Why we must make sure the Darwinists lose

Here, in "Justification by Faith", Darwinist atheist Michael Ruse comments on Christopher (new atheist) Hitchens's esophageal cancer diagnosis ( bad news):

Third, with Hitchens I simply don’t see that deathbed conversions, especially those done in fear or pain, are worth a thing. They have about as much validity as a confession forced out through waterboarding. I have often wondered, when I am on a plane, if it were announced that it was hijacked and we were on the way to the White House or whatever, what then would I do? Would I tell Jesus that I am sorry? I confess that I might. But if Jesus thinks that that is worth anything, then he loses my respect entirely.

This is merely disgusting. Death concentrates the mind on what is real. Look at other examples of the human race: Todd Beamer, the guy who was a devout Christian, took charge of a plane captured by terrorists, possibly aimed at the Capitol or the White House. He said the Lord's Prayer with an emergency services worker before shouting Let's roll! to other men on the plane, creating a disturbance that probably resulted in the plane's crash in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, losing all on board.

Michael Ruse wouldn't respect Jesus if he told him he was sorry for his sins, and Jesus accepted that fact? Well then, I don't respect Michael Ruse. And you can decide whether you are better off living in Todd Beamer's version of American society or Michael Ruses. One must choose. But those people were doomed anyway, and he prevented vastly worse disorders.

Too many people, in my experience, do not understand what is at stake.

Altruism: Lessons from the Heroes of Mumbai

In "Heroes At The Taj" (Forbes, December 1, 2008) Michael Pollack thanks his saviors:

Far fewer people would have survived if it weren't for the extreme selflessness shown by the Taj staff, who organized us, catered to us and then, in the end, literally died for us.

They complemented the extreme bravery and courage of the Indian commandos, who, in a pitch-black setting and unfamiliar, tightly packed terrain, valiantly held the terrorists at bay.

It is also amazing that, out of our entire group, not one person screamed or panicked. There was an eerie but quiet calm that pervaded--one more thing that got us all out alive. Even people in adjacent rooms, who were being executed, kept silent.

It is much easier to destroy than to build, yet somehow humanity has managed to build far more than it has ever destroyed. Likewise, in a period of crisis, it is much easier to find faults and failings rather than to celebrate the good deeds. It is now time to commemorate our heroes.

Also, in "For heroes of Mumbai Terror Was a Call to Action" (New York Times, December 1, 2008), Somini Sengupta reports,

Overnight, Mr. Zende became one of Mumbai’s new heroes, their humanity all the more striking in the face of the inhumanity of the gunmen. As the city faced one of the most horrific terrorist attacks in the nation’s history, many ordinary citizens like Mr. Zende, 37, displayed extraordinary grace.

Many times, they did so at considerable personal risk, performing acts of heroism that were not part of their job descriptions. Without their quick thinking and common sense, the toll of the attacks would most likely have been even greater than the 173 confirmed dead on Monday.

A friend wrote to ask me if I knew of an evolutionary explanation for altruism. I replied:

First, if by "evolution," we mean "Darwinian evolution," then altruism would mean helping one's own kinfolk in order to preserve one's own genes - which one shares with them (= Dawkins's " "selfish gene"). That really doesn't apply to situations where people help strangers at the risk of their own lives.

An elaboration of the theory (= the meme, also a Dawkins idea) holds that a mechanistic process in the brain causes a unit of thought (a meme) to spread from person to person, so that - for example - Mother Theresa might rescue abandoned children and raise them as Catholic Christians, thus helping her selfish memes. That really doesn't apply here either. I have made clear before that I consider both concepts better suited to pop culture than to science.

In The Spiritual Brain, Mario Beauregard and I wrote about instances of heroic altruism here in boring Toronto - young men jumping onto the subway tracks to rescue an old woman who had got dizzy and fallen in, and motorists rushing toward the Air France jumbo that crashed near Highway 401 (the provincial artery) and helping the evacuation - which proceeded in such an orderly fashion that no one died.

