No, this is the kind of response you get from a person who has read it and understood it. If you have understood it properly you wouldn't write stuff you wrote and have such opionions.
I've yet to see any indication in your writing that you have read the book let alone understood it, now would be a good time to offer your thoughts on it since you're refuting what I've said about it.
I seriously doubt you understood it properly judging by what you have said in this thread so far. You have a grasp of evolution more than the average joe, but I've yet to see anything from you that shows a more deeper understanding. Dawkins book can definitely be read multiple ways in the sense that someone not very familiar with evolutionary theory can interpret his words to mean different things. An example would be extrapolating many of his arguments from The Battle of the Sexes to vindicate modern behaviours. An even more specific difference between different readers would be between a "mutationist" (not in the old sense of the word) and a Darwinist who favours Natural Selection as the dominant force.
There's a lot to talk about from the book, reproduction just being one of the many interesting topics discussed. I had a hard time choosing only one; I've left plenty of arguments for you to choose from to demonstrate that you not only read it but understood it.
People are not concious beings at all. Just because people know that sugar is bad for them doesn't stop them from craving it.
I'm not going to turn this in to a philosophical discussion. We are clearly conscious in the sense of the term that we are conscious of ourselves, other species, and the world around us. There's a difference between being conscious and being in full control. No one is saying that we can choose not to crave sugar in that we could over-rule our biochemistry directly. I never made that argument, and I don't know who has.
It's all stuff that's hardwired into our brains and there is nothing or little we can do about it.
How does that relate to consciousness? I'll leave the specifics of your statement for another time but no one has argued that consciousness means you can over-rule your biology. Do you even know what consciousness means? This is why I have a hard time believing you read The Selfish Gene, you wouldn't have made it more than a few chapters without hitting a brick wall as he clearly explains a hypothetical origin for consciousness from the start.
There is your problem. Poor reading skills are one of them as you clearly totally missed what I was trying to tell.
Ok then, feel free to clarify:
Based on our assumptions no men would have sex with a girl that is on a pill - Whose assumptions are you talking about? Certainly not mine.
The mere fact that there contraceptives have become available doesn't change our hardwired instinctsNo one said it did, but what does contraception have to do with our instincts? You do not understand evolution or our evolutionary history in the slightest if you think contraceptives are a problem for evolutionary theory or our current behaviour.
and yet most of that was achieved as a direct result of our grand grand grand fathers' attempts to get more pussy.
Only in the sense that if they hadn't reproduced, the people who made those things wouldn't have been born. You think skyscrapers, TV, modern music, submarines, cars, and over-priced clothing are the result of an evolutionary adaptation and are currently under selective pressure? These things are clearly consequences of our evolutionary history, there's no gene that increases the fitness of an individual by making them build skyscrapers. Again, I find it hard to believe you could read The Selfish Gene and understand it correctly when you say stuff like this.
If I'm again misunderstanding you, please do clarify because the things you are saying are absurd.
One day you're going to get my point and you're going to be like
And what point is that? You've made plenty, zero with any real evidence backing them up however.
you haven't been reading between the lines of the feminine conversations you overhear.
But slut shaming is not necessarily done for competition over a single man. We don't live in a closed system like some less advanced societies do, so as the saying goes "there's plenty more fish in the sea". Slut shaming is done in high school for no reason, between two girls who are not competing for the same men, and there's usually no reproductive benefit from this slut shaming. It clearly seems to have a more behavioural and social role than reproductive. As I said before, it could be indirectly related to reproduction (hence, social status).
but I don't think you'll find many parents encouraging their daughters to sleep around.
Not sleep around, but a couple of relationships with boyfriends in high school is pretty much the norm here and many other western countries that I can think of.
Single parent (overwhelmingly female)
As you'd expect.
supported either by court enforced alimony or state handouts. To believe this is sustainable in the long run is naive.
And so they should be. The responsibility for a child isn't put solely on the female. A male can be a single parent and receive the same benefits, just because that happens less often doesn't mean there's a gender bias, the more sensible explanation is that men aren't required to bear a child for 9 months. Also, just because it's on the 'increase' (stats would be nice) doesn't mean it's going to continue to rise. I guess you support the notion that pensions shouldn't exist?
Anyway, what the hell does this have to do with slut shaming? We should slut shame so we don't bankrupt the economy? Really? Surely there's a better way...
Less "native" children being born, immigration on the rise, you can't say the West isn't changing.
I only said that slut shaming is justifiable based on your arguments.
NZ is probably one of the most susceptible countries to immigration changing our culture and society so I'm quite familiar with it all but it's best left for another discussion.
If female promiscuity is "uncontrolled", no one will want to buy the cow when they can get the milk for free.
Women seem perfectly happy with buying the cow when the milk is free, does that make women better than us? And again, I can't believe you're using this all to justify slut shaming as if you think that if slut shaming stopped overnight the world would come to a halt. You could almost justify any behaviour in the same way, arguing that it maintains status quo. It's so absurd.
