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Monogamy May Have Evolved To Prevent Infanticide
sciencehabit writes "Human males and females have a strong tendency to live together in monogamous pairs, albeit for highly varied periods of time and degrees of fidelity. Just how such behavior arose has been the topic of much debate among researchers. A new study comes to a startling conclusion: Among primates, including perhaps humans, monogamy evolved because it protected infants from being killed by rival males."
and killing offspring is directly opposed to the core of evolutionary theory
Unless those offspring are in direct competition for food and reproductive access with your offspring. Then it makes a lot of sense evolution-wise.
Been there, done that.
What a myopic view. You have a lot to learn about evolution, and even more so about dogma and religion. "Science" an esteemed science journal would unlikely stoop to sensationalize. Where do you get your bias -- FOX?
No, science is not religion, in the way you're implying it is. Science works by creating theories (either from educated guesses or observations, often both) and testing them.
If it can't be tested, it's not science*.
*Of course, one thing is not being capable of measuring something - the fact that light is affected by gravity took a while to test, for instance. That doesn't make it impossible to test.
Clearly you didn't read the article. The very study linked in the summary specifically compared 230 primate species, some of which are socially monogamous and some of which are not. And it explains why it *hasn't* evolved among all of the fairly similar species in the study using a model based on the infanticide rate.
There are almost certainly things to be picked apart in the study, but you need to understand the basic premise before you can start on that track.
and killing offspring is directly opposed to the core of evolutionary theory, which rewards the widest possible range of mates to guarantee diverse genetic combinations and the maximum chances for survival and spread of strong genes.
This may come as a complete surprise to you, but there do exist plenty of creatures out there that do kill the offspring and still haven't become extinct and there do exist plenty of creatures out there that do not kill their offspring and only mate with one or very few partners and still haven't managed to become extinct. Hell, there exists atleast one specific one that doesn't mate at all and produces only perfect clones of themselves, and still haven't become extinct. The point is, you cannot just lump different survival-strategies together like that and deny the existence or even the possibility for anything other than your one chosen one; what works for one type of a creature may not work for another, and the nature has the tendency of throwing all sorts of types of stuff on the wall and seeing what sticks.
If anything humans are polygamous. A third cheat and the reason the other two thirds don't is because of social, financial and other consequences or just aren't attractive enough to get someone to cheat with.
Because there's no "design" to evolution. Whatever works, works. And there's not one "right" way to evolve. There's no reason for a feature that evolves in one species to independently evolve in other species (although it's possible.)
assert(birth_date<time-86400)
It takes a female chimpanzee 4 to 5 years to teach her offspring enough to survive. During that time, she does not come into heat. Humans, on the other hand, can have babies about once a year. A single female could not raise them all on her own without some help. Today, we call that helper a husband and father. Monogamy means more babies.
Don't stop where the ink does.
It's gotten to the point where anyone who uses the word "neckbeard" can be assumed to have a neckbeard.
The current fortune is perfect for this thread:
"A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices." -- William James
Just beautiful.
Just because someone else has a different hypothesis doesn't mean this one is wrong.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Humans are not brought into heat by the absence of young, and killing offspring is directly opposed to the core of evolutionary theory, which rewards the widest possible range of mates to guarantee diverse genetic combinations and the maximum chances for survival and spread of strong genes.
Male squirrels will gnaw the nuts off their male offspring if the mother neglects to defend them constantly. Last I checked squirrels seemed to be enjoying reasonable reproductive success ;-)
That "just so" story gets me in the feels, therefore it isn't evo-psych STEMlord oppression.
Are you saying that scientists have an evolutionary predisposition to promote evolution?
I love my sig.
How does monogamy change who is in competition with whom? There is no evolutionary mechanism to enforce monogamy. From a purely genetic standpoint there is no benefit to monogamy for a strong male.
Articles like this are just freeze dried beef pasta boiled up in 100 gallon vats and thrown to the neckbeards who gobble it up while slathering vaseline and yanking each other off.
Shit isn't even pretending to be science any more. It's just some asshole in a lab coat leading a revivial in a Kentucky tent.
Repeat after me (and Darwin): survival of the fittest. Competition within a species is one of the quickest ways to make its genepool more competitive.
Bio questions? Ask me to start a Q&A journal. Computer analogies available for most topics!
primates tend to be in bands
Except for the ones that aren't, like orangutans, a close relative of ours.
Mogamy happen because it takes a long time to rise the offspring, and it needs the support of both the female and male
That's one pressure. TFS mentions another. There can be more than one reason, and there usually are.
Tic-Tac-Toe, Global Thermonuclear War, and relationships all have the same winning move.
Can you explain why you *didn't* get into a car accident in the last month? What was it that you did that nobody else who got into a car accident last month did, to cause you to avoid all the accidents that could have happened?
You could say that Bill was drunk, or Alice was texting, and that's why they got into car accidents, but that doesn't explain how every single person that drove drunk or texted while driving didn't get into an accident.
What kind of explanation were you expecting?
Birds clearly have an advantage by being able to fly. If I said "Flying is not advantageous, because if it was, all organisms would have evolved to be able to fly", would that be convincing to you?
Here is a quote from Euripedes a writer from Ancient Greece where they had polygamy:
A second wife is hateful to the children of the first; A viper is not more hateful.
Monogamy evolved because it makes great furniture.
The study (and the linked article) go far beyond "lots of stuff could have worked and this is the one that must have come up." What is says is that monogamy hasn't evolved in other species because they don't practice infanticide. And why is that? Because big-brained animals take a long time to develop, so the young are defenseless.
I believe evolution happens, both historically and currently, and on scales both grand and small.
But I'm tired of so-called scientists making news stories out of un-testable speculations about how something or another could have been a factor in our evolutionary past.
That kind of speculation is for late-night living-room talk, not scientific journals.
How does monogamy change who is in competition with whom? There is no evolutionary mechanism to enforce monogamy. From a purely genetic standpoint there is no benefit to monogamy for a strong male.
Articles like this are just freeze dried beef pasta boiled up in 100 gallon vats and thrown to the neckbeards who gobble it up while slathering vaseline and yanking each other off.
Shit isn't even pretending to be science any more. It's just some asshole in a lab coat leading a revivial in a Kentucky tent.
The argument is that your statement about a strong male being better off without monogamy seems right but isn't, because if strong males fail to stick around and ensure the children they conceived survive to reach adulthood and carry on the cycle, it won't happen, and their "strong" genes will be wiped from the face of the earth.
