Purely random? Some copy errors are more common than others, and this is true regardless of phylum, class, (etc.)
All mutations are unpredictable hence apparently random.
The chance of lethality decreased when genes became more complex. Evolution led to increasingly effective error detection and correction: unassisted DNA copying is only accurate to two nines (99%, one error per hundred) but has increased manyfold.
Even in bacteria: evolution took almost three billion years to get from the first blobbish thing capable of making copies of its own RNA, to the point where a multi-celled organism could survive. We are latecomers to the exhilaration of evolution.
“in order to allow” is a non sequitur. Whatever change leads to more progeny is called Natural Selection. Good effects do lead to more progeny - not by foresight or planning, just by virtue of being better in some small way.
Observation from limited data. Virtually all complex life is the same at this level.
I think that’s complete bunk. There are a lot of reasons for “gender ideology.” I would argue that the central cause is confusion about what identity is. This started long before Darwin. The vast majority of criteria that have defined the male and female roles in societies are specific to the given society. They are not fundamental to being male or female. They are not found in the Bible anywhere. They have been adequate in smaller societies, b ut the more people you have in a society, the less likely all of them are going to match all of the criteria of either of those roles. There will be males who are perceptive of the intricate beauty of flowers and women who aren’t. There will be women who are drawn to the thrills of hunting and men who aren’t. And so on. When your natural inclinations are so at odds with a role your entire society is expecting you to feel, you’re going to struggle in a way no one else in your society struggles or can understand. You’re going to be alone in a way no one else is. if you find someone who shares your dilemma, you’re going to want to stick with them. Your place in society is then going to change in your own mind. You and your friend are going to united and in opposition with that society.
If your society is stable, changing slowly from generation to generation as the majority were before the beginning of colonization, science, the Enlightenment and industrialization, then this is not going to amount to much as far as your society is concerned because you will be so outnumbered. At most, you will be found and forced to find somewhere else to live or be punished.
But colonization, science the Enlightenment and industrialization enabled people to live longer and survive more easily, and reduced child mortality (which was around 50% in the early 1800s), so the population exploded. There were about 1 bn people on the planet in 1800. It’s doubled 3 times since then. For some perspective, the world population in Jesus around half that (according to best estimates). That’s 1800 years to double once and then 220 years to double 3 more times.
So finding some other place to live became much, much, much easier over the past 200 years than it had been. And the Enlightenment established the concept of individual rights, which gave anyone who had been rejected by their society a means for challenging that rejection.
I don’t see how Darwin has much to do with it at all beyond the fact that it enabled people to see things in Nature that were previously opaque to them and this enabled a great deal of science and technology. I would say the biggest worldly culprit for the many challenges humanity is facing today is the Enlightenment, most significantly the ideas of John Locke. That, and the institutions of science it ushered into the world, was intentionally an effort to reject not just God but the existence of any sort of God being and to view the universe as a giant, unconscious, soulless and lifeless machine. That is the foundational view that drove science and still largely does. I’m not bashing science the method of inquiry, which is very useful, or claiming that all scientists reject God. This site is proof that isn’t true!
i’m a musician and have long known a lot of gay people. The most prominent reasons for their homosexuality that I’ve discerned are a) finding it impossible to fit into the role society expects them to because of their anatomy and b) basing their identity on their sexual desires. Both of those things mean that they’ve grown up in a situation that is untenable to them and, eventually, rebel against it by embracing their own experiences and thoughts over social expectations. But then, many heterosexuals do that, also.
That’s my problem with anti-LGBTQ efforts in society. Basing your identity on your desire is evil no matter what your desire is, so even if it were possible to somehow get rid of all LGBTQ people in society, the underlying issue would not have been affected at all and society would feel its consequences, as all societies have in many ways.
There is no solution of which humans are capable. It is in God’s hands.
I don’t really know what you are talking about. What are these “vast majority of criteria” you refer to? I don’t see anything of the kind.