Can you imagine having to live in a crummy apartment while your wife is shagging her lover in the house you're still paying for?
Therfore, slut shame?
My head hurts when I think about the argument you presented in that paragraph. Here's a brief example of why: there are many cases where divorced husbands were killed by their ex-lovers who were cheating on someone else. Can you imagine being dead? Don't get married; slut shame. I don't even know why you want to justify slut shaming, all your problems won't disappear overnight if we endorse it. In fact, it's pretty prominent at the moment yet all your problems
still exist.
Either slut-shaming should be the norm, or the concept of marriage and even fidelity should be abolished. We're clearly very bad at it
Slut shaming is the norm? Well, it's so common that it's actually a problem in our society. Why argue for slut shaming when it clearly hasn't done anything to improve your doubts about marriage. And again, as I said to POLAND, why abolish marriage or fidelity just because you feel that way. Plenty of people don't agree with you and plenty of people agree with you. You know what the people who agree with you do? They don't get married and have polygynous (or polyandrous, if that's your thing) relationships.
Women abhor personal responsibility
Again, this is a pretty huge claim that will require some backing up. As I said to POLAND, can you tell me the mechanism by which women are made to abhor personal responsibility? I assume you know the neurological mechanism which causes this.
I can't see why you are rational when it comes to other parts of science, such as physics, yet believe you can just postulate any darn theory in to existence about women that fits your world view. You
can't do that. It's not science. It's not rational. If The Guardian came out with an article saying "women love personal responsibility", no doubt you would scoff and complain.
Why the FÜCK should I, when no woman would be prepared to do the same for me?
Because in terms of the risks in committing to a relationship, which was your concern, women are at a far greater risk than men because men do not have a social stigma about their promiscuity. To spell it out: men have more freedom from society in sleeping around, women have less freedom, therefore women are taking a greater risk when they trust their partner to be faithful than vice versa.
I'm not making a point about men and women understanding each other's positions, I'm refuting your claim by saying you should look at it from the perspective because the grass is not greener on that side of things. Since there are only two sides, and the other side is in a worse position than your side for that given argument, your argument is not valid. Drop the complaining about women not seeing things from your side, it's irrelevant to my point and could be very well true for all I care.
Surveys suggest it but I doubt this is the case in reality.
I've only ever seen that damn Durex survey which popped up in the news here awhile ago. Obviously a flawed survey in many ways. However, this supports it's findings:
http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nsfg/abc_list_n ... erlifetime
I'm obviously not going to read the whole report but the main areas of concern seem to check out (sample, sampling method, questionnaire, etc). You would also expect it to be a lot more robust than most academic research asking similar questions. Naturally, it'd be magnitudes more robust than what could be gathered from personal experience (e.g. me or you)
There are men in prison because they cannot keep up with the child support.
Really? I could understand if they're in prison due to fraud or something similar (such as lying on government forms about their income and child support) but that's obviously not the same as going to prison for not being able to keep up with payments. Any examples of written law or something?
Anyway, who cares. As I said before, a child is not solely a woman's responsibility. If you disagree with this, then there are a million other thing you must think is wrong with society and the only solution would be to form a band of hunter-gatherers and try your luck in the wilderness.
It's symptomatic of a society that promotes an ideal and romantic notion of male/female relations which it is then unwilling to back up.
Society promotes a romantic notion of life itself; you go through being butthurt about that during your teens (and probably the rest of your life, to a degree).
Women are allowed to have abortions. Men aren't allowed to flee.
Women aren't allowed to have abortions willy nilly, not in many places (incl. NZ). How is having an abortion equivalent to a man fleeing anyway? A man fleeing doesn't get rid of the problem, it creates more.
Of course I'm sympathetic to strengthening certain laws regarding child support where it can be shown that the woman deceived a man regarding her intentions or contraception. Though I'm not familiar with the current legality of such practice anyway, for all I know a man could be exempt if he had a video of a girl poking holes in the condom in his wallet. So I can't really comment except to say I obviously don't think men should pay support when some form of agreement (that can be proven in court) existed before hand or they were tricked/victim of sabotage.
This suggests that you exist in a very feminine environment
Well not really. Them being girls doesn't change the environment of the work place at all: we work, have a break, work some more. I'm not sure what kind of changes you'd expect? I'm in a government department office, my bosses are government employees, I'm technically employed by the government. Dominated by men or women, the environment stays pretty neutral. Note that I said my group is 5:1 female to male, we work in an office space with other workers where the ratio is more evenly split.
Women aren't found in high proportion in environments that do not pander to them.
The government doesn't pander to women, it's neutral to gender... it treats women with the same respect as men. In other words, gender isn't a factor in the running of the office (how it should be). Being surrounded by women would never enter your mind, they're just colleagues. It's not like you can't bring out the dart board, flick on the footy, and crack a cold one because you work with woman. You can't do that because it's an office.