The Trouble with Altruism
Responding to my post yesterday about Harvard's decision to include a faith and reason requirement in the core curriculum, Donald McLaughlin pointed out a particular reason objectors believe religion has no place or at least a lower standing in academia:
In [The Blank Slate], Steven Pinker argues that our thoughts, beliefs and so forth really are little more than the result of the biochemical processes by which our minds operate. For Pinker, everything, including our thoughts are the end product of the blind, purposeless process of evolution. But that creates a real problem for Pinker. His belief that religious belief is irrational or his belief that science and reason produce truth is ITSELF the result of those same blind, purposeless evolutionary processes. Presumably Pinker 'believes' that his cognitve faculties, themselves the end products of those blind, purposeless evolutionary processes, have as one of their primary functions the production of true beliefs. But surely there is something amiss here: it is mere question begging to make that assumption independent of other confirming data.
At best, if Pinker were going to do the intellectually honest thing, he needs adopt a position of agnosticism towards his own belief; at worst outright rejection of it. Niether choice is very convenient, however, for his philosophical naturalism.
In today's BreakPoint commentary, Chuck addresses the problem altruism poses for evolution.
While Darwin himself never acknowledged the difficulty posed by altruism, his acolytes and disciples did. Their responses led to the creation of the discipline known variously as “evolutionary psychology” or “sociobiology.”
Whatever it’s called, the evolutionary “explanation” for altruism is basically the same: It’s really selfishness in disguise. When the son offers to give away half of his food, it’s not goodness—it’s a kind of enlightened self-interest. We do what we perceive as “good” for others so that they, in turn, might do the same for us and, thus, increase both of our chances for survival.
Of course, the transaction being described isn’t “altruism” at all; it’s called “cooperation.” It’s the stuff of zebras and baboons, both of which live in large groups for mutual protection and neither of which would knowingly sacrifice its life to save another’s.
But in the Darwinian scheme, true altruism “has no place in nature.” When you start from the assumption that our behavior is the product of “selfish genes,” then you must agree with the sociobiologist who wrote “scratch an ‘altruist’ and watch a hypocrite bleed.”
Little wonder that [David] Stove [in Darwinian Fairytales] called Darwinism, especially sociobiology, a “ridiculous slander on human beings.” Darwinism not only cannot account for what is most essentially human—that is, things like altruism and music—it insists on denigrating them, as well.
Read the rest of the commentary and share your thoughts here.