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Religion & Law

: Thoughts in a Haystack

God and the Prisoner's Dilemma

By John Pieret

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Martin Nowak, a mathematician and biologist at Harvard, accepts evolutionary explanations of the appearance of altruism in humans and other species.

Yet as a Catholic, he rejects [Richard] 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.

Rather than viewing altruism as an evolutionary hangover from a clan-dominated environment, Nowak views it both as an evolutionary adaptation and a still-winning strategy. But doesn't that make his study, undertaken with Sarah Coakley, formerly of Harvard Divinity School and now at Cambridge University, entitled "The Evolution and Theology of Cooperation," at least half redundant?

Has Nowak unwittingly dispensed with the need for a God by demonstrating that morality and generosity are wise evolutionary adaptations imparted by nature? "I come to the opposite conclusion," he replied. He said he and other scientists try to describe the mechanisms by which creation works, without reference to a creator. "Science a priori excludes any possibility of the interaction between the creation and the creator. . . . You have never, ever actually proven in science that there is no God."
In his view - and he admits that not everyone agrees - the question of whether God exists is forever beyond science's ability to answer. You can never, Nowak believes, come up with deductive proof for God's existence.

Coakley goes further, saying that Christians seeking rational defense for their faith might

... draw strength from considerations about the nature of the universe [and] forms of evolutionary development. . . . These arguments might not persuade a rampant atheist (what would?); but for one at least 'considering' faith, they could have a significant impact.

Nowak is more traditional, appealing to St. Augustine for the proposition that having belief in God is, itself, the result of an act of grace ... raising nasty theological issues if the lack of belief is supposed to have bad post-life consequences. But what may really raise eyebrows is this:

Coakley said the two partners have begun a new project to measure attitudes toward cooperation among both religious people and nonbelievers. Early results, she writes, suggest that the former have more faith, if you will, in the power of cooperation.

I wonder if there is anything more likely to cause friction between believers and nonbelievers than the suggestion that the other group is more cooperative.
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Full post as published by Thoughts in a Haystack on September 27, 2008 (boomark / email).