The Indelible Bonobo Experience

Rather than coming to us top-down from God, or any other external source, morality for de Waal springs bottom-up from our emotions and our day-to-day social interactions, which themselves evolved from foundations in animal societies. (via Frans de Waal’s Bottom-Up Morality: We’re Not Good Because Of God : 13.7: Cosmos And Culture : NPR)

• Azalea, a trisomic rhesus macaque (trisomic = born with three copies of a certain chromosome), had abnormal motor and social skills, in ways somewhat akin to humans with Down syndrome. Instead of punishing her “incomprehensible blunders,” such as threatening the alpha male, the other macaques were accepting and forgiving of her until Azalea’s death at age three. Female chimpanzees may confront and shut down an overly aggressive male, sometimes even pulling two adversaries close together for reconciliation, or prying rocks from an aroused males’ hands.
• In cases like these, animals are feeling empathy, then acting on that feeling with displays of kindness or help, behavior that de Waal callssympathy. The empathy is purely embodied — literally felt in the body — and part of our evolved biology. “Our brains have been designed to blur the line between self and other,” he writes. “It is an ancient neural circuitry that marks every mammal, from mouse to elephant.”
• A scientist and non-believer, de Waal isn’t saying here that religion is required for human morality, only that the two have been entwined throughout human history. Since I have wearied of the Richard Dawkins school of religion-bashing, in which belief is equated with dim-wittedness, I can only applaud de Waal’s approach, as when he writes, “The enemy of science is not religion. Religion comes in endless shapes and forms … . The true enemy is the substitution of thought, reflection, and curiosity with dogma.”

Gray’s research suggests that torture’s very repugnancy is what causes some of us to defend its use—we feel terrible about it, so we think there must be a reason for it. In movies the effect may be more pronounced: The giant screen brings us even “closer” to an interrogation. We condone the torture be­cause the cinematic intimacy causes us, the audience, to feel complicit. This proximity bias—a variation of confirmation bias we might call the Zero Effect—is relevant for scientists engaged in all kinds of observational research. It is also a crucial consideration for those of us watching interrogators at work, onscreen or in life. (via The Science Of ‘Zero Dark Thirty’: When We Can Condone Torture | Popular Science)

A new study says all faith-based prison programs may not be created equal. Photograph by: Joe Raedle / Newsmakers, file , Postmedia News (via New study raises questions about religion as deterrent against criminal behaviour)

• The U.S. study found that through “purposeful distortion or genuine ignorance,” hardcore criminals often co-opt religious doctrine to justify or further their crimes.
• Prison ministries shouldn’t just be about presenting religious doctrine because some inmates might take religious teachings to excuse their behaviour, lead author Volkan Topalli, a criminal justice professor at Georgia State University, said in an interview Monday.
• “People have to understand that presenting religious doctrine to people isn’t enough to change their behaviour,” he said. “(Faith-based services) have to be systematic and about behaviour change — religion has to be a vehicle, rather than the goal.”
• The research of Topalli and his colleagues was published this month in the journal Theoretical Criminology in an article titled With God on My Side: The Paradoxical Relationship Between Religious Belief and Criminality Among Hardcore Street Offenders.
• They interviewed 48 people who were actively involved in serious and violent street-level crimes, including drug dealing, robbery, car jacking and burglary.
• Almost all of them professed a belief in God and identified with the Christian faith.  However, many of the criminals had an incomplete understanding of the rules and expectations of their faith, the study found.