HansHill wrote: ↑Tue Jun 17, 2025 8:51 am
Strange for you to rate MacDonald as a third rate scientist then practically agree with his theory. His idea is that Judaism is an evolved group identity, enforced via an enormous array of cultural practices to build societal (and therefore genetic) distance from other outgroups.
So anyway back to the Palestinians, where do they fit into this identity of the persecuted Jew? I assume they are a distinct identity, yes?
Any religion or ethnicity or culture or subculture is inherently an evolved group identity. There will be genetic and social factors (both internal and external) that act at one another. I just think he oversimplifies things and is overly obsessed with Jews for some reason.
Diaspora Jews developed strong communal norms to endure exclusion and persecution. These norms fostered cohesion, literacy, and economic niches, not necessarily as a biological “genetic strategy” but as a cultural and historical survival mechanism.
Many other minorities show the same like Overseas Chinese, Armenians, Mormons. So, parts of what MacDonald describes are basic sociology and diaspora survival history — but his racial-evolution angle is not standard science.
This might be off so correct me if its wrong but ChatGPT says that MacDonald argues Judaism is not just a religion or culture, but an evolved biological strategy shaped by natural selection to maximize survival and dominance in competition with host populations. He frames Jewish traits (high intelligence, endogamy, in-group charity, preference for intellectual occupations) as genetically selected traits, not just cultural. He further claims this creates conflict because Jews, as a high-IQ group with collective interests, naturally subvert or outcompete the non-Jewish majority in host societies.
Mainstream science rejects this as bad evolutionary theory for several reasons:
1. MacDonald overgeneralizes population genetics. Modern evolutionary biology accepts population-level genetic variation, but it does not support the idea of neat, large-scale racial “strategies” acting like a conscious group organism. Human behavioral traits like group loyalty, learning, religious identity, and economic habits are overwhelmingly cultural and plastic — not coded in a simple genetic blueprint. Diaspora survival strategies (education, in-group charity, discouraging out-marriage) are well explained by cultural adaptation, not evidence of a biological group strategy that persists in DNA.
2. There's poor genetic evidence for his claims. Jewish populations are genetically diverse: Ashkenazi, Sephardi, Mizrahi communities have mixed ancestry. While some genetic diseases and higher average IQ in Ashkenazi samples have been studied, these do not map neatly to a coordinated genetic “strategy.” Traits like high literacy, scholarly traditions, and communal charity are classic cultural transmission effects — no credible geneticist claims Jews are evolutionarily selected as a conspiratorial race.
3. He selectively analyzes history and cherry-picks examples that fit the “group conflict” model while ignoring huge variations. There are secular Jews who intermarry, political disagreements, and periods when Jewish communities assimilated almost entirely.
4. Evolutionary group selection is itself controversial. The idea that natural selection strongly favors complex traits at the group level (rather than the individual gene level) is disputed in evolutionary biology. MacDonald’s idea assumes “Jewish genes” benefit the collective rather than the individual — a mechanism without robust genetic demonstration.
5. Many diaspora minorities show identical patterns like the Overseas Chinese in Southeast Asia, Lebanese merchants in West Africa, Armenians in the Ottoman Empire, Ismaili Indian merchants in East Africa. None require a “racial strategy” — just repeated cultural norms under similar pressures.
I'm not sure what you are asking about with respect to the Palestinians.
For centuries under the Ottoman Empire (1516–1917), the region called Bilad al-Sham (Greater Syria) included what we now call Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, and Palestine. During this period, people identified themselves religion, local town or clan (e.g., Jerusalemite, Nablus merchant), or broader Arab or Syrian affiliation, not a distinct “Palestinian nation.” Identity was mostly local and regional — not a separate “Palestinian nation-state” consciousness.
In the late Ottoman period (late 1800s), a more distinct sense of local Filastini (Palestinian) identity began to appear, partly due to Ottoman modernization (schools, newspapers, better roads), Arab nationalism growing across the region in reaction to Turkish nationalism, and local notables (families like the Husseinis and Nashashibis in Jerusalem) managing towns and religious sites. Still, the idea of “Palestine” was a geographic region within Greater Syria, not yet a fully separate national project.
The crucial turning point came in 1917 after Britain committed to create a “national home for the Jewish people” in Palestine with the Balfour Declaration. Massive Jewish immigration under the British Mandate and growing Zionist institutions create a rival political project in the same land. During the Arab Revolt (1936–39), Palestinian Arabs launch an uprising against both British colonial rule and increasing Jewish settlement. This period crystalized a distinct Palestinian political identity in opposition to Zionism and separate from broader Arab nationalist movements. They became a defined community seeking self-rule.
I don't know if I would call that some kind of racial or genetic evolutionary strategy but more of a sociological process. An episode of ethnogenesis in a sense.
