----- Original Message ----- From: "Daniel Davies" <dsquared at al-islam.com> To: <lbo-talk at lists.panix.com> Sent: Thursday, February 21, 2002 3:23 PM Subject: Re:Selfish Genes & Population Demographics
> For this reason, I don't accept Luke's assertion that this can all be
> explained because "sex isn't necessarily connected with conception these
> days". As a matter of fact, sex *is* necessarily connected with
> conception, unless people actively make the effort to break that
> connection. And if evolutionary psychology is going to make it as a
theory
> of psychology at all, it's got to be able to explain choices exactly of
> this kind.
At one time, the only procreative choice anyone made was whether or not to have sex. There is no hard-wired desire to have tons of kids because having tons of sex was once enough to ensure that people were plenty fruitful.
If you ask me, the number of cultures where norms endorsing abstinence do have a discernible impact on how much and how often people have sex provides much better (though not nearly enough) evidence against sociobiology.
-- Luke
> PS: Of course, Eric's original question of "why does it seem that
leftists
> are so hostile to Dawkins? " is much easier to answer. Leftists are
> hostile to Dawkins because he is such an arrogant and self-satisfied
> w*nker, and because he was so unbearably rude to Gould, Eldredge and
> Lewontin in the course of the debate summarised in "Dawkins versus Gould:
> Survival of the Fittest" by Kim Sterelny, a debate which ended with
Gould's
> position entirely unchanged, Dawkins sheepishly claiming that properly
> interpreted his disagreements with Gould had never existed, but with
> Dawkins, Dennett and Pinker still strutting about like the Lords of the
> fucking Dance claiming that they alone were the true heirs of Darwin and
> Gould was the equivalent of the prosecutor in the Scopes Monkey Trial.
> Gould, Lewontin and Eldredge (and Stephen Rose) are good leftist lads, and
> the left, whatever its sectarian faults, recognises a knobhead when it
sees
> one attacking its mates.
>
>
> Get Your Free Email at http://www.al-islam.com