We eat and drink. We don’t eat and drink in order to procreate. It just turns out that people who don’t eat and drink tend not to procreate. The two aren’t really connected by a purpose. Nobody planned it. They are only connected by raw cause-and-effect. It kind of works out to the same result, but it’s wrong to say there is any “reason” to it. Our bodies don’t care what we do. “Evolution” doesn’t care what we do. We just do what we do and thats that.
It’s not “good” to reproduce and “bad” not to reproduce from any objective standpoint. That’s like saying rocks are good and water is bad. Or that Venus is good and the moon is bad. It doesn’t make sense. This stuff is just there. Either our bodies function or they don’t. Either we reproduce or we don’t. In the end it’s just matter and energy, no one form means anything more than any other form.
Think about it this way. We wouldn’t be able to reproduce if the sun wasn’t exactly as far away as it is because we’d either be living on a ball of fire or a ball of ice. But that doesn’t mean the “purpose” of the sun is to allow us to reproduce. Our sex drive is the same way. It is the way it is. It’s one of the things that allows us to reproduce. But that isn’t the “purpose” of it. It just happens that if it were different we wouldn’t be around to think about it.
The largest denomination of Christianity (the Roman Catholic Church) opposes all forms of birth control, so I suppose that’s responsible for there being more humans than there otherwise would have been. The “Be Fruitful and Multiply” thing came from Moses, but Christianity certainly popularized it.
OK, so positive = survivability. Based on that, the fact we’re still here shows that Christianity didn’t destroy humanity, it just shifted some of the demographics around (to put it crudely). I doubt humanity would have disappeared if any particular religion had not started, either, and any future religion won’t impact on human survivability based on its attitude to reproduction. It’s much more likely to be done by someone (religious or otherwise) causing some sort of catastrophic event.
I don’t think “people don’t think it is” is evidence at all either way in this case. Nor do I think that people look down on some form of it is evidence, either. But i’m pretty much with you on the main point. We can breed, certainly, but to say that because we are able to it is therefore our entire reason for being seems odd to me. As far as leaving something to the next generation goes, people who adopt don’t appear to consider themselves total failures with a stopgap measure; we don’t just pass on our genes, we pass on a whole host of things.
Eh, i’d question the wording of this one. I would say that people who deny their sexual interests aren’t looked on as necessarily all that weird, but truly asexual people, with true absense of interest in sex, generally seem to be looked on as quite weird indeed. But yes, people thinking something is so isn’t a reason.
Conscious choice is purely a HUMAN construct, the only real reason we have this choice is because our big ass brains figured out enough science to reach the point where we can fuck without a real risk of pregnancy.
Humans are Animals while still being more, the fact that we have big brains doesnt negate the animal in all of us.
add in the fact that something on the vicinity of 99.999999% of all humans (and animals for that matter) engage in sex and I think you have your answer.
There are many ways to have an “effect on our species,” other than reproducing. Did Jesus and Hitler (sorry, Gaudere) have no effect on our species? Was Einstein’s impact on the world merely due to the fact that he had a daughter?
My religious perspective is that “it” is not reducible to “who can I fuck” but rather a more complicated version akin to “What must I do to make the world what it ought to be so as to ensure that I can lay down with a person I love, and be open and trusting and sexual, and reproduce, perhaps, and that in the aftermath the world will be a safe place for us as a couple (umm threesome, whatever) and/or family”.
In that larger sense, with all of its complexities? Damn right that’s what it’s all about. Make the world safe for love & sex & having kiddies and being able to be open to all that without feeling unduly vulnerable.
That translates into a lot of additionally complicated “therefores”. But yeah, that’s the core of it.
This thread seems to be heading in a different direction, but there’s no reason why I shouldn’t pause and appreciate this. Nicely put, sir.
Just for giggles, I’m going to throw out the idea that, from various standpoints and for various reasons, everyone in this thread is likely to be right. I tend toward the pragmatic, however, and so I’ll throw in one vote for the “life support system for genitalia” theory.
There is no grand scheme of things. There can be no cogs, because there is no machine. The survival of our species is pretty neat to think about, but in the end it is an accident and it doesn’t actually mean much. One day it will come to end and matter and energy will arrange itself in some other, equally valid way. The old guy who dies childless and the guy whose line lives on for millions of years end up in exactly the same place in the end, it just takes a bit longer in the second instance.
We are animals, and animals reproduce. But an animal’s “purpose” is not to reproduce, anymore than a rock’s “purpose” is to sit there like a rock. An animal that doesn’t reproduce is not less of an animal, just like a rock that rolls down a hillside isn’t less of a rock. We are describing attributes.
The only thing that can give some purpose or reason is consciousness. And as far as we know, humans are the only things that have consciousness. Now for sure part of the reason why we ended up with consciousness is because it helps us reproduce. But that doesn’t mean that it’s “purpose” is reproduction. We have the unique burden of deciding our own values, our own reasons for going on, and our own reasons for reproducing if we choose to.
They had profound effects on human culture. They had no effect on our survival as a species. Einstein’s daughter (and her progeny) will have a a far greater impact on the destiny of our species than the theory of relativity.
They do if they interfered with or encouraged our survival. I don’t want this to turn this thread into religion bashing, but I think suppression of scientific advancement, hatred/prejudice leading to wars/fighting, and unsafe sexual practices & unchecked reproduction interfere with our survival. Not enough to wipe us out obviously, but they were clearly negative, not positive effects.