Goofs When She "Chucksplained" Homosexuality

 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. 

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. 

Today's Materialism Enforcement Is Like Yesteryear's Heterosexuality Enforcement

I have seen many very surprising things in my life. One of the most surprising things occurred shortly after I arrived about 7:00 AM on September 11, 2001 at my desk on a high floor of one of the two towers of the World Trade Center. I never in a million years would have guessed that by noon both towers of the World Trade Center would be reduced to piles of smoking rubbish. Luckily I escaped using the stairways. Another extremely surprising thing I have seen in my life is a great change in public attitudes towards homosexuality in the United States. 

I seemed to have heard not a single word about homosexuality before I was about 13. There seemed to be no mention of it anywhere on TV or in the movies. No teacher at school said a word about it. During the 1950's and almost all of the 1960's there was a kind of a heterosexuality enforcement regime in place. In a variety of ways, society tried to depict homosexuals as people who were sick freaks. To understand how successfully society had stigmatized homosexuality, you can consider how infrequently people used the "easy out" of avoiding the Vietnam War draft by declaring themselves to be homosexuals. 

During the 1960's the US drafted young adults into service into the military. Around 1965 the Vietnam War began to become very unpopular among young men. People realized that many thousands of young men were being forced to serve in a dirty, dubious war on the other side of the globe, and opposition to the draft was massive. If you were a young man in those days it was hard to get out of the draft by claiming to be a conscientious objector, particularly if your family had no background with such a tradition. You could avoid the draft by fleeing to Canada or Sweden, and staying there for many years. Or you could take the "easy out" of just declaring yourself publicly to be a homosexual, which would allow you to stay in the US near your friends or family. The US Army at this time was treating homosexuality as a reason for rejecting a draftee. At this time society had so stigmatized homosexuality that few men avoided the draft by publicly declaring themselves to be homosexual. Society had whipped up so many anti-gay feelings among the populace that many a young man thought that he would rather flee to some other country (presumably never to return to the US) than declare himself to be a homosexual. 

Part of the shaming effect was achieved by the "Bible of psychiatry" (the DSM) listing homosexuality as a mental disorder, something it did until the early 1970's. Both the DSM-I published in 1952 and the DSM-2 published in 1968 had classified homosexuality as a mental problem. Throughout the 1960's gay sex was prohibited by law in 48 out of 50 of the US states.  

Finally in the 1970's things began to slowly change. During the 1970's about half of the 50 US states dropped their laws against gay sex. You can see the change in the laws in the diagram on the page here.  A key weakening of the heterosexuality enforcement regime came around 1974 when the American Psychiatric Association removed homosexuality from its list of mental disorders. In the 1970's we finally began to occasionally see a few positive depictions of gays, such as in an episode of "All in the Family" which was considered daring in its time. 

But the lessening of the heterosexuality enforcement regime proceeded quite gradually. During the 1990's gay sex was still illegal in more than a dozen US states, and it was not until 2003 that a US  Supreme Court decision (Lawrence vs. Texas) effectively deactivated all of the US laws against gay sex in private homes. In many US states there are still laws against homosexuality, but they are almost never enforced. I remember that in the 2004 US presidential campaign, Democratic candidate Howard Dean was widely considered to be too much of a radical largely because he had signed a law in Vermont merely allowing "civil unions" for gay people (which were like marriage in all but name). Finally in 2015 a Supreme Court decision allowed gay marriage throughout the United States. 

By now we have in the United States a collapse of the heterosexuality enforcement regime which prevailed for so long, and was still running very strong in the 1950's and 1960's. But such a heterosexuality enforcement regime still exists in some other countries. Now a Netflix user will occasionally see gay kissing occurring on regular TV shows, and there are annual public Gay Pride parades that are massively attended not just by gays but also by very many straight people eager to show their support for gay people. The degree of homosexuality acceptance we now see in the US would have seemed extremely shocking to someone in the mid 1960's, who never would have imagined that a tendency so despised and shamed in his time would be so accepted in our time. 

But there is another social conduct enforcement regime still in place, one that uses many tactics that allowed the heterosexuality enforcement regime to flourish for so long. This is the social conformity regime enforcing Darwinist materialism in academia and the US press. Just as the heterosexuality enforcement regime attempted for so long to depict a significant fraction of the population (perhaps 10% or more) as being shameful sinners or deviants to be despised,  the enforcers of Darwinist materialism attempt to depict a large fraction of the population as being rather like law-breakers to be despised.  That fraction of the population is the large fraction that rejects claims that there are material explanations for all the wonders of the mind and biology, or that reports observing or believing in paranormal phenomena. 

