And then there were some monasteries/convents that were reserved for men or women of noble birth.
Let’s take this one small step at a time and hopefully by so doing avoid making this into a “Bell Curve” debate. {shudder}
Do you believe that there are no genetic contributors to an ability to learn certain sorts of materials better than other sorts and to temperament? Those factors may be of extremely small impact compared to cultural factors, exposures, and opportunity, but there is little doubt that they exist. The genetically predisposed smartest person will not likely thrive without being planted in tolerably fertile soil (an opportunity to learn and to be exposed to ideas) and we all know those who cannot learn much no matter what educational opportunities they are given. (I don’t care who tried to teach me and how hard I worked at it, I would never be able to learn to play any musical instrument well, for example.)
Is that really a controversial concept?
Now take an arbitrary phenotype that has a significant genetic contribution and imagine that possessing that phenotype results in 1% less reproductive success over multiple generations. Is it likely that the frequency of that phenotype will increase or stay the same? Or will it marginally decrease?
One can argue, with good cause, that educational success correlates less with genetic ability to learn over some minimal baseline, and more with culture, opportunity, and exposure. I personally accept that to be the case. But those who rise out from a paucity of cultural push to learn, a lack of opportunity and exposure, and manage to become members of the learned class, surely must possess some traits, some arbitrary phenotypes, that are their genetic gifts significantly above the mean. The average person does not overcome those handicaps.
If that above average person is made less reproductively fit, while his parents and siblings are otherwise no more reproductively fit than the others who are without any dose of those genes who are around them, what is rational to believe would happen to the frequency of those alleles and to that phenotype in the population?
Again, my position is that the importance of genetic predisposition on education and “accomplishment” is extremely slight compared to cultural and other environmental factors, once some minimum baseline of intellect is extant. I am quite confident in my guess that those with the greatest intellectual gifts are wasting away somewhere on this planet for lack of having been born where those gifts would be developed. None of that informs on the what-if question of having some fraction of those with those gifts be more likely to have less reproductive success. And out of hand unsupported assertions that priests had as many children as those who were not priests, that having above average intellect was not criteria for becoming part of the religious class, that there was no mobility from lower class into the religious class (that the religious class was just the second born sons of nobility with little ambition), deserve to be challenged and either supported or acknowdged as WAGs.
The fact that probably a dozen other factors took more genes out of the pool than religious celibacy would have no influence so long as those were randomly distributed in regard to the trait in question. Maybe they were not. You could make the argument that the same traits kept some from being killed in work accidents for example. It would be a good point. The trait could have had a more than offsetting positive impact on reproductive fitness as well if it impacted survival likelihood from those factors. That again does not mean that a negative impact was not also at work, even if it was offset.
DSeid, on what basis do you presume that the celibates were genetically predisposed to being genetically more intelligent than the average person of the time?
Don’t forget that as stated above, many clergy weren’t selected because they were the brightest in the non-existent public school program, which would have been a case for selecting out the brightest from the population; they were selected because they were not the first born and then given an education. Their older brothers were creating children with closely related genes to the celibates.
Actually, in modern times, if those who have a particular religious fervor are guided into the celibate state, then this would be a case for selecting out religiosity. No wonder atheism is growing…
**TP **please reread what I have written. I have not written what you think I have. Honestly I don’t have the ability to state it any more clearly and precisely than I have, so if some are going to persistently misunderstand the point I have actually made then I will have to live with that.
moriah, cite please that clergy was the preferred path for those other than first born, whether they had an intellectual bent or not, and that say learnng fighting skills and joining the Crusades was not a preferred option for those with lesser intellectual gifts, as claimed by one of my cites.
And if so, so? Some fraction was not selected for due to above average intellectual ability? Do you claim that no fraction was? That there was no bias of higher than average intellect joining the clergy (instead of learning fighting skils if non-first born nobility, or staying as a serf class if of that class)? And that intellectual ability has no genetic factor contibuting to it?
