Recently several books written by prominent authors have been published that attack religious belief as a pernicious delusion. The four most prominent authors are Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchens, who collectively are often called the “new atheists” [Dawkins2006; Dennett2006; Harris2006; Hitchens2007]. In his book, prominent biologist Richard Dawkins asks us to imagine “a world with no religion … no suicide bombers, no 9/11 no 7/7, no Crusades, no witch-hunts, no Gunpowder Plot, no Indian partition, no Israeli/Palestinian wars, no Serb/Croat/Muslim massacres, no persecution of Jews as ‘Christ-killers,’ no Northern Ireland ‘troubles,’ no ‘honour killings,’ no shiny-suited bouffant-haired televangelists fleecing gullible people of their money” [Dawkins2006, pg. 23-24]. Christopher Hitchens declares that religion is “violent, irrational, intolerant, allied to racism, tribalism, and bigotry, invested in ignorance and hostile to free inquiry, contemptuous of women and coercive toward children” [Hitchens2007, pg. 56].

Along this line, physicist Victor J. Stenger, in his book God: The Failed Hypothesis, reviews numerous claims for God’s existence, including “intelligent design” arguments, claims for God’s influence in biology and the claimed effects of prayer. He finds these wanting, and thus concludes that God does not exist [Stenger2008]. In this work and other writings, Stenger specifically rejects claims that there are any health or other benefits from religious beliefs or participation [Stenger2013].

Setting aside for a moment the arguments by these writers and others for and against the existence of God, and setting also aside claims of supernatural effects, what do we make of the atheist writers’ claims regarding health and social benefits from religious belief and participation?

Benefits of religion

To begin with, while there certainly are valid points in the writings of these scholars, they have also drawn considerable criticism, not just from religious fundamentalists and apologists, but also from some very knowledgeable scholars in the field of science and religion, writers who in many cases are not particularly religious themselves. For details, see Atheists.

And among the specific criticisms that have been leveled at these authors is that they completely ignore the many benefits bestowed by religion throughout history, particularly their role in fostering social cohesion and moral training. For example, historians Will and Ariel Durant (neither of whom were particularly religious) wrote that “Even the skeptical historian develops a humble respect for religion, since he sees it functioning, and seemingly indispensable, in every land and age. … There is no significant example in history, before our time, of a society successfully maintaining moral life without the aid of religion.” [Durant1968, pg. 43, 51].

Along this line, Michael Shermer, a well-known skeptic who has criticized claims of religion and supernatural effects on numerous occasions, has noted that religion has its undeniable positive side [Shermer2000]:

However, for every one of these grand tragedies there are ten thousand acts of personal kindness and social good that go unreported. … Religion, like all social institutions of such historical depth and cultural impact, cannot be reduced to an unambiguous good or evil.

Other, more recent studies, by numerous scholars have amply underscored benefits of religious belief and participation:

1. A 1999 study, which involved a nine-year follow-up analysis of 21,000 American adults, found that religious attendance of at least once per week resulted in seven additional years of life expectancy. What’s more, this effect mostly remained in place even after adjusting for various social factors and health behaviors [Hummer1999].
2. A 1997 study of 5286 weekly church attendees in Alameda County, California found that these persons were 25% less likely to die than infrequent church attendees. These results were attributed in part to better health practices, expanded social involvement, exercising more, and remaining married longer [Strawbridge1997].
3. In a 1998 study of 1931 elderly adults (55 years and older), weekly church attendees experienced the lowest rates of mortality in the study group, while non-attendees experienced the highest rates. This study also showed that volunteer work in addition to church attendance contributed to even longer life expectancy [Oman1998].
4. A 1999 study of 4000 seniors (64 years and older) found that the death hazard was 46% lower for frequent church attendees, compared with infrequent church attendees. As noted in other studies, frequent church attendees were physically healthier, had better social support, and displayed a set of healthier lifestyle behaviors [Koenig1999].
5. A 2004 study comparing Utah residents who are members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS) with those who are not LDS confirmed, not surprisingly, that the LDS members had much lower rates of tobacco, alcohol and drug usage than the non-LDS group, since these substances are strongly discouraged by the Church. The study found that life expectancy was 77.3 years for LDS males versus 70.0 years for non-LDS males, and 82.2 years for LDS females versus 76.4 for non-LDS females. Interestingly, however, the study noted that differences in rates of tobacco use explains only about 1.5 years of the 7.3 year gap for males, and only 1.2 years of the 5.8 year gap for females. The author suggests that this additional gap may be due to better overall physical health, better social support and other lifestyle practices [Merrill2004].

