A Darwinian explanation for religious prohibition of gay relations?

Xluna

What with all the recent talk of all them homersexuals,:D I had an interesting thought. Now I posted this as an individual post on the Christianity forum but thouht it might be worthy of it's own thread.


Just a thought...I personally think that perhaps the reason why homosexuality was so frowned upon by the Abrahamic religions may have a Darwinian explanation. If you have a relatively small tribe and wish to survive then you want as many people in the tribe as possible. Homosexual relations don't lead to more tribes people,so it's deletarious to the growth and survival of the small tribe. Hence religious laws prohibiting it.

Now the Romans and Greeks were not desert tribes and their civilisation was far more stable,advanced and large than the emerging religious desert tribes,so the possibility of being eradicated was far less than the Jews,so they could afford to tolerate gay relations. I could be way off,but I can't help feel there's some truth in my musings.

What do you think?

robindch

It's been proposed as a reason before and I believe there's some truth in it.

But that said, it's always seemed more likely to me that instead of acting as an "encouragement" for gay men and women to produce children they otherwise might not have, the anti-gay thing has much more use as a motivational tool to help promote in-group cohesiveness and from that, the overall social power of the religion within that society, simply by defining a relatively powerless out-group against which it's easy to whip up hatred.

Many religions include the basic notion of "ritual purity" which is roughly defined as the state of cleanliness one must be in while considering or approaching the religion's notion of the divine. Anal sex is universally considered an "impure" act, so it's easy to see how gay men -- against whom 95% of the hatred is directed -- are considered impure, and therefore engaging in activity likely to lead to retribution against everybody in the society by some snotty deity. And the priesthoods are great at stirring it.

Xluna

I'm having an interesting discussion with PDN in the thread I mentioned about this if you want to follow it.

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?p=64559984&posted=1#post64559984

Tell me, is there such a thing as "Darwinian psychology"? It seems to me Darwinism could be used as a major tool to explain a lot about the human psyche.

ChocolateSauce

I think it would have more to do with concepts of disgust and unnatural behaviour. If there were a smallish tribe (50-100 people?) that accepted homosexuality back then, there is no reason they couldn't have adjusted somehow, like polygamy or the gay men inseminating the women as friends.

The simplest explanation, that gay relations were seen as an abomination, is probably the correct one.

hiorta

My understanding is that the 'gay' way of life is deeper and beyond the control of the individual and so cannot be modified by the individual. Is this so?

Zombrex

ChocolateSauce wrote: »

I think it would have more to do with concepts of disgust and unnatural behaviour. If there were a smallish tribe (50-100 people?) that accepted homosexuality back then, there is no reason they couldn't have adjusted somehow, like polygamy or the gay men inseminating the women as friends.

The simplest explanation, that gay relations were seen as an abomination, is probably the correct one.

Yeah I would think that is the most likely explanation.

They simply found it disgusting, and thus claimed their god did as well.

liamw

Wicknight wrote: »

Yeah I would think that is the most likely explanation.

They simply found it disgusting, and thus claimed their god did as well.

I imagine they just looked at homosexuality and thought that it does not seem natural at all.. therefore it can't be god's will because why would god design something like that

robindch

Xluna wrote: »

is there such a thing as "Darwinian psychology"? It seems to me Darwinism could be used as a major tool to explain a lot about the human psyche.

There are two new fields of study which have arisen over the last thirty years or so. These are Evolutionary psychology (aka Evolutionary developmental psychology, aka evo-devo) which looks at our evolutionary past and tries to explain current human psychology.

The other area is Human behavioral ecology which goes at the problem from the other end, taking human psychology and tries to explain how each feature is adaptive in some way.

There's a fair amount of overlap between the two topics and from the research and results perspective, it seems that evo-devo is the more fruitful area at the moment.

Tim Robbins

Xluna wrote: »

I'm having an interesting discussion with PDN in the thread I mentioned about this if you want to follow it.

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?p=64559984&posted=1#post64559984

When he brings Stalin and Hitler into it and somehow tries to infer cause and effect between atheism and homphobia, you should point that there is no doctrine in atheism which stipulates anything either postive or negative about gays and that his argument is the same as trying to infer that they both hated gays because they had moustaches.

Obni

Start with a relatively small population of primates with a 50-50 gender split.
Make a significant proportion of the males gay.
There would be no impact on the number of offspring if polygamy is adopted (as pointed out by Chocolate Sauce).
Assuming the non-sexual benefits of groups are still appreciated by the gay male population (i.e. security, polled resources, co-operative hunting, support during illness etc..) then given their contribution to hunting, gathering, protection, territorial defence, a large subgroup of gay males might be of huge positive benefit.
A large subgroup of gay women, would have a negative impact on population unless they submitted to insemination.

You would probably have to wait until the species evolved a culture capable of defining gay members as 'other', to allow the larger non-gay group to use as a criterion for defining a pecking order within the group to their advantage. The fact that the level of sophistication required to support notions of 'other' may coincide with the development of advanced cultural structures, such as religions, is surely a matter of timing rather than of a causal link.

