Aids, Condoms don’t work according to logic of evolution.

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So can Father Time

always remember to unroll the condom first

Well... behavior isn't purely biological. There's a very definite cultural component to human behavior, despite the possible biological basis for many aspects of human behavior.

In most species of social insect, producing a large number of offspring, the majority of the offspring are "low quality" and are essentially workers and soldiers; a disposable caste.

There are fewer "high quality" offspring because of the resources required. It doesn't work exactly that way in humans, but it's something to think about.

From an evolutionary perspective, condom use can actually increase the chances of success for future offspring if the couple or group waits until they have access to enough resources to ensure that their offspring will have quality food and education.

Nah, we'll just feed their litters ritalin to make them less like their parents. One of these days, we'll have to come up with some method of gene repair, so we can fix whatever goes wrong with them.

Ironic statement to make on an AS forum.

While I understand where this thread is coming from, there are a few issues...

First of all, if Biblical doctrine is followed then AIDs and condoms are no longer an issue - why? Because sex without marriage is not supposed to happen, and if sex spreads AIDs, which can hurt or kill someone, if it isn't properly managed with expensive regimes of medication, it is also against Biblical doctrine to have sex with someone if you do have AIDs... so all things told, all this really proves is that people say that they follow christian values, but in truth, they use it as a front.

I have noticed that many religious people act very much holier than thou - that being said, each has his/her own skeletons to hide.

Hypocrites all, you might say - but aren't we all?

Religion is an idealistic mold that completely forgets the driving forces of man, and tries to stifle them, instead of executing them responsibly. As well, it gives no rationale as to why - the result being a bunch of people who fail to meet a standard that they didn't understand why they were trying to meet in the first place.

Pretty messed up, all things told, but that is only the tip of the iceberg.

Lauchlin

I couldn't agree more.

"With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But in order for good people to do evil things - That takes religion."

Do you regard success chance of surviving to adulthood. Nature does not care if the offspring can afford a sports car. We are living in a age where virtually any single-parent from a poor environment can garantee their children will all servive to adulthood. Quantity has a quality of its own.

If you study evolution, you might come across different 'evolutionary strategies.'

The r-strategy is to produce lots of offspring, and to have a short life cycle ... it aims to get in quick, reproduce quick. In the plant kingdom, r-strats are the weeds.

Other species are k-strategy. They produces fewer offspring, but invest more in them (like oak with acorns). These species are relatively slow growing compared to r-species, but are often larger and much longer lived.

Both strategies work, depending on the habitat niche. Overall, I do think the k-strategy is more highly evolved. An acre of oak usually does more photosynthesis than an acre of weeds - which means they are more successful by that measure. The size of brains in mammals is linked to the length of childhood. Longer childhoods lead to more brain development, but is costly in terms of resources. Primates are very much a k-strategy, and the primates with relatively small brains are r-species (rhesus, macaque monkeys).

When resources are abundant, everyone prospers. When the economy tightens, who suffers the most? The poor. Having fewer kids increases the possibility of breaking out of poverty, and will benefit future generations.

The environment has changed in the Western society. One where the poor is capable of out breading the rich.

Smarter more powerful nations are not starting wars with poorer western countries. Thus weak countries are not being taken over by the strong, thus staying weak. Intelligence, is less of a requirement for survival for those nations. As I already mentioned children of single parents are all living and surviving to adulthood. Intelligence is less of a requirement there.

It is interesting to think about where we would be today if there was no war between nations. It isn’ as good as you think

Perhaps this is evolution's way of 'telling' us that being any more sensible/smart doesn't have an evolutionary advantage, and that the species needs more people who will just bonk and make people without thinking about their careers, other plans etc.

While this would be inconvenient given the over-population, evolution isn't known for reducing numbers *before* it runs out of resources - a species' reproduction rate is usually stopped *by* the lack of resources.

That would require African style famine

Yes, I think there will be more famines like the ones happening in Africa, as over-population becomes more of a problem all over the world.

War does have an effect on the population. But that wasn't what I was thinking.

If an oldfashon war happened American vs China in a world with food shortage. China would probably win as the Americans are bigger thus need more food then the tiny chinese. A few generation of such wars would leed to humankind evolving smaller as a result of the food shortage.

From what I understand about evolution, it is basically reproduction-driven. Every animal and plant breeder knows this, which is why they carefully choose which ones will reproduce and which ones will not. This is how breeds come about.

I don't know how many people are aware that one reason the early birth control pioneers focused so much on limiting births to poor women (especially minorities) was eugenics. While they made a big deal about their supposed compassion for these women and wanting to ease their burden (and it is true that the more children you have the more likely you are to be trapped in poverty), it was also no secret that they felt that they were doing the human race a favor by discouraging reproduction among those they considered inferior. Didn't Margaret Sanger say her goal was to encourage more children from the fit and less among the unfit? It does, however, seem like her scheme backfired, and that the opposite is happening. Anyway population control and fear that the wrong people are breeding too much is as old as the Bible (see the first chapter of Exodus).

What I haven't seen discussed anywhere is how religion affects the evolution of the human sex drive. I know many Christian women who have resigned themselves to lifelong abstinence because they are unable to find a partner who believes in the traditional Christian teaching of no sex before marriage. These women are not reproducing. Same with priests and nuns and others who have forsaken sex for religion. Presumably some of these people have chosen this lifestyle because they don't have much of a sex drive. That means those that are reproducing have stronger sex drives. Will the human sex drive intensify even further in the future? And is that why people are finding the traditional sexual teachings harder and harder to follow?

I probably have something to say about this subject but doing some cooking at moment