And at about that same time there was also a spate of books and articles in the US about a world population �bomb� or �explosion.� While such literature did describe a legitimate concern, I don�t know of any writer of that period that dealt with the issue of what might be called �reproductive equity.� That is, one might have asked, �Should Europe and the US try to reduce their birth rate unilaterally while the rate remains high in other countries? �
And birth control pills were introduced in the US that general period.
While I've often been a critic of the Catholic Church, I could, at least in retrospect in middle age, agree with the Catholic position regarding the pill. An implicit premise of birth control pills was that it doesn�t matter whether or not sexual activity is intended to produce offspring. Could unintended consequences spring from such a premise?
�Sex is a powerful drive,� birth control advocates could argue. �It simply isn�t realistic to expect an adult male to go without sexual activity.� If that were accepted as being true, however, then perhaps homosexual activity could satisfy the demands of Eros as well as heterosexual activity.
Now, while there�s a saying that �Sex sells,� perhaps I might be permitted to propose my own saying: �Those who can�t think of anything else to sell, often sell sex.�
And the need to make money often leads to products that would be considered irrational if they weren�t justified by the fact that they do, in fact, bring in money. Also: in some other countries the population may be forced into a mold of uniformity by brutal tyranny. In the United States, however, we have a much better voluntary system known as �conformity.� Consumers desire to fit in and play a proper role in our splendid �consumer-driven economy,� even if a lot of the merchandise, such as bottled water, is rather absurd. Much sex-related merchandise may be placed in the same category as bottled water.
For example, the mellowing of the sexual drive had previously been a benefit for many men as they got older. But it seemed even those older men had a duty to buy. A new medical problem, �errectile dysfunction,� or �ED,� was announced. Like AIDS, ED was a disease first discovered in the twentieth century. One might have wondered. �Where had this terrible scourge of ED first originated? Was it among primates of central Africa? --Or did it originate from the monkeys in the marketing department at some big company?"
[ 8 ] Evolution & Religion
Objections I had to ideas about sex in American popular culture of 2008 were partly of a somewhat theoretical or philosophical nature. Is it correct that in order to embrace religion or morality one must reject science, and that to be scientific, one must reject, not only religion, but morality as well? That would seem a sorry state of affairs. So I didn�t admire what had become a ritualized or ceremonial debate about evolution between scientists and Christian fundamentalists.
And here�s how I was thinking about evolution:
Let�s suppose that the first life form on Earth arose as the result of molecules colliding randomly in a primeval ocean. How are we to know that a particular molecular aggregate is, in fact, alive?
The answer is easy. We know it�s alive because it can reproduce.
So some scientists might refer to this hypothetical entity as having been the �first self-replicating entity� on the planet Earth. But that would be an incorrect designation. The entity wouldn�t have been �self-replicating� at all: in order to reproduce, it would have required enabling conditions in the surrounding medium or immediately proximate environment. Specifically, if the reproductive act resulted in a perfect copy of the original; then, for every atom in the original entity, there must have been a corresponding atom of the same element in the surrounding ocean, medium, or substrate. Those atoms in the surrounding medium were what must have been assembled to make the copy of the original entity. So, again, the original entity wasn�t �self-replicating;� rather, replication required favorable or enabling external material circumstances.
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