Ars Disputandi

Volume 5 (2005)
ISSN: 1566 5399

Gregory R. Peterson The Evolution of Morality and Religion

SOUTH DAKOTA STATE
UNIVERSITY, USA
By Donald M. Broom

Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003; xii + 259 pp.; hb.

50.00, pb. 18.99; ISBN: 0 521 82192 4/0 521 52924 7.

[1]
Everybody claims to be an expert on religion. At least, so it seems when
the subject of religion comes up. If the individual is religious, then the task is to
explain the truth of one's religion and to explain the existence (and sometimes
falsity) of others. If the individual is not religious (in the conventional sense
of the term), then the individual will have an explanation as to why everyone
else is religious, usually to the effect that most people are gullible, that religion
relieves anxiety or some other psychological malady, or that religion began as an
explanation of the unexplainable and is now, thanks to modern science, a vestige
of the ancient world that will eventually wither away.
[2]
The game of explaining religion is played by scholars as well, and in
modern times has seen contributions from a variety of elds, including anthropol-
ogy, sociology, psychology, to religious studies, respectively represented by such
classic voices as E. B. Tylor, Emile Durkehim, Sigmund Freud, and James Frazer.
Biology is a relative latecomer to this discourse, but since the publication of E.
O Wilson's Sociobiology in 1975 and Richard Dawkins The Sel sh Gene in 1976,
there has been a steady stream of research and speculation as to the evolutionary
origins of morality and religion and the link between the two.
[3]
Donald Broom's The Evolution of Morality and Religion is a contribution
to this eld of literature, which has burgeoned within the last decade. Broom
is Colleen Macleod Professor of Animal Welfare in the Department of Clinical
Veterinary Medicine at the University of Cambridge. It is a distinctive and unusual
vantage point from which to write about the evolution of morality and religion, one
that is fraught with dangers since veterinary medicine provides no background
in philosophy and religion and also puts him at some distance from the primary
research in evolutionary biology. By itself, this is neither here nor there; many
scholars are accomplished virtuosi who are able to cross disciplinary boundaries
with ease. In Broom's case, this is less so, and the result is a work that, while
serviceable in some aspects, neither stands out in originality nor does justice to
the complexity of the phenomena it examines.
[4]
Broom's thesis, as the title implies, is straightforward: the origin and
signi cance of religion and morality can be explained on evolutionary grounds.
For Broom, this is both a descriptive and normative claim. Descriptively, Broom
claims that evolutionary biology can give an account of how morality arises in
biological organisms and what role religion plays in supporting morality. Nor-

c July 8, 2005, Ars Disputandi. If you would like to cite this article, please do so as follows:
Gregory R. Peterson, `Review of The Evolution of Morality and Religion,' Ars Disputandi [http://www.ArsDisputandi.
org] 5 (2005), paragraph number.
 Gregory R. Peterson: Review of The Evolution of Morality and Religion

matively, since we are by nature moral and religious, these are good things, and
society should continue to support moral and religious behavior.
[5]
The text itself is divided into eight chapters. The rst chapter lays out
some of the key concepts, arguments and de nitions that will inform the rest of
the book. Morality is to be understood in terms of bene t or harm to others.
Religion is de ned as `. . . a system of beliefs and rules which individuals revere
and respond to in their lives and which is seen as emanating directly or indirectly
from some intangible power (p. 4).' Since sexual activity in and of itself does not
harm or bene t others, it is not of primary moral concern and so sexual codes of
conduct should be treated separately from morality.
[6]
The argument proper begins in chapter 2, which provides a survey of
the biological study of cooperation and altruism. The de nition of altruism is
that which is standard in biology, `An altruistic act by an individual is one which
involves some cost to that individual in terms of reduced tness but increases the
tness of one or more individuals (p. 34).' Broom reviews some of the extensive
literature on kin altruism (cooperation that occurs between genetically related
organisms such as a mother-child relationship or two cousins) and reciprocal
altruism (roughly speaking, the principle of `if you scratch my back now, I'll
scratch your back later'), as well as extensive eld research that has catalogued
the various forms of animal cooperation. The research here is largely solid and
provides a summary that is in some ways distinctive from the usual treatment
given in other elds.
[7]
Chapter three is, in some ways, an extension of chapter two, giving some
account of the biological grounds of reasoning and emotion. Chapter four, by
contrast, moves on to a survey and evaluation of the philosophical literature on
morality. Broom claims that morality is rooted in our biology and that it occurs
from early childhood on. While this is Broom's conclusion, it is hard to see how
he gets there or how this informs his survey of the philosophical literature. To his
credit, Broom has clearly read many of the important works in the western ethical
tradition, but his evaluations are often sweeping and not particularly well argued.
He declares that utilitarianism and deontology are unsatisfactory in their pure
forms, and so we must combine elements of the two (how he doesn't say). After
previously declaring that sexual behavior is of little moral signi cance, Broom
here devotes twelve pages to an evaluation of sexual do's and don'ts, and so we
learn that rape, pedophilia, cliterectomy, and polgyny are bad, while monogamy,
pornography, certain forms of prostitution, and stable homosexual relationships
are morally permissible. It is exceedingly unclear how any of this can be deter-
mined by our biological nature, but Broom seems con dent that this is so.
[8]
Chapter 5 turns its eye to the subject of religion. According to Broom, the
prime function of religion is to support morality. This is inferred because wherever
we go in the world, we nd that religions provide moral codes for people to follow
and that these moral codes are, claims Broom, all essentially the same. While
religion contains many `peripheral' elements, those aspects of religion which are
most important serve to support morality. Thus, belief in God or gods serves
to provide an omniscient moral monitor to make sure people do good and avoid

