Click here to be grossed out by more than a century of pernicious Darwin-science.
Darwin made me do it ping.
I have the golf gene. Can the author explain what the cavemen used for golf clubs and golf balls?
Thank God you don’t teach science, except, perhaps, to members of your own family.
UNM has Scientists? Getting touchy-feeley with their rape genes? Next thing you know, it wont be rape, it will be assault with a friendly weapon.
should be an interesting topic.
And this passes for science right along with AGW.
It’s all because of people like George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Karl Rove!
Aren’t they behind ALL the evils in this world???
So much for the contention that the ToE does not promote immorality.
Actually, some of those things *may* be, if not “encoded”, than that we are “capable” of doing them. Importantly, for serious and important biological reasons.
To set aside the “free will” debate for a moment, look at the cellular level. To start with, reproduction, at all, is not easy, in fact it is very hard. Human males are known to have at least three kinds of sperm: fertilizing, “blocking”, and “fighting” sperm. Only the first group even try to get to the female’s egg. The other two groups stop at some point, turn around, and either try to block or actively fight with, other male’s sperm that may also be in the area. But that is simplicity itself, compared with what the female body does.
To start with, almost as soon as the male ejaculates, the female very quickly changes her internal pH, because otherwise it would kill the sperm. The semen rests in a pool, which is still a long way away from its goal, and as part of an orgasm, the female may assist the sperm by dipping the ends of her fallopian tubes into that pool, thus shortening the distance.
Sperm is also “graded”, even from the same male, so that some is optimal, with more dominant genes, and others have more active recessive genes. The female’s body “remembers” if she has had a more optimal baby, and will actually choose a less optimal baby for a second child. Clearly a genetic diversity survival scheme. Her body may even prefer a different male’s sperm, and give it preference over the male she has already had a child with sperm.
Then, with fertilization, the female pulls off an amazing trick. She shuts down her normal anti-cancer immune system, because a fertilized egg developing into a fetus acts a lot like a tumor; and she uses a temporary alternate anti-cancer system that can distinguish between a fetus and a cancer. After birth, she goes back to her primary anti-cancer system.
It is downright amazing that we can reproduce at all.
Now, that being said, the male reproductive prerogative is to spread their DNA around. But females have two prerogatives, first in getting the most desirable sperm for their egg, and second, to get the help of a male provider to help in the raising of her children. The trouble is, that when there are a lot of males around, it is unlikely that the two men are the same guy.
But humans came up with an amazing social idea that is better than basic monogamous reproduction: marriage. Marriage, when enforced by everyone, gives advantages to the male, the female, and especially their offspring. As far as pure biology goes, it is a brilliant idea.
When enforced, and this is critical, it is a promise to the male that the offspring will be his. To the female, that the male will help raise the children. And the benefits to the children from having two parents are obvious.
However, as with sperm, there are a lot of people in society who shouldn’t have children. And it is a problem when they are in competition with people who should have children.
Wolves get around this by only permitting their alpha pair to mate, and producing large litters. But people, it has been theorized, get around this problem with, of all things, prostitution and other techniques. That is, the prostitute, likely a female that should not reproduce, attracts the males that should not reproduce. This removes them from competition with breeding couples.
This may also, to a great extent, explain homosexuality. That is, they are people who should not reproduce, so they are inclined not to.
Many of the other vices that plague mankind also may have biological roots, relating to either reproduction or survival. Begging and charity may be a matched set of these, as are cowardice and bravery, etc.
However, again, only the “capability” of these things are in our genes. Whether we express them or not depends both on our upbringing, and the quality of our character.
I get some amusement when, every few years, some scientists decide that because female chimpanzees in a harem will try to cheat on the dominant male chimpanzee who rules the harem, that cheating must be “natural”, and thus it is okay for humans to cheat.
This is because I can point out that if the dominant male catches one of his females cheating with another male, he is likely to kill both of them. So if cheating is natural, so is the homicide of the cheating couple. The scientists don’t like that idea as much.
Yes, one professor has a theory and therefore all "evolutionists say so"..
There's obviously a retard gene there as well..
I disagree with this guy’s theory, and propose an alternative. It’s not that our male ancestors had “rape genes” but that some of our female ancestors instead developed “wear skimpy furs” genes. This was a beneficial adaptation, because the women with the “wear skimpy furs” genes would then breed with both men who were willing and those who were unwilling, but had been seduced by the carnal lusts the skimpy furs aroused in them. Thus the offspring of these women possessed more genetic diversity which allowed them to adapt and survive better.
“Biological Bases of Sexual Coercion”
Would that be like, First Base, Second Base, etc.?
What a bunch of Newsweek shite ........
Yeah, but hanging out in washrooms is fine according to these people.
You know what's really nutty about this thread? The article talks about a couple of "evolutionists" who argued that we have rape genes, but then goes on to describe lots of other "evolutionists" who have challenged not only that assertion but the whole field of evolutionary psychology. The whole point of the article is how that view is being overturned. And yet the anti-evolutionists here ignore all of that and imply that "evos" as a group accept the rape gene argument. It's like you/they didn't even read the article!
Well, then, we really have a lot of folks to release from prison. I mean, if it’s genetically compelled, there’s not much we can do but offer counseling to victims and pray for gene therapy needed to free these perps from their compulsion. /sarc