Brothers and Sisters

Mapping the end of incest and dawn of individualism
Nov 2019 phys.org

Apparently the Romans had to learn not to have incest in order to advance their civilization. Thanks Jesus.

Historians and scholars still don't know why Europe shifted between 1300 - 1500 AD, but they did. They were under the influence of the Catholic Church.

They think maybe: "Kin-based institutions reward conformity, tradition, nepotism, and obedience to authority, traits that help protect assets—such as farms—from outsiders. But once familial barriers crumble, the team predicted that individualistic traits like independence, creativity, cooperation, and fairness with strangers would increase."

So in conclusion - the willingness to trust strangers correlates to whether or not your family structure is the kind where your cousins mate. If it is, you're less likely to trust strangers, because you tend to find yourself surrounded by your own blood.

Now whether this means Europe needed to start trusting strangers because they were getting mixed up faster than a bag of microwave popcorn, or they facilitated this dynamism because of their beliefs, either way the association paints an interesting picture of the physics of sociology.

Post Script
Facial deformity in royal dynasty was linked to inbreeding, scientists confirm
Dec 2019, phys.org

Like the Stanely What

Centuries-old arm of St. Francis Xavier is in Ottawa
Feb 2018, CBC

directly from CBC-
The month-long cross-Canada tour of a Catholic relic — the severed arm of St. Francis Xavier — is ending in Ottawa this week.

St. Francis Xavier was a Catholic missionary and his arm is considered sacred because he baptized more than 100,000 people with it.

Xavier died in 1552 and his body remains in India, but the Catholic Church removed his arm.

This is the first time the relic has ever been in Canada and one of only a handful of times it has left the Vatican.

Only a handful.

And then, somebody says, "It's kind of like the Stanley Cup".

The Stanley What?


And on a partially unrelated note:

In case you're thinking what I'm thinking:
People ate mummies in the 1800's

But wait, there's more:
This is an update, because I only just now discovered that, yes, the circumcised foreskin of Jesus is one of the holiest of relics, and it's called the Holy Prepuce, or the Holy Foreskin.

Holy Bread

Salvador Dalí, Crucifixion (Corpus_Hypercubus), 1954

Dali wears bread on his head, 1958

Say What?
Vatican outlaws gluten-free bread for Holy Communion
July 2017, BBC

Bread used to celebrate the Eucharist during Roman Catholic Mass must not be gluten-free - although it may be made from genetically modified organisms, the Vatican has ruled.

In a letter to bishops, Cardinal Robert Sarah said the bread can be low-gluten. But he said there must be enough protein in the wheat to make it without additives.

The new rules are needed because the bread is now sold in supermarkets and on the internet, the cardinal said. [I don't understand; the Vatican sells its own brand of bread?]

Roman Catholics believe bread and wine served at the Eucharist are converted into the body and blood of Christ through a process known as transubstantiation.
-BBC

Every once in a while I forget that this is a real thing, like, during this particular ceremony the bread is -really- turned into the body of Christ. Really. Really?

But wait, you're telling me that the same entity that thinks its bread is turning into flesh is also making decisions about the validity of genetically modified organisms. CRISPR vs Christ?

On Science and Religion

Study finds beliefs about all-knowing gods fosters co-operation

Feb 2016, phys.org

The research, an international collaboration among anthropologists and psychologists, looked at how religion affects humans' willingness to co-operate with those outside their social circle.

I'm a strong believer that religion serves the purpose of large-scale human population cooperation, and that despite how much people (like myself even) think it instead today acts as a thought-smothering default state in response to difficult decision-making tasks, it has been, in the early development of human civilization, totally necessary for that development to take place, and that science (a kind of anti-religion) would not exist today had it not been for religion, and that the two are part of the same continuum of cultural evolution. This piece here is a good start for a more well-articulated discussion on the matter.