Human as a monogamous species...

[mith]

I'm thinking polyandry happens when there's much less females than males...it pays for the female to sleep around . Also (I don't remember where I read this) gorillas exhibit some form of polyandry...the females will occasionally wander off to the neighboring tribes. If the males are not able to guard the females from other males polyandry is much more likely to happen.

[charles brough]

I cannot believe the group acceps the supposition that humans are different than other animals for having sex to have children rather than because of instinct ("fun")! All animals have sex because it fulfills their instinct to want it. The number of people who have sex they do not want to have just in order to have children has to be extremely small! A man really has to want to have sex in order to be able to have it!! If it does not stimulate him, he cannot perform!

It is easy to assume that sex is not instinctive when we see how different it is among different people under different circumstances, but all our important motivation is instinctive. It evolved in us. Growing up is a process by which the ideology of society causes us to adapt our instinctive urges in ways that better enable us to live and work together. Being social animals, we have to do that. Society helps us condition the way we express or carry out our instincts, our wants.

We are not a monogamous species. If we were monogamous, we would not need monogamous religious systems to condition our behavior. We adopted monagmous religious---all major world religious are monogamous---because modern society and civilization would be impossible otherwise. We adopted the patriarchal-monogamous system some 5,000 years ago and it was what made civilization possible. Whenever the system breaks down, as it is now, society crumbles----i.e., social problems proliferate---and civilization declines. This cycle has happened many times in world history.

charles
http://humanpurpose.simplenet.com

[mith]

Biologically speaking, I think being monogamous keeps the STD rate down.