Does Evolution Condone Rape?

[Maynard Keenan]

In the animal kingdom the goal is get your sperm into a female. Male animals will do this in whatever way possible. If a female is unwilling she'll either get away, fight it off, or get "raped." It has nothing to do with evolution or creation.

 

[Parsimonious]

In the animal kingdom the goal is get your sperm into a female. Male animals will do this in whatever way possible. If a female is unwilling she'll either get away, fight it off, or get "raped." It has nothing to do with evolution or creation.

It has EVERYTHING to do with evolution. Behavior evolves if something affects reproductive success it is under selection pressure. Understanding mating behavior requires analyzing things from an evolutionary perspective. It gives us a fundamental understanding of the behavior.

Your right it has nothing to do with creation, "the fall" is a pretty meaningless causative framework.

 

[JohnR7]

There is some fascinating evidence that shows that women will extra-pair copulate during the peak fertile phase of their cycle to try and get a "good genes" guy to be the father of the baby, and then get a good investor, but poor quality male, to raise the child. So investment in offspring is a antagonistic relationship and is a problem no matter who the father is.

I remember seeing that. The men that a women will choose to father their child maybe different from the men she will choose to help her raise that child. Men in general often are willing to raise another mans child. Women in general are not willing to raise another women's child under those same conditions. I remember when I was a single parent there were women who started to show interest in me but when they found out I was a single parent they lost interest. They did not want anything to do with that. Unless they had lots of kids of their own and then they saw it as sort of a trade off. That is why so often you end up with yours, mine and ours when it comes to kids.

 

[Parsimonious]

I remember seeing that. The men that a women will choose to father their child maybe different from the men she will choose to help her raise that child. Men in general often are willing to raise another mans child. Women in general are not willing to raise another women's child under those same conditions. I remember when I was a single parent there were women who started to show interest in me but when they found out I was a single parent they lost interest. They did not want anything to do with that. Unless they had lots of kids of their own and then they saw it as sort of a trade off. That is why so often you end up with yours, mine and ours when it comes to kids.

Thats sort of whats going on but not exactly. Women will often try and pretend the kid really IS the investors kid.

Check out this thread I started a while ago for more details:

http://www.christianforums.com/t1989851

 

[ChrisPelletier]

The reference to the “by-product” quote I am not sure about. Is that a direct quote? I can assure you that Thornill most adamantly does NOT believe rape is simply a by-product but exhibits all the signs of an adaptation.

Yeah, direct quote from Randy Thornhill in an interview a couple years after the paper was published. From “Straw men and fairy tales: Evaluating reactions to A Natural History of Rape.” It might be a pet idea of his (all scientists have ideas on how things work) but even he has to concede that he didn’t find evidence supporting rape-adaptation.

Lets first address your response to there being physical adaptation. There is absolutely no reason to think that having a psychological or behavioral adaptation has to correspond to having a physical adaptation. Why does this have to be the case?

Well there is some reason to think so. In different species psychological selection has had physical selection directly tied in with it or tied in as a byproduct. Hyenas are an example of the byproduct scenario. The aggressive behavior is accompanied by pseudo-penises and other testosterone associated products. There are just several mechanical mechanisms in other organisms that ensure efficient delivery of “the goods.” I’m just saying that I expect to see some mechanism of the same persuasion.

In addition I think it would be very helpful if you say how you would define an adaptation. How you would look to tell the difference between by-products, spandrels, exaptations, ect. The approach that Evolutionary Psychology uses, as well as a great deal of evolutionary biology is the approach of functional design. Adaptations are the result of direct selection and the only evolutionary mechanism that can develop function design is direct selection. Do you agree with this approach or not? I think that might be helpful to get straight.

I agree with the definition.

The functional design is specifically related to the consequences of rape. This design and specificity is strong evidence for adaptation against rape. If women have specific adaptations against rape it means that rape was consistent enough to be a cause of selection.

I didn’t pick this out from the papers.

This is only half the evidence to work with. There is the direct evidence of the analysis of men.

Haven’t seen evidence for it.

