The Moral Animal

By JONATHAN SACKS Published: December 23, 2012 NY Times

IT is the religious time of the year. Step into any city in America or Britain and you will see the night sky lit by religious symbols, Christmas decorations certainly and probably also a giant menorah. Religion in the West seems alive and well. But is it really? Or have these symbols been emptied of content, no more than a glittering backdrop to the West’s newest faith, consumerism, and its secular cathedrals, shopping malls? At first glance, religion is in decline. In Britain, the results of the 2011 national census have just been published. They show that a quarter of the population claims to have no religion, almost double the figure 10 years ago. And though the United States remains the most religious country in the West, 20 percent declare themselves without religious affiliation — double the number a generation ago. Looked at another way, though, the figures tell a different story. Since the 18th century, many Western intellectuals have predicted religion’s imminent demise. Yet after a series of withering attacks, most recently by the new atheists, including Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins and the late Christopher Hitchens, still in Britain three in four people, and in America four in five, declare allegiance to a religious faith. That, in an age of science, is what is truly surprising. The irony is that many of the new atheists are followers of Charles Darwin. We are what we are, they say, because it has allowed us to survive and pass on our genes to the next generation. Our biological and cultural makeup constitutes our “adaptive fitness.” Yet religion is the greatest survivor of them all. Superpowers tend to last a century; the great faiths last millenniums. The question is why. Darwin himself suggested what is almost certainly the correct answer. He was puzzled by a phenomenon that seemed to contradict his most basic thesis, that natural selection should favor the ruthless. Altruists, who risk their lives for others, should therefore usually die before passing on their genes to the next generation. Yet all societies value altruism, and something similar can be found among social animals, from chimpanzees to dolphins to leafcutter ants. Neuroscientists have shown how this works. We have mirror neurons that lead us to feel pain when we see others suffering. We are hard-wired for empathy. We are moral animals. The precise implications of Darwin’s answer are still being debated by his disciples — Harvard’s E. O. Wilson in one corner, Oxford’s Richard Dawkins in the other. To put it at its simplest, we hand on our genes as individuals but we survive as members of groups, and groups can exist only when individuals act not solely for their own advantage but for the sake of the group as a whole. Our unique advantage is that we form larger and more complex groups than any other life-form. A result is that we have two patterns of reaction in the brain, one focusing on potential danger to us as individuals, the other, located in the prefrontal cortex, taking a more considered view of the consequences of our actions for us and others. The first is immediate, instinctive and emotive. The second is reflective and rational. We are caught, in the psychologist Daniel Kahneman’s phrase, between thinking fast and slow. The fast track helps us survive, but it can also lead us to acts that are impulsive and destructive. The slow track leads us to more considered behavior, but it is often overridden in the heat of the moment. We are sinners and saints, egotists and altruists, exactly as the prophets and philosophers have long maintained. If this is so, we are in a position to understand why religion helped us survive in the past — and why we will need it in the future. It strengthens and speeds up the slow track. It reconfigures our neural pathways, turning altruism into instinct, through the rituals we perform, the texts we read and the prayers we pray. It remains the most powerful community builder the world has known. Religion binds individuals into groups through habits of altruism, creating relationships of trust strong enough to defeat destructive emotions. Far from refuting religion, the Neo-Darwinists have helped us understand why it matters. No one has shown this more elegantly than the political scientist Robert D. Putnam. In the 1990s he became famous for the phrase “bowling alone”: more people were going bowling, but fewer were joining bowling teams. Individualism was slowly destroying our capacity to form groups. A decade later, in his book “American Grace,” he showed that there was one place where social capital could still be found: religious communities. Mr. Putnam’s research showed that frequent church- or synagogue-goers were more likely to give money to charity, do volunteer work, help the homeless, donate blood, help a neighbor with housework, spend time with someone who was feeling depressed, offer a seat to a stranger or help someone find a job. Religiosity as measured by church or synagogue attendance is, he found, a better predictor of altruism than education, age, income, gender or race. Religion is the best antidote to the individualism of the consumer age. The idea that society can do without it flies in the face of history and, now, evolutionary biology. This may go to show that God has a sense of humor. It certainly shows that the free societies of the West must never lose their sense of God. Jonathan Sacks is the chief rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of the Commonwealth and a member of the House of Lords.

