Rule
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quote:
ORIGINAL: Arpig
2) Assuming there is a discrepancy, why do you ignore the obvious explanations for the bizarre? Europe is richer, better fed, and has a much higher basic standard of health and living. Europe is also, as a whole less polluted (and those badly polluted parts of eastern Europe amazingly enough have a higher incidence of birth defects). Those are the differences that matter, not whether or not they tend to leave a little flap of skin on the end of a penis or not. I am going to go easy on you and not even ask that you provide any proof,instead I will just ask you to explain how circumcision leads to birth defects. Please explain, I am truly interested in hearing this.
There are various external factors that may cause mutations: UV-radiation, radioactive radiation, chemicals, virusses and perhaps even some bacteria. Sure, a lower living standard may expose one more frequently to virus or harmful chemicals. However: most mutations are not due to external factors. Most mutations arise because the DNA replicating proteins are purposely inaccurate copiers. Most mutations arise because the germ DNA has been copied inaccurately. So environmental factors are relatively unimportant (unless one lives next to a chemical factory or a nuclear waste site, or on a radioactive mountain).
To the gene pool of any species the cause of mutations is of no importance at all. What is important is how such mutations are selected for or against. Beneficial mutations need to be saved for the gene pool, and multiplied and if possible made dominant and enhanced by new mutations to the same or associated genes (/ proteins), whereas deleterious mutations need to be removed from the gene pool or to be made recessive.
In nature this management of the contents of the gene pool is achieved for the most part by simple natural selection. Individuals that manifest deleterious phenotype are removed from the population by environmental conditions or predators, or the frequency of the deleterious mutation is reduced because affected individuals have less reproductive opportunities.
The human species has a problem here: there are hardly any predators nor environmental conditions that cull the human herd - unless they are other humans.
In any population deleterious mutations will accumulate when they enter the gene pool faster than they are removed from it. Mutations do enter the human gene pool at a high rate - perhaps faster than in other, more slowly evolving species. (Which causes me to wonder whether the human DNA replicating proteins are purposely worse at copying DNA than those of other species.)
So human populations are screwed unless they manage to quickly reduce the frequency of deleterious alleles from their gene pool. When there is a culture of indiscriminate sexual intercourse, perhaps as a strategy of conflict management, as often appears to have happened on various islands, there is in the getting fertilised stage of the life of the gene pool no opportunity to remove the deleterious alleles. This may explain why the newspaper article that I read spoke about the high rate of congenital defects in the Antillian population. It is likely also the reason why in ancient Sparta (an almost island) babies were exposed, and why their offspring male and female exercized naked so that they would be familiar with the physical defects of their partners when they finally chose a mate and married. Just trying to get rid of the high frequency of accumulating deleterious mutations.
Thus indiscriminate sexual intercourse tends to contribute to the accumulation of harmful alleles in the gene pool.
The opposite extreme - strict monogamy - also contributes to the accumulation of harmful alleles in the gene pool. Mutations that have occurred are passed on to the next generation in the same frequency, and in each generation new deleterious mutations are added to the already prevalent ones. These (deleterious) mutations usually are recessive and only manifest their presence in the phenotype when two carriers mate and produce a homozygous offspring. If it is a lethal mutation, such a homozygous offspring will die in the womb or shortly after birth - hopefully before achieving reproductive age. Inbreeding in strictly monogamous populations, having cousins marrying cousins, therefore is a prime method to remove those lethal deleterious mutations from the gene pool, to make less lethal but still deleterious mutations visible(, and in rare cases to harvest recessive beneficial mutations). This strict monogamy and inbreeding is precisely what is seen in Jewish and Muslim populations that mutilate the penises of their males. In Muslim villages the inhabitants have nearly identical genomes.
In ancient Athens there was no indiscriminate sexual intercourse: adulterous women were punished severely when caught. So any woman falling in love with a stranger had to weigh the consequences: was it worth the risk of punishment to have intercourse with this man who was not her husband? Thus the laws of Athens forced the women to perform sexual selection, whether consciously or instinctively.
Evolution by means of sexual selection is many times faster than evolution by means of commonplace natural selection. Sexual selection produces beauty and produces beauty fast. The tail feathers of the peacock and the birds of paradise evolved due to sexual selection.
Athens became the dominant culture of the ancient Greeks.
This sexual selection is not possible in strictly monogamous cultures like the Jewish and Muslim cultures, where adulterous women are (or were) murdered in "honor" killings.
And then there was Pandora - the one who opened the box containing all the misery of mankind, releasing in particular the sexually transmissible diseases. These diseases have various effects. 1) they afflict the promiscuous, thus removing the promiscuity alleles from the gene pool. 2) Populations that are vulnerable to and have been culled by a sexually transmitted disease will be more faithful to their partner and less promiscuous than populations that have not been culled that way. 3) They will also be more resistent to that particular disease. 4) Their women will also consciously and instinctively be more sexually selective: does the stranger not look healthy or perfect, then no adultery with him. This sexual selection removes deleterious mutations from the gene pool as fast as they enter them - and conserves beneficial mutations equally fast.
These benefits of sexually transmitted diseases are not awarded to populations that are less vulnerable to sexually transmitted diseases.
No, circumcision does not lead to birth defects. It is far worse: circumcision makes individuals less vulnerable to sexually transmitted diseases. Causing individuals to not be faithful, causing them to not be less promiscuous, causing the population to not acquire resistance against that particular disease, causing their women to not be sexually selective. Thus due to circumcision causing the males to be less vulnerable to sexually transmitted diseases, the opposite is invoked: when such a disease strikes, it hurts bad. Cultural measures are taken to reduce the risk of infection: strict monogamy is introduced and any adulterous woman is murdered, maintaining the monogamy through fear. Sexual selection is prevented as the women are not allowed adultery. Consequently, deleterious alleles will accumulate in the gene pool, necessitating inbreeding and polygamy. Polygamy in its turn causes a surplus of less fit males, who have no reproductive opportunity unless they rape women or go to war against other populations to kidnap women.
< Message edited by Rule -- 8/10/2009 3:37:26 AM >
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RE: Is anything inherently right? - 
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