Heterosexuality enforcement was achieved largely through legalistic strategies and deviance-shaming strategies. The legalistic strategies involved passing laws against homosexuality, and by making dubious claims that homosexuality violates the law of God. This typically required quotations from the oldest books of the Old Testament, since Jesus said nothing about homosexuality. Equally dubious is the legalistic strategy of today's materialism enforcers. Such people attempt to persuade us that there are "rules of science" that allow only material explanations for natural phenomena. But there are no such rules of science. Unlike courts such as US federal courts which follow a formally written set of rules of evidence  such as the Federal Rules of Evidence, science has never followed formal rules of evidence or formal rules of procedure. The rules followed by different groups of scientists are hazy and vary from one field of study to another.  There is no formal rule in science that natural phenomena must be explained by material causes, nor has there been any tradition constantly followed by scientists of only explaining things through material causes. And if there was such a tradition, it would be merely habit, one that should be abandoned as soon as any evidence justified its abandonment.  The materialism enforcer pressuring people to follow the Way of Darwin (stated in some book written centuries ago) is like some heterosexuality enforcer pressuring people to follow the Way of Moses (stated in some book written centuries ago). 

In the US there was never any imprisonment of people for defying materialism, although in the period between 1920 and 1960 the Soviet Union engaged in very massive killing and imprisonment of people defying the ideology it called "dialectical materialism." Equally great persecution of those defying materialism occurred during the long reign of Chairman Mao in China, particularly during the Cultural Revolution period of the 1960's. 

Just as yesteryear's heterosexuality enforcer made a heavy use of derogatory deviance shaming, today's materialism enforcers make a heavy use of derogatory deviance shaming. Yesteryear's heterosexuality enforcer made a frequent merciless use of terms of abuse such as a six-letter term beginning with "f," a ten-letter term beginning with "c," and so forth to refer to gay people. Today's materialism enforcer makes frequent use of terms of contempt such as "creationist," "mystic" or "spiritualist." Often the terms are used inaccurately, in ways that mislead.  The term "creationist" will forever be entwined with the term "biblical creationist," so calling anyone a creationist is an attempt to insinuate that he is a fundamentalist. In fact, most of the people called "creationists" by materialism enforcers are not fundamentalists, and do not even appeal to scripture in their writings, but instead appeal to the facts involving stratospheric levels of systemic organization and fine-tuned complexity in biological organisms.  It is therefore misleading to refer to such people as "creationists." The term "mystic" has a technical meaning in religion or philosophy, and most of the people our materialists call mystics are not actually mystics. Similarly, most of the people called spiritualists by materialists are not believers in spiritualism, the belief that it is possible to communicate with the dead by use of mediums or seances.  

The shaming tactics of today's materialism enforcers continue full blast, and in a single article it is common to read a trifecta of mudslinging in which Darwinism defenders try to smear and shame their opponents by (1) inaccurately claiming or insinuating they are fundamentalists; (2) inaccurately linking them to vaccine opponents; and (3) attempting to compare them to cigarette manufacturers, about as groundless a comparison as you could make. "Shame, blame and defame" is the way materialists handle their critics.  Part of this program involves merciless attempts to gaslight observers of the paranormal by trying to paint them as people hallucinating. Then there are the endless attempts of materialists to try to paint those documenting the paranormal as frauds or cheats. 

A key element of heterosexuality enforcement was misrepresenting the degree of diversity in human sexuality. For very many years in the very rare instances when homosexuality was mentioned, people were told that only the tiniest fraction of humans were homosexual (1% was a commonly stated estimate). We continued to be told  this for many years after the Kinsey surveys had reported data suggesting that more than 10% of the population was homosexual or bisexual.  Something extremely similar occurs in regard to materialism enforcement. Materialism enforcers constantly make misleading claims that there is a "scientific consensus" in favor of the tenets of materialism. The term "consensus" is defined in different ways, including "unanimity of opinion" or "general agreement." There is no robust evidence that there exists any unanimity of opinion or any "general agreement" in favor of the tenets of materialism or Darwinism, either within the scientist population as a whole, or within the population of all biologists and psychologists. 

The only way to reliably determine the degree of belief by scientists in some doctrine is to do a fairly-designed secret ballot of scientists, but such ballots are virtually never done. Almost all attempts to poll scientists on their beliefs are guilty of procedural problems, such as failing to provide a secret ballot, or offering too limited a series of choices in an opinion poll, one of which should always be a best version of an alternative to a prevailing tenet, and one of which should always be the equivalent of "I don't know" or "I am not sure."  Rare opinion polls of scientists fail to meet such minimal standards, and will typically offer poll choices that include some "straw man" version of an alternative to dominant ideas, rather than some more credible alternative. Therefore all claims of anything like a consensus (either in terms of a unanimity of opinion or even a strong majority of opinion) in regard to the key claims of materialism or Darwinism are unfounded.  Any well-designed international secret ballot poll of a large branch of scientists (such as all biologists or all psychologists) would probably reveal that no such consensus exists, if you define "consensus" as either unanimity or near-unanimity of opinion. 

