| Some time ago I wrote a two-part critique of Frans de Waal's book, The Atheist and the Bonobo, arguing that de Waal not only fails to understand the evolutionary significance of religion in the success of human groups, but advocates a return to the moral world of the apes, a proposition that seems guaranteed to insure continuation of the social disintegration now to be witnessed in the Western world. Part 1 of that critique delivers, I believe, points worth making. Part 2, however, enters I now see, a realm of incoherence, notwithstanding the validity of the objective that I was driving at. Normally, coming across a flawed post from the past, I either shrug or hit the delete button. The critique of de Waal, however, seems worth getting right, especially as, according to my blog stats, people are still reading it. Here, then, is the revision. which I have temporarily pinned to the top of the page. |
First Posted December 8, 2016. revised November 23, 2019: Frans de Waal, whose accounts of animal behavior have won him numerous awards and honors, believes that empathy, which is innate to both mankind and many other species, is the only effective basis for socially constructive behavior and that religion as a guide to human conduct is, therefore, both unnecessary and undesirable.
However, as I discussed in an earlier post, de Waal fails to acknowledge the limits to the power of empathy, which is most clearly expressed among family members, friends and neighbors, but which is less evident or entirely absent in interactions among strangers, especially among strangers differing in tribe, culture, race or nation.
