Altruism and Evolution

In this video a dog is hit by a car on the interstate. Another dog pulls the wounded one out of harm’s way, clearly risking its own life. This is one of the most touching videos I have seen in a long, long time. Beyond its obvious emotionally gripping sentiments, this video tells us something very important about the innate morality of all animals, and particularly mammals.

Critics of evolution often espouse the straw man idea that, because natural selection favors the fittest of a given environment, this automatically means that all animals are inherently selfish and are bent, at whatever cost, towards the propagation of their own genes. With this admission, anti-evolutionists (aka ear-pluggers) conclude that this is far too grim a worldview to swallow and that it cannot account for altruism or self-sacrifice. To explain these “higher virtues” one obviously needs to appeal to a higher power, right? One needs a great standard for absolute morality that can externally impart these abstract, counter-intuitive behaviors into our selfish genes?

Wrong.

What these people fail to take into account are the evolutionary survival benefits that come from in-group/species cooperation and altruism. It is not difficult to piece together. Imagine a species that travels in a small clan or tribe. This clan or tribe would never survive if the pervading moral sentiment was “every man for himself” or “dog eat dog” (Pun, intended). Participating in a self-sacrificing, and sometimes even life threatening, manner within a community only reinforces the collective solidarity that others generally behave the same way. You are inclined to risk your life for someone in your community because you intuitively realize that you may need the same help one day to survive. This is how mammals, who generally travel in extended families and packs, have survived for literally millions of years. This is why when someone is drowning most people most of the time would attempt to rescue that person even though drowning themselves is obviously not conducive to survival and gene propagation. This is why whales often beach themselves purposefully to try and save a member of their own species. This is why harpooned sperm whales are surrounded by other whales, even though this raises their risk of being hunted as well. This is why some species of bats regurgitate blood into the weaker bats in the colony. And so on and so on and so on.

Now, let’s ask ourselves some questions. What god do dogs worship? What god do whales or bats worship? Where are they getting this external drive to be charitable and self-sacrificing to others within their species? Hell, chimpanzees and sperm whales are largely documented to help humans in times of danger, often at their own peril. Where does this come from? They don’t worship any gods that we know of, let alone the Jehovah, Jesus, and Allah we’ve all adopted as our invisible sky fathers. This is because morality is an innate, evolved mechanism that has helped them survive for millions of years.

I’ve got a full post on human morality in the works. But in the meantime thoughtfully consider this video and ask yourself what would make a lowly dog with no soul risk it’s only life to drag a wounded dog off a busy interstate. Then think of how much more so we might exemplify this behavior as human beings.

In reason,

Clint Wells