February 14, 2013 | David F. Coppedge

Monkey Luv: It's All Chemicals

The latest “shed light on evolution” story will ruin your Valentine’s Day.

You think you love that special person in your life, but if National Geographic‘s philosophy is right, you are only a bag of chemicals responding to other chemicals.  They say this in “Owl Monkeys Shed Light on Evolution of Love: Tiny primates form close bonds that may be foundation of human relationships.”  And what is monkey luv?  Skip to the end of the article for the answer:

According to Young, our brains are in the love seat, so to speak: The organs “have evolved the mechanism to produce an emotional attachment,” he said.

That attachment is spurred by oxytocin—produced during intimate contact in both people and animals—and dopamine, which is responsible for feelings of exhilaration and happiness.

So, many splendored as it is, love, he said, “is really the result of a cocktail of chemicals.”

New Scientist joined the howler chorus, stating that “The researchers believe that their observations of owl monkey romance sheds light on how shared child-rearing among humans gave rise to this crazy little thing called love.”

Let’s face it; owl monkeys are cute.  Who wouldn’t love a face like that?  It seems, though, that NG is guilty of a logical fallacy called non-sequitur.  After the fact does not mean because of the fact.  Oxytocin and dopamine may be associated with life’s intimate moments, but if love is simply the result of an O-D cocktail, who is the bartender?

It’s not necessary to spend a lot of time on this nonsense because it’s already fallacious.  But for fun, let’s try C. S. Lewis’s argument from reason on it (an application of the self-refuting fallacy).  (For details, see new book The Magician’s Twin.)  If love is a result of a cocktail of chemicals, then love for Darwin is the result of a cocktail of chemicals, and so is love of the truth.  But if truth is a result of chemicals, there’s no way to be sure it’s true – including the claim that truth and love are the result of chemicals.  Learn this logical progression well.  It will unmask Darwin every time.

Love Is a Monkey Hormone Thing

Once in a Down and windy House

In the evening mist

Two notions kissed*

And the world stood still

As Charlie penned his book

My silent heart, he taught it how to weep

Aaagh, true love’s

An evolved chemical thing.

*(random mutation and natural selection, or gradualism and materialism)

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Comments

  • rockyway says:

    1. ‘…love, he said, “is really the result of a cocktail of chemicals.”

    – You see here what kind of nonsense results from reductionism.

    This dreary conclusion would only be true if materialism were true; i.e. it depends upon assuming materialism and upon denying Design. If we adopt creation as our basic assumption we can conclude that human love is the result of design. One doesn’t have to deny the operational effects of chemicals (i.e. to facilitate a behavior) to affirm design.

    In this article we see another example of equivocation, where the author conflates animal behavior/s with human behavior. As I see it, equivocation between animal and human is perhaps (there’s so much to choose from) major error of Darwinist thinking. Human consciousness changes everything and makes even simple things like eating utterly different among the two groups.

    The author is saying ”love” is an accident of chemicals, but that’s an oxymoron. If love is not an intentional, conscious act it’s not love. The Darwinist has no right to call instinctual ”bonding” between animals love. To call certain activities animals engage in love is to dehumanize human beings. (There’s something deeply perverse about this equivocation project evolutionists are engaged in.)

    2. “…observations of owl monkey romance sheds light on how shared child-rearing among humans gave rise to this crazy little thing called love.”

    – Using the term ”romance” here is more meaningless equivocation. Having adopted evolutionary materialism our intellectuals have seemingly become incapable of understanding anything. (Is it not obvious that without literature or story romance cannot exist?)

    It’s a sad commentary on our times that our universities have become the refuge of anti-humanists.

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