A scientific perspective on polygyny

[brYce]

This was written by a Jewish lady named Mayim in a Facebook group I belong to:

I can explain it in biological terms based on evolutionary principles driven by natural selection if you like.

Ok, first we have to assume that each individual has some differences in their genes that confers positive or negative traits to their abilities to survive.

Second, evolution occurs when those with survival traits have more children that survive in the next generation.

Third, men have a very much larger ability to father children than women, who are limited to one every couple of years.

Evolution has favored the drive in men to have as many children as possible, but hang on, there’s an opposing selective pressure on this drive.

Women, because they are so heavily burdened with pregnancy and child care by the dependency of human babies (long time of helplessness and extended childhood), are driven by selection to pick men to mate with that are willing to stick around and help raise the kids.

This female choice acts as a selective force on the behavior of men. Men who have ‘helping and nurturing’ genes get favored by women.

Also, the more resources the male has, the more favored he is by women as a mate.

On the flip side, men have little ability to know which offspring that a woman has belongs to him. He will favor a woman who appears faithful to him and to him alone. The man who ‘put a fence around' his woman/women’ is the one who would have the most genetic representation in the next generation, therefore, that trait persists.

So, under this scheme, men who could accumulate wealth and power were looked on favorably by women as mates because he could provide for her offspring. His faithfulness only mattered in so far as he didn’t shirk his support of the earlier children. But his demands for faithfulness of his wives doesn’t lessen, no matter how many of them he might have.

From the female perspective, she’s better off selecting a wealthy and powerful mate even if she’s a second, third or fourth wife, because her children will fare better than if she picks a weak mate with poor ability to help her raise her children. However, in situations were wealth and power is more evenly distributed and men can’t accumulate enough wealth to provide for more than one family, women’s choice dictates monogamy.

Comments?

 

[Fitzlight]

First of all evolution is a totally unproven therory and I can not figure out why people continue to speak of it as if it was a proven fact. Why people except the idea on such little evidence as two are three bones of what may or may not be a man I will never understand. The evolutionary world was fooled for 41 years by a fake, "Piltdown man: Found in a gravel pit in Sussex England in 1912, this fossil was considered by some sources to be the second most important fossil proving the evolution of man—until it was found to be a complete forgery 41 years later. The skull was found to be of modern age. The fragments had been chemically stained to give the appearance of age, and the teeth had been filed down!" The very best evolutionist scientist were fooled by a fake and did not know it until the man who fooled them admitted it and showed the world how he did it. So please people if you wish to believe in evolution then do so but stop trying to make the rest of us, who do not believe in it, believe that it has been proven to be fact when it is no where near being proven and still remains simple a therory and nothing more. It is the religeon of Atheist and all others who wish to not believe in God/Jesus. They have forced their religeon on us, the believers in God/Jesus, long enough and it is time that we stand up against them and refuse to accept their religeon.

 

[brYce]

Don't you think that her observations are interesting? I think that it's interesting that even those who believe in evolution can see how polygyny is favourable.

 

[DrRay777]

Welcome to the forum Fitzlight. Preach it!

Be blessed,

Dr. Ray

 

[Tlaloc]

Fitz, I've studied 'Historical Geology' in the university setting, I know exactly what you mean. I very much doubt brYce put this here as an endorsement of evolutionary theory. I can understand you're reaction though.

It is worth noting though that the conclusions of this article are based on the idea of Natural Selection, which is very sound in its root form and Glorifies God as Edward Blythe intended it. There is very little BS to filter out in this article as is observations on survival rather than raw speculation. I'm sure what they think the implications of this are is faulty, but the only line that needs to be filtered out is the one starting in 'Second'. Natural Selection is a Christian concept which I will not hand over to the evolutionists.

That said, from a purely pragmatic standpoint this article is awesome. Faithfulness IS important to any decent man. Security IS important to any woman. Polygamy IS good for both men and women. Why? God made it that way. Of course the reasons these things are good run far deeper than survival, but it is a side bonus.