2018-10-08

The scientific sin of a ‘just-so story’

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by Neil Godfrey

In his enormously popular but scientifically questionable bestseller The Naked Ape, the writer Desmond Morris suggested that lipstick was an attempt to make women’s facial lips resemble the engorged sexually aroused genital ones. It might be a superficially attractive argument, but upon the slightest degree of scrutiny it vanishes in the haze, for there is just no evidence for this to be true. If it were true, we would expect to see selection for lipstick wearing, and higher reproductive success in women who wear lipstick. It also doesn’t account for the changes in styles and colours of lipstick, or the fact that most women haven’t worn lipstick for the vast majority of human history, yet still somehow managed to give birth to a healthy cohort of progeny. It is an example of the scientific sin of a ‘just-so story’ – speculation that sounds appealing, but cannot be tested or is devoid of evidence.

Rutherford, Adam. 2018. The Book of Humans: The Story of How We Became Us. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson. p. 83

2018-06-07

When Lipstick Is for Whores

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

by Neil Godfrey

Many aeons ago I was a member of a strict religious cult that taught makeup originated with harlots and therefore wearing it was a sin against God that could condemn one to annihilation in the Book of Revelation’s Lake of Fire:

Most women, when asked WHY they use lipstick, will, of course, not confess: “I use it as an expression of vanity,” or “I use it to express an urge to be like the world.” 

No, most women will say: “I wear it to look nice” — or “to avoid offense.” They SAY it in words that sound harmless. But GOD KNOWS YOUR HEARTS better than you do — and HE knows that the heart of women, as well as men, is “Deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked.” And He asks: “Who can know it?” (Jer. 17:9.) Yes, the inner intents of the heart often deceive its owner. TO WHOM does this woman wish to “look nice”? — to GOD? NO, for to GOD she looks like a painted artificial PROSTITUTE! . . . .

There is so much more that could be said on this subject that I could go on and on and fill 100 pages!* But I think this is enough! Every woman who wants that deceitfulness and wickedness removed from her heart is going to remove that physical colored dirt from her face once and for all!

Those yielded to the CHRIST who paid such a PRICE for this very cleansing will need no more. Those not so yielded would not repent and let the precious blood of Christ cleanse them, and their faces, though I write ten thousand pages! God lays down the LAW. God tells us WHAT IS SIN, and He tells us that this vain use of facial makeup is SIN!

But God leaves it to YOU to decide whether to sin! And never forget the PENALTY for this sin is DEATH for eternity in a Lake of FIRE! It is truly, an AWFUL — a FRIGHTFUL FATE. YOU are WARNED! You are a free moral agent. That decision is now YOUR RESPONSIBILITY!

(Thus saith HWA in Truth About Make-Up)

* The booklet Truth About Make-Up was 11,633 words long!

Wow.

I never expected to hear that sentiment echoed in today’s “worldly discourse”: Continue reading “When Lipstick Is for Whores”