Hello, I was having a discussion on twitter about the historic impact Religion had on society, I was arguing(without success) that it had many uses in history, not necessarily that we would be worse off without it, but that it benefited the human race in quite a few ways.
What do you think? are the many practical uses to religion in history, what are they? do they effect us today? would we have been better off without it?
My opinion is that there are many sciences and practical uses that come from Religion, such as the Ancient Greek Astrologersmapping the sky, which probably wouldn't have happened as quickly were it not for religion.
I also think that religion as a whole is worth the genocides, wars and witch hunts that sprouted from it, because of the sciences and curiosity that it drove.
I ask this question to see what Hubski thinks, also to hopefully get my friends from twitter to join Hubski(I'll make sure to clean up after them :) as twitter is a rubbish platform for this kind of discussion, and they'd love it here.
I'm not qualified to make a detailed analysis of religion's role in history all in an effort to distill religion to "net positive" or "net negative," and I think _refugee_ makes a good point. My own personal views of religion could perhaps be summed up in Vonnegut's invention of Bokononism: One of my favorite parts of Bokononism is the description of the creation of man:
And God said, "Let Us make living creatures out of mud, so the mud can see what We have done." And God created every living creature that now moveth, and one was man. Mud as man alone could speak. God leaned close as mud as man sat up, looked around, and spoke. Man blinked. "What is the purpose of all this?" he asked politely. "Everything must have a purpose?" asked God. "Certainly," said man. "Then I leave it to you to think of one for all this," said God. And He went away. I think that to the degree that religion gives people purpose and meaning, and advocates for people to live in ways that make them brave, kind, healthy and happy, religion is beneficial. Which parts of organized religions really fulfill those aims is quite debatable and subjective.Bokononism is based on the concept of foma, which are defined as harmless untruths. A foundation of Bokononism is that the religion, including its texts, is formed entirely of lies; however, one who believes and adheres to these lies will have peace of mind, and perhaps live a good life. The primary tenet of Bokononism is to "Live by the foma that make you brave and kind and healthy and happy."
In the beginning, God created earth, and he looked upon it in His cosmic loneliness.
I'm glad you appreciated it. Thank you for the gold star. Back when I used Facebook, I had "Bokononism" listed on my profile as my religion. At some point, and I don't recall his exact words, but an "friend" posted on my wall saying: I never could think of a good way to respond, other than conspicuous silence. I don't think he really knows me that well though.You know Bokononism is a joke religion, right? Vonnegut would be rolling in his grave if he knew you were taking it seriously! LOL!!
this thread be blowin' up yo Personally, I am not sure it is possible to make quantitative statements such as "the good that religion has brought into the world outweighs its negatives," or vice versa. It would require an extremely expansive and knowledgeable worldview, as well as an analytically brilliant mind. I also am not sure if there is a point to such a discussion. (But I would love to hear what inspired this question and line of thinking - when I say I don't know if there is a point, I mean, what does this discussion merit? ) Religion can be good; religion can be bad. It is neither, but both.
In modern contexts it's all about the person though, and less about their religion. There are a ton of Christians who genuinely serve the needy, the sick, the less fortunate in general, and do so because of religious motivation. There are atheists who do the same, because it's just the right thing to do. Conversely, you have plenty of devouts of every faith abusing their spouses, children, employees, out of religious motivation/justification. It's really about the people though. Religion being used as justification after the fact.Religion can be good; religion can be bad.
