April 1, 2021

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This article was originally published as a chapter in the book “Design and Catastrophe: 51 Scientists Explore Evidence in Nature"

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The Bible affirms that we were carefully designed by a wise, all-powerful God who created out of love and provided good resources for the sake and happiness of His creatures. At the end of the creative task, God determined that everything He had made was “very good” (Gen. 1:31).

Conversely, materialistic accounts of origins portray us and all other earthlings as the unforeseen outcome of biological evolution. This natural process of change over time is said to be driven by natural selection, a mechanism commonly associated with struggle, violence, and death. The weak die, the strong live; organisms fight ruthlessly with their peers for control over limited resources; the fittest succeed and reproduce at the expense of the less fit.

This is the type of environment featured in classical wildlife documentaries: life is harsh in the African savanna, where a sickly zebra ends up being devoured by vultures and hyenas, crocodiles feast on the slowest wildebeests crossing the river, and a male lion savagely kills cubs that are not his. If natural selection is both the facilitator and the governor of life on Earth, the discouraging answer to the question of our origin is that there is no transcendent reason for our existence. The only purpose driving living beings is to survive for another day.

Nature, however, happens to be much more complex than scientists and documentary producers believe it to be. Many studies have shown a different view of how organisms interact with each other. Hundreds of articles have been published on what are called “prosocial” behaviors especially seen among animals that live in social groups, such as dolphins, elephants, and chimpanzees. Members of a pod, herd, or troop do not spend their days constantly fighting each other. On the contrary, it is common to find them cooperating in group tasks, such as food acquisition, or assisting a comrade in trouble. Dolphins team up to keep injured companions at the water’s surface,[1] and elephants rescue individuals that have fallen into holes.[2]

Dozens of articles and hundreds of observations on chimpanzees document their propensity to appease upset partners, console those who are distressed, and help peers in need. An emblematic case was reported in the Yerkes National Primate Research Center at Emory University, which houses a large colony of chimpanzees. Peony, an old female, had arthritis and could not walk or climb normally. Several younger females helped her climb by pushing her from the back and brought her water from a fountain by carrying it in their mouths.[3] In a wild population in Tanzania, a female chimpanzee was observed caring for a severely disabled baby that could not walk, sit, or climb on its own because of spinal damage. With the aid of an older daughter, she managed to keep the baby alive for almost two years.[4]

As many scientists have realized, these types of behaviors reveal a profound emotional awareness in animals. Several biologists who have been studying very different species have reached this conclusion. Frans de Waal, who works mainly with primates, has written several books on the extraordinary emotional capacities of these animals. Peggy Mason, who works with rats, designed with her team a series of experiments to assess whether rats feel empathy, and the results were unequivocal.[5] She believes that “acting on empathic feelings to help another in need is a biological and in fact a neurobiological mandate. It’s in our brain.”[6]

Finding that diverse animals, from rats to elephants, have a deep concern for others sheds light on our original questions. A world where animals and people are preprogrammed to connect and care aligns well with the biblical account of a God of love who created humans in His image.

Secular scientists who intend to explain empathy from an evolutionary perspective[7] argue that animal groups with strong bonds among their members might be more successful at leaving descendants. Empathy, which promotes bonding, could have been favored by natural selection after its random appearance in some ancestor far back in the evolution of animals.

Although plausible, this hypothesis falls short of explaining how natural selection could maintain specific altruistic behaviors such as the care of the elderly or the disabled, which do not increase reproductive rates yet increase costs in time and energy. Even more difficult to explain are altruistic behaviors like the adoption of a baby of a different species, which has been documented at least twice in the wild.[8]

To me, there is a much more parsimonious and harmonious explanation for cooperation, empathy, and altruism than slow acquisition during evolution. The God of the Bible, whose very essence is love, empathy, and selflessness, so deeply embedded these features in the brains of the creatures He designed that thousands of years of sin have not been able to erase them completely.

NOTES

[1] KJ Park, H Sohn, YR An, DY Moon, SG Choi, DH An. An unusual case of care-giving behavior in wild long-beaked common dolphins (Delphinus capensis) in the East Sea. Marine Mammal Science 2013; 29(4): E508–E514.

[2] LA Bates, PC Lee, N Njiraini, JH Poole, K Sayialel, CJ Moss, RW Byrne. Do elephants show empathy? Journal of Consciousness Studies 2008; 15(10–11): 204–225.

[3] F de Waal. The age of empathy: nature’s lessons for a kinder society. New York: Broadway Books; 2010.

[4] T Matsumoto, N Itoh, S Inoue, M Nakamura. An observation of a severely disabled infant chimpanzee in the wild and her interactions with her mother. Primates 2016; 57(1):3–7.

[5] IB-A Bartal, J Decety, P Mason. Empathy and pro-social behavior in rats. Science 2011; 334(6061):1427–1430.

[6] Quoted in H Wein, Rats show empathy, too, NIH Research Matters, December 19, 2011. https://www.nih.gov/news-events/nih-researchmatters/rats-show-empathy-too [accessed October 10, 2019].

[7] FBM de Waal. Putting the altruism back into altruism: the evolution of empathy. Annual Review of Psychology 2008; 59:279–300.

[8] P Carzon, F Delfour, K Dudzinski, M Oremus, E Clua. Cross-genus adoptions in delphinids: one example with taxonomic discussion. Ethology 2019; 125(9):669–676; P Izar, MP Verderane, E Visalberghi, EB Ottoni, MG de Oliveira, J Shirley, D Fragaszy. Cross-genus adoption of a marmoset (Callithrix jacchus) by wild capuchin monkeys (Cebus libidinosus): case report. American Journal of Primatology 2006; 68(7):692–700.

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Noemí Durán is the director of the European Branch Office of the Geoscience Research Institute. Noemí has a PhD in Biology from Loma Linda University, and her area of expertise is animal behavior. She lectures on faith, science, and origins topics, and teaches science and religion classes in several theological seminaries across Europe.