Evolution Vs. The Bible

THE CONTROVERSY. Previously in college I had a Evolutionary Psychology course and a Religion: Sex, Gender and The Bible course. Both are topics that raises eyebrows as they deal with topics that are very touchy. A little background on the Evolutionary Psychology course is it explains behaviors that have evolved to be advantageous to survival or more so reproduction. The Religion: Sex, Gender and The Bible course focuses on various interpretations of the bible such as queer biblical interpretation, feminist biblical interpretation, and masculine interpretation.While each course are polar opposites they intermingle as they touch on the ever looming question of creation. The bible offers two creation stories (1) the seven days of creation (2) the story of Adam and Eve. The psychology course does not offer a creation story but more of a suggestion towards our greatest ancestral relatives on a phylogeny tree which would be Bonobos, Orangutan, Gorilla and Chimpanzee. We along with those four previous apes I mentioned are considered the five great apes in evolution. One subject each class touched upon was rape. Rape is defined as the unlawful sexual intercourse or any sexual penetration of the vagina, anus, or mouth of another person, with or without force, by a sex organ, body part, or foreign object, without the consent of the victim. The Bible mentions rape an uncountable number of times as many characters in the books are raped. What interested me the most about rape in The Bible was the laws concerning rape. The laws concerning rape were pretty specific but very cringeworthy to say the least. A watered down version of the laws is if a woman is raped within a town (1) if she is not heard crying for help then both her and the accused will be stoned, (2) if heard then just the accused will be stoned. If a woman is raped outside of a town then only the accused will be stoned. If a man rapes a virgin, he will be forced to pay her father the virgin bride price (the price a man would pay a father for his virgin daughter. He would usually pay him in cattle and goods) and the daughter will have to marry her rapist. These laws are ludicrous and were quite shocking to hear but not as shocking as it was to hear about studies and findings on modern day rape. Malmuth (1981) found that 2/3 males answered "yes" to the question of would you commit a rape if there was no chance of any retribution, punishment, detection, or legal outcomes. It's actually mind-blowing to hear this but when I think about it, in reality it is not that surprising. Sexual assault is so common and men feel so entitled. Men feel as if they control women and we were solely meant for their pleasure. This study was replicated and the findings were still shocking as the results were 35% of males indicated a non-zero chance of engaging in rape if there was no chance of being discovered. Only 35%. And people wonder why women feel so little of themselves.