Clown 

David Berlinski writes about the arrogance of the modern secular scientist--at least those who hold to its religious form of atheistic scientism.

Curiously enough, for all that science may be a very good thing, members of the scientific community are often dismayed to discover that, like policemen, they are not better loved.  Indeed, they are widely considered self-righteous, vain, politically immature and arrogant.  This last is considered a special injustice.

"Contrary to what many anti-intellectuals maintain, " the biologist Massimo Pigliucci has written, science is "a much more humble enterprise than any religion or other ideology."  Yet despite the outstanding humility of the scientific community, anti-intellectuals persist in their sullen suspicions. Scientists are hardly helped when one of their own champions immerses himself in the emollient of his own enthusiasm.

Credibility in Tatters

Lies, Damned Lies, and Scientists

We are told that all educated and rational people respect science and scientific disciplines.  The respect is to high that we have even erected an idol, called Scientism, which propounds that only matter exists, so that the study of matter is our sole prophet.  But now science lies discredited.  This particular idol  "lies broke in the Temple of Ba'al".

Public science, official science, state-propagated science has had its credibility riven to shreds.  Who would want now to be a scientist?  It has become a thoroughly discredited profession.  James Delingpole explains how this has come to pass.

The Fall and Rise of Idolatry

Philosophers' Noisy Talk

In the fourth century AD, Athanasius (one of the great early church fathers) described the impact upon idolatry from the time of Christ's coming down to his day (circa 325AD).  He argues that the coming of Christ amongst men drove out superstition and idolatry in the Roman Empire and the Mediterranean nations.

Idolatry amongst the Gentiles was real, pervasive, and local.  Every town had its shrines and deities.  Athanasius witnessed the decline and decrepitude of the established religion of idolatry.  But what caused it?

When did people begin to abandon the worship of idols, unless it were since the very Word of God came among men?  When have oracles ceased and become void of meaning, among the Greeks and everywhere, except since the Saviour had revealed Himself on earth?

When did those whom the poets call gods and heroes begin to be adjudged as mere mortals, except when the Lord took the spoils of death and preserved incorruptible the body He had taken, raising it from among the dead?  Or when did the deceitfulness and madness of daemons fall under contempt, save when the Word, the Power of God, the Master of all these as well, condescended on account of the weakness of mankind and appeared on earth?

When did the practice and theory of magic begin to be spurned under foot, if not at the manifestation of the Divine Word to men?  In a word, when did the wisdom of the Greeks become foolish, save when the true Wisdom of God revealed Himself on earth?  In old times the whole world and every place in it was led astray by the worship of idols, and men thought the idols were the only gods that were.  But now, all over the world men are forsaking the fear of idols and taking refuge with Christ; and by worshipping Him as God they come through Him to know the Father also, Whom formerly they did not know.

The objects of worship formerly were varied and countless; each place had its own idol and the so-called god of one place could not pass over to another in order to persuade the people there to worship him, but was barely reverenced even by his own.  Indeed no! Nobody worshipped his neighbour's god, but every man had his own idol and thought that it was lord of all.  But now Christ alone is worshipped, as One and the Same among all peoples everywhere; and what the feebleness of idols could not do, namely convince even those dwelling close at hand, He has effected.  He has persuaded not only those close at hand, but literally the entire world to worship one and the same Lord and through Him the Father.

Again, in former times every place was full of the fraud of the oracles, and the utterances of those at Delphi and Dordona and in Boeotia and Lycia and Libya and Egypt and those of the Kabiri and the Pythoness were considered marvellous by the minds of men.  But now, since Christ has been proclaimed everywhere, their madness too has ceased, and there is no one left among them to give oracles at all. . . .

And what is one to say about the magic that they think so marvellous?  Before the sojourn of the Word, it was strong and active among Egyptians and Chaldeans and Indians and filled all who saw it with terror and astonishment.  But by the coming of the Truth and the manifestation of the Word it too has been confuted and entirely destroyed.

As to Greek wisdom, however, and the philosophers' noisy talk, I really think no one requires argument from us, for the amazing fact is patent to all that, for all that they have written so much, the Greeks failed to convince even a few from their own neighbourhood in regard to immortality and the virtuous ordering of life.  Christ alone, using common speech and through he agency of men not clever with their tongues, has convinced whole assemblies of people all the world over to despise death, and to take heed to the thing that do not die, to look past the things of time and gaze on things eternal, to think nothing of earthly glory and to aspire only to immortality.  [Athanasius, On the Incarnation.  Translated and edited by Sister Penelope Lawson.  (New York: Macmillan Publishing House, 1946.), p.75ff.] 

