The English word "mansplaining" means to attempt to explain something to someone, typically a woman, in a manner regarded as condescending or patronizing, typically in a way that is unconvincing. I can coin a similar term: the term "chucksplaining." Chucksplaining can be defined as to attempt to explain something using Darwinist assumptions, typically in a way that is unconvincing. "Chuck" is a nickname for Charles, and Charles Darwin was the father of Darwinist thought.
We had an example of chucksplaining in a recent post at the Daily Kos site, a post you can read here. It is a post entitled "Evolutionary Biology-Homosexuality as Necessary Species Adaptation." The author (a user with the user name of FarWestGirl) attempts to explain the existence of homosexuality. The existence of homosexuality has always been one of many thorns in the side of Darwinists, because explaining the phenomenon is very challenging under Darwinist assumptions.
Darwinism is centered around the idea that evolution slowly increases the prevalence of traits which tend to increase an organism's likelihood to survive until reproduction (and also the likelihood of the organism's reproduction). So suppose there were two genes (or set of genes) in different organisms of a species, one which caused very strong sexual interest, and another which caused complete lack of sexual interest. According to conventional evolutionary theory, the first gene (or set of genes) would cause more reproduction, which would cause the gene (or set of genes) to become more and more common (all other things being equal), as the gene (or set of genes) was inherited more and more often; but the second gene (or set of genes) would cause less reproduction, which would cause the gene (or set of genes) to become less and less common, because the gene (or set of genes) would be inherited much less frequently.
How, then, can we account for homosexuality using such principles? Surveys indicate that between about 2% and 6% of the population are gay or bisexual. Given that very many gay people would never answer “Yes” when asked if they are gay, the actual percentage may be even higher.
Today homosexuality is generally believed to be an inherent tendency, not a choice; so under Darwinist assumptions we have little choice but to assume that homosexuality has a strong genetic component. It has been estimated that homosexuals reproduce at only 20 percent of the rate that heterosexuals reproduce. It would seem that a straightforward calculation using Darwinian conventions lead us to the conclusion that homosexuality should have died out long ago. Whatever genetic basis might be behind homosexuality should have become less and less common, because of the vastly lower reproduction rate of homosexuals. It would seem, therefore, under Darwinist assumptions that homosexuality shouldn't exist, at least not in its current prevalence of perhaps 5% of the population.
Biologist J.B.S. Haldane imagined a case in which 99.9 percent of the population had one gene, and only .1 percent of the population had a second gene. If there was some reason why the second gene was 1% more likely to be inherited, then within 4000 generations, things would completely switch around so that 99.9 percent of the people would end up with the second gene, and only .1 percent would end up with the first gene. The example illustrates how strongly evolution tends to get rid of genes that are less likely to be passed on to descendants.
So how can we account for homosexuality under conventional Darwinian assumptions? Some theories have been suggested, but they haven't been very convincing.
Just like all the other Darwinists trying to explain homosexuality, the Daily Kos writer FarWestGirl flounders. Referring to homosexuals, she offers this explanation:
"If 10 to 20% of the group had little or no interest in the type of activity that results in offspring, the benefits to the group’s long term survival are threefold- fewer children born for the tribe to support, so decreased competition for resources, more adults contributing to the support of the offspring that are produced- a concentration of resources, increasing the per capita survival rate for offspring significantly. And finally, it prolongs the time it takes to overpopulate an otherwise desirable territory."
This reasoning makes no sense. It is an attempt to convince us that if a population has fewer children, that would be beneficial for the population's survival prospects. The opposite is the truth. The more offspring produced by a population, the higher its survival prospects.
Notice the "heads I win, tails you lose" kind of reasoning here. I guess it kind of works like this: if something in biology increases the reproduction rate of a species, the theorist says that was an adaption caused by evolution; and if something in biology decreases the reproduction rate of a species, the theorist also says that was caused by evolution, to prevent overpopulation problems. (What is being imagined here: a wise old Mother Evolution with powers of foresight?) Similarly, evolutionary biologists offer so-called natural selection as their explanation of enormous bursts of rapid biological innovation such as the Cambrian Explosion. But when you point out all the species which have not changed in eons, they make opposite-sounding statements such as the statement by one evolutionary biologist that "there is no evidence that natural selection is in relentless pursuit of more complex molecules, cells, or organisms."
Although the DailyKos writer (FarWestGirl) does not use the term "group selection," it is just such a concept she is appealing to. There is an internal war within evolutionary biology over whether group selection is a credible concept. That war is described in the wikipedia.org article on group selection, which you can read here. That article notes, "The vast majority of behavioural biologists have not been convinced by renewed attempts to revisit group selection as a plausible mechanism of evolution."'
The average person may be surprised to hear of so bitter a fight within evolutionary biology over the existence or nonexistence of group selection. He may say, "Huh? These are the guys always boasting about their consensus!"