Finally, no 140 character limit. The best way I think I can put it is this. People were already trying to learn about the universe, they studied the stars and tried to find the meaning behind it all. The issue is that when organised religions such as the catholic church caught wind of this and when it disagreed with their teachings they had these people killed or tortured. They stopped people from findings things out because they knew there would be conflictions with their religious beliefs. This held back many areas of science for hundreds of years. I couldn't begin to imagine where we would be as a society right now if this hadn't happened. It's for these reasons that I think religion has been a burden on the human race and not a help. I know most, pretty much all, religions started out as people trying to find answers to life's big questions. I get that, I want answers too. But we're no closer to finding conclusive answers to these questions than we were thousands of years ago and as a result we've been held back hugely. People began to use religion as a tool to exercise their bigotry and persecute those who held different values than they did. This is still prevalent today in many places. Even very modern countries such as America change their laws and ways of governing society because of religion. Because of incidents such as the attack on the WTC, Muslims in America are treated by many people as if they are devil spawn. This divide in people is caused by their religious beliefs. It is my firm belief that most genocides that have occurred throughout history would have been easily avoided but for one group of people having different beliefs than another. I know this is unavoidable, people come to different conclusions about why they are here but there is no reason for them to fight and kill because of it. I believe that any possible benefits given by religion are far outweighed by the thousands of years of suffering they have caused.
I tend to agree with you. From my experience, the greatest thing that religion brings to the table is fellowship and organization. Organized fellowship, the gathering of people to coalesce around a common idea, philosophy etc. is a powerful thing. Could this exist without religion? Absolutely. Would people still be able to do great things, help their fellow man etc. without religion? Absolutely. Therefore, in my opinion organized religion cannot justify the amount of atrocities that have occurred in its name with the good that has stemmed from it. That said, I am of the opinion that spirituality and moreover the quest to answer certain questions that fall in the spiritual realm are incredibly important to society and the individual. In fact, I would love to see a world that embraced the ideals of Jesus Christ without having to create a religion out of it. The next Hubski podcast asks the question what is the difference between spirituality and religion? I'm almost done with it and look forward to yours and others' thoughts on what it has to say.I believe that any possible benefits given by religion are far outweighed by the thousands of years of suffering they have caused.
Maybe with less sense of right-and-wrong, governments would have never formed and the human race would be seperated, fighting eachother to stay alive more than researching into more inportant matters like how to deal with hunger etc. I'm making a lot of assumptions here. I think It would help to know how the first goverments formed to see if Religion played much of a part.Therefore, in my opinion organized religion cannot justify the amount of atrocities that have occurred in its name with the good that has stemmed from it.
Lots of of atrocities have occurred in the name of religion, but would a world without religion have neccessarily seen less? I think the idea of a afterlife and gods overwatching us gave people moral, told them what's right and wrong etc.
Without the fear of gods punishing them, would people still have conformed and helped and done the "right thing" by their religous standards?
Conversely though, I think many of the good things that came from religion would have still happened without religion. Certainly now, at the point we are at we no longer need a fake man in the sky in order for us to act ethically or morally. If you have some time and are interested in an entertaining debate between the late Christopher Hitchens and Tony Blair around whether or not religion is a force of good in the world see below:Lots of of atrocities have occurred in the name of religion, but would a world without religion have neccessarily seen less?
I think that perhaps we would have seen less. That said many of the atrocities would still have occurred via tribalism. My God versus your God is just another way of having us versus them argument. Humans are good at creating isms whether it's via tribe, religion, nationality, ethnicity etc.
I wish more people believed that. I would say that there are plenty of people (Sticking to the example of Christianity because I'm most well versed in it's lore) who only act morally because of the threat of what happens if they don't. Abrahamic religions in general are very If/Then based, with the 'Then' being enternal suffering, a pretty strong motivator. That's what scares me the most about some of the most devout, they only act like civilized people out of fear of damnation, what happens if they lose their faith? Do they shoot up a school? Bomb indiscriminately? Abuse their spouse or children? That's not a human, that's an upright ape who only behaves because of the big stick held over his/her head. We put dangerous animals in a cage, is the threat of eternal damnation the cage for the upright apes? Is fear the only thing that keeps that darker nature at bay? Certainly now, at the point we are at we no longer need a fake man in the sky in order for us to act ethically or morally.