Ok, I’ve been through it three times now and still not sure what you are saying. At the end you seem to be realizing how everything else on earth would make it unlikely that the small number of actual celibates wouldn’t have much effect on the gene pool. If that’s where you’ve finally arrived, well then fine.
D, if I may call you that, you gave the perfect Internet answer.
It said absolutely nothing, contained no identifiable facts, failed to address the points others have made, misunderstood the science, and did not advance the argument a particle. Yet it filled a large block of space, possibly deluded those with no knowledge, and satisfied the requirement that one must never admit wrongness at any time as long as obfuscation is an alternative.
There’s a spot for you in the clergy.
Sure, call me D.
Hmm. the points that had been made were that there could have been no influence of celibacy on the gene pool because 1) priests were not always celibate 2) intelligence was not actually a factor in who became a priest 3) intelligence is not based on genes 4) not enough people went into the clergy
I may believe that the impact is likely to have been very small but find those arguments all unconvincing or unsupported and the presentation of the response as a GQ factual answer rather than a debatable speculation was to impetus of my response.
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An effect could be possible if there was any impact on reproductive fitness even if the impact was not 100%
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I find the claim that intelligence was not a factor to be unsupported by the cites I can find. In fact the bright and capable from non-nobility had the possibility of advancement via the clergy path.
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A claim that genetics has zero impact on intellect and temperament is quite a claim to make.
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Possibly true, maybe even probably, but such is a speculation based on a guess of how many and an assumption of few generations. Even 1% over multiple generations would have an impact on a trait that was strongly genetically based.
I suspect the conclusion is still correct but that is NOT a factual answer and I find flaw in the arguments that were presented as proof that such an impact was definitively not the case; those who present their humble opinions about that as GQ answers should have the difference between fact and speculation pointed out.
What points do you believe I failed to address?
You failed to point out how an insignificant number of truly celibate siblingless people form a genetic bottleneck. That’s the problem, it isn’t easy to get a noticeable effect on the gene pool that way. Wars, disease, famine, events that affect a broader group are needed. Individual branches terminate all the time for all sorts of reasons but the other branches of the tree keep growing and branching, and the trunk continues to grow and branch as well.
TriPolar makes the major point, but I need to add that a) you haven’t made the case that the clergy were in fact more intelligent than the rest of the population; b) this particular trait would have been passed down sufficiently to affect the population as a whole; c) if there is any effect, then taking negative genes out is as important as taking positive genes out; d) the continuity of genes from siblings makes the total possible removal far less than 1%; and e) there is a gigantic difference between taking 1% of the genes out and having “1% less reproductive success over multiple generations.”
I don’t see that people have made definitive statements. We’ve all been saying that the effect is likely to have been extremely small for a host of reasons and that inheritance of intelligence is hard to pinpoint even in known populations. That’s a position you seem to agree with underneath. Arguing against that while ignoring half the host of reasons is odd, and certainly hasn’t been successful.
TP, a genetic bottleneck is not required to have an impact. Why would you think it is? Wars, disease, famine, events that affect a broader group, are not required to gene selection tp occur. A gene-based trait having a slight reproductive advantage over multiple generations OTOH is likely to have an impact. Take, for example, the spread of the genes associated with adult persistence of lactase. Did everyone with it survive and have children and everyone without it die without reproducing? Of course not. It marginally increased likelihood of survival and reproductive success in adulthood. No bottleneck involved, no war-disease-famine required. Yet it is documented to have spread across complete populations in fewer than a few thousand years.
Of course the issue is how many is “insignificant” …
I have provided cites that present a picture of educational opportunity in the clergy as a fairly meritocratic business open to all classes of course with a requisite level of intellect required and a picture of those noble born who were not first-born choosing a fighting profession unless they were of bookish bent and ability, in which case they went into the clergy. If that picture is incorrect then provide more than some poster’s say so.
