Altruism 1 -- Science Disproves Evolution

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Humans and many animals will endanger or even sacrifice their lives to save another�sometimes the life of another species (a). Natural selection, which evolutionists say selects individual characteristics, should rapidly eliminate altruistic (self-sacrificing) �individuals.� How could such risky, costly behavior ever be inherited? Its possession tends to prevent the altruistic �individual� from passing on its genes for altruism (b)?

a. �...the existence of altruism between different species�which is not uncommon�remains an obstinate enigma.� Taylor, p. 225.

Some inherited behavior is lethal to the animal but beneficial to unrelated species. For example, dolphins sometimes protect humans from deadly sharks. Many animals (goats, lambs, rabbits, horses, frogs, toads) scream when a predator discovers them. This increases their exposure but warns other species.

b. From an evolutionist�s point of view, a very costly form of altruism occurs when an animal forgoes reproduction while caring for another individual�s young. This occurs in some human societies where a man has multiple wives who share in raising the children of one wife. More well known examples include celibate individuals (such as nuns and many missionaries) who devote themselves to helping others. Such traits should never have evolved, or if they accidentally arose, they should quickly die out.

�From a Darwinian standpoint, going childless by choice is hard enough to explain, but adoption, as the arch-Darwinist Richard Dawkins notes, is a double whammy. Not only do you reduce, or at least fail to increase, your own reproductive success, but you improve someone else�s. Since the birth parent is your rival in the great genetic steeplechase, a gene that encourages adoption should be knocked out of the running in fairly short order.� Cleo Sullivan, �The Adoption Paradox,� Discover, January 2001, p. 80.

Adoption is known even among mice, rats, skunks, llamas, deer, caribou, kangaroos, wallabies, seals, sea lions, dogs, pigs, goats, sheep, bears, and many primates. Altruism is also shown by some people who have pets�a form of adoption�especially individuals who have pets in lieu of having children.

Humans, vertebrates, and invertebrates frequently help raise the unrelated young of others:

�...it is not clear that the degree of relatedness is consistently higher in cooperative breeders than in other species that live in stable groups but do not breed cooperatively. In many societies of vertebrates as well as invertebrates, differences in contributions to rearing young do not appear to vary with the relatedness of helpers, and several studies of cooperative birds and mammals have shown that helpers can be unrelated to the young they are raising and that the unrelated helpers invest as heavily as close relatives.� Tim Clutton-Brock, �Breeding Together: Kin Selection and Mutualism in Cooperative Vertebrates,� Science, Vol. 296, 5 April 2002, p. 69.