The really amazing thing - to me at least - is that human altruism can be sparked in circumstances that do not involve life or death. Have a look at this story, for example - the Texas woman Marilyn Mock who bought another woman's lost house for her. So a claim that a special brain circuit kicks in during a life-or-death crisis doesn't seem fully explanatory either.

More generally, psychologists who are searching for an animal model are doubtless looking in the wrong direction. They should, in my view, begin by rcognizing that this type of behaviour is characteristically human and probably requires a human level of consciousness. Its principal characteristic was summed up by Mock, who explained, "If it was you, you'd want somebody to stop and help you" - that is, one sees another self as equivalent to one's own self and regards another's interests as one's own. Searching for an animal that does this "naturally" is an uninformative waste of time because humans don't do it "naturally"; we do it only sometimes, and what's remarkable is that we do it at all.

Is the human race evolving toward more altruism? Some evolutionary theorists, like Teilhard de Chardin, have argued for such a position, but they are not Darwinians and are generally attacked by Darwinians.

Some good research has been done on altruism in humans; I've heard good things about Oliner's The Altruistic Personality: Rescuers Of Jews In Nazi Europe, though I haven't read it. David Stove also has some interesting thoughts on the subject in Darwinian Fairytales: Selfish Genes, Errors of Heredity, and Other Fables of Evolution. Here is my long review of Stove's book. Some other altruism stories are here.

To sum up, as Stove would have it, the fact that altruism is a problem in evolutionary psychology tells you much about evolutionary psychology and little about altruism.

(Note: The photo, taken 2005, is Mumbai from the air, from Know India. )

Neuroscience: Advocacy research hits the big time

We are always hearing that "research shows" this and that. What to believe?

Warning against research claiming to show that one lifestyle produces better results than another, University of Kent sociologist Frank Furedi notes:

If you are offended that your lifestyle and belief have not been validated by gold-standard research, you will be delighted to know that there must be a study out there that proves your moral worth.

[ ... ]

Scientists can now prove that contrasting political outlooks are related to differences in how the brain processes information. Scientists at NYU and UCLA believe that their experiments show that liberals tolerate ambiguity and conflict better than conservatives because of the way their brains function. They too have numbers - liberals are 4.9 times as likely as conservatives to indicate activity in the brain circuits that engage with conflict.

Despite its links with the past, advocacy research has now acquired an unprecedented significance in Western culture. One important driver of its expansion is the growing significance that people attach to their lifestyles. The very subjects that advocacy research addresses suggest that lifestyle issues such as emotional orientation, parenting styles and the management of relations have become increasingly politicised.

As Furedi implies, that sort of thing is mostly junk. But it does not follow that lifestyle choices make no difference at all.

For example, people who regularly volunteer and give to charity are more likely to be happy than people who sit around whinging that the world is rotten and that no one cares about them. And research does show that. But the explanation is obvious: People who reach out have more fun and make more friends than people who do not.

I usually trust research that follows obvious intuitions and mistrust research that comes up with odd conclusions that could be politically motivated.

Some stories on lifestyle habits that may make a real difference:

Police just as good as church in promoting socially helpful behaviour?

News flash, sort of ... people would rather give to charity than pay taxes

Research that tells you something you already knew: Givers are happier

Altruism - it's all about sexual display, see?

Humanity's hopeful sign: Disaster causes outpouring of charity in China

Altruism: Why it can't really exist but why it does anyway

Evolutionary psychology: Police just as good as church in promoting socially helpful behavior -researchers

At MSNBC, Robin Lloyd advises,"Religion not the only path to altruism." He is reporting on research showing that religious people give more to charity. According to a recent review essay by University of British Columbia social psychologist Ara Norenzayan and graduate student Azim Shariff,

Religion and its promotion of empathy get undue credit for our unselfish acts. Instead, it’s our less-than-virtuous psychological perception that a moral authority is watching us that promotes altruism, a new review essay suggests.