-1 Uncomfortable Truth
This whole article seems like it's clutching at straws to me. Correlation does not imply causation.
Tip: humans are social animals. The survival of the species and close group is just as important for the strong male to spread his genes as his own survival is. Your knowledge on the subject seems cursory at best, though I suspect that you are trolling.
Can you explain why you *didn't* get into a car accident in the last month?
While I haven't been accident free, I do tend to drive more cautiously and I know of many drivers that aren't nearly so cautious. I've been a passenger in their vehicles, and sadly I've been around long enough to know of a great many people personally who have died due to idiotic things they've done (like being 8x the legal intoxication limit and driving off a bridge for somebody I knew).
Their genes have been pulled from the gene pool, although it could be said that automobiles haven't been driven by humans long enough for natural selection pressures to make model drivers yet. Based on the number of auto accidents each year though, I'd say there is some strong evolutionary pressure happening with that environment. Especially note the age at which most accidents happen (young adults usually less than age 30 with the highest risk for those who are new drivers).
Perhaps it is just that us older folks are more cautious and the younger idiots have been culled by the time they get to my age? A few learn from sad experience by their friends, which just means that their brain actually has an evolutionary advantage too.
Males who abandoned their offspring tended not to see their genes spread further.
African-Americans seem to be (population-wise, though not monetarily) surviving quite well in their current environment.
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
It makes sense in a strange way.
"Human males and females have a strong tendency to live together in monogamous pairs"
As much as they have a strong tendency towards not being able to afford harems.
Now, mod me down freely. My karma can't get any worse...
No, it did not say that other species practiced infanticide. It said that infanticide was much more detrimental to us (and what had evolved into us) due to the extended period of helplessness during infancy. Infanticide was much too expensive for us than it is for lions and such.
Boobies never hurt anyone. - Sherry Glaser.
why it hasn't evolved in lots of other species.
IANAA (I am not an Anthropologist) but I'm going to take a stab in the dark and hypothesise that it is because human offspring require a much bigger commitment of time, energy and resources before they can fend for themselves, than the offspring of pretty much any other species on the planet. Mind you monogamy is not exactly some sort of genetic trait we have evolved. Here in the west it is largely a cultural phenomenon that the christian church has popularised. There are plenty of cultures around the world where even fairly low status males can have more than one wife and there are also cultures where wives can have multiple husbands. So it is probably more accurate to say that humans evolved to be highly social and to engage in highly structured very long term bonding to form monogamous or polygamous families, partly to minimise infanticide and to maximise the odds of their very time and resource expensive offspring reaching adulthood.
Only to idiots, are orders laws.
-- Henning von Tresckow
But the point is, it's not productive to discuss what "could be" explained by evolution, since that is practically everything and anything. You have to stick with the fossil record, DNA, and (where possible) direct experiments.
I think that it is "Evolutionary Psychology" that is the religion -- not science.
If you said, "Evolutionary Psychology is ritualized Nuttery, like Economics," then I would be in complete agreement with you.
You may want to read about nursing and the absence of ovulation. You also should follow that up with how long nursing goes on in hunter-gatherer societies.
Not to mention that nursing is a heavy calorie drain. Even if ovulation does occur when a mother is nursing, nursing a year old child is a heavy calorie drain - calories that can contribute to a new male's child instead. There's also the time element - killing another male's child increases the time a female can spend on the male's child.
I don't think you understand the core of evolutionary theory if you think that males who don't kill their rival's children (and thus increase their own child's reproductive success) aren't going to outbreed those who do.
Now that I think about it, this would also support infanticide even committed by females. Imagine a band of hominids. In this band there's a few breeding pairs, as well as males too young to get mates, and females that are currently uncommitted. If the uncommitted female can successfully breed with a "cheating" male already in a breeding pair, that will reduce the time and resources given to that male's breeding partner. Plus there's always the chance of the uncommitted female permanently stealing away the male. But if that female cannot protect her own offspring, the incentive to cheat will be less. So if a female can kill her male partner's children by another female, there's an incentive there.
What is says is that monogamy hasn't evolved in other species because they don't practice infanticide.
What I was thinking when I posted was of all the nature documentaries where a male adopts a new female into his "harem" and promptly kills her young. A few weeks ago I saw a somewhat unnerving film of a zebra doing that, picking up the foal by the neck with his teeth, and bashing him down onto the ground. I believe lots of other species do it too, and I've seen films of several.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
This is merely another variation on the very old theme of humans needed more co-operation than their ancestors.
"Be sexually faithful or your children die" is a harsh bargain, but such are the stakes in evolutionary biology.
Science works by creating theories (either from educated guesses or observations, often both) and testing them.
If it can't be tested, it's not science*.
Sorry to seem pedantic, but science works by creating hypothesis and testing them, not theories.
Theories need to be supported by a vast body of evidence, and should provide both an explanation and the ability to make falsifiable predictions. They start out as hypothesis, however once experimentation and observation bear out the hypothesis, and sufficient data is accrued to show that all the expected data fits the hypothesis, and that predictions made by the hypothesis continue to be valid, then the framework derived from the hypothesis can be called a theory.
The point being, once something in science is considered a theory, you're long past the creation and testing stages (although there is nothing wrong with continuing to validate new data against existing theories; and obviously once new data is available some theories become either no longer valid, or only valid for certain systems of constraints). What you were talking about above are hypothesis, and the difference is critical to make in this world of vast scientific illiteracy.
Yaz
The headline of horribly stupid because it identifies and ascribes intention and foresight to a process where those qualities are by definition absent. It's the village idiot's view of evolution and is as useful as thinking that the sun decides to rise each morning in order to warm the earth.
Monogamy didn't evolve to do X or Y or to prevent Z. It's one of many traits that allowed its carriers' offspring to endure.
Yeah, when has common sense ever mattered to humanity?
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
"Can you explain why you *didn't* get into a car accident in the last month?"
Yes, I drive carefully and safer than the other morons on the road. My Probability of getting in an accident is mitigated lower by my own actions.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
" From a purely genetic standpoint there is no benefit to monogamy for a strong male."
From a genetic standpoint Monogomy is a disadvantage for a strong male. A strong male should be humping everything in sight to spread his genetics far and wide.
