Despite what the survey said, women like to date the wild ones, but they want the cautious ones to be there to provide a more secure home and family lifestyle. The problem comes when they try to turn the wild boyfriend who do risky things into the cautious husband. Sometimes it works, sometimes it ends up on the local police report, in the "family disturbance" category.

There was a nifty British study recently (don't have a link) which concluded that women tend to prefer one type of male during estrus, and a quite different type at all other times. My type has the temporal odds going for it, at least.

I did a lot of stupid, risky things in my youth, like surfing big waves. Weren't any girls in the line-up. It was all about showing off to guys. If there weren't other guys in the line-up, no way you take off on a 10-15 foot wave. Alone, you surf a 6 foot wave, and double its size in the retelling.

In the future, they're going to wonder what the evolutionary advantage was in giving bad answers to stupid questions.

Just because people show a particular trait doesn't mean that it results from or in any way effects evolution. What part of random mutation is hard to understand. And even if you're going to be an evolutionary determinist, there does appear to be a more likely answer then display here: There is a clear evolutionary advantage in taking a prebuscent boy and shoveling as much testosterone through him as possible. That there is also a cost doesn't mean it's not pro-survival, given that in its absence procreation is, um, somewhat less likely.

And even if it weren't a stupid question, a survey of young men and women doesn't give anything like a reliable answer. I assume that, on today's campuses, it is still true that football players have the opportunity to engage in pro-evolutionary activity more often than computer geeks.

Yes, but if everything doesn't contribute to Evolution then Darwinism goes bung--an unacceptable alternative for the faithful.

Women have a habit of saying they prefer one kind of man, but actually choosing another kind altogether.

It probably sounds good to a woman say that she would prefer a cautious man (makes her sound more mature), but the real way to see what she wants is to see what kind of men she chooses to be with.

Women tend to grow bored with the stable, cautious types, even if they married one. This is the reason women cheat.

Ben:

Yes, what women actually want, think they want, and say they want are likely to be three different things.

(Not that that is exclusive to women...)

Mr. Judd;

You wrote

Yes, but if everything doesn't contribute to Evolution then Darwinism goes bung--an unacceptable alternative for the faithful.

Uh, no. Please read Mr. Cohen's comment again for exactly why this quote is inaccurate. Every evolutionist I know believes that phenotypes are filled with what programming geeks call "artifacts", i.e. by-products of other, more fundamental processes. In fact, the existence of these kind of artifacts is one of the better arguments against Intelligent Design. Why would such a Designer create organisms with so many glitches / bugs / faults?

Why do we?

AOG - The obvious answer is that the Designer wishes us to believe in evolution.

AOG: Why would Microsoft?

Ben and Mike have it. Ask women what they want, then observe their actual choices. The yawning gap between the two is hilarious.
Economists call this the difference between stated preference and revealed preference.

Mr. Cohen;

Last I checked, Bill Gates was neither omniscient nor omnipotent, nor was his staff composed of angels. As for Mr. Judd, is that a backhanded way of saying that you believe I have truly God-like powers of programming?

PJ;

That's so cruel it makes Lovecraft's Old Ones look beneficent.

PJ:

"The obvious answer is that the Designer wishes us to believe in evolution."

I'd be careful of using that argument. Not so much for its 'turtles all the way' element, but because it's an admission of the overwhelming evidence for undesigned evolution. And is thus in opposition to the normal anti-Darwinian line (OJ's) that the evidence is insufficient.

It's a better argument though, because it fits the facts.

It's true: if there is a Designer, he is cruel, and he's trying to trick us into thinking he doesn't exist.

Women like men who make them laugh.

Yet even after all these years, there are humorless men.

When almost everyone breeds, selection pressure is less.

Orrin, you would be more persuasive if you would engage what the idea of Darwinian evolution actually is. PZ Myers has a curious post today at pharyngula.org on why crocodiles seem to have too much heart.

AOG (and, to some extent, Brit):

1. You come close to setting out a standard of behavior the G-d must meet, otherwise you won't believe in him. It doesn't work that way.

2. What G-d wants from us is our faith. It is not faith if His existence is too apparent.

3. Having designed and created the Universe, G-d is pretty good about not obviously ignoring His rules. Thus, He works in a less than perfect medium. This is less surprising when we realize that coming in less than perfect seems to have been His intent.

