Homosexuals are Evolutionary Failures?

Philosophy Forums Society, Government, and Economics
1

Homosexuals will not pass on their genes to the next generation.

In evolutionary terms they are failures, unfit to survive. Homosexuals are naturally selected by the invisible hand of Nature or Evolution, to cease and to be eliminated from the gene pool of the homo sapien species. Even if we say homosexuality is a response by evolution to over population, it still does not answer why a particular set of genes are selected for termination and not another. We can only conclude that for reason obscured and perhaps unknowable to us, homosexual genes are detrimental to the good of the entire species.

And if Evolution have so decreed, we then have a scientific basis to socially treat homosexuals as outcasts, to discriminate them in terms of access to resources, or not to give them equal rights and opportunities to survival and other socially valuable statues and symbols, in any particular social grouping. Is this not a logical and reasonable conclusion to make? And further this explains homophobia and other social discrimination that we see, for they are nothing but just the outworking of evolution in our species.

The only scientific argument for the presence of homosexuals in society is that they somehow contribute to the increase survival of the social grouping in a particular generation.

An example that comes to mind are the worker ants or worker bees in a colony which do not mate and reproduce, but are slaves throughout their entire lives. Perhaps with the chores of gathering food and constructing shelters totallu undertaken by sexless members of the society, the queen, and other fertile members, of the colony can have complete focus on mating and reproduction, and increasing the overall success rate of the entire colony and thus the species.

Now if this is a model from evolution should we not find a similar pattern in human societies? But where and what are the contributions of the homosexuals that improve the survival of the fitter genes in soceity? Any views?

2

By that logic, we shouldn’t give stupid people equal rights either. Survival of the fittest is a dead concept for humans. Also, even if homosexual genes are bad for society, it’s no big deal, because who are they going to pass them on to?

People are not equal, but they deserve equal rights.

3

So you are saying with humans we should not be scientific in our dealings with ourselves? We give ourselves the privilege of being unnatural and to ignore, even go against, the decrees of Evolution and Nature?

And with regard to stupid people, I do not think from an evolutionary perspective we can say they are stupid. They mate and reproduce and in fact even make lots of children, do they not?. So evolutionary they are very successful. It is clear homosexuals do not reproduce and therefore they are the losers!

It is only we who think we are smart, but we can’t outsmart evolution whose dictate of survival of the fittest still rules regardless what we think or say.

But my real question is if homosexual genes are bad to society then what is the use of homosexuals in their generation in society? Even sexless worker ants are far more useful as far as the reproductive success of the species is concern. I do not yet see how homosexuals inprove this for human beings.

4

Chanbengchin,

Not necessarily true, you are assuming that all homosexuals do not procreate.

It seems you are assuming that there is such a gay thing as a ‘gay’ gene which only ‘gay’ people have. It is possible, that we all contain a number of genes that when combined in the certain way have the phenotopic effect of homosexuality. It’s also possible that environmental factors have an effect on people’s sexuality. In which case, these genes will continue to stay in the gene pool forever. It’s also possible that there is no such thing as ‘gay’ genes at all. I think it’s incorrect to blanket term homosexuals as “unfit to survive”, it’s much more complicated than that.

Your conclusion does not follow from the premise. I think Richard Dawkins said it best in The Selfish Gene;

I am not advocating a morality based on evolution. I am saying how things have evolved. I am not saying how we humans morally ought to behave. … If you wish to extract a moral from it, read it as a warning. Be warned that if you wish, as I do, to build a society in which individuals cooperate generously and unselfishly towards a common good, you can expect little help from biological nature. Let us try to teach generosity and altruism, because we are born selfish. Let us understand what our own selfish genes are up to, because we may then at least have a chance to upset their designs, something that no other species has ever aspired to do.

Evolution may tell us what is the case, but it does not tell us what ought to be the case. We see this every day with adoption, abortion, contraception, vegetarianism, medical science etc. We do not let natural selection run its course anymore.

Why and how are homosexual genes bad to society? Seems like a bit of a witch-hunt to me.

  • ben
5

you seem to think that the only use humans have is creating more humans.

what if my brain was five times bigger than yours and my genitals didnt work. should i be marginalized or enslaved? obviously not.

gay people dont neccesarily have this huge benefit like i would be providing with my brain, but same with most people. genitals are irrelevant

6

Not to mention the fact that homosexuality might not even be genetic. There is still no substantive evidence, as far as I know.

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Not at all. What I am saying is the whole set of genes are somehow selected naturally by evolution not to be passed on. What the reasons for such selection are not obvious to me (and I hope someone can enlighten me here); but as evolution is true, so there must therefore be something ‘bad’ about those genes. Now whether these genes alone are responsible for one being gay is also immaterial, for it is certainly a necessary ingredient. Its elimination will certainly stop if not reduce the chances of homosexuality in the next generation.