The dominant criteria are biological. The impact on the individual’s life for most of human history, including menstrual cycle and effects, pregnancy, and breastfeeding versus the male ability to develop muscles faster have been enormous. It is only in modern times that the effects of these have become somewhat less due to both technology and a vast increase in the range of human activities where these difference have become irrelevant.
So the problem is when these biological differences have been incorporated into the culture and thus adding weight to these biological differences. It hard to see how this added pressure to conform to narrow gender roles is adding anything positive. And the attempt to use religion to reinforce these unnecessary cultural elements only calls into question whether religion is helpful in dealing with the reality of modern times or adding to the problems instead.
This seems a very strange thing for you to say and makes no sense whatsoever. Perhaps you need to work on that sentence to make is better express the idea you had in mind. Could it be you meant to say “reality” rather than “identity”? External reality experienced by all people is pretty much what it is regardless of what you may want. But I still wouldn’t call it evil to confuse this what you want… only delusional. Identity, being something we choose for ourselves MUST include our desires or it downright meaningless. OH… perhaps you mean making the identity of OTHER people something which depends on your desires. Still don’t know if “evil” is the right word in that case either… but it is closer.
You’re talking about male & female in terms of biology. I’m talking about how a society defines a gender role. But then you are agreeing with me:
[quote=“mitchellmckain, post:63, topic:52873”]
So the problem is when these biological differences have been incorporated into the culture and thus adding weight to these biological differences. It hard to see how this added pressure to conform to narrow gender roles is adding anything positive.
[/quote]g
I agree with you. It’s a difficult issue.
No, I meant identity. A friend of mine, for example, posted a picture of himself when he was 12 (or maybe younger) on Facebook. He is gay and in the pic he was holding a baseball glove “like a girl,” as we used to say when I was a kid. His comment was, “my gayness was obvious even then.” But, of course, this is ridiculous. Having a penis or not has nothing to do with being able to hold a baseball glove like a real baseball player. But in the 60s and 70s, if you were a boy holding a glove like that, the coach and other boys would ridicule you for holding a glove “like a girl.”
I would argue that he internalized that and the many other things he heard about what made a male a MAN and what made a female a WOMAN. He soon stopped trying to live up to being a MAN. A childhood friend of mine was like that, also. But if you couldn’t be a MAN, and being a MAN was essential to getting a WOMAN, then you were likely not going to have emotional intimacy and sexual gratification with a WOMAN. So from their point of view as adolescents, they had a bleak future in some very important ways.
Desire, though, is kind of imprinted on us. Much as ducklings may attach to a human if that’s who they encounter at the right time as babies rather than their actual mother, our desires get imprinted on us through certain experiences that happen at the right time in our development. Or, they are fostered over time through immersion. The latter is why kids of musicians, for example, virtually always love music and learn to play it, at least, whether or not they go on to become professional musicians.
We have a biologically driven sexual desire, but what triggers it is NOT hard-wired into us. Rather, it develops as we are developing as kids. A desire may feel so strong as to be permanently fixed, but it can change.
So my friends came to adolescence not having the criteria that they saw as making a man a MAN, thus not being (at least in their own minds) desirable to girls (at least as a romantic partner, something very likely confirmed by many experiences) and found that boys could be desirable to them, as well. And then their life and their identity started to be built around that desire.
This is very different from the homosexuality of the ancient Greeks.
I knew a grad student in my university days who when given flowers was like, “Meh”. But then she took a biochemistry course and got seriously into DNA, and after that she thought flowers were beautiful because of the DNA behind them.
Yep. Because I “threw like a girl” some called me a “fag”.
Well, they did till I earned a place on the second varsity wrestling team. Though nine years later when my younger brother was in high school guys were considered to be gay to even try out for the wrestling team.
I once read an article about a scientific paper that examined a certain primitive tribal society. As is common in such societies, women stayed at the tribe’s camp and men went out hunting. One reason the tribe people considered that to be the correct way to do things was that some of the prey the hunters went after was rather dangerous, and men were better at running away. Where prey could be caught with snares and traps, women tended to that.