In an April 2013 New York Times column, Stanford scholar Tanya M. Luhrmann summarized some of these results, and then added her own observations. In evangelical churches she has studied as an anthropologist, she found that people really do look out for one another, showing up with dinner when friends are sick, or simply talking with them when they are unhappy. They are relatively more generous, often in private contributions, when others are in need. She mentioned that when one member of an evangelical group cried at needing a $1500 dental procedure, yet had no money, her friends, many of whom were students with very limited funds, covered the cost by anonymous donations [Luhrmann2013].

Luhrmann argues that any faith which demands that you experience the world as more than just what is material and observable, as something that is good, may well transfer to other aspects of life. For example, she observed that those who were able to experience a loving God vividly were mentally healthier (as measured by a standardized psychiatric scale), and this may lead to better overall physical health as well [Luhrmann2013].

Conclusion

In summary, contrary to claims of some religious detractors, there are real and measurable benefits to religious belief and participation. These benefits have been documented in study after study over many years. There is no suggestion in this data of supernatural effects, but the natural effects are real enough!

For additional discussion, see Atheists and Religion fade away.

On March 18, 2013, a Florida man was found guilty of burglary and criminal damage to property, in an attempt to steal an ATM machine from a store. But the burglar had dropped his hat, and subsequent analysis of DNA in the hat matched that of a suspect. Based on this evidence, the jury quickly reached a guilty verdict.

DNA evidence works the other way too. On January 30, 2013, a former Akron, Ohio police captain, who had been convicted of murdering his wife in 1997, was cleared of the crime and released from prison, because comparisons of DNA at the crime scene did not match his DNA.

The public appears to be completely supportive of such actions taken on the basis of DNA evidence. A 2005 Gallup poll found that 85% of Americans view DNA evidence is either completely reliable or very reliable, and, further, that DNA evidence is considered more reliable than fingerprint evidence. Doubtless these figures are even higher today. There are potential lab errors and data handling problems, but by and large DNA tests deserve the trust the public places in them.

Athletic drug testing

In a similar way, the public appears to be very supportive of using scientific drug tests, performed using modern mass spectrometry methods, to determine whether athletes have been using steroids and other banned performance-enhancing substances. In recent years, San Francisco Giants slugger Barry Bonds and Tour de France winner Lance Armstrong, among many others, have been found to have used these substances, and have been censured.

Evolution

There is a supreme irony in the fact that the public overwhelmingly accepts DNA profiling to convict (or release) criminals, and mass spectrometry to detect banned substances in the urine of competing athletes, yet both of these technologies have been employed for many years in studies of geology and evolution, and, in fact, constitute part of the huge body of evidence in support of the scientific worldview of a 4.5-billion-year-old earth, with an evolutionary development of biological species. Instead, fully 40% of Americans hold that God created the universe, the earth, the sun, moon, stars, plants, animals, and the first two people within the past 10,000 years.

Needless to say, many millions of people are being utterly inconsistent in their approach to science and technology. DNA evidence of exactly the same sort that is used to convict criminals is also used to affirm the very close biological relationship between species. For example, human beta-globin (a component of hemoglobin in blood) is identical to that in chimpanzees, is 99.3% identical to that in gorillas, yet progressively less similar to that in red foxes, dogs, polar bears, horses, rats, chicken and salmon. Also, humans have four transposon mutations in a certain section of their DNA. Bonobos and chimpanzees both have exactly these same mutations, plus one additional one. Gorillas only share three of these and orangutans, two.

Such evidence is multiplied many thousands of times when analyzing the full human DNA genome, and millions of times as scientists examine the rapidly growing online databases of DNA for other species. There is no reasonable explanation for these between-species similarities, except that the species involved in these comparisons are descended from a common ancestor, as proposed by evolutionary theory.

Geology

Similarly, mass spectrometers, which are currently the centerpiece of drug testing equipment, have for decades been used for radiometric dating of rock samples. Mass spectrometers measure the levels of certain radioactive isotopes, and this data can be converted into a date of the specimen in question. Over the years, these techniques have become ever more consistent and reliable, and now fully deserve their gold-standard reputation in the scientific community. Tens of thousands of such measurements are in the peer-reviewed scientific literature.