That is how it works in nature. A male lion has a pride of females for this exact reason.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Well reading TFA criticism was given that human monogamy is primarily socially imposed, and that we are not monogamous on the whole. On the other hand, we can think of some reasons why that might be, the strongest one comes to mind that practicing infanticide amongst humans tends to result in you being removed from the gene donor pool. Perhaps we need monogamy least because we have another mechanism to protect our young? Speculation, of course, they didn't study this.
Killing enemy sires offspring is not at all opposed to the core of evolution, particularly if there is competition for mates. It's why some species have evolved males who are almost useless for practical activities outside of killing each other, ex. the Lion.
You could say that Bill was drunk, or Alice was texting, and that's why they got into car accidents, but that doesn't explain how every single person that drove drunk or texted while driving didn't get into an accident.
If you got in a car accident, would anyone swear that this must be a murder because, you were cautious driver? Or would they just accept that being cautious only decreases your odds of being in an accident to some still greater than 0 probability?
Imagine if you were a non-drug user and a virgin. If a doctor informed you that you tested positive for HIV, it might take a bit more evidence in the form of more tests to convince you. It's not impossible to contract HIV in other ways (e.g. blood transfusions, bit by an infected monkey, etc), but avoiding intravenous drugs and unprotected sex are nearly 100% effective ways of preventing HIV contraction, in a way that being a cautious driver does not prevent car accidents.
Oh, anonymous person on the Internet is such a big tough man. Catch a whiff of that musky manliness. But only a whiff! For should you inhale too deeply, the raw might of their being may overwhelm your soul!
Listen, everyone! You should accept how this person chooses to address YOU. The Cat has obviously shown his superior intellect and grasp of reality. Do not let the display of raw emotion intimidate you. Instead, be in awe of such power unleashed.
This stunning specimen of human perfection deserves... NAY, DEMANDS ... your respect and attention. And you will give it to them. For they are... The Cat.
No sig for you!!
We'll never evolve to be better drivers, cars are too safe for that (little relationship between poor driving skill and being kicked from the gene pool) and good drivers can be killed due to others' stupidity.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Not only that, but it's not possible for monogamy to be the result of infanticide (and through extrapolation, "evolved to prevent it"). If anything, it's the opposite: the survivors of infanticide benefited from it, and whatever genes passed down from their father which caused them to commit infanticide would be passed on to them, continuing the trend.
I would suspect that monogamy evolved out of necessity and lack of population density, possibly during a period of strong environmental stressors, when females were in short supply. I wouldn't be surprised if polygamy was co-evolved for similar reasons.
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
I would say a good reason to doubt someone had been in a car accident, would be if you had reason to believe that they were never in contact with cars. For example: I would highly doubt the claim that anyone dying prior to the invention of the automobile could have died as a result of a car accident.
Why didn't Benjamin Franklin get into a car accident? "It would have been impossible since cars weren't invented until after his death." seems a perfectly legitimate reason.
Young women are attracted to young men who take unnecessary risks in extreme displays of their adult skills. Today it's smoking the wheels of cars, not so long ago it was jumping out of trees onto wild buffalo. Every hero in every action movie does the same thing, no matter what is thrown at the hero he gets up and keeps going, no matter what the hero blows up or how many bullets he shoots no innocent bystander is ever hurt.
Young women are not attracted to 'idiots' that crash and burn, they are attracted to 'heros' who's skills and strength keep them alive and healthy despite the odds. It's not a conscious thing in either sex, "cheating death" is an integral part of the human ritual of finding a suitable mate, it's so deeply ingrained in humans that a males brain chemistry will reward "cheating death" with feelings of elation, pride, and self-satisfaction.
Looking back as an old man who had the luck to survive the motorbike ritual (among others), young men really do behave like peacocks, the things they unconsciously do to attract a mate are even more dangerous to the individual than that ridiculous tail is to the peacock. At the end of the day it does make our societies (if not our species) better suited to the civilizations we invented. We are continually evolving and are in a feedback loop with the environment we have created for ourselves, not unlike the termite and it's air-conditioned fungus farm.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Lots of other people drive recklessly and don't get into car accidents either.
My point was that monogamy may have evolved in humans because it prevented evolutionary incentive against infanticide, even if it didn't evolve that way in lots of other species.
Just like how one reckless driver may be killed in an accident *because* he was reckless, even if the vast majority of reckless drivers do not get into accidents.
What the propaganda's author forgot to take into consideration is the fact that women do not go into estrus or heat. They cyclically ovulate. The whole reason any male animal who is observed to kill another member's of its species offspring is to send the female back into HEAT as a result. This would not be the result for a human, so the premise that the author made for himself to confirm (bias), is flawed on its face. Never mind the methodology!
but neither does it forbid it.
you're quoting it without comprehending it, and missing an important word.
the word is "necessarily", as in "necessarily imply".
the statement is cautionary in nature, not regulatory. ie, not absolute.
as in: "sometimes people commit the opposite fallacy – dismissing correlation entirely, as if it does not suggest causation."
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
"Human males and females have a strong tendency to live together in monogamous pairs" [citation needed]
Perhaps not. Maybe the mods objected to the misogyny.
So you are saying evolution is like throwing spaghetti against the wall and seeing what sticks? Sounds to me like some entity could have is noodily appendages guiding the whole thing.
Perhaps I'm just hungry. Pasta sounds good tonight.
Any insufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from technology.
I'd like to hypothesize that a lot of people are hung up on finding an evolutionary answer for everything. Sometimes things just happen in a species without there being an evolutionary advantage. Species are not hyper optimized. Sometimes things are just side effects. Sometimes I get a feeling that people like to anthropomorphize evolution, replacing a deity that designs with specific reasons and goals with a system that does the same thing. Especially with very fuzzy things like behavior.
Ie, I've heard people discussing the reason for grandmothers. This is a silly concept, unless your view of evolution is that it is a system that optimizes organisms. Maybe grandmothers exist because humans live longer than they used to, no need for a hand waving explanation. Others want to have an evolutionary "reason" for homosexuality. Yes, it's not a nice thought to think that it's a biological mistake, but it's certainly easy enough to think that it is because some genes are expressed at a certain time that caused various hormones to be produced at a particular time in development, and as a side effect of this slight variance in timing you end up with an organism that does not fit the standardized phenotype. May as well ask what the evolutionary advantage of preferring red heads over blondes is.