You’re addressing two different things. Basing one’s identity on desire alone is what I think the point was, and it’s a good point because such a choice is inherently limiting.
I’ve wondered if gender roles in ancient H-G societies differentiated in part due to women needing to nurse babies. This meant they developed a bond with their child that the father could not develop, because there was no means for a man to have that kind of intimacy with a baby. So even after the child outgrew breast feeding, the mother had a obligations in her relationship with the child that the father could not really fulfill. And that meant women could not be away from the child for too long of a period and couldn’t as much time to the skills needed for hunting. Thus, men were on the whole able to better at it.
If my thinking is on track, it would make sense that roles would become at least loosely divided according to gender.
The initial question reflects a problem of correlation versus causation, as well as definition.
What is “Darwinism”? Even outside antievolutionary circles, it seems to be a pejorative rather than a useful term.
As there is no scientific reason to doubt that biological evolution using natural selection is a pretty good description of the normal way to create new kinds of organisms, resistance to evolution is driven largely by religious and philosophical considerations. Those considerations overlap significantly with the set of people who would have fixed standards about sexuality rather than just following whatever the culture promotes. Conversely, someone with a science background may be driven away from religion by its association with bad claims about science and therefore be prone to accept other claims.
But the tension between evolution and Christianity results from an Enlightenment-style misinterpretation of the Bible on two counts. First, it reflects individual self-sufficiency in the unquestioning confidence placed in one’s own reasoning to interpret the passages, rather than a willingness to reconsider. Secondly, it insists that a “scientific” interpretation is best. Hence the error of promoting a “God hypothesis”, just like “new atheists” insist on. The biblical approach, however, is God being the axiom, not the hypothesis. Science is very useful, but not for everything, and a true respect for the scriptural text will seek to understand it on its own terms, not impose a modernistic (or any other) reading on it.
It might be worth noting that the Raelians, who support ID, also support “free love”, to the extent that their parade in Paris generated complaints about indecency.
One often neglected factor on gender issues is the role of endocrine disruptors. Lots of chemicals can lead to gender problems in animals, including many common pollutants, various legal and illegal drugs, some “natural” extracts, etc.
Very unhelpful story for explaining what you mean. What in the world does this have to do with desire and how in the world is that evil?
If I was a female baseball player, I could just as well have said he is holding the glove like a boy. The problem there is equating gender with something which has nothing to do with gender. There are those with training in baseball and those without it.
I wouldn’t use the word “imprinting.” What you describe sounds much more like a combination of choice and learning from positive and negative experiences. It most certainly is not an instinctive attachment to the first thing you see.
Not completely hard-wired especially not for everyone.
Oh now you are going to have me laughing at you with complete hilarity. That is nothing but a bunch of culturally invented nonsense.
We don’t completely disagree but we don’t completely agree either. I very much doubt sexual preference is genetically/biologically determined. At most I think some are more flexible than others. It seems unlikely to me that evolution would produce a predisposition counter to species survival. But flexibility does have its advantages.
In any case, we are wandering off topic, which was your claim that identity based on desire is somehow evil, which I say is preposterous (even that your claim is far more evil than people having some identity you don’t approve of). And it is wandering away from the topic of the thread which was the the connection between the acceptance of evolution and transgender issues.
And I think insisting that ones identity must be about things we are born with like race and sex is closely tied to evils like bigotry. I on the contrary insist our identity is found in the things we value, and I extend this even to God to say God is love rather than power and knowledge because love is what He chooses to value and that is where His identity is truly found rather than in the things He has by the nature of His existence.
Through this anatomical arrangement humans can link sexual motivation to an almost unlimited number of strategies that will trump temporal and spatial limitations. For example, rats cannot say “Let’s meet again next week at the corner ice cream parlor”.
