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February 23 - October 27, 2020
Despite his upright stance, his clothes, and his sometimes-good table manners, man rarely surpasses his most primal impulses.
Rank, in turn, typically confers rewards, which for males includes preferential access to resources such as food, females, and territory.
My own opinion is that if there is a higher power (and I have yet to see evidence that there is) it certainly doesn't resemble any of the obvious, simplistic, and species-centric characterizations that have been widely proposed throughout the history of religion.
With larger populations, the roles of gods began to reflect social concerns rather than the forces of nature. Notably, gods began to more actively regulate social interactions and punish breeches of morality and cooperation.
It is worth noting that this business of marking over the territorial markers of one's rivals is known to primates and proliferated among the gods of the biblical age.
This understanding is crucial because mate competition is the ultimate driving force behind male violence.
researchers in one study took height information of 720 couples and found that only one couple was a pair in which the woman was taller than the man, a ratio far rarer than the chance probability of the woman being taller, which was 2:100.
In practice, this means that men who like novelty in sexual partners and who are driven by their lust to seek out variety (e.g., through casual affairs, numerous sexual partners across the lifespan, etc.) are going to pass on their genes in higher numbers; genes coding for sexual acquisitiveness have an algorithmic advantage over those genes, say, coding for sexual contentment.
Overall women value financial resources about 100 percent more than men do.”
As British geneticist J. B. S. Haldane famously said, “I would lay down my life for two brothers or eight cousins.”
The evolutionary sciences have begun to reveal that rather than blank slates, we are actually possessed of an enormous array of specialized neural circuits to solve specific problems—known as modularity.
Guthrie describes how humans are strongly inclined to anthropomorphize because the most important animate being to human survival has historically been other humans.
Research has also found that the appeal of masculine leaders extends across cultures and that humans prefer masculine features in female leaders as well.
Resemblance ends up having important fitness implications in humans. For instance, research has found that men, more than women, are willing to invest more in hypothetical children (i.e., in pictures) whose faces are digitally composited with their own faces.
Regardless of whether it is achieved by dominance, or more peaceably by prestige, high rank continues to be characterized by control (or potential control) over resources—which women have traditionally been attracted to
God should be jealous of no one, for a truly omnipotent being should have no truly viable competitors.
Women tend to be drawn toward powerful male gods, just as they are attracted to powerful men.
While sexual dimorphism among humans is not as prominent as in species that are extremely polygamous,53 men are generally taller and more robust, which women like.
Not surprisingly women across cultures tend to be attracted to material wealth in men (a highly consistent research finding).
However, success in nature's interminable competition for resources is only as good to females as the winning male's willingness to share. Indeed, research has found that men's overall attractiveness is ultimately based on a combination of dominance and altruism, suggesting that women value dominant men who share.
Between males and females we see a mutual exchange of resources—such as sex, childrearing, provisioning, and protection—that ultimately serves the reproductive interests of both sexes.
Hair has special value for men. Long hair in particular is regarded across cultures as a highlight of female beauty. Like other aspects of female beauty, the ability to grow long hair is also an evolutionary marker of physical health and fertility.
The morality of the seminal sixth commandment is predicated on in-group logic. Thou shall not kill establishes a rule that killing members of the in-group is considered murder, whereas different principles apply to killing out-group members—such killings are often acceptable, righteous, and regularly sanctioned by God.
humans process rank information unconsciously and with incredible speed.
research finds that subjects rate images of men with beards as more aggressive13 and as having higher social status14 than images of clean-shaven men.
The centrality of submission among Muslims is understood with the very translation of the world Islam, which literally means submission.
The Koran, one of the few books that incite people to murder when it is burned, provides an extensive recitation of admonitions against freethinking.
Human worth is almost always a relative value, established by comparison to other humans.
It is probably not incidental that circumcision results in less sexual sensitivity due to callousing of the nerve-ending-rich penile glans; circumcision, in effect, produces less sexual pleasure, something that one can easily imagine dominant males wishing on would-be sexual competitors.
One researcher points out that among monogamous primates, males have no foreskin, but among promiscuous primates, males have foreskins and other “elaborations including spines, plungers, labile scoops, flexible ridges and other distal structures” designed to “increase the probability that a male's sperm will achieve fertilization and decrease this probability for rival sperm.”
According to watchdog organizations concerned with journalistic freedom and free speech, Islamic nations today predominate among the top ten most censored countries in the world.
But violence may ultimately be a less effective strategy than simply choking off the flow of information.
Whether by interdiction or violence, it requires effort to limit the flow of knowledge and control the ideological landscape. But the potential benefits are immense, particularly in terms of controlling material resources.
Will Durant writes of how during the Middle Ages, secular landowners were required to pay tithes, a tenth of their income (or produce) to the local Church. These tithes were collected by priests whose job it was to “curse for his tithes,” or, to excommunicate anyone fabricating or evading his returns.
As we have seen, the privilege of male dominance imparts great reward, notably more females and more food. But it also means not suffering the pains of being dominated.
Across the history of our species, homicide and warfare have made male survival an especially tenuous affair for men.
Those competitions are sure to have been a driving force in differential selection, which really means that we are very likely biologically predisposed to have these kinds of biases because on some level doing so provided a survival advantage to our ancestors. Understanding this, then, puts the ultimate blame for religious violence not on religion but on evolution, with religion being just another marker of difference along with politics, street gangs, and sports teams.
Population density is related to an increase in male antisocial behaviors, which are often violent.
The most obvious suggestion might be to outlaw religion, but even if this were indisputably ethical, which it is not, it is unlikely to ever be successful. The need for religion appears to reflect the evolved design of our brains, and the emotional reward of religious experience may be just too powerful.
Conversely, if we learn anything from history, it should be that censorship is enormously dangerous.
Most importantly, censorship keeps a population ignorant, which holds great appeal to dictators.
That to compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of opinions which he disbelieves is sinful and tyrannical.
To abide by doctrines that cannot be questioned, against which opposing evidence cannot be posed, is to make oneself exquisitely vulnerable to despotic behavior.
