There’s a bit in the latest Tom Stoppard play at the National Theatre in which an atheistic scientist dismisses Raphael's famous Madonna and Child painting as: “Woman Maximising Gene Survival”. There is no such thing as altruism, he insists, all human behavior, indeed all animal behavior, is fundamentally self-interested. Genes exist only to maximize their chances of survival and reproduction.
But there is an immediate problem with this familiar hypothesis. On Saturday a terrible earthquake occurred in Nepal. Thousands died and many more were made homeless. In response, throughout this week, people have been donating money to an emergency relief fund – donating money to support people they have never met and for a place that most of us have never visited. If all our behavior is a version of self-interest, why do we do this?
Back in 1964, William Hamilton came up with an explanation called kin selection. He argued that altruism is consistent with the belief that genes are programmed for their own benefit when altruistic behavior is aimed towards those who are genetically similar us, to members of our family for instance. In such circumstances, though we may make an individual sacrifice, we may be furthering the reproductive chances of our own gene pool– and that’s what matters.
But I don’t have any Nepalese relatives. I don’t think I know anyone from Nepal. Indeed - some people even give their money for the care of animals, and I fail to see how this can be seen as a way of maximizing the chances of the donor’s genetic group.
Later, in the 1970’s, another evolutionary biologist came up with the idea that we behave altruistically because it maximizes the chances of others behaving the same way towards us. It’s a sort of tit-for-tat arrangement.
But the Nepalese people are amongst the poorest in the world. I don’t suspect that they’d have much money to offer if an earthquake happened here. And yet still we give.
But Stoppard’s play, The Hard Problem, makes a religious character the central advocate for altruism. And I wish he hadn’t. For despite the fact the most of the world’s religious traditions stress the importance of putting others first, morality does not rely upon God. Indeed, doing good simply for the sake of some postponed heavenly benefit would be to undermine altruism not to support it. Goodness should be its own reward.
Which is why there is no fight here between science and religion. “Let us try to teach generosity and altruism, because we are born selfish” – no, this is not Augustine on Original Sin. Its Richard Dawkins in The Selfish Gene. And you might be surprised that I agree with him entirely. Biology might fight against altruism. But, as Dawkins says, and as our generosity to Nepal clearly demonstrates, our biology doesn’t have to win.