荷蘭生物學家Gert Korthof,駁斥美國生物學者Francis S. Collins的神創進化論

《上帝的語言》一書的評論

作者：荷蘭生物學家Gert Korthof)

T https://bityl.co/95ZQ

heistic Evolution:more evolution and less supernatural than ID and creationism Review of The language of God  by Gert Korthof,

「上帝的語言」是美國著名基督徒生物學家Francis Collins著作，在閱讀Collins著作時，我逐漸明白他所做的不僅僅是

"一個科學家為信仰提供證據"。在這本書中，柯林斯也提出了支持達爾文進化論的證據。他對進化論的證據給我留下了更深刻的印象

。他也反對「年輕地球6000年創造論」（YEC）和「智慧設計」（ID）不過，我也會評斥他的道德法則論點和他所主張的「神學進化論」。

    人類基因組

法蘭西斯-柯林斯在討論人類基因組計畫（HGP）對進化的影響方面處於有利地位，因為他在1993年至2008年8月期間擔任HGP項目

的主任。HGP是一項雄心勃勃的國際科學努力，在2000年6月26日完成了人類基因組的第一稿（註80）。這一成就被描述為"人類自我

認識的一個巔峰"。"我們已經初步瞥見了我們的指令書，以前只有上帝知道"。在擔任HGP主任之前，柯林斯於1989年在科學界贏得了聲譽，當時他發現了導致遺傳性疾病囊性纖維化（CF）的突變，這為治癒這種可能致命的疾病開闢了道路。法蘭西斯-柯林斯在2008年之前一直是美國國家人類基因組研究所（NHGRI）的主任。2009年，柯林斯成為美國國家衛生研究院的院長（註87）按:柯林斯已定於2021年年底缷任這職務。

儘管我認為我對遺傳學、基因組學和進化方面最重要的研究成果相當瞭解，但在讀完柯林斯的文章後，我必須承認我錯過了一些重要的東西。在此，我選擇了三個極好的例子來說明基因組初讀帶來的驚喜。這三個例子的輪廓我都知道，但細節和微妙之處對我來說是新的。我覺得它們令人印象深刻。它們不是共同世系的第一個證據，因為自達爾文以來，各種證據都有了。但它們是極其令人愉快和美麗的。值得注意的是，柯林斯對創造論者的替代解釋給予了關注。我發現在有詩意的標題的那一章中的例子。"破譯上帝的指令書。人類基因組的教訓"（第五章），"初讀基因組的驚喜 "一段（第124-141頁）。

他的第一個例子以一個簡單明瞭的問題開始，很容易。從人類的DNA序列開始，在其他生物的基因組中找到類似DNA序列的可能性有多大？(第127頁)。

表1

表1的第一欄顯示，人類的基因不是人類獨有的，其他動物也有同樣的基因。一個人類基因可以100%地在黑猩猩身上找到，99%的概率在狗或老鼠身上找到（38,39）。這是由共同世系預測和解釋的（概要）。不止如此。共同世系不僅預測了人類的基因可以在其他物種中以不同的概率被發現，而且更具體地說，昆蟲和蠕蟲的可能性應該更小。因此，即使在這個基本層面上，共同血統的預測也比僅僅列出人類和其他動物的不同相似性更微妙。預測是在這些差異中必須有一個模式。該模式必須確認到生命樹上。

基因是容易的。但基因之間的DNA又是怎樣的呢？表1的第二欄顯示，不編碼蛋白質的人類DNA在其他動物中被發現的可能性要低得多。人類基因之間的DNA在黑猩猩身上仍有98%的可能性被發現，但在狗身上的可能性則明顯下降到只有52%。為什麼會這樣呢？基因之間的DNA是無功能的，即所謂的垃圾DNA。中性突變（=不影響功能的突變）將隨著時間的推移穩定地積累。由於自然選擇對中性突變沒有控制力，它們可以自由地朝任何方向發展。那麼，為什麼我們仍然看到相似之處呢？那些最終的相似性只能解釋為它們是從人類和黑猩猩或人類和狗的共同祖先那裡繼承下來的。

