
In both chimps and people, fathers, brothers, and sons form the core domestic group; it is ordinarily females that change groups.
Paul Ehrlich (45)
When a female primate migrates into a group of related males, she is generally welcome. To but it bluntly, she provides the resource of another womb. She will join the group and bear related offspring. Male infants grow up unmolested, providing the paternity is unquestioned. If an outsider male happens to take over an established troop, frequently he will kill newborns.(46) The females will come into estrus more quickly and he can father his own. In his book on chimpanzee culture, William McCrew notes, “[W]hen within-group infanticide occurs, it is male-biased, towards sons. Why? Perhaps because in a species where males never leave their natal community and grow up to join the co-operating male club, it is important that these sons be genetic kin. Daughters grow up to emigrate, to have their offspring elsewhere, and so are not a threat to the long-term integrity of the group, so they are spared.”(47)
In the above we can see that there are at least two reasons why infanticide occurs. The first is to insure paternity, the second to protect and expand blood alliances. We might describe the first as child selection, the second as a form of kin selection. Via infanticide one set of genes directly determines what other sets of genes will survive to propagate and assist in survival of related genes. No doubt, to many minds this type of thinking is embarrassingly animalistic. The ultimately selfish nature of human drives is candidly exposed. It is a blow to the notion that we are special, our motives grand. In one sense religion serves to provide noble disguises for quite mundane motives. Infanticide is as bluntly revealing an example as there may be. Is there evidence of infanticide in the Bible? Well, yes. Even more so, there is a mountain of material manifesting the two motives of child selection and kin selection.
In two of the most important Bible stories, the god of the people determines that a son shall be sacrificed. Under command of his superordinate, Abraham comes within moments of killing his first and only son, Isaac. But the child is spared. In the New Testament, the Bible god sends his own, only son to be sacrificed. Although human agents do the deed, the plan comes from above. In Abraham’s case, the near act of infanticide is used to test the strength of a relationship or alliance. Abraham’s god was no alien god, but his great father. In the case of Jesus, the purpose of the indirect killing of an adult child, Jesus, is to redeem a relationship. Significantly, in the stories Jesus has no wife, so there is no loss of potential offspring. The relationship redeemed is that between a god — the great father — and the many children who have strayed from him. A strong bond between a father and his children helps assure that his legacy lives on. This is true for both genes and units of culture, sometimes called memes.
Here are three other clear examples of the Bible god engaging in infanticide directly or instructing his people to perform the act: Continue Reading »