They reevaluated many studies and "found little or no evidence that empathy plays any role in religious prosociality."

Humans are evolved to be acutely sensitive to our reputations as do-gooders in our social groups because this promotes strong cooperative bonds that help the species. This psychological mechanism was originally unrelated to religion, the authors write in the Oct. 3 issue of the journal Science.

The review also shoots down the idea that religion is necessary to make people choose to engage in altruistic behavior — or do something that benefits others at your own personal expense. Religion has no monopoly on good behavior today, Norenzayan said.

In fact, the courts, police, cameras, credit records and other justice-related authorities can serve the same purpose nowadays, encouraging proscial behavior among large groups of strangers.

Note the staggering implication: Police, cameras and credit records are required to get the non-religious to do things that the religious do willingly? Surely, it is not qute as bad as that.

A friend writes,

The piece totally misses the point if it thinks that forced "giving" is altruism. Giving motivated by "courts, police, cameras, credit records and other justice-related authorities" is not giving and not altruism. It is done for self-interest.

Yes, but keep in mind that evolutionary psychology, in which this current research is rooted, denies that anyone ever acts except in self-interest - driven by their selfish genes.

There seems to be a constant need to discredit the voluntary charity and empathy of religiously motivated people, a need typefied by this research. It's not hard to see why. Charity and empathy demonstrates that the key assumption behind the research is false.

See also: Neuroscience: News flash, sort of ... people would rather give to charity than pay taxes

Research that tells you something you already knew: Givers are happier

Altruism - it's all about sexual display, see?

Humanity's hopeful sign: Disaster causes outpouring of charity in China

Altruism: Why it can't really exist but why it does anyway

Altruism: Can mathematics, with a dash of faith, explain altruism?

In "Mathematics and faith explain altruism" (Boston Globe, September 27, 2008 ), Rich Barlow profiles the work of mathematician Martin Nowak, who claims to have shown through game theory that altruism pays off. We read:

Then there is Harvard's Martin Nowak. A mathematician and biologist, he agrees with Dawkins's explanation of how we evolved to be good Samaritans. Yet as a Catholic, he rejects Dawkins's notion that believing in evolution precludes belief in a God who included altruism in evolution's bequest to us. Needless to say, he also rejects Dawkins's disdain for believers as scientifically illiterate yahoos. This Vienna-born mathematician says that if you do the math, you'll find that cooperation is more than just a nice leftover from humanity's infancy; it's a winning strategy for living, a way to thrive.

For the past three years, with Sarah Coakley, formerly of Harvard Divinity School and now at Cambridge University in England, Nowak pursued a study project, the title of which - "The Evolution and Theology of Cooperation" - gives a clue to its partnership between science and religion. Nowak said his work demonstrated the mathematical probability that being cooperative, generous, and forgiving produces better results for people than looking out for Number One.

Oh? Tell that to the Canadian martyrs, pictured above.

I don't mind people making up theories - of differing degrees of plausibility - about how altruism got started, but I do mind when they confuse key issues around "altruism."

In the Christian tradition, the quest is to become more and more like Jesus. That, of course, necessarily entails some suffering on behalf of others, perhaps considerable suffering, which must be borne patiently and cheerfully.

We may hope that our suffering is a "winning strategy for living" - but it may not be. And it isn't the reason we do it because many issues are very difficult to judge.

Suppose, for example, a woman in her mid-thirties devotes herself to the care of an Alzheimer-stricken mother, giving up her own chance for marriage and a family. Opinions among well-disposed people may well differ as to whether she should just put the old woman - who does not even recognize her, and often shouts vile abuse - in a home. The only question the daughter can try to answer is, in the trite phrase, "What would Jesus do?"

True, traditional Christians believe that Jesus will redeem it all, but they resist believing that that redemption will be evident in the simple and obvious way that game theory could shed light on.

Life is certainly more complex than that.

See also:

Humanity's hopeful sign: Disaster causes outpouring of charity in China

Altruism: Why it can't really exist but why it does anyway.