The heterosexuality enforcers of yesteryear did not want people to know that there were large thriving communities of gay people in places such as San Francisco or the Greenwich Village neighborhood of New York City. So I never heard or read a word about such communities until I was maybe 17 years old. Similarly, today's materialism enforcers do not want you to know facts such as that significant fractions of the population report out-of-body experiences, that large fractions of dying people or widows (and perhaps even a majority) report seeing apparitions of deceased family members or hearing their voices,  and that the reporting of dramatic paranormal experiences was incredibly common around the time Darwin was writing, being well documented by many a distinguished scientist such as Sir William Crookes and Alfred Russel Wallace, co-founder of the theory of evolution. So we hear of no such things in their writings. Today's materialism enforcers do not want you to know about the very large number of scientists who have expressed doubt or lack of confidence in claims that are claimed to be part of a mainstream consensus, so they avoid quoting statements like the scientist confessions I list in my post here. Such enforcers try to keep doubt about their dogmas "hidden in the closet." 

The heterosexuality enforcers of yesteryear frequently appealed to naturality, saying that you must follow "the natural way" of heterosexuality and not engage in "unnatural acts" such as homosexuality. The force of this reasoning started to diminish as people realized that gay people act in a way that is perfectly natural for them. Today's materialism enforcer also appeals to naturality, often calling his position "naturalism," which he defines as the belief that only nature exists. But strangely he tries to push you  towards some of the most unnatural conclusions a person could make. It is a natural human response to respond to examples of gigantic organization and vast fine-tuned complexity (such as we see everywhere throughout biological organisms) by assuming that they must be the result (directly or indirectly) of some purposeful intelligence rather than unguided accidental processes. It is the person wanting you to believe that such things are accidents of chance who is luring you to draw some conclusion that is extremely unnatural, in the sense of being against all of your common sense instincts.  As the evidence for very precise cosmic fine-tuning and stratospheric levels of information and well-arranged molecular machinery in living things grows greater and greater, it seems to become more and more apt to suspect there's nothing more unnatural than naturalism. 

Now we see our naturalists attempting to explain the very precise fine-tuning of the laws and fundamental constants of our universe by appealing to some notion that there exists some multiverse, described as an infinity or near infinity of other universes, having an infinite variety of conditions. Nothing could be more unnatural than this desperate maneuver. 

Heterosexuality enforcement often involved creating kind of "zones of exclusion" in which homosexuals were for all practical purposes forbidden. The heterosexuality enforcers would sometimes admit that quite a few people are homosexual, but would create zones of exclusion in which homosexuals were effectively told they were not allowed. Such zones might be the US Army (before it changed its policy to allow gay people), a church, a club, an office or a sports team. Similar "zones of exclusion" are nowadays created by the enforcers of materialism while having a "keep it in the closet" attitude. A person may tell you that it's your right to believe that the processes of biology are thoroughly purposeful (the blessings of some power greater than man), or that humans have immortal souls, but may tell you (by word or deed) that you can't express such views within his science class or can't express such views and expect to be hired or promoted or published as a biology teacher or professor. The heterosexuality enforcer effectively would say things like this about homosexuals:

• "Not in my office!"
• "Not in my parish!"
• "Not in my family!"
• "Not on my team!"
• "Not in my club!"

And today's materialism enforcer effectively says things like this  (while thinking of contrarian thinkers and embarrassing evidence to be excluded):

• "Not in my class!"
• "Not in my journal!"
• "Not in my staff!"
• "Not on my committee!"
• "Not on my panel!"
• "Not on my web site!"
• "Not in my conference!" 

The current state in regard to the enforcement of materialism in academia and the science press resembles the 1950's state regarding the enforcement of heterosexuality. Our universities and mainstream science publications are constantly painting a portrait of a purely materialist world, just as in the 1950's we were led to believe the US was a purely heterosexual country. Our mainstream science publications continue to try to shame, smear and defame reasonable critics of materialist claims as well as witnesses of paranormal phenomena. But yesteryear's heterosexuality enforcement regime has collapsed in the United States. And within a few decades the same thing may happen to today's materialism enforcement regime. 