Idolatry still exists in places around the world.  But when the Christian Gospel of Christ takes hold, idolatry is the first and abiding casualty.  The reverse is also true: if a civilisation rebels against the gentle yoke of Christ, it is not long before superstition and various idols make a comeback.  Consider how many "scientists" have become reverently superstitious about Evolution, seeing its hand, influence, control, and explanatory power everywhere.  Consider how our Most High Priests of scientism gravely propound an infinite number of parallel universes to warrant the complexity of the one in which we live.  For Stochasticity to have a chance of producing such an exquisitely balanced and fine tuned universe, there must needs be an infinite number of other universes where the emergence of life is impossible or has failed.  These nonsenses and contradictions are uttered most gravely and reverently by the most superstitious of all.

The Delphic oracle--the alleged voice of Apollo himself--was a charlatan's purse (and at root everyone knew it).  It survived for so long because of the wilful credulity of those who needed such things to make some kind of superstitious sense of the world. The coming of the Gospel eradicated that need.  But deny or ignore the Gospel and gross ignorance soon makes a return.

The distance between our modern superstitious scientists and the devotees of Delphi is less than a cigarette paper. 

More Gadfly Than Blowfly

Syndrome of the Embarrassing Advocate

Every so often we are treated to one of our resident Unbelievers pontificating away as if his life depended upon it.  Sir Bob Jones is a wealthy man--irreverent, atheistic, and entertaining--who likes to throw together an occasional opinion piece in the NZ Herald with all the panache and thoughtfulness of someone deep in his cups.  In other words, Bob is not to be taken seriously.  Mercifully he does not take himself seriously.  More gadfly than blowfly.

Nevertheless, Bob is a self-professed empiricist.  It's all science for him.  Not religion.  All hard data, not superstitious rubbish.  He bombastically writes:

I'll stick with science rather than fairy tales.  All the primitive praying never saved us from the Creation's syphilis and rabies as antibiotics have, this just one of the thousands of examples of our debt to science.

Except that old Bob doesn't stick with science.  If he were to do so, he would be entirely more believable.  On the contrary, he appears not to understand much about science nor fairy tales for that matter.  As things stand, Bob has convictions about everything as do all opinionated folk.  Yet, for some bewildering reason, Bob has apparently never considered the limitations of his beloved empiricism.

Letter From Europe (About the Death of Human Rights)

The Sovereignty of Depersonalised Will

When men turn away from God, the "centre" no longer holds.  There is no absolute moral code to which all men are subject and in bonds.  All that is left is the "man-as-god" volition of individuals, then, eventually, the will of the one, the uber-man, the dictator.  The West is currently in the phase of rejecting morals and championing the volition of individuals.  Eventually, the uber-individual, the One, the Dictator will emerge.

The European Court of Human Rights is now well down this track.

Gregor Puppinck, PhD, Director of the European Centre for Law and Justice explains how human rights are becoming “trans-humans rights” under the influence of individualism, skepticism and biotechnologies. Human rights courts are currently redefining the “new man” through the creation of post and trans-humans rights.

- How does trans-humanism enter into the legal field?
The rights guaranteed by the European Court of Human Rights, define man. In 1950, when the Convention was signed, these rights were defined in order to protect the inherent abilities of human beings, their nature, which distinguish man from animal and manifest his or her dignity.  At the time, man was not technological, and the existence of a human nature and dignity as the basis of rights was well established. But today, biotechnology can not only enhance our natural abilities, but also endow us with new ones.  . . .

 - How did biotechnology influence human rights?
Human rights express and set as a standard successive conceptions that society makes about man: there were ‘humanist’ rights followed by ‘personalist’ rights. It is nowadays post-human rights that are paving the way for trans-human rights.

Post-humanism is the domination of individual wills over human nature. As a result, it is replacing human rights with ‘rights of individuals’. Although the wording of the Human Rights adopted in 1950 has not changed, their individualist interpretation has altered, even revolutionised, their content. Thus, the Convention recognizes the right to life, but the individual will to die or to abort a pregnancy is prevailing over that right. Assisted suicide, euthanasia or abortion are post-human rights.