If the only thing preventing someone from killing people is the threat of eternal damnation, frankly they are dangerous and insane. I never think about hell. Literally, never. I'm not concerned about it and I never will be, it is a man-made place meant to scare impressionable, unintelligent men women and children. Still, I don't kill people and I'm a pretty good dude. The necessity of religion, outside of fellowship and organized congregation is limited in my opinion. Human beings crave a sense of belonging. We need to be able to say I am a… "Blank." That's why people are avid fans of sports teams, political parties etc. I often quote the John Lennon lyric, "I don't believe in Beatles, I just believe in me…" -it's a good approach in my opinion.
Wouldn't that be down to how you were raised? and the way your parents were and their parents were? Obviously in modern times you don't need religion to have morals, but without anyone to teach you them, would they still exist? Genie had no sense of ownership or right/wrong when she was released, she was eventually taught these moral values but back in the day there would have been no one to teach these if they didn't exist in the first place. Does anyone know of some studies done to see how apes value eachother's lives? for example if you placed a ape in front of a cage, and gave the ape a button which convinced the subject the ape in cage was killed, would he press it? if not what would it take for him to press it?I never think about hell. Literally, never. I'm not concerned about it and I never will be, it is a man-made place meant to scare impressionable, unintelligent men women and children. Still, I don't kill people and I'm a pretty good dude.
Does anyone know of some studies done to see how apes value eachother's lives? for example if you placed a ape in front of a cage, and gave the ape a button which convinced the subject the ape in cage was killed, would he press it? if not what would it take for him to press it?
my guess is that theadvancedapes will be able to help you here.
I had a conversation recently with my fiancee's mother. She tried to convince me that we should have a Rabbi marry us. I flat refused. She argued that it wasn't about religion but rather about respecting a beautiful ceremony. While I get her point, I totally disagree. I'm not going to have my marriage start with a definition of this and not that. Especially if we have a family one day, I don't want my kids identifying themselves by religion. We are already societally obligated to segregate by nationality, race, gender, etc. I don't think it's necessary or productive to add a specific religion into the mix. That said, if I have a curious child who wants to explore any particular religion, I would encourage them to do so. When I was a teenager, I started visiting a Zen temple in Ann Arbor, mainly out of curiosity. My mom got upset and asked me why I would want to join a cult when I already have such a nice religion. I love my mom, but she's not exactly the worldly type. I can look back and understand a lot of the ways she parented now that I thought were nuts at the time. But on that one I think she missed the mark by a mile.Human beings crave a sense of belonging. We need to be able to say I am a… "Blank." That's why people are avid fans of sports teams, political parties etc.
My hats off to you for not caving into the in-laws. My father-in-law's pastor married us, so in a way I guess I lost that battle. That said, it wasn't much of a battle as I saw it as a way to show I was embracing his family -and his pastor was a hell of a nice guy. That said, recently my daughter has been asking a lot of questions about this. Right now she is staying with my mom who is a Catholic. I'm a little bit terrified that my mom will go against our wishes and start describing heaven to her etc. My plan is that if she asked me where people go when they die I'm going to turn the question around to her and ask her where she thinks they go. Beyond that, I plan on being very honest with her and letting her know that I'm not sure what happens when people, animals, plants etc. die. This all started when she asked about my wife's mom and where she was. My wife's mom died when she was only 12 years old and at the same time she was asking this, our dog died. Kids are smart, and I'm starting to realize I need to be prepared for some really big questions.
The other day my mother and daughter went to the park together. There was a church that had organized games and free snacks for any kids that were hanging out there. After a round of snacks they gathered the children up for story time. The story was a religious one. My Mom got kind of pissed off about it, didn't think it was cool to lure kids in with free fun and lay some dogmatic stories on them. Guess we have opposite moms. I could really care less. I want my kid to be exposed to as many different wacko's as she can. I plan on reading her all the basic bible stories (I've done a few already) just for the sake of her own cultural literacy. I'm not planing on her believing or not beveling in god, I'll let her know how ridiculous I find most Christian beliefs and also let her know that I love and respect many Christians. I have been doing the "What do you think?" tactic a lot lately with her. She asks many questions that are either just annoying things she already knows or are tough questions with no good answer. I find "what do you think" is one of the better ways to get her to either stop being annoying or to promote a dialog. We lost several family members right before and after my kids birth. She has a pretty good clue about death, in fact she can be downright maudlin about it at times. There is an old guy who is often coming or going when we go to the public pool. He is looking pretty rough, but goes swimming almost every day. First time Hazel saw him she blurted out super loud "Is he going to die daddy?" She has seen the face of death and was naturally curious.
