It’s really far more simple than all that.

You see, birth control pills encourage unmarried women to have sex.

Said women get used to living it up, so that no man could ever satisfy their wanton nympho lust.  Thus, when they get married, the only way to keep them from cheating is to either keep them constantly pregnant or at least have the threat of getting pregnant with the wrong man’s child hanging over their heads.  If you let your wife take birth control pills, neither of these options is possible. 

Thus, the birth control pill makes women cheat.

Done, and done. 

I should so be an evo psych… I could make way more money that way…

I just had a blinding flash of insight.

I didn’t understand why EvPsych seemed so obsessed with the manly, Victor Mature-like scents of manly men that women just can’t stay away from. It seems very tenuous, and given where smell ranks on the human sensitivity level (least sensitive; we’re visual, auditory, and tactile learners, not so much taste or smell), it seems odd that it would play such a fundamental and central role in who women are attracted to. After all, everyone knows that when it comes to women, it’s all about the waist/hip ratio, and men don’t make passes at fatties because of our biological drives, which just happen to fall in line with beauty norms as they are right now, but not as much with beauty norms as they were...you know, before now.

But anyhow, back to smell—I finally figured it out. It’s an even more banal version of the “women dig men with money” argument. Men, you see, are attractive based on our smell. What’s the right smell for a guy? Who knows? Nobody does. Indeed, what’s a good smell varies from guy to guy, based on the woman in question and how she smells.

What’s the genius of this? It’s that you—yes, you, troll-like misogynist EvPsych true believer!—could have exactly the perfect smell to attract Scarlett Johansson. Yes, you could be banging hot chicks thanks to your awesome, perfect smell. And frankly, how would you know if you don’t have the right smell? You don’t, so you can assume that you smell awesome.

It’s all about saying that there are a finite number of attractive women, all of whom are attainable to you, Joe 50-year-old, as long as you make a lot of money and smell right. In short, it’s all about reassuring guys that they’ll get laid by a hottie. In short, it’s textbook EvPsych.

It’s interesting how much attention is paid to human pheromones, when reliable research has continually shown that there’s no there there.  But people don’t want to believe that.  We want to believe that our noses overwhelm our minds.

It seems very tenuous, and given where smell ranks on the human sensitivity level (least sensitive; we’re visual, auditory, and tactile learners, not so much taste or smell), it seems odd that it would play such a fundamental and central role in who women are attracted to.

Actually, humans react in surprising ways to smell, most of them subconscious.  It’s why stores can pump certain scents in to get people to buy more.  And there’s definitely something to the fact that we react to each other’s pheromones—any woman who’s ever lived with other women knows that your cycles start to sync up.

As with so many evo-psych spoutings, there may well be a real phenomenon that they’re detecting.  The problem is that they always, ALWAYS misinterpret what they see. 

But, then, I’ve broken up with boyfriends because they didn’t smell right, and it wasn’t in a body odor way.  They just smelled ... off.

It’s interesting how much attention is paid to human pheromones, when reliable research has continually shown that there’s no there there.

Really?  So what’s the new explanation for why friends cycle together?  And please don’t tell me that something I have actually experienced in multiple settings is all in my head.

I opted out of this discussion entirely at 24 with a tubal, and this is why I advocate that women go for one when they’re certain they don’t want to be pregnant- blissful, wanton whoredom PLUS the ability to smell this evopsych jibberjabber from a mile away.

Forget diamonds, ladies: a tubal is forever.

Um...isn’t our sense of smell basically dead?  We’re a visual animal with a limited range of scent sensibility.

It’s not like those Axe commercials are REAL.  Even if AXE didn’t make you smell like road kill, it sure wouldn’t affect women walking down the street.

Now, having been pregnant, I can assure you that pregnant women’s senses of smell do improve.  I was extremely sensitive to odor, which was doubly funny as my spouse has so many allergies that he can rarely smell anything at all.

The pill mimics pregnancy hormones, thereby preventing ovulation b/c your body thinks it’ already pregnant.  If so, your pregnancy scent sense should pick up, so you would be MORE likely to notice odor than not.

So women on the pill, should they decide to mate with you in the first place, are likely to continue doing so when they get off the pill.

What?  Evopsych’s easy to do.  If I had a penis, I bet I could get published!

given where smell ranks on the human sensitivity level (least sensitive; we’re visual, auditory, and tactile learners, not so much taste or smell), it seems odd that it would play such a fundamental and central role in who women are attracted to

On the other hand, smells carry a lot of memory, especially feelings of comfort, familiarity, nostalgia, etc.  Earlier this evening the smell of Pigs In A Blanket came wafting into my apartment, and I was immediately taken back to being a very small child helping my mom “cook”.  My abusive stalker ex-boyfriend wore too much cheapo cologne, and now just getting a whiff of that almost sends me into a panic attack.  All products from Bath & Body Works send me into junior high gym class flashbacks.  The smell of room-temp lunch meat reminds me of this horrible road trip I took with my senile great-grandmother when I was in middle school.  Patchouli reminds me of the French Quarter and the hippie/bohemian/goth scene in New Orleans.

I can also say, and maybe this is a total fluke, that, in my really successful relationships where I was destined to really fall for the person, I always liked the way they smelled.  I realized recently that the new girl in my life has a really nice smell, and I think that bodes well. 

Of course, does that have any bearing on all the rest of this tripe?  Probably not.  I just think people tend to fall for people they think smell good.  Just like we fall for people who look good and feel comfortable to hold/kiss/cuddle.

And there’s definitely something to the fact that we react to each other’s pheromones—any woman who’s ever lived with other women knows that your cycles start to sync up.

Apparently, scientifically sound research has debunked this claim.  The research was initially done in 1971, and has been debunked in follow-up studies.  But the debunking isn’t sexy, so it wasn’t remembered. 

I believed in pheromones for a long time, and was sad to find out that it wasn’t for real.  Pheromones are real in other animals, but there’s not any solid research indicating any major effect on humans.  It makes sense that it wouldn’t---we have very weak senses of smell, and no need to use pheromones to communicate like other animals do.  That’s because we have language and other kinds of communication much more effective than releasing a hormone.

I’ve never figured out whether I think women’s cycles synch up, but I have to say it has never happened to me.  Similarly with the theory that women’s cycles have some sort of rhythm that relates to lunar cycles.

This anecdata brought to you by Chanel No. 5.  Get the right pheromones to attract a hedge fund manager!

And please don’t tell me that something I have actually experienced in multiple settings is all in my head.

I’d never say that.  I have no idea what you experienced, except that I know it’s anecdotal evidence.  The link above demonstrates that under scientific scrutiny, you might find that your anecdotal evidence is just that.  I’m sure you menstruate with friends.  I was on the same cycles as my roommates in college, as well.  But we couldn’t point to pheromones---we were all on the pill, so our periods were scheduled by Ortho.

The pill mimics pregnancy hormones, thereby preventing ovulation b/c your body thinks it’ already pregnant.

God, I feel like the asshole debunking myths, but I can’t help it.  I think the idea that the pill mimics pregnancy got out because doctors found it easier to explain how it works that way.  But if it did, that would be problematic, weight gain-wise.  It was designed after scientists realize that a woman’s hormone levels shift dramatically after she ovulates, so the pill tricks you body not into thinking it’s pregnant, but that you just ovulated.

Opop, a friend of mine did his dissertation study in memory, and confirmed that while smell maybe isn’t so linked up to behavior, it is strongly linked to memory.

So the urban myth about how stores pump in smells to make you shop more doesn’t have legs?

Um...isn’t our sense of smell basically dead?  We’re a visual animal with a limited range of scent sensibility.

As Mnemosyne points out, it is there.  However, female sexuality is just a leeeeeetle too complex to reduce down to MHC scent markers(*).

I just finished the very amusing “Bonk" by Mary Roach where she mentions research suggesting that the Pill, by evening out hormonal spiking through a women’s cycle, might actually help in making her choices with her head rather than her ovaries. Given that, IIRC, the hormone in question was testosterone, there’s an interesting implication there you can bring up the next time someone suggests that women act irrationally once a month(**)…

(*) Duh.

(**) And if you can’t figure it out, let me tear myself away from my video games, put down my porn collection and comb my bald spot before being more explicit…

PIATOR, I’ve heard it said that men have similar hormonal cycles which are of course slightly less obvious because they don’t coincide with Teh Blooooodddddd. I think that both sexes think with their reproductive systems sometimes, and that’s sort of OK. 

I just hate that women are the only ones conventional wisdom pegs that way.  Men are rational, but women are ruled by that infernal “biology” crap.

I have no idea what you experienced, except that I know it’s anecdotal evidence.

I was not on the Pill, I have cycles as regular as clockwork even when I’m not on it, and yet I cycled a week early when I met up with my best friend.  And given that I was celibate at the time, either I miscarried the next Baby Jesus, or something else was going on.  It is, unfortunately, not the kind of circumstance you can easily replicate in a lab—I don’t even know what kind of test conditions you could set up.

So the urban myth about how stores pump in smells to make you shop more doesn’t have legs?

Nah, I believe it.  Marketers believe all the same myths we do.  Does it work?  Define “work”.  Smells can evoke specific, conscious ideas, like you said, and that seems like it can influence decision-making.  Smelling cookies can make you hungrier.  Some perfumes are designed to remind people of common childhood smells.  But when you smell something and it puts your mind in another place, you actually know it’s going on.  The whole idea with pheromones is that your behavior is unconscious.  But you smell something that reminds you of home, and that’s not an unconscious thing at all. 

