How Was Celibacy Selected For?

Brett made an interesting point that sounds like complete bullshit, but interesting bullshit. Celibate religious men extend their genetic code by maintaining their way of life and teachings..

I think there are 2 problems with that theory.

1. A society can maintain its legacy and ethical grounding without celibacy (fathers and mothers preserve the ethical code)
2. We don’t know what happens on an individual level. It could be an offshoot of a different instinct, like the sense of wonder. Humans in the past that had the “wonder” instinct were more likely to innovate. Religion was a by product of having that instinct. And celibate monks are a random byproduct of religion.

From an evolutionary biology perspective, religious celebacy doesn’t fit into the puzzle because these people are actively preventing their genetics from carrying on right? So there must be a hidden reason why these ideas have been selected for over time. Dawkins calls these ideas ‘memes’, and like genes, they want to survive and multiply.

If you think about genes on a population level, rather than on an individual level, then what Bret is saying makes sense because the collective gene pool is what is important. So, let’s say practices of celibacy (prevention of STDS) , obedience, discipline, reverence for authority, charity etc… select for religious populations rather than non religious populations end up with more money, better health and more cohesion. If religions were so bad for societies, we would have course corrected a long time ago.

The same argument is used for why evolutionarily speaking, why homosexuality exists (to take care of kin and provide resources to rest of population).. But, I’m suspicious of these explanations because they ignite two other possibilities that are just as valid. One, we have no idea why religion survived, it’s simply something that may not have happened.

Maybe religious populations are less narcissistic and communal than non religious populations, but the “religious” aspect was just a consequence of the technology available at the time. Today, we have other kinds of religions that have very different structures but still build group cohesion and charity etc..  Example, sports clubs.

Another possible reason is that on an individual level, credulity may have been a necessary precursor for innovation. So this is something I was thinking about. Imagine you are someone who never wonders about the infinite, the unknown etc… You would never learn new things, challenge old paradigms and innovate etc… So you would not have an advantage over a population that does have that trait.

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Related posts:

1. Will It Fly Summary (7/10)
2. Modern Man in Search of a Soul Summary (8/10)
3. Part 2: Stir Up The Transgressive and Taboo (The Art of Seduction)
4. Chapter 19: And They Lived Happily Every After (Sapiens)