I want my daughter to be exposed to all sorts of ideas, even the crazy ones… Just not the crazy ones "yet." She's only three years old and the idea of some religious zealot telling her the concept of heaven and hell doesn't really appeal to me.
That's the way I'll probably go when I have kids, My parents think it's inportant I think what I want to think and be what I want to be,
which ironically is how I plan to raise my future children.
Beyond that, I plan on being very honest with her and letting her know that I'm not sure what happens when people, animals, plants etc. die.
plants
I'm not too good when it comes to religous beliefs but is there actually people who debate what happens when plants die!?
I agree, but the whole 'How do atheists have morals without jeeeezuuuuuussssss' argument needs an equally silly rebuttal, such as 'The only thing stopping you faithful from rape and murder is a magical sky wizard, right?'If the only thing preventing someone from killing people is the threat of eternal damnation, frankly they are dangerous and insane.
Most of the Christians I know are main stream protestants or Catholics (and I am very close with many Jews, also). Admittedly, I don't intereact too often with a lot of evangelical types, but I would say in my experience that your statement is generally untrue and very simplistic. I think the number of people who take The Word literally is vanishingly small among the educated class, and that modern Christianity has more to do with community, faith, discipline, and spirituality than with rules per se. There are good people and bad people of all stripes.I would say that there are plenty of people (Sticking to the example of Christianity because I'm most well versed in it's lore) who only act morally because of the threat of what happens if they don't.
I meant that when our parents taught us things like "stealing is wrong", they could have POSSIBLY gotten that ideal from highly religous people generations back the family tree.
I agree, goverments can definitely form without religion. the question is at what speed?Ooh, that's a dangerous argument. You're pretty close to implying that people can't have moral standards without religion, which (trust me) is not where you want to go.
Close one indeed! I don't think you need religion to do anything :)Regardless of how governments and societies did form, there's no reason I know of that they couldn't have formed without religion. The mere fact (if it is a fact) that early governments formed around religions only implies that governments can form around religions, not that they can't form not around religions.
I don't mean to disrespect your opinion or anything, but the idea that religion held back the scientific advancement of the human race isn't accepted by any notable historian. I often see people posting the 'chart' that shows a gap in scientific advancement during so called' dark ages' (which didn't really exist, it was an age dreamt up during the renaissance by writers who had a hard-on for the romans), which also grossly misrepresents human history. And for what knowledge was lost, you can't blame Christianity for that when the collapse of a continent spanning empire contributed to a great deal of said lost knowledge (much of which was preserved anyway, by Muslims and other places in the east). I think the most common blame I see on Christians is the Library at Alexandria, which had been destroyed, looted, and burned several other times before Christianity even existed, it also ignores the fact that there were plenty of other centres of knowledge. It's also a very, very eurocentric perspective on human progress, and it completely ignores the intellectual progress in China and the middle east. I'm not disagreeing with your statement that people use religion as a means to persectute others, that much is true, but the idea that religion is inherently a rival of science in history is a very flawed notion that isn't supported in any historical circles, unless you're counting people like Hitchens (who wasn't a historian).
The actual question is whether religion had a historic impact on society or whether society had a historic impact on religion. Something neglected in these (sophomoric) discussions is that historically speaking, the separation of church and state is a decidedly modern invention (and a conditionally-adopted one at that). Government and religion both represent a power structure. Piketty pointed out that prior to the French revolution, the Holy Roman Empire owned something ridiculous like 80% of all capital in France, for example. Henry VIII and the Anglican church wasn't about Henry wanting a marriage annulled; it was about Henry VIII demonstrating to the Vatican that Fuck you Clement I'm the goddamn king. In the end, though, it's a question that isn't even worth investigating. Did a need to convert the savages militarize medieval Europe or did a need to pillage the Holy Land militarize Christendom? Who cares? People died for the justification of a greater cause and that will continue so long as someone makes decisions for someone else as part of any social structure anywhere ever.