As a single example, in February 2013 U.C. Berkeley researchers, using a state-of-the-art argon-argon scheme that permits a very accurate date determination, found that the Cretaceous-Tertiary meteorite impact occurred 66,038,000 years ago. They separately measured the age of the epoch when the last of the dinosaurs abruptly went extinct; this occurred 66,043,000 years ago. Given that these dates differ by no more than the statistical error bars of the measurements (11,000 years), they are essentially identical. Thus these new findings offer dramatic confirmation to the theory that the meteorite impact caused the extinction (although climate-related phenomena prior to that time may have exacerbated stress on these species).

The importance of education

It is widely thought that the reason so many are so inconsistent in their scientific worldview is that they view evolution as in conflict with the precepts and teachings of their religious denomination. But here, too, the evidence points in another direction. A recent MIT study found that only 11% of Americans belong to a faith that openly rejects evolution. In other words, the vast majority of those Americans who reject evolution cannot cite the teachings of their religious denomination as the reason.

So why the massive inconsistency, on at least three fronts? There is no good answer. But certainly improved scientific education is important now, and will be ever more important in the future. Along this line, in the latest international test score results U.S. eighth graders ranked an unimpressive 12th place worldwide.

What’s more, many teachers in K-12 schools are either themselves unfamiliar with the full strength of evidence behind geology and evolutionary biology, or are being subjected to fierce pressures from parents and, in some cases, timid school administrators.

One way or another, youth need to be better educated. How can we expect the public to correctly understand DNA and drug testing, not to mention geology and evolution, if they have never been rigorously taught these precepts in school?

March 2013 is the 39th anniversary of a curious milestone of 20th century military history: On March 9, 1974, nearly 29 years after World War II supposedly ended with the Japanese surrender, Hiroo Onoda, the last Japanese holdout, turned over his sword and rifle to his commanding officer and ceased his para-military campaign on Lubang Island in the Philippine Islands.

Onoda had landed on Lubang Island in December 1944, where he was given orders to do all that he could to disrupt Allied activities on the island, but under no circumstances was he to surrender or take his own life. He and two fellow Japanese soldiers continued guerrilla activities for some time, sabotaging port operations and engaging local inhabitants and police in a number of gun battles.

In October 1945 he and his two companions found a leaflet declaring that the war was over. Thinking that it was Allied propaganda, they ignored it. One by one his companions were killed, leaving him alone.

Finally, in February 1974, Onoda met Norio Suzuki, a Japanese student who had come to search for him. Suzuki told him that the war was over, but Onoda still insisted that he would not surrender until given orders from a superior officer. Suzuki returned to Japan with photographs of himself with Onoda, and the Japanese government accordingly sent Onoda’s previous commanding officer, who had since become a bookseller, to the Philippines, where he met Onoda and accepted his resignation.

After returning to Japan, Onoda married in 1976, then traveled to Brazil, where he assumed a leading role in a Japanese community there (and still spends some of his time there). Additional details of Onoda’s colorful “career” can be found in the informative Wikipedia article.

Hero or Don Quixote?

While many may admire Onoda’s tenacity, many others see his holdout as a classic case of Don Quixote-style stubbornness to accept reality. After all, even a modest attempt by Onoda and his men to learn the facts would have produced the requisite information that the war had ended long ago, and that they should end their guerrilla campaign. This would have saved nearly 30 years of futile and fruitless efforts to “win” a war that had long since been lost. Think of the many years of potential service Onoda and his companions could have offered to spouses, families, and communities back in their own homeland.

What’s more, the “cause” that Onoda fought so hard for had long since ceased to be worth fighting. Even though the U.S. ended the war with the highly controversial deployment of atomic bombs, within a few years Japan and the U.S. were allies, and extensive trade began between the two nations. This trade, in consumer electronics, automobiles, computers and services, continues at an ever-increasing pace to this day. Many Japanese citizens now reside in the U.S. (and some have become naturalized citizens), and many U.S. citizens reside in Japan (and some have become naturalized there as well).

The war between scientists and young-earth creationists

There is another long-running battle that also ended, for all intents and purposes, roughly at the same time as the end of World War II: the “debate” over whether the earth and all its natural wonders were created in a flash over a 6-day (or 6000-year) period, completing a few thousand years ago, or whether this process was a long sequence spanning many millions of years.