Humans are extremely complex, in a chaos system way. We have plenty of attributes that are not optimal for reproduction of the species, but they exist because they don't kill us off. But evolution is dumbed down for teaching purposes, even in undergraduate classes. People still recite "survival of the fittest" as if it's some sort of law. Others talk about "higher" species or "more evolved", which is nonsense.
As for monogomy, research among cultures around the world do show a consistent view that is "mostly" monogamous. Ie, serial monogamy with occasional cheating on the sly. That's universal. Yes, there are examples of cultures with polygamy, but even in those societies the polygamy is rare and when it occurs it is due to societal pressures (ie, a severe shortage of one gender, usually men due to wars), and at other times is restricted to just high class members of society (ie, to have more than one wife is proof that you are wealthy).
This is how it works in nature - sometimes. The strongest male being the only one that reproduces is not at all the most common reproductive strategy. Even when it does occur, sometimes there are smaller males waiting for the top two to go off and fight so that they have a shot at the females (sea lions).
With birds it makes sense for the male to stick around until the offspring leave the nest. But they still quite often will stick around the next season as well. There's no simplistic evolutionary reason for them to not try and find a different partner next year, or for them to stop breeding altogether if their partner dies.
The more demanding infant seems like all the more reason for an interloping male to kill it.
I may be misunderstanding your argument, but the premise of the study is that monogamy developed to stop interlopers for this reason.
Wouldn't the survivors of infanticide be those whose parents were inclined toward monogamy, affording them better protection?
There is no general answer to whether you will get more bang for the buck from defense (sticking around to guard your young) or offense (going out to eliminate the competition). It depends entirely on the situation. There is simply no utility in trying to reason out an answer based on basic evolutionary principles. Many narratives are plausible. The point of gathering evidence is to see which one actually occurred.
Well, the Creationist has an easy argument on this one. God made Adam and Eve, so that's the design.
Peter predicted that you would "deliberately forget" creation 2000 years ago...
Trust me when I tell you that there is more Rah, rah, Go Team! than scientific method in origins science. I mean, they just voted to see whether to accept that dinosaurs were killed by an asteroid 65 million years ago. We don't need evidence! We have politics!
Peter predicted that you would "deliberately forget" creation 2000 years ago...
Define "close relative". Do you mean that we look similar? You realize that we are genetically pretty far from orangutans and are actually closer to dogs, pigs and dolphins.
Peter predicted that you would "deliberately forget" creation 2000 years ago...
We'll never evolve to be better drivers
We would quickly evolve into better drivers, if the licensing laws were changed.
First, let's assume that good driving is enhanced by certain genetic characteristics - quick reaction times, fine motor control, good peripheral vision, etc. We don't have to identify them, just assume they exist.
We already know that our culture highly values cars. People who own more expensive vehicles are generally viewed as more successful, and therefore are more desirable as mates. This is no different than birds who attract mates with more colorful plumage than their rivals.
If drivers had to pass an annual competency exam, perhaps similar to the requirements for maintaining a pilot's license, fewer people would be driving. The people who could drive would therefore be even more desirable as mates. Lacking the "colorful plumage" of a shiny car, this would remove otherwise wealthy but bad drivers from the breeding pool.
Breeding pairs of successful drivers would potentially produce offspring that share the traits of their good driving parents. Congratulations, you have now evolved a new generation of people who are likely to be better drivers.
It's totally possible. Things like this have been done with animals for hundreds of years. And this path doesn't even require poor drivers to remove themselves from the gene pool through traffic accidents.
John
Long ago, I was at a good friend's house waiting for him when his wife asked me to help her with some small task that her husband normally would have done. So I did the work, and when I was done she thanked me, saying "The only thing better than having one husband is having two husbands!"
I immediately replied, "The only thing worse than having one wife is having two wives."
No, he's correct.
That is complete nonsense. We are seeing the results of social pressure to be monogamous; it is not genetic.
Just look at history for 1000's of examples to the contrary. Monogamy is a very recent phenomenon.
These studies are a huge disservice to humanity that attempt to "force" a point of view on people.
It's also reasonable to assume that infanticide may have more attribution to infant mortality than deliberate action by another male.
People who produce this junk are really missing so much of the picture.
I most certainly wasn't quoting it without comprehending it. From the Wikipedia article:
There can be no conclusion made regarding the existence or the direction of a cause and effect relationship only from the fact that A and B are correlated. Determining whether there is an actual cause and effect relationship requires further investigation, even when the relationship between A and B is statistically significant, a large effect size is observed, or a large part of the variance is explained.
It's worth noting that until you've covered all contributing variables and factors to a problem domain you cannot with certainty draw causation from correlation; something that this article (and sensationalised headline) lacks. That is the point.
no contradiction here. the article is flame bait, regardless of any poster's political or religious views.
why did God grant wings to birds and not to us?
i never thought of it that way. wtf, God! i mean, come on! throw me a bone, here.
You realize that we are genetically pretty far from orangutans and are actually closer to dogs, pigs and dolphins.
That simply isn't true. We share about 97% of our DNA with Orangutans. Research indicates we split off from a common ancestor roughly 15 million years ago. We are close to dogs, pigs and dolphins, and also to mice genetically, but we're still closer to orangutans. Interestingly, however, research has shown that there may have been some horizontal gene transfer from humans to domestic animals like dogs and pigs by way of viruses.
You do realize that you're full of shit here, right? I'm not entirely sure you realize this because you're not posting as AC.
When one observes the actions of Primates in groups, one can then see how our species began. To call their environment, "unforgivingly brutal," would be generous. To consider how the first proto-human survived in a group of non proto-humans would truly be the luckiest human, ever. While others could debate this issue on point, and calmly state, "luck had nothing to do with it, at all."
Can you explain why you *didn't* get into a car accident in the last month?...
I can easy. I didn't ride in any cars last month.
Be seeing you...
im a hardcore atheist who is definitely pro choice and have absolutely no part in any cults, and if i had mod points, i would have modded you down as well. it is obvious that you are being a flamebait, either that or your parents should have washed your mouth out with soap when you were younger.
Being a father of 4, I love those whipper snappers like crazy, even when being annoying, noisy, crying, mean. Other people's kids? Little turds can go the hell if they act like that. Shut them up and get the them the F outta my face. Of course I never say that to anyone and have the higher level thinking to take a step back and get some sympathy. But the initial instinct is there, hating other peoples' childrens' antics. Perhaps a latent instinct still at play.
primates tend to be in bands...
