Killing Babies: Why Spanish Conquistadors are like Male Chimpanzees

I received a fascinating email from R.H., a professor at a university in Texas. R.H. drew a clever parallel between infanticide in animals and the history of the Spanish Conquistadors in America.

In nature there are numerous examples of infanticide carried out by "step fathers." For example, when a new male joins a chimpanzee troop he will often kill infants. While this horrifies us, it makes evolutionary sense. When a female chimpanzee enters her fertile period she will typically mate with almost all of the males in her troop. This means that the males in the troop have no idea which male fathered which baby. If a male from the troop kills an infant, it could be his own.

But when a new male joins the troop, he can be certain that he's not the father of any of the babies. If he kills the babies it causes their mothers to become fertile again, and he has a higher probability of passing his genes on. So that's exactly what he does.

You see this in humans too. Sadly, human step fathers are roughly fifty times more likely to kill a step child than the natural father of a child – remarkably parallel to the statistics you find in chimpanzees and many other species. We'd like to think we're evolved, that we've moved past our animal instincts, but it just isn't so. You see this pattern throughout nature: a new mate (male or female) is far more likely to kill the "step children" than the natural parent.

So what on Earth does this have to do with Conquistadors? I thought you'd never ask...

Professor R.H. wrote, "The Spanish destroyed many temples, idols, and customs that connected the indigenous population to their ancient religion." That's an understatement. They also killed

The Lie Called Thanksgiving, and Squanto's True Heroism

Thanksgiving? It's complete historical bulls**t.

You know the story: Pilgrims land, a bad winter, things look worse the next year, the local Indians, including the special friend Squanto, showed the Pilgrims how to plant corn and catch fish, they finally have a wonderful fall harvest, and everyone, settlers and natives alike, sits down at a table groaning under the weight of plentiful food to give thanks.

Nothing but lies.

The true tale is far more fascinating. Lies My Teacher Told Me is a fascinating book by historian James Loewen, which I highly recommend.

Tisquantum, who we know as "Squanto," was an amazing man. American schoolchildren are taught that he was a simple Indian who befriended the Pilgrims, but in fact he was nothing of the sort. Tisquantum was captured and enslaved, and taken to Europe, where he learned English and European ways.

After his first enslavement and return to America, he was captured and enslaved again, to be sold in Spain. He was rescued by some Spanish friars who took control of the slaves and tried to convert them to Christianity. After four years and at least one aborted journey, Tisquantum made his way back to America, only to discover that his entire family and village, everyone he knew, had been killed by a plague, probably smallpox.

This was the Indian who helped the Pilgrims survive the second winter – a man who was enslaved twice, forced to learn English ways, and who had just discovered everyone he loved was dead.

The American Myth called Thanksgiving paints the Pilgrims as hard working and resourceful. In reality, they landed in a virtual paradise, with the previous farmers all dead from smallpox, and their fields cleared and ready to plant, and fish aplenty, and yet they still nearly starved to death. Tisquantum, in spite of the mistreatment he'd received at the hands of the English, and in spite of the tragedy of losing his people, decided to help the Pilgrims. Historians agree that without Tisquantum's help, the Pilgrims would probably have starved to death.

And the most fascinating part is that Tisquantum may have been the only man alive who could do this. He knew how to fish, how to farm American crops, and he also spoke English well. His presence in the Plymouth area changed American history.

So why has this fascinating story of a resourceful and kind Native American been replaced by the boring story we now tell at Thanksgiving? The answer is remarkably parallel to religion itself: People believe what is most appealing, not what is true.

In the case of religion, memeplexes like the Christain religion, with its promise that the meek will inherit, and that all of this suffering on Earth is nothing compared to the wonderful rewards to come, are very appealing. The atheist will tell you that when you're dead you're dead, and so it goes. Which do you want to believe? The Heaven myth is much more appealing, so that's the meme that survives. Truth has little to do with it.

Thanksgiving is very much like that. We want to think of the founders of America, our spiritual forefathers, as being strong, capable explorers who opened up the "new world." The fact that we exterminated the Native Americans with disease, war, slavery and simple murder is an embarrassing footnote that we'd like to forget.

So when the stories are told (America's history memes), they evolve. The memes that make the Europeans look better get retold, become the memetic survivors in the "survival of the fittest" battle of stories. Conversely, the memes that make Tisquantum and his kin look like clever, resourceful people get diminished. Ultimately, we get a story in which our ancestors endured hardship but prevailed through courage, etc., etc. to found this great nation.

It's a damned shame, because the true story is one in which there were many heroes and many villians. If that story were told, instead of the myth that we call Thanksgiving, we'd all be richer, and our view of current events would be far more mature.

One small footnote: It happens that one of my ancestors was aboard the Mayflower, and became one of the very Pilgrims who Tisquantum helped. If not for Tisquantum, I wouldn't be here today.

Does God have Genitalia?

I've always wondered: Does God have genitalia? Does He have a penis and scrotum and testicles? And if so, what the heck does He do with them?

I mean, if God has a penis, why?

Does He have a relationship with some goddess somewhere? Back in the good old days, like in Moses' time, the Jews were pagans (yes, they really did believe in many gods, in spite of what you were taught), and a lot of the Jews thought maybe God and Isis were hanging out together, and maybe even doing the dirty. But since the Abrahamic religions evolved the idea of monotheism, that means Isis and those other goddesses were just figments of everyone's imaginations, which sort of implies God really didn't have a girlfriend after all. And presumably, since God doesn't commit sins, and masturbation is a sin, that's out too. So a penis thing would be pretty useless.

And surely God doesn't need to take a leak, since He is God. I mean, he doesn't need to eat or drink, right? So there's nothing to pee either, so that doesn't explain why God has genitalia, if indeed He does. In fact, that kind of leads to more questions than answers, because if He doesn't eat, then why does He need a stomach, intestines, and all that other stuff inside?

But if God doesn't have a penis, scrotum, testicles and such, and maybe not even a stomach and intestines, then it's kind of odd to say we humans were made in His image, because we do have all that stuff in order to eat, drink and procreate. So maybe the Bible means "in his image" sort of like a snapshot or something, like, on the outside we'd say, "Hey, look, I look just like you, God!" but if a surgeon could get God on the operating table and take a look inside, he'd say, "Hey, this isn't right! This guy's got no stomach, or anything!"

I guess maybe that Genesis creation stuff is a myth or something. It sure can't be literally true, since you'd have to overlook an awful lot of crazy stuff to believe all of it.

When Gay Marriage Was a Christian Rite

It turns out the Roman Catholic church has, once again, ignored the historical evidence and censored history, in order to support its current homophobic and hypocritical stance on gay marriage. A family member forwarded this fascinating article to me:

When Same-Sex Marriage Was a Christian Rite

The article describes how down through most of the history of the Roman Catholic Church, there were many instances of church-sanctioned homosexual marriages, including a marriage between two Roman saints, St Sergius and Saint Bacchus.

Contrary to the Church's revised version of history, the truth is that the Roman Catholic church has a long history of tolerance and even celebration of homosexual love and marriage. Records of same-sex marriages have been discovered throughout the Christian world, including in the records of the Vatican itself.

Unfortunately, the Roman Catholic Church, and Christian denominations in general, have a long history of revising the facts, and an amazing ability to get people to swallow their altered history as truth.

Tags: gay homosexual marriage catholic history christian christianity atheist atheism religion virus