Theology and Evolutionary Psychology, Chapter 5: Family Values?

One of the big research areas in evolutionary psychology focuses on cooperative behavior, altruism, and reciprocity. How can these seemingly unselfish behaviors emerge from the selfish Darwinian mechanism of natural selection? How can Nature "red in tooth and claw" produce pro-social behaviors?

There has been tons written on this subject, but today we will focus on kin selection.

Kin selection depends upon the idea of inclusive fitness, first explicated by W.D. Hamilton. Hamilton's breakthrough was due to his analysis of the social insects (e.g., ants, termites). The social insects had been a puzzle since the time of Darwin. Why? Well, many of the workers in social insect colonies are born sterile. They never reproduce. This is puzzling in that if the worker never reproduces its worker DNA never replicates to produce more workers. It would seem that sterile workers would die out very quickly. Yet, there they are. Why?

Well, the answer is this: All the insects are siblings. They are brothers and sisters. This insight prompted Hamilton to propose the idea of inclusive fitness.

Basically, the idea is this: Copies of my genes don't just reside in my own body. Copies of my genes are spread out across all of my genetic relatives.

For example, if I have gene X there is a 50% chance that my brother or sister has this gene as well. What this means is that if a gene emerged that encouraged me to sacrifice on behalf of my family and children that gene would thrive as there is a high probability that across everyone I saved multiple copies of that gene are represented. Thus, although I might die my genes (or copies of the same gene carried in my family) thrive. This is kin selection.

The behavioral implication of kin selection is simple to state: My degree of cooperativeness with a person is directly correlated with our degree of genetic relatedness. (For the technically inclined Hamilton's Rule states that a cooperative action will be performed if C < R x B, where C = Cost of the action to the actor, R = Genetic relatedness between actor and recipient, and B = the benefit to the actor. The point being that if you hold C and B constant and raise R--genetic relatedness--the right side of the equation will outweigh the Cost which leads to cooperative behavior.)

The theological implication for all this is simple: Family is a Darwinian locus. Bluntly, family is selfish (genetically speaking). That is, all the time, love, and effort I spend on family is, from a Darwinian perspective, the epitome of selfishness. I'm simply working to propagate my genes in the gene pool. Family life is in the Darwinian Hall of Fame.

This situation is very ironic given the focus on family in American churches. It really is darkly funny. The people so upset about evolution being taught in schools are the very people touting "family values." It's like denying the reality of the electron while being an electrician.

I point all this out not to be mean or mean-spirited. I'm just trying to educate the Christian witness. To trumpet family values to the larger culture strikes educated critics of Christianity as the height of silliness. Christians would do well to seek another platform.

And I think Jesus would agree with me. One of the embarrassing things about Jesus for the Religious Right is how suspicious Jesus was of family. I think Jesus instinctively knew that family was a Darwinian black hole, sucking up most of our time and resources. As Jesus stated, "What credit is it to you if you greet only your brothers and sisters?" Exactly. Family isn't a moral demonstration.

So what is a moral demonstration? Well, here's one: Adoption. Or being a loving step-parent. Or mentoring an inner city child. Or helping care for impoverished children on other continents.

These are true moral demonstrations. Why? Because we get nothing, Darwinianly speaking, from these actions. According to Hamilton's rule, it's all cost. Which means the act (using a Darwinian calculus) is altruistic.

So, dear Christians, let's downplay Family Values. Maybe we should push for Jesus' Values, where every child of the world is treated as our own.