而這一預測又有第二個層次的特殊性。在這種 "垃圾DNA "的相似性和不相似性中存在著一種模式。這種模式也遵循生命之樹的規律。蛔蟲和果蠅在很久以前就與人類分道揚鑣了，以至於它們的垃圾DNA的任何相似之處都被完全抹去。我非常喜歡第三個例子，因為我在醫學細胞遺傳學領域工作。它是關於人類和黑猩猩的染色體。作為介紹，我在我工作的細胞遺傳學實驗室裡聽到了一則不錯的軼事。一位醫學細胞遺傳學家（專門研究人類染色體異常的醫學問題）被問及他對一位匿名病人的染色體的看法。他為這個病例流了很多血，幾個小時後，他終於得出結論："這個病人有嚴重的染色體異常"。對這位細胞遺傳學家來說，不幸的是，這位病人根本就不是人，而是一隻完全健康的黑猩猩。當然，教訓是黑猩猩和人類的染色體看起來如此相似，甚至訓練有素的醫學細胞遺傳學家也會被愚弄。自從幾十年前發現染色體染色法並將其應用於人類和黑猩猩的染色體後，有人認為人類2號染色體是黑猩猩12號和13號染色體的頭對頭融合產物（註2）。然而，染色體的染色技術和顯微鏡的解析度並不允許進行明確的證明。最近，人類和黑猩猩基因組的完整序列顯示了染色體融合事件的分子指紋，其位置正是舊染色體染色技術所預測的（註19）。這是基因組測序技術的勝利，也是科學進步的生動體現。幾十年後，終於確定了黑猩猩和人類的共同後裔的確切證據。沒有比DNA更深層次的證明了。還能要求什麼證據呢？柯林斯："如果不假設黑猩猩和人類的共同祖先，就很難理解這種觀察"（第138頁）。在柯林斯的書中還有更多令人興奮的例子（見第五章）。

進一步閱讀。肖恩-卡羅爾（Sean Carroll）（2006年）的《適者生存》（The Making of the Fittest）第五章 "化石基因 "講述了更多關於他所謂的 "化石基因 "的故事，這些基因的功能已經被放棄了。

You Tube上的 "進化的證據 "動畫（血紅蛋白α鏈和β鏈的密碼子用法是由進化論預測的，而不是由創造論/ID預測的）。

進化的證據，第二部分顯示了人類基因組中維生素C生物合成的假基因。推薦! 類似柯林斯的例子。

        什麼是神論進化論？

如果你沒有給有神論進化論（TE）下定義，就不能討論它。柯林斯提供了一個有用的定義（但它有未解決的內部矛盾：見我的評論）。

      根據柯林斯的說法，神論進化論 我的評論

1 宇宙是從虛無中產生的，大約在140億年前。  

2儘管存在巨大的不可能性，但宇宙的屬性似乎已被精確地調整為生命（我的強調），這是TE的神論部分。請注意，柯林斯並沒有說 "為人類調諧"。要麼他必須假設人類的起源是不可避免的，要麼假設超自然的干預。然而，干預與4相矛盾。人類的起源是否是不可避免的，這個問題有待於經驗調查，不能事先決定。

3雖然地球上生命起源的確切機制仍然未知，但一旦生命出現，進化和自然選擇的過程允許生物的多樣性和複雜性在非常長的時間內發展 注：沒有聲稱超自然的干預。柯林斯對生命的起源是不可知論的（與大多數創造論者和智慧設計理論家相反）。這種觀點不能與未來的研究結果相衝突。

4一旦進化開始了，就不需要特別的超自然干預，這與創造論者和智慧設計理論家的觀點再次相反。然而，第6點與這種說法相矛盾，因為道德法則是一種神聖的干預。

5 人類是這個過程的一部分，與類人猿共用一個共同的祖先 這是主流科學。但仍然是一個重要的主張，因為ID智能設計者的宣導者通常對這一點非常 "不可知論"（不確定）。

