DreadVandal:
No matter what the conscious motives are, the biological reason for them is procreation. You have just said so. The beautiful thing about being human is that we do not have to be enslaved to our appetites and passions. We can choose to rationally order our activities toward the best ends. Religion doesn’t have to renounce romantic love. Religion just reminds people that romantic love is not the basis for moral decision making.
Yes, from the perspective of evolution people with a low sex drive would not have left many offspring behind and their genetic heritage would not have lived on. The genes we have now are the genes of those who had lots of sex, lots of offpsring etc.
BUT, this kind of argument is very dangerous. Because it makes perfect sense biologically for a powerful male to “capture” many wives, to cheat on the side, and essentially to have as much sex as possible with as many women as possible (especially if his children are going to be provided for by other males). From the perspective of evolution men with such behaviors would have been more successful, and men today would have their genes. If this kind of a behavior has a genetic basis, which to an extent it seems to given men’s very high sex drive, pursuit of many women, and for that matter polygamy.
Biologically the drive is to have sex, not to procreate. People have the sex instinct and desire, and they go at it. Do you think a primitive alpha male was thinking “let me go procreate”, no he had a very powerful physical and emotional drive to have sex, so he would fight to have access to women and would have sex with them when he had those desires. It is more following a physical instinct and an urge.
Think of the very idea of adultery, adultery is having sex with another man’s wife. In the Old Testament men could have concubines and several wives, some did. But adultery is always when a man has sex with a married woman, i.e. he is infringing on the territory of another male.
The idea of powerful males “giving up” women they could have to lesser males who would have monogamous relationships with them IS a social construct and seems to me to be unnatural. Very few mammals are monogamous. Usually there is competition for resources, so the most powerful males take over that territory and wait for the females to come over. Weaker males sometimes NEVER have sex in their lives and don’t get to procreate.
Biologically it all makes sense, women get a high-quality, strong, able male to pass on his high-quality genes (after all women can only have so many babies in their lifetimes). And the powerful male benefits tremendously from the number of offspring he will come to have.
And guess who raises children among most mammals? Females. That is nature for the most part. And I bet that if we lost our culture and government structure and organization, that is how it would be. Powerful males with strength would control everything by virtue of physical strength, there would be very little consideration for the feelings of women, and weak males would have little to no place in such a society.
The whole notion of marriage elevates us above “nature”, monogamy, faithfulness, consideration for women, and now consideration for the emotional bond, the love, the connection between spouses. All these in my opinion are the marks of a sophisticated culture that is far above what is “natural” in the most basic sense.
This is natural for us now, because we’re been raised in this society, these are our values. For people now it is natural to marry out of love, to have love and intmiacy based relationships, to have this be equal if not more important to the goal of starting a family. Procreation is still extremely important, but it is just a part of what it means to be a family. The unity and love of spouses is an equally important part.
And now we live better than human beings have ever lived. Our quality of life is amazing compared to what it was in say Medieval Europe. The difference being especially clear in the lives of women.
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I never thought that would happen when I was younger. Who knows, maybe I would have resented a child back then, but, God can change anything. I personally believe that as you grow and the circumstances of your life change, so you may find that things that were once abbhorent to you will be tolerable and maybe even desirable. It is not for us to know only to live, grow and have faith.
