Posted on 10/10/2009 10:57:27 AM PDT by topcat54
If you believe in evolution, there is nothing wrong with rape. In fact, you can’t really call it rape. Whoopi Goldberg dismissed Roman Polanski’s rape conviction by declaring that it “wasn’t rape-rape” (see her comments on The View.) As a firm believer in evolution, she should have said, “There’s nothing wrong with rape or sexual aggression. That’s how we all got here!” Here’s the premise: Whatever animals do in nature is natural. What’s natural is normal. What’s normal is moral. So if penguins engage in homosexual behavior, then that behavior must be natural, normal, and moral. How can we mere mortals impose our rules of sexual behavior on what’s natural in the animal kingdom? Homosexuals extrapolate that what animals do naturally in nature applies to what higher “animals” can do naturally without any moral judgments attached.
Consider the case of Timothy Treadwell depicted in the movie Grizzly Man (2005). He lived among bears for 13 years and thought of them as his friends. In 2003, Treadwell and his companion, Amie Huguenard, were mauled and mostly eaten by one of the Alaskan grizzly bears. While he thought of the bears as his brothers and sisters, the bears thought of him as lunch. “Nature, red in tooth and claw,” as Alfred Lord Tennyson put it. Then there’s the case of Armin Meiwes who killed and ate 43-year-old Bernd-Jurgen Brandes.[1] What did Mr. Meiwes do that was wrong given the premise that animal behavior is a normative model for human behavior?[2] If the bears that ate Treadwell were only doing what came naturally, then how can the cannibal nature of Meiwes be judged as abnormal given evolutionary assumptions? Whoopi missed a great opportunity to extol the virtues of the evolutionary religion of the intelligentsia by pointing out these examples of evolution in action.
A few years ago, I saw an advertisement for a television special on Turner Network Television—“The Trials of Life.” The full-page advertisement showed a composite picture of six animals, one of which was the bald eagle, with the following caption: “Discover how similar the face of nature is to yours. The way you love, the way you fight, the way you grow, all have their roots in the kingdom we all live in: the animal kingdom.” The implication here is obvious: Humans are only an evolutionary step away from other animals.
While channel surfing, I came across the second installment of the six-part series. I soon learned what Benjamin Franklin meant when he described the eagle as a bird of “bad moral character.” With two eaglets in the nest and not enough food to go around, mamma allows the weakest eaglet to die. She then cannibalizes the dead eaglet and feeds it to the survivor. Was this natural or unnatural? Is this moral animal behavior that we should emulate? How do we know? Should we follow the example of the eagles or just the homosexual penguins?
If animal behavior is a template for human behavior, then why can’t a similar case be made for rape among human animals? As hard as it might be to imagine, the connection has been made. Randy Thornhill, a biologist who teaches at the University of New Mexico, and Craig T. Palmer, an anthropologist who teaches at the University of Missouri-Columbia, attempt to demonstrate in their book A Natural History of Rape [3] (MIT Press) that evolutionary principles explain rape as a “genetically developed strategy sustained over generations of human life because it is a kind of sexual selection—a successful reproductive strategy.” They go on to claim, however, that even though rape can be explained genetically in evolutionary terms, this does not make the behavior morally right. Of course, given Darwinian assumptions, there is no way to condemn rape on moral grounds. If we are truly the products of evolution, then there can be no moral judgments about anything. So then, if homosexuals want to use penguins as their moral model, then they need to take all animal behavior into consideration when they build their moral worldview. If we should follow the animal world regarding homosexual penguins and thereby regard human homosexual behavior as normal, then we must be consistent and follow the animal world regarding rape, eating our young, and eating our neighbors and decriminalize these behaviors as well. Whoopi just needed some help in framing the issue a little better.
Endnotes:
[1] http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/3286721.stm
[2] Theodore Dalrymple, “The Case for Cannibalism” (January 5, 2005): http://www.city-journal.org/html/eon_01_05_04td.html
[3] Randy Thornhill, and Craig T. Palmer, A Natural History of Rape: Biological Bases of Sexual Coercion (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2000)..
These sort of stories highlight the fact that without religion, there can be no morality. It is impossible to explain without any religious context why things like rape, murder, stealing, lying and whatnot are indeed wrong.
Liberals — all id and ego; no superego.
Good ole’ hoopie. The never ending liberal idiot.
Whoopi is an animal. That makes her point for her.