6但人類也有其獨特之處，無法用進化論來解釋，而是指向我們的精神本質。這包括道德法則的存在（對與錯的認識）和對上帝的尋找，這是歷史上所有人類文化的特點。     見。道德法則部分。未來的研究可以而且可能會推翻這種觀點。這還不是全部。基因是容易的，基因也是不容易的。解釋基因的相似性並不容易，因為基因在做有用的事情，而且它們在人和狗身上預計會做同樣有用的事情。因此，相同的基因預計會有類似的DNA序列。但我們是幸運的。基因有暗角。那些暗角是編碼相同氨基酸的同等方式。這些暗角的行為就像基因之間的垃圾DNA一樣。

基因的突變有兩種：改變和不改變氨基酸的突變。那些不改變氨基酸的突變被稱為沉默的突變。那些改變氨基酸的突變可能是有利的、有害的或中性的（=氨基酸不同但不影響蛋白質的性能）。

資料顯示，蛋白質編碼DNA（基因）中的沉默突變比改變氨基酸的突變要常見得多。為什麼呢？原因與垃圾DNA的原因相同。不改變一個氨基酸的突變不會被自然選擇看到，因此可以自由改變。這些基因在生命樹上分離的時間越長，差異就越大。柯林斯："如果這些基因組是由個別特殊的創造行為創造的，為什麼會出現這種特殊的特徵呢？"(p.130)造物主將不得不創造無意義的差異來取樂，或者更糟糕的是誤導人類觀察者。不知不覺中，柯林斯在這裡緊跟達爾文在《物種起源》中的推理。柯林斯無用的垃圾DNA論點與達爾文的"雛形，過去的回聲，......無用的器官，像百年閣樓的垃圾一樣隱藏在活體中"（註31）具有相同的功能。

    這些關於造物主的言論很有意義，因為它們是由一個有神論者和一個基督徒說的。用我自己的話說：神學理論並不能預測或解釋這些微妙的觀察。只有在事實被發現後，有神論者才會試圖猜測為什麼上帝會以那種精確的方式來做。柯林斯對其他創造論的解釋非常耐心。然而，他並沒有對獨立的創造/物種的起源進行全面的神學和生物學分析。例子。為什麼會有突變？為什麼一個明智的、仁慈的、強大的上帝會把DNA設計成這樣的方式，使突變不可避免？變異會破壞他設計的完美基因組。為什麼？有什麼意義呢？為什麼要跳出基因？一個基因中對同一氨基酸有不同的編碼有什麼意義？通過省略這些神學和生物學方面的考慮，柯林斯為進化論提出了過於有利和過於合理的替代方案。我在《獨立起源和生命的事實》中討論了反對獨立起源的技術論據。

    我的第二個例子是柯林斯對人類和老鼠染色體的比較。這個例子被柯林斯說成是 "一個共同祖先的更有說服力的證據"。因此，如果讀者想瞭解共同世系的最佳證據，就必須瞭解這個證據。他的證據有兩個方面：一是如何支持共同世系，二是如何使獨立起源成為不合理的替代解釋。這個例子不是關於真正的基因，也不是關於真正的隨機DNA，而是關於基因的受損拷貝（跳躍基因）。跳躍的基因會產生幾個拷貝，在染色體的隨機位置插入。在過去和現在都是如此。在人類和小鼠中，基因沿染色體的順序往往是一樣的。這一點早已為人所知。截斷的ARET這對於一些跳躍基因（古代重複元素）也是如此。它們在人類和小鼠的染色體上經常發現相似的位置。更值得注意的是，受損的拷貝也出現在人類和小鼠的相同位置。這是新的。柯林斯："在人類和小鼠基因組的同一位置發現一個精確截斷的ARE[受損拷貝是令人信服的證據，說明這一插入事件一定發生在人類和小鼠共同的祖先身上。" (p.135).

