Sorry, Prometheus, beat'cha to it
see my post #94,
this page)
Quote:
|
Quote by: Prometheus (2) Less Sex (by religions that teach that) - When a religion teaches to only have sex with your spouse, it may seem evolutionarily detremantal, but it increases the fitness of your offspring to be raised with both parents (see numerous psych studies) |
Indeed. It takes about 8 years to raise a child to the point where it has any reasonable chance to survive on their own. Therefore it is in the interest of a tribe's survival for families to remain together to raise children to adulthood. Adultery creates instability within families and threatens the successful raising of children. Likewise, promiscuous sex outside of marriage creates children outside of stable family relationships.
The invention of reliable birth control in the 60's threw a real monkey-wrench into this whole paradigm, since sex suddenly no longer bore the burden of pregnancy if we didn't want it to... hence the sexual revolution. We're still trying to come to grips with this today. The backlash finally appeared when sex-addled baby boomers grew up and realised that, a) birth control isn't perfect and b) stable families are still important to society.
Likewise, "Thou shalt honor thy parents" is a survival trait, since children must focus on learning the lessons of being a harmonious and contributing adult from their parents.
"Thou shalt not bare false witness"... lying creates disharmony and friction within the social group.
Etc. etc. etc.
.