In humans, sexual desire that emerges during adolescence parallels the development of self-concept. From this point on, a person (self) makes a conscious (volitional) decision to have or not to have sex, a Shakespearean metaphor but based on scientific evidence (see Koechlin’s work above).
Animals will never kill themselves (willfully) out of romantic fallouts. Countless numbers of young people have done just that when their intense love fell apart. Why does this happen? This happens because human strategies and human identity (self) are one and the same. They both originate within the executive regions; especially in the Brodmann area 10 (see the references above). “Self” is an abstract representation of accumulated episodic memories. Humans have a monster called “self”. Each and every decision has to be filtered through the self. It is the self that makes decision to kill the self; animals do not have a sense of self, so animals die only when they run out of food, or are killed by a predator, or by accident, but humans commit suicide even if plentiful amounts of food are available to them. In this regard, the methods of engineering human sexual desire are significantly more complicated than those of animals.
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Well, I’m glad you at least got some entertainment out of it. But I have to laugh at your seeming determination to not understand.
After you read my whole comment isn’t it obvious that my story and discussion of MAN and WOMAN were setting up my conclusion about identity and desire? That is:
Regarding imprinting, when one says A is “like” B, the meaning should be that A & B have relevant things in common, but are not exactly the same. When you put “kind of” before “like,” the meaning should be that the things in common are fewer and the differences are more numerous. The point I was making is that sexual preference (along with many other things that become a part of our identity) can be established through the right circumstances occurring at the right time and that the right time is a window of opportunity along the timeline of ones development, outside of which circumstances are not going to affect sexual preference much. I would suspect that all aspects of a human beings could be involved in this, including but not limited to each of genes, emotional experience and conscious choices. It’s not any one thing, but the combination of things.
My story was presented in an effort to illuminate how that might happen.
I said in my first comment the following:
What I am saying has come from personal acquaintance with, observation of and reflection upon gay people. Don’t read it like it’s a scientific paper submitted for peer review.
Regarding desire and evil, Biblically, evil is rejecting God. All sin is a form of rejection of God. And rejection can be subtle. I’m not sure there’s a better example than Jesus’ assertions about adultery. All you have to do is to sexually desire a person to whom you’re not married to commit adultery. And if you do, you are rejecting God in that moment. Thus, if you build your entire identity around your sexual preference you are building it upon your sexual desire. How could this even be possible without sexually desiring people to whom you’re not married?
And how could one possibly identify oneself by ones sexual preference (or any worldly preference) AND also desire God above all else? Yet, isn’t the latter what God called us to do?
But I have no such determination. I think the problem is much more likely the very different cultures in which we were raised with such different assumptions it makes it difficult for me to understand what you are saying.
So a quick summary… I was raised in the most extreme liberal culture with free love, the smell of pot, peace marches, communes, contempt for the Christian establishment, where absolute sexual equality was assumed.
It is from that background that I came to the conclusion Christianity had some value after all. So I suspect we are just coming from opposite directions even if it is to similar values and conclusions.
To me it isn’t obvious or even clear.
My definition of evil is the pursuit of desires without regard for the well-being of others and I do not see how ones own identity has anything whatsoever to do with the well-being of others. It is the imposition of identity on people based on their own ideology or religion which I would call evil, for the determination of ones own identity for whatever reasons is our natural right and essence as living beings.
Ok… But I don’t think it is the timing so much as what simply gets the ball rolling. I don’t think we have some kind of internal time table, but we are habitual or self-programing entities and thus we learn and follow patterns of behavior we establish for ourselves when positive experiences result from them, and avoid those giving negative experiences.
And while I have not had so much personal acquaintance as you have, your observation does agree with similar observations by my father working in social services. And with his extreme liberal orientation I doubt there was much cultural bias in his conclusions.