柯林斯："除非有人願意採取這樣的立場，即上帝將這些被斬首的AREs（註1）放在這些精確的位置上以混淆和誤導我們，否則人類和小鼠的共同祖先的結論幾乎是不可避免的。因此，這種最新的基因組資料對那些堅持所有物種都是憑空創造的觀點的人提出了壓倒性的挑戰"。(p.136-137).

我補充說：同樣有一百個其他的生物技術反對特殊創造論和獨立起源的觀點，而且有些已經有150年了。請注意：柯林斯小心翼翼地避免聲稱特創論是錯誤的，但他希望讀者能看到，特創論作為對TARE的解釋是非常不合理的。

對於新達爾文主義的隨機性和進化的預定結果（人類物種）的不相容性，柯林斯給出了一個神學解決方案。"在我們看來，進化可能是由機會驅動的，但從上帝的角度來看，結果將是完全指定的"。(p.205). 我無法理解這種神學主張，因為我無法把自己放在上帝的位置上。我不知道如何像上帝一樣思考。顯然，柯林斯可以。

      智慧設計

法蘭西斯-柯林斯表明，一個人不需要成為無神論者來接受進化論。這很重要。另外，從一個基督徒那裡聽到一個基督徒不需要認同智慧設計，這也是一件好事。柯林斯拒絕年輕地球創造論（YEC）和智慧設計（ID），因為它與良好的科學相衝突。在 "進化：是理論還是事實？柯林斯指出。

"這裡報告的來自基因組研究的例子，加上其他可以寫滿數百本如此長的書的例子，為進化論提供了那種分子支援，使幾乎所有的工作生物學家都相信達爾文的變異和自然選擇框架是毫無疑問的正確。" (p.141)

此外，柯林斯認為，否認進化論會使上帝成為大騙子。這就是大欺騙者的論點，

他還用它來反對(年輕地球創造論)YEC對人類基因組資料的解釋。在新的研究中，諸如人類血液凝固級聯、眼睛和細菌鞭毛等ID(智慧設計)例子都失敗了。基因組研究有助於駁斥ID智慧設計的主張。智慧設計ID是一種缺口之神的理論。智慧設計ID損害了信仰。同樣，人們可以問，當柯林斯自己的不可簡化的複雜道德法則被自然過程解釋時，信仰會發生什麼？他對智慧設計ID的討論很短，他對文獻的引用清單也很短（註3）。

      道德法則的論證

法蘭西斯-柯林斯道德法則對柯林斯來說非常重要："作為一個信徒二十八年後，道德法則對我來說是上帝最有力的路標"（第218頁）。換句話說。柯林斯用道德法則來論證上帝的存在，這是一個古老的神學論點（註25）。什麼是 "道德律"？柯林斯引用C.S.路易士的話（註4）："對壓迫、謀殺、背叛、虛假的譴責，以及對老人、年輕人和弱者的仁慈、施捨、公正和誠實的禁令（註15），（註41）。但是，為什麼道德法則能證明上帝的存在？柯林斯有兩個主要論據。一個是世界上所有的文化和宗教都認可一個普遍的、絕對的和永恆的道德法則。據柯林斯說，在《宗教和倫理學百科全書》中，它有壓倒性的記載。他認為，這是一個獨特的屬性，將人類和動物區分開來。道德法則包括利他主義，而利他主義不僅僅是互惠（"你幫我抓背，我就幫你抓背"，第25頁）。他的第二個論點是 "無私的利他主義對進化論者來說是一個重大的挑戰"（第27頁）。在接受了人類的進化起源沒有超自然的幹預之後，對他來說，道德法則是唯一不能被解釋的屬性，也永遠不會被達爾文進化論和人類基因組資料所解釋。這兩個論點都出現了一些嚴重的困難。