Social science: Why are the religious more charitable?

Altruism: Why it can't really exist but why it does anyway

"Charity, do-gooding, philanthropy it's all just selfishness masquerading as virtue," notes Jim Holt in the New York Times Magazine (March 9, 2008), citing what he calls the cynical view:

In modern times, the theory that each of us, despite occasional appearances of self-sacrificial nobility, is ultimately and invariably looking out for No. 1 got a big boost from Darwin's theory of evolution. By the logic of natural selection, any tendency to act selflessly ought to be snuffed out in the struggle to survive and propagate. So if someone seems to be behaving as an altruist - say, by giving away a fortune to relieve the sufferings of others - that person is really following the selfish dictates of his own genes. The evolutionary psychologist Randolph Nesse confessed that he slept badly for many nights after absorbing this supposed discovery, which he called "one of the most disturbing in the history of science."

"Supposed" discovery hits the notion square on the head - and, I hope, puts it out of its misery.

The view Holt describes is not, strictly speaking, a "cynical" view. Evolutionary psychology has, as a central project, the idea of showing that all human behaviour is analogous to the behaviour of primate apes. That is the reason - indeed the only reason - why genuine altruism is considered a problem. Absent that project, genuine altruism would be regarded as merely one facet of human behaviour, and could be interpreted in a variety of ways. But it would not need to be explained away.

Anyway, Holt reviews the supposed reasons that people "really" help others, but finds them unconvincing. He cites an interesting experiment at the University of Oregon:

Nineteen students were given $100 each and told that they could anonymously donate a portion of this money to charity. The students who, on average, donated the most showed heightened activity in the pleasure centers of their brain as they gave up the money. Their generosity was accompanied by a neural "warm glow."

[ ... ]

But can an objective reason, by itself, motivate selfless generosity? In the Oregon brain-scanning experiment, curiously enough, two of the students who were the most liberal in their charitable giving were "outliers" who seemed to get no neural reward for their generosity. They did not benefit from the warm-glow effect. Yet they were outstandingly altruistic anyway.

Yes, because some people are just like that. It may be that no apes are like that. But so?

People helping people: Why is it a puzzle?

To the Source advises me of another attempt to explain altruism (sacrificing oneself for others), this time by Steve Pinker in the New York Times Magazine, as an evolutionary strategy to spread one's selfish genes. Honestly, I do not know why they bother. But they do:

For the past several decades, leading neo-Darwinists have labored hard to provide a Darwinian basis for morality. The basic idea here is that morality is a form of extended selfishness. The mother who leaps into the burning car to save her children is acting unselfishly from her point of view, but from her genes' point of view, the action is entirely self-interested. The mother is simply trying to ensure that her genes make it into the next generation. Some evolutionists like Robert Trivers extend this logic to explain why we treat even strangers decently and fairly. This is called "reciprocal altruism," which may be translated as "I'll be nice to you, so that you can be nice to me."

Of course, that doesn't really explain why people help strangers or enemies, which they do surprisingly often. Some people just like to help or feel they must.

Actually, there isn't really a "problem of altruism." Only if you propose a theory by which everyone must be selfish, is there a problem of altruism. Absent the theory, it isn't a problem at all.

Over time, people develop a personal view of the world, which is not usually driven by genes, and they make decisions about helping from there.

In my own view, theories about "selfish genes" should be ignored unless specific genes are identified. Genes are real. The theory is probably not.

Research that tells you something you already knew: Givers are happier

Sure they are. The research is most interesting, even though the conclusion is not very surprising. In "Why Givinf Makes You Happy", Arthur Brooks doesn't really explain why giving makes you happy but he provides some very interesting information:

The happiness difference between givers and non-givers is not due to differences in their personal characteristics, such as income or religion. Imagine two people who are identical in terms of income and faith — as well as age, education, politics, sex, and family circumstances — but one donates money and volunteers, while the other does not. The giver will be, on average, 11 percentage points more likely to be very happy than the non-giver.

