[ExI] The Catholic Impact (was Re: Origin of ethics and morals)

[Giovanni Santostasi]

Kelly,
One of the most catholic place in the world is Italy.
But would you consider such a place anti-intellectual? It was the
birthplace of Renaissance,
Leonardo, Galileo....

Giovanni


On Sun, Dec 11, 2011 at 4:19 PM, Kelly Anderson <kellycoinguy at gmail.com>wrote:

> I agree that the evolution of morality is partially genetic and
> partially memetic... The bigger part would have to be memetic though,
> just because memes reproduce faster than genes in human populations.
> I'm improvising on this post, so don't take anything I'm saying here
> too seriously, it's just to start a conversation. And if anything here
> sounds racist, or anti-anyone, please I ask your forgiveness up front.
>
> One thing that I haven't heard anyone think about out loud is the
> effect of a thousand+ years of Catholicism on our genes (we all know
> more or less what it did to our memes)... The Catholic faith was
> pretty efficient at a few things that might have had a genetic
> impact...
>
> 1) Heretics, Muslims and Jews were occasionally slaughtered, though
> probably not in great enough numbers to have a huge genetic effect.
>
> 2) Religious orders (monks, priests and nuns) tended to attract those
> who were interested in an intellectual life. Obviously, their
> reproduction was sharply curtailed being in these religious orders.
> Would that imply that Catholicism decreased intellectualism in those
> areas where it was practiced for many centuries?
>
> 3) Catholic beliefs about food (fish Friday, wine, dirty water) might
> have had some impact, as did their support of kings and the political
> orders under kings.
>
> 4) Catholicism and feudalism meant very limited travel for most
> people. This could have led to prejudice, insofar as that is genetic,
> but probably more importantly, it created islands where specific genes
> that would otherwise have been bred out of a larger population became
> more prevalent. This may be more especially the case for recessives.
>
> 5) Might there have been a breeding advantage to those who truly
> believed leading to more true believers? Might there have been other
> breeding advantages related to Catholic beliefs?
>
> 6) Did feudal beliefs about bathing increase the capacity of the
> overall immune system of those who survived? Same with the black
> death...
>
> 7) Could there have been effects on rates of promiscuity in the gene
> pool from Catholic punishments of adultery and fornication, as well as
> the negative effects of being a bastard?
>
> 8) Insofar as ethics are genetic, there may be other impacts of our
> brush with the papacy.
>
> It's an interesting topic, at least to me. These are just starting
> points for discussion. I actually think that number 2 is probably one
> of the more plausible scenarios... but I don't know how you would go
> about testing such a hypothesis without the standard accusations of
> racism coming up immediately.
>
> -Kelly
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