Why Religious fairy tales work Save for later Reblogpost

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“Stupid and insane ideas have often lodged themselves like a living form into the cultures of the past and continue to do this today. Memes. All kinds of them,.. Stories,.. and we homo sapiens evolved to tell stories,.. to believe stories,.. and to collectively believe stories. They bind us together,.. get some of us to meet once a week and sing songs,.. or others to bow 5 times a day and point their asses right up into the skies as they test their ability to orientate their sense of direction in the direction of the favorite city of their imaginary God.”

…said to me, by a Sam Harris fan

I guess the Sam Harris fan has a point. Humans love stories. We love religious stories. The stories can be thought of, as memes. We humans have oriented our lives, our cultures around these stories, for thousands of years. But is he right? Are these stories a waste of time?

Elon Musk was talking about the fall in fertility, among advanced technological nations. The fall is so severe that unless something changes, we humans in advanced technological nations, may go extinct, in a hurry.

In this clip from the documentary “The Demographic Winter” it recounts much of the same theme as Elon’s comments, and chalks the decline up, to sexual freedom somehow, without being specific as to how that works out in aiding the decline.

In “The So Called Demographic Winter the Hyper-gamy Factor”, Thinking Ape puts forth the case that the root cause of demographic decline, is female hyper-gamy…..meaning the female tendency to choose higher status mates….combined with feminism, giving women the vote, and modern life, which allows women’s hyper-gamy to run unchecked.

My comment: It’s clear that “empowering women” severely limits birth and drops the birth rate…..to the point where cultures collapse, once you empower women. What’s another word for empowering women? Feminism.

Here’s the biological reason, feminism might not work:

How did humans solve this biological dilemma in the past?

With regulated sexuality….or enforced monogamy.

So what is Regulated Sexuality? Religion basically.

Remember what the Sam Harris fan said about religion:

“Stories,.. and we homo sapiens evolved to tell stories,.. to believe stories,.. and to collectively believe stories.  They bind us together,.. get some of us to meet once a week and sing songs,.. or others to bow 5 times a day and point their asses right up into the skies as they test their ability to orientate their sense of direction in the direction of the favorite city of their imaginary God.”

Well, that’s all true. And that’s what the Bible is: a bunch of stories. They bind us together. I personally like the Bible.

One of my favorite stories is the one of Abraham and Sarah:

The Lord’s Covenant With Abram…in Genesis

15 After this, the word of the Lord came to Abram in a vision:

“Do not be afraid, Abram.
    I am your shield,^[a]
    your very great reward.^[b]”

² But Abram said, “Sovereign Lord, what can you give me since I remain childless and the one who will inherit^[c] my estate is Eliezer of Damascus?” ³ And Abram said, “You have given me no children; so a servant in my household will be my heir.”

⁴ Then the word of the Lord came to him: “This man will not be your heir, but a son who is your own flesh and blood will be your heir.” ⁵ He took him outside and said, “Look up at the sky and count the stars—if indeed you can count them.” Then he said to him, “So shall your offspring^[d] be.”

Here’s why I love this story: In Genesis, Abraham is married to Sarah. He loves Sarah, but she can’t have children, she’s too old….(she hit ‘the Wall’)…but thanks to a miracle, has a child, even though she is too old. I call it A Feminist Miracle :) Then Sarah, being a good wife, brings Abraham a “handmaiden” named Hagar to his bed, and then Abraham has a son with her as well.

That’s one reason Sam Harris is wrong about religion. Whether religion is “literally true” or not, is beside the point. Religion evolves as a social adaptation that allowed societies to stay stable, by controlling men and women. Our ancestors worked out, by trial and error, without being overtly conscious about it, the fact that women are hyper-gamous, and this can quickly unravel the social order. The social effects of this in the past must have been very, very bad.

That seems a good story. What does it teach us? It is the man’s job to look after women. It is women’s job, to marry  the man and give him children. That’s about nature, about binding men and women together, about a genetic compact between the genders, and it’s about sex. That is essentially Patriarchy, in a nutshell…a good story. The Bible is teaching us about sex, nature, male and female, and what the genetic deal is, between the genders. Men have a role. Women have a role. We seem to have forgotten that. And this story of Abraham and Sarah, being part of religion, being part of the Bible, is also “Regulated Sexuality”….using religion to bind men and women together, to control social order, to reign in female hyper-gamy.

Why was hyper-gamy such a threat? I would guess it quickly destabilizes society if we let it run free. After many hundreds of generation of watching men and women interact without rules, there must have been so much social instability, that stories were invented, to regulate and control human behavior, which has a tendency to get out of hand, if left unchecked. It’s the same reason we have laws. I would guess it is socially dangerous to allow women unlimited sexual freedom…..as we are currently doing, and as feminism pushes for. Today we call it “Riding the Cock Cara-sol”….and our ancestors found that if you allow too much of that, society collapses…thus religion. The human pair bond is quite delicate and subject to much tension, including the tension that arises out of female hyper-gamy. So our ancestors made up stories, for people to live within these stories, which bind people together, in a cosmic purpose, for social strength. If humans are convinced that an all seeing God approves or disproves of their behavior, it’s easier for people to self-regulate their behavior, and society stays more stable. And of course my objection to feminism is it seeks to destroy those stories, destroy the bonds which hold men and women together.

And implied, in the Biblical narrative of Adam and Eve, is that Adam must figure this out. He must figure out, he can’t trust his wife, she’s gonna stab him in the back. She can’t lead. He must….morally.

So bad, that men had to invent religion, Gods up in the sky, whole rituals including pointing yourself east 5 times a day, prostrate on the ground, pointing at some obscure city called Mecca, in the Arab desert, and praying to a God that may or may not be imaginary. And in the case of the Arabs, they must have realized that men  would sleep with each other’s wives, just as much as women would sleep with other men….so there is so much distrust of both women and men, that black bags are worn by women, in public, so men can’t look at the beauty of young women.

Adam and Eve…the first story in the Bible…what does the woman do? Try to lead the man, astray….eat of the Forbidden Fruit….which is a metaphor for, do the wrong thing. The message in that story is that, in male-female relationships, the woman can’t be trusted. I don’t think the story is just about women. The woman has hypergamous instincts, but those don’t work, unless an Alpha male is also a threat, and plays his role in sleeping with another man’s wife.

And that has been part of the basic social narrative in European cultures, that have formed our culture and kept it together, for the past couple thousand years.

If religion is not “literally true” is certainly is true in another way: it allows societies to function and stay stable. We have got rid of religion so we are in a long term decline and are on our way out as a society.

I’d rather have Patriarchy, over the freedom social narrative.

So I’ll take fairy tale stories, “insane stories”….as the Sam Harris fan characterized the Bible…..over unregulated, completely free societies, any day. Fairy tales work better than freedom for women, in maintaining social cohesion, a sense of security for women and men, and a sense of community, and a dignified social role of respect and leadership, for men.

And the reason these fairy tales work, is that fairy tales evolved, as other things in nature evolved. These fairy tales are rooted in nature, and thus are rooted in biological reality, they are expressions rooted in evolution, and are expressions of biological concepts, like hyper-gamy and the social need for controlled sexuality, that arises from the nature of the way females…and males….evolved through time….in nature. These stories evolved by trial and error. They were not just pulled out of a hat, in the Bronze Age. These myths evolved, from real life, over thousands of generations, the wisdom of which, was encoded in stories….for us to use, or interpret, or decipher…as I am doing, right here, right now… If you act as if they are true, and base your social order on that belief, then society stays functional. If you reject those fairy tales, societies fall apart, as is happening right before you eyes, right now.