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Altruism in Primates and HumansBy Ken (“Arizona Atheist”)6-7-09http://arizonaatheist.blogspot.com/There is a continuously growing body of research which suggests that morality is an innate trait of human beings and our primate relatives. This fact is yet another blow to the concept of theism. Nolonger is god seen as the source of morals (in most cases god contradicts our sense of morality to beginwith! Just read the many murders by god inside the pages of the bible for proof); they were crafted bynatural selection, and ever since this theory was proposed it has caused an uproar within the theologicalcommunity.Some theologians/apologists have tried to shoot down these ideas, but more often than not, they end upcompletely distorting the concept all together. Take for example, David Marshall, in his book, "TheTruth Behind the New Atheism", on pages 104-105:"Dawkins and Hauser seem to see morality as one more bit of data about the evolution of a particular species. I may feel it is immoral to let a child drown. But if I see that feeling as an accidental product of evolution, like my appendix, what if I want it out? And if I'm late for work, and the child belongs to acompeting race - threatening not just jeans, but selfish genes - it's hard to see how evolution furnishesany argument for saving her.""One could conclude, as some have, 'So evolution gives us guilty feelings when we steal candy fromchildren. Now that I understand the blind forces that produced this emotion, and the fact that it has notranscendent value, I'll take what I want.' Evolution doesn't help at all."This isn't the only stupid thing Marshall has said about the idea of humans' innate morality. I debunkedthis incorrect view in my review of his book [1] so I will just copy my response from it.I find Marshall's discussion about the evolutionary concept of morality to be extremely ignorant. Hedoesn't seem to understand that, as he quoted Dawkins, "Scientific facts about the world do nottranslate into moral shoulds," and that the process of evolution - natural selection/survival - does notequate to good moral standards and that's not where we get our morals from to begin with. Marshallseems to be confusing the actual process of evolution itself, with the fact that the process created theinnate morals we seem to follow. We don't follow the evolutionary process (which created themorality); we follow a byproduct of that process. Just because something is sometimes done in nature,doesn't mean that's what the evolutionary sense of morality dictates humans do regarding "right" and"wrong."Once again, another mistake by Marshall. His idea of "selfish genes" also seems to be mistaken.Dawkins didn't mean that genes are "selfish" as is the more common definition of " seeking or concentrating on one's own advantage, pleasure, or well-being without regard for others," butsomething else. In his book, "The Moral Animal: Why We Are the Way We Are: The New Science of Evolutionary Psychology", Robert Wright explains this well:
 
"[T]hose genes that are conductive to the survival and reproduction of copies of themselves (emphasisin original) are the genes that win. They may do this straightforwardly, by prompting their vehicle tosurvive, beget offspring, and equip the offspring for survival and reproduction. Or they may do thiscircuitously - by, say, prompting their to labor tirelessly, sterilely, and, and 'selflessly,' so that a queenant can have lots of offspring containing them. However the genes get the job done, it is selfish fromtheir (emphasis in original) point of view, even if it seems altruistic at the level of the organism[...]" [2]In his book, "Moral Minds", Marc Hauser does a good job of explaining this process of how peopleseem to choose, without consciously understanding why they chose a particular answer, the sameanswers regardless of not only religion, but other differences. The entire point is that the process is near instantaneous and a person is unable to rationalize why they chose a particular answer. This is the entire point, which Marshall seems to miss. If it is 1) instantaneous and a person cannot find a rational reasonfor his choice and 2) the same or similar answers are given across a spectrum of individuals who havevastly different religious, cultural, and ethnic backgrounds, etc. then where are these moral decisionscoming from? Because there is no evidence of a god, and the bible is a mixture of "good" and "bad"ideas about morality, then the only option left is that the process of evolution crafted some innate senseof morality.Here is an example of a moral dilemma which highlights this innate process. If 5 people came into ahospital all needing organ transplants but no donors were available would be it moral to kill one manwaiting in the waiting room to save all five? No.Here's another. A train has lost it's breaks and is heading on a track that 5 hikers are walking on, while aside track one hiker is walking. If the conductor switches the train to the side track and kills the oneman would that seem morally OK? I'd say yes, but again, why? As Mark Hauser said, "If you said 'no'to the first question and 'yes' to the second, you are like most people I