Charles Darwin on infanticide, contraception, women and God

Written on Thursday, October 23rd, 2008 at 3:38 pm | by blackshama

Darwin’s ”Origin of Species” is rather tame as compared to his “Descent of Man” in which he outlines the origin of Homo sapiens from lower forms and the development of its moral faculties and religion. The overarching principle here is sexual selection. The various manifestations of human life, from sexual dimorphism, politics, religion and God, is linked to sex and sex alone.

What I will say here is something that has been almost completely ignored in the Pinoy debate on reproductive health and choice. The question is what is the logic of choosing in view of Homo sapiens rather strange sex life.

Nothing can generate wholesale condemnation than the subject of infanticide. Darwin places this phenomenon that is common in human societies in terms of resource limitation (especially in societies that live on oceanic islands). Darwin then argues that infanticide is nothing but a manifestation of sexual selection. He provides evidence such as 1) female babies are the ones likely killed, 2) widespread polyandry, 3) and the fact that women try to preserve their beauty. All three evidences (easily quantifiable) are derivatives of sexual selection behaviour.

The Victorian Darwin never heard of late 20th and 21st century concepts of “pro choice” often bannered by feminists. Thus for Darwin, the procurement of abortions and infanticide are nothing but the same. One of his hypotheses for the logic of abortion is that females want to prevent their “loss of beauty”. Again this is to extend their capacity for sex selection. The tradeoff which is stated so clearly in the “Descent” (and discounted by gender constructivists) is the objectification of women as mere chattel and property.  We have to rethink the feminist idea of choice in this light of scientific evidence. Unfortunately feminists will dump Darwin as “patriarchal”.

If Darwin is really right then sexual selection which he believed was evolutionarily fixed early in human evolution guaranteed that the so called “sins” like infanticide, abortion and contraception and the objectification of women need not have arisen. Darwin also posited the importance of maintaining the family.  Religion, which Darwin also believed was fixed early in human evolution, may preserve what I call bits and pieces of behaviours that guaranteed evolutionary fitness.

I find much of this in the teachings of the Catholic Church. For example, the preservation of the family unit, its opposition to “same sex marriage” (which obviously can’t allow for tranmission of heritable traits), its opposition to abortion, contraception, infanticide and euthanasia are just some of the many.

The Agnostic Darwin as a way to Catholic truth? This would make the Catholic conservatives apoplectic!  But what else is new?  Even the intransingent Galileo knew that the heliocentric theory was a way to Catholic truth.   Darwinism is a monkeywrench thrown at fundamentalism and not faith. The social constructivists and literal creationists have had their cardiac arrests long ago!

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About The Author: blackshama is an ex-academic OFW, now an academic at home involved in mentoring hardheaded postgraduate students and terrorizing undergrads who think they can have it easy! He blogs at "Blackshama's Blog".

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7 Responses to “Charles Darwin on infanticide, contraception, women and God”

  1. cvj on October 23rd, 2008 4:27 pm

    Couldn’t feminists defend themselves by countering (i think validly) that attributing pro-choice beliefs to evolutionary programmed sexual selection, is an instance of the Genetic Fallacy? While “preventing loss of beauty” may have been the original reason for abortions in the past, it is not necessarily the reason for doing so today.

  2. Blackshama on October 23rd, 2008 5:03 pm

    Cvj

    Feminists will have a hard time. The premise of Darwinian theory is descent. Feminists will have to argue that sexual selection is a construct particular to a certain time in order to use the genetic fallacy.

    Actually Darwin’s “loss of beauty” hypothesis is a shocker for me.I never thought the beauty industry had more to it than meets the eye. Perhaps the loss of beauty hypothesis may be extended to loss of career?

  3. BrianB on October 23rd, 2008 5:51 pm

    This is uber-right wing. How can you not know this?

  4. Dean Jorge Bocobo on October 23rd, 2008 6:51 pm

    Merely on the evidence that religion, in one form or another, is found in all known human societies, I would concede the point suggested that religion was fixed early on in the evolution of human societies. Perhaps it helped those societies survive by fostering social cohesion, cooperation or some other evolutionarily useful attribute, beliefs, habits or even taboos. And of course, because Religion wielded tremendous power in societies, it also fostered much of the early cultural achievements of ancient man, including the development of Science, reason, mathematics, the higher intellectual arts. I have discussed with you in other contexts the idea that Science has evolved out of Religion, inheriting its best traits (reason and logical rigor!)… and now exceeding it in explanatory, and I believe in evolutionary potency. And so it seems to me that Religion is kinda like the human appendix, which probably was once useful, even crucial for some evolutionary purpose, but no more. In the inevitably immortal words of Christopher Hitchens, Religion is a “vestige of our fearful childhood as a species.”

    So though we may concede the role of religion in human social evolution, that is no warrant to give it a permanent place. My sense is that Religion in its organized forms, like Roman Catholicism, must itself evolve, and rather quickly, if it is to survive at all.

    Morality itself, and not religion per se (with its extra dimension of theology) was probably what is in fact inherent in our natures as produced by the necessities of evolution. As education and firmly scientific culture takes hold in the world (which may take a lil more time), so too will this sense of morality being evolutionarily useful obviate the need to get it from the superstitious and the supernatural.

  5. cvj on October 23rd, 2008 9:11 pm

    Blackshama, for the genetic fallacy to apply, feminists (and other pro-choice women) will only have to argue that “lost of beauty” is not the explicit reason for their taking such a stand. After all, women also have minds of their own and they can arrive at their opinions through a process of conscious reasoning. Or are you saying that conscious reasoning can be disregarded in cases where underlying motivations as programmed by evolution, which are usually beneath the individual’s level of awareness, are present?

  6. Blackshama on October 23rd, 2008 11:08 pm

    Cvj

    I agree with you. But sadly feminism and other social constructivisms have dismissed Darwinism as bunk! Well some people at UP Diliman’s Women Studies are apoplectic when I say these Darwinian ideas!

    BTW if we think of Dawkinism’s memes, women don’t have minds! (oooops,I forgot, men too!)

    DJB

    Anthropologists of religion say that religions exist because they are functional. In Darwinian terms this could be enhanced fitness due to directed selection. It is a wonder why Roman Catholicism has persisted so long. Consider that the old Egyptian religion is of interest only to blokes like Zahi Hawass and some forms of Protestantism are gasping (like Episcopalianism!).

    What’s with Roman Catholicism that makes it persist? I don’t place much water to the hypothesis that it is the Pope’s authority for the Popes have been long ignored. Of course the Church would have the Petrine promise to explain that!

    Is it perhaps that the foundations of Catholic belief is really Darwinian or subject to Darwinian principles?

    Let the Opus Dei choke on that! LOL!

    It is quite fun really to dish out heresy!

  7. cvj on October 24th, 2008 1:04 am

    Blackshama, i agree with you that by their rejection of Darwinism, the feminists (and social constructivists) are missing out on a lot. After all, they can choose not to accept any purported normative implications while still benefiting from the explanatory power of the field, particularly on how certain behaviors evolved, with the subject matter of your post above being an example. Another example i came across is this book by Torr Norretranders, The Generous Man: How Helping Others Is the Sexiest Thing You can Do which attempts to explain altruism as an evolutionary adaptation.

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