Why Multiply?

Question

I can understand as animals we are survival machines, blindly programmed to preserve the selfish molecules known as genes but why a desire to give birth to a child that has no benefit to our living at all. I know that we all have a desire to perform in sexual activities and ‘If’ there was a God then perhaps this was his way of making us multiply, i.e. we desire s*x, even with a small side effect of popping out a child. But I don’t believe in God. So why multiply?

Answer 1

Kids are gifts, they are not burden or garbage.  What do you do to your parents?  It's a good way to think... especially in our so-called civilized North America.

Even the best gift you get from your family or friends, you have to use it in its right way to fully enjoy it.

You'll agree that kids are gifts if you could bring your kids up in an appropriate way.  They will make you real headaches if you "handling" them inappropriately.

Answer 2

Well for you that makes sense.  But for me that makes no sense. So I accept that to you what I'm going to say is just plain foolish.

God is love.  And love is a creative force.  In fact in nature most animals create and environment yes known as mating rituals to personify the importance of love.  And it is for the celebration and importance of life.  To bring new life, a new YOU into the world.

Answer 3

Humans are animals - we are just too arrogant to admit it freely.

According to the International Programs Center, U.S. Census Bureau, the total population of the World, projected to 07/26/08 at 18:53 GMT (EST+5) is  6,712,627,276

Answer 4

There is no reason in asking "why."

There is no logical answer. We are impelled by our desires, which ultimately do not satisfy our INDIVIDUAL purposes, but satisfy the call of the SPECIES as a whole.

That is, an individual's existence is the agency by which the species achieves achieves immortality. A man dies, but the species does not--this is accomplished by the noxious agent we call "love."

let us examine the matter a little further:

(For humor, I will use the word "love.")

Love is the pretext whereby so many people crucify themselves to the arrangement of marriage, relationships, and commitments, for a reason no better than mere obsession.

If man were to think logically of this arrangement, he would spare himself the burden of irrationally committing his life (and sacrificing so many freedoms) to another, in a relationship that will insidiously produce pleasure in the beginning, and pain or insanity in the end. The purpose of this arrangement is instrumental not to individual happiness, but the production of offspring.

If one were to think logically of relationships and love, 70% of the marriages that end in divorce in the U.S. simply would not be.

The trifling topics that comprise 90% of a woman's discourse about "relationship problems" would not be.

How many arguments do you hear regarding problems of love?

You need only look at the Singles and Dating section in Yahoo! Answers to confirm my statements --how irrational are all these people? How miserable are they? Most of the threads posted are of a problem--one that often leads to unimaginable despair... confirm this for yourself. See what nature's design has in store for the individual.

Love is the Sundew of humanity. It will provide the sweetest nectar and the most beautiful display, only to kill you in the end.

Simply put, Love is not for the individual; it is for the propagation of the species.

In short, there is no logical reason for the arrangement and "multiplication" of which you speak. It is a mechanism of evolutionary efficiency. We call it "love."

Good luck.

-----------------EDIT----------------

I find it necessary to add that Mezizany's use of words and examples are nothing but a pulp of sophism.

"... Life is like riding the bicycle. We decide where we are riding to and to what ultimate adventure we will have on our bicycle. We use the mechanisms of propulsion to carry out this adventure."

---my rebuttal to this insubstantial example is such:

If life is as Mezizany says, a "bicycle," then WE are the bicycle ridden by the will of the species (in the form of irrational INDIVIDUAL desires) to the point of exhaustion and then death. A man does not marry, take up a mortgage and  a myriad of other financial alternatives only to make a house a home for a woman and child, only to die in the end unprofitably. This is the crude language in which we must speak to describe society; not terms like "adventure."

"In unmetaphorical terms, we are not survival machines, we are not blindly programmed to preserve the selfish molecules. We are Beings who exist to uncover our beingness."  I will not even begin to rebuttal this statement; it is riddled in ambiguity and fallacy-- it is meaningless. How dandy would it be to able to smuggle an absolute such as "being" into an argument that is utterly lacking in premise--how do you even provide premise for the absolute without fallaciously presuming it?

"Language exposes/uncovers/assigns meaning of phenomenon to us as Beings"

---- language is a feeble and limited tool we use to rationalize our misery. Language does not "expose" phenomena; it allows us to ASSUME phenomena by way of induction.

"Science is the tool, a singular perspective of a far-broader meaningfulness that is in sum our totality of Beings." Such romanticize of presuming absolutes. This does not present logic or idea; it presents words in the form of fancy ambiguity.

"In other words, living is the adventure, the adventure of our own choosing, (limited only by the summation of all Other's adventure-choosings en mass), and the scientific metaphor of the mechanisms of propulsion thru our adventure must not be confused with the adventure itself."

----More ambiguous nonsense: you need only look at humanity en masse to see that there is nothing of "choosing." The individual carries his cross unquestionably and carries it until he is trampled by fate. We do not choose any adventure when we are slaves to a desire that is indescribable by language. We are the bicycle, which carries double its weight in the form of insatiable desire and burden for reasons that defy logic itself. How wonderful would it be to use the word "adventure" to justify suffering.