I think the more likely explanation for why lovers’ smells make us happy is that we have a strong association between their smell (which we take in up close) and them.  I’ve had boyfriends who I could identify a shirt or a pillow of theirs by smelling it, not because they stank or anything, but I knew their smell.  But at that point, I knew it---had dated them for awhile.  A friend of mine said that my clothes I lent her smelled a little of cinnamon.  It’s there, but the point is that the associations are immediate and conscious.

I don’t even know what kind of test conditions you could set up.

I’m not a scientist, but I know you’d start by comparing a group of women in close contact with a group not.

Who knows what caused your period to be off?  The only thing I know of that’s proven to move it around is stress---stressful events can cause women to menstruate early.  There’s also the long-standing perception issues that everyone shares.  In Carol Tavris’s Mismeasure of Woman, she recounts how women who believe in PMS remember that they were in bad moods prior to their periods, but when they were made to keep daily diaries, it turns out that their ups and downs were not tracked to their periods at all, and that men and women had the same ups and downs.  But bad events right before the period were easier to remember, because they confirmed what was already believed.

Heh, PIATOR. I read that book and did more follow-up and was disappointed to realize that I was probably suffering from standard misperceptions making me believe I was more cantankerous before my period.  Unlikely, it turns out.

Men, you see, are attractive based on our smell. What’s the right smell for a guy? Who knows? Nobody does.

Actually, scientists know, and the attractive smell is the smell of a different immune complex.

Which, makes sense, since disparate immune types produce children with broader defenses against diseases, and closer immune types are a potential indicator of kinship (and you don’t want to mate with your kin.)

The science on this is quite sound. The “science” that suggests women are going to cheat more on the pill? That’s your typical evo-psych bullshit, of course. Human behavior doesn’t reduce like that.

Let’s just say for the sake of argument that smell opens the door to the initiation of a relationship, if a guy is an ass the woman is not going to stick around period.  So this really is a non issue. Want a faithful and loving wife, treat her like an equal and be a good husband.

I miscarried the… Baby Jesus

This is so going to be my go-to tongue in cheek reference for starting my period a few days late when I know it has nothing to do with pregnancy.

Back on (semi) topic, I also have to say that weird stressful momentous life changes can cause my cycle to go haywire (usually with an extra special surprise period).  I got a surprise period while on the pill the week after September 11, an event I was intimately involved with (yes, Michelle Malkin, it’s true.  I’d spent the previous evening taking on all 12 hijackers and Osama Bin Laden). 

I also have the bad habit of starting my period on every international flight I’ve ever taken, whether it was time or not.  I have wasted more layovers in European airports trying to track down a tampon than I care to recall.

Actually, scientists know, and the attractive smell is the smell of a different immune complex guys who happen to also be attracted to careers in the sciences.

Who’d a thunk it?

And there’s definitely something to the fact that we react to each other’s pheromones—any woman who’s ever lived with other women knows that your cycles start to sync up.
er, how’s that a function of smell?? (genuinely confused by this one)

Also, I also come down on the side of ‘urban myth’ as I grew up as one of 4 girls, meaning there were 5 women in the house and we all managed to be on different schedules (oh, those were *fun* teenage years /sarcasm). I also have lived in a university house with 3 other gals and no synch up happened… just my 0.02

Also, Amanda, re the shopping smells—that sounds about right.  Even though I hate Subway, their shops emit this amazing yeasty baking bread smell that always makes me hungry.  I never end up eating there, but the smell really does work on me and I can imagine, if I lived in a city less thick with food options, that it would probably reel me in.  There are plenty of other delis and bakeries that bake fresh bread all day, and yet none of them has the intense smell that Subway does.  I’ve always assumed it was artificial.

I’d also assumed that it worked not by some nefarious sort of mind control, but just that it would be the smell you associated with that particular store.  Which would create brand loyalty.  You enter the store, even just to browse, and you smell that familiar smell, and it’s like “OMG, I Love This Place!  I should shop here more often!” Even if the customer doesn’t give in and buy something right then, they’ll probably come back.

I think that both sexes think with their reproductive systems sometimes,

Sorta the point.  Having experienced male teenaged horniness from the inside, I’m not really in a mood to listen to anyone speak about how irrationally slutty the girls get once a month.  I’ll buy painfully cramped and incredibly cranky quite easily, having run into it with several women I’ve loved, but my own personal experience suggests that we’re all obsessively masturbating monkeys at heart, male or female.

There was another interesting piece of research in the book - IIRC, about 80% of the students placed in unknown pairs in a dark room and assured that they would be able to leave anonymously and no-one would ever know, hugged and/or groped by mutual consent.  We want to be touched and loved, to be intimate, it’s just the rest of the shit around being human that stuffs it up.

I read that book and did more follow-up and was disappointed to realize that I was probably suffering from standard misperceptions making me believe I was more cantankerous before my period.

You, cantankerous?  But you’re such a sweet innocent little flower all the time, Marcotte…

Pheromones are real in other animals, but there’s not any solid research indicating any major effect on humans.  It makes sense that it wouldn’t---we have very weak senses of smell, and no need to use pheromones to communicate like other animals do.

I don’t think that holds up because pheromones would not necessarily have a ‘scent,’ even though scents and pheromones rely on chemoreception systems.  That said, one of the major differences between the human and chimp genomes is a series of mutations that turn off a big chunk of the pathways between the olfactory system and the brain in humans (we have fewer genes than chimps).  It could be the case that we ‘have’ pheromones and it could further be the case that we can sense some of them on some level, but it is very likely the case that we can be pretty detached from each other’s pheromones and override them with other forms of communication.  Since chemoreception tends to have a very immediate effect on behavior (like the strong link between memory and scents or quick disgust response), being able to take step back from each other was probably a key component of the evolution of human sociality and likely co-evolved with our language use and ability to function in large social groups.  So, the chodes are doubly bogus: if we grant the claim the pill fucks with pheromone reception, it would be an evolutionary advantage to take the pill and choose a mate based on some other criteria.

It’s obvious that it would be advantageous to be able to attach emotions like fear or comfort to bad or good environments with scents, but it doesn’t necessarily mean shit for complex behaviors--which comes first, the scent or the emotion?  Besides being advantageous, it’s kinda nice to enjoy to smell of your parents or your partner, but the choades just have to fuck up every pleasant little aspect of our biology.  Greedy little bastards.

The fact that 20% of all marriages take place between first cousins and other degrees of relatedness blows this “evo psych” theory to hell, as cosanguity would be discouraged if the MCH-difference was highly selected for.

I know you’d start by comparing a group of women in close contact with a group not.

And then you control for age, nutrition, physical activity so that the main difference would be one group lives together and one group doesn’t, you gather data for 18 months, then crunch the numbers, and there be the answer.

Here’s an interesting take on the subject

The most likely theory is some kind of hormone change. Women’s menstrual cycles respond to contact with men, becoming shorter and more regular. So rather than a mechanical synchronization, like pendulum clocks, the cause is more likely chemical. In 1971, Martha McClintock published a study about the 135 women in her dorm at Wellesley College. She found that the synchronization of menstruation between roommates and close friends did increase after the women began living together. McClintock’s explanation was pheromones. She co-authored a followup experiment, exposing women to chemical compounds from the armpits of other women. She concluded that this did alter menstruation (4).

There are a number of problems dealing with the statistics of this and other experiments, though. The data can be interpreted to either support or negate McClintock’s conclusion, depending on how it is analyzed (4).

Why synchronize? One possible benefit of simultaneous ovulation for the whole population is simultaneous birthing. When female rats give birth at the same time, their pups are significantly healthier and more likely to survive. Certain times of the year may be better for births, as when lambs are born in spring rather than fall. So synchrony may have developed because it is helpful in raising healthy young (6).

The research I have done has increased rather than answering my list of questions. Is the math used in these studies wrong? Most articles I found denouncing the theory were written by men; most supporting it (or even denouncing it but wishing it were true) were by women. So is this just something women want to believe because it would be cool and bring us closer together? Also, according to McClintock, some women responded strongly to other women’s pheromones, while others did not respond at all (6). Does this mean that it is not strictly group behavior but leader/follower behavior,
with some women’s cycles setting the trend for the others? If so, does this chemical leadership correlate to any kind of social behaviors, like alpha females among wolves? My conclusion can only be that despite all those sex-ed videos from seventh grade, menstruation is still awfully confusing.

OTOH:

Definition of Menstrual synchronization

Menstrual synchronization: A phenomenon that occurs when two or more menstruating women live together, in which the menstrual cycles of the women gradually become synchronized. The mechanism and reason for this effect is unknown, although current research lays it to the effects of female pheromones on other women’s ovulation cycles.

Amanda:

I have no idea what you experienced, except that I know it’s anecdotal evidence. The link above demonstrates that under scientific scrutiny, you might find that your anecdotal evidence is just that. I’m sure you menstruate with friends. I was on the same cycles as my roommates in college, as well. But we couldn’t point to pheromones---we were all on the pill, so our periods were scheduled by Ortho.

The problem with all the studies that purport menstrual synchronicity is that they all (and by “all,” I mean “all two of them") feature uselessly small sample sizes, which are subject to corruption by coincidences, statistical artifacts, and all kinds of perception biases. Besides, there’s little to no evidence that humans even possess the olfactory apparatus for pheromones to alter our hormonal levels to begin with. Lots of mammals have just such a thing, of course. We apparently don’t.

The take on this that I read focused more on infertility, miscarriage and immune system problems, basically saying that the men women are more likely to choose while on the pill will, should they hook up and later decide to makes babies, produce sickly offspring or none at all.  Not sure what the take-away message is. Stick to condoms until you’re sure it’s the one so you won’t be steered wrong by your pill-addled hormones?

eh, the interest in phermones is mostly due to a desire to be able to game the system of attraction. So, you know, instead of actually being a decent person to have sex with, you could just smell like one.

