Religion! Evolution! Homosexuality!

Religion! Evolution! Homosexuality!

How in the world can these three hot-button topics be combined in one article? Well, they all have something in common. The existence of Humanity!

Religion

Religion in all its many forms is, not always, but pretty much always, the fulcrum of human cultures, and when the foam of existence is scraped off the top of culture, there it is, tying it all together. Unlike science, when religion is the topic, humanity does not try to analyze and find the scientific truth (if any) behind the assumptions, theories, and supernatural revelations. Religion has its own methodologies to find the desired answers, and there are many of them.

Probably the greatest estimate of the number of religions that humanity harbors is about 10,000. Many are very small in number of believers, and many are offshoots of a major religion. But religions do not “play nice” with each other. For example, even under the guise of acceptance, the presence of rejection, conversion, and even elimination through violence, it is still there, under the covers of civilization. There has been, and is, wars great and small between separate religions, and even between different beliefs within the same religion. Bloody wars between different beliefs and different forms of the same beliefs have been with humanity since the beginning. Although religion can create reasonably comfortable cultures it can also create death and destruction. In almost all the wars we can remember, religion plays a part in the beginning and the end. Over human history, a tribe, a culture, a nation often has something that another tribe, a culture, a nation covets, and religion and culture often provide the rationale for the invasion and occupation of a weaker civilization. ?Modern death and destruction in war now far exceed that that occurred only a couple of hundred years ago. In an amazingly short time, the technological age created by humanity can now destroy the planet that birthed humanity, and the cultures that created religions.

?Evolution

Religion, however, is just a relatively recent instigating factor in the development and conduct of human aggression and human wars. We were not always Homo sapiens, our human species is a rather recent evolutionary development in the hominid family of great apes. Chimpanzees, the genus Pan, are our closest living relatives, the genus Homo the root of humanity, separated from the common ancestor of chimps and humans about 2.8 million years ago. That sounds like the birth of humanity occurred a very long time ago, and it was a very long time in the time frame that humanity can imagine. But life on Earth began about 3.7 billion years ago so it took immense time before the human perspective for what we call intelligent life (us) to evolve. But actually, humanity is a species new to existence on Earth.

Science has a pretty good idea of how life began on Earth. There are various estimates, but there is agreement that about 4 billion years ago when the environment of early Earth became capable of maintaining a chemistry that could support the development of life from basic organic molecules through the process of abiogenesis; the early chemistry of RNA and DNA formed the first organic molecules of life. In turn, the chemistry of the genes that were the essence of the first life was formed. In support of this conjecture, there are 355 genes that seem to be common to all life and could be part of the first organisms to form reproductive life if and when the environment was capable of supporting life. This is complex and to some extent, speculative chemistry. But the concept exists and it is based on scientific reality. The tale of the Garden of Eden is only fiction created by humans to explain the origin of human life. There are a great many stories such as this.

The next wrinkle in the rug of life is human evolution. It’s not hard to figure out why human evolution is such an intriguing, controversial, and highly investigated science. Our interest extends not only to the human species but also to all life forms, especially those that have a negative or positive relationship with humanity.

The structure of life on planet Earth has a long and complex history. Every modern species of microbe, plant, or animal has a long history of interaction and development through the millions, actually billions, of years of biological interaction with other species of life and changing environments. Evolution, geological and biological, is directed by environmental change and the complex structure of life on Earth. We know that evolution continuously, over time, creates new species of life. We, humanity, as we advanced in science and technology, have always been fascinated with size and numbers, the concept of how many, how long, and how far have always been important and have always been at the foundation of civilization. So, of course, we know exactly how many species of life occupy this planet along with us. Well, we don’t know. We know that with our science of biology, we have identified and described about 1.2 million species, and with biological research, growing rapidly; we also know that this is only a small fraction of the total number of species of life that we have scientifically described that occupy our planet along with us. That number is more of a guess than a count, it depends on the definition of species, and ranges between about 3 million to 1 trillion species, with roughly about 10 million species as the most common estimate of the range of the number of species currently alive on Earth.