We can imagine how things might be after such an enforcement regime collapses. It might be like this:

• Around 2050 it might be that no longer will high school and college students be instructed so that the staggering wonders of hierarchical systemic organization in the human body known to 21st century science are described as being due to explanations drafted in the 19th century by people who knew nothing about such epitomes of fine-tuned complexity and didn't even present theories of physical organization. 
• Around 2050 it might no longer be that mainstream science publications keep always writing that scientists will one day understand how a brain stores memories, an empty promise they have now been making for 75 years after the invention of the electron microscope which should have been sufficient to discover such a thing around 1950 if it was occurring.
• Around 2050 it might actually be that in university psychology courses and in high school psychology courses people will be taught fairly about the very large fraction of normal, honest human beings who have witnessed paranormal phenomena, without such people being depicted as crazy people or silly people, and without teachers trying to shame such people and make them objects of hate and scorn. 
• Around 2050 it might be that in biology textbooks and in mainstream science articles we will get a discussion of the many brain physical shortfalls that suggest the brain cannot be the source of phenomena such as instant memory creation, instant memory recall and the remembering of facts learned fifty years ago and experiences had decades ago, things such as the lack of any addressing or indexing in the brain, the very heavy signal noise in brains, the relatively slow average transmission speed of signals in the cortex, the unreliability of signal transmission across synapses, and the short lifetimes of synaptic proteins (1000 times shorter than the longest length of times humans can remember things). 
• Around 2050 it might be that in school classes people learn about the many respectable scientists who very carefully studied paranormal phenomena and reported observing things that defy the explanations of materialists.  Teachers might stop following a "nothing spooky allowed" rule, and might stop following a "shame the witnesses" rule in dealing with those report observing spooky things.  

If it seems unthinkable that such changes could occur, just consider how extremely dramatic have been the changes in the past 50 years in regard to the treatment by the press and academia of homosexuality. It is not possible to keep basic facts of human existence and human experience and human biology and human belief forever hidden in some closet. 

So Many Question Marks About Sex and Reproduction

Let us look at human sexual activity and human reproduction, and consider how little such things are understood by the modern biologist. The average male first becomes aware of sex when he finds rather suddenly around the age of puberty that he can get pleasure by rubbing his penis. We might think this part of sex is thoroughly understood by the modern biologist, although there are reasons for doubting that claim, since the origin of sexual organs is hard to explain (for reasons I'll discuss later in this post). But at least given the male anatomy, it is easy to understand why a male would engage in sexual self-stimulation, as such an act immediately produces pleasure. While it may seem that sexual attraction of a male to a female is also easy to understand, it is not so clear why that occurs.

Of course, if we think of a “final cause” type of reason why males should be sexually attracted to females, a reason involving end purposes, the reason is that such attraction helps to achieve reproduction which perpetuates the species. But there is no clear immediate cause for why a male should be sexually attracted so strongly to a female. From the standpoint of sheer physical pleasure, there is no obvious reason why a male should find it much more pleasurable to engage in sexual intercourse than to engage in masturbation.

There is no DNA explanation for why males should be attracted to females. Essentially DNA is an information system for storing the chemicals (amino acids) that make up proteins and similar molecules in the human body. There is no way that DNA could be expressing something like some “target of attraction” (such as a female form) that is passed on to males as a message to be attracted to some particular type of physical form. In some species the female emits a chemical or scent that causes arousal in the male, but that does not seem to occur to any major degree in humans.

There are other aspects of male sexual attraction that biologists have no good explanation for. Males are enormously interested in seeing unclothed females, but such an attraction has no obvious biological explanation. Women don't have to be naked to engage in sexual intercourse. No biological end is achieved when adult men are sexually attracted to naked female breasts. It is also puzzling that a man seems just as interested in engaging in oral sex with a female as vaginal sex. From a biological standpoint, this is hard to explain, given that oral sex achieves no reproductive end.

We can imagine a set of sexual behavior characteristics for males that would make the most sense from a biological, reproductive and evolutionary standpoint. They would be something like this:

1. Males would be very interested in having vaginal sex with females, but not at all interested in oral sex that has no reproduction value.
2. Males would be very interested in sex that achieves reproduction, but not interested in just looking at pictures or videos of other people having sex or looking at pictures or videos of naked women.
3. Males would have sex with as many women as they could over a lifetime to maximize their offspring, and would not commit to marriages restricting their sexual partners.
4. Males would be exclusively heterosexual.
5. Males would not be interested in any type of sex that involved birth control that prevented reproduction.
6. Males would have no interest in having sex with females older than 40 who are unlikely to become pregnant.

Actual male sexual behavior drastically departs from such a set of characteristics. In the USA a large fraction of all males spend more  time looking at pornography than they do engaging in any activity that might result in or lead to reproduction. The average single male seeks to have sex that does not result in reproduction, and is just as interested in oral sex as vaginal sex. Most men do commit to marriage that restricts their sexual partners. Very many men are sexually attracted to women over 40, and about 5% of the male population is homosexual.

It seems, then, that actual male sexual behavior is something very hard for a biologist to explain. What is particularly baffling from a biological explanation standpoint is homosexuality. Why should about five percent of the male population be not interested in having sex with females, but instead interested in having sex with males? The fact of widespread homosexuality defies the predictions of Darwinism, which predicts that organisms should have characteristics that maximize their reproduction.