Not always. I know quite a few who are perfectly happy doing session work. There's a lot to be said for having a steady job.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
That's a temporary "no where around".
I can assure you that there were women around for most of the time this trait took to evolve. I there had been no women around, that trait wouldn't have evolved at all.
(At least not until after evolving the ability for men to get pregnant).
Yeah, yeah, misogyny is the buzz-word of the day ... which really means "if you challenge anything that could be construed to challenge a woman in any way for any reason, I'll pull out the misogyny card so that I don't need an argument". The term is about as robust as "discrimination" (which means "to choose"). The power of words...
Anyway, a friend of mine taught in Papua New Guinea for about 10 years back in the 80s. He lived there for that time (other than the occasional holiday). He was not a missionary - he was there for education programs. This is roughly what he told me a few years back (and re-confirmed when I asked him again)...
The men tended to stay with the men, the women tended to stay with the women. There was only a loose "sexual" association between men and women - and the offspring (when the men got randy) belonged to the community rather than a couple. The kids would go with whatever adult they wanted to stay with, sometimes months at a time. Over time, this social structure was forcibly changed by the missionaries to reform these hethens.
Now, this social structure was not monogamous in ANY sense of the word and involved little or no infanticide. Interestingly, it mimics (loosely) some aspects of Indonesian culture, although Indonesian culture has also been "westernised" to a degree, although I did see this sense of "community" that you don't get in the west ... front doors left open, people just coming and going into other's houses, kids staying at other families' house for weeks at a time - it was amazing to see.
Feel free to call me a misogynist too, since it's popular to throw buzzwords around. Whenever I hear the "m" word, my "wanker alert" light goes off.
My co worker, who studied biology, mentioned another point to consider - the size of the humans skull.
The skull of a newborn is big. It is as big is can get without causing mortal damage to the mother at birth, but, apparently, it is not 'big enough', as it is still growing...
So on the one hand, a human infant needs a lot of protection and care for a long time (as it's brain and skull are still growing), but on the other, the mother is very weak for a substantial time after birth (due to the difficulty of delivering a baby with such a big skull). She could certainly use a helping hand, preferably in the coming years, but certainly in the coming days.
In a social species, culture (or peer pressure if you want to call it that) is a selectable trait which can influence the evolution of a species. The trait is a passed on through learned behaviour rather than genetics
Modifications in behaviour of members of a group can directly affect the survivability of the entire group relative to other groups of the same species.
The obvious example being disease control, if there is a communicable disease which relies on certain behaviour by individuals to spread through a group and one group in an area doesn't follow that behaviour has a better chance of survival, it could be sexual practices, dietary practices (i.e cannibalism for ritual or nutrition) etc.
These comments are my personal opinions and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the other voices in my head.
Hell, there exists atleast one specific one that doesn't mate at all and produces only perfect clones of themselves, and still haven't become extinct.
In case you don't know the specific term for this (and how widespread it is): Parthenogenesis.
Automotive manslaughter is in legal code for a purpose. Yes, you can be accused of murder, or at least be charged with a criminal offense due to negligence if you are driving recklessly. There is a whole spectrum of responsibility here, and there definitely are drivers who are much more reckless than others.
I never said it was 100% perfect, but being cautious can help. It is an evolutionary pressure.... which goes back to the point of the original post and article and why anything which is an evolutionary pressure can be evaluated for what benefits it might provide. This is true even if those involved in changing their actions are unaware of why they are doing things in a certain manner.
BTW, while a cautious driver may not 100% reduce accidents and injuries, it certainly can cut that risk down substantially. That was my point. Yes I do think being careful, letting stupid drivers pass you by and letting them get into accidents elsewhere instead of with your vehicle can be a substantial reason why you didn't get into a vehicle accident this past month. Being irresponsible is also a reason why some people seem to regularly total vehicles as well.
A whole lot of young men also die doing stupid shit like that. I've been to far too many funerals of children of close friends where those children were doing stupid peacock stuff like you are talking about to know that the perception of some of these young men strutting their stuff like idiots is a sign of immortality.
Besides, most realistic women aren't really impressed by this kind of stupidity as well... or if they are attracted to it they also behave in a reckless manner. I'm serious too. Some people get lucky, but how many have died or hurt themselves or others?
It really is no different than perhaps the feeling of "cheating death" by being one of the few survivors storming the beaches of Normandy in June of 1944. Some survived, but a whole lot died. Some kept their head down when the bullets went by and acted smart, while others simply had bad luck. The foolish and reckless ones really did die. Perhaps a few brave folks too, but mostly not in that extreme circumstance.
I seriously doubt that it would be much of an evolutionary advantage to doing dangerous things as a young man. You are by far and away more likely to have your genes culled.
Why didn't Benjamin Franklin get into a car accident? "It would have been impossible since cars weren't invented until after his death." seems a perfectly legitimate reason.
First of all, I did note that it hasn't been an evolutionary pressure for that long (at most just a few generations). That said, there are similar kinds of analogous situations that young adults have done in the past that certainly would require the same level of personal judgement. It used to be said that for every million dollars spent on a construction project, at least one person would die. This was often enough due to a lack of safety gear, but also due to young men doing stupid things and not paying attention to their personal safety on the job site. Sailing ships were also very dangerous to be in, and often sailors would do really stupid and reckless things when at sea... something that was available to Ben Franklin in particular as he did several trans-Atlantic crossings in his lifetime.
I'm not saying it is strictly with automobiles, but pretending that you are brave when in fact you are just reckless doesn't help.
Hell, there exists atleast one specific one that doesn't mate at all and produces only perfect clones of themselves, and still haven't become extinct.
In case you don't know the specific term for this (and how widespread it is): Parthenogenesis.
Aye, I was looking for the word. Thanks! :)
We are seeing the results of social pressure to be monogamous; it is not genetic
If you think this means that it's not evolved behaviour, then I can only assume that your education in evolution stopped just after Darwin. Try picking up a textbook written in the last 30 years. I'd recommend The Extended Phenotype (published in 1982).
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Besides, most realistic women aren't really impressed by this kind of stupidity as well... or if they are attracted to it they also behave in a reckless manner.
So? The idiots doing this stuff don't really care if the girl who sleeps with them as a result is "realistic" or "reckless."