Hi Guys It's me. I see merit to both of your sides. I've stated before I do not believe in a God(s) at this current point. I am open to the idea of Religion. I personally have only ever had experience to the Catholic church. I personally like the idea of a group of people with good ideas and promoting begin good people, But I've already found that and it's not what you'd call a Religion in the traditional sense. I am referencing DFTBA/Nerdfighteria or whatever version you call it. I shat not explain it but I implore you to check it out. The way I see it there is no one concrete definition of Religion, it take many forms like sexuality, issues with gender/race, or like any grand idea be it moral/scientific. Religion has many levels it can be analysed on and would take years to do so. So let me tell you this, Science and Religion are not like black and white (complete opposites) nor are they black and white. Before I go let me ask you something, Albert Einstein one of the best and famous scientists, what was the one thing he denied for most of his life, what was the one thing he could not except. That God does not place dice with the universe. He couldn't except that that a scientist could not know every thing. His blind faith in science caused him to act on scientifically. He denied quantum mechanics right up until his death in 1955, long after the world scientific community had accepted it as useful and experimentally valid. Just remember that science cannot exist without faith, and Religion cannot exist without science
>> science cannot exist without faith I suppose it depends on exactly how you define faith, but I don't see this as true at all.
Faith, generally, is believing X with no evidence.
Science does not require this kind of faith. I also don't see how religion requires science - religions existed for ages before the principles of science were discovered.
I mean, if you accept natural selection as the driving force behind our evolution, it's pretty damn hard to assert that religion has no use, at least evolutionarily. At the very least, religion's positive effects must match the negatives (leading to genetic drift), and since the negatives are so readily available (as you'll find whenever you get into one of these debates), it follows that there must be quite a few positives. The way I look at it is that religion likely developed in a manner similar to homosexuality. There's this theory in evolutionary biology called the "gay uncle" hypothesis that basically posits that relatively late in human evolution, when we had already formed tribes of some sort, some tribe or another happened to have (by way of mutation, crossing over, autc.) a few homosexual members. These members, since they had no children of their own, were able to contribute to the development of others' children, leading to greater success (2 parents + "gay uncle" > 2 parents) and therefore greater reproduction. So this tribe as a whole flourished, and the homosexual gene which was present in some members of the tribe with it. As I see it, there's no reason religion couldn't have developed in a similar manner. Religion encourages people to be altruistic (generally), so people were altruistic towards those in close proximity to them (other members of their tribe), leading to a greater average standing and the spread of the religious gene. So that's my purely utilitarian explanation. As to whether religion is objectively a good phenomenon? I still haven't fully developed my own opinion on that matter.
You're a little all over the place, homeslice, and while you're butting up next to some good ideas, you need to do a bit more digging around. Your analogy is pretty wonky, but it's because you have a misunderstanding of the underlying concepts. This is a bit personal, being as I am someone who works as a biologist and is queer, but homosexuality and heterosexuality are not exactly a binary, nor have they EVER been, and this doesn't exactly lend itself well to tersely-linked allele studies, which is why many of them have had some many problems with reproducibility. Sexual and romantic desire are the result of complex interactions between social and innate factors. Trying to directly tie this to a freakin gene, which may provide some preference via developmental avenues (which hasn't exactly been, you know, proven) has no deterministic tie to a complex behavior such as homosexuality, much less it's current iteration, it just provides a nice avenue for some researchers bear upon it with their field of interest and should be taken with a spoonful of salt. While some researchers do model the spread of ideas/concepts as memes in the same fashion as others study population genetics, the biggest problem is it is highly questionable how empirical you can really get. What it means to have religious belief varies wildly throughout history, and tying any moral center (including altruism) is really misstating what the nature of religion is, namely, metaphysical arguments for the intent and purpose of humanity's existence and explanations of the natural world. Or at least, that's my conception of it.