Do people give because they are happy or are they happy because they give? Actually, it is more likely a feedback loop - it is mutually reinforcing if you keep it up.

Not only that but if you expect giving to make you happy, it is more likely to do so. There is some interesting neuroscience stuff here too:

For example, people who give often report feelings of euphoria, which psychologists have referred to as the "Helper's High." They believe that charitable activity induces endorphins that produce a very mild version of the sensations people get from drugs like morphine and heroin.

Charity also lowers the stress hormones that cause unhappiness.

Just don't get sucked into the belief that it is some purely chemical process. For example, one reason that charity will reduce the stress hormones that cause unhappiness is that it causes our minds to stop focusing on our own (unhappy?) feelings and start focusing on the happy feelings of the person who is receiving a benefit. Just not thinking about our own troubles for a bit is a benefit to us, and results in greater self-reported happiness.

Altruism files: Entrepreneur doctor honours promise despite dotcom disaster

As the Stanford press release explains,

Neurosurgeon and entrepreneur James Doty, MD, was feeling generous when he agreed in 2000 to give a multimillion-dollar gift of stock to Stanford University School of Medicine, but he didn’t realize at the time that he would end up giving away his entire personal fortune.

But when he lost it all in the dotcom meltdown, he insisted on honouring his promise of, like, real money, even though it hurt.
The Chronicle of Higher Education reports that he endowed both a neurosurgery chair in spinal-cord repair and a project sponsored by the Dalai Lama on the neurological basis behind compassion and altruism. The Chronicle also reports him saying "I'm happy to give it. I'm thankful. It's actually been a wonderful experience and has made me a better person."

Who would doubt it? Trying to help others is never a "paper" loss or profit.

Altruism files: How birds explain it all

Here is an article on altruism in birds that offers such convoluted explanations of the willingness of some birds to feed others that they make me wonder why anyone bothers to try to find an explanation for altruism in birds. Maybe, when food is not in short supply, some birds will take to feeding others.

... when helpers are at hand, female fairy-wrens produce eggs with 12 percent less fat, 13 percent less protein, and less carbohydrate, than eggs produced by females that do not have helpers. The hatchlings of those "lite" eggs are smaller than normal chicks, but their initial scrawniness is quickly overcome by the extra food brought by the non-breeding helpers.

The one who benefits is the mother.

Now, the obvious reason for all this bother is to try to find a selfish reason is to explain away altruism in humans as the outcome of the activities of selfish genes, and not of thinking minds. That is, you do not decide anything, your genes decide it and you carry it out.

Superstition is hardly dead. It is alive and well, and has gravitated to the many offspring of the Human Genome Project.

Altruism - it's all about sexual display, see?

In an unintentionally hilarious article in The Economist, evolutionary psychologist Geoffrey Miller is touted as

a man with a theory that, if true, will change the way people think about themselves.

That is, he thinks he can demonstrate that charity is just as "selfish" as self-indulgence. And it's all about sex too, no less.

The major problem with Miller's study (apart from the sheer fatuity that mars all evolutionary psychology) is that he appears to have failed to credit key earlier research. Surely he does not believe that he has "discovered" the ulterior motives that cause many people to volunteer or contribute to fashionable causes. Here's an abstract of the earlier finding:

Be careful not to do your 'acts of righteousness' before men, to be seen by them. If you do, you will have no reward from your Father in heaven.

So when you give to the needy, do not announce it with trumpets, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and on the streets, to be honored by men. I tell you the truth, they have received their reward in full. But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your giving may be in secret. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.

The earlier source didn't think that the display had to relate to sex, of course. If it was display at all, it was not the genuine article.

I will be very surprised if Miller succeeds in changing the way people think about themselves.

Recent Column: Can you choose to help? Or are you simply spreading your selfish genes?

