Wow. It's hard to take this 'godless' fellow at Gene Expression seriously. In my previous comment on his nonsense, I suggested that it was a waste of time to erect straw men against each other's positions, so what does he do? He assembles a long, rambling post in which he tries to tell me what I actually think, and gets it completely wrong at every point. In fact, his entire argument is unpleasantly dishonest, relying entirely on assigning me false positions.

I'm not going to spend a lot of effort dissecting the silliness of his accusations, but here's a sampling of what he claims that I believe.

There are plenty of people who deny that biology significantly affects human behavior, and yeah, PZ is one of them. He really does think it's possible to culturally reprogram people to not be sexually jealous, despite the copious evidence to the contrary.

Pray tell, PZ, where are those well controlled studies that show humans that aren't sexually jealous?

PZ just will not accept that men and women are behaviorally different and no amount of cultural upheaval and government intervention will eliminate all differences between them.

He really does believe that male and female nature is so plastic that some kind of societal intervention can make men and women indistinguishably androgynous from a behavioral standpoint. There's no room for the norm of reaction in this Lysenkoist worldview, so let's take the point on directly.

So we are left with the very strong statement that according to PZ, human culture evolved independently of human biology.

it's a blanket assumption from the "social constructionist/blank slate" crowd that Darwinian selection explains nothing about human behavior (in this case, sexual jealousy), and that exclusively social explanations for cultural institutions should be privileged over any explanation that invokes biology.

It's good to see that PZ knows the basics about steroid hormones, but it's bad to see that he falsely implies to his readers that those different side groups are unimportant in understanding sex differences.

PZ (or should I call him PC?) would like you to remain unaware of all this, because he'd like you to believe that sex differences stop at the neck, and couldn't possibly affect neurological processes or behavior on average.

Finally, PZ believes we most *certainly* mustn't think of supposing that biology might have impacted cultural evolution, at least not until we've tried the utopian re-engineering of society that will - in PZ's words - show us there is "no reason to suspect biology is directly involved in the cultural institutions around marriage".

many of the individuals involved (from PZ Myers to Majikthise to Sapphos, etc.) have stated that it's not right to criticize open marriage, but it is right to criticize those who criticize open marriage...even if the facts strongly indicate that open marriage is likely to lead to breakups.

It's simply breathtaking. I don't think I've ever seen quite so large an army of straw soldiers erected in my honor. Every one of those statements—from the idea that I don't believe people are jealous to my belief that biology doesn't affect culture to my plan for a Lysenkoist re-engineering of society—are nothing but fatuous inventions of Mr Godless that are in direct contradiction of my actual beliefs. I'm tempted to respond by refuting his ridiculous delusion that the moon is made of vanilla ice cream, but that would be stooping to his level. No, thank you. I will, however, assure everyone that I actually have noticed that men and women tend to be different both above and below the neck, and can think of lots of examples where biology affects culture, and vice versa.

I'm going to single out just one example of Mr Godless's astonishing lack of comprehension, the example of a hilarious and pathetic remark from one of his colleagues, who said, "can anyone really believe that feminist studies has anything relevant to tell us about 'the social construction' of male-female interaction when degree recipients aren’t even required to know the difference between the chemical structure of estrogen vs. that of testosterone, let alone anything about the comparative genomics of the X and Y chromosomes?" My reply was "What kind of geek would think that knowing that estrogen’s C19 is unmethylated while its A ring is aromatic gives him any insight at all into the different behaviors of the sexes?"

His rebuttal?

You see, steroid hormones like estrogen and testosterone do their job by slipping through the plasma membrane and turning on various genes...and different side groups mean that different genes get turned on in men and women. These differing patterns of gene expression produce the physiological and behavioral differences between the sexes.

Zoom, right over his head, and he geekily plods on, compounding the error. I'm sorry, guy, but knowing the methylation state of one of the carbons in a steroid hormone tells me nothing about social and sexual differences between men and women; there's a whole world of stuff going on between the chemistry and the behavior that emerges. It's like listening to a typography nerd earnestly explaining what a 'serif' is, who concludes that he has now explained all of Shakespeare, and that by demonstrating the irrefutable existence of type he has proven his superiority over me, the guy who doesn't believe in the alphabet. I think I'll stand by my belief that I'll get more insight on the matter by talking to a radical feminist humanities professor (who will recognize that I know my ABCs) than I will wasting my time with the uneducated boy in the print shop.