To: DuckTapeSunroof who wrote (364344 ) 2/27/2003 8:49:32 PM From: Johannes Pilch Read Replies (1) | Respond to of 769670 I don't think that you can generalize in this way about biological makeup directly producing such a behavioral imperative... in fact, I'm sure you can't. (Except in some kind of a philosophical or metaphysical 'thought game'.) There is nothing metaphysical about it at all. It's really a simple matter of integrity with biological identity. We are free to act as we choose, but to act in the manner that corresponds most with what we are in nature requires that we reject certain behaviors. Your dad's abandoning your mom for another woman simply has no integrity with what you are. It has no integrity with what he is, nor with what his wife or any other human is. If A and only A + B and only B= C, then A + D is foreign to the identity of C.There is no scientific, physical evidence for monogamy being the only natural behavioral state for humanity... in fact, there is significant scientific evidence to support the view that it is not a biological imperative for humans... Well as I have said, we may act as we wish. Some animals eat their young. Nevertheless for obvious reasons this is no basis for civilization. The basis of human civilization is human identity along with behaviors that have integrity with human identity.If you want to make a moral case that monogamy is a way to 'perfect' the human condition, that's one thing, and that's a perfectly acceptable argument. Morality is not needed here at all, unless by morality we mean "that which most reflects human identity." In that case since heterosexual monogamy indisputably is the only sexual relationship that accurately reflects what each human is in nature, it is the most moral of all human sexual relationships. >>> But you cannot draw upon biological science to claim that it is the only natural state of sexual practice for humanity... because the evidence contradicting that is so overwhelming. Creatures may well act contrary to their inherent biological identities. Nevertheless because they do this is no reason to claim their contrary behavior is "natural" or acceptable. Contrary behavior is against nature. It is "animalistic" because like the raw unthinking behavior that often comes from animals, it comes of ignorance of self.