Posted on 03/27/2011 12:09:25 PM PDT by decimon
Thanks for the link
You’re welcome.
That's basically all that's really left of evolution any more, i.e. echoes in the echo chamber of dead and dying ideological doctrines masquerading as science theories.
The Athenians might have exposed “imperfect” babies but they exposed unwanted females too...
Which is why that perderasty was so popular in ancient Athens: they lacked enough girls to go around.
Wow, thanks, interesting.
And for this, thanks, plain text much clearer, and
Qx. ping.
Have you participated in the Nat Geo DNA study?
I’ve been somewhat disappointed in the results—always more money for not that much more info, imho.
Still it’s interesting.
ALL classical peoples practiced infanticide, with the sole exception of the Jews.
It was routinely cited by Greek/Roman writers as an example of how weird the Jews were. Why, they raise all their children, even the girls!
In almost all cultures, the decision whether the baby would live or die was left up to the male head of household. AFAIK, only the Spartans involved the state directly in these decisions.
BTW, these children were usually exposed, not killed directly. Childless couples would go “shopping” in the known exposure areas, and many would pick up a likely child and raise him as their own son. In certain times and places there was a cottage industry of people who would rescue these babies, raise them to a salable age and sell them on the slave market. So by no means did these children always die.
Pederasty was so popular in ancient Greece for many of the same reasons it is in Islam. Women were kept indoors and behind veils. Men did not have relationships with a woman except as a breeder or a courtesan. While romantic love no doubt often happened between a husband and wife, the ideal beauty and love object of their culture was the pubescent/adolescent boy.
Oddly enough, Sparta was the big exception to this. Their women were infinitely freer than those in the rest of Greece.
While more girl babies might have been exposed than boys, this was largely compensated for by the enormous death rate among males in war and civil strife.
You have no idea what “fit” and “unfit” mean in Darwinian terms, or do you?
Regarding chromosomes and persistance of traits. My late husband and I visited ancestral property in southern Illinois a few years before he died in 2005. We found a distant relative on adjacent land. It turned out they had a common ancestor in the late 1700’s. There were certain physical similarities, around the eyes, and they both had similar long fleshy ears. In my husband’s case it was the great grandfather. For the other man it was the great, great grandfather. His line married at a younger age.
Regarding fitness, I think it is survival of the more fit, but as conditions often change, what fit is also tends to change. Vive la diferance.
I saw this today, and thought that it might be of interest, to you.
You beat me to the Idiocracy Reference, well done!
Thanks JDW.... I always try to keep up with this stuff.
[snip]
In mere impressionism we take our stand. We have no positive tests nor standards. Realism in art: realism in science—they pass away. In 1859, the thing to do was to accept Darwinism; now many biologists are revolting and trying to conceive of something else. The thing to do was to accept it in its day, but Darwinism of course was never proved:
The fittest survive.
What is meant by the fittest?
Not the strongest; not the cleverest—
Weakness and stupidity everywhere survive.
There is no way of determining fitness except in that a thing does survive.
“Fitness,” then, is only another name for “survival.”
Darwinism:
That survivors survive.
(Charles Fort, “Book of the Damned”, pp. 23-24)
I haven’t, as I told blam, I was worried that, after swabbing out my cheek and mailing it with the check, then waiting for weeks, I’d find out I was related to the corned beef I had for lunch.
LOL.
I didn’t really want my DNA in the system . . . however, I figure they have plenty of ways to achieve that anyway. LOL.
Sometime “survival of the fittest” challenges our notion of “fit”.
Shades of Euroweenie pedophile rings, to my thinking.
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