And perhaps a more holistic question to ask is do you believe humans have context specific psychological and behavioral adaptations at all?

Hard to say. I think that general responses are prevalent, but I can’t rule out the context specific ones either. I just haven’t seen a context specific reaction paper.

Under these conditions rape as a CONTIGENT plan could evolve.

The contingent circumstances would have to happen very frequently for this to occur. Usually only one method of procreation is ever selected for in a population (the most advantageous)

Yes, actually, personally only in the orangutan and scorpion fly, but there are many documented cases of rape in animals. But the OP specifically asked us not to go to far down this route. But cross-species comparisons of rape and rape behavior can be very interesting and informative when analyzing human rape behavior.

There is a psychological factor involved in rape no present in other organisms, lets try and stick to humans as much as we can.

In the animal kingdom the goal is get your sperm into a female. Male animals will do this in whatever way possible. If a female is unwilling she'll either get away, fight it off, or get "raped." It has nothing to do with evolution or creation.
Well it actually does matter, it may or may not be a method of selection. Hopefully we’ll get some references from research done on the topic and find out.

Rape is disadvantageous to women but that says NOTHING about its advantage to men.

On a final note, going along with my idea that I would expect to see a physical change, selection on just males would have to be quite prominent to not effect female selection. This would also further support my idea that selecting for male adaptations would include some physical traits. But then again I might be wrong, I just haven’t seen the support for this view.

 

[tocis]

I guess there is not a problem, but I dont see your argument. If most rapes are of a "reproductive" variety where is the problem for adaptation.

My original point was that rape is not (necessarily) motivated by desire to procreate. If it was, why when would there be numerous cases where procreation is impossible?

And if traits that benefit the individual with in a given context at the expense of the group can evolve then the relative violence or dominance of a trait as it effects "society" doesnt matter in the equation.

My point here was (supposed to be? Maybe I wasn't clear enough... ) that, if there is a kind of genetic predisposition toward violence, it probably will not have an advantageous effect on the population at large. Whether it would have no effect at all or be a disadvantage I didn't want to state.

 

[Oonna]

Just so you know, Rape is a act of violence just like any other act of violence. The "tool" is just the penis. Most Perps cant even "finish the job" and its all about power and control, not making babies...


Here are the myths and Realitys of rape

http://www.calcasa.org/34.0.html

And for you men that want to keep your daughters and mothers safe
http://www.mystrength.org/

 

[madarab]

Sexual assault of any kind is an issue that almost everyone is going to feel strong negative emotions about. Even though it might be scientifically and socially advantageous to understand the phenomenon so that we can reduce or even eliminate it, it would be very hard to find either researchers or reviewers who could do so without bias or prejudice about the subject. In a large public forum such as this one, there will almost invariably be people who either were victims of sexual assault or close to people who were, making reasoned discussion even more difficult. I'm not even sure that it is wise to raise the subject here.

 

[JohnR7]

Most Perps cant even "finish the job" and its all about power and control, not making babies...

I would rather imagine that if a rapest was not able to actually penetrate the female, that would be of little consolation to the female he was trying to rape.

Sometimes it maybe considered a very fine line between what could be considered rape. I remember a guy telling me once that if a women got into bed with him and then did not want to have sex, he would rape her because he did not think that the court system would prosecute him in that situation.

 

[Nathan Poe]

I would rather imagine that if a rapest was not able to actually penetrate the female, that would be of little consolation to the female he was trying to rape.

Agreed, but the point is that what we would call rape, at least among humans, is not, from an evolutionary perspective, an efficent way of reproduction, since it doesn't get the job done.

Sometimes it maybe considered a very fine line between what could be considered rape. I remember a guy telling me once that if a women got into bed with him and then did not want to have sex, he would rape her because he did not think that the court system would prosecute him in that situation.

No means no at any point along the way. Your friend is likely to find himself in San Quentin, where he'll probably have a 300-pound cellmate who also has difficulty understanding the word "no."

 

[JohnR7]

No means no at any point along the way.

Maybe now a days. He told me this more then 30 years ago and things were a little bit different back then from what they are now.