And on Richard Dawkins, why do we want to ‘upset’ evolution? Hasnt evolution been so successful over the eons since life started? Can humans, the child of evolution, now be wiser than evolution, even to attempt to chart and steer its course, if at it is possible? We cannot create a single life, we can only copy what is already there. So do we want to unnecessarily incur the risk that we cause evolution to go all awry, leading to our demise? a demise more rapidly than if we simply and naturally evolve?

I do not see Dawkin’s basis and rationale for saying we should go against our selfish genes. If our genes are selfish, naturally, then it must be good. And it is not that we do not have another example of such individual selfish pursuit that leads to a collective good, namely Adam Smith’s invisible hand.

For sure evolution is what we observed things as they are. But if what is, is not what ought to be, then what is ought to be? And again what is the basis and rationale for whatever ought to be? Is not the maximal survival of the species as good as any - if there is any other - reason why we ought to be?

Do we have another reason to be other than to propagate our species endlessly, just as any biological species are, most emphatically seen in the insect world, eg the cicadas. There after years of hibernation in the ground, they suddenly erupted matured and after a frenzied orgy of mating it dies, but not before leaving its seed, so as to continue the whole cycle again and again and again. We humans are just as biological as any in the animal world.

No it is a scientific question. There must be an evolutionary justification for the presence of homosexuals in a society, for, as you have suggested, there is the possibility, by one way or another, that will be homosexuals in every generation. It is certainly legitimate to ask why, especially so as it does not seems to contribute the goal of evolution, that is the survival of the fittest.

8

Then what do you think is the ‘use’ of humans?

If this ‘use’ is all about its maximal survival of a species, as it is in all the biological world, then what use are brains? Only genital matters.

But of course I may be wrong. You may have another justified reason for thinking that the ‘use’ of humans is other than its survival as a species.

So then, pray do tell what is it?

9

Hi chanbengchin

I believe you are wrong, but isn’t that the purpose of philosophy? :wink: I believe that homosexuality has both its cultural benefits and evolutionary benefits all in accordance with “Nature’s” hands. “Homosexuality” is evidenced by the mammal kingdom. Studies, biological and psychological, have shown that homosexuality is a product of genetics, and that it is evidenced, among other things, in differences in brain structure and in individuals’ responses to hormones. These structural brains show that even homosexuals have “purpose” to play in the future role of the species.

The physical and social expressions of homosexuality arise from needs and drives common to all mammals, indeed to most animals. These are the need for physical and emotional intimacy, the need for companionship, and the need for sex. It is inherent within the DNA-nucleus-from mitcondria-energy-fueled to gluocose :wink:

Homosexuals who form pair bonds are expressing the basic human need for devoted companionship, an expression that tremendously increases their ability to gain and store resources-resources that accrue to the benefit of their families, their friends, their society–

I mean, many objections I have seen against homosexuality are people who prescribe to male-dominated religions, highly patriarchal, whom embrace superstition and fear.

We have seen it in the animal species, DNA inheritance, “natural inclinations” (for lack of a better word), etc

Have you heard of the impetus towards members of the same sex in relation to pair bonding?

I do not think ‘‘procreation’’ is something that is highly regarded now, since we face the problem of overpopulation, so if anything, homosexuals are contributing positively to the overpopulation problem.

As Futureman mentioned, genitals are irrelevant.

10

The process of evolution through natural selection is nothing more than patience and luck. There is no wisdom or intelligence to the process itself.

The act of homosexual intercourse will not lead to reproduction. A person who has a homosexual orientation is not a mule. He or she is not sterile.

Only if an individual is sterile will he or she be unable to pass on his or her genes.

We can predict that an individual with a homosexual orientation is less likely to pass on her of her genes. That is all.

Human being luckily ( or perhaps unluckily depending on your perspective) don’t live, fuck and die. We ain’t fruit flies.

We live for about 12 or more years as sterile, non-productive children. We have a period of potency. Then we can have a period of 30 or more years after the age of forty in which we are extremely highly unlikely to reproduce. Our worth is not exclusive to our period of potency.

An organism that is unfit to survive in an environment will die there. Like a human being is unfit to live at the bottom of the ocean, or on the surface of the moon (without amazing tools). Any living being that was unfit to live in a particular environment would die there.

Why would your turn Nature or Evolution into some kind of new God or Fate that somehow chooses individual to be homosexual. If the process of evolution explains homosexuality as a behavior then it is probably due to a random mutation or a recessive gene. There is nothing magical, immoral or moral about it.

The process of evolution doesn’t respond to anything. It just goes on happening due to the overall scarcity of natural resources. Populations are limited by their food supply.

Evolution is not a god, or a king therefore it cannot decree anything.