I have heard that there is inbreeding inhibition built into your scent- if your immune system response too closely matches that of a prospective partner, they won’t smell “right”.

-it’s totally true, though: “You Smell Good” is up there with “I want to make babies with you” as a a clue that someone is into you.

I don’t know if my sense of smell changed while I was the on the pill, but *how* I smelled did:  my favorite perfume smelled completely different on me, depending on whether I was on or off. I

The fun thing about EvoPsycho is that it tends to concoct Just So stories that explain things about behavior that we all know to be true, except that we don’t. I remember Robert Wright using Evo Psycho to explain why woman’s monogamous, man is polygamous, and someone pointing out that we really don’t know whether that’s true.

I did not know that menstrual synchronization had been called into question. I unlearn something every day.

Loneoak, I’m not sure that humans have fewer genes that chimps. We have one fewer pair of chromosomes, but our number 2 is actually two pairs that got stuck together, so our genomes and chimps’ are still quite similar.

My anecdotal spare change:

-- Memory is strongly linked to smell. That’s been known for a long while, I think, and it’s certainly true for me. Smell does definitely improve with pregnancy, but then everything’s wacky for about 9 months, in my experience.

-- Pheremones? Meh. Smell, though, can certainly govern initial attraction; there’s a lot to be said, though, for associative memory with the smell of a loved one. I have only ever passed on dating one person - who I otherwise really liked and was attracted to - because they had a weird, kinda artificial-fruity scent to them that I just couldn’t get used to. *shrug*

-- Syncronized menstruation: I’ve heard the pheremones angle, but I just don’t know. I’ve synced with people I work with, but my very own wife? Nope.

-- As for overseas travel, it does tend to bring on the periods, regardless of when I’m due. The first time this happened, I was furious and indignant. And at a wedding… well, going clubbing after the wedding… changing in a car park… so much fun… but now I know, and do not blithely travel anywhere without backup.

Overall, I know that we are biologically driven mammals, I just believe that we can, and mostly do, go well beyond the biological “imperatives” - moreover, any religious fundamentalist who would even consider using this sort of argument had best think twice (assuming they’ve thought once), since their entire religion is based on rising above very basic biological urges. (And also, not on any sort of evolution...)

the men women are more likely to choose while on the pill will, should they hook up and later decide to makes babies, produce sickly offspring or none at all.

It seems like this would be pretty easy to debunk by looking at the several generations of children that have been born to women who met their husbands while on the pill.  This would at least imply that you would have seen a huge increase in overall “sickliness” of children born in the 60’s, or a rise in infertility among couples who would have no reason to experience such problems.  As far as I know, neither of those things happened. 

Or, if research on a macro level like that were unreliable, one should at least be able to do a study of the children born to women who were on the pill when they met their mate.  In fact I’m pretty sure that by now you could do a study on the grandchildren of such women, even a study where both the mother and both grandmothers were all on the pill.

To clarify, I was saying the article I read about this, before I came here, didn’t focus on the cheating. But yeah, the “conclusions,” if they can be called that, don’t seem to be based on any study of actual increase in infertility or childhood ill health. It was based on women smelling pieces of paper or t-shirts or something and speculating about what might happen if more women paired with men who shared their immune characteristics.

I’ve synced with people I work with, but my very own wife? Nope.

I’d think that one would probably get a higher dose of the theoretical pheromones from someone you sleep with and have sex with than someone you share an office with.

I couldn’t find the article this is actually talking about, but the guy they quoted seems to do research in mice.  Maybe he’s branched out a bit in this last one it’s talking about.  He ( I think it’s the same guy) does have a recent review of studies.  I don’t know what all it says bc it is behind a subscription.  For people wanting to see what studies there have been on MHC/HLA and preference, there are a lot out there.  Basically what’s already been said.  Different = prefered, except during specific cycle times.

The results for menstrual synchrony are a bit interesting, mainly because you can see researchers directly arguing with each other (scroll down to the reply to’s).  But what is also interesting are the lunar studies.

Shame it is late, this could be an interesting discussion.

The Oppoponax, the problems with researching this sort of thing are immense. First of all, the introduction of regular bathing and laundering must have reduced our parents’ and grandparents’ chemical signaling considerably. One or two hundred years ago our scents would have been much more noticeable than they are now. On the other hand most people would have had a much smaller social circle and a much shallower gene pool in which to fish. Darwin married his first cousin, as did the heroine in Northanger Abbey.

What sort of study could disentangle the effects of the pill and anti-perspirants?

Evo-Psych seems to be one of those things that just stuck ‘Evolution’ on to be all scientific, like the strange ‘woo’ that likes to chain ‘Quantum’ onto stuff.

Except that back in the day, when it was sane, it appears to have been founded by Richard Dawkins. I’d like to think he’d repudiate some of the battier stuff, though.

What sort of study could disentangle the effects of the pill and anti-perspirants?

If either were a factor, the last century would have spelled the virtual extinction of Homo sapiens.

Except that back in the day, when it was sane, it appears to have been founded by Richard Dawkins. I’d like to think he’d repudiate some of the battier stuff, though.

LOLz.

Wait, you guys really didn’t know this?

Part of the reason I refuse to give The God Delusion any real chance is that Dawkins has a long history of confusing hard science with, well, every other form of human thought.  If it exists, it must be reducible to biology, and if it doesn’t reduce to biology, it must not exist.

This would at least imply that you would have seen a huge increase in overall “sickliness” of children born in the 60’s,

Food allergies, asthma…

Dawkins really just popularized the work of earlier researchers like William Hamilton and Robert Trivers, giving Hamilton’s view of evolution a title which could “go viral” (the selfish gene).  Cosmides and Tooby are much more to blame for the evo-psych business.

Oh, and I’m pretty sure that Dawkins admits that non-biological sciences exist (I mean, he filled up a science-writing anthology heavy with astronomy, physics and mathematics).  Plus, the man is on record loving music and poetry and the works of Douglas Adams.

Food allergies, asthma…

My point is more that if it were so simple, the results would be immediately obvious.  How many “sickly children” in 1940 would’ve been diagnosed with having severe food allergies in 1970?  Asthma rates are pretty obviously correlative to air pollution, btw. 

Oh, and I’m pretty sure that Dawkins admits that non-biological sciences exist (I mean, he filled up a science-writing anthology heavy with astronomy, physics and mathematics).

Please remember not to take every word that everyone says absolutely literally.

Plus, the man is on record loving music

A lot of people with a hard-on for math and the hard sciences can find room in their hearts to accept music as legitimate, because it, too, boils down to math on some level.

and poetry

I don’t think you’re allowed to be an Oxford Don without romanticizing John Donne all out of proportion.

and the works of Douglas Adams.

The two men were friends.  I hardly said that he wanted all non-hard science related fields abolished, just that his work in general shows that he has problems seeing the difference between his particular field (biology) and everything else.  For instance the idea that anyone would use their authority on the former as a qualification to write a book on religion.  He’s just a guy with an opinion.  He, however, tends not to see it that way.  So I enjoy giggling about the fact that he came to prominence in a subfield based on the premise that you can use over-broad “biological” or “evolutionary” theories to explain pretty much anything you want, however you want to.

For people who call themselves atheists, Dawkins’ fans sure do love canonizing him.

Tangentially, people exposed to “fart spray” tend to make harsher moral judgements (at least for on-paper vignettes.) (Dirty rooms apparently can have a similar effect on certain people - apparently feelings of aesthetic disgust are affecting their moral counterparts).

http://scienceblogs.com/mixingmemory/2008/07/fart_spray_and_disgust_more_ge.php

” If it exists, it must be reducible to biology”

Well (for human things, etc.) ultimately yes, it must - and physics beyond that - but true, that assertion can be rather on the trivial, thinly uninformative, deeply uncertain, or pointlessly distanced side of things.

Dirty rooms apparently can have a similar effect on certain people - apparently feelings of aesthetic disgust are affecting their moral counterparts

This does not surprise me at all—the last time I shopped at American Apparel, the dressing rooms reeked of eau de nasty hipster.  Of course, there were contributing factors (really tired of sexist ads, really tired of tiny-person sizing, etc).  But phew!

I also find that a stinky subway commute puts me in a bad mood for the rest of the day, and often as said bad mood sinks in I sit there, pouting, trying to figure out who stinks and adding all sorts of value judgments to whoever I decide it must be (depending on the nature of the smell and the nature of the folks on the train, generally, with a sideline in “hmmm, maybe some rank homeless guy was sitting here just before I got on...").  Some of my least charitable thoughts happen in the vicinity of a terrible smell.

And keep in mind that the average semi-close paring doesn’t really have that high a risk of increased genetic problems unless your in an isoleted “founder effect” population; And that case *every* possible paring will be fairly close as there are no alternatives. If Evo-psycologststs are are to go beyond “Just So” stories they must show that it is at least plausible that huge numbers of ancestral humans lived under conditions where the supposed selected-for trait would have made a difference.

But evo-psych is not all bunk. Leda Cosmides showed that humans are are genarally poor at performing the Wason selection task except when it is framed in terms of breaking social norms. Humans are notioriously bad at understanding ~(P->Q) is equivalent to P & ~Q. Many fail when asked to turn over the two cards to test the rule “if a card has an A on one side it has a 7 on the other”. but when the cards are labeled with what people are drinking and how old they are, they get the right cards to peg the underage drinkers every time.

