Cynewulf, I see you're ignoring substantive replies to your claims. If you're going to do that, you should just stop posting in the thread. No one here is interested in you using it as a pulpit instead of a discussion thread.
You are right, of course, and that was bad form. Apologies. As for people not being interested in my using this thread as a pulpit, that may certainly be the case. This thread was, however, in dire need of some balancing of the preachers present here. There does not seem to be much room for the discussion you want in an environment filled with people who can categorically state that Abraham is a historical person, and that the Exodus from Egypt happened as described. I do not think people are interested in a debate over the facts behind the stories and legends of the Jewish people, but I will certainly take that discussion, too, as I find it much more interesting than this one.
Now, for your points:
Cynewulf, I'm not sure why you used the word polemic, as the dictionary definition doesn't seem to apply to this circumstance.
Dictionary definitions should never be taken too seriously. They are hopelessly insufficient, and can not be said to provide anything other than guidelines to the extralinguistic phenomena in the real world that words signify. If you want, I can give you a brief explanation of what I meant. You willfully distorted my argument in order to make it easier to respond to, as well as lend your argument increased credence. That relates closely enough to the dictionaty definiton of "polemic" to be a valid usage, as I see it. Some might disagree, however.
As to your list of reasons why someone might find another person attractive: They are all fair. Still, in the context of a romantic and sexual relationship they seem like fringe factors. However, that is not the point. I never claimed that all interpersonal attraction is sexually grounded. My initial claim was in response to an obviously very young girl's claim that none of her male friends had sexual thoughts and associations toward girls to whom they were attracted. Now, please do correct me if I am wrong, but is it not common in the United States to understand "attraction" as romantic attraction in the case of a youngster referring to males being attracted to females? Is it not common usage in the United States, and indeed in the rest of the English speaking world, to understand "attracted to" as a somewhat weaker form of "in love with", in contexts such as this? Because this is the context to which I responded. Of course other forms of attraction are possible, which are not sexual in nature. However, romantic attraction is deeply rooted in the sexual, even though other, less visceral "reasons" for attraction are possible at later stages. That does not mean, as I tried to point out in my initial post, that sexual acts are a necessary and unavoidable result. If they are, however, there is nothing wrong or "dirty" or "sinful" with that, either. In my opinion.
Can't you think that members of your family are attractive? That doesn't mean you want to have sex with them. What if you think friends of your same sex are attractive? That doesn't mean you're homosexual. Don't you distinguish between cute kids and not so cute kids? Let's start calling everyone pedophiliacs.
What you are talking about is having a cognitive realisation that certain people "are" attractive. That is by no means the same as being attracted to them, in the usage of the word specified here. It is possible to "know" that one's mother is attractive. If you are attracted to her, however, (again, for the slow of understanding, in the meaning of the word I have clarified in this context) then you are probably in some sort of trouble.