Answer 5

some people shouldnt multiply

Answer 6

It is fun trying.....

Answer 7

It is wrong when you stated "why a desire to give birth to a child that has no benefit to our living at all"-- that is subjective. Also if we ceased in reproduction because we thought it was of no benefit-- then evolution would not continue.

Answer 8

Why multiply? The answer is the question. To bifurcate. From the biological perspective, DNA's only purpose is to bifurcate. It is what it does. All our cultural values, all our intellect and actions, all our being are tangential to this singular purpose, to reproduce. There is no exterior why. There is no agenda underlying this biological necessity. The mechanism of DNA replication is not a bi-product of some unknown source of purpose. Replication is the purpose of the mechanism.

Your question is like asking "Why do we use the pedals to pedal the bicycle?"  Sure, you could push the bicycle and run along next to it, but that defeats the purpose of the pedal mechanism itself. But there is no hidden agenda of the pedal. The pedal isn't anything other than the mechanism to propel the bicycle.  The same with biological reproduction. It is the mechanism to reproduce. There is no other "how come" involved.

To continue the metaphor... Life is like riding the bicycle. We decide where we are riding to and to what ultimate adventure we will have on our bicycle. We use the mechanisms of propulsion to carry out this adventure.

In unmetaphorical terms, we are not survival machines, we are not blindly programmed to preserve the selfish molecules. We are Beings who exist to uncover our beingness. We use one tool to do this uncovering, language. Language exposes/uncovers/assigns meaning of phenomenon to us as Beings.  Language then builds a reality for us to dwell in. Thru this architecture of meaning, we have stumbled upon the metaphor of science which allows us to reveal the phenomenon of materials in such a way that we've given meaning to it in terms of genetics and evolution.

Your mis-step is believing this metaphorical language of science is the ground of meaning. Science is the tool, a singular perspective of a far-broader meaningfulness that is in sum our totality of Beings.

In other words, living is the adventure, the adventure of our own choosing, (limited only by the summation of all Other's adventure-choosings en mass), and the scientific metaphor of the mechanisms of propulsion thru our adventure must not be confused with the adventure itself. It is a useful tool to help us with making the adventure, but it is not the adventure in and of itself.

The mis-step is taking the metaphor of scientific mechanization language as the adventure.  This is a tautology, meaningless and not grounded at all in the existential phenomenona of Being.

In short, reproduction is not our life purpose, nor is there an underlying purpose of reproduction. We are not the medium thru with genes carrying out some tautological progression. The information carried in genes has no room for such foresight.

Genes are simply a mechanism to carry out our true purpose, which is defined by the will-to-power (our own choosing purposefulness of uncovering thru language) and limited by the summation of Other's will-to-power.  

Do not confuse the mechanism with the purpose. For example, when we drive a car, it is dangerous to drive the car only in terms of excercising the mechanical nature of the vehicle. We drive towards destination. We use the car for purposes other than the mechanical.  The same with reproduction. It is a means to an end, not an end in itself.

To think otherwise, therein lies the danger of biological reductionism.

Answer 9

so we dont die out if no1 ever has a child again well all get old and die

Answer 10

Okay, this is about the most selfish thing I have ever heard. 'why a desire to give birth to a child that has no benefit to our living at all.' Okay, let's think this way: A child is born. The same child grows up living in a peaceful and kind family. This child stops all war. Improvement can happened in the smallest ways. You affect your children, and your children changes the world.

Answer 11

if your way of thinking is superior.. pass it on to your offspring... survival of the fittest isnt just the athletic..

Answer 12

Genes. This is one widely promoted (but often disputed) reason as to why we (as you say) multiply. It is said to be an instinctive desire to have offspring, moreover, desirable to have lots of offspring to increase the odds of more of your genes being passed on because only 50% of your own genes will be present in you child (due to 50% being from each parent).

This is known as Hamiltons Rule. This rule also aims to tell us why altruistic actions could be beneficial when they don't directly benefit one individual. For example, if a parent were to sacrifice themselves in order to save 3 children then it is seen as more beneficial than to save one or two children (because one parents genes is 100% of their genes. Similarly 2 children of that parent will have the combined percentage of 100% of genes. Yet 3 children will have 50% each, therefore making the overall percentage 150% therefore saving more genes in 3 children is more beneficial than saving oneself).

Answer 13

Any species that ever evolved without that drive soon went extinct. The species that exist today exist because of that drive.

Answer 14

Because it is fun and pleasurable as far as the s*x goes.

And as they children grow they give you challenges and responsibilities that give meaning to your life.

Answer 15

Whether by God or evolution, it's built into us,

in the same way as the sexual urge.

If you look at s*x with total rationality,

How much sense does it make, ... really?

When your first kid grabs your little finger in his

chubby little fist, ..... then you'll know.