But it’s not just that people are familiar with underage drinking that makes them do so well. When we make the test be about car batteries and whether cars will start they do a little better than they did whth the cards with the A’s and 7"s on them, but not early so well as they did with the underage drinkers. More interestingly, when subjects were presented whith a nonsensical social norm such as “No one is allowed to attend the Feast of Teavy except those who bring a tribute of rootkla nuts” they did much better at the Wason selection task then they did when thinking about familiar cause and effect statements about cars and batteries, but not quite as well as they did with the underage drinking test. In summary: People are excellent at recognizing that ~(P->Q) is the same as P & ~Q in cases where they are testing compliance with social rules, even when these rules are unfimiliar or bizarrre. People are pretty good at recognizing this same inference when presented with a selection task involving familiar cause and effect reasoning, such as car batteries and cars starting, but not as good as they are at finding rootkla nut cheaters. People are uch less capable at recognizing this same inference pattern when presented with unusual cause and effect questions, and they mostly suck at abstract tests involving cards wit numbers and letters. Therefore Cosmides asserts we have a innate “cheater detector” brain module which can adapt to any social rule we might encounter rather than a general logical ability shaped by experience.

That was an extremely short summary of a paper I wrote for an ape-sex obsessed philosophy professor several years ago. Original paper was much longer and had cites and stuff. I saw ape-sex man on cable access a couple years later giving a summary of Cosmides’ work very similar to the one I presented above. Of course, he had a projector to show my cards and other props I turned in with my paper. Part of my paper was that I had cards and props you could play with to illustrate how the Wason task worked and even perform your own Wason tasks. That’s how I got an A in the seminar even though I had less than ten pages of text when the general requirement was 25-50. This was in no way slacking. I could have misunderstood the subject and messed up my cards and props and thus blown the grade. I even bought some little toy cars and glued stickers on them that said “vroom” and “stall”. How many of yall ever wrote a paper that had a footnote instructing the reader to look at four toy cars?

So, evo-psych is not all BS, even if some or most of it is.

Someday I’ll make a Flash game based on the Wason task to illustrate this. Problem is those who have studied symbolic logic will skew the results. They will most likely do equally well however the question is framed.

Leda Cosmides showed that humans are are genarally poor at performing the Wason selection task except when it is framed in terms of breaking social norms. Humans are notioriously bad at understanding ~(P->Q) is equivalent to P & ~Q. Many fail when asked to turn over the two cards to test the rule “if a card has an A on one side it has a 7 on the other”. but when the cards are labeled with what people are drinking and how old they are, they get the right cards to peg the underage drinkers every time.

Ummm, yeah.  Because the first several tasks you mention are so hopelessly abstract that I’m reasonably scientifically literate and have no idea what you mean by any of that, but the underaged drinker task would be extremely familiar to at least any American you tested.  Fewer people than that are familiar with car batteries.  I have a feeling that any European mechanic you tested would have reversed results.  Every member of a given society has to know the most basic social rules, whereas “make cars work” is a specialist task. 

I saw ape-sex man on cable access a couple years later giving a summary of Cosmides’ work very similar to the one I presented above.

Most undergraduate professors are, surprisingly enough, more familiar with the material they teach than the undergrads taking the course.  Surprising, I know.

A lot of people with a hard-on for math and the hard sciences can find room in their hearts to accept music as legitimate, because it, too, boils down to math on some level.

Proof.  Give me proof.  That’s not why I “accept music as legitimate”, and it’s not a reason I’ve ever read for Dawkins doing so.  Come to think of it, I’m hard-pressed to recall a single popularizer or advocate of science who has acted in that fashion (maybe they’re all ashamed to admit it?).  I’m a physics boffin; many of my friends are physicists, mathematicians, ecologists, mechanical engineers and electrical wizards; and I can’t think of a single one of us who thinks like that.  Some types of music bear similarities to some forms of mathematical activity, and a common pleasure might be found in the two cases, but that’s a far cry from saying that we enjoy “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” for its group-theoretic properties.

Straw scientist is made of straw.

For people who call themselves atheists, Dawkins’ fans sure do love canonizing him.

In various venues, I have criticized Dawkins for perpetuating “textbook cardboard” versions of science history, choosing to emphasize polemic over scientific knowledge, giving people an exaggerated idea of the worth of Stephen Wolfram’s “research”, indulging in inflammatory rhetoric when the occasion did not call for it, failing to consider key points with regard to the Bible’s literary relevance, and a few other crimes besides.  Of course, you couldn’t have known that without a fair bit of Googling, but on the other hand, I’m not used to dragging a disclaimer around like a steamer trunk every time I mention somebody’s name.

Stating that an individual is comparatively blameless on one point is not equivalent to canonization.

Come to think of it, I’m hard-pressed to recall a single popularizer or advocate of science who has acted in that fashion (maybe they’re all ashamed to admit it?).

You clearly didn’t attend my high school, where the head academic administrator, a math teacher, in pursuit of more funding for the science department, proposed elimination of all the arts offerings.  Except, of course, for music, on account of it being a valuable tool for math learning.  (Though there was suspicion that it was because music classes were the one elective area widely allowed by parents of the math/science prodigies she was trying to appease.)

My point, BTW, is not so much that no scientists like art or like music for reasons aside from its compatibility with mathematics, but that music is the common exception for people who call out all art, humanities, and soft sciences as lesser than math and the hard sciences.  If you don’t think such people exist, you must be new to Pandagon, and probably new to the ATHEISM FTW argument.

Re the canonization crack, the bottom line is that if you can’t let some stranger in a blog comment mock Dawkins (even just in terms of “heehee, Dawkins is one of the pioneers of a completely bullshit pseudoscience, and his fanboys/girls don’t even know!"), you might want to pull back off his dick a little.

OK, I believe I understand what “choad” means from context, but I’m curious to know where it came from.  Would anyone be kind enough to explain it to me?

It’s really just an especially evocative way of calling someone a dick.

“ .....if a guy is an ass the woman is not going to stick around period.  ”

AHHHH HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!  No! Stop! whew! {wipes eyes} Good stuff there.

‘Cuz we don’t know ANYone who stuck it out with a jerk boyfriend.  ::eyeroll::

Opoponax, wow. I mean, just… wow.

You’re that kind of stupid that it takes some serious brains to achieve. Congrats, I guess.

people who call out all art, humanities, and soft sciences as lesser than math and the hard sciences.

Blake, meet Chet.  Or, as he’s known around here, Straw Atheist.  You’ll have to ask him whether he’s made of straw, though.

Okay, can we please not use “evolutionary psychologist” as an invective, much less a way of automatically dismissing research? Yes, Steven Pinker et al. are misogynistic and blind to contradictory studies, but there are good ones out there. They’re just not heard in the media because they’re not making ridiculous extrapolations like this one. (David Livingstone Smith, for one, is a favorite of mine. He works with the evolutionary origins of violence and deceit.)

Even if the study is correct (which I wouldn’t rule out, since there are ways of making use of small samples), smell only plays into passion, which is only the shortest acting (a few months) and most tenuous of the three aspects of attraction (passion, intimacy, and attachment). Once a relationship becomes more established, and serotonin, dopamine, and oxytocin (the chemicals that rule social bonds) take over from testosterone (the hormone that controls lust and passion), the bond doesn’t depend on the innate attraction.

Also, regarding the existence/non-existence of human pheromones:
I just finished a class that touched on this. Humans don’t create pheromones, but the various differences in our body chemistries, immune systems, etc. cause perceptible differences in our scents. For example, both women and men are attracted to the scent of people with different immune systems. Our immune systems make our skin more or less habitable to different microbes, which changes our scent. In fact, women (as far as I know, the only studies have been done on women) interpret body odor differently depending on histocompatability (immune system similarity). For one woman, a particular man’s sweat will smell slightly of cinnamon (seriously), while another will smell vinegar or rotten eggs. From personal experience, I suspect that this is true in reverse as well.

smell only plays into passion, which is only the shortest acting (a few months) and most tenuous of the three aspects of attraction (passion, intimacy, and attachment).

See, this is where we run into trouble accepting evo-psych at face value.  Because if anything else said in this discussion is valid, this statement has to be bull.

Remember how we talked about the role of smell in memory, and its use to establish comfortable, familiar, nostalgic feelings in people?  If that’s the primary role of smell on the mind, then the only valid assumption would be that the smell of someone you love becomes more positive the deeper you get into the relationship.  If I think, “mmmm, happy memories of all the awesome things we’ve done together!” when I smell your side of the bed, that would imply intimacy and/or attachment, not passion.  In fact, the funny thing about the smell of a lover is that often, after the passion is over and a fleeting relationship is on the wane, smelling that smell can bring everything back.

Though, as I’ve said before, I haven’t much cared for the smell of my more temporary and unremarkable partners.

Oy, Opponax, lighten up! Blake Stacey is one of the good guys!

We hard science types (in my case, Math B.A., in real life an electrical engineer, 10 patents, beaucoup bucks) not only love babes and babies but music and all the arts. Everything. There are thousands of novels on my bookshelves, hundreds of CD’s and LP’s in the armoire that conceals as well the electronics that play them. Season tickets to the opera and the symphony and the playhouse. Everyone one in town knows my mother because she sold them their house, or because she was the first woman mayor, or because we always order lemonade for lunch.

When my sister, the soi-disant artist, lately a psychologist, visits and redecorates, rotating paintings from closets to walls, I wonder: is she now embarassed by this one of hers that we prominantly displayed for a decade or just bored? Does she really not like Kandinsky? She knows not to mess with my Hundertwasser (but then we saw the original exhibit at Berkeley together).

We’re liberal in every respect: we love the arts, we love the science, we love the rub-a-dub-dub. Our godlessness gets up your nose; sorry; there’s nothing we can do about that. I do fly my Earth flag for Beltane and Samhain, and another flag of earth for perihelion and aphelion.

My DH’s clean sweat smell is a turn on for me, but being on the pill doesn’t change that at all.