11

have you ever been happy? or had an orgasm? or had fun?

all of those things are more interesting than simply knowing that fertilized eggs with your name on them are growing up somewhere. nature is not the same as humanity. big brains who put themselves to work for the betterment of society can create more fun, financial security, orgasms and happiness than would have been there otherwise.

but i dont know about your average joe homo. i guess if he doesnt provide humanity with an empirical benefit, then you should just genocide him. but then again, youd have to genocide a lot of useless average moronic evangelical mtv watchers. including all of those who are contributing to earthly overpopulation.

nature does not know the best course of action for humanity, at least since we left the garden of eden/african jungle utopia, and probably always. all evolution does is find who is the best at having sex, and lucky for us it worked out that brains eventually help somewhat.

if we listened to it, we could just step in and take control and make the horniest sexingest most overproducing genitals since bacteria. wouldnt that be great?!!? no.

12

You believe what you believe. It counts for nothing to me, or to others. Your reasons on the other hand do. And to merely say I am wrong does not change anything, for it adds nor subtract nothing from what I have said or written. You have only judged in a manner unknown to me.

So show me that I am wrong, and show me what the benefits are, particularly in a way that makes evolutionary sense, for nothing else matter do they? Unless I am wrong again of course; and if so then show me what matters more than the survival of a species, ie is there something else that the extinction of the homo sapien species is a risk worth taking.

How? And what is this “purpose”?

This is the constant underlying but unanswered question for which this thread was started, and none of the posts have come close to an answer.

If you say that homosexuals, or other non breeding humans, come into this world, and seek each other “devoted companionship” fulfilling a “basic human need”, and then die, without contributing his genes to the social pool, then what is the meaning of their existence and what have been their value to the evolution of human beings?

I was hoping you could say something like evolution is not only in the genetic dimension, but also in the cultural dimension, such as in the notion of memes, ie ideas, concepts, beliefs, practices/rituals, insights, etc etc that are also valuable to a species increased survival, but are propagated in the form of culture and not genes.

And for non-procreating individuals, again naturally selected, their contribution are either in the creation/adaptation or propagation of these memes. That sounds like a plausible explanation, but then what are the evidences to support such a theory, and is this the only plausible theory? Or perhaps like Dawkins, quoted by Ben, have suggested that evolution dont say what ought to be, then what is the ought to be, and upon what is its justification?

13

So humans are more than just animals and not merely biological? That is, unlike animals, we are not a mere blobs of biological instincts in the cog of evolution. We exist for a reason other the mindless, unknowable, probabilistic (or pre-determined) propagation of our own kind? Is this what you are implying here? If so what is this extra-biological reason for being?

This is just an anthropomorphic allusion, just as the law of physics does not imply any agent mandating and enforcing the law. What is meant is its inevitability and inexorability, again just as any law of physics - there is nothing you can to do oppose it, it will be what it will be. But I am reading suggestions that this is not so, ie evolution is not inevitable, eg:

or Dawkin’s suggestion to ‘upset’ evolution.

So perhaps we have come to a point that we can indeed ‘upset’ the ‘law’ or ‘decrees’ of evolution, just like we can overcome gravity and go to the moon, or to overcome the hostility of an inert and harsh environment, even to colonise the Moon and Mars if we ever want or need to.

If indeed this is the case, then unlike evolution, surely we have more intelligence, knowledge and wisdom to chart, steer and harness the laws of evolution to our ends, perhaps our extra-biological ends, if there are such. But are these all true? Or am I now on the edge of fantasy and delusion?

14

That’s it? Life, or particularly human life, is all about orgasm, fun, happines and ‘interesting’ things??? I don’t know about you but that don’t sound like something that something inside me concur with. In fact it sounds downright pathetic.

I am not saying we ‘genocide’ him, I am just asking what is the reason for his occurrence in society. You have earlier, in our ‘engagement’ in the Golden Irony, mentioned or alluded that some people are more worthy than another. What is your measure of worthiness and why? So to you what is the “average joe homo” worth to society and would you ever give him your heart if he will die unless he gets it?

Really? I think there have been studies that showed IQ and number of children to be inversely correlated. But then again dumbness is what we call dumbness. It need not be.

OK, so what ‘great’ thing would you make if you can “step in and take control”? and why?