4. Intelligent Design is often used, and is always misunderstood, as a proof of G-d's existence. But it isn't. Logically, there could easily be a designer who was not G-d. We could as easily be some alien's fourth grade science project, or a computer simulation run to show the efficacy of evolution.

David's last is especially germane. Our Universe is just about as efficient as we'll make one in a couple thousand years when we try it ourselves.

Harry:

No I wouldn't be. You're a true believer. Your life would be even emptier if you came to terms with any of the objections even someone as scientifically illiterate as I raised.

David:

1. I clearly state precisely the opposite. I'm quite willing to accept that if there is a God, he is amoral, at least in our understanding of the term 'moral'.
..and 3. or if not amoral, then he is incompetent or irrational or inconsistent.

Those aren't reasons for my lack of belief in the supernatural, though they are partial reasons for my specific rejections of the stuff I was told in Sunday school.

2. What happened to revelation? What happened to the watchmaker argument, or the self-evidence of Design? That argument suggests that the evidence points to a lack of design, and God is testing us.

Point 4 is entirely correct. But in my experience, 99.9% of ID-proponents believe that the Designer also happens to be their God.

ID exists because Creationism became too embarrassing.

ID exists because even if Creationism weren't true Darwinism can't withjstand scientific inquiry.

Does ID even amount to a theory? Where could I find a coherent summary?

creeper:

Open any book on Darwinism and just substitute Design anywhere it says Natural Selection.

Doing that, Orrin, wouldn't make a whole lotta sense. But no matter.

Never mind that little detail about how ID posits a creator of sorts, let's just be supposin' that there's such a book on 'Darwinism' where a substitution of 'Design' for 'Natural Selection' would amount to some semblance of a theory, please point me to it.

All of them.

So you can't think of one. No surprise there.

Define Evolution.

Evolution? I thought you were going on about Darwinism.

So where's that book on 'Darwinism' where a substitution of 'Design' for 'Natural Selection' would amount to some semblance of a theory?

According to your claim, it's all of them, so surely you could suggest at least one?

Brit: I did say that that post applied to you only to "some extent" and I don't believe that I've ever argued that creation, itself, is proof of a creator.

As to why G-d obeys his own laws, you'll have to ask Him.

As I have noted before, Anna Karenina would have every reason to be annoyed at Tolstoy, if she believed in him. Our explanation that she should be thrilled to be such an important part of a great work of art probably wouldn't make her feel any better.

Orrin, have you read Robert Pennock's 'Tower of Babel'?

Hardly any science in it at all (he's a philosopher at U. of Texas).

There are two (well, actually, hundreds but two main ones) problems with your critique of darwinsim.

One is that you mischaracterize it. I've demonstrated that sufficiently.

The other is more subtle, and has to do with argumentation. Pennock's is the best analysis I've seen of that.

Harry:

No, but if you send it I will. It's supposed to be hilarious.

He makes the same error you guys do with regard to argumentation, maintaining that it isn't enough to show that Darwinism is dubiuous, but that opponents should prove a new theory of their own. That's not scientific, but then Darwinism isn't.

creeper:

It's easy. Here's the Economist tribute to Ernst M ayr rewritten as if he were an IDer instead of a Darwinist:

"CHARLES DARWIN'S most famous book is called “On the Origin of Species by Means of Intelligent Design”. That is not, however, what it is actually about. Intelligent Design is there in abundance. Darwin shows how small, heritable variations that improve survival and reproduction will accumulate over the millennia. He also shows that groups of similar species have descended from common ancestors. But on the origin of those species—exactly how one ancestral species divides into many—the book is largely silent.

Darwin did not know the answer to this question, and nor did anyone else until Ernst Mayr, a biologist working at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, enlightened them. First, in 1942, he published “Systematics and the Origin of Species”. This got to the heart of the problem by defining what a species actually is—not a group of individuals that look alike, but a group that can breed among themselves but not with others. That now-routine observation cleared the way to ask how such “reproductive isolation” comes about. Mr Mayr's answer was that bits of large interbreeding populations sometimes get isolated from the main (climate change may break up a range, for example). Intelligent Design will then do its work on the isolated sub-populations. To the extent that these sub-groups throw up different genetic mutations for intelligence to work on, and are subjected to different pressures, they will evolve in different directions. Eventually, they will become new species."