Jeffry can you point to any evo psych theories that aren’t manifestly ridiculous? Googling David Livingston Smith, I see he wrote a book about Freud (YAY penis envy!), which does not bode well for his credibility. Evo psych seems to constantly ignore local, immediate environmental factors in favor of trying to find genetic sources for learned behavior.

And he wrote Why We Lie. To quote, “As any seducer knows, honesty and reproductive success are not necessarily good bedfellows” ....except that’s not true.

A lot of people with a hard-on for math and the hard sciences can find room in their hearts to accept music as legitimate, because it, too, boils down to math on some level.

Or maybe they already enjoy music, and therefore invent a reason for it to be OK. Kind of like how maybe you already don’t like someone, and then decide that their smell is the problem.

eh, the pill does make it easier for women to cheat if they choose to. as far as it making them want to cheat more with the smell thing, eh again it reminds me of what happens to a lot of -science- good research can be done, perhaps an incremental improvement in our understanding of things, limited to a very specific thing but then that research is twisted to fit whatever need the organization has. then of course you have research like this, which is in its own special category.

Opoponax: You’re sort of right. Mostly, I wasn’t clear. I should have said “</i>the attraction to histocompatable people influenced by</i> smell only plays into passion.” Of course it does evoke the memories of a partner, but that won’t (if the pill only affects the ability to determine histocompatibility) be changed by going off the pill.

Banisteriopsis: Well, for one, there was a recent study that suggested a basis for male homosexuality. Since gay men tend to have female relatives with higher sex drives and larger numbers of children, the researchers suggested that homosexuality is an evolutionarily unfortunate (in the sense that failing to pass on genes is unfortunate) side effect of androphilia, or sexual attraction to men. Genes that increase androphilia would make women more likely to reproduce, but also make men more likely to be gay or bisexual. There’s also a large branch that deals with cognitive evolution (for example, how we process images of faces is very different from the way monkeys and the lesser apes do). My favorite study was one that I read a while back about the evolution of music. Across cultures, regardless of musical training or what you listen to, when you yell you tend to “sing” at a G, C, or D. Turns out that those are also the tones that are most common in bird calls. We apparently evolved to find bird songs comforting since birds fall silent when there are predators around, and so we have a built in bias for those particular notes.

Smith’s book on Freud was a critique, trying to sift the observations of his patients that might be useful for future researchers and which are the product of a mind that had endured a somewhat bizarre childhood. For example, one of his students discovered that his patients were basically telling stories about his (the student’s) mood even though he was considered one of the best at removing himself from the psychotherapy session. He was convinced that either he was crazy or his patients were psychic, but we now know that we can read emotions based on tiny facial movements, posture, etc., but they tend not to enter the conscious mind.

Also, that quote from Why We Lie refers to another finding by anthropologists and psychologists: we lie constantly, and often unconsciously, but the highest percentage is to partners (lowest is to close platonic friends). He was perhaps a little too illustrative, but the general thesis is not that we evolved to lie, but that we evolved to deceive ourselves so that we could deceive others. When we have convinced ourselves that we are in the top 10% of our peers (as, for example, 90% of professors have), our professions of competence are more persuasive to mates than if we were to tell a conscious untruth as Nice Guys® do. In fact, one of the primary symptoms of depression is the ability to accurately gauge other people’s impressions of oneself.

The opopnax: So the urban myth about how stores pump in smells to make you shop more doesn’t have legs?

I wouldn’t doubt that they are doing it, but I have doubts about its success, as reaction to smell is IME dependant on the memories tied into that smell, which are different for every person. Plus, there’s allergies… Most of the artificial smells used to perfume rooms (and people) just make my nose itch, and new-car smell leaves a plastic taste on my tongue. While the smell of wet bricks, or garlic in hot olive oil, or wood smoke makes me more curious and less cautious—but I can’t imagine many stores perfuming in that!

Dan S.: Tangentially, people exposed to “fart spray” tend to make harsher moral judgements

From a data sample of one, being in an unpleasant place doing stupid work does not bring out my more charitable impulses… A migraine coming on has pretty much the same effect. Either charity needs patience, or misery wants company.

[url="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18700206?ordinalpos=1&itool=EntrezSystem2.PEntrez.Pubmed.Pubmed_ResultsPanel.Pubmed_RVDocSum" ]
Abstract here. [/url] (Note sure why my tags are not working.)
Previous studies in animals and humans show that genes in the major histocompatibility complex (MHC) influence individual odours and that females often prefer odour of MHC-dissimilar males, perhaps to increase offspring heterozygosity or reduce inbreeding. Women using oral hormonal contraceptives have been reported to have the opposite preference, raising the possibility that oral contraceptives alter female preference towards MHC similarity, with possible fertility costs. Here we test directly whether contraceptive pill use alters odour preferences using a longitudinal design in which women were tested before and after initiating pill use; a control group of non-users were tested with a comparable interval between test sessions. In contrast to some previous studies, there was no significant difference in ratings between odours of MHC-dissimilar and MHC-similar men among women during the follicular cycle phase. However, single women preferred odours of MHC-similar men, while women in relationships preferred odours of MHC-dissimilar men, a result consistent with studies in other species, suggesting that paired females may seek to improve offspring quality through extra-pair partnerships. Across tests, we found a significant preference shift towards MHC similarity associated with pill use, which was not evident in the control group. If odour plays a role in human mate choice, our results suggest that contraceptive pill use could disrupt disassortative mate preferences.

The research comes from here, although I could not find any of the study’s authors listed on the website.

If odour plays a role in human mate choice, our results suggest that contraceptive pill use could disrupt disassortative mate preferences.

That’s a very big “if”. It also boils down “compatibility” as a purely physiological phenomenon, unless there’s some groundbreaking research that shows that the mental processes that would make two people intellectually compatible are expressed as pheromones.

In many cultures, women are given little to no agency in their ability to choose a mate. If female mate choice was important to the health of children, there would be an inverse relationship between the degree of patriarchy in a culture and the overall health of the infants born, which would be *massively* larger than any health differences caused by female mate choice influenced by the Pill. Many women, in fact, choose their mates when *not* on the Pill, and go on it in order to have sex with the man they have already chosen.

So if this argument actually held scientific merit, it’s not an argument against the Pill, it’s an argument against letting parents choose mates for their daughters—an argument against patriarchy. “Women should freely choose their own mates based on their hormonal attractions or unhealthy babies could result” is not nearly as strong an argument against the Pill as it is an argument against arranged marriages.

The argument that women are more likely to cheat if on the Pill *because* of the hormone thing seems really, really thin. If a woman is on the Pill, and she wants a particular man, and she’s having regular sex with him, and then she goes off the Pill for whatever reason and finds she wants a different man… who the fuck goes off the Pill and *then* cheats? Isn’t that basically asking to get pregnant by a guy who’s not the man you’re living with? I would find much more logic in the notion that the Pill empowers women to cheat because they don’t have to fear getting pregnant by the wrong man (given that children can show strong traits of their genetic parents, I would think women would be much more concerned that they might get pregnant and the resemblance of the child to the genetic father would give away that they cheated if they were *not* on the Pill.) If the idea is that going on the Pill makes you attracted to men you’re mentally compatible with, and then when you go off the Pill you want sexytime with a different guy… uh, isn’t that an argument that you should stay on the Pill forever, not an argument that you should never have been on it?

This argument is a serious, serious stretch. There are better reasons to assume that a woman who is on the Pill may be more likely to cheat than that she has chosen a mate with the wrong smell. Overall the argument is actually *for* empowering women to choose their own men, which worldwide is a serious problem facing women, even if in our society it’s generally a right women take for granted.

(I would also like to point out that the only hormone that we *know* causes severe emotional effects, and what they are, is testosterone, which in overdose does indeed cause aggression and rage. I am struck dumb with puzzlement every time men attempt to argue that women are emotional because of their hormones. Since when was anger not an emotion? I don’t think the sex that is responsible for 90% of all murders has the right to accuse the other sex of being irrationally ruled by emotion EVER. If women are emotional and irrational in the week we are not influenced by estrogen, what does that say about men, who are never influenced by estrogen?)

I thought ev psych said that women most want to mate when they ovulate, so that they will be most receptive to intercourse when it can produce offspring, as with other mammals. Women who take birth control never ovulate, thus they would never have that surge in the urge to merge.

Now I’m trying to fit what Amanda said into what I thought I knew. Are women who take birth control always in a heightened state of arousal, because their bodies think they have just ovulated? Or are they always in the base state? One answer argues that women’s bodies are more ready for sex, the other that they’re less ready.

As a data point, one woman I know especially well always gets quite flirty once a month, which fits well into my original understanding.

We’re liberal in every respect: we love the arts, we love the science, we love the rub-a-dub-dub.

Yes.  As I’ve said.  The issue is not so much “all scientists hate the arts!” but that there exist a subset of people (often not actually scientists, in the case of the math teacher/administrator) who prefer the hard sciences to the detriment of “everything else”.  Those folks tend to be able to find room for music, however.  So saying that someone who shows evidence of disdain for everything that is not the hard sciences still likes music isn’t really saying a lot—that attitude is pretty common, actually.

BTW, I’m not really sure that Dawkins “hates” everything that isn’t hard science, he just doesn’t seem to understand the difference, or the value of a non hard science approach (especially to concepts quite blatantly not rooted in the hard sciences—biology cannot explain religion any more than music theory can explain black holes).  He really seems to think “I can’t see god in my microscope, therefore GOD IS WRONG and believers are EVIL” is a valid enough idea to center an entire book on. 

