In a message dated 1/26/00 4:08:08 PM Dateline Standard Time,
rylander@prolexia.com writes:
>Mike,
>While it's easy to overstate what these researchers are hypothesizing (and
>they see it as a hypothesis, not anything very firm, I believe), and also
>responses to it, would it be surprising if evil (as well as good) is very
>natural for humans? Don't Christians believe that humans have a sinful
>nature?
Yes, but do they attribute that sinful nature to God? If God used natural
selection to create humans, and natural selection created humans with
the proclivity to rape, then didn't God create humans with the proclivity to
rape?
>That fact doesn't simply excuse yielding to it, right?
From a naturalistic perspective, why not? From where comes this
ability to not yield to my genetic programming?
>Evolutionary psychology is often very speculative, but I think it's
>surprisingly insightful in its comments wrt human sexuality in general, even
>if not -necessarily- in this particular case.
I think it only has the appearance of being insightful due to the plastic-wrap
nature of darwinism. But the question is why not in this case? What's
the evidence with an insightful claim and what is missing in the rape claim?
BTW, it wouldn't take much to come up with an darwinian justification
for racism, now would it?
>(Myself, I've never found the typical feminist view of rape -- just a crime
>motivated by violence, not at all sex -- at all cogent, so that doesn't
>count much against this new theory for me. But then, I find feminist
>theories in general to be wanting....)
Feminist views are much more sophisticated than the media sound bites.
They argue that rape is more about degradation and humiliation than
sex. This is why men rape 80 year old women and other men. It's about
having power and using it to degrade/humiliate another human being
(this, BTW, is what upsets most rape victims and not the sex).
Clearly, it has a sexual element, but it's not simply about sex. This
view then gets reduced to the "it's violence, not sex" slogan.
Mike
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Wed Jan 26 2000 - 23:41:37 EST