Thread by @abdullahadam

Thread on the particulars of our human nature, on understanding why we are the way we are, and the impotent explanatory power of religion.

The more I study and read the more amazed I am at how particular our characteristics are, things that used to seem so ‘objective’ about our humanity turns out to be coincidental from our history due to reasons of survival... And learning this is so mind-blowing.

It makes the religious explanations look like a joke. Compare this to the ridiculous explanations the Quran gives about magic being taught by two angels to cause problems between man and his wife, jinns are real, shooting stars chasing devils away from Allah’s revelations..

The hadith trying to say that meat rotting is because of the disobedience of Bani Israel, eclipses are used to scare humans, and who ejaculates first determines a baby’s looks 😂

One of the dark parts of being human is that in less than ideal situations, we are likely to let our children die. For example, in societies where food and resources are limited, women will kill their baby or purposely not take care of the child when its sick, etc..

Now this sounds heartless, but from an evolutionary perspective, it makes more sense to take your chances with the kid that's already growing up, rather than split the resources between him and the little twerp you just gave birth to.

So far, so good, pretty straightforward.

Now here’s the bombshell. Postpartum depression got passed on because those that suffered it were more likely to kill their children and increase their chances of survival, which increases their chances of having more kids and passing on the genes...

Insane, isn't it? Postpartum depression may have evolved for this very reason.

Steven Pinker @sapinker writes:

In most cultures, neonaticide is a form of this triage. Until very recently in human evolutionary history, mothers nursed their children for two to four years before becoming fertile again. Many children died, especially in the perilous first year

.. Most women saw no more than two or three of their children survive to adulthood, and many did not see any survive. To become a grandmother, a woman had to make hard choices. In most societies documented by anthropologists, including those of hunter-gatherers

(our best glimpse into our ancestors’ way of life), a woman lets a newborn die when its prospects for survival to adulthood are poor. The forecast might be based on abnormal signs in the infant, or on bad circumstances for successful motherhood at the time --

she might be burdened with older children, beset by war or famine or without a husband or social support. Moreover, she might be young enough to try again.

We are all descendants of women who made the difficult decisions that allowed them to become grandmothers in that unforgiving world, and we inherited that brain circuitry that led to those decisions.

Daly and Wilson have shown that the statistics on neonaticide in contemporary North America parallel those in the anthropological literature. The women who sacrifice their offspring tend to be young, poor, unmarried and socially isolated.

-end quote-

What would we expect? We would expect a book of God to contain the most amazing insights, yet all we find is as time goes by it looks more and more ridiculous. And that the explanatory power of science and collective knowledge of humanity looks more and more potent.

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