(Note: This column won an Award of Merit at Write Canada 2007. It was originally published in Maranatha News, June 2006.)

by Denyse O'Leary

Canadian Andrew Brash, a Calgary resident, was only a few hundred steps from his dream the summit of Mount Everest. Then, he saw something that made him turn aside.

Australian mountaineer, Lincoln Hall, was sitting on the ridge in a thin shirt, with no hat or gloves. His guides had left him for dead and, his hands nearly frozen, he was trying to jump over a cliff. Brash prevented him from jumping and thus saved his life. But Brash did not think of himself as a hero, even though days before, a group of 40 climbers had not stopped to help a Briton dying on the mountainside.

If all this sounds a bit like the parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:30 37), maybe that is because life imitates not merely art but prophecy. In every age, there are those who help, at a cost to themselves and those who don't.

Helping at risk to oneself is not new. When the Air France Airbus crashed in Toronto on August 2, 2005, a number of motorists helped passengers to safety. Similarly, on November 6, 2005, Grandmother Rosalia DeSantis was travelling home on the subway and, feeling hot and dizzy, she leaned over the edge of the platform . Later, in Sunnybrook Hospital's emergency ward, she learned what had happened to her. She had fainted, hit her head, fallen into the gap, and was lying across a track bleeding. The train was coming into the station in seconds.

How had she survived? Two men who knew neither her nor each other Theo Parusis, 25, and Alvaro Meija, 26 jumped down onto the track and hoisted her up to safety, five seconds before the train rolled over the spot.

One thing I learned while writing By Design or by Chance? (2004), an overview of the intelligent design controversy and while co-authoring The Spiritual Brain (Harper 2007) is that materialistic philosophy has a hard time accounting for altruism. The most fashionable theory today argues that you do not act to benefit others because you think God wants you to but in order to spread your selfish genes, as a product of evolution. Thus, you might help your own relatives, because they have some identical genes with you. Therefore helping your relatives spreads at least some of your genes. But you are unlikely to help people who do not share genes with you. The famous evolutionary biologist J.B.S. Haldane put it this way, "Would I lay down my life to save my brother? No, but I would to save two brothers or eight cousins."

The main problem with the materialistic theory expressed by Haldane is not that it offends religious believers but that it ignores the evidence. The evidence is that people often help unrelated others in situations where they cannot expect any reward, may suffer a disappointment or undergo a serious risk, and have no reason to think that they will spread their genes. This is only a small part of the growing conflict between Christianity and Darwinism that I have been tracking for a number of years now. It is certainly a far cry from "Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends" (John 15:13, NIV) and " while we were still sinners, Christ died for us." (Rom 5:7 8 ). These sayings do not even mention relatives. Jesus died both for friends and for non-friends. No wonder there are growing worldview conflicts.

Toronto-based Canadian journalist Denyse O'Leary (www.designorchance.com) is the author of the multiple award-winning By Design or by Chance? (Augsburg Fortress 2004), anoverview of the intelligent design controversy, and of Faith@Science. She was named CBA Canada's Recommended Author of the Year in 2005 and is co-author, with Montreal neuroscientist Mario Beauregard, of the forthcoming The Spiritual Brain: A neuroscientist's case for the existence of the soul (Harper 2007).

My other blog is the Post-Darwinist, detailing events of interest in the intelligent design controversy.

Pop science watch: Is the altruism spot edging out the God spot in pop science?

A Washington Post article reports

"You gotta see this!" Jorge Moll had written. Moll and Jordan Grafman, neuroscientists at the National Institutes of Health, had been scanning the brains of volunteers as they were asked to think about a scenario involving either donating a sum of money to charity or keeping it for themselves.

As Grafman read the e-mail, Moll came bursting in. The scientists stared at each other. Grafman was thinking, "Whoa -- wait a minute!"

