There are many apparent examples of what I called last week “altruistic indignation.” One experiences altruistic indignation if one becomes angry at the perceived unjust treatment of another person. Does this phenomenon really exist? Do we ever genuinely become grieved when someone who is not ourselves is being treated unjustly? The answer to this question is vital. If the answer is “Yes, there really is such a thing as altruistic indignation,” then this poses a problem for the atheist. This week, and the next two weeks, I want to examine typical attempted atheistic explanations for this.
The most common response is from evolutionary ethics. Take for example, the wolf who stays behind to fight the enemy, even though he knows that he will die, so that the rest of the pack can go free. This seems at first glance to be a strong example of altruism – the wolf lays down its own life for its pack. The wolf's altruism comes from its evolutionary instinct to keep its species alive, at all costs. The wolf has a deep instinct to lay down its life for its pack, just as the parent has a deep instinct to lay down her life for her children, if need be. For the evolutionary ethicist, these altruistic instincts are implanted in us by mother nature, for these instincts are what is necessary to keep our own species around.
Richard Dawkins is a fierce critic of the doctrine that mother nature has made us altruists for the sake of the propagation of life. Dawkins, along with Peter Singer, is one of the two living thinkers best known for being atheistic. In his famous book, The Selfish Gene (and specifically Chapter One – Why are People?), Dawkins calls this wishful, un-Darwinistic thinking. Many evolutionists falsely buy into the idea that we have altruistic instincts for the sake of the survival of our own species, but that is because they do not understand Darwinism properly. Dawkins defends Darwin’s idea that we are all “ruthlessly selfish,” right down to our genes. Therefore, the true Dawinistic explanation of the wolf laying down its life for the pack is that it is protecting its own genes: it is ultimately an egoistic action, even though it appears to be “altruistic” to some wishful thinkers.
So is there really such a thing as altruism (in our restricted sense of altruistic indignation)? The evolutionary ethicist says “Yes,” and the explanation is that mother nature has made us altruistic as a survival mechanism for our species. Unfortunately, as Dawkins points out, this is wildly un-Darwinistic. Even though some may find it odd because of my Christian world-view, I really like Darwinism. Although I am no scientist, I find Darwinism helpful to my cause, simply because of its thesis that we are all ruthlessly selfish in every way. Seeing the world this way makes the miracle of love all the more salient. If we are all ruthlessly selfish, and yet we can find examples of altruism, then the miracle of love is even more miraculous!
The evolutionary ethicist has proposed the theory that we are altruistic for the sake of the survival of our own species. Dawkins has pointed out that these evolutionists are “fairy tale” evolutionists, because Darwin’s theory of natural selection, properly understood, excludes this possibility. While I am happy to let Dawkins win that debate, I have tried to point out that while evolution, as Dawkins explains it, can explain (at least some) altruistic actions, it cannot explain altruistic indignation, at least when it is for the sake of someone on the other side of the world. Dawkins’ idea, which he lays out in Chapter Five of his book, is that altruism is decreased by a factor of two each successive generation, and is also decreased as one moves further from one’s immediate gene pool. So since my children carry half of my genes, I am very altruistic toward them. If I have grandchildren some day, they will carry one-fourth of my genes, and so I will be slightly less altruistic towards them (And why do some love their adopted children? Dawkins insists that this is a genetic malfunction!). And I will be even less altruistic toward my future nieces and nephews, since they have a few of my genes, but not a lot. This is a very brief summary Dawkins’ explanation of Darwinism, but it brings up a wonderful question: Why would I be angry about the unjust treatment of women on the other side of the globe? Darwin says I should not be. Halleluiah!