The specific characteristics of human sexual behavior are hard-to-explain from a biological standpoint, and we can say the same thing about the part of human reproduction that occurs after the moment of conception. The fact is: none of us knows how babies originate. We merely know something a million times simpler: how women become pregnant. 

By saying “none of us knows how babies originate” what I mean is that no one knows how it is that a fertilized egg is able to progress to become a full-sized baby. In our society we have the speech custom of saying that when a child learns how a fertilized egg originates in a womb after sexual intercourse between a male and female, that child is said to have learned “where babies come from.” But what such a child has learned is how a female egg becomes fertilized, which is much different from how it is that a full-sized baby is able to originate in a womb.

Now, you may say, “I know where babies come from – it's more complicated than just sexual intercourse.” You may then tell me a story like the one below, which is often told in popular science literature.

"Babies are able to originate in the womb because the DNA blueprint of a human in read. Inside each person's DNA is a blueprint of a human body, a kind of recipe for making a human. So inside the womb what's going on is that the DNA blueprint or recipe is being read, and the baby appears in a form matching that blueprint."

But the idea that DNA is a blueprint or recipe for making a human is false. There are several reasons why it cannot be true. The first is that human DNA has been thoroughly analyzed in massive multi-year scientific projects such as the Human Genome Project and the ENCODE project, and no blueprint or recipe for making a human has been found in DNA. For example, there is no known place in DNA where it specifies that human males have one head or two legs or two arms or ten fingers or one penis or two eyes. The second reason is that the inherent expressive limitations of DNA means it could not possibly be stating a human blueprint or a recipe for making a human. Just as the physical limitations of an electric  traffic light restrict it to expressing only 3 commands (stop, walk, or proceed carefully), the physical limitations of DNA means that it is limited to expressing chemical information (such as the amino acids that make up a protein), and mean that DNA is not at all suitable for expressing three-dimensional body plans or some recipe for making three-dimensional structures. The third reason is that there is nothing in a human womb that would be capable of interpreting a human body plan if it were written in DNA.

Consider a construction blueprint, a big sheet of paper stating the plan for a structure to be built. It is never true that you can go to some uninhabited construction site with lots of bricks, nails, pipes and lumber, drop a blueprint in the middle of the site, and then expect a building to be built that matches the blueprint. For something to be constructed using a blueprint, there must be an intelligent blueprint reader smart enough to understand the complex instructions, and convert them into specific actions that result in the construction of the finished product. Blueprints don't build buildings; people build buildings using blueprints. It works the same for recipes. Recipes don't make food; humans make food after reading recipes.

Imagine if it were true that DNA stored a blueprint or recipe for making a human (and I have just given two reasons why this is not true). Even in such a case, we would not at all have an explanation for how a fertilized egg progresses to become a full-sized baby. For inside the female womb there would be nothing that we know of smart enough to read incredibly complex instructions such as a blueprint or recipe for making a human. Inside the womb there's no equivalent of a construction crew or a blueprint reader. A womb doesn't have a brain inside it smart enough to read a blueprint for making a human.

Moreover, the whole idea of a blueprint or recipe for making something as internally dynamic as a human is nonsensical. A blueprint is something that specifies the layout of a static building that doesn't move. A recipe is something for making some piece of food that doesn't move. But humans are enormously dynamic in several ways, including the growth of their bodies and the immensity of constant dynamic activity inside the body.  The activity of cells and organs is as complex as the busy activity within a huge defense plant or automobile factory.  You could never specify the enormous complexities of a human's internal biochemical dynamics through a static snapshot such as a blueprint. 

We therefore have four very good reasons for thinking that the “babies arise from the blueprints in DNA” idea is bunk. The first is that there is in DNA no blueprint or recipe for making a human or any of its organs or any of its cells.  DNA does not specify a body plan, and genotypes do not specify phenotypes (they merely influence phenotypes). The second reason is that given the inherent expressive limitations of DNA (which restrict it to chemistry), there is no way that DNA could be storing a blueprint or recipe for making a human. The third reason is that even if human DNA had a blueprint or recipe for making a human (which would be fantastically complex instructions), there would be nothing in a human womb capable of understanding such fantastically complicated instructions and executing them to cause a fertilized egg to progress to become a full-sized baby. The fourth is that a blueprint or recipe could only specify the state of a human organism at one instant, not the incredibly complicated tale of a human's internal dynamics or the developmental history of a human from a speck-sized egg to a full grown adult. 