My post #11 made the point that this is not really a question that has a factual (i.e.GQ) anwer but instead requires a fair amount of speculation and guesswork. The answers given were best guesses humble opinions and certainly defensible with debate … the response to my post of no, those were factual answers, that “[t]he GQ answer has been given”, that my questioning those assumptions and best guesses was somehow making “outright false” assumptions of my own and demonstrating “preconceptions” that I am “unwilling to give up”, is frankly bewildering and amusing.
Yes, beneficial genes spread. That’s why you need a bottleneck to eliminate them, which is what I thought was being discussed here.
Yes, this is the best-known and probably most-studied example. The ones I’ve read put the advantage in reproductive success at 3-5%. As you note, this was sufficient to drive the presence of the mutation to near 100% levels in northwest Europe in a few thousand years.
That’s exactly why I said earlier that “there is a gigantic difference between taking 1% of the genes out and having ‘1% less reproductive success over multiple generations.’” If the world worked as you claimed and the removal of the celibates’ genes were to have even a 1% less reproductive success rate, the effects would be immense and seen all over Europe, producing a noticeably different distribution of intelligence than in other cultures. Yet, no such difference has ever been found. That alone should be proof that the effect you’re claiming doesn’t exist.
TP “beneficial” in this context means increasing reproductive fitness, nothing more and nothing less. If it decreases reproductive fitness even a smidge then it is clearly not “beneficial.”
Expano, so either an effect is huge or it does not exist? No. I would posit that over the time period we are looking at, with the limited effect per generation, that any possible effect would indeed likely be slight. I admit however that such is a WAG. In any case what you would be looking for I guess is another somewhat genetically isolated group within the same overall environment that did not have celibacy among those who were able to become their most educated, perhaps even had intellectual success correlated somewhat with increased reproductive success, yes?
Before responding to this (and coming back round to OP), I’d like to know, where did you learn this?
This is where I was going to jump in with a WAG that I heard once, and submit it FWIW.
Again, the “evolutionary” implications of Catholic population cultural behavior–priest (non)sex-and-literacy/intelligence (aha!–is that correlated? but thats another story)–vs. Ashkenazi Jewish cultural sex-and-literacy/intelligence behavior.
I agree that “evolutionary” can’t be true, as it would apply to the species/genome. But as inheritance, I still don’t know. [If details of hair, nose, face, eyes, whatever are so strongly inherited, shouldn’t brain features that tend toward later intelligence inheritable?]
Anyway, this is how I heard it: the best and the brightest scholars of the Catholics were monks, and, as OP implies, there goes that to for the kiddies, one might say.
Ashkenazic social behavior, from Middle Ages on, in tiniest of shtetles to metropolises:
Barring dynastic marriages, roughly speaking the smartest boy/man–or deemed most studious, which of course is not the same, or whatever–is fought for by the families of the daughter: recall that although everyone had to study Torah, true Yeshiva boys were exempt from remunerative labor, and it is expected that they be supported by their wives while they spend the days in study.
These boys, as a rule, then, were paired off, and it was considered the right and normal thing o do–with the richest daughters. These girls were better fed, presumably healthier to begin with, perhaps possessing, if not an evolutionary advantage, certainly one giving a higher benefit for the next generation offspring than, generally speaking, daughters of worse-off families.
Rinse and repeat, and you get More-Than-The-Normal-Number-Of-“Smart Jews”[sup]TM[/sup].
And, of course, when you tell this theory to another Jew, and believe it, you may want to comment on the tremendous waste of intellect of the priests: Sigh, while shaking head ruefully and saying “Goyim.”
I merely flipped through the paper you cite. Moreover, I am not a scientist in any remotely related field, let alone genetics.
What’s the word on the street, including yours, on that paper or ones along those lines?
Leo Bloom, the most recent thread on that subject (and there have been several over the years) is here. The factoid pertinent to this thread is that indeed another population in the same area did, apparently during that same Middle Ages time period, have an IQ pattern that diverged slighty from the general European one (for whatever significance or insignificance that pattern has to anything).