Sometimes I get a feeling that people like to anthropomorphize evolution, replacing a deity that designs with specific reasons and goals with a system that does the same thing.
Yup. In grad school I had a professor that would make me scratch my head. If you just took whatever he waid and substituted "mother nature" or "evolution" with the word "God" he'd basically be a creationist.
Evolution doesn't like being treated like a deity. It will do bad things to your kids if you continue in such sin.
Not really. In a species with a relatively long gestation period and few offspring per litter, the limiting factor in population growth is the females. A primate female can only produce a very limited number of children over her lifespan (especially compared, for example, to rodents) and a significant fraction of those won't survive to adulthood anyway. A reproductive strategy that involves killing even more of them off is going to leave the tribe very weak and so the survivors may have benefitted from the process, but that only matters in evolutionary terms if they survive long enough to breed, and do so in comparable quantities to others with different strategies.
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Again, just because we're not capable of testing them due to our limitations (limited lives, precise and/or massive measurements, etc.) at the moment, does not mean it is impossible to test them (working through several generations, advances in measuring equipment, etc.).
On the other hand, something like "God created the universe." cannot be tested. That belief is necessarily grounded in faith alone.
Indeed, you're absolutely right.
They did a statistic among many primate species. But the conclusion that this applies to humans is propably wrong:
The closest relatives of humans - chimps and bonobos - don't live in monogamous pairs.
Humans share genital features and gender relative body size with bonobos and chimps but not with monogamous primates like gibbons.
And pure hunter gatherer societies that exist know don't live monogamous.
It is very likely that monogamy in humans was triggered by agriculture. It really doesn't make much sense for a population living in small communal groups without property.
http://www.sexatdawn.com/
The research presented in the article might be sound for monogamous primates, but that group of animals does not include humans.
Indeed.
Imagine you are living in a small group of foragers that share all their food and take care of the children together and have next to no property. How exactly could mating with only one partner help you raise your child or sustain food supply? It is also hard to imagine how infanticide could be prevented by monogamy in such a context. A better strategy for a female to avoid infanticide would be to regularly mate with most males so that all males might be the father of each child. And actualy that is what is observed in many pure hunter gatherer societies.
Gorilla, Gibbons and other primates only mate to create offspring. They only copulate a few times per pregancy. Chimps, Bonobos and humans however copulated thousands of times per pregnancy. Sex in these species is not only used to create offspring but also for communication and as a tool to form bonds within a group.
As for monogomy, research among cultures around the world do show a consistent view that is "mostly" monogamous. Ie, serial monogamy with occasional cheating on the sly. That's universal.
Monogamy is almost universal among agricultural societies where property and patrimony play an important role. It is also crucial in patriarchates without social welfare where women can't support themselves if not married. (However, even in agricultural societes monogamy is relatively new. The old testament still contains many norms regulating polygamous live.)
Monogomy however is the exception for pure hunter gatherer societies today, Humans lived in societies like that for most of their history. Promiscous societies are rare now because hunter gatherer societies are rare.
Modern industrialized welfare stares remove most of the presurres that resulted in the adoption of monogamy. People start realizing this. As a result polyamory and other open lifestyles are on the rise.
Citations:
https://www.facebook.com/sexatdawn
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polyamory
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex-positive_movement
That's the drawback of the mod system, sometimes it reinforces a cultural/sexual/religious/political bias to someones personal agenda, rather than modding the content.
Personally I think monogamy happened because, after the sex, now you have to see to the needs of two or more screaming ,weepy, hormonal women who want to eat, have new clothes, go to the river/fire/gathering NOW! Right damn NOW! Early man could even see the need to filter this down to one at a time in spite of sex.
Then Cheating was born, which later spawned lawyers, so even a good fix still has an unavoidable drawback.
*Repent!Quit Your Job!Slack Off!The World Ends Tomorrow and You May Die!
On the other hand, it has also become popular to immediately dismiss the usage simply because of the word. Sometimes it applies, sometimes it does not. Of course people over use it, but you see that with pretty much everything.
" killing offspring is directly opposed to the core of evolutionary theory,"
Lions are a famous example of killing competing offspring.
Resources are limited, so killing competitors works and is what to do.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
Heh, actually, when you look at meta studies on the topic, 'there is not one right way to evolve' is pretty much the human credo. People argue back and forth about if we are biologically monogamous and point to various historical and modern examples, including various people who seem to have 'wiring' for it. But what it comes down to is we have both behaviors in our geneset, and which one is more common at any given time and place is a product of that context.
It's worth noting that one of the reasons for severe decline of lions has been slowness evolutional response to human hunting factor (they seek mainly alpha males). Essentially every time one dies, the entire pride suffers a bout of infanticide, which is the key reason for decline of lions in the areas where they are hunted. If it was just alpha male deaths caused directly by humans, lions as species would have far less problems.
It's a pretty good microcosm of small tribal community and is somewhat relevant to humans as well.
One guy (neckbeard wafting in the breeze from the battery powered fan next to his action figures) thought you were funny.
It's not so much an issue of the male not caring about the females recklessness or behavior, but I their point was that the females that are likely to be impressed by the typical reckless bad boy are more likely to be immature and reckless themselves. Who's more likely to go for the bad boy, a teenager 'rebel' type girl or a career oriented type woman?
That being said, since the reckless type woman is more likely to find reckless as a positive quality, who has the higher chance of successfully carrying the offspring? Pregnancy isn't hazard-less, so which woman is more likely to not smoke, or regularly see her OB/GYN? I know this is a lot of what if / more likely's, but I think this is the point the other posters was trying to make.
Not to pull the hormone card, but perhaps you give your will power a bit too much credit. Perhaps your interest in these items is more hard wired into you than you give it credit. Could it perhaps be your testosterone levels that make you so interested in the thrill and adrenaline, no different than your wife's estrogen may or may not make her more likely to chill with some ice cream and lifetime on stream depending on the week.
I'm not saying all men and women are their cliches, but hormones have a huge effect on a person's personality, mood and interests that we often don't give it credit for. So whilst you may not be actively seeking a new mate consciously, perhaps your hormones are still doing their work even though your brain isn't?
Because contraception has been invented and the poor don't use it so much. The rich still get laid a lot more.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
"Because you still believe that the earth is 3000 years old and god demanded monogamy."
I don't know anyone that believes the Earth is only 3000 years old, but I know a few who think 6000 to 10000 years
And monogamy is not mentioned in the old testament, many of those people had many wives.