So how is it that humans are able to reproduce? Nobody understands such a thing. We merely understand how a human egg can become fertilized, which is a vastly different thing from understanding human reproduction. We cannot say we understand human reproduction until we understand how it is that a fertilized egg is able to progress to become a full-sized baby, and no one has a credible explanation for how such a miracle of organization can occur.  Scientists don't even understand any low-level factors sufficient to explain the reproduction of a single cell, so how could they possibly understand the almost infinitely more complicated problem of the reproduction of a large visible organism built from fantastically complex arrangements of two hundred different types of cells? 

The lack of a prevailing theory of development (a theory explaining the progression from a newly fertilized egg to a full-sized baby) is confessed by the article on "Developmental biology" in the Stanford Encylopedia of Philosophy.  In that article we read the following:

"It is uncommon to find presentations of developmental biology that make reference to a theory of development. Instead, we find references to families of approaches (developmental genetics, experimental embryology, cell biology, and molecular biology) or catalogues of 'key molecular components' (transcription factor families, inducing factor families, cytoskeleton or cell adhesion molecules, and extracellular matrix components). No standard theory or group of models provides theoretical scaffolding in the major textbooks (e.g., Slack 2013; Wolpert et al. 2010; Gilbert 2010). The absence of any reference to a theory of development or some set of core explanatory models is prima facie puzzling. Why is it so difficult to identify a constitutive theory for developmental biology?"

The failure of attempts to explain morphogenesis in a bottom-up manner suggest the need for a novel top-down hypothesis about what causes a newly fertilized egg to progress to become a human -- the idea that every human being arises because of the action of some reality outside of a human being. Nature never told us that human beings arise because of "bottom-up" action of mere molecules. It was merely biologists who hastily assumed such a thing. 

There is another great mystery involving sex and reproduction: the origin of the human reproductive system. Scientists have no credible explanation for such a thing. The explanation that such a thing appeared because of natural selection (the supposed fact that fit things reproduce more) smells like circular reasoning. Since natural selection simply means the superior reproduction rate of a fitter organism, you cannot use such an idea to explain the origin of a reproduction system itself; for unless a reproduction system already exists, there can be no reproduction.

In the case of the human reproduction system, we have the “incipient stages” problem to the highest degree. The incipient stages problem is that natural selection typically cannot explain the earliest stages of a complex biological innovation, for such stages are almost always useless. What use would one tenth of a testicle be, or one tenth of a penis, or one tenth of a vaginal canal, or one tenth of a uterus? No use at all. Natural selection cannot explain the appearance of such things.

One of the gravest difficulties in explaining complex biological innovations is when you have a problem of interlocking dependencies, a kind of “which came first, the chicken or the egg” problem. We have that problem in the highest extent in trying to naturally explain the human reproduction system. For example, we may ask: which came first, the testicle or the ovary? We cannot imagine either appearing first because of natural selection, since both are useless without the other. The problem is not solved by imagining gradual changes from some earlier species with a different reproduction system, because the same type of “which came first, the chicken or the egg” problem will be found in that earlier species.

Scientists do not have a credible explanation for the origin of sexual reproduction in any organism. If a planet had only organisms engaging in asexual reproduction (like the fission reproduction that bacteria use), it would seem very probable that life on that planet would just continue to use such reproduction, without moving to sexual reproduction, which is vastly different. Asexual reproduction is actually a more efficient way for an organism to transmit its genes, so under Darwinian assumptions we would expect that a planet would just keep using asexual reproduction. 

When scientists try to offer explanations for how sexual reproduction appeared, they resort to "final cause" type explanations, that amount to kind of saying, "It happened because the end result was better." But they fail to provide a credible explanation of how nature could have moved from asexual reproduction to sexual reproduction, a transition that seems no more likely than a computer randomly switching its operating system from the Apple system to the Microsoft system.  

In imagining any such transitions, there is a gigantic general problem: what we can call the problem of nonfunctional intermediates. It is typically true that we cannot imagine a transition between two very different and highly-functional biological things without a passage through an intermediate state that is non-functional.  For example, if over very many thousands or millions of years one specialized protein molecule changed gradually to become some other specialized protein molecule, there would have been an intermediate non-functional state; but in such a state such a molecule would have tended to have fallen out of a gene pool, preventing the imagined transition. In a transition from asexual reproduction to sexual reproduction, such a problem of nonfunctional intermediates is particularly severe. For we cannot imagine any species passing through a nonfunctional intermediate state involving reproduction, one in which reproduction could not occur. As soon as such a state was reached, the species would become extinct. 

Let us consider an elementary example of nonfunctional intermediates during a transition from one functional thing to another. Suppose I have a red "stop" sign, and I wish to modify this to serve another function. I can do this in three steps:

(1) I paint over the "s" in "stop."
(2) I paint over the "p" in "stop" to make it "w."
(3) I then paint "zone" under what was originally the word "stop."