That said I recognize the limited significance of IQ and believe that cultural factors are of an order of magitude greater impact to educational attainment and outcomes than IQ or other traits possibly associated with “bookishness.”
(It is exactly the claims that the best and the brightest became monks and that there went the kiddies that were waved off dismissively early on in this thread and my having provoked something by trying to argue for the possibility of a reality somewhere between that version and a complete lack of on average better and brighter and having fewer and that such could still have had some impact.)
DSeid, I realize that you are trying to play devil’s advocate, appropriate in a thread about clergy. What we’re complaining about is that you don’t seem to understand your own argument or genetics or probably both. Not to mention that you are begging the question in the original sense of the term, by simply assuming that the clergy were a group of special intelligence and using that assumption to argue that a difference must therefore exist.
Leo, the paper on the Ashkenazi is extremely contentious. Although there’s been some cautious acceptance, I’d say that the majority dismiss it almost out of hand because even the genetic history is not well enough understood.
And as one commenter said:
Oh dear. That commenter turns out to be DSeid in that other thread he linked to. The devil is in the details.
Anyway, if you want a popular discussion it’s included in The 10,000 Year Explosion: How Civilization Accelerated Human Evolution by two of the authors of the original paper, Gregory Cochran and Henry Harpending. It’s well worth the read.
Whether you accept the results or not, one thing has to be said about it: YOU CAN’T COMPARE IT WITH CLERGY CELIBACY. DSeid, you are trying to compare an inbred, genetically reinforcing population with the absence of a slice of random genes. That’s not a possible argument. It’s a statement that you are grabbing at straws to try to make a case.
If you disagree with the statement that the clergy were not a genetically differentiated group, then prove that they were. First. Before making any other statements. That’s what set you off. I’m going to set you off some more. You can’t prove this. Even if it were true, nobody knows enough to say so. Without that proof, everything you say afterward falls apart in an embarrassing way. Not to mention that if you understood population genetics you would see that the effect you are postulating would indeed have huge effects over time and the invisible variation that we do see is not a possible outcome. Then you compound the failure of that argument by actually saying “cultural factors are of an order of magitude [sic] greater.” So your argument is correct even if we can’t ever prove it? Handwaving is too polite a term for this. Bullshit is closer.
Yes, I believe that “accomplishment” is more influenced by cultural factors than genetic factors. The role that that marginal IQ difference plays in outcomes is very debatable (note, no GQ answer possible) but there is a GQ answer that that marginal IQ difference exists (it does), and the hypothesis that it is a result of negative IQ selection on the people surrounding that particular Jewish enclave is not much different in nature than the one that hypothesizes that it was the result of positive selection within that enclave. To the degree that the latter is held to be plausible (and it is) the former is not much less so. To the degree that your argument against the hypothesis was based on the lack of observed differences between the population subjected to a potential negative selection and another population around them (you did put that forth), this population is the case in point.
No, I am not “trying to compare an inbred, genetically reinforcing population with the absence of a slice of random genes”; I am stating that it seems to me to be unlikely that the slice of genes associated with becoming clergy was completely random and that there is no way to really know whether or not they were. It also is not really known how much becoming clergy reduced the number of any possible genes being passed on or not, claims of no influence notwithstanding.
An answer in GQ does not need to be disproven by someone questioning it, which is what I have been doing; it needs to be proven by those who state it. It has been stated that a GQ answer was given; I don’t think it was and do not think it is possible to do so with the information we have. I understand population genetics thank you very much and as politely as possible must question if you do. Genetic influences on traits can have variable penentrance and multifactorial confounders - if you want to claim that any genetic influence on a trait that resulted in a gene or genes being reduced in a next generation over any arbitrary number of generations by any fraction would have to result in either a huge or a zero impact then I would ask you to show me your math.
I think we’ve beaten this topic into the ground. If your position is that you can provide no facts to back up any of your assertions then start a thread elsewhere and have at it.