Along the way in her attempted explanation, the Daily Kos writer repeats one of the worst false claims of Darwinists: the myth that DNA or its genes specify anatomy and behavior traits. She repeats that myth when she says, "In straightforward genetics the genome is contained in our DNA, it’s the code book or template for development and maintenance of the organism." She repeats that falsehood when she states things like this: "So our genome, our DNA, codes for hands with four fingers and a thumb," No, our genome (our DNA) does not do any such thing as coding for our hands (that is, specifying the structure of our hands). DNA does not contain any anatomy specifications. DNA and its genes only contain low-level chemical information such as which amino acids make up a protein. DNA and its genes (the genome) is not a blueprint, recipe, program or template for the building of a body, and is not "a template for development and maintenance of the organism."
The reason why Darwinists keep on repeating the appalling lie that DNA is a specification for building bodies is explained in my widely read post "Why We Were Told So Often the Huge Lie That DNA Is a Specification for Building Humans," which you can read here. In that post I quote more than 40 scientists, doctors and PhD's who all deny that DNA and its genes are any such thing as a blueprint, program or recipe for building a human body. By claiming that "our genome, our DNA, codes for hands with four fingers and a thumb," the DailyKos writer FarWestGirl has repeated one of the worst "old wives' tales" of Darwinist literature, a groundless myth that Darwinists keep senselessly repeating, even though many authorities have pointed out its untruth.
Once we realize the truth about DNA, genomes and genes, any Darwinist explanation of homosexuality becomes all the more obviously untenable. The truth is that very few of the instinctive behaviors of organisms can be explained using genetic or Darwinist explanations. DNA and its genes do not specify the anatomy of organisms, and also do not specify high-level behaviors or mental capabilities of organisms. So no credible story of the origin of the human race can be centered around the idea of a gradual accumulation of random beneficial changes in an organism's DNA, genome or genes.
The DailyKos writer FarWestGirl does correctly point out that homosexuality is an innate kind of thing, not something that someone chooses as they choose to play a particular sport. But the fact that some people wrongly depict homosexuality as a choice does not redeem FarWestGirl's bungling Darwinist attempt to explain why homosexuality exists. You do not justify your messed up conception of some phenomenon by pointing out how others have a different messed up conception of that phenomenon.
Sexual attraction is an example of an instinct. As I discuss in my post of five years ago "A Soul Might Explain Instincts, but DNA and Brains Cannot," the world of biology is full of all kinds of astonishing instincts, which are very often beyond any credible explanation involving brains or genes. Given how DNA and its genes specify merely low-level chemical information, we can imagine no credible genetic explanation why some humans would be sexually attracted to their own sex rather than the opposite sex. Attempts at neural explanations of instinct are in general unbelievable, particularly given that the most astonishing examples of instinct often are seen in insects with the tiniest brains. Commenting on the failure of evolutionary explanations for how there arose instincts, the physician Gustave Geley put it this way:
"It is well known that the instincts of animals are as innumerable as they are marvellous... Thanks to instinct, an animal of any given species always acts conformably to the genius of its kind, sometimes in a very complex manner, for attack, defence, subsistence, reproduction, and so forth. The essential instinct is identical in all the individuals of the same species, and seems as refractory to variation as the species itself. For each species it constitutes a psychical characteristic as well defined as the physical. Now the origin of instincts is no more explicable by natural selection or by the influence of the environment than the formation of species. This can be best observed in the insect."
Geley was referring to wonders of instinct such as the hive building of honeybees and the most astonishing and extraordinarily complex multi-stage migration instincts of the monarch butterfly, involving a 4000-mile annual migration divided up among four generations. An account of that migration (one of nature's most stupendous wonders) can be read here.
We might move towards a credible-sounding speculation of why homosexuality exists by using that old computer programmer's phrase, "It's not a bug -- it's a feature" (a term meaning that what you thought was a defect was something deliberately put in the program). Homosexuality is so widespread that we can reasonably suspect that it is an intended feature of our world, a part of the Grand Design for planet Earth and the spiritual journey of some of its inhabitants.
A reasonable speculation is that part of the reason we are here on this troubled planet is so that we can face a variety of difficult challenges. Why we would benefit from facing such challenges is a tough question, but part of the answer might be that there is no glory in doing easy things, but only glory in doing hard things. So maybe we are here partly to win eternal glory for ourselves, by undergoing many hard and difficult challenges. Such challenges may come in a thousand different forms. One of those challenges might be living as a member of a minority group in a society in which your minority is unliked or maybe even despised. Those who face such a challenge may win special glory for themselves that they will enjoy in some afterlife that follows this life.
That may be part of the reason there are things such as different sexual orientations and different skin colors and different levels of physical and mental fitness -- because it is part of the Grand Plan that some people may face the challenge of living despite disadvantages or living as a member of a disliked or hated minority, a challenge that may have an eventual payoff (within an afterlife) exceeding the earthly pain endured. Or there may be any number of reasons why people might (in the long run of eternity) benefit from undergoing any of a thousand types of difficult challenges here on Earth, with living as a member of an unliked minority being only one of very many types of such challenges.
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