The problem with that is “God” is generally equated with whatever people saying this choose and thus “evil” becomes rejecting THEIR attempts to rule over others. The Bible ALSO says…
Romans 2:12 All who have sinned without the law will also perish without the law, and all who have sinned under the law will be judged by the law. 13 For it is not the hearers of the law who are righteous before God, but the doers of the law who will be justified. 14 When Gentiles who have not the law do by nature what the law requires, they are a law to themselves, even though they do not have the law. 15 They show that what the law requires is written on their hearts, while their conscience also bears witness and their conflicting thoughts accuse or perhaps excuse them
Thus those who know nothing of the God of your religion may not be rejecting the God which speaks to their heart. And so when they see your religion going against this and doing evil then their rejection of it is not evil but good.
OK… but I will not accept this as a step in an argument for why I must do as you say because you are not God and I do not accept your authority to speak for Him. I believe in a Living God who is quite capable of speaking for Himself.
And… while I am a Christian and thus have come to believe the Bible is the word of God. The argument that people must believe something just because the Bible says so remains as absurd to me now as it was when I was growing up.
I do not believe things are good just because God commands them but that God commands them because they are good (at least for those people when He commanded them). And thus I do not agree with the premise that sin is disobedience. That sounds like a way of thinking that works better for the devil than for God. I believe that sin consists of self-destructive habits and this is the reason God tells us not to do such things.
So people are evil if they even think they are heterosexual?
I certainly do not think that an awareness of ourselves as biological organisms with drives and desires is what Jesus was talking about. I think it is a matter of pursuing those desires in our thoughts and the danger these can become habitual or obsessive.
The same way as one can have an identity as an artist, doctor, lawyer, gymnast, wife, or anything else and still desire God above all else.
What I think is evil here is your attempt to forbid all self-discovery and desires contrary to your ideology (which is a program for psychological disaster). It is far more suitable in devotion to the devil than to God who is creator and giver of life.
Disobedience is sin, but not all sin is disobedience. That’s implicit in the statement that there are people “who have sinned without the law”.
I like Martin Luther’s illustration: you have no control over what birds may fly over your head, but you do have control over letting them nest in your hair.
Romans 6:16 Do you not know that if you yield yourselves to any one as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one whom you obey, either of sin, which leads to death, or of obedience, which leads to righteousness?
The sinner is the one who is obedient to sin (and the tempter – the devil), so righteousness requires disobedience to the dictates of sin (and the devil). Therefore sin is not a matter of obedience versus disobedience at all. Nor can we make it simply a matter of naming God as the one you are obedient to. Does not the devil declare himself god of this world? Not only can anyone claim the evils they are doing is obedience to God (and people have done so frequently), but they can claim the commands they give to others are from God when they are not (and this also has been done frequently).
As I explained before, I believe things are good not simply because God has commanded them but rather God has commanded them because they are good. Thus it isn’t about obedience or disobedience at all, but about understanding what is good versus evil, and why God has commanded things. It is the difference between parenting a toddler and parenting a teen. We must grow up and learn the reasons and not expect that we can forever simply rely on someone telling us what to do.
I agree that evil includes your definition, but I was referring to the Biblical definition of evil. While Adam & Eve disobeyed God, that disobedience was preceded by rejection of what God had told them. First came the choice to disregard God’s command and his declaration of the consequences of disobeying that command, instead embrace the serpent’s contradictory declaration of those consequences, then came the act of disobedience. Many take this further: That they did not merely reject God (in 1 Samuel 8 God specifies this as rejection of “God as their King”), but coveted his position as God (“you will be like God”) and, thus, all sin is at bottom this coveting.
For sexuality, there is most definitely an internal time table, which is the biologically triggered stage of puberty. But it’s not just the biology of it. Adolescence is a time when kids begin to realize their own autonomy. Below is a link to a paper about this. It concludes as follows:
“ No other period of the lifespan is sexuality at such a period of developmental change. While elements of sexuality and sexual interest are observable in children, the reorganization of the hormonal, anatomic, and neuropsychological substrates of sex during early adolescence is profound. Likewise, adolescence brings into play detailed and complex rules governing sexual display, sexual interaction, mating, and reproduction.”
