Having sex or not having sex, getting married or not getting married for superstitious reasons is STUPID!

There are very pragmatic reasons for keeping it in your pants that in reality, have absolutely nothing to do with fictional invisible friends in the sky. On a global scale, we are becoming a species that is increasingly hard to manage resources and pollution.

On an individual level there are many reasons. Having a kid because society has sold that to you is STUPID. If you don't want a kid, don't have one. If you cant afford a kid, even more reason not to have one. Children are a lifetime commitment and humans don't nearly enough time teaching their young the pragmatic issues of life planning.

I don't want kids myself. I constantly get teased by my co-workers about being single and when I flip out at work they tease me and say I need to get laid. They are being half serious too. Sex certainly can be a stress reliever, true. But having sex, like anything in life, has its dangers. Disease and unwanted pregnancies and financial slavery, can all be problems.

Why the hell would I jeopardize my status because my peers think a moment of self gratification is worth the risk. It is funny because some of my co-workers have kids outside of marriage, kids they cant afford and bills they cant pay as a result of letting their hormones rule them.

Basing life decisions on superstition is stupid. If you are going to have a kid or not have a kid because God or an ancient book of myth said so, you might as well take a quarter out of your pocket and flip it and base your decisions on that flip, it would be just as practical.

I don't really buy the ideas in that article. Well, I suppose that they paint a picture that has some degree of accuracy. However, the way that it is written has so many possible holes in it, that I find it hard to take it as having a fully fleshed out validity.

First off, the top half has references to a number of studies that show specific points that are presented as relevant. However, without specific links to the studies in question, it is just not possible to understand if they were properly conducted such that the results are even valid. If that is not enough, they are all different studies by different groups of people for different purposes. That being said, why must they then all integrate into a whole view of what black culture is?

For example, 42% of black women in the US are unmarried. So fucking what? If that exact same data also deals with the question of who is going to church, then it might be possible to get a picture of the role of the church in keeping women single.

And what about the age range of the surveyed women? Off the top of my head, I would tend to think that church going people might marry a year or two later than non-church going people. Also, the murder rate among black males can be staggeringly high in some communities, so the data might also have a bit of women who are widows being counted as unmarried.

On the other hand, are non-church going women so likely to get married? I fairly socially stables communities, that may be the case. However, in conditions of low social-economic status, the picture can be different. Then there may be an overabundance of available females as a disproportionate number of young males are in jail at any given moment. Those who are not in jail are providing stud service to the women in the community.

So the statistical portion of the article is really pretty weak.

Second, the article really does not even attempt to deal with sociology-biological issues. Let's say just for grins that 42% of marriageable women have been removed from the breeding pool. What are the consequences of that?

One point is that just because they are not making the trim available does not mean that they are not actively spreading the meme of religion. So not much can be said there about selection pressure on the spread of religion.

Another point is that the available males now have options. They can play the religious game and get trim (and have babies who will be raised religious). They can go gay. They can become hyper-aggressive and possibly end up in jail (thus making what may be a bad issue worse on a community level).

I suppose that a game theory approach could work out the best strategies to encourage reproduction for such a community. Probably the best strategy would be for those who do manage to get some trim to have large families. Those who cannot get it together to trim are breeding the anti-social traits to the margins of the gene pool. In the long term, that will probably encourage the spread of the religious meme.

I volunteer to date Robin Young...