What a load of crock, there is not a single bit of scientific evidence in the form of DNA, fossils or anything else that can even come close to proving evolution exists at all. The whole theory of evolution is of a universe/world/species that are evolving out of control and that through death the fittest survive. That theory alone suggests that extinction for every species would have happened long ago.
God created everything, created Adam and Eve to enjoy marriage just as God created man and woman to only marry one another, once, for life. Thus raise children there in.
Anyone who says evolution is real is clinically insane or scared of the real truth. God created man and thus mans actions have consequences before an almighty God and evolution is a means to filter God out of the picture and try to remove eternal consequences that they have before God.
Pregnancy isn't hazard-less...
Modern society goes out of its way to make it pretty close. The whole concept of health insurance is practically engineered to eliminate most kinds of selective pressure.
or a career oriented type woman
Career oriented type women are going against nature, as they put career above reproduction.
.
And anyway, even they are often attracted to bad boys, it's just that logic tells them that mating with such would be bad for their career.
In reality, the reckless girl is most likely to successfully carry offspring, as she is probably being reckless about birth control, while the career oriented woman takes it diligently. We (humans) survived for quite a long time without regular obgyn visits.
Yeah, that was the point I was replying to. If we are unwilling to reduce the safety of driving (the "stick" of natural selection), breeding selection can still be achieved through status (the "carrot").
I'm not sure it would become "geeky" though. Back to the licensed pilot analogy for a moment, people tend to treat airline pilots with more respect than bus drivers, even though both perform an equivalent service in society. If driving were limited to the talented few, bus driving might become a more prestigious job.
John
I acknowledge this, but the point I was more so making is a woman who has adequate health care (insurance) and is likely to keep up with the visits is the one who is the more responsible, less reckless female. I can list more women than I have fingers that are my age (mid-20s) who are plenty responsible and even then don't have health care, much less the irresponsible minimum-wage ones who can't afford rent much less a doctor visit.
It just seemed to me there's a very, very small probability the responsible woman's baby is more likely to survive than the less-responsible woman's, although I didn't take into account the point s0nicfreak made below, regarding BC.
I don't know anyone that believes the Earth is only 3000 years old, but I know a few who think 6000 to 10000 years
>
Yes, and those people are going to Hell.
Dark Reflection
Understandable, and I concur on this point. I'm sure for the most whether it's rich male or female the user is much more likely their tracks are covered in terms of leaving behind offspring regardless of whether it's just messing around (single) or an affair. (Plus equal access to health care blah blah)
Although I'd be interested in any concrete evidence that anyone has regarding this social class sees more action than the others besides "woman love fast cars and money".
Good point...but for me that would be a win/win either way :D
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
im a hardcore atheist
Same, except I'm merely a softcore atheist... I like to leave something to the imagination.
faggot
Incidentally, the study also explains why gay people are less monogamous: there would be no kids to protect from infanticide...
*ducks*
Is the term "misogyny" too vague? OK. Perhaps the mods objected to the use of the B-word. Also, the post hinted that women should be compelled to have abortions, which is as bad as prohibiting them from having abortions.
Creation. The only explanation. Duh.
I actually just heard an interesting piece on The Science Show (an Australian Broadcast Corporation show) last night where a sex researcher pointed out that pair bonding tends to be strongest in places where resources are most scarce and it takes the most effort to raise children (e.g., the high north) and least strong in warm climates where the food almost literally falls out of the sky from trees. Because it takes a lot more directed effort to raise a child in a hard climate, the parents stay together as protectors and providers for longer.
Anyway, it's not clear from the article whether they're talking about some sort of genetic evolution or a cultural evolution. I'd have to read the original article to see what they really think about it. Biological monogamy is something that makes almost no sense to me, but it's obvious (particularly by your example) that cultures have their own values when it comes to the nature of parenting, monogamy and bonding.
It's true that sometimes things arise that aren't evolutionary advantages, but at the very least, they're guaranteed to NOT be a disadvantage.
Still, you can find a reason for grandmothers, and it's not so trivial as 'they weren't a disadvantage', since it would seem that having an old woman around past childbearing age who is slower and more vulnerable than the other members of the group WOULD be a disadvantage. We're interested in studying grandmothers because they run counter to certain assumptions we'd have about fitness and survival. Clearly they must have been a net advantage if we can find them in the fossil record (and we do).
I can't disagree that there's a lot of randomness involved, and there's a lot of wild stuff that's part of our DNA (for instance, it's hypothesised that a virus infecting a sperm cell is the reason why humans have an enormous amount of virus DNA transcribed into our genome) but that doesn't mean things like grandmothers aren't worth researching. Maybe it's chaos, but maybe it's not. Studying those branches helps us separate the wheat from the chaff, so we can slowly unwind what's chance and what's not.
People getting real butthurt over nothing.
I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer.
Except that other primates and animals do practice infanticide -- in fact it's quite common.
That humans generally don't do this is different enough to be worth noting.
As to if monogamy "evolved to" prevent infanticide -- well, I'm more inclined to think the two happened in parallel. Evolution happened, and it changed our behavior -- but it's not like nature said "hmmm, how do we stop them from killing their young?"
But let's not pretend that "monogamy hasn't evolved in other species because they don't practice infanticide" -- because that's not the case at all.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
I am talking about the difference between the realms of near certainty and probability.
When you say "I didn't get into a car accident because I am a safe driver" this is not the complete story because lots of safe drivers get into car accidents and lots of dangerous drivers don't. The real answer is that you were lucky, and also your safe driving habbits probably increased your odds.
While there are a near infinite number of concrete reasons why one might actually get into a car accident, like being drunk, texting, falling asleep, having a stroke, getting into a heated argument, etc, the only reasons for not getting into an accident are very abstract like "I am a careful driver". All of these concrete reasons like texting all increase your liklihood of gettting into an accident, just like how being a good driver decreases them, but the difference is that when you do get in an accident, one or more of them actually does cause your accident.
If somebody frequently drives drunk and texts while driving, but gets in an accident sober while texting one day, you wouldn't say that drunk driving and texting lead to his accident, because he was sober. Sure, he may have got in a different accident due to being drunk had things turned out differently, but he didn't.
