Adultery, USA

Today's story of choice centers around one man's descent into infidelity and his wife's peculiar punishment of such infidelity thereafter.

The story itself is a must-read for humor alone, but one thing that struck me in the article was the radio DJ's confidence that the marriage would not last. It was not so much the prediction that was intriguing, but rather how the future of the couple was discussed as if the humans involved were a pair of dice being rolled in a game of craps. Pity or empathy was found nowhere in the article, but rather the event simply became another edition of a reality tv (in this case reality radio) wherein the whole show centered on the question, "will this last?"

None of this really is really a surprise. Marriage simply isn't sacred anymore. And it really should not come as a surprise when science of all institutions is advocating adultery such as in this article (Warning: while the article is entirely scientific in nature, sexuality is discussed with openness especially within primates). But while evolutionary theory may very well argue human sexuality and whether or not adultery should be considered taboo, we must scratch our head a little bit when the scientists decide to become religious skeptics in the name of science when we read such quotes in the article linked above:

“Claims to moral outrage appear to be falling on deaf ears as humans in modern societies are moving closer to the kind of sexuality that existed in our species for millennia; that is, before civilization imposed religious strictures on who was allowed to bonk whom.”

SOAPBOX: And this is what really gets my goat...when I was in evolutionary biology classes in college and when I read scientific articles and books regarding the subject, there are occasionally the scientists who just have an open bias against religion, and talk of the ancient homo sapien races before civilization with a kind of romanticism of "the old ways" before morality and religion corrupted man. Which in my opinion, is absurd, as scientists should have no say on philosophical and religious matters. SOAPBOX OVER

Now that I am off my soapbox, my whole point of the link to the science article is that if what people say is true in that where science go, western culture will follow, it will not be long until polygamy is the quid pro quo amongst relationships. Sure the divorce rate may go down, but at the price of monogamy.