Yet another one of the building blocks of fundamentalism has toppled. When faced with the discoveries of modern science, religion keeps pointing into the shadows of undiscovered truths and declares that which we don't (yet) understand to be beyond the realm of science and therefore fall under the purview of theology. Yet those shadowy areas continue to shrink. Case in point: For ages the argument of religious people for the existence of a god or gods is that without inspiration from a supernatural power where would morality come from? Certainly not the cruel world of nature, right?
It turns out that nature may not act so cruelly as we might suppose. Otherwise we'd have a world populated entirely by hungry velociraptors. For decades evolutionary biologists have hypothesized on the origins of such ethical traits as altruism and empathy that form the basis of human societal mores. Emory University primatologist Frans de Waal, observed the incidence of various un-selfish behaviors in monkeys and apes for 20 years and notes that altruism in the form of putting one's self on harms way to help another is a trait one finds among many animals including primates like Rhesus monkeys who will starve themselves rather than cause harm to each other. These traits become more complex as one moves into the great apes who work together to diffuse fights and comfort victims of an attack.
The Copernican revolution continues. One wonders where religion will dig its trenches next.
It turns out that nature may not act so cruelly as we might suppose. Otherwise we'd have a world populated entirely by hungry velociraptors. For decades evolutionary biologists have hypothesized on the origins of such ethical traits as altruism and empathy that form the basis of human societal mores. Emory University primatologist Frans de Waal, observed the incidence of various un-selfish behaviors in monkeys and apes for 20 years and notes that altruism in the form of putting one's self on harms way to help another is a trait one finds among many animals including primates like Rhesus monkeys who will starve themselves rather than cause harm to each other. These traits become more complex as one moves into the great apes who work together to diffuse fights and comfort victims of an attack."Morality is as firmly grounded in neurobiology as anything else we do or are," de Waal wrote in his 1996 book "Good Natured." Biologists ignored this possibility for many years, believing that because natural selection was cruel and pitiless it could only produce people with the same qualities. But this is a fallacy, in de Waal's view. Natural selection favors organisms that survive and reproduce, by whatever means. And it has provided people, he writes in "Primates and Philosophers," with "a compass for life's choices that takes the interests of the entire community into account, which is the essence of human morality."
The Copernican revolution continues. One wonders where religion will dig its trenches next.
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