Yeah, that’s one of the issues I struggled with mightily when I first started being drawn to Jesus about 10 1/2 years ago. For me, the resolution of that issue is in the fact that we each must develop our own understanding of anything. Thus, even within the wide world of Christianity, there is a wide variation of understandings, some actually in contradiction with one another and others varying in terms of depth and sophistication. Thus, while Jesus knows the Father as fully and completely as is possible for anyone who is not the Father, the rest of us fall short of that to some extent. Our “knowing” of God is really our own conception of God in accordance with what we are capable of understanding (I intend “knowing” to mean concepts, as opposed to experience of or communion with God which is really beyond the capacity of the intellect to deal with). So when you say, “when they see your religion going against this and doing evil,” you’re talking about a conflict between conceptions of God (or more accurately a concept of God and the absence of a concept of God), not two different God’s. I think Paul’s statement in your quote—“They show that what the law requires is written on their hearts…”— is deeply profound. For he is referencing God’s pronouncement of the New Covenant in Jeremiah 31:33-33: “I will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts….”
I am not doubtful that Jesus is King or that it is only through Him that one can “come to the Father,” but I am doubtful that Christianity is the only means God put in the world by which we might come to Him. Paramahansa Yogananda has a very interesting and profound view on what Jesus was saying when he said that, and it seems to agree with Paul in Ephesians 4 regarding “growing up in all things into Christ himself.” I don’t know if he’s right, but Yogananda is one of those people who were not Christians, yet lived his entire life, from the time he was a very young boy dedicated to God.
For me personally, an important factor in the view I’m expressing is the fact that Buddhism most definitely prepared me for Christ. When I first read the Gospels after being drawn back to Christ, I was astonished at how of much what I’d learned in my time in Buddhism I saw in Christ’s words and actions. I have not encountered anything in the Bible that contradicts any of that, but rather found Jesus to go beyond that.
I am total agreement. Yet, I would argue that if I were spiritually mature enough and you were demanding that I do something that contradicts my understanding how, as a servant of God, I should act in the world, I would seek to respond not so much to that immediate conflict as to the larger issue of your salvation; that is, in whatever way I could determine would help you to take a step forward in your own spiritual growth.
Within the sphere of what has been documented regarding Christian groups’ responses to that kind of conflict, though, this has rarely been the response. The response has most often been to just split apart.
Identity is a difficult thing to pin down, but I’m not talking about characteristics, but rather identity. If a person’s identity is built upon their sexual desire, then yes, evil is their foundation. But categorizing yourself as heterosexual is not, in itself, doing that.
Buddhism and Yoga Masters have a very deep and sophisticated understanding of what identity and desire are. It’s not just philosophy or morality, but rather a form of science (many call it a Holy Science, but this was adopted rather recently in response to the rise of Western science), because it is based on profound and very long-term observation and contemplation of the nature of the mind. In Buddhism (where it hasn’t been watered down and distorted by preexisting local beliefs, such as in Thailand), you don’t learn things through intellectual study so much as through experience. As was stated in a Vipassana meditation course I attended, “First the experience, then the theory.”
That’s exactly what I’m talking about. My story that you found unhelpful was attempting to illuminate the process through which that might happen.
You are understanding identity in the superficial, Western way. I’m not. But I don’t know how I could communicate it, because neither Western thought nor the Bible really lays a foundation for it, while the thought developed in ancient India does.
I’m not sure what that means. Some just say if they don’t find it in the Bible then they should reject it. But there’s a lot that we see in the world that is not found in the Bible, such as the many things science has revealed. My guess, though, is that God set in motion one part of his plan through Abraham and the Bible and another through the ancient roots of what the West calls Hinduism (which actually just means a person from India) in the Indus Valley Civilization (and the subsequent Indian civilization) and the Upanishads. They are different, but in their essence not contradicting, perspectives on God and our relationship with Him. And they compliment one another. The Bible is deeply concerned with community without much detail about individual growth, while the Upanishads are deeply concerned with individual spiritual growth (with tons of detail) without much about community.