第一個問題是 "道德法則 "這一概念的含義問題。法律可以指（1）一個國家的公民必須遵守的規則體系，通常是書面的，也可以指（2）自然法，是對自然界規律性的描述。柯林斯混亂地使用了 "法律 "的兩種含義，而沒有明確區分它們。下面是一個含義（1）的明顯例子。"道德法則的難以置信的高標準，我不得不承認我在實踐中經常違反"（第30頁）。(道德)法則的第二個含義在下面這段話中很明顯。"是一種接近於法律的現象，就像萬有引力定律，"（第23頁）。更糟糕的是，柯林斯在補充時將意義1和2混為一談。"然而它是一個規律，以驚人的規律性被打破"（第23頁）。萬有引力定律並沒有以驚人的規律性被打破。事實世界（引力）和價值世界（道德法則）是非常不同的 "法律"，認為它們相似是非常不恰當的。在這種混亂的思維下，人們甚至無法開始對這個問題進行有意義的討論：說道德律存在是什麼意思？道德法則對一個人來說是內在的還是外在的？根據柯林斯的一個描述，道德法則是人類內部的："利他主義的衝動，良心的聲音"，"我們都有一種天生的是非知識"（第243頁）。內部法律不可能是意義上的法律（1），因為（書面）規則體系是外在於人的。為了檢驗這一主張，人們需要實際利他行為的經驗證據，或犯罪和仇恨犯罪的統計數字（註69），訪談，或大腦掃描。與其稱之為 "道德律"，不如稱之為 "道德行為"，或 "道德感覺"，或 "道德傾向"，或 "道德知識"。在這裡，達爾文的解釋可能是相關的。複雜的情況出現了，因為外部命令可以通過教育（父母、學校、教堂）內化。

事實上，柯林斯使用 "道德法則 "的第二個含義是對人類來說是外在的。"一個試圖讓我們以某種方式行事的命令"。在這裡，道德法則不是與生俱來的，而是需要被教導的。這可以稱為 "神聖的命令理論"，即道德價值是上帝所命令的任何東西的理論。本書最後一章中的一段話證實了這一觀點（註59）。如果是這樣，與其稱之為道德律，不如稱之為道德命令或神聖命令。為了檢驗這個含義，人們會調查宗教文本。但在道德法則的這一含義中，柯林斯所說的 "道德法則對我來說是上帝最有力的路標 "是一個同義反復，因為像《聖經》這樣的宗教文本應該是上帝啟發的文本，其中存在的任何道德命令都必然來自於上帝。在這裡，達爾文的解釋是不相關的，也不可能失敗。指望從進化論中解釋定義不明確、有偏見的宗教譴責和禁令，而不顧現實生活中的行為，這是不對的。

在 "道德命令 "的意義上，無私的利他主義絕不可能成為 "進化論者的主要挑戰"。柯林斯使用了C.S.路易士的一句話，他引用了《宗教與倫理百科全書》（註6）。然而，這第二個意思（外部）有它自己的問題。柯林斯引用的《道德律》是一個高度選擇性的禁令和譴責的清單。例如，在《舊約》的某一頁上頒佈了和平、正義、尊重人和財產的崇高道德原則，而在下一頁上則認可強姦、殺戮和掠奪不是自己 "鄰居 "的人（註7）。如果他的清單是有偏見的，那麼它就不能作為普遍道德法則存在的一個很好的測試。

這份清單的另一個問題是，它的原則是抽象和籠統的，這使得在實際應用中存在分歧，如墮胎、安樂死、自殺、克隆、死刑、疫苗接種、器官和血液捐贈、節育、離婚、同性戀婚姻、跨種族性行為、槍支管制、戰爭、資本主義。柯林斯的錯誤在於，他把定義一個共同的道德原則清單和觀察這樣一個清單混淆了。