Now I have changed my functional "stop" sign to a functional sign saying "tow zone."  A transition has occurred from one functional state to another. But there was no way to do this without passing through a nonfunctional intermediate state.  The sign is functional when it says either "stop" or "tow zone." But the sign is nonfunctional as a traffic sign if it just said "top" or "tow" or "stopw" (as it would have after only step 1 or only step 2 or only steps 1 and 2 or only step 3).  If it is clear from this example that you cannot avoid passing through a nonfunctional intermediate when changing a very simple "stop" sign into a very simple "tow zone" sign, it should be far more clear that you could not avoid passing through a nonfunctional intermediate state when making a transition almost infinitely more complicated: a transition from asexual reproduction to sexual reproduction. 

We have in this essay a discussion of why sexual reproduction is baffling from the standpoint of evolutionary dogma.  The author (an orthodox Darwinist) states that " the payoffs of asexual baby-making are quite clear, while its male-and-female based alternative is loaded with liabilities."  These include the fact that with sexual reproduction, there's only a 50% chance of a favorable genetic trait being transmitted to an ancestor, as opposed to a 100% chance with asexual reproduction.  Eventually the author tries to argue not very convincingly that sexual reproduction might be superior in the very long term because "sex enables individuals to diversify their long-term bets." 

A similar approach has been taken by quite a few writers who try to suggest that ultimately in the very long run sexual reproduction might be superior. But as blind evolution lacks all foresight, there is no reason why it would ever make drastic coordinated changes in organisms because in the very long run (generations later) this might leave something superior.  Let us imagine a species that successfully reproduced asexually starting to gradually transform into a species that reproduced sexually. In the short term, this would be disadvantageous, surely leading to a decrease in reproductive success while the species was in some intermediate state in which asexual reproduction had been damaged, but sexual reproduction was not yet possible. So such a transformation would never occur under Darwinian assumptions. 

Darwinian evolution should always be as short-sighted as the law of gravity.  Gravity "wants things to fall," but gravity never causes a ball to roll up a mountain top so that it can have a bigger fall from a mountain top. Gravity doesn't have the foresight for such a thing. And similarly, since blind evolution should lack all foresight, we can imagine no plausible path by which an asexually reproducing species would ever transform into a sexually reproducing species. It is a fallacy to talk about some possible eventual superiority of sexually reproducing organisms, if you also maintain that a path leading to sexual reproduction (having negative short-term effects) was produced by a blind process in which immediate rewards are all that count.  So today's biologists lack any credible explanation for the origin of sexual reproduction. 

Overall it seems that the great majority of sex and reproduction is not well understood by biologists. You may start to realize how little we know about these topics when we consider that nowhere in DNA is there any such thing as a specification of the physical structure of either the male or female reproductive organs, nor is there any such thing in DNA as a specification of any of the cell types used by such organs. Since such things cannot be explained by "favorable DNA mutations" or any other changes in DNA, we can't even explain very well the things involved in the very beginning of reproduction.  A scientific web page states that "the complexity that we observe in cells can be compared to that of airplanes." The reproduction of a single eukaryotic cell is a marvel comparable to an airplane splitting into two full copies of itself, so that one airplane splits to become two functional airplanes as big as the first. We understand neither that little microscropic marvel nor the almost infinitely more impressive macroscopic marvel of a full-sized human growing from a tiny speck-like egg. 

Postscript: The recent Quanta magazine article "Why Sex? Biologists Find New Explanations" does nothing to change my previously stated opinion that biologists have no credible account for the origin of sex.  The discussion is purely advantage-oriented type of speculation, in which biologists speculate that sexual reproduction might be better for one reason or another. There is no coherent theory advanced as to how sexual reproduction could have naturally originated, or how life could have naturally made a transition from asexual reproduction to sexual reproduction.  In this regard the biologist is like someone claiming that a pumpkin and mice turned into a horse-drawn coach (as in the Cinderalla story), and who offer the "explanation" that this happened because the horse-drawn coach was nicer transportation. 

Homosexuality Hard to Explain Using Darwinian Orthodoxy

Under the thinking encouraged by many a modern materialist, almost everything about us can be explained by evolution and our genes. But there are difficulties in such thinking, one of which is properly accounting for the widespread existence of homosexuality.

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 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 would cause more reproduction, which would cause the gene to become more and more common (all other things being equal), as the gene was inherited more and more often; but the second gene would cause less reproduction, which would cause the gene to become less and less common, because the gene 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 Darwinian conventions 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, 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. In this article evolutionary biologist David P. Barash discusses some possibilities for explaining this paradox, but he just doesn't seem to be able to get to first base.

Barash first mentions “kin selection” as a possibility, saying of homosexuals “perhaps they are able to help their relatives rear offspring, to the ultimate evolutionary benefit of any homosexuality-promoting genes present in those children.” That's very speculative, and Barash gives no evidence to support it, except mentioning some tiny Samoan gay group which he claims “lavish attention upon their nieces and nephews.”