The extinction of a species may be caused by the natural process of evolutionary change through natural selection, the result of one species evolving into one or more similar species through physical adaptation to changing environmental conditions. This is a process natural to Earth life and occurs through small changes over great time. Extinction of a species was due to either new species forming through branching into one or more different species as the environment slowly changed, or because of a cataclysmic event such as a large meteor strike or earthquake that quickly destroyed the environment and life over a great expanse. ?

Evolution does create species extinction through the replacement of species that are more fit for survival than their precursors. However, through evolution, species lost are replaced by the development of new species that are a better environmental fit, and the number of species increases rather than diminishes. But now, over the last few centuries, the environmental and technical development of humanity has greatly changed the environment of Earth and this has rapidly eliminated many species of plant and animal life. This is a great reduction in the number of species on Earth.

There are many complexities in the study of evolution, and one of them, perhaps the most important, is how many species of animals and plants are becoming extinct because of environmental changes and the direct destruction of living species and their environments by humans. At this point in Earth Time, we find ourselves well into the beginning of what appears to be the Anthropocene (human) extinction. This is the term used by science to describe the loss of species of life due to the growth of human civilization. This is now considered to be the 6th mass extinction event.

In the history of life on Earth, there have been 5 mass extinction events. A mass extinction event is defined as the rapid loss of about 75% of species in a relatively brief period of time, no more than 3 million years. The meaning of extinction is the total loss to Earth of a species that if not for a rapid or slow lethal event that occurs over the entire extent of the range of that species, that species would otherwise have survived for an indefinite period. The extinction of species due to the presence of extreme numbers and technological developments of humanity is an unnatural loss of species.

The International Union for Conservation of Nature counts more than 881 animal species that have gone extinct since about the year 1500. The numerical data and rates of extinction due to human population growth and technological activity can’t be accurately determined but it is estimated that unless there is a significant change in human exploitation of Earth and its resources within 10 to 20 years, the ecology of life on Earth (due to climate change and global warming) will suffer significantly from the loss of plant and animal species. It is possible that 50% of the plant and animal life on Earth could meet extinction by the end of this century. Life provides the stability of Earth’s environment, land and sea, and humanity without a healthy planet and a stable environment, even if we survive the decline of life, as part of the life of an Earth we will suffer greatly as Earth’s environment dies.

?

Homosexuality

You might be thinking, WHAT THE HELL DOES HOMOSEXUALITY HAVE TO DO WITH RELIGION AND EVOLUTION?

Yeah, it is a bit of a mental stretch, but all three are interactive parts of the human species and the structures of human evolution and civilizations, both in the present and the history of humanity. ?First of all, homosexuality is not a crime. ?No, it may be an abnormality in the same way that many differences in human development are the result of genetic variations and hormonal irregularities that sometimes confuse physical, mental, and sexual development in the human animal. Yes, we are animals in every physical and mental way. It is intellect that is our special attribute where we can claim a major difference. But we are also not alone in claiming differences from all other animals. Every species of plant and animal that has lived and is living on Earth has physical and mental characteristics that define their species. And since sexuality is part and parcel of all stages of plant and animal existence, and since human sexuality is subject to and inclusive of the same variations in sexuality created by normal and abnormal hormonal and physical developmental variations that are inherent in the sexual development of life; sexuality in the human animal is also subject to biological variations.

In late December of 2023, I published a small book titled Reproduction! Evolution! Intellect! You can’t have one without the others. I wrote the book because humanity has a problem. We have the intellectual capability to “conquer” our planet and through our intellect, we developed technologies that can and are changing the environment of Earth to suit the needs and wants of human development. This has developed to the point of destroying the Earthly biological environments that created the human species. Also at risk are most of the other species of life that have created our biological environments.