Just as many evolutionary psychologists seem to think “I Like Boning Chicks!  Patriarchy FTW!” is a valid explanation for, well, just about any human behavior.  Even human behaviors which are directly contradicted by such an approach.  Which is why it cracks me up that A) Dawkins and these fools are adjacent branches on the Intelligentsia Family Tree, and B) Dawkins worshippers don’t know this, and/or assume that Dawkins would disavow such research if given the chance.  Even though the two forms of argument are very, very similar. 

Our godlessness gets up your nose; sorry; there’s nothing we can do about that.

To be honest, I have nothing but positive opinions of atheism.  I even agree with quite a few of the premises of The God Delusion.  I just don’t feel particularly inclined to suck Richard Dawkins’ cock.

homosexuality is an evolutionarily unfortunate (in the sense that failing to pass on genes is unfortunate) side effect of androphilia, or sexual attraction to men.

Or in non-evo psycho language:

Homosexual Man Is Homosexual.

Wow, really?  Tell us something we didn’t know.  You mean that sexual attraction to men is a side effect of (*GASP*, can it really be true?) sexual attraction to men?!

I would almost buy the idea that homosexuality can be “switched on” in people who come from copiously fertile families, though*.  If it seems that your bloodline is already being passed on quite nicely, and there are plenty of healthy babies and fertile women to go around, then nobody would miss your genes not being in the pool.  Or, more realistically considering that homosexuality as an absolute sexual identity is pretty recent, that if everyone on your team is making lots of healthy babies which seem like they’re thriving and living on to further the next generation, you can feel free to express yourself sexually however you want—it is not imperative that all sexual contact be about reproduction.  Which gels nicely with the idea that most traditional condemnations of homosexuality go hand in hand with condemnations of any non-reproductive sexuality as well as exhortations to Go Forth And Multiply. 

* If the research actually bears it out, obviously—I’m not convinced this is true, or that any good studies can possibly have been done.

My favorite study was one that I read a while back about the evolution of music. Across cultures, regardless of musical training or what you listen to, when you yell you tend to “sing” at a G, C, or D. Turns out that those are also the tones that are most common in bird calls. We apparently evolved to find bird songs comforting since birds fall silent when there are predators around, and so we have a built in bias for those particular notes.

This makes absolutely no sense at all.  Or really, it’s such a broad sweep of disparate concepts into a half-baked whole that you might as well be telling me that the reason all humans’ favorite color is red is because it’s the only color that bulls can see, and the ancient Minoan culture was built around bull worship.  So therefore humans have a natural affinity for bulls, which also explains why the Chicago Bulls uniforms are red, and why they were such a great team throughout the 1990’s, and why truly great players like Michael Jordan ended up playing for them, and thus why we won the ‘92 Olympic basketball gold medal.  This bit of sports trivia, foretold by biology!

Which is, in general, what makes evolutionary psychology so hard to stomach if you know anything about real life grownup science.  Anyone can take a few Did You Know factoids (which may or may not have any basis in reality, anyway) and string them together into a Grand High Theory Of Everything.

To be honest, I have nothing but positive opinions of atheism.

Oh, please. To sum up every argument you’ve ever been a part of, Op: “I could never be an atheist; they’re too meanie meanie poo-poo when I want to play pretend. Plus, I know more that any scientist because I have a subscription to both The New Yorker and Discover Magazine.”

I love the arts; partly that’s the result of coming from a family of humanities scholars. If you think I’ve ever said otherwise you’ve missed whatever point I was making, completely. As usual.

he just doesn’t seem to understand the difference, or the value of a non hard science approach

Approach to what?

Here’s the article this is based on (from 1996). Here are a couple bits from it:

‘Zoologist Michael Stoddart, author of The Scented Ape (Cambridge University Press, 1991), points out that humans possess denser skin concentrations of scent glands than almost any other mammal.’

given this, wouldn’t it be a bit surprising that we used our smell for nothing?

‘This means that if a lab mouse inherits a version of an MHC gene for resistance to Disease A from its mother and a version lending resistance to Disease B from its father, that mouse will be able to resist both diseases.

When a female mouse is offered two suitors in mate choice trials, she inevitably chooses to mate with the one whose MHC genes least overlap with her own. It turns out that female mice evaluate males’ MHC profile by sniffing their urine. The immune system creates scented proteins that are unique to every version of each MHC gene. These immune by-products are excreted from the body with other used-up chemicals, allowing a discerning female to sniff out exactly how closely related to her that other mouse is.’

and

‘Human volunteers can discriminate between mice that differ genetically only in their MHC.’

I really don’t understand the need people have to pretend we’re not animals or that we’re special. Most other animals use scent to help pick a mate, why is that so bad for us. Note that this does not mean that it is the major way we decide (or even a large factor), only that it’s part of the mix.

I should note that the article gets into the stupidity the last couple pages, but before that it seems reasonable.

I also have to throw this in since it has to do with math:

‘Lavender incense contributes to a pleasant mood—but it lowers volunteers’ mathematical abilities. ‘

No, Chet.  First of all, I have zero opposition to atheists or atheism.

I do, however, see one flaw in a common atheist approach.  I think that it’s silly to decide that, because you can’t see God with your telescope, therefore all belief in same is obviously incorrect, delusional, or even evil.  Because I can name 20 things that the vast majority of all humans believe which are similarly not rooted in the hard sciences, and I doubt that many atheists have even realized this, let alone attempted to abandon them.  One cannot use, as a metric for the undesirability of theism, whether it can be conclusively proven by hard science that god exists.  Well, if one is consistent and intellectually responsible, that is. 

The existence of god is no more an objective argument than the existence of the self. 

Now, people who are willing to admit that belief or lack thereof is not necessarily an objective scientific truth, and who also consider themselves atheists?  I love those guys!

First of all, I have zero opposition to atheists or atheism.

Right, just like Megan McArdle is a feminist. Never mind that you oppose atheists in every single thread.

I think that it’s silly to decide that, because you can’t see God with your telescope, therefore all belief in same is obviously incorrect, delusional, or even evil.

But, say, believing things on the basis of no good evidence? Nothing silly about that, right? Making things up with your imagination and playing pretend that they’re real? That’s super-serious time, according to you.

Because I can name 20 things that the vast majority of all humans believe which are similarly not rooted in the hard sciences

Firstly, let’s abandon the facile “hard/soft science” dichotomy, since it’s ridiculous. The truth is that there’s two kinds of knowledge - that which comes from evidence-based inquiry into the world around us (including the people who live in it) and that which comes from imagination. I’m of the opinion that the second kind isn’t really “knowledge” at all, of course. You seem to disagree. Given the well-known capacity of imagination to create fiction, I continue to be boggled by those who have become convinced that their imaginations can produce reliable truth.

One cannot use, as a metric for the undesirability of theism, whether it can be conclusively proven by hard science that god exists.

One can, and many have. You’ve never demonstrated anything else, merely asserted. The idea that “God is beyond the reach of science” is a transparent word game, as Dawkins, Harris, and others have conclusively shown. All you’ve shown is that responding to their arguments is, apparently, beneath you.

BREAKING NEWS!

Opoponax doesn’t like Richard Dawkins. News at 11.

homosexuality is an evolutionarily unfortunate (in the sense that failing to pass on genes is unfortunate) side effect of androphilia, or sexual attraction to men.

Or in non-evo psycho language:

Homosexual Man Is Homosexual.

Wow, really?  Tell us something we didn’t know.  You mean that sexual attraction to men is a side effect of (*GASP*, can it really be true?) sexual attraction to men?!

Jesus Christ, Opoponax, did you even read the sentence after that?

Plus, would you please not mouth off about “real science”? I simplified the study. It was supported by other evidence (humans across cultures really do find melodic bird calls comforting), was controlled, and was pretty cautious about its conclusions. Hence my “apparently.” I ought to have said “probably” or “maybe,” but sheesh.

Never mind that you oppose atheists in every single thread.

Hm.  Now maybe this is just because I’m an irrational believer in hokum and woo, but I could’ve sworn that I existed outside of Pandagon comment threads.  If you’re going to pursue that line of argument, though, I guess I’ll have to give you credit for your sincere commitment to the idea that, if you can’t see it, it can’t possibly exist.  Things that do not happen in your presence and are not recorded for posterity cannot be proven to have ever occurred.

Mainly, to be honest, I try not to participate in atheism threads, because I’m not an atheist, and not a believer in the sort of religion that atheism threads are generally critiquing, and the Theism vs. Atheism argument kind of bores me.  Occasionally, if significantly bored, I will let myself tussle in a thread that didn’t start out as being about atheism, or which was only tangentially related to Atheism As A Concept.  I think threads about science, creationism, vaccination, etc. are fair game, because they’re not solely atheist turf. 

I also fail to see how “atheism is cool by me; I think X common argument, however, is a fallacy” = OMG KILL ALL ATHEISTS!  YAY JESUS!

I will say, though, that I think I was probably being an ass in that one thread when I tried to argue that atheists who “shove their atheism in people’s faces” or whatever are beyond the pale.  Mainly since I realized that most of my experience of this is via the web, and obviously people with blogs should be able to say what they want, and it’s not even really fair for me to call out people like Dawkins who publish irritatingly inflammatory books with that viewpoint.  So, OK, I formally apologize for that one thing. 

Making things up with your imagination and playing pretend that they’re real?

This line of argument, btw, is precisely what is at the root of the idea that the problem with (some) atheists is that they don’t appreciate ANYTHING outside the realm of the hard sciences.  Or, in other words, good luck with that whole “confidence” thing.  Or that whole “love” thing.  Or that whole “I have a unique personality” concept.  To name just 3 things which cannot be conclusively proven to exist.

Firstly, let’s abandon the facile “hard/soft science” dichotomy, since it’s ridiculous.

