Friday, August 5, 2011

Homosexuality and the Wisdom of Evolution?

Evolution has no wisdom or forethought; it doesn't pick "the best" solution. Evolution simply conserves what works, so overtime, most individuals of a population are quite well adapted for their environment but not all to the same degree. Genetics produces character traits corresponding to a normal distribution - most individuals will have a particular trait to an average degree - but some will over-express the trait to an unusual degree and others will under-express the same trait. Think about height - most people are of average height, some are unusually tall, others unusually short - neither extreme condition is evolutionarily favorable, but in order to maintain a population of average height, these outliers will be present. Many heritable traits are distributed like this and there is a tendency for populations to regress toward the mean (average) character state, yet random genetic variability insures that the too-tall and too-short outliers are present in roughly the same proportion for each generation. It's the same with sexuality - there is an average where most of us can be found, but there are always outliers. The degree of a human society's humanity might be measured by how it deals with its outliers - should we kill all of the tall and all of the short? All of the idiots and all of the geniuses? It won't change the fact that they'll be back with the next generation.

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