I can’t really call that thought my thought, though. It has been given to me through pursuit of innate interests, personal experiences I was steered into by various things in my life and personality and through many moments of inspiration. What I’m supposed to do with that, though, has thus far not been revealed to me.
I think both God’s definition of the New Covenant in Jeremiah 31:33-34 and Paul in Ephesians 4 agree with you except for the obedience part. Yet, that’s at least partly because of how you’re understanding obedience. If my student is obedient to me, then I can help him learn and grow as well as I possibly can. If he is defiant, then I am much more limited. Yet, my aim is for him to no longer need me; to eventually know and be able to do what I know and can do.
So I don’t think Biblical obedience is merely about doing what God says, but rather about making oneself as pliable as possible for God to work in and through. If the clay is not suitable for shaping, then the pot will be poorly made. A poorly made pot is not only flawed within itself, but also less useful than well-made one.
For those following this discussion with Kguess, I put a like on that response. It is not that I agree with everything He says (though I do agree with the majority of it), but more of an acceptance of our different points of view. I can see he has enough of an awareness of the complexity of the issues that I don’t see much point in objecting, and to argue (quibble) further would just be pushing my own identity (my perspective) on him and I have no interest in doing that.
I have similar stepping stones in existentialism, pragmatism, and science, though I do have some familiarity with Buddhism and “Hinduism.” My biggest difficulty with these and their scriptures is the presumption of reincarnation which I will never accept.
…and… what you call “superficial” I might call objective and measurable. LOL … not saying this is the limit of reality but perhaps the limit on the certainty (and agreement) with which we can know some things.
In therian mammals (marsupials and placentals) [except for a couple of mice where the mechanism is not yet certain], if one has a functional sry gene and functioning receptors, then the individual will develop male characteristics and if not the individual develops female characteristics. Of course, additional gene functions, chemical disruptors, etc. affect how thoroughly the development follows one or the other.
The sry gene is normally on the Y chromosome (again, for therians). But the fact that someone may have a non-functional Y chromosome, or might have the sry gene on an X chromosome (and thus be a sterile XX male) does not tell us anything one way or the other about deciding to ignore one’s anatomical sex.
Monotremes and non-mammals have different details in their sex determination mechanisms, versus the “normally functioning Y chromosome → male” pattern for most mammals. More generally, details of reproductive behavior are generally species-specific. Thus, the purportedly evolutionary “animals do X, therefore it’s OK for me” argument is not in fact biologically sound. Anti-evolution arguments invoking such claims are missing the actual error in reasoning by seeking an easy way to stir up their followers rather than a good argument to persuade outsiders. Rather than claiming that the pop lyric along the lines of “You and me baby are nothing but mammals, so let’s do it like they do on the Discovery Channel” proved that evolution is evil, they should point out that 1. Science supports that we are mammals, but “nothing but” is a philosophical imposition from outside of science. Science can’t particularly show whether we are more than just physical animals or not, as Ecclesiastes points out. 2. What if today’s show features pine trees, or black widow spiders, or banana slugs, or any number of other organisms with a reproductive pattern not suited for humans? Even restricting the comparisons to great apes raises problems in detail (male orangutans don’t have a good grasp of “consent”, for example).
Exactly. Some species commit infanticide. Others mourn their young for days. Some species commit cannibalism on weaker members. Others will die to protect the weak of their group.
Humans can also do terrible things to each other. The “civilised” Romans exposed unwanted children and watched people being slaughtered in the arena for fun.
Anthropologists can explain how and why certain cultural phenomena such as these developed. But that doesn’t tell you anything about whether it is moral or not.
I’m hesitant to wade into any discussion that is even remotely culture war adjacent, as there are often multitudes of competing isms standing off with one another leaving a situation seemingly unreconcilable. I will, however, lob the occasional flash-bang grenade from behind my own fortifications simply because it amuses me.
