transcript

Speaker 1:
[00:01] Welcome to Breakpoint, a daily look at an ever-changing culture through the lens of unchanging truth. For the Colson Center, I'm John Stonestreet. According to the Daily Mail, some scientists may have found evidence of the first non-binary person, and I quote, Stone Age societies embraced complex identities and flexible gender roles experts have revealed after unearthing the skeleton of a woman who was buried like a man 7,000 years ago. Studies of 125 skeletons across several cemeteries in Hungary have found that while the majority of people were buried according to their gender, some defied the norm, end quote. Since people who lived a thousand years before Abraham didn't post their pronouns on social media, we'll just have to trust this research article published in the American Journal of Biological Anthropology under this title, Fixed and Fluid, The Two Faces of Gender Roles, a Combined Study of Activity Patterns and Burial Practices in the European Neolithic. The gist of the article is that back then, men tended to be buried in one way and women in another. However, a few unearthed skeletons don't quite fit the burial pattern. Also, the bones of some of the women showed evidence of consistent kneeling in life, a practice that is more associated with men from that time. And so, in the absence of any real biological, genetic or developmental science to support transgender ideology, these researchers are finding a way to inject it into palaeontology. After all, who needs evidence when you can rely on a newspaper to make a just-so claim that these findings, and I quote, could shed a whole new light on gender fluidity in the neolithic? It's all common practice in the evolving field of evolutionary psychology. Of course, the most obvious irony here is that the claims of the research are based on examining skeletons that are known to be male and female, which shows that the researchers know perfectly well the difference between them. Within all cultures are norms of masculinity and femininity. Individuals vary in how they express who they are as male and female. These differences do not change in the least, the fact that human beings are sexually distinct. The fact that researchers can tell the difference between a boy bone and a girl bone undermines the whole idea of gender fluidity. And of course, it's just bad scholarship to suggest conclusions from a sample of very few graves in very few locations. We know very little about ancient Egypt, much less ancient Europe, so suggesting that Neolithic cultures had gender fluidity based on a few graves is kind of like suggesting polling results for a sizable city based on vague conversations with two or three people. It's an example of historical presentism. It's a way of looking at the past through the lens of the present. Not to mention, even if conclusive evidence were found of ancient transgenderism, what difference would that make? The discovery of a so-called gender fluid society in ancient Europe says nothing about how people then or now ought to live. After all, we have ample evidence of ancient cultures that practiced incest, slavery, human sacrifice and cannibalism. In the early 80s, researchers in Mexico found the remains of 42 children who had been sacrificed back in the 15th century. In 2018, The Daily Mail reported that some 345 infants, mostly girls, were found in a Pakistani garbage dump. And just 15 years ago, investigators in Philadelphia discovered the horrors of Kermit Gosnell, the abortionist who just died in prison. No one would claim that the egregious behavior of groups from another time and place justifies the same behavior in this time and place. In fact, evolutionary psychology often succumbs to what might be called just-so stories. Borrowing a title from Rudyard Kipling, this is the tendency to announce conclusions that simply must be so because they're required by assumptions that cannot be questioned. For example, there's a long history of explaining past behavior through the lens of neo-Darwinian assumptions, like natural selection. Increasingly today, however, it's the assumptions of so-called gender ideology and sexual orientation that are behind the just-so stories that masquerade as science. For the Colson Center, I'm John Stonestreet with Breakpoint. Today's Breakpoint was co-authored with Dr. Timothy Padgett. If you're a fan of Breakpoint, leave us a review wherever you download your podcast. And for more resources like this, or to share this commentary with others, go to breakpoint.org.

Speaker 2:
[04:36] Christian Educators, this is Billy Hutchinson with Colson Educators. And as a former teacher myself, I know you're busy, and I know you want to teach like a Christian, not just be a Christian who teaches. Well, that's why we created the Colson Educators app. You can get practical worldview training wherever you are, complete courses on your schedule, earn CEUs, and connect with a community of like-minded educators. Download the Colson Educators app on the Apple App Store or Google Play.