Apr 07 2009
God Wants to Know: Who’s Your Daddy?
Do religious conservatives “focus on the family” and emphasize “family values” so much because they love all children and want the best for them? In part, maybe. But in all the clamoring about the dangers of motherhood out of wedlock, etc., I detect paternal instincts and concerns. The underlying idea is not so much having a father in the family — but a loyal husband. One the social group can trust and is tied to the wife and the community through ceremony.
The Bible-based religions — Christianity, Judaism, Islam — are not unique in their paternal concerns.
When irreligion is prominent in the family, O Krishna, the women of the family become corrupt, and from the degradation of womanhood, O descendant of Vrsni, comes unwanted progeny.
- Bhagavad Gita 1:40 (9)
Why would any child, any progeny, be unwanted? Perhaps when there is no father . . . that we can trust and is loyal to us.
The Bible deity, in his own right, is hyper-concerned about issues of paternity and, in particular, how it relates to ingroup/outgroup dynamics. Consider these two verses:
Intermarry with us; give us your daughters and take our daughters for yourselves. (Genesis 34:9)
Do not intermarry with them. Do not give your daughters to their sons or take their daughters for your sons. (Deuteronomy 7:3)
Why the inconsistency? Because you don’t want to form alliances and merge groups with anybody and everybody. I suspect that were a person to propose to religious conservatives that all single mothers be provided with atheist fathers, the fathers would not be welcome. For the fathers would not be perceived as “one of us.”
The Bible deity expresses sexual concerns beyond those of paternity. The great leader fills the role as the human sexuality chief-of-police. As primatologist Franz de Waal has put it -
“Religions tend to present sexual morals as God-given and in doing so harken back to the image of an ancestral alpha male that, according to Freud, always kept a firm hold on our psych.” (10)
In terms of sexuality, the number one concern appears to be over “cheating.” Yes, adultery, but also other forms of cheating. Having non-procreative sex is often considered a form of cheating . . . perhaps of cheating elders out of potential offspring. Lately, quite a bit of research has been conducted on primates that shows an instinctive ability to detect cheating and cheaters. Sex and progeny is a very important resource that cheater-detection will key on. If you detect a cheat, but are individually powerless to do something about it, how nice it is to have an ally in a higher place. Or, if that ally is on-the-job 24/7, so you can relax a little.
“In cognitive terms, dominance hierarchies constitute a set of social norms that reflect which behaviors are permitted, prohibited, or obligated given one’s rank. In order to maintain priority of access to resources, dominant individuals monitor the behavior of subordinates and aggress against those who “cheat” (violate social norms).” (11)
“God” has his nose in the sexual behavior of humans. In one sense, he is a puppet voicing the sexual concerns of those throwing their voices.
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(9) Prabhupada, A.C. Bhaktivedanta, Bhagavad Gita As It Is, Collier Books, NY, 1972.
(10) de Waal, F. Our Inner Ape: A Leading Primatologist Explains Why We Are Who We Are, New York, Riverhead Books, 2005, p. 112
(11) Cummins, D. D. “Cheater Detection is Modified by Social Rank: The Impact of Dominance of the Evolution of Cognitive Functions,” Evolution and Human Behavior, Volume 20, Issue 4, July 1999, 220-248.