15

whew what a loaded thread. i must say theres a lot worth saying all of a sudden.

your original argument is saying that the mission for each individual, or the greatest good they can accomplish, or the most important thing they should focus on, or the most valuable thing about an individual is the fact that they will contribute the number of people in the society, and preferably with their good healthy genes.

you base this on the fact that procreating skills are the “quality” that “evolution has chosen” to base its branching decisions on.

the only reason evolution “chose” that way is because thats the way the universe works. its not like evolution could have “chosen” people who were good at dancing. it was forced to increase the number of the mutation that increased its numbers the most. because thats what happened. no choosing.

things that help you have more children include many things that human civilization has now taken care of. in the past, an animal who mutated so that he ate more food was THEN therefore able to reproduce more. its not actually based on the efficiency of genitals.

in fact, if a species started evolving so that its genitals were better, then that would be a handicap. if there happened to be a mutation that affected some other good skill such as super strong leg muscles, then that mutation is going to have a hard if not impossible time finding its way to overcome the quickly spreading genes of the guy who has super genitals.

whatever that doesnt matter. as long as the mutations inflicted upon a human do not HURT the other things that he affects society with, then you cant say that he is bad for society. a sterile person is bad for a society that wants to expand, not for one that doesnt.

why are there gay people? god only knows. why cancer.

what is my measure of a humans worthiness? how much he can and will help other people. if it was found that only ghandi is going to be like ghandi, then give him your heart if your some suicidal depressed guy who thinks your worthless.

why are brains good even though nerds today dont get laid? because nerds back in the day knew how to make tools and respond to situations in better, more thoughtfull ways. survive longer=more kids. thats why new animals are at all better than the old.

what great thing would i make? thats tough. first i would say to raise the iq a little bit, since its not fair that i am so smart but it is great. then being smart doesnt look so good when everybody is competing for your job and people with high iqs are stuck in factories. and that is exactly why genetic castes are the only way to go until robots do all of the unnatractive labor

16

There is essentially no dimension of behavior which is not both environmentally and genetically influenced. Genes and environment interact in extraordinarily complex ways with each other, as well as among themselves to produce a final result; the environmental influences are multi-factorial and affect each other; in human behavior, the pertinent genes are also multiple. Which leads me to deduce that homosexuals do pass on their genes since there is genetic heritability in such behavior.

17

There is evidence that at least one basis for homosexuality is a gene that is actually selectively advantageous for mothers…makes them better able to breast feed and so forth. When it is passed on to men, however, it often results in a homosexual orientation.

Of course, it’s ludicrous to suggest that homosexuals don’t procreate in the first place. Pure homosexuality–i.e. where there is no attraction to women at all–doesn’t really exist. Gay men can still get it up with women, and historically, cultures that have tolerated homosexuality have expected men to return home to their wives after partying with their gay lovers. Obviously, gays will not procreate as much as heterosexuals, so you might expect that homosexuals will only comprise a fraction of the population. And guess what? That’s exactly what we see.

So much for Chan’s little reductio game.

18

chanbengchin, i have sex with women, have a kid on the way, am genrally cautious of the innermost mentality of wowen (i.e., fuck having an argument with one) this (i hope) makes me straight as jesus. now what does it mean if i go a bit gay whenever i take ecstasy? if its not good from a neo-darwinian perspective, why is it after this gay period finishs and my contiousness returns to (not going arrruggghuuddshwshs please kill me) i can have sex for ages and spunk enough to put forest fires out?

19

I think we could all benefit from a rigorous definition of ‘homosexual’ and ‘homosexuality’. Isn’t definition of terms the first step in a serious philosophical discussion, if that’s what this is going to be?
It simply won’t do to talk about ‘homosexuals’ as a discrete type of person when discussing rights and evolution, but then refer to ‘homosexuality’ as a sliding-scale behavior that nearly anyone can exhibit in greater or lesser degrees when discussing the ethical implications. A person who marries, has children, by all acounts seems to enjoy life, then at some point ‘realizes’ that they were ‘gay all along’ isn’t at all what chanbenchin meant when he said ‘homosexual’ in his opening post, that much is clear.
It may be the sort of person chanbenchin was supposing in his first post doesn’t exist (as Logo seems to believe), or is statistically irrelevant (as I would contend). If that’s true, then there is also no such group being denied rights, however.

20

It may well be, but is 10% irrelevant? What if it is 5%? Is it still irrelevant? Or if not, what about 2%, or 1%?

And that 1% in a world population of 6 billion is 60 million people. It may be irrelevant but it is sure a huge number, and as such an explanation for why this statistical oddity is still relevant as literally millions of lives are involved.

Also if it is statistically irrelevant then how can homosexuality be explained as evolution’s response to over-population? By definition it can never have any significant consequences.

Maybe homosexuality is proof that evolution failed, not that homosexuals are evolutionary failures.

And regarding definitions, you put it more elegantly than I could have. Yes I was not thinking of the kind of ‘homosexuality’ that Logo and the sexually harrassed Panda were talking about. I am specifically talking about those that can relate sexually only to one’s same sex.

If you can procreate and have sex with your own sex then certainly your genes continued to be passed on to the next generation. Now whether this behaviour of such procreative people having sex with your own sex is genetic or not, I am not entirely sure, and even if it is so, it may be an entirely different one from the 1% that I am talking about.

Also evolutionary such behaviour is irrelevant, ie evolution dont care who you have sex with as long as the gene pool for the next generation is enriched and preserved.