TnA: The female bonobos have that part figured out as well (not going into details, it's a family forum). And some fish are genuinely transsexual, they can change their sex in times of need. Then there are lots of animals, some even multicellular, without sex. Sponges, for example, and polyps. And from the animals that do have males and females, all forms of behavior are present: you have couples that stay together for a lifetime, you have harems, orgies, cheating. The most common form among mammals, I think, is the mating for one season, where a couple raises one generation of kids and then parts. Quite often, the male disappears as fast as he can. The harem is also popular: one strong male has all the females of one herd, the other males get chased away. I'll hapilly follow a commandment that says "Thou shalt have sex exactly as the animals, for I created both of you"
SD: If the statistics you come up with is just a list of sinful cities, why they were sinful, and when they were hit by disaster, don't bother. A double blind test is required to convice me: If one person compiles the list of sins and disasters, he'll subconsciously influence the result towards his views.
The following would be the setup. Person A collects news about things possibly considered sinful and disasters. He carefully removes all information that allows you to guess where the news is from (Names, of course, but other information may apply too). Cities with well known disasters, like now NO, need to be kept out of the statistics completely. The news about sins goes to Person B, who rates the sinfullness in several areas (homosexuality, drugs, whatever). The news about disasters goes to Person C, who rates the severity of the disaster (For example, persons killed + .1 * persons injured). The information what news item belonged to which city goes to person D, who also gets the ratings from B and C. person D then does a plot of sinfulness vs. some average disaster severity. Of course, the news need to be from a small geographical area, so the ambient disaster densities don't influence the result: Studies that neglect that can prove that trailer parks create tornadoes
The problem with beliefs of the "God sent a disaster because the people there were sinners" type is not the belief itself, it's the actions that may follow. Some people with this belief won't help a person thusly punished by God. Some people may go a step further and anticipate Gods intended punishing, and be the executor of the punishment. SD's post don't hint that he's one of those types, luckily.
On topic: Assuming NO was smitten for its sins, does that justify Curious George and the feds sitting on their asses doing nothing fo a week?
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