Indeed, with the development of radioactive isotope dating, also a development of the pre-war research into nuclear physics, the last rational basis for reasonable doubt of the earth’s great antiquity was removed. Within a few years after the war, and certainly by the 1960s, these radiometric dating schemes were widely deployed and permitted highly accurate determinations of numerous epochs in the geological chronology of earth. They have been further refined over the intervening years and now fully deserve their gold-standard reputation in the scientific world (see Radiometric dating and Reliability).

Similarly, the development of protein and DNA sequencing technology over the past 20 years has removed any remaining rational basis to doubt that living organisms on earth today are the result of an evolutionary process spanning many millions of years. For example, many thousands of artifacts have been found in DNA that are shared between closely related species, in ways that have no other reasonable explanation other than that these species once descended from a common set of ancestors (see DNA).

Lessons for present-day creationists

Unlike the history of World War II, the last holdouts in the battle over the age of the earth and evolution have not yet given up. Even in 2013, various groups around the U.S. are proposing state laws that would require “equal time” for creationist or intelligent design precepts, or would require that “all sides” be taught on “controversial” topics such as evolution. This is in spite of the fact that all such laws that have been enacted have been struck down by court decisions, which have uniformly ruled that such provisions are tantamount to specifying unscientific religious dogma be taught in public schools, and are therefore unconstitutional (see Court cases).

These battles are also being fought in spite of the fact that the scientific community has for several decades regarded the rapidly growing body of evidence as unequivocal — the earth is many millions of years old; biological species on earth today did arise through a long evolutionary process (see Evolution).

But don’t we admire heroes in these battles, just as some have admired Onoda’s tenacity? Perhaps. But think for a moment about what has been lost (and is being lost) in the wake of this long-lost and utterly futile “war.” Millions of persons, particularly vulnerable youth, are confused over the increasingly nasty public rhetoric between holdout creationists and certain atheist scholars. And the U.S. is increasingly is falling behind tenacious international competitors in training its youth in the latest scientific research and technology.

Time for a graceful surrender

Indeed, now is the time for the last of the holdout young-earth creationists to gracefully concede defeat: simply acknowledge that the earth and its biological species are of great antiquity, the product of an evolutionary development, and then move forward to other matters more properly in the province of modern enlightened religion.

After all, true religion is not about technical matters. There is not a single verse in the Bible or any other revered work of religious scripture that is even remotely in the style of the precise, quantitative, data-driven style of a modern scientific research paper (see Bible science). Great religion has always addressed grander themes. Leave technical questions to the world of scientific research.

It is also time for the world of science to acknowledge that it does not necessarily have all the answers. Science, properly speaking, can say nothing about the overriding purpose of creation, the meaning of our existence, morality and redemption, or, for that matter, the existence or non-existence of God — all these matters are beyond the realm of empirical scientific inquiry (see Science answers). And religion is not going to fade away anytime soon, because it fulfills important needs in millions of persons worldwide (see Religion fade away).

So let’s declare a truce between science and religion, and, like the U.S. and Japan, move forward with profitable exchanges. Society can be enriched by both camps.

Plagiarism, namely the copying of text or ideas of others, without explicit citation and/or permission, is considered a serious breach of ethics in the academic world. Even copying with permission is a breach of ethics in many environments, such as classroom instruction, where original, independent work is required of each individual. Nowadays many leading scientific journals and conferences employ sophisticated plagiarism-detecting software, which often can detect overlap of even a few consecutive words of text with previously published papers. Individual teachers and researchers often utilize Google searches and the like to ascertain whether written material is original.

Biologist Kenneth Miller recounts how he once detected an incidence of plagiarism in one of his biology classes. He found two papers that were curiously similar, even though there were attempts to disguise the fact — rearranged paragraphs, etc. But the clincher for the case was that each student had misspelled the same six words in exactly the same way. When confronted with this fact, the students recognized that the evidence was overwhelmingly against them, and they surrendered to the school’s disciplinary system [Miller2008, pg. 100].

“Thought experiment” of plagiarism

It is worth considering the following “thought experiment” of a more elaborate form of academic plagiarism that might arise in a classroom setting.