Whee!  Finally!  Now we’re getting somewhere.

So you do, in fact, agree that fields like philosophy, psychology, sociology, anthropology, theology, and the like offer superior approaches to the concept of religion than biology does, and that the concept of a biologist writing an authoritative book on why atheism is factually correct is 100% laughable bullshit.

Why were we ever arguing in the first place?

The idea that “God is beyond the reach of science” is a transparent word game, as Dawkins, Harris, and others have conclusively shown.

Oooh, you’re right, some big important doodz with book deals say otherwise, so they must be right, mustn’t they?  Srsly, I put down The God Delusion on my first attempt because the first 10 pages don’t say anything I didn’t figure out before I was 15 years old, and yet treat these ideas like sacred manna from heaven the Very Important Brain Of Mister Very Important Oxford Don.  That, as well as my prior knowledge of Dawkins and his propensity for evo-psycho sophmoric stoner wankery, were really my first turn-offs, not necessarily the advocacy of atheism per se.

I put down The God Delusion on my first attempt because the first 10 pages don’t say anything I didn’t figure out before I was 15 years old, and yet treat these ideas like sacred manna from heaven the Very Important Brain Of Mister Very Important Oxford Don.

Dawkins is just another evangelist, filled with anti-God zealotry. I don’t care if people believe in god or not, so it’s hard for me to relate to a person who wants to rid mankind of The God Delusion(TM).

If you’re going to pursue that line of argument, though, I guess I’ll have to give you credit for your sincere commitment to the idea that, if you can’t see it, it can’t possibly exist.

I’m not pursuing any line of argument except two, right now: 1) that it’s unreasonable to believe things without good evidence for them, and 2) when your posts aren’t head-slappingly stupid, they’re outright dishonest.

This line of argument, btw, is precisely what is at the root of the idea that the problem with (some) atheists is that they don’t appreciate ANYTHING outside the realm of the hard sciences.

We’re not talking about any “hard sciences”, here, remember? We’re talking about a real dichotomy - making things up and pretending they’re real, vs. restricting belief to what can be substantiated with evidence.

When are you going to grapple with that? Your nonsense about “atheists who won’t believe anything that’s not hard science”, in addition to having been proven to be a straw man, is simply an idiotic response.

So you do, in fact, agree that fields like philosophy, psychology, sociology, anthropology, theology, and the like offer superior approaches to the concept of religion than biology does

In fact, I object strenuously to you lumping evidence-based anthropology, sociology, and psychology in with the rigorless nonsense of theology and philosophy. You’re still operating from the false “hard/soft” dichotomy, which you just agreed was ridiculous.

I guess you can’t even keep your lies straight.

Why were we ever arguing in the first place?

Because you’re an idiot jackass who is always wrong? I think your greatest hit was when you tried to pretend that I was an idiot for paying 7 dollars to see a movie in a theatre rather than 500 dollars to see it on an airplane.

Oooh, you’re right, some big important doodz with book deals say otherwise, so they must be right, mustn’t they?

They actually have arguments - several books full of them, which you might bother to read sometime - which it actually takes a little more than infantile, homophobic taunts to address.

Srsly, I put down The God Delusion on my first attempt because the first 10 pages don’t say anything I didn’t figure out before I was 15 years old, and yet treat these ideas like sacred manna from heaven the Very Important Brain Of Mister Very Important Oxford Don.

Oh, I see. Ten pages in and you’ve got it all figured out. Never mind that the first chapter, or so, is all the stuff Dawkins figures should be obvious to a child of 6 (which put you about 9 years behind I guess), not any kind of Holy Writ.

I don’t care if people believe in god or not, so it’s hard for me to relate to a person who wants to rid mankind of The God Delusion(TM).

It’s hard for me to relate to someone who thinks the worst excess of religion is that the religious have conversations where they try to convince people, and not, say, that they get people to kill, lie, and steal based on belief in things that we know don’t exist. It’s hard for me to relate to that because it seems to transparently stupid.

I don’t understand how anybody can be opposed to proselytization in principle. Progressives, especially. What’s the point of progressivism (especially in politics) if convincing other people to join up is somehow against the rules? The problem with religion isn’t that they’re trying to get you to change your mind about something - since when is that disallowed - it’s that they’re trying to convince you to believe something absurd.

Yanno my sex drive DROPS like a STONE on the pill
(or NuvaRing that I’m using now since the Pill began to give me headaches)…
Like I’m wandering around with sex on the brain?
Pft.

I don’t understand how anybody can be opposed to proselytization in principle.

Good wine needs no bush.—Shakespeare. Worthwhile things don’t need to be advertised, plugged, or promoted.  Anything I have to be talked into accepting, I don’t want. In fact, nothing that people have ever tried to talk me into has been worthwhile. And having “conversations” with a zealot is as annoying as having a “conversation” with a used car dealer. Richard Dawkins is no different from a time-share salesman.

Your nonsense about “atheists who won’t believe anything that’s not hard science”, in addition to having been proven to be a straw man
...

In fact, I object strenuously to you lumping evidence-based anthropology, sociology, and psychology in with the rigorless nonsense of theology and philosophy.

Chet, seriously?  And you’re the one who calls me stupid and dishonest?

Never mind that the first chapter, or so, is all the stuff Dawkins figures should be obvious to a child of 6

You haven’t read The God Delusion, have you?

I’m referring, specifically, to the anecdote with which he opens the book.  He tells a story of his wife, who, as a child, was extremely miserable in school.  Years later she confessed this to her mother, who insisted that she need only have said the word, and they would have taken her out of that school or otherwise resolved the issue.  She confessed that she’d had no idea that such a thing was possible.  Dawkins uses this as an analogy for religion—that countless people are made miserable by their faith, but as a rule they simply have no idea that any other option exists. 

If Dawkins thought that any child of 6 would already know you can stop participating in religion anytime you want, and in fact even change religions if you find a different one you like better, that was certainly at odds with his choice of analogy.  Instead, he chose to start by manipulating his audience into buying the axiom at the core of the entire argument:  spiritual beliefs are inherently oppressive and horrid, and all participants are either deluded or duped into participating.  This is a pretty obviously weak starting axiom, so he just jumps right over that with a play to the emotions.

The especially interesting thing about this passage, btw, is that it pretty conclusively proves that religion is a bit of a red herring, if you’re concerned about the use of some cultural artifact to control the masses*.  Because the entire anecdote is obviously a lesson in authoritarian social rules.  Firstly, the very British concept that no matter how miserable you are, you must never under any circumstances try to change it—to do so would be weak and shameful, and probably incur some sort of punishment which would be worse than the general state of misery.  And secondly, the politely authoritarian fiction that, if some childhood trauma is safely in the past, your parents should just lie and say “Oh, darling, if only you had told us!”, rather than admit that nobody had any control over the situation, or they dropped the ball, or that arbitrary bullshit would have blocked them from trusting you or attempting to change things. 

Except of course that “unconscious social conditioning” isn’t nearly as dramatic a concept to rail against as religion is, and it’s really hard to get people examining that sort of thing.  I, for one, doubt that Dawkins would ever have considered that reading of his story, because he’s part of the society that takes those rules so seriously that they never even think about them.  You also have the fact that a book about unspoken social conditioning written by a biologist probably wouldn’t get published, and if he did manage to convince a publisher that he was qualified to write such a book, it would get labeled “social sciences” and get tossed into an obscure corner of the bookshop, and it probably wouldn’t result in round-the-world Atheist Pity Party speaking engagements, talk show appearances, and the like.  Obviously below the station of such an important figure as His Highness The Pope Of Rationalism Richard Dawkins. 

* Not that I think religion is necessarily a great thing, or beyond criticism, or that religious ideas don’t play into the sort of thing I pointed out.  Just that they’re a lot more pervasive than any church.

Just that they’re a lot more pervasive than any church

Where “they” are “unwritten cultural mores” - sorry if that’s not clear.

Because you’re an idiot jackass who is always wrong?

Quite amusing considering this is coming from the very person who believed all people living under Marxist derived regimes worshiped “supernatural radios”, conflated state perpetuated propagandistic performance with what most of the people actually believed, and argued that Marxist derived regimes were religions and that their citizens saw their leaders as theistic deities.  Something that would evoke scornful laughter from relatives, friends, and neighbors who actually grew up and lived under such regimes.....and flunking grades from even some avowedly Marxist and atheist Profs after they’ve recovered from ROTFLOL.

Chet, seriously?  And you’re the one who calls me stupid and dishonest?

I’m sorry, I knew I was talking to an idiot but I assumed you knew what people meant by “hard” and “soft” science, you know, since it was you who introduced the term.

My assumption is that you think you’ve caught me in some kind of contradiction, yes? Hilariously, you’ve simply failed to realize that sociology, anthropology, and psychology are valid “soft sciences” (to the people that use that terminology), while philosophy and theology are not sciences at all, either hard or soft.

And the truth is, they have no merit. Not because they’re not science, but because they’re nonsense.

You haven’t read The God Delusion, have you?

Own it, read it, was bored by it, since most of it was Dawkins making arguments I’d already made myself.

I’m referring, specifically, to the anecdote with which he opens the book.

Well, that’s certainly a conclusive basis on which to reject 376 pages of argument!

Except of course that “unconscious social conditioning” isn’t nearly as dramatic a concept to rail against as religion is

Except of course that they’re the same thing, that’s the point of the book; religion is solely a conscious and unconscious means of social coercion, rather than a set of beliefs about anything that is actually true. The truth-condition of the belief is irrelevant. That’s the place that faith takes you.