Absolutely. Looking back I realize I sort of implied that the hypothesis was widely accepted, but I understand that it remains just a hypothesis; I brought it up purely for the sake of explaining my own theory regarding the development of religion. That's fair, I guess I just intended to address the altruistic aspects of major religions. I've actually written in the past about separating religion as moral code from religion as belief about the supernatural, if you're interested I could repost it here (the subreddit where I originally posted went private).This is a bit personal, being as I am someone who works as a biologist and is queer, but homosexuality and heterosexuality are not exactly a binary, nor have they EVER been, and this doesn't exactly lend itself well to tersely-linked allele studies, which is why many of them have had some many problems with reproducibility. Sexual and romantic desire are the result of complex interactions between social and innate factors. Trying to directly tie this to a freakin gene, which may provide some preference via developmental avenues (which hasn't exactly been, you know, proven) has no deterministic tie to a complex behavior such as homosexuality, much less it's current iteration, it just provides a nice avenue for some researchers bear upon it with their field of interest and should be taken with a spoonful of salt.
What it means to have religious belief varies wildly throughout history, and tying any moral center (including altruism) is really misstating what the nature of religion is, namely, metaphysical arguments for the intent and purpose of humanity's existence and explanations of the natural world. Or at least, that's my conception of it.
Totes, there's actually a lot of hypothesis that will remain just that but are interesting thought experiments, like this paper tying schizophrenic phenotypes to shamanism. Wholly unprovable and most likely wrong, but interesting regardless. It just gets a little hairy when making some pretty seemingly secure presumptions about something as complex and personal as sexuality or religious belief. Sure, repost it here, it makes sense, but trying to parse the two is going to be quite difficult, as I think they are directly intertwined.
Fair warning, it's a bit long: I'll start with a definition of Christian Atheism. This is probably not totally accurate, but it'll serve for the purposes of this post. Essentially, my personal brand of CA holds that the Bible is relatively true, but God is just a metaphor for inherent goodness, and Jesus was either just another part of that metaphor, or part of that metaphor which was conflated with an unusually wise teacher. There are a couple other aspects like heaven being just the state of having lived a good life, but those are the basics. I find such a simple definition is useful because it allows CA to co-exist with whatever one's beliefs about the rest of Christianity are. For more on the separation of Christianity's belief system from its morality, check out Peter Rollins's description of one thing he feels the church as a whole gets wrong from his AMA here. [Note - removed link because the AMA took place in a private subreddit] OK, now that that's done, a little about the evolution of religion. I find arguments for God that claim a belief in a higher power couldn't have developed via natural selection entirely unconvincing. Morally speaking, religion is advantageous because of group selection. Basically some theories of group selection hold that while egoistic individuals outperform altruistic individuals, altruistic groups do better in the long run. As a result, groups ended up with belief systems that held altruism in high regard. For more on the debate, see the IEP's page on Altruism and Group Selection. Further, in terms of non-moral beliefs about the afterlife, religion is advantageous because, as Ernest Becker argues in his seminal work The Denial of Death, if we hadn't developed ways of dealing with our awareness of our own mortality, we would likely all go mad. So we developed systems that allowed us to deny death, including religion. While it's debatable whether we would actually all go mad if it wasn't for death-denial, it's much less controversial to claim that simply denying our death religiously (pun absolutely intended) is much less resource-intense (mentally) than coming to a place of acceptance of our death, and this is all that's necessary for death-denial to be selected. The important things to recognize here are that a.) religion as an ethical system need not be irrational just because belief in a higher power / afterlife is and b.) these two aspects of religion are independent in terms of their evolutionary benefits, and don't necessarily need to be part of the same system (i.e. religion). This is where CA comes in. In accepting the moral systems of Christianity but rejecting its (arguably irrational) beliefs in God and an afterlife, CA separates these two evolutionary aspects, allowing for (arguably) a more rational form of religion. Christianity's beliefs in God and an afterlife are irrational and make unfounded (and fundamentally unprovable) claims about the world, so it makes sense to reject them and find another way to deal with death-awareness. However, the moral/ethical system Christianity espouses is generally advantageous because it allows society to function more effectively (through loving/forgiving one another, giving to the less fortunate, etc), so there's no reason to reject the latter aspect just because the former is irrational. TL;DR Christian atheism is useful because it separates Christianity's moral/ethical system from its death-denial, two distinct evolutionarily useful aspects which happen to have been conflated into one system.Note - this post will contain my basic thoughts about Christian Atheism, the evolution of religion (i.e. via natural selection), and the connection between them. The connection between parts 1 and 2 may not be immediately evident, but stick with it and I promise it'll make sense (probably). TL;DR near the end.
