One common objection to religious belief is that science can explain everything. Perhaps the most intense discourse today is between evolution and creation. Many militant atheists assume that we do not accept the facts of history and science, but this is false. The Church simply states that everything did not happen by accident; we are made in the image and likeness of God. Each one of us has an immortal soul.
A few weeks ago on GAG, I answered a question asking what guys think of girls who are waiting until marriage for sex. I see questions like this semi-frequently and usually answer that I’m waiting as well. I invariably see answers like “I wouldn’t even talk to her” or boasting that they could convince girls otherwise. One male user answered that waiting until marriage is flawed. Another user naively agreed: “Deeply flawed. Scientists have proved it!” I asked to see that scientific proof. The user who made the post replied…
“It probably relates to how through looking at our evolution as a species, how sex existed before marriage, how one is ingrained into our primal urges while the other is heavily promoted via certain organised groups and comparing our behavior to that of other species in the animal kingdom. For example, any species that have life partners only do so after having sex, there are never life partners prior to reproduction.”
Now he didn’t exactly say that we should always submit to these “primal urges”, but he touched on an interesting question. Did sex exist before marriage? Yes, but monogamy, the predecessor to formalized marriage, dates back at least 20,000 years according to the American Journal of Physical Anthropology.
“What Separates Us From The Animals”
The Earth is between four to five billion years old. Archeologists believe that humans have been around for about two hundred thousand years. If monogamy dates as recently as 20,000 years ago and if humans were around for long before that, we must assume that early humans were polygamous. The University of Tennessee-Knoxville theorizes that early human males, usually those who were physically weaker, would bribe the females for long-term sex, usually with meat. This, Knoxville theorizes, is the origin of monogamy.
What this doesn’t explain from a purely scientific perspective though is the origin and evolution of love and affection. Psychology Today states that as the brain grew in size, so did the amount of knowledge humans had to attain, and so childhood was prolonged. As childhood grew longer, human parents developed a more nurturing attitude towards their young. Oxytocin, the hormone heavily involved with love, was released as parents held their children. As affection between parent and child grew, so did affection between the parents.
Devolving Our Sexuality
We can only conclude that love, marriage, and family are the true building blocks of society. Using libidinistic (as Pope John Paul II would call it) logic, it would be easier to argue in favor of simply having sex with only one partner before marriage (see here). Why must we who are so evolved and have determined our free will and existence as persons submit to a primitive instinct?
In Ancient Greece, you could be executed for corruption the youth (Socrates). It’s happening now with pornography being “normal”, television shows glorifying teen mothers, Victoria’s Secret targeting teenagers, and some public school districts distributing contraception. And President Obama somehow thinks that a supposed turning of women’s “health care” back to the 1950s is a cause for alarm. Although we believe in monogamy, when we are told about our primal urges (commonly mistaken as instinct) and “needs”, we are not only devaluing our sexuality, but devolving it.
The End?
No, not really. We could talk more about parental responsibility, the necessity of marriage and family, abortion, birth control, gay marriage, premarital sex, Scripture, or any one of a number of things, but we’ll save that for other posts. There’s simply too much to address here.