At the time of man when it was standard for 'rape or sexual aggression,' there was no such thing as 'moral.'
That man-made ideal came many, many years later.
Every now and then, researchers observe a chimpanzee harem, and note that the females often try to sneak away from the dominant male, to have sex with males that hang around the periphery of the harem.
They then say that because chimpanzees cheat, that it must be natural to cheat on one’s spouse.
However, they always neglect the other side of the equation. If a dominant male catches one of his females cheating with another male, he is likely to brutally kill both of them.
So, if cheating is natural, so is murdering your cheating spouse and their lover if you catch them. Just like in Texas.
The only thing Whoopi is an expert at, is baby killing.
She has admitted to aborting several of her own children.
Actually, there is no morality in evolutionary logic. At best an argument can be made for the importance of deceiving people into thinking that you care about them or have their best interest in mind, but that is where the logic of morality stops.
Indeed, the inner city baby daddies who are getting a dozen women to have their children should be considered to be at the top of the current evolutionary ladder. They have figured out the most efficient way to increase their gene line, while having the government (us) feed, shelter and clothe them. Sort of like human Cow Birds.
And for the "no morality without religion" crowd, there is Leviticus 20:10, which says the same thing.
"I'm Whoopie Golgberg and I Love Kids."
Click for Whoopie video still on the Toys-R-Us website.
If we were just animals, then one might excuse the behavior. I’m of the opinion that Adam and Eve were given the first souls, and distinguishing them from Homo Sapien Sapiens (call us now Homo Sapien Adamsis), thereby setting mankind apart from the animal world. It allowed us to consider spiritual things, and allowed us to become spiritual beings. It provided the key element that causes us to rise above our base (animalistic) nature.
The materialists and secular humanists ignore it at their peril.
“These sort of stories highlight the fact that without religion, there can be no morality. It is impossible to explain without any religious context why things like rape, murder, stealing, lying and whatnot are indeed wrong.”
How absurd and vile. They are wrong because they are contrary to the very nature of human beings, the very necessity for them to survive as human beings. The human mind cannot function on lies. A human cannot exist without producing and stealing is a denial of that basic human requirement and must except a lie to violate that truth. It is the very nature of human beings to understand that “pleasure” is the reward for correct choices and pain the consequence of wrong ones. A pleasure enjoyed that is not earned is like stealing, enjoying that which is unearned and undeserved. It is a basic human requirement to know that one is worthy of what one enjoys in life, and must suffer the psychological consequences for attempting to enjoy what is not earned, and consequences of the lie to cover up that guilt.
Perhaps you would not be able to figure out that rape, murder, stealing, lying are wrong, without some authority telling you they are, but truly moral people do not need to be told they are wrong.
What you are implying is that rape, murder, stealing, and lying are only wrong because God said so. If He said they were OK, would they be?
Hank
If we take the view that humans are descended from lower order animals, then how can this be true? In the animal kingdom, the only rule is survival of the fittest. Animals kill other animals, steal from other animals, take the mates of other animals because that is their instinctively driven behavior. If we are descended from those same animals, then how can it be in our very nature to not do these things?
Perhaps you would not be able to figure out that rape, murder, stealing, lying are wrong, without some authority telling you they are, but truly moral people do not need to be told they are wrong.
Then how did those people learn to do it? And how did the people who taught those who taught these moral people learn? Where did what we consider to be good behavior come from?
What you are implying is that rape, murder, stealing, and lying are only wrong because God said so. If He said they were OK, would they be?
I am not implying it, I am explicitly saying it. Look at the Islamic faith as an example for how morality is derived from religion. In this faith, the holy book states very clearly that it is perfectly OK to kill nonbelievers, that it is perfectly OK to lie to advance the cause of Islam and that it is perfectly OK to have sex with minor girls. Many followers of Islam who agree with these tenets do so because Allah told them it was OK.
Likewise, societies that base their morality, and ultimately their laws upon laws listed in the Bible do so because we believe that God told is this was the right thing to do.
And the Creationist Craliban wonder why they get so little support from most Americans....
It simply doesn't get any dumber than that. An epic example of non sequitur (On par for that crowd, though.) Just because non-consensual sex may (or may not - who knows?) have played a role in evolution, it does not follow therefrom that 'rape' is condoned today by someone believing in the theory of evolution. (Otherwise, 95+ percent of males out there would be active rapists.)
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