The results were showing that when the volunteers placed the interests of others before their own, the generosity activated a primitive part of the brain that usually lights up in response to food or sex. Altruism, the experiment suggested, was not a superior moral faculty that suppresses basic selfish urges but rather was basic to the brain, hard-wired and pleasurable

There you have it! Morality explained. Indeed, a whack of materialists chimed in with comments like:

Morality, he said, is not a brain function elevated above our baser impulses. Greene said it is not "handed down" by philosophers and clergy, but "handed up," an outgrowth of the brain's basic propensities.

Here's a less hyped report of the original study, including the comment:

"Although understanding the function of this brain region may not necessarily identify what drives people like Mother Theresa, it may give clues to the origins of important social behaviors like altruism," said study investigator Scott A. Huettel, Ph.D., a neuroscientist at the Brain Imaging and Analysis Center.

But would it even do that? A skeptical lawyer friend comments:

I don't think this is as persuasive as the author thinks. Different cultures have different taste preferences for food, for example -- some cultures love tastes that others find disgusting. Thus a person who has learned to like a particular taste will have the pleasure center activated when it tastes the flavor it has learned to experience as pleasant. But if the person has learned to hate a taste, that person's pleasure center will not light up on tasting that food.

So too with the altruistic behavior -- the person was taught that the behavior was good, and so feels pleasure when doing the behavior.

Thus I think what we are really seeing is a reflection of learned behavior, not "hardwired" altruism.

I note also that the study says the test subjects were "volunteers." In other words, the scientists chose altruistic people -- people willing to volunteer to help them -- as their universe of test subjects.

I should think the main question is whether altruism is really, in any sense, "hardwired" anywhere. "Hardwired" is outdated reductionist computerspeak, long overdue to be retired. It immediately raises an issue: "Hardwired" means part of the physical structure of the brain, like wiring in a computer. Somehow, that sounds unlikely. In fact, it sounds exactly like all those stupid, useless quests for the God gene, God circuit, God module in the brain, or whatever.

In my experience, young children have generous impulses, but the impulses are inconsistent and not necessarily keyed to a strong moral sense. The habit of generous behaviour within moral limits must indeed be learned. Sometimes it is, and sometimes it isn't. Like all good habits, it usually becomes a source of pleasure in time. No doubt the researchers are picking up a small part of that outcome. Of course, as anyone who persists in well-doing knows, altruism is certainly not always a pleasure. Some people are thankless, feckless, frustrating, or undeserving. Even the most experienced generous person can develop compassion fatigue. Persisting through the unpleasantness is the beginning of good character.

Kim in Vienna kindly noted some of my other comments on this subject. Here's a thought from nonmaterialist neurosurgeon Michael Egnor:

The brain is a material substance. It has location, dimensions, weight, temperature, and energy. It also has parts; it has a superior surface, a medial boundary, a left side and a right side. As such, it can interact with other things that have similar properties- things that have matter and parts and energy. A region of the brain can cause action potentials, or movements of the arm. Oxygen molecules, barbiturate molecules, electrons, or a hammer can, in turn, affect the brain.
Altruism, in contrast, has no matter or energy. It has no ‘location’, no weight, no dimension, no temperature. It has no properties of matter. Altruism entails things like purpose and judgment, which aren’t material. Altruism has no parts, in the sense that there is a ‘left-side’ of altruism and a ‘right side’ of altruism. There are, of course, left sided and right sided parts of the brain, which may be associated with acts of altruism, but there is no ‘left’ or ‘right’ to altruism itself. Of course, objects (like human brains or bodies) that have location, weight, etc. can mediate or carry out altruistic acts, but the altruism itself doesn’t have a location. Altruism isn’t spatial. ‘My altruism is three inches from the edge of the table’ is a nonsensical statement.

He adds,

Materialist neuroscientists confuse association with causation. This is the unhappy result of scientific materialism, which excludes immaterial causes. Yet many things in the world, including our ideas and even our theories about the world, are not matter or energy. Altruism is obviously something very real; many people’s lives depend on it. We don’t know exactly what it is, but we know, by its properties, what it’s not. It’s not material. It shares no properties in common with matter. It can’t be caused by a piece of the brain.

