Evolutionary Cooperation

By Bill Creasy

Evolution has gotten a reputation as being about competition, but cooperation has also been an important evolutionary strategy. Cooperation is essential for sexual mating and reproduction, as well as for herd behavior or for hunting in packs.

Studies of primate behavior have not always emphasized cooperation. Jane Goodall's initial studies of chimps indicated that they were very cooperative. But when groups of chimps were given "free" bunches of bananas, the chimps became territorial and defensive. Perhaps stress of interactions with humans and competition over the unexpected free food caused some aggressive behavior. The archetype of the importance of the alpha male and competition for dominance was emphasized as being the major model of evolutionary behavior.

But in chimps, as in humans, cooperation is as important as competition for survival of individuals and groups. In times of scarcity, the chimps tend to share so everyone gets enough. When surplus bananas are given, the alpha male tends to try to keep them all for himself, but this type of situation may be uncommon when the chimps are undisturbed.

Similarly, human civilization has arisen from cooperation toward common ends and mutual survival, rather than individual dominance. As secular humanists, we should emphasize that cooperation is consistent with the theory of evolution. Religion or supernatural intervention is not necessary to explain ethical or cooperative behavior. Secular humanists should also develop systems of ethical ideals that are consistent with our understanding of the way evolution works.

For humans, the evolution of our culture and civilization is occurring much faster than biological or genetic evolution. We should encourage evolution of culture that doesn't involve suffering and death of individual people. Evolution of ideas can be difficult, but not as traumatic as the deaths of living beings.

As an example, consider the competition of the ideas of secular humanist with those of Christianity. Humanists often find themselves at odds with basic principles of Christianity. But Christianity has a wide variety of sects that generate a range of ideas, and many of the ideas are humanistic. Several WASH members have observed that one reason religion is so successful in the U.S. is because it has a Darwinian competition. Since the government doesn't support a particular religion, each one must compete for believers and money.

We humanists think of Christianity as supporting intelligent design, which is at odds with the theory of evolution. But evolution is relevant to many aspects of culture besides the origin of life, and it is the source of predictions about how cultures become dominant. There are some Christian ideas that may be more evolutionarily successful than those of humanism.

For example, a central idea of evolution is that some individuals or species will be more reproductively successful over the long term. Humanism favors a basic equality of opportunity of all humans, and it has some difficulty accomodating the idea that one group of humans is in some sense "better" than others. In the current climate of political correctness, everyone's culture is supposed to deserve equal respect. Christianity readily accepts the idea that one culture and set of beliefs is superior and will receive preferential treatment.

Christianity also promotes the idea that those with better beliefs should actively be evangelical in trying to convert everyone else to those beliefs, thus spreading the culture. Again, humanists have some reluctance to do active conversion. We tend to expect that rational people will find us after drawing their own conclusions.

Perhaps one of the most successful ideas of Christianity is its ability to inspire people to work together and help each other. The ideas give people a meaning to their lives, and they provide a method for rationalizing the misfortunes that happen to everyone during their lives. It provides a justification for people in the same religious group to cooperate with each other.

I'm not defending or apologizing for Christian doctrine. But we can't become so focused on criticizing doctrine that we ignore the social, cultural, and individual benefits that the beliefs provide. In evolutionary terms, the results, or reproductive success, are what matters. We need to recognize the value that these kinds of ideas provide to people and then find adequate ways to provide the same benefits in a rational, humanistic framework, if we are going to compete in evolutionary terms.

This article was published in the February 2006 issue of WASHline, the newsletter of the Washington Area Secular Humanists.