Thursday, December 5, 2013

I Enjoy Poking Holes


I enjoy poking holes in dubious arguments, because the response is like clock-work: rationalizations and ad hominem attacks.

Let's take evolutionary psychology and evolutionary biology. The first is not a science and the second is. The first is often embarrassing, such as an article I once read that said the reason some women had big breasts is so that when they sagged as they got older, men would know they weren't fertile anymore. Apparently the author was totally serious about this.

That's just silly beyond belief. As if a man cannot tell a woman's age just by looking at her, no matter how she tries to hide it with plastic surgery and make-up and bras.

I have for a while been reading articles about how women want "Alphas" for "high quality genes" and "Betas" for "provisioning."

When people talk about genes and DNA and RNA in this manner it is clear they have no idea what genes and DNA and RNA are.

Genes, not surprisingly, bear a strong resemblance to computer code. Even Richard Dawkins, of all people, noticed that, when in River Out of Eden, he wrote, "The machine code of the genes is uncannily computer like. Apart from differences in jargon, the pages of a molecular-biology journal might be interchanged with those of a computer-engineering journal."

Yet there are those out there who seem to think they can read this computer code and know it says, "Women want Alpha genes and Beta provisioning."

What they are doing is looking at the behavior of a very small minority of women and then trying to rationalize it as being somewhere in their genes, and being in their genes, applies to all women.

I just can't wait until those genes are found, along with those genes for being an "Alpha" and a "Beta" and "Gamma" and "Omega" and all the rest.

My father, for example, was close to being movie-star handsome. I am not. But I am bigger than he was, taller, heavier, and a lot smarter. Why such a difference?

When I asked one woman her opinion about this, she told me I must have inherited it from a distant ancestor. When I asked her where that "distant ancestor" got the genes from in the first place, I got crickets.

To make the jump from imagined genes to behavior is a gigantic and completely unwarranted leap. Those there are those who do believe it, and they are convinced they are right.

Genes turn themselves on and off. It's been recently found some can be turned on by meditation. They can apparently be turned on and off in the womb, which is known as "fetal programming."

When one is stuck in a mental straightjacket, that person is not interested in finding the truth. They are interested in complete security, which means giving up the ability to think and instead believe what "authority figures" have told them.

I hope in the long run all these very dubious beliefs get settled and the truth emerges. But it's going to take a long time.

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