Glenster

Tim Robbins wrote: »

Wthere is no doctrine in atheism which stipulates anything either postive or negative about gays

Is there any doctrine in atheism?

Beyond there not being a god

Stercus Accidit

Glenster wrote: »

Is there any doctrine in atheism?

Beyond there not being a god

no

Gurgle

Glenster wrote: »

Beyond there not being a god

I wouldn't even commit to that much detail.

Zombrex

Glenster wrote: »

Is there any doctrine in atheism?

Beyond there not being a god

Yes. All atheists must believe that Wicknight is awesome.

If you don't, you aren't an atheist.

Petrovia

Wicknight wrote: »

Yes. All atheists must believe that Wicknight is awesome.

If you don't, you aren't an atheist.

No no no no. It's also ok if you are of the opinion that Wicknight is probably awesome.

robindch

Wicknight wrote: »

All atheists must believe that Wicknight is awesome. If you don't, you aren't an atheist.

Wouldn't that make us Wiccans?

Karl Hungus

Xluna wrote: »

What do you think?

I think there could be some merit in it, but then I think about other factors as well, cross dressing for example (which I believe is not connected with sexual orientation) seems to be as equally taboo with religious and/or conservative types and seen as deviant behavior, yet there's no Darwinian explanation as to why a man dressing like a woman would be so frowned upon. Or consider transsexualism, something we've only learned how to deal with in the last century (and by deal with I mean gender reassignment, not a slap round the head as some would probably like to 'deal with it'), and as so did we have time to develop an evolutionary reaction to such a situation as a sex change? Yet that's something that much of society deems truly deviant.

So yeah, you can probably point to how homosexuality being shunned as something deeply ingrained, but when I see statements from the pope about "saving humanity from homosexual and transsexual behavior", I think that it's merely down to good old human bigotry and intolerance towards something strange, deviant or 'queer'. I think history is full of examples of hostile reactions towards taboo behavior that have no evolutionary basis for being taboo, so perhaps looking at the reactions to homosexuality throughout history is taking too narrow a view? Like I said, there could be merit to it, but maybe it's worth stepping back a bit?

SkepticOne

Petrovia wrote: »

No no no no. It's also ok if you are of the opinion that Wicknight is probably awesome.

That would make you a wicknostic.

Petrovia

SkepticOne wrote: »

That would make you a wicknostic.

That old chestnut! :pac:

...though I'd settle for 'agnostic wickist'.

recedite

Even chimpanzees have their roving bands of males. They make war on the surrounding tribes and serve to keep their own territory's boundaries enlarged. However, there is no particular benefit to them in being gay. At some point a strong one might become the dominant polygamous male, and stay at home.
At one time young Roman soldiers were banned from being married, for much the same reasons.

Tim Robbins

Glenster wrote: »

Is there any doctrine in atheism?

Beyond there not being a god

If you could even call that being a doctrine.
Put it this way, you don't believe in flying unicorns - is that a doctrine?

And no - after the disbelief stance there's nothing else to it. You could be a raging sociopath or a human rights activitst. But neither are anything to do with an atheist doctrine.

Whereas if you are a Christian your raging sociopath can quote several passages of the OT and uf you're human right activist can quote somewhere else and the two of them can argue over interpretation of the scriptures.

The atheist can't quote anything from his metaphyscial stance to justify his / her behavior. He could quote a philosopher or a poem but that has nothing to do with an atheist doctrine per se.

Even though PDN with his sophistry and sematics will try to show you there is no difference between the cruel behaviour of Christians and the cruel behaviour of atheists.

Dades

Tim Robbins wrote: »

Even though PDN with his sophistry and sematics will try to show you there is no difference between the cruel behaviour of Christians and the cruel behaviour of atheists.

Was that jibe really necessary to your post? If you have a beef with PDN address it in a thread he is posting in.

robindch

Tim Robbins wrote: »

When he brings Stalin and Hitler into it [...] you should [...]

Using "when" with "should" assumes the hypothetical, so it's better to use "if" in this case if there's any doubt about whether or not the hypothetical will occur.

Or better still, reply to the other thread directly or include a link from there to here so that all posters can exercise their right to reply. And keep it non-personal, please.

recedite

robindch wrote: »

Using "when" with "should" assumes the hypothetical, so it's better to use "if" in this case if there's any doubt about whether or not the hypothetical will occur.

Or better still, reply to the other thread directly or include a link from there to here so that all posters can exercise their right to reply. And keep it non-personal, please.

Talk about being semantic!
Anyway,the link is on the previous page.;)

robindch

recedite wrote: »

Talk about being semantic!

A forum contributor reported the quoted post, so in the interests of justice being seen to be done -- and if it's felt appropriate -- a short public response will usually be posted simply (a) to let the person who reported the post see that reports are actioned and (b) to let the reportee know that somebody felt their post was inappropriate in some way.