The materialist project is becoming all the more frenetic as it becomes more obviously undoable. Consider, for example the claim that apes speak.

Upcoming book! The Spiritual Brain: A neuroscientist's case for the existence of the soul (Mario Beauregard and Denyse O'Leary, Harper August 2007).

Heroism: How do people become heroes?

From the Virginia Tech horror emerges the story of a 76 year old engineering professor, Jewish holocaust survivor
Liviu Librescu, who blocked the doorway, enabling his students to escape to safety through the window, while he himself was killed.

A colleague recalls

"It wouldn’t amaze me he would do such a thing," fellow engineering professor Muhammad Hajj said. "He’s that kind of person, willing to take care of others, protect others."

His body is to be buried in Israel.
Much ink is spilled over the question of what one would do oneself in similar circumstances. For what it is worth, people do not typically have time to learn new skills for confronting serious danger or dying. Most of us face danger the way we face other circumstances and die the way we live. That is one reason why the major religious traditions teach the importance of cultivating a good everyday character.

Here's Graeme Hamilton's National Post essay on courage, with some interesting comments from law prof William L. Miller, whose book The Mystery of Courage looks into such questions:

His research into courage led him to study soldiers' memoirs, particularly from the U.S. Civil War, and what he found is that it is difficult to predict who will behave courageously under fire. "One of the things that features very prominently in these memoirs is that people are always sizing up everyone else in the unit: 'Who's the courageous guy, and who's the coward?' There are some tendencies but they can never quite predict. The little nerdy accountant turns out to be a great soldier and the barroom brawler turns out to just crack when he hears gunfire."

Of course, it might have taken a signal act of courage for the little nerdy accountant to go have a beer when he knew the barroom brawler was around. We cannot judge only by outward appearance.

Toronto-based Canadian journalist Denyse O'Leary (www.designorchance.com) is the author of the multiple award-winning By Design or by Chance? (Augsburg Fortress 2004), an overview of the intelligent design controversy, and of Faith@Science. She was named CBA Canada's Recommended Author of the Year in 2005 and is co-author, with Montreal neuroscientist Mario Beauregard, of the forthcoming The Spiritual Brain: A neuroscientist's case for the existence of the soul (Harper 2007).

The power of one: Compassion is strictly a one-to-one thing

I'd love to blog more today, but must run off to do a TV show (Behind the Story, where journalists talk about how news is covered).

Meanwhile, here's an item by a psychologist that highlights the importance of focusing on one person if you want to encourage people to feel compassion:

A recent study I conducted with Deborah Small of the University of Pennsylvania and George Loewenstein of Carnegie Mellon University found that donations to aid a starving 7-year-old child in Africa declined sharply when her image was accompanied by a statistical summary of the millions of needy children like her in other African countries. The numbers appeared to interfere with people’s feelings of compassion toward the young victim.

It's not hard to see why. Compassion requires putting yourself in another person's shoes. I can imagine what it would be like to be seven years old and starving, but I haven't the least idea what it would be like to be 500 000 people starving.

Actually, I haven't the least idea what it would be like to be 500 000 people in any condition. Inundating me with numbers doesn't help. Like most human beings, I can't easily grasp big numbers without mathematical operations, and the process doesn't especially elicit compassion.

I like author Slovic's quote from Mother Teresa: "If I look at the mass I will never act. If I look at the one, I will." We need to know we will make a real difference in one individual's life.

My other blog is the Post-Darwinist, detailing events of interest in the intelligent design controversy.

Toronto-based Canadian journalist Denyse O'Leary (www.designorchance.com) is the author of the multiple award-winning By Design or by Chance? (Augsburg Fortress 2004), an overview of the intelligent design controversy, and of Faith@Science. She was named CBA Canada's Recommended Author of the Year in 2005 and is co-author, with Montreal neuroscientist Mario Beauregard, of the forthcoming The Spiritual Brain (Harper 2007).