Suppose that a professor, who has given an assignment for a term paper, notes that six submitted papers have remarkable similarities, with extensive sections of identical or nearly identical material. Suppose further that the professor notices five instances of a particularly odd type of error, where a section of text that is otherwise nonsensical in context has been inserted into the text (say by accidental cut-and-paste), and that several of these error blocks appear in more than one of the term papers. Let the six students be denoted 1 through 6, the five error blocks be A through E, and let x or o denote whether this error is observed in the student’s paper. Suppose these error blocks can be organized as follows:

						Error blocks
			Student		A	B	C	D	E
        /---------	1		o	x	x	x	x
       /----------	2		x	x	x	x	x
      / \---------	3		x	x	x	x	x
     /------------	4		o	o	x	x	x
-----|------------	5		o	o	o	x	x
     \------------	6		o	o	o	o	o

It is clear that there is a hierarchical structure to these error blocks, as indicated in the diagram on the left: student #6′s paper appears close to the “original,” with student #5 copying from #6, student #4 copying from student #5, students #1, #2 and #3 copying from #4, and student #2 or #3 copying from the other. Another possibility is that these students copied from additional manuscripts, not seen here, which nonetheless also fell into this hierarchical pattern. But it is abundantly clear that extensive copying has occurred, and that the general who-copied-from-whom pattern shown above holds.

Few would argue with these conclusions, in part because otherwise it is exceedingly unlikely that any of these unusual errors would occur even once in a manuscript, let alone independently in different manuscripts, and it is even less likely that there would be large sections of identical material in all six papers.

Transposons and the primate lineage

“Transposons” or “jumping genes” are a highly unusual type of mutation where a section of DNA has been randomly copied from one part of an organism’s genome to another. Most of the time, these inserted genes do no damage, because they “land” in relatively unimportant sections of DNA. But they do provide an excellent means to classify species into their phylogenetic (“family tree”) relationship. This is because it is exceedingly unlikely that the same random insertion of an entire gene would occur at the same spot in the genomes of two or more different species, unless, of course, each inherited this curious feature from a common ancestor. Transposon data has been used in this way to classify species into a “family tree,” with a result that is virtually identical to what biologists had earlier reckoned based only physical features and biological functions [Rogers2011, pg. 25-30].

Here is an example of how transposon data can be used to determine the phylogenetic relationships (i.e., “family tree”) of various primates including humans. As is well known, the DNA of various primate species is almost identical, with well over 90% of DNA common between these species. Several transposons have been identified in human DNA and also in the DNA of gibbons, orangutans, gorillas, chimps and bonobos. In the table below, the columns labeled A through E denote five transposons, and x and o respectively denote that the transposon is present or absent in the genome of the given species:

						Transposon blocks
			Species		A	B	C	D	E
        /---------	Human		o	x	x	x	x
       /----------	Bonobo		x	x	x	x	x
      / \---------	Chimp		x	x	x	x	x
     /------------	Gorilla		o	o	x	x	x
-----|------------	Orangutan	o	o	o	x	x
     \------------	Gibbon		o	o	o	o	o

Needless to say, these data are precisely the same as the table above of hypothetical errors in student manuscripts. And just as it was abundantly clear from the above table that massive copying had occurred, with some students copying from others (or from other common sources), it is abundantly clear from this table that our closest primate relatives are chimpanzees and bonobos, with gorillas, orangutans and gibbons somewhat more distant, yet still closely related, and all six species deriving from a common ancestor. Note, for instance, that the chimp-bonobo-human lineage acquired one transposon after splitting from gorillas, and then the bonobo-chimp lineage acquired one after splitting from humans [Rogers2011, pg. 89; Salem2003].

Mutations in the Vitamin C gene

One other interesting example of this type is the “GULO” gene, which is an essential part of the machinery that makes Vitamin C in most animals. Humans lack a functioning copy of this gene — our copy is a highly mutated fragment, classified as a relic gene or pseudogene. Scurvy, that scourge of British sailors on the high seas and of Mormon pioneers crossing the plains, occurs in humans when they do not get enough Vitamin C in their diet. Interestingly, although the GULO pseudogene is highly mutated and utterly useless, humans and chimpanzees have almost identical copies of it — human and chimp versions are 98% identical. Evidently a common ancestor of humans and chimps adopted a diet rich in fruits and vegetables, and thus a chance mutation that disabled Vitamin C production was no longer a fatal one and was passed on to posterity [Fairbanks2007, pg. 53-55].