 

[JimmyKoKoPop]

Maybe now a days. He told me this more then 30 years ago and things were a little bit different back then from what they are now.

This person who told you this has a point. Rape in that situation is very hard to prove, and it is quite possible he'd get away if brought to trial.

 

[JohnR7]

This person who told you this has a point. Rape in that situation is very hard to prove, and it is quite possible he'd get away if brought to trial.

He never went to jail, I run into him from time to time. About 5 years ago I talked with him and he is still a free man. Actually, he is the older brother of a friend of mine, but I got to know him also along the way. I think he is married now, so maybe he does not play around with the women as much as he did when he was younger, but I don't know because I did not ask him.

 

[Nathan Poe]

He never went to jail,

Meaning he never got caught, nothing more.

You tell me if you think his attitude was morally right or wrong.

 

[dlamberth]

Evolution makes no statement on morals. All it is is a tool to explain how things evolved.

With that said, what I'm going to add now is purly my own thoughts and mean absolutly nothing other than my own musings.

It is my belief that an aspect of us Human Beings is that we have an opportunity to step out of karma. Meaning that we can have our own own influence on some of the evolutionary influences that effect Homo Sapians. For instance, what might we develop into if we truly took the teachings of Love, Compassion and Forgiveness that Jesus tried to impart upon us to heart? Personally, I'd say that we become more fully human.



.

 

[Matthew410]

Just so you know, Rape is a act of violence just like any other act of violence. The "tool" is just the penis. Most Perps cant even "finish the job" and its all about power and control, not making babies...


Here are the myths and Realitys of rape

<www calcasa org/34.0>

And for you men that want to keep your daughters and mothers safe
<www mystrength org>

Whether or not "evolution" condones rape, God does not! Thanks for the great website Oonna. Maybe educating men like this can change the course of "evolution."

 

[JimmyKoKoPop]

*deleted*

 

[Oonna]

Whether or not "evolution" condones rape, God does not! Thanks for the great website Oonna. Maybe educating men like this can change the course of "evolution."

Your welcome Matthew410, i hope you will share it with your friends.

 

[ChrisPelletier]

Because there hasn’t been any activity in this thread for a while I just want to wrap it up with some closing commentary.

I started this thread because I saw a ludicrous claim made: rape was a method utilized for selection during human evolution. This by itself is a point for debate (was rape a selection device?), but the use of this theory was not to debate whether or not rape was a selection devise; rather, this point was used to say evolution and the people who believe in it are morally bankrupt.

I intended to raise two issues: 1 – Evolution has no moral standpoint, thus this argument should not be used in the creation/evolution debate. Whenever it is used in a debate its application is more “mudslinging” than debate. 2 – Rape is not a selection devise as shown in scientific studies.



Here are some responses to various replies:

Just so you know, Rape is a act of violence just like any other act of violence. The "tool" is just the penis. Most Perps cant even "finish the job" and its all about power and control, not making babies...

I realize rape is an act of violence. I believe with my previous posts I was able to convey, just as you said, that rape is not for making babies.

Sexual assault of any kind is an issue that almost everyone is going to feel strong negative emotions about. Even though it might be scientifically and socially advantageous to understand the phenomenon so that we can reduce or even eliminate it, it would be very hard to find either researchers or reviewers who could do so without bias or prejudice about the subject. In a large public forum such as this one, there will almost invariably be people who either were victims of sexual assault or close to people who were, making reasoned discussion even more difficult. I'm not even sure that it is wise to raise the subject here.

Bias of the researchers is a hard thing to nail down. The good thing is that the papers posted by me earlier in the thread have been reviewed many times and come under hard scrutiny. Through all this the papers still stand.

As to whether or not we should raise the subject? I think we need to. I certainly don’t want to offend anyone who has been assaulted, but I also don’t want anyone to use rape erroneously in any argument.

 

[serventofthelord]

I don't see how evolution condones rape. It isn't a system of morality, it's just how evolutionists believe things are. Saying it condones rape is like saying that believing people die condones death. Evolutionism might be untrue but that doesn't make evolutionists evil monsters who want to go around killing and raping.