108 Comments Readers shared their thoughts on this article. 1. I am familiar with the arguments about religion being a powerful agent for social cohesion, "good" behavior, etc. But when we look at the political landscape today, the groups that are most in favor of "going it alone" (i.e. government is the problem) are also the ones who want to declare the US a Christian nation and to require prayer in the classroom while ripping apart the network of social services that have been established to help those in need. George W. Bush created a culture of quasi-manditory prayer breakfasts in the White House. Was that a sign of a group dedicated to high moral principles? Joe Logan, Melbourne Australia 2. This is an interesting article and I feel some agreement with a belief that religion plays some purpose for many people. My view is that if it works for you and helps make you a person more considerate of others essentially, then that's good. But if you can get past the idea that following a religion itself is necessary to be a better person then I think that is a move in the right direction.

I don't actually see any real argument here that 'proves' the existence of god, just an argument that believing in religion plays some part in making society better because of the way that belief works on an individual's brain. I don't think that the loss of personal faith should necessarily result in leading an empty existence or a completely consumerist and self centred life though. Perhaps it would be a step forward in the evolutionary process for humans to just be good because it is 'better' than being bad - and you won't have to waste your Sabbath (whichever day that is) involved in strange rituals . Surely that would be an advantage!

There are some odd cults out there too of course - Scientologists, Westboro Baptists, to name just two of the strangest. What good do they actually bring to society (except their own)?

I can still say Happy Christmas though - and mean it because the idea of Christmas reflects what is essentially good and uplifting about humanity, considering others before the self. So - Happy Christmas! And thank god for Christopher Hitchens. Dave Montana 3. Maybe this author is on to something, but I don't think so. I work in public interest law where I spend my time providing much needed legal services to the worst off members of our society. I almost never come across religious people in this field. Almost everyone in this field does what they do because they realize on a philosophical level that it is the right thing to do, not because their religion tells them it is the right thing to do. Things like donating blood and giving to charity are the kinds of things token things that religious people do on occassion to feel good about themselves before going back to their regular corporate day jobs. Rather than make altruism instinctive, religion causes people to engage in altruistic conduct because they are told they will benefit from it in eternity. People who arrive at altruism through secular humanism or secular philosophy, on the other hand, internalize the reasons for doing good deeds and do those things because of a deeply held belief that doing good deeds is good in itself. Maybe my personal experience would not be borne out by statistics, but of the people I know who dedicate their lives to serving the poor, weak, and disabled, there is a noticeable lack of churchgoers. Most of the churchgoers in my community are too preoccupied with criticizing and condemning the worst off members of society for their supposed moral failings to actually have time to do anything for them. Tom Port Angeles, WA 4. The fact that anyone would write an article like this illustrates the dilemma of the scientific mind in our age.

I believe the author when he asserts that religion evolved as a basic human tool for "automating" the empathic responses that promote group survival, and that we have not yet developed a better tool for that purpose, and given evolution's long time scale, are unlikely to any time soon. There is a dark side to this same phenomenon, which is at least as powerful. However, as our communities fragment, churches do stand out as unique focuses for the community that is so essentially human.

On the other hand, we know enough of science that it seems to me to take an incredible amount of denial to understand science and still profess a belief in the basic tenants of any available religion. Speaking for myself, no matter how much I may want to share the community that is available at any number of churches in my community, I simply can't bring myself to "believe" what they believe. There just isn't any evidence for it, and there's plenty to the contrary.

Non-religious communities are great, and can serve many of the purposes, but without the magic and morality, they don't automate the altruistic, empathic responses as the author described religion doing.

This is only one of the many human challenges caused by our "outrunning" of evolution by science and technology, but a significant one.

5. My social group is very much composed of atheists and agnostics. And given that we bond into that group quite as strongly --- or more so --- than most of us ever did in our religions (which were rather more forced upon us than consciously chosen), it would appear that non-religiosity should therefore rise to the status of religion in this social Darwinist context. rosa ca 6. Altruism, linked as it is in this country to formal institutions - churches or legal non- profits - is in for a rocky ride. Increasingly we 'bowl alone', unwilling to undergo the scripted rituals demanded by the larger authority. No, I don't want to be prayed over or have to cast down my eyes simply to be able to help another person. I'll bowl alone with my checkbook - but tiredly shake my head that there are so few options for individual efforts. This country needs new ways for the millions of nones to join in community, but because we are set up with the model we have, the air is choked out of the room, already claimed by the religious. But let's not kid overselves: the model offered - church folk doing acts of care - is utterly inadequate. Hunger is rampant. Homelessness is off the scale. The poor are under attack on Medicaid, food stamps, Women and Infants Feeding Program - you name it, the need is there. Yet I hear nothing from the churches, from all those altruistic helpers. This year, those voices are utterly silent. And I don't read minds:Is it because they are frightened at the need - or simply indifferent? Don't know. Your article was pleasant, sir, but I truly am puzzled at what you were trying to say. Next time, ay?