Letter From the UK (About Dawkins's Dogmatism)

Richard Dawkins, what on earth happened to you?

Dawkins in 2014 is a man so convinced that he possesses God-like powers of omniscience that he can’t understand why everyone is angry at him for pointing out the obvious

Eleanor Robertson
The Guardian
30 July 2014

Another day, another tweet from Richard Dawkins proving that if non-conscious material is given enough time, it is capable of evolving into an obstreperous crackpot who should have retired from public speech when he had the chance to bow out before embarrassing himself.

“Date rape is bad. Stranger rape at knifepoint is worse,” huffs Dawkins. Seeming to have anticipated, although not understood, the feminist reaction this kind of sentiment generally evokes, he finishes the tweet: “If you think that’s an endorsement of date rape, go away and learn how to think.”

. . . . Dawkins has been arrogant for years, a man so convinced of his intellectual superiority that he believes the one domain in which he happens to be an expert, science, is the only legitimate way of acquiring or assessing knowledge. All of his outbursts in recent years follow from this belief: he understands the scientific method, a process intended to mitigate the interference of human subjectivity in data collection, as a universally applicable way of understanding not just the physical world but literally everything else as well.

Justification of Knowledge and Truth (Part II)

A Bold Plan for Perpetual Ignorance

How do we know that what we know is actually true?  Wittgenstein and the post-modernists argued that we never will know absolute truth; all we can have is perspectives (including this one).  This has not sat well with traditional philosophers, but it has certainly had a field day in the world of academia.  We now have endless lists of perspectives as subjects for study: queer literature, minority art, feminist politics, proletarian ethics, trans-gender discourse, and so on, ad nauseam.  The end result is lots and lots of insignificant jobs for post-modern academics.  Lots of heat, but not much light.

We have argued that rationalism--one of the traditional justifications of knowledge--elides into tautologies and irrationalism.  The second major tendency to justify knowledge as being true-truth is empiricism.  This is probably the tendency which is most popular today--largely, due to the widespread belief that science (which employs the "empirical" method) delivers the truth.  As Frame explains:

Devolutionary Progress

The Impossibility of Science

The world of science is in a parlous condition.  It is not a recent phenomenon.  However, its rotten fruits seem to appear more frequently.  Who would have thought that we would see "official science" sanctioned by actual governments along with the putative government of the United Nations--which "science" has then moved aggressively to silence criticism and debate.  It has also been caught withholding and fabricating data, and even argued that those who oppose should suffer imprisonment and other legal sanctions.  Yet this has become "normal" in the vast propaganda overreaches of climate science and its spurious hypothesis of man-caused global warming. 

Something is going on beneath the surface.  How could a scientific position cause such alarm that to oppose it or question its veracity would invite civil sanctions?  What kind of society would act in that way?  An increasingly primitive one.  Socrates was condemned to death for the heinous crime of corrupting the youth of Athens.  Was it because of his bi-sexuality?  No.  Was it due to his pederasty?  No.  It was due to his suggestion that the gods may be mythical, not real.  For this "corruption", he was condemned to a big sip of  hemlock.  The question is, Why has modern, official science become so corrupted that it more resembles the primitive ignorance of ancient Athens than a modern, advanced state? 

To answer the question we need to consider the philosophical and religious foundations of science.

Pour Me Another One

Klingon Cloaking Devices and the Starship Ideology

Now we are being told that genetic factors account for about 30 to 40 percent of of whether a man becomes a homosexual or not.  We suspect that similar claims could be made about whether a man becomes a murderer.  But one thing is absolutely sure, apparently.  Environmental factors definitely, most definitely do not play any role whatsoever.  Moreover, choice is absolutely, totally, and completely excluded as a factor in becoming a homosexual.

But they [the research scientists] said this did not imply that upbringing or other social factors, or individual choice, had a bearing on sexual orientation.  “Sexual orientation has nothing to do with choice,” one of the lead researchers, Dr Michael Bailey, from Northwestern University in Chicago, said. [NZ Herald.  Emphasis, ours.]

Notice the emphatic assertion.  Homosexuality has nothing to do with choice.  When a scientist becomes this emphatic with respect to human behaviour, expect that science has elided into cheap propaganda.