I have offered an explanation for behavior choice in animals that says we seek emotional payback - to increase our sense of well-being - in our behavior choices. I have stated that that is all that is needed to allow a human, a dog, a cat or a fish, for that matter, to choose behavior from its repertoire that would support its survival.
I have offered several examples that plausibly illustrate this mechanism. Since I have no way of quantifying emotional force I do not claim that I have proven my hypothesis - that behavior choice is the result of a summation of those emotional forces. That doesn't make my explanation circular - it just leaves me without a way to quantify its operation. It certainly doesn't disprove it.
While I can't prove my hypothesis you can disprove it. You only need to provide one example where it fails to account for behavior choice - where something other than seeking emotional fulfillment causes behavior choice to be made in opposition to that emotional fulfillment. Until you do that, it remains a highly plausible candidate for an explanation of behavior choice in animals.
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I find your lack of rigor and consistency extraordinary . . . you actually do seem to be something of an automaton . . . really, that’s not just an "emotional response" on my part.
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Saying that I lack rigor and consistency and am somewhat of an automoton is nothing but an emotional response. From reading your posts over the last several months I doubt you have the capacity to make an argument that did not emotionally disparage your opponent's view. You live in a world where the emotions of your belief system control every thought you have and every statement you make. Every abstract concept that occurs in your mind has one purpose - to affirm your theistic belief system and attack all who do not share it. That's not only the reason you participate in this forum, based on the amount of time you seem to have available for this mission, it's no doubt what you live for. Such is life inside the mind of an ideologue. Such is the power of the emotions of strong belief systems when they are allowed to infect one's mind. Thanks for illustrating this so well.
Except for a few posts where you comically implied that JimB or Todd agreed with you about something, I doubt I can find a post where you did not have something nasty to say about someone else or their ideas.
If you actually had a point to make I suspect you would have made it by now. I don't have time for high-school level debating games about God and the associated name calling. As I said before, I'll check back once in a while to see if anything worthwhile is happening here.
Margaret