You can difnitively say after every car accident. Was this accident due to texting, drunk driving, both, neither, or unknown? After every moment that goes by without an accident, can you even attempt to specify whether this moment was accident free because you weren't drunk or that you weren't texting? Like "I would have hit this car if I was drunk" or "I would have hit that car if I was texting"?
Non events don't give you the kind of specifics that actual events do
I am not arguing against the evolutionary pressure.
My original post was to "Black Parrot" who said "But that doesn't explain why it hasn't evolved in lots of other species."
I was illustrating with my car accident analogy that you don;t need to explain why things *don't* happen with that kind of specificity.
The "But that doesn't explain why [monogamy] hasn't evolved in lots of other species." argument is analogous to the "But that doesn't explain why other safe drivers still get into car accidents" argument.
I don't know if you've yet figured out that I don't buy this argument.
I am saying that it is easier to explain why things happen than it is to explain why they don't. You can probably explain what events lead you to meet and marry your wife. You probably can't explain why this failed to occur with the other 3.5 billion women on the planet to the same specificity.
Any explanation like "I liked her Australian accent" has some truth to it, but it's not the whole story, because lots of girls have Australian accents
You can try to explain why humans have monogamy without incurring the burden of explaining why every other species doesn't given the adaptive qualities of lower rates of infanticide. "It just didn't happen" is a perfectly reasonable explanation for why an improbable thing didn't happen.
That's not shit. That's PR ;)
Depends on how you define "monogamy" as well. A common term I've heard recently is "serial monogamy", meaning a series of mostly exclusive relationships, as opposed to multiple overlapping relationships.
...you kill my kid and my wife and I fucking kill you slowly and painfully. Albeit, both parties still lose.
Chewbacon
The Bible is like Wikipedia: written by a bunch of people and verifiable by questionable sources.
But why does there have to be a "reason" in the first place? It would seem to be rare to have women survive long after menopause in the first place so I don't see any evolutionary response to it occuring. Ie, redirecting maternal instincts towards grandchildren is purely a side effect of menopause, rather than menopause being an adaptation that allows grandmothers. And none of this explains grandfathers (who also redirect paternal instincts).
Ie, if one change in a gene results in 3 or 4 changes to the individual, one of those changes alone can be a big disadvantage when looked at alone, it's a negative side effect that is offset by other benefits.
Overall though I just dislike the trend to finding the "reason" for something in evolution.
Nothing about this is said in the Bible, the only science manual you need.
I haven't thought of anything clever to put here, but then again most of you haven't either.
I suppose you can contend that there's only one reason for anything in evolution: it happens and it has a beneficial side effect (or at least, no negative side effect).
But menopause itself may be an evolutionary response to men being interested in younger women (menopause is really unusual in animals; I think humans may be the only animal it occurs in, but don't quote me on that). If there's no interest, it's a beneficial side-effect to not waste resources by preparing a womb every month. So now that the female is freed from the necessity of breeding, they can take an interest in children, and children that grow up with grandmothers are more successful and survive more often, so you get a knock-on effect of women that enter menopause at a certain age are a net benefit to groups of people, until that mutation has spread to the entire species.
Maybe I'm misunderstanding your point, but if we don't try to understand how these things--even seemingly inconsequential things--how can we understand how complex creatures and social structures come to be and survive? Everything that we understand about ourselves or any other animal feeds back into the general pool of knowledge. If something has a reason, we should find it. It feels ridiculous to just wave our hands and declare that we don't really care. (As a group, I mean. You can do that all you like and I wouldn't judge you for it; I'm not interested in all branches of geology, for instance, but I'm glad someone out there is.)
Female cats, and female dogs (generally those that have not had a litter of their own), will often kill others' offspring.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
The old testament still contains many norms regulating polygamous live.
Of course, the Old Testament Hebrews were not agricultural, but pastoral, especially at the time when many of the rules were made.
In the above post "serial monogamy" is included when I talk about "monogamy".
The alternative is to have multiple intimate relationships at the same time.
If you live in a closed group of less than 50 people with next to no contact to anybody else the relationship to anybody in you world must be relatively intense as is interdependence between everybody in the group. There is no real reason why these relationships should not include sex.
"You may want to read about nursing and the absence of ovulation."
Its just a myth thar women who are nursing don't get pregnant. I have seen quite a lot of pregnant nurses.
In primitive societies, grandmotherhood often occurs before menopause. If marriage occurs at 15, and it takes one year for the first child (actually, it often takes around six months for the first child, although nine for all subsequent ones :-), then women will often become grandmothers in their early 30s, while they are still fertile.
Overall though I just dislike the trend to finding the "reason" for something in evolution.
This trend came closely after Darwin's first book, so you might as well accept it. While there is no reason for what Darwin called "sport" (i.e., new characteristics showing up seemingly at random), the other side of evolution, the premature death of the less fit due to starvation, privation, or predation, especially before they have bred enough offspring to replace themselves, certainly has a reason behind it.
Science is a fucking religion.
No, Science is not a religion.
The way we do science, however, can be uncomfortably close to religion, with its own dogma, preachers and heathens that get in the way of the job at hand.
We all know Max Planck's rather wry quote that Science advances one funeral at a time. That isn't how Science was meant to work. As such I can certainly understand your frustration.
..Mullah or Pope, Preacher or Poet, who was it wrote: "Give any one species too much rope and they'll fuck it up"?
Is that why I'm in this handbasket??????
Since when did evolution care about justice?
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
I'm not trying to incite a God vs. Science battle. I accept both, so I have no dog in the fight. And the fact that we could possibly test cosmological models with godlike powers and immortality does not contribute anything to our current scientific understanding. One could just as easily say, "I can prove that God exists by standing in His presence." Again, I'm not saying we shouldn't investigate evolution or cosmology. My point is that we should avoid the type of hubris that leads some fundamentalist Christians to believe the value of pi is exactly three because the Bible describes a city wall as having a diameter of ten cubits and a circumference of thirty cubits, therefore God has decreed the exact value of pi. Instead, let's be realistic about what we do and do not know and not pretend that some god of science has decreed the absolute truth of our current evolutionary model from the top of a mountain.
Today's Sesame Street was brought to you by the number e.
Your example of the lions seems to be counter to what you wanted to show. If the male lion leaves the pride a new lions will take over his spot and kill off all his offspring. That is not too good for the strong males genes.
-- ssoorrrryy,, dduupplleexx sswwiittcchh oonn.. -Quote found on actual fortune cookie.