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passive_fist comments on Open thread, Sep. 28 - Oct. 4, 2015 - Less Wrong Discussion
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This is a commonly-repeated point which I have seen no evidence for. Specifically, I am aware of no evidence that propensity to believe in religion is passed on as a hereditary trait. Indeed, there are many human behaviours that would seem to be highly selected against in evolutionary terms but still persist to a high degree in the population (homosexuality, etc.) The reason of course is that these behaviours have a strong developmental component that is independent of genetics.
As an anecdotal example, I am the child of very religious parents and I have zero belief in religion, and I have always had zero belief in it ever since I remember.
People always make the implicit assumption that children are going to be identical to their parents. In practice, culture, environment, and other factors play a huge role. The key to securing the future success of a society lies less in getting 'smart' people to breed and more in providing a good and intellectually stimulating environment for future children to grow up in.
This is a tangent, but I just caught myself thinking, 'If my religious parents had a less amorphous image of religion - although maybe in their heads it really is so - a more structured way of how the world should be, instead of is, I would find religion more to my liking. After all, they taught me to doubt, they taught me to tolerate incompatible beliefs when they don't likely lead to what I consider 'bad outcomes', they taught me to be curious about the world, so they have to have these values themselves! But no, it was as if they just thought religion is something you pick up with age... Maybe religious and unreligious people are more concerned about their own generation, and the respective vocal minorities who 'go after the children' are regarded as truce-breakers?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religiosity#Genes_and_environment
http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2013-08/what-twins-reveal-about-god-gene
Also, homosexuality is 35-40% hereditary. There have been twin studies done. This is plausible, if for instance its caused by recessive genes which confer a homozygote fitness boost.
Intelligence isn't orthogonal to religiosity, and I didn't propose any sort of eugenics.
Why do you believe this? All the evidence I've seen is that intelligence is mostly genetic, and providing an intellectually stimulating environment (beyond normal schooling, I suppose) will have very little effect.
http://www.medicaldaily.com/intelligence-and-iq-scores-children-are-not-influenced-parenting-style-good-or-bad-313588
I'm not necessarily disagreeing with you; I know that homosexuality is somewhat influenced by genetics. Which is why I said it has a strong developmental component. It is not 100% genetic, like eye color or skin color.
All of this said, twin studies are highly unreliable and I don't recommend them as hard and fast evidence.
I'm not talking in terms of raw intelligence potential per se. I'm talking about how that intelligence is used. I'm sure that "medieval theocracies" had plenty of smart people, in fact they were almost definitely just as smart, in raw intelligence terms, as people are today. This is why I'm saying the key to a successful society lies in providing a good cultural environment for children to grow up in.