Ars Disputandi 5 (2005), http://www.ArsDisputandi.org

 Gregory R. Peterson: Review of The Evolution of Morality and Religion

evil, while beliefs in an afterlife provide a positive incentive for doing so. Practices
such as communal rituals and public prayer serve to foster community and mutual
support. There is astonishingly little documentation of research to support these
sweeping claims.
[9]
Furthermore, Broom then proceeds to enlighten us to the various moral
and intellectual errors of religions and how these should be corrected. Apparently,
a prime problem is that much of what goes on in religion is intellectually unsus-
tainable, and so it must be jettisoned or rede ned. God, for instance, should not
be understood as a cosmic being who created the universe, which to Broom is too
patently absurd to claim. Rather, God should be understood as the social collec-
tive, which has many of the properties of the divine (a la Feuerbach or Durkheim).
So, when we are worshipping God, we are really worshipping society. Broom
concludes the chapter with a laundry list of 10 suggestions to make the world's
religions more rational and moral. These include items like:
(1) Emphasize the moral aspect of its teachings.
[10]
or
(4) Eliminate or minimize any practice or teaching which is likely to encourage
tribal or sectarian con ict now or in the future.
[11]
or
(7) Make the concept of God, or other deities, easier to comprehend and less
imbued with qualities which elicit hostility or disbelief on grounds of widely
accepted knowledge. (pp. 192 3)
[12]
The next two chapters present a range of views. Because religion
serves a biological function, its continued existence (modi ed according to the ten
suggestions) should be supported. Broom then moves on to issues of social and
animal welfare. Because humans are by nature cooperative, we should oppose
unfettered free markets, naked economic competition, and large differences in
wages and income. Because other animals also are capable of moral behavior
and emotion, we should treat them ethically, although how this is to be done is
not speci ed. The nal chapter provides a short and clear summary of the entire
argument of the book.
[13]
To his credit, Broom has taken the time to do much of the relevant
research, not only in the eld of evolutionary biology but also in moral philosophy
and (to a lesser extent) in religion. Unfortunately, the whole is much less than
the sum of its parts. Throughout, there is a tendency to easily dismiss views
that the author nds inconvenient or too philosophical to t within his scienti c
framework. For instance, Broom dismisses the distinction between mind and
brain as unimportant, and unable to nd any useful evidence for minds, prefers
instead to talk about brains (p. 6). Or take his de nition of emotion, `. . . being a
physiologically describable electrical and neurochemical state of particular regions
of the brain, which may result in other changes in the brain, hormone release or

Ars Disputandi 5 (2005), http://www.ArsDisputandi.org

 Gregory R. Peterson: Review of The Evolution of Morality and Religion

other peripheral changes but which need not involve awareness (p. 98).' Besides
the sheer insuf ciency of this de nition from a scienti c standpoint (it could serve
equally well as a de nition for the onset of puberty), it reveals the inability of the
author to grapple with the messy importance of the phenomenal side of emotions
and psychological life that may provide counterexamples to his approach.
[14]
These sorts of problems are replete within the text. Broom blithely
dismisses the `is/ought' distinction in moral philosophy most famously associated
with G. E. Moore, but seems unaware of how this dismissal poses problems for
his own position. Broom would have us think that we are by nature altruistic. But
if this is so, he then has to explain why we do non-altruistic things. For instance,
Broom seeks to distance religion from group violence, which he sees rooted in a
kind of tribalism. It might be argued (not without reason), that tribalism is part
of our biological nature. According to Broom's logic (what is natural is good),
then tribalism must be good, with all the violence that is associated with it. But
if tribalism is not natural, then it has to be explained why it is so prevalent. A
similar problem occurs with his treatment of sexual codes and, more generally,
with his descriptive and normative accounts of religion. After all, if religion really
is rooted in our biological nature, how can we ever hope to change religious belief
to make it more (supposedly) rational? Won't we just creep back to our irrational
propensities? Furthermore, given the fact the religion works only if we believe,
for instance, that there really is a God `out there' waiting to punish us, doesn't
Broom's endorsement of a God-as-society theory undermine the very function of
religion that makes it so morally important?
[15]
These and similar problems plague the text and argument. The book is
also marred by occasional factual errors. The author seems to almost completely
misunderstand Daniel Dennett's levels of intentionality that has been widely used
in cognitive ethology (p. 111). He insists that there must be a moral concept of the
divine in both Taoism and Zen Buddhism (p. 168) and describes Islam as a heavily
doctrinal religion (p. 170).
[16]
As a nal observation, it should be noted that it is not clear for whom
this text is designed. The early chapters read very strongly like an undergraduate
science textbook, with the strengths and weaknesses that are implied by that ob-
servation. But the later chapters clearly go beyond scienti c reasoning, including
as they do personal judgments of the rightness or wrongness of particular ethical
and religious beliefs and practices. The work seems to be intended as another
attempt to explain religion and morality scienti cally. If that is the case, it reveals
how much there is yet to learn.

Ars Disputandi 5 (2005), http://www.ArsDisputandi.org