Equally compelling evidence can be seen by comparing other genes and biological proteins. For example, human beta globin, a component of hemoglobin in blood, is identical to that of chimpanzees, differs in only one location from that of gorillas, yet is increasingly distinct from that in red foxes, polar bears, horses, rats, chicken and salmon — see DNA. Anyone with an Internet connection can examine these databases first-hand to study the relative closeness of various species [Evolution2009].

DNA evidence for evolution

Evidence such as that mentioned above literally screams key assertions of biological evolution, namely common ancestry of related organisms (and indeed of the entire biological kingdom), and of the reality of mutations. So why are so many reluctant to accept these conclusions?

Consider for example the usage of DNA evidence in forensics. Biologist Sean Carroll mentions the case of Kevin Green, who in 1979 had been convicted of the attempted murder of his wife Dianna Green and the actual murder of her unborn child who died in the beating. But in 1996, forensic researchers at the California Department of Justice, after analyzing 17-year-old samples collected at the crime scene, concluded that the DNA matched not the convicted murderer but instead that of a different man who was then in prison on another charge. Green was thus released from prison [Carroll2006, pg. 13-14].

Indeed, DNA evidence, after decades of refinement of the underlying experimental procedures and methods of analysis, fully deserves its gold-standard reputation in the criminal forensic field. It is now commonplace for society to condemn accused persons to a lifetime in prison, and, in other cases, free convicted killers, all on the basis of DNA evidence. It is, quite literally, a matter of life and death.

And yet the underlying principles and techniques widely used in DNA analysis in forensics are essentially the same as those employed in biological phylogenetics, and are just as reliable. As Carroll has noted, DNA evidence “clinches the case for biological evolution as the basis for life’s diversity, beyond any reasonable doubt” [Carroll2006, pg. 17].

All material on this blog and website is copyrighted. All rights reserved. David H. Bailey (c) 2013.

One aspect of nature in general and evolutionary theory in particular that gives many Judeo-Christian believers some pause is its reliance on forms of competition that in many cases we would consider cruel. Parasites often destroy their living hosts from within. Female spiders, in many cases, devour their mates. And anyone who has watched a nature show on TV, with gazelles being chased by hungry lions, recognizes that nature is certainly “red in tooth and claw.” This fact was noted by Charles Darwin himself, who wrote in a letter to his colleague Joseph Hooker [Darwin1856], “What a book a Devil’s Chaplain might write on the clumsy, wasteful, blundering low & horridly cruel works of nature.”

Many religious scholars have struggled with this issue, as part of the greater mystery of why suffering and evil occur. The philosopher David Hume, echoing an argument first made by the Greek philosopher Epicurus (341-270 BC), asked [Hume1935, pg. 244], “Is [God] willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is impotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Whence then cometh evil?”

But there is an answer to Hume’s question: evolution. Yes, evolution, “which at first seemed to remove the need for God in the world, now has convincingly removed the need to explain the world’s imperfections as failed outcomes of God’s design” [Ayala2007, pg. 159]. In the words of Aubrey Moore, a nineteenth century British theologian [Moore1891, pg. 99], “Darwinism appeared, and, under the guise of a foe, did the work of a friend.”

Catholic theologian John Haught adds the following [Haught2008, pg. 107]:

As the ultimate ground of novelty, freedom, and hope, the Christian God offers the entire universe as well as ourselves the opportunity of ongoing liberation from the lifelessness of perfect design. Evolution, therefore, may be understood, at a theological level, as the story of the world’s gradual emergence from initial chaos and monotony, and of its adventurous search for the more intensely elaborate modes of being. The God of evolution humbly invites creatures to participate in the ongoing creation of the universe. This gracious invitation to share in the creation of the universe is consistent with the fundamental Christian belief that the ultimate ground of the universe and our own lives is the loving, vulnerable, defenseless, and self-emptying generosity of God.

Is nature entirely “red in tooth and claw”?