know or the thousands of subjects I have tested in experiments. Further, you most likely answered these questions immediately,with little or no reflection. What, however, determined your answer?" He goes on to say how usuallymorality says that killing is wrong so how does it somehow "feel right" to kill in the second scenario but not the first? Some innate moral processes seem to be at work and we cannot consciously figure outwhy we feel about a particular scenario the way we do with the standard morality that we are taught insociety or through religion. So where are these principals coming from? That is the question that thescience of evolutionary morality is attempting to answer. [3]His claim that evolution doesn't help at all is also ignorant because it's been shown that evolution seemsalso to have crafted our sense of altruism. From the January, 2008 issue of Discover magazine:"For years, lacking evidence to the contrary, most scientists had assumed that altruism is unique tohumans. Sure, other primates groom each other and even share food, but this kind of helping could bechalked up to selfish motives - either to benefit close relatives who share their genes or to get animmediate reward. In June, however, scientists from the Max Planck Institute for EvolutionaryAnthropology reported the first experimental evidence of spontaneous altruism in chimpanzees, toward both non related chimps and humans.In one experiment done with semifree-ranging chimps in Uganda, a chimp struggled to open a door locked by a chain. The researchers wanted to see if a second chimp would release the chain to help thefirst get food. Three-quarters of the time, the chimps in a position to help did just that. 'The crucialthing here is they help without any expectation of being rewarded, because they don't benefit from their 
 
helping,' leading researcher Felix Warneken explains.The pattern showed up in a similar experiment with chimpanzees and humans: When a person withwhom they had no prior relationship struggled to reach a stick, the chimps handed it to the person evenwhen it required climbing up to a tall raceway. The chimps helped people just as often as 18-month-oldGerman toddlers did in a similar set up involving a person struggling to reach a pen.'The main finding is that humans and chimpanzees share altruistic tendencies,' Warneken says. In termsof evolution, he adds, this similarity suggests that the two species' common ancestors has theseinclinations before culture developed.And that tells us something about human nature.'There's a widely held belief that humans are selfish inthe beginning and only through socialization do we turn into somewhat altruistic individuals,'Warneken says. This work suggests our nature contains the seeds for both types of behavior.'"As can be seen, nature seems to have designed our capacity to do both good and bad. So to sayfollowing the evolutionary concept of morality will make you only care for your "in group," asMarshall suggests, is false as these findings do much to prove.Other research confirming this is in Frans de Waal's book "Primates and Philosophers: How MoralityEvolved". de Waal cites his many years of experience working with primates and the altruistic behavior they share with humans.On page 25 de Waal notes, "There exists ample evidence of one primate coming to another's aid in afight, putting an arm around a previous victim of attack, or other emotional responses to the distress of others...""...[T]he screams of a severely punished or rejected infant rhesus monkey will often cause other infantsto approach, embrace, mount, or even pile on top of the victim. Thus, the distress of one infant seems tospread to it peers, which then seek contact to soothe their own arousal." [4]"It is reasonable to assume that the altruistic and caring responses of other animals, especiallymammals, rest on similar mechanisms. When Zahn-Waxler visited homes to find out how childrenrespond to family members instructed to feign sadness (sobbing), pain (crying), or distress (choking),she discovered that children a little over one year of age already comfort others. Since expressions of sympathy emerge at an early age in virtually every member of our species, they are as natural as thefirst step. An unplanned sidebar to this study, however, was that household pets appeared as worried asthe children by the 'distress' of family members. They hovered over them or put their heads in their laps." [5]To show the apes' empathetic response, de Waal tells of a story in which Ladygine-Kohts needed to gether young chimpanzee off the roof of her house, so she feigned crying in order to provoke asympathetic response. In her own words:"If I pretend to be crying, close my eyes and weep, Joni [her chimpanzee] immediately stops his playsor any other activities, quickly runs over to me, all excited and shagged, from the most remote places inthe house, such as the roof or the ceiling of his cage, from where I could not drive him down despitemy persistent calls...He hastily run around, as if looking for the offender; looking at my face, hetenderly takes my chin in his palm, lightly touches my face with his...as though trying to understand
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