Of course he was wrong about the breeding, but we have to work with what you guys have come up with.

Orrin,

"He makes the same error you guys do with regard to argumentation, maintaining that it isn't enough to show that Darwinism is dubiuous, but that opponents should prove a new theory of their own. That's not scientific, but then Darwinism isn't."

Critics don't have to come up with a new theory of their own; simply proving the existing theory wrong will do. I have yet to see you attempt this with regard to the theory of evolution. Generally, you use either strawman arguments or make overblown claims that you are unable to back up with facts.

It's an interesting quote you posted, btw. One thing you should take from it is that scientific understanding of evolution has moved on since Darwin, and pretending time stood still around 1900 really doesn't accomplish much.

creeper:

Agreed, the book Harry cites is foolish.

Where did I refer to the book Harry cited? I was talking about the quote you posted.

"Critics don't have to come up with a new theory of their own" That's the subtle argument Ha\rry was talking about.

You're talking about that book you haven't read? Maybe you should read it first.

creeper:

There's plenty of information about it on the Internet.

OJ doesn't need to read books to be an expert on them. His track record of writing conclusive reviews of books he hasn't read is impeccable

It's a brave approach to book review, though most undergraduates have tried it at some point, when time is tight and essay deadlines loom.

Life is too short to waste on Darwinian drivel.

How so? You spend quite a bit of time on 'Darwinian drivel'.

That is not Pennock's argument. Not even close.

I have no doubt that there is a lot of comment on the Internet saying that it is, but there's a lot of bad information on the Internet.

I'll be happy to send Orrin the book if he'll give me the address.

Not that I think it will change his mind, which was made up in advance of evidence.

Evidence! Good one!

Here's from the Amazon description, especially funny:

"With great insight and good humor, Pennock catalogues the wide range of creationist beliefs, dissects their main arguments and highlights what he sees as their internal inconsistencies. He focuses most of his attention on explicating the alleged weakness of the premises of theistic science and its reliance on an "intelligent designer," contending that its incorporation of miracles into its explanatory sphere undermines all aspects of science."

Is Darwinism disproven because there are inconsistencies among Darwinists? And note that the latter simply assumes science to be true, so anything that undermines it wrong.

The Amazon description does not say that internal inconsistencies disprove the range of creationist beliefs, merely that Pennock highlights them.

Science represents our current knowledge of the natural world. Obviously incorporating miracles (ie. the supernatural) to explain away any gaps in our knowledge (or even to serve as alternate explanations for phenomena for which scientific explanations exist) would be unscientific – regardless of whether you regard science as the ultimate standard of 'truth' or not.

No it doesn't, that's the point. knowledge is a truth claim.

The reason I put truth in quotes is because there are different kinds of truth. The one you're after is a more all-encompassing truth that includes the spiritual and the supernatural. Science does not include those.

What science does include is our current state of knowledge of the natural world. When you say something is true in a scientific context, it simply means that it is consistent with fact or reality; it makes no pretense to a higher truth, incorporating the spiritual.

No there aren't. All truths are the same.

Perhaps, but not all uses of the word 'truth' are.

truth

1. Conformity to fact or actuality.
2. A statement proven to be or accepted as true.
3. Sincerity; integrity.
4. Fidelity to an original or standard.
5.
1. Reality; actuality.
2. often Truth That which is considered to be the supreme reality and to have the ultimate meaning and value of existence.

You're thinking more along the lines of what is here referred to as "Truth".

"I didn't steal the apple, and that's the truth" is a simple statement of fact, not of a kind of cosmic truth.

No, it's "truth". We can have no idea what realoity is or that it, or we, even exists.

Again, you're using the word 'truth' in an ontological way. It's not the only way the word is commonly used.

Whether you accept that or not, it's the truth.

Yes, it's used all kinds of ways, mistakenly. It's just folks making truth claims that have no rational basis. That's your form of faith and you're welcome to it.

"mistakenly"

No, both meanings are according to the accepted definition. Nothing wrong with that.