You also have the fact that a book about unspoken social conditioning written by a biologist probably wouldn’t get published

Again with the anti-biology slurs. I really wonder if you have any other mode of argumentation than just “attack Dawkins.”

it probably wouldn’t result in round-the-world Atheist Pity Party speaking engagements

Can’t for the life of me imagine why atheists fail to recognize you as such a great ally. No sir.

Quite amusing considering this is coming from the very person who believed all people living under Marxist derived regimes worshiped “supernatural radios”, conflated state perpetuated propagandistic performance with what most of the people actually believed, and argued that Marxist derived regimes were religions and that their citizens saw their leaders as theistic deities.

I don’t recall saying “all people”, but certainly many people did; I can show you pictures of the parades in front of Stalin’s painting, if you like. That’s a completely incomprehensible act unless they truly believed that Stalin could see them through the painting, supernaturally; by definition that’s religion.

But, whatever, Exholt. We know atheists made fun of you in college. Because you’re an idiot, not because of your religion.

Something that would evoke scornful laughter from relatives, friends, and neighbors who actually grew up and lived under such regimes....

Who do you think told me this information? The people who grew up and lived under such regimes. it was abundantly obvious to them that Socialism simply displaced Orthodox control of the government. It’s abundantly obvious if you study Russian history, as I did. Why is the obvious so hard for you to grasp? Because they “said they were atheist”? Anybody can say they’re anything they want. It’s how they act that is conclusive. Russian socialists acted religious. Thus, Russian socialism was a form of religion.

Jeffrey: “Since gay men tend to have female relatives with higher sex drives and larger numbers of children, the researchers suggested that homosexuality is an evolutionarily unfortunate (in the sense that failing to pass on genes is unfortunate) side effect of androphilia, or sexual attraction to men. Genes that increase androphilia would make women more likely to reproduce, but also make men more likely to be gay or bisexual.”

Um, but would this not apply also to lesbians? So lesbians should surely have male relatives with higher sex drives and larger numbers of children, since those gynophilia genes would make men more likely to reproduce, but women more likely to be gay/ bi.

But then, uh, ALL menz have a HUGE sex drive and want to inseminate all teh laydeez, right?! Whereas high sex drive in females is an aberration?

Also surely if these high sex drive genes are just as likely to end up in a male or female body, the chances of that being 50/50, they would have no evolutionary advantage - since they are equally as likely to result in no reproduction as a lot of reproduction, the genes would just die out.

So much for that one.

Um, but would this not apply also to lesbians?

Only if lesbianism is caused by a gene for gynophilia. What reason do you have to believe that to be the case?

Also surely if these high sex drive genes are just as likely to end up in a male or female body, the chances of that being 50/50, they would have no evolutionary advantage - since they are equally as likely to result in no reproduction as a lot of reproduction, the genes would just die out.

You’re not quite doing the math right. The advantage is there because in the individuals that do pass it on, they pass it on to more offspring than normal; enough more, in fact, to counter the loss in offspring represented by the male who’s now less likely to mate.

It’s a net reproductive advantage. And even if it weren’t, they wouldn’t just “die out” - neutral mutations persist in populations without needing to provide a reproductive advantage. Don’t you remember your Hardy-Weinberg equation?

So much for that one.

Not really. I notice you don’t even try to offer an alternate explanation for the increased fecundity of female relatives of male homosexuals. Is that just an inconvenient fact you’re going to ignore, or what?

But, whatever, Exholt. We know atheists made fun of you in college. Because you’re an idiot, not because of your religion.

I find that quite amusing as I managed to graduate around the top 20% of my graduating class while several of those “militant atheists” found themselves placed on academic suspension or even tossed out because they flunked too many courses....even in courses such as a colloquium on modern Soviet/Russian history and Seminars on Chinese history and politics where they were the supposed self-proclaimed “experts”. 

it was abundantly obvious to them that Socialism simply displaced Orthodox control of the government. It’s abundantly obvious if you study Russian history, as I did. Why is the obvious so hard for you to grasp? Because they “said they were atheist”? Anybody can say they’re anything they want. It’s how they act that is conclusive. Russian socialists acted religious. Thus, Russian socialism was a form of religion.

Other than the fact my Russian history Prof and my Russian emigre neighbors would disagree with what they would consider an oversimplistic analysis of a complex process and the conflation of propagandistic performance with the actual reality, Soviet Russia does not equal all Marxist derived regimes. 

Hate to break it to ya, but there were other Marxist derived regimes which implemented Marxist derived ideologies differently based on the unique circumstances and situations present in that time and place.....like Mainland China.  Soviet Russia is not the be-all and end-all of all Marxist derived regimes.

I think what I find most convincing about exholt’s posts is his repeatedly claiming authority based on academic achievement and unique personal knowledge. Everyone knows that somebody repeatedly claiming to be an expert based on their own say-so has to be telling the truth, right?

Fairy moans

“Remember how we talked about the role of smell in memory, and its use to establish comfortable, familiar, nostalgic feelings in people?  If that’s the primary role of smell on the mind, then the only valid assumption would be that the smell of someone you love becomes more positive the deeper you get into the relationship.”

I don’t think anyone claimed that becoming a memory marker is the primary role of smell on the mind.  I think the first role of smell is to warn you away from things that are bad for you (corpses, rotten food, shit) and attract you to things that are good for you (food, fresh air).

It works both ways.  A smell can be associated with a good experience, so you gravitate towards it (library smell!).  Or it can be a good experience itself, which you then associate with a person, place or thing that is otherwise neutral. 

Evolution has made us so that we are repulsed by smells that are unhealthy for us and attracted by smells that are helpful to us.  People who were attracted to unhealthy things, or couldn’t tell there was good food around, were less successful at surviving and reproducing.

If we are able to smell the difference between genetic types, if we can tell from a sniff whether someone’s more or less likely to be a good choice for breeding, then it would be positively weird if using that ability wasn’t reflected both in births and in our genome.  I don’t know if we are able to make that distinction.  I don’t know if the Pill affects it.  It’s also uncertain how many babies result from a sniff. 

But we all know that one-night stands and physical flings are not rare.  So *if* we can smell each other out, we’d have more “good” pairings than would be expected by chance, and those pairings would have more babies than “bad” pairings.

Secondly, parents who are very attracted to each other will be more likely to stay together and be more reliable parents, all other things being equal.  It won’t make an abusive spouse less abusive, but the other spouse may stay longer because the sex is good. 

So there’s a double plus:  more healthy babies are born to those couples than to random couples, and those couples are more likely to stay together and may more easily support each other and the babies, plus have more babies because they still have sex.

Yes, it’s more complicated than that.  Yes, there are going to be counterexamples.  But since the theory is not “only ‘compatible’ couples have babies together,” counterexamples don’t disprove anything.

Wow. Women, and the pill and cheating has to do with the Dawkins. Who knew?

Soviet Russia is not the be-all and end-all of all Marxist derived regimes.

It’s certainly a representative example. Maoist China, for instance, is no less religious about Mao than Russia was about Stalin at the time. What do you think those giant paintings were all about, Exholt?

<blockquote>What do you think those giant paintings were all about, Exholt?</i>
What are all the paintings of George Washington in schools about? And why is the word “Trump” on so many sky scrapers?

Opop sez:
So you do, in fact, agree that fields like philosophy, psychology, sociology, anthropology, theology, and the like offer superior approaches to the concept of religion than biology does, and that the concept of a biologist writing an authoritative book on why atheism is factually correct is 100% laughable bullshit.

This is the answer I think an atheist would give: Belief in gods is a fact claim about the (natural) world. Science is a way of studying the natural world that relies on evidence. If there is no evidence for gods, then it makes no sense to believe in gods. Biologists can (just as well as anybody else) examine the natural-world evidence for gods, and can come to a conclusion based on its lack.

Philosophy and theology are not sciences. (The rest you mentioned are, IMO.) They don’t examine the natural-world evidence for gods. Well, theology doesn’t, at least. I think theology assumes at least one god as a starting point.

Philosophy examines the arguments for and against gods. Certain philosophers can (and have) come to the conclusion that (for example) it’s not necessary to treat “gods exist” as a fact claim (for whatever reason), so we can dispense with the requirement for evidence. But to someone who sees “gods exist” as a fact claim, this won’t do. This is why many of the atheists you mentioned dismiss philosophy as having anything to say about the “gods exist” question. (Yes, I’m oversimplifying a little bit.)

I don’t expect this to change your mind about Dawkins, just wanted to try to pin down the point of contention.

Jeffrey: “Since gay men tend to have female relatives with higher sex drives and larger numbers of children, the researchers suggested that homosexuality is an evolutionarily unfortunate (in the sense that failing to pass on genes is unfortunate) side effect of androphilia, or sexual attraction to men. Genes that increase androphilia would make women more likely to reproduce, but also make men more likely to be gay or bisexual.”

Um, but would this not apply also to lesbians? So lesbians should surely have male relatives with higher sex drives and larger numbers of children, since those gynophilia genes would make men more likely to reproduce, but women more likely to be gay/ bi.

Possibly, possibly not.  Remember that the default human form is female and (presumably) orientated towards males; “gynophilia” might be influenced by some hormone in the fetal environment, without a corresponding “androphilia” hormone. Or perhaps the default is to be orientated towards females, and you need the “androphilia” hormone to start finding muscular chests attractive. 

As regards evolutionary pressure, there’s a whole raft of issues as regards competition of gender-based reproductive strategies - I can see favouring the reproductive chances of female offspring at the expense of male offspring as a worthwhile strategy, assuming everyone else isn’t doing it.

Soviet Russia is not the be-all and end-all of all Marxist derived regimes.

Yes, but in Soviet Russia, fissures anal you

No but seriously, with all of these women running around cheating all of the time, where’s the love for Chewbacca?

Sincerely,
Chewbacca