But we are not functionally aware of our precarious situation. We continue to assume that because we have intellect, we have a special supernatural existence and that it is not just planet Earth that supports us. No, it is a supernatural entity that supernaturally created our species and will soon rescue us from this physical existence and allow us to continue our existence forever in a heavenly environment that will presumably preserve our physical and intellectual character for eternity. I don’t believe that that was how we came to be and that the end of human existence would be heavenly. No, our existence was and is biological. We are created biologically, we are born in pain and blood, we live as biology directs, and we die as the evolution of our species determines. ?However, I do think we still have a chance to correct our mistakes, preserve our environment, and create a reduced human population that can live under the environmental restrictions necessary for human existence on Earth. That was why I wrote that book. Maybe, just maybe, it will help us in some small way understand what we are. It is available at Amazon Kindle for 99 cents.

But back to homosexuality. The following is a small section of the book (I’m pretty sure I can do this, I do own the copyright for my book…) that discusses sexuality in humans.

“Male and female humans are different physically, emotionally, behaviorally, and even psychologically, but the genetic coding that separates male and female consists of only one chromosome out of the 46 that provide the genetic instructions for creating a human being. Male and female humans are more genetically alike than the differences in physical and behavioral characteristics might indicate. These differences, introduced by evolution, resulted in the survival of the species Homo sapiens through adaptation to changing environments, both biological and environmental. There are many variations in the physique and behavior of males and females that have the same genetic “roots”. These physical and mental differences from the same genes are the result of physical and mental development as controlled by hormones, the point of their expression in development, and the degree of their influence, which produces different results in males and females.

An example of the same biological “roots” of reproductive development in humans is the milk lines that are present in both males and females. Male humans do not have the enlarged breasts and capability to provide milk for newborn babies as do mature females. However, males do have variously pronounced minor breast development and the presence of inoperative nipples. Present within the male and female torso are “milk lines”, vestigial structures that form from the thickening of the mammary ridge, one on each side of the thoracic area of the human embryo. These milk lines form in the seventh week of embryo development before sexual determination becomes part of embryo development. This is why male humans have nipples that have no function. The hormones that create functional breasts in females are not present in males, although very rarely levels of hormones that produce the larger breasts in females also occur in males. Also, along the milk lines, as they develop in early embryonic development, they appear as an elevated ridge along each ventral side of the embryo indicating the placement of nipples in the adult female. Humans have only two nipples that develop, most mammals have up to about eight nipples along the milk lines and can feed numerous offspring. Occasionally a human female, and a male as well, may have the development of more than two nipples along the milk line. These additional nipples present below the typical breasts are non-functional.

This is but one example of the expression of the timing of genetic effects and the evolutionary importance of genetically controlling the timing and activity of hormones in all aspects of the development of male and female human beings. Male and female humans do not have separate genomes. There are differences, physical and mental, but except for the sex-determining X and Y chromosomes, the genomes of males and females are the same. Male and female humans are creatures of the same genes, just different from each other in how the genes from the XX and the XY chromosomes guide sexual development, and in the resulting physical and mental expression of sexuality. There is not a perfect physical and mental separation in the expression of sexuality in humans. Genetically, hormonally, physically, and behaviorally, the differences between males and females are a range and not a complete and absolute separation. In this species, Homo sapiens, the expression of sexuality between male and female is a gradation and not a completely distinct separation. There are genetic, physical, mental, and behavioral variations in each sex that vary in development and intensity and can be observed in some individuals in various intensities. Unfortunately, human cultures have various levels of acceptance of individuals with sexual expression beyond the mien of what is considered normal male and female sexuality.

This expression of sexuality in conflict with a strict expression of biological sexual behavior may have produced a buffer or a balance of behaviors that could have been instrumental in the survival of primitive human tribal associations where cooperation between all members of the tribe was necessary for survival. The tribe may have benefited from the presence of males who did not fight for leadership and could perform tasks that required both the strength of males and the socialization of females. As well as females that could produce offspring and yet also perform tasks within the purview of males. These sexual modifications could have facilitated tribal survival by enhancing cooperation within tribal activities in both war and peace. And if so, that may have also encouraged the maintenance of the presence of intersexuality in the genetics and development of humanity.

Martin Moe