Online Vol. 10.2007 

To Cooperate or to Defect?

Biologists and Theologians Join Forces in Researching Altruism

By Philip Clayton

What happens when you bring together one of the world's top specialists on mathematical models of evolution with one of the world's top theologians? Does it turns out that what biologists mean by "cooperation" or "altruism" and what theologians mean by these terms is the same? Or do contradictions, tensions, and incompatibilities result? Is evolution about "the selfish gene," as Richard Dawkins suggests, whereas religionists wish to emphasize love and self-sacrifice?

For the past three years Martin Nowak, Professor of Biology and of Mathematics at Harvard University and Director of Harvard's Program for Evolutionary Dynamics, and Sarah Coakley, formerly Mallinckrodt Professor at Harvard Divinity School and now Norris-Hulse Professor at Cambridge University, together with their teams of researchers, have pursued this topic with the assistance of a major grant from the Templeton Foundation.

"We wanted to discover in what ways evolutionary biology is and is not a threat to religious perspectives," Prof. Nowak declared. Describing his work on biological game theory, the evolution of cooperation, and conditions for altruistic behavior, Nowak asked, "What are the issues where it is difficult for Christian theology to embrace evolutionary ideas, and in what areas does there turn out to be no conflict?"

These are not easy questions. "Our goal was to create a genuinely nuanced understanding between theologians and evolutionary biologists, in a context where it's very difficult for this to occur," Prof. Coakley added. "It takes months, even years of getting under each other's skin in order to understand each others intentions, goals, and language." Yet the stakes for theology are high: "if it turns out that cooperation is a third principle in evolution, alongside mutation and selection, this fundamentally affects how you think about evolution."

Their Harvard research program on "The Evolution and Theology of Cooperation" (ETC) has taken on a host of difficult questions: how does cooperation relate to the emergence of ethical normativity in cultural evolution? How are traditional arguments for the existence of God to be re-thought in the light of Darwinian accounts of the emergence of cooperation? Is cooperation in biological systems identical to religious calls to altruism, love, and self-sacrifice? Can the religious call to altruism - unconditional love of the other - be regarded, and even explained, as an evolutionary development?

The ETC project has attracted immense attention - in part because the confrontation between "secular" Darwinism and "fundamentalist" creationism so dominates the media today, and in part because this particular high-level partnership between biology and theology is taking place at Harvard University. Nor have Coakley and Nowak shied away from publicity. Three or four times each semester they have organized large and well-attended, public events at Harvard, including in their programs such well-known lecturers as E. O. Wilson and Marc Hauser. Some scientist speakers have called for reductive explanations of religion and morality, and some theologians have insisted upon the inherent limitations of all scientific treatments of religious belief. Most, however, have sought to bring scientific and religious resources to bear on the study of cooperation. After each event, the PI's, the speakers, and the ETC research team meet to look for synthesis and cross-fertilization - for a nuanced theory that does justice to both sets of insights.

As Nowak told Harvard Magazine in September 2007, claims of a fundamental antagonism between biology and religion turn out to be empirically false. Reporting on the ETC results, he notes that "it seems that religion actually helps people to behave accordingly: to cooperate with each other." The most recent empirical studies suggest that punishment is not, as once thought, the great motivator. Instead, Nowak's results in clinical trials are beginning to show that the rewards of cooperation, rather than the threat of punishment, have the greatest effect in influencing human subjects to act altruistically rather than for their own gain.

ETC's most significant long-term result may well be new kinds of studies that augment traditional work in game theory, factoring in the deeper motivations and intentions of the actors and measuring the results. From the beginning Coakley has insisted on the need to go beyond actions alone in order to analyze underlying intentions, and Nowak now agrees: "I think altruism, as opposed to cooperation, is something that has to do with intentions and desires," he affirmed. The influence works in both directions, however. Coakley, it turns out, is now working with Nowak's researchers to organize an empirical study of altruism among the members of her own Episcopalian congregation. Volunteers only, of course.

Neither researcher is ready to stop. Coakley wants to extend the work more deeply into theological territory, for "if you put into the picture a religious belief system that unifies desire, affect, and rational cognition, you will have a much richer and more complicated account" of human action. Nowak is seeking funding for a new Center for Evolution and Emergence at Harvard. "On a larger scale I'd like to understand the evolution of generosity and the very limits of the evolutionary process," he notes. "You have the evolution of intelligent life on earth. But what provided the possibility of intelligent life, the boundaries within which the very process is working?"

In separate interviews, both researchers emphasized above all else the ways their own thinking has been transformed by working together on the three-year ETC project. "I'd say that I have just awoken out of a dogmatic theological slumber," Coakley quipped; "I now realize that for almost every theological account I give there could be an evolutionary dimension that I should attend to and usually don't." Nowak added, "I've gained the maturity to look at the world simultaneously as a scientist and as one deeply interested in religious questions. My search has always included these two aspects, but before the project I couldn't bring them together."

Dr. Philip Clayton is Ingraham Professor at Claremont School of Theology and a former visiting scholar with the ETC program at Harvard.

ETC's major international conference took place in May, 2007; results will soon be published in a major new volume from Harvard University Press. For other publications and events see the Evolution and Theology of Cooperation project web site at www.fas.harvard.edu/~etc/.

Marby Sparkman, Editor
milestoneseditor@templeton.org

Pamela Thompson, Vice President of Communications
pthompson@templeton.org

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