What’s more, nature is not entirely “red in tooth and claw.” Many organisms exhibit remarkable cooperative behavior. The intricate behavior of bee colonies is just one of many examples. The point has been made perhaps most strongly by biologist Frans de Waal in a recent work that documents numerous examples of altruism, sharing and compassion among primates and other animals [deWaal2009]. Here are just a few of the examples he mentions:

1. Oscar the cat. A recent article in the New England Journal of Medicine documents how a cat makes daily rounds in a geriatric clinic in Providence, Rhode Island, sniffing and observing each patient, and then selecting one to curl up and purr beside. The cat has nurtured at least 25 patients, sensing with uncanny accuracy when one is about to die [deWaal2009, pg. 73].
2. Washoe’s rescue. When Washoe, known as the first language-trained chimpanzee, heard another female chimpanzee scream after grabbing an electric guard wire at a zoo, she raced across two electric wires to reach the victim and pulled her to safety [deWaal2009, pg. 106].
3. Social scratching. Wild chimpanzees in the Mahale Mountains in Tanzania have a curious custom of scratching and grooming each other, often for hours at a time. As de Waal notes, this “social scratching” is unlikely to be innate, because only the Mahale chimps show this behavior [deWaal2009, pg. 110].
4. Chimps help humans. In an experiment at the Max Planck Institute in Leipzig, Germany, chimpanzees at a sanctuary in Uganda were shown a human unsuccessfully reaching through some bars for a plastic stick. Many of the tested chimps spontaneously came to help the person by picking up the item and handing it to them. They were not “trained” or “rewarded” for this assistance. The results held even when the experimenters increased the cost of helping, by requiring the chimps to climb a platform to retrieve the stick [deWaal2009, pg. 114].
5. Dolphins assist a distressed companion. As a result of an explosion off the coast of Florida in 1954, a bottlenose dolphin was observed to be stunned — it surfaced, listing badly to one side. Soon two other dolphins came to its side, buoying it to the surface in an apparent effort to allow it to breathe while it remained partially stunned, until their companion had recovered [deWaal2009, pg. 128].
6. Humpback whale thanks humans. In 2005, a female humpback whale was spotted off the coast of California entangled in (and being injured by) some nylon ropes. Divers from a rescue team spent about one hour in a difficult (and treacherous) job of disentangling the whale. When the whale finally realized she was free, she swam in a large circle and nuzzled each diver in succession, evidently thanking them for their help [deWaal2009, pg. 130].
7. 4000-year old crippled boy (not in de Waal’s book, but worth mentioning). In 2007, Australian archaeologists excavating a site in northern Vietnam found the remains of a boy who had been crippled with fused vertebrae and weak bones. Subsequent analysis, published in 2012, concluded that he had suffered from a congenital disease known as the Klippel-Feil syndrome, which left him paralyzed from the waist down and with little use of his arms. Yet he lived for another ten years, evidently lovingly cared for by his extended family [Gorman2012].

Cooperation versus conflict

With regards to the cultural development of mankind, numerous writers have observed that all of human history can be seen as a progression in cooperation in lieu of war and violence. Scholar Robert Wright concludes that this built-in social impetus to pursue “nonzero sum games” is virtually a law of nature. He observes [Wright2001, pg. 17, 332],

[I]f … we talk about the objectively observable features of social reality, the direction of history is unmistakable. When you look beneath the roiled surface of human events, beyond the comings and goings of particular regimes, beyond the lives and deaths of the “great men” who have strutted on the stage of history, you see an arrow beginning tens of thousands of years ago and continuing to the present. And, looking ahead, you see where it is pointing. … Maybe history is … not so much the product of divinity as the realization of divinity.

In a similar vein, evolutionary biologist Mark Pagel, in his 2012 book Wired for Culture, argues at length that human society is different precisely because we have acquired a propensity for cooperation with a much larger group than our immediate family, potentially extensible to the entire human family. He concludes by writing [Pagel2012, pg. 369]:

The message of this book is that our genes have created in us a machine capable of greater inventiveness and common good than any other on Earth. The key is to provide or somehow create among people stronger clues of trust and common values than might otherwise be suggested by the highly imprecise markers of ethnicity or cultural differences that we have used throughout our history, and then to encourage the conditions that give people a sense of shared purpose and shared outcomes. That is the recipe that carried us around the world beginning around 60,000 years ago, and it still works.

Conclusion

So nature is much more than “red in tooth and claw.” Nature has endowed humans to set aside war and to see each other respectfully as allies in beating back poverty and ignorance, even in completely different societies that historically have been continuously at war. And nature has endowed humans with the capacity, seemingly far beyond the requirements of our basic survival, to contemplate our very existence. It is a compelling picture, one that led Charles Darwin to declare, as the final paragraph of Origin of Species [Darwin1859]:

Thus, from the war of nature, from famine and death, the most exalted object which we are capable of conceiving, namely, the production of the higher animals, directly follows. There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.

For additional details and references, see Elevating.