Erin Burke, a Ph.D. candidate conducting research on human reproductive ecology is co-author on a recent paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science on the relationship between religion and paternity certainty.  Along with senior author Beverly Strassman, Professor of Anthropology at the University of Michigan, Burke and her co-authors examined associations between various religious affiliations and paternity in order to test the hypothesis that religion may serve as a cultural mechanism for increasing paternity certainty.  Their findings supported their hypothesis.  The abstract of the paper is below.

Burke received her B.A. in Anthropology from the University of Michigan in 2006 and is a 3rd year Ph.D. candidate studying reproductive ecology and human behavioral evolution under the collaborative supervision of Professor Richard Bribiescas.

Abstract

The sacred texts of five world religions (Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, Islam, and Judaism) use similar belief systems to set limits on sexual behavior. We propose that this similarity is a shared cultural solution to a biological problem: namely male uncertainty over the paternity of offspring. Furthermore, we propose the hypothesis that religious practices that more strongly regulate female sexuality should be more successful at promoting paternity certainty. Using genetic data on 1,706 father–son pairs, we tested this hypothesis in a traditional African population in which multiple religions (Islam, Christianity, and indigenous) coexist in the same families and villages. We show that the indigenous religion enables males to achieve a significantly (P = 0.019) lower probability of cuckoldry (1.3% versus 2.9%) by enforcing the honest signaling of menstruation, but that all three religions share tenets aimed at the avoidance of extrapair copulation. Our findings provide evidence for high paternity certainty in a traditional African population, and they shed light on the reproductive agendas that underlie religious patriarchy.

Strassmann BI, Kurapati NT, Hug BF, Burke EE, Gillespie BW, Karafet TM, Hammer MF. 2012. Religion as a means to assure paternity. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 109(25):9781-9785.