I am jumping in late and don't really have much to offer but had trouble with the notion that classifying human behavior as a disease because it doesn't promote procreation or advance the species is really dumb science first of all, but also seems to fundamentally misunderstand the human condition. How is this not immediately obvious?
From a biological and evolutionary standpoint, procreation is absolutely paramount. If you are born sterile, or otherwise unable or disinclined to procreate either mentally or physically, you are not passing your genes on or propagating the species. That's not even debatable. Unless you don't believe in evolution?
Q: What's the most important thing for a species to do in order to not go extinct?
A: Invent books, wine, and air jordans.
This is a pretty hilarious debate to be having with people who continually accuse people of being "anti-science."
Wine and Air Jordans haven't made much difference, but books have allowed for far more people to populate the earth than any one person plopping out a few kids ever has.
And yet, other species thrive without books. Or air jordans or wine. What's the common denominator? Oh right - they make more of themselves. One might say that reproduction is paramount to survival of a species.
It really is amazing the mental gymnsatics on display here in an attempt to disprove the basic point that reproduction is the most important thing to continuation of a species. Bear in mind, I never said "only" - I said "most important" and "paramount" - but even this is disputed. From the "pro-science" crowd.
you seem to have distilled this down to the notion that if a species doesn't make new members then it goes extinct, which is true. that doesn't make it the most important biological imperative though. that's resource procurement imo.
species that had no problem physically procreating have gone extinct. their baby makers didn't suddenly mass-malfunction. i'm not aware of a species going extinct because its members universally lost the ability or inclination to eff. i suppose it could have happened, but i don't think it's common. typically the species loses access to the resources necessary for its survival and/or is killed off in large numbers (e.g., predation, disease, change in climate/environment).
the reason humanity is the dominant species is thanks to our social evolution, which permits us to control any and all available resources. likewise we also now have no natural predators that threaten our numbers. we do not involuntarily take a backseat to any other species in those regards, and it isn't due simply to how many new members we produce vs. how many they produce. we didn't out-eff them, we out-cultured them.