Fertility Gods - Baba Brinkman

Take a look at the sky

And gaze at a billion stars

Seven billion people

Catch that feelin' of awe

Building civilizations

Going back millennia

Thank the fertility gods

Fertility gods

Take a look at a mosque,

take a look at a church,

take a look at a synagogue

Any religion, ashram, temple, muslim, christian, hindu, any god

What does every one of them have in common?

Followers who attend more often

Tend to have more offspring, you can check, but that effect is relatively modern

This civilization isn’t much like the time and place we evolved in

Back in the Stone Age having sixteen babies wasn’t really an option

Women had their hands full all day working, weaving, gathering, hunting

Then farming changed the game,

resources were suddenly abundant

And fledgling civilizations started to compete to increase their numbers

And soon religion had a new function:

policing reproduction

The local religion promotes having children as a woman’s highest calling

And if it isn’t in wedlock and as soon as possible, the sky is falling

It seems kinda Machiavellian,

suppressing any act of rebellion

But just 'cause it seems designed doesn’t mean the designer has to be brilliant

Cultures produce designs, they test and try different combinations

And promoting fertility might have helped some to avoid foreign domination

Take a look at the sky

And gaze at a billion stars

Seven billion people

Catch that feelin' of awe

Building civilizations

Going back millennia

Thank the fertility gods

Fertility gods

Religion isn’t just for finding peace in a earthquake or Jesus' birthday

For the past ten thousand years it invented ways to increase the birthrate

Cause bigger states tend to annihilate and assimilate little states

And religion is just one way that little states innovate to become bigger states

And lately women’s liberation’s given them basic rights take their fates

In their own hands and oh damn,

religion’s so resistant to women tryin' to liberate

Those sinful contraceptives are not in the bible,

they’re novel methods

Of giving women control of their own bodies,

so they draw god’s invectives

Abortion doctors are devils and Michelle Obama’s immodest dresses

And cover your faces in public places and follow all the Imam’s directives

And don’t use condoms,

even if your spouse is HIV infected?

Religious people should be really thankful that hell is just a cheap fiction

And demographics are shifting and despite religion when opportunity

Knocks for women,

whether education or economic,

they stop reproducing

At four times replacement rates and concentrate on their own agendas

And what happens to the old men in control of religion then?

I don’t remember

Take a look at the sky

And gaze at a billion stars

Seven billion people

Catch that feelin' of awe

Building civilizations

Going back millennia

Thank the fertility gods

Fertility gods