Gaius, this was a panel convened to speak about abuse of women. So that's what it focused on. One of the keynote speakers was the head of the U.N. council on human rights, so I think it's fair to say she's aware of human rights violations against other groups. But this was about women.

The thing I find interesting about the Jesus myth is not so much the discussion over whether he existed as a real person or not. It's that the whole story of his life is a cobbled succession of borrowed stories from earlier mythologies. It would be one thing to see something like a reasonable biography interspersed with a few exaggerations or claims of miracles. The myths of George Washington chopping down the cherry tree and having wooden teeth both come to mind as good examples. We know Washington existed because of good record keeping, and we know he was the president. But we have to weed through the stories about him and try to decide what's true and what's not in terms of his personal life.

Not so with Jesus. EVERYTHING in the gospels gives every appearance of being made up, including -- as the author mentioned -- the very circumstances of his being born and basic biographical information. It's baffling to me that any serious scholar could suggest that we take anything in the Gospel seriously.

As for Paul, I think it's important to mention that some mythicists interpret Paul very differently than they interpret the Gospels. They believe that Paul saw Jesus as a heavenly deity, like the Greek and Roman gods he was most certainly familiar with. Births and deaths and resurrections had happened in the pantheon for centuries, and it doesn't seem outlandish to me that Paul could have viewed Jesus the same way. It's odd that for all the specificity of the Gospel as to earthly deeds and miracles, Paul doesn't corroborate any of it. And he wrote his earliest epistles before the Gospel was written. That seems very odd to me.

It looks like trumped up charges to me, chief. No evidence, no case.

I suppose I should have made myself a little more clear about that, Librehombre. I don't consider myself a humanist, so I'm admittedly doing humanists a disservice by not mentioning that they've been covering the subject of living without God for years. But I think Darrel's book is especially valuable because it isn't specifically humanist. It's just non-religious. And a lot of people -- myself included -- spent a lot of time wanting information without advice. That is, don't tell me how I *should* live. Give me information to help me make my own decision. And for some, I think the idea of humanism sounds too much like secular religion. So I think this fills a niche.

Wow. I knew about a lot of those, but when you compile it all into a list, it definitely seems more... bizarre. I honestly don't know enough to be able to make more than an educated guess, but I think one of the things that probably has a lot to do with it is the really high incidence of virginity among relatively old men and women. (That is, it's pretty unusual to be a 25 or 30 year old virgin.)

Probably most American readers can't relate as well to this, but virginity really does have an effect on the brain, if for no other reason than we invent lots of fantasies about sex that may or may not have anything to do with reality at all.

There's also got to be something to the "culture of repression" that's contributing to this as well. Japanese men and women both lead "double lives" in the sense that they must be completely prim, proper, and reserved at work, but almost anything goes at the club, on the bus, or on the street. It's my understanding that nobody flinches when half the males on a completely full bus are reading explicit magazines openly. That just wouldn't happen in America.

On a totally different topic, you might be interested to read Athol Kay's guest post on my blog. It's my latest post, so it should post here.
My recent post Guest Post: Athol Kay

I wonder how many babies have been born to women who had sex for reasons other than the vag tingle. When you look at the history of marriage, you have to wonder why evolutionary psychologists are so hip to jump on the female mate selection bandwagon when studies like these come out. It seems very likely to me that a significant part of the female cognitive algorithm is devoted to cost/benefit analysis of men. While this can certainly translate into physiological responses, it's just tricky, tricky territory to start asserting causal relationships. Cognitive decisions and unconscious desires are tough to link linearly.

Women are definitely turned on by situations. Romance novels don't have pictures. The thought of a strong protector might trigger sexual response, especially when a strong protector is very valuable, but it just seems like there are too many variables. To much noise in the data.
My recent post A Bit of Soul Searching

I'm very leery of a lot of these ideas. Not that I think they're wrong, but I'm not ready to jump on the bandwagon, mainly because I can't work out the evolutionary reasoning. It's fine to say that the long term costs to the woman are sometimes higher when she chooses a masculine mate, but sexual fitness is about the offspring, not the health and happiness of the mother. While it's true that a mother does need to be healthy to care for her offspring, I don't know that I'm convinced that this benefit alone constitutes a strong enough evolutionary pressure to account for a shift in mate preference based on socioeconomic strength in the culture.

To put it more simply, what these tests measure is not female's subjective opinions about the long term fitness of a potential mate, but whether or not his face makes the vag tingle. This hypothesis suggests that female bodies are able to forecast socioeconomic trends and make subconscious adjustments to account for the long term health of the relationship. While this isn't impossible, it seems like a bit of a stretch based on the sketchy data I've seen so far. I think it's far more likely that something like birth control will be the culprit.

I smell a rat. Did the researchers by chance control for birth control? If not, then the whole thing might be bunk. We would expect that women in the wealthiest, healthiest countries are all on the pill, right? And the pill is known to shift women's preferences towards less masculine and more androgynous.

I think you're right. We tend to create a false dichotomy. Smart guys all have advanced degrees, and spend all their time in labs mixing potions together or building computers out of paper clips. That's only a small subset of "smart guys." Some guys are viciously smart AND socially savvy. They've applied their intelligence to social dominance. These are the guys who ALWAYS have beautiful, intelligent wives/girlfriends.

Ah, very good observation, Susan. Let me put it another way. Your hobby doesn't make me want to have sex with you. But once we've had sex and I'm thinking about committing to you long term, your hobby might well make you more desirable.

It's that whole value thing again. An interesting hobby might well add value to you as a long term mate, especially if it's a shared interest, or something a guy thinks he might like if he tried it. (And on a more cynical note, girls with hobbies have something to do on Saturday while college football is on. That's no small thing.)

The short answer is no. It doesn't work in reverse, unless your hobby is dressing up in schoolgirl outfits and doing stripteases for your boyfriend.

That isn't to say that men don't want girls with hobbies. Most guys do. But a girl's hobbies aren't boner inducing. When a girl is doing a hobby, she's not doing her lover. So no... hobbies don't turn guys on.

Oh, but FYI, if you're talking to a guy and he starts getting bored or distracted when you talk about your hobbies, there's a 78.3% chance that he's trying to get in your pants and wishes you would let him show off his hobbies some more so you'll jump his bones.
My recent post The Story of Easter, Part 3