Then Barash mentions a “social prestige” theory, claiming that gay men became priests or shamans, and that “perhaps the additional social prestige conveyed to their heterosexual relatives might give a reproductive boost to those relatives, and thereby to any shared genes carrying a predisposition toward homosexuality.” But Barash admits that this idea is “lacking in empirical support,” which means there is no evidence for it.

Another theory for the survival of homosexuality is that it had something to do with what is called group selection. As Barash puts it, “Although the great majority of biologists maintain that natural selection occurs at the level of individuals and their genes rather than groups, it is at least possible that human beings are an exception; that groups containing homosexuals might have done better than groups composed entirely of straights.” Judging from that wording, it doesn't sound like that theory is on solid ground, since it contradicts an assumption made by the “great majority” of biologists.

Barash also mentions a “balanced polymorphism” explanation, saying “the possibility cannot be excluded.” Again, not a solid speculation, since no evidence is provided. He also mentions the possibility of “sexually antagonistic selection,” but says there is “no evidence for this idea.”

So while Barash mentions quite a few possibilities, he gives the reader no confidence at all that evolutionary biologists have any good explanation for why homosexuality has not died out because of evolutionary factors. Barash has nothing but strained speculations, and the only evidence he claims to have is a thin and dubious claim involving some tiny group in the distant islands of Samoa – a country with a total population of only about 200,000.

It would therefore seem that the large-scale existence of homosexuality is a significant problem for Darwinian orthodoxy. In fact, as I explained in this essay, Darwinian orthodoxy has quite a few difficulties accounting for numerous aspects of humanity, such as our abilities for math, language, philosophy, introspection, and tendencies such as spirituality, aesthetic appreciation, and altruism, most of which don't do much good from a “survival of genes” evolutionary standpoint. It would seem that while Darwinian concepts are a valuable contribution that explain a great deal, Darwinism may be seriously oversold as some kind of “this explains everything” theory to account for human nature.

These are hard to explain using only Darwinism

Could any unorthodox thinking lead us to other possibilities that might account for homosexuality?

I know of one unorthodox hypothesis about the cause of homosexuality. The hypothesis goes like this: (1) some people alive on Earth have had previous earthly lives; (2) a male homosexual is typically someone who was previously reincarnated as a female; (3) that person is attracted to males because of a residual attraction to males carried over from a previous life as a female. The only evidence for this hypothesis is the evidence for reincarnation, which may be much stronger than many people think, due to the research of Ian Stevenson at the University of Virginia.

Another unorthodox hypothesis is the hypothesis that a large part of the blueprint or schema for a human being is stored outside of a person's DNA. I explained this idea in my previous post entitled “Half of the Blueprint for You May Be Stored Outside Your Cells,” in which I pointed out the curious fact that the species of plant known as rice is believed to have 38,000 genes, but humans (almost infinitely more complicated) are believed to have only 23,000 genes. In that post I summarized this idea as follows:

Genes are a very important determinant of human nature. But as they are merely recipes for making proteins, we cannot at all explain all the exquisite features of human nature by assuming that the secrets of human nature are all stored in merely 23,000 genes. There may well be some completely undiscovered information storehouse that also is crucial in determining human nature – an unknown noncellular “dark genome.” When a human body and a full human mind comes into existence, it may require information from cellular genes and this mysterious noncellular“dark genome.”

If there is some kind of “dark genome” that might help to explain human nature, homosexuality could be an aspect of that, perhaps some permutation of human nature stored among various other permutations in that “dark genome” (here “dark” simply means currently undiscovered). This “dark genome” or “second genome” might be unrelated to reproduction rates, so within such an information storehouse the continued existence of traits related to homosexuality might be plausible enough.

Another unorthodox idea, which no doubt will infuriate some fundamentalists, is that homosexuality has been deliberately included as part of the human mixture by a higher power, who wants homosexuality to exist so that it can one day be a significant brake on out-of-control overpopulation.

These ideas are admittedly speculative – but no more speculative than the totally speculative musings of Professor Barash, who seemed “lost at sea” when trying to give an orthodox Darwinian explanation for why homosexuality still is widespread.

Postscript: According to the book Dataclysm: Who We Are by Christian Rudder, a Google researcher has reported that 5 percent of porn searches are for gay porn, and that such a percentage is consistent from state to state in the US. This data tends to back up both the idea that homosexuality is inherent, rather than something largely chosen (given the local drawbacks of "choosing to be gay" in some US states such as North Dakota and Mississippi); and it also suggests a relatively high gay population (5% rather than just 2%). Such data tends to accentuate the explanatory problem mentioned in this post.