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Amazon.co.ukQuiverfull: the high road to low brows
Evolutionary studies have brought some bad news for certain types of evangelical Christian. According to new research, large broods lead to low-quality offspring, who then seek out low-quality mates.
Clearly, this is bad news for the Quiverfull movement. Adherents of this conservative, evangelical lifestyle promote large families as a way of populating the world with more Christians. Alas, it seems that what they may actually achieve is an increase in the world’s supply of idiots. Whether this is a good or bad thing for the continuation of the Christian faith will depend on your point of view.
The results of the research – which involved zebra finches – surprised the researchers, too. Scientists always believed that females of any species would always seek out the best possible males with which to mate. It turns out, however, that the female finches tended to mate with males of their own level. Low-quality females went for low-quality males – birds whose songs weren’t quite up to scratch or whose plumage was maybe a tad tatty.
Large broods have a tendency to result in larger numbers of low-quality females, because of the competition between siblings.
So where does this leave Quiverfull? Given that members of extremist cults tend towards intra-sect breeding, if not actual inbreeding, can one expect an inevitable decline in IQ levels among these Christian families?
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(1) 8 October 2009 at 1:39 pm
Miykael Poly
This is not only a problem with quiverfull… The ban on condoms, by the Roman catholic church, ensures that the poor people will always have a lot of children. While there is be a lot less inbreeding, still there is a large “brood”, although the children would not be from a single mother.
The way of the quiverfull leads just to accelerated quality drop, compared to the way of the Roman catholic church.
(2) 15 December 2009 at 4:20 am
WMDKitty
The decline started long ago….