I'm not sure I understand, why does someone having just one gay child preclude the effect? Evolution isn't certain of anything. It's not like a conscious entity that decides what happens, it's just the combined effect of natural selection and random genetic anomalies on a population. It's certainly possible you'd only have gay children, but the more children you have, the greater the chance that that "streak", as it were, disappears.
Are you sure about that? Minsky said Is there really anything concrete that distinguishes intelligence from evolution, other than speed? Evolution certainly acts like a languid form of intelligence. Perhaps even consciousness? </meta-tangent>Evolution isn't certain of anything. It's not like a conscious entity that decides what happens
Speed is what distinguishes intelligence
No bird discovers how to fly: evolution used a trillion bird-years to 'discover' that–where merely hundreds of person-years sufficed
I think the distinguishing factor there is that evolution works exclusively through random chance and essentially trial-and-error, whereas intelligence generally involves the use of reason to determine what will probably be effective. But you're right, there's certainly a comparison to be made, and one could argue that intelligence just works through theoretical trial and error, making it sort of a small-scale evolution.
Sorry, I wasn't very clear. What I mean is, if a father with the gene had one gay child, and then fell out a tree and died, the gay child wouldn't reproduce and the gene would die. So that gene would be more succesful if all the other genes insured pre-mature deaths didn't happen, perhaps suggesting it originated from well-off tribes.
Gayness is a cultural phenomenon, and quite a young one. It's impact on the spread of genes probably has had zero effect on the gene pool. Until recently, homosexual sex didn't preclude one from having a family. Nobody identified as "gay" until very recently in evolutionary terms, even though males have been having sex with males since long before the dawn of man. For a measurable effect on inheritance, we'll have to wait a lot longer than a handful of generations.
First of all That's a bold statement. I like bold statements, I like people who make bold statements. I politely disagree, but that's not the point. Now to the meat of my response. This basically says don't eat shellfish. Back when the early Hebrews were putzing around, there's evidence to suggest that red tides were a bit more common than they are today. And that's bad for shellfish, and really bad for anything that eats shellfish. You have figured out that sometimes, when people eat clams, shrimp, crabs, etc, they get really sick and die. So, in order to keep the faithful alive, and to keep your religion prominent (Basically the same thing, the Canaanites were only one of the various religious warbands running around that area of the world), you need to make it harder for people to kill themselves. And because you don't have the ability to diagnose illness all that well, or even realize that it's a natural poison/toxin rather than divine wrath, because some people eat this stuff sometimes and are just fine, you have to make it a crime against your god to eat this stuff. Because you're going to need that imbecile who eats toxic food to bash some non-believers head in, and to make more believers. This, combined with the organizational structure and preservation of knowledge that the Catholic Church (Really the Jesuits) preserved in a period of relative anarchy, are really the only demonstrations of value that I see in Western religion. (Eastern having a lot of the same pluses and minuses, but I'm not as well versed in their histories and relative examples.)I also think that religion as a whole is worth the genocides, wars and witch hunts that sprouted from it, because of the sciences and curiosity that it drove.
"And all that have not fins and scales in the seas, and in the rivers, of all that move in the waters, and of any living thing which is in the waters, they shall be an abomination unto you:"
Lev11:10