第二個問題來自於混淆了 "道德法則 "的兩個含義，當它被應用於人類的實際行為時。人類行為可以是道德的（利他主義），也可以是不道德的（利己主義）。對柯林斯來說，"道德律 "定義了 "道德 "一詞的含義。當柯林斯尋找實際道德行為的證據時，他把重點放在極端的（註53）和罕見的利他主義形式上（特蕾莎修女，奧斯卡-辛德勒），以及我所說的 "自殺式利他主義"（4a），而忽略了溫和的但更常見的利他主義形式。實際上，他聲稱那些罕見的形式不能用達爾文主義解釋，而忽略了可以用達爾文主義解釋的常見形式。他對人類 "真正的利他主義 "的積極證據是傳聞，但被說成是對人類物種的代表。然而，想出動物中真正利他主義的軼事（11）和想出人類中真正利他主義的罕見或獨特案例（如特蕾莎修女）一樣容易。即使是一百萬個特蕾莎，也只相當於人類世界人口的不到0.1%。特蕾莎式的利他主義遠非常見，而是罕見（註40）。特蕾莎獲得諾貝爾獎的事實意味著她的行為是特殊的，她的行為得到了獎勵（註82）。在當代人格心理學中，合群性是人格結構的五個主要維度之一。順應性強的人可以被描述為利他主義、溫和、善良、有同情心和溫暖。研究表明，該特質呈鐘形曲線分佈（正態分佈），相對而言，極端分數並不常見（希特勒和特蕾莎修女處於量表的兩個極端），許多人的得分介於兩者之間（註16）。真正的 "利他主義 "只是人類群體中連續分佈的特質的一個極端。當他必須處理我們未能以道德方式行事的問題時，柯林斯轉而談及《神聖命令》意義上的道德律，並談到我們的自由意志、我們對道德律的不服從，以及我們與生俱來的是非知識會被 "分心和誤解 "所掩蓋（註8）。無論實際行為與道德命令之間的差距有多大，都不影響道德律（The Moral Command）的存在。無論我們的行為如何，神聖的命令只是存在于宗教文本中。然而，在人類中，知善與行善之間存在著巨大的差距（註8）。知與行之間的差距是如此巨大，以至於導致了臭名昭著的 "痛苦問題"。"人們普遍認為，C.S.路易士所說的 "痛苦問題 "是基督教信仰最重要的障礙之一"（註9）。柯林斯自己寫道："我們的痛苦有很大一部分是由我們對彼此的行為帶來的"（第43頁），這再次確立了道德律與我們實際行為之間的差異。但這一切並不影響柯林斯，因為他處於一個舒適的位置，即沒有多少不道德的人類行為會否定上帝。在這個意義上，"道德律 "的存在是無可辯駁的，並將自動成為上帝的證據。

    在討論動物的道德法則時，柯林斯在實際行為的意義上使用它。他不能不這樣做，因為人們不能問動物關於他們的是非的知識。在動物身上，只有實際的行為可以觀察。但這為評價道德法則創造了雙重標準，加強了對動物的偏見和對人類的支持。第三個問題。柯林斯未能證明

達爾文主義未能解釋道德法則（"真正的利他主義"）。

道德法則的神性起源

b源於a

首先，達爾文主義的解釋。柯林斯聲稱，"無私的利他主義給進化論者帶來了重大挑戰"。(在這次討論中，我遵循柯林斯將道德律簡化為無私的利他主義的說法）。)

 達爾文主義的主流觀點

事實上，主流的達爾文主義觀點是。"由於人們意識到自然選擇應該有利於個體而不是其所屬的物種的行為，解釋利他行為的發生已經成為進化生物學的核心問題之一"。(註17). 進化生物學家Jerry Coyne寫道："互惠的利他主義（你給我撓背......），這不是真正的利他主義，而是一種對雙方個體都有利的互利主義。根據進化論，真正的利他主義，即個人的犧牲大於他們的利益，不可能進化，也不應該在非人類動物中看到。(它不是。"（......）"雖然真正的利他主義不能由基因產生，但人類可能會以理性的方式走向美好"（45）。理查-道金斯（Richard Dawkins）認為，"讓我們嘗試教導慷慨和利他主義，因為我們生來就是自私的"（註27）。數學家Peter D. Taylor寫道："[進化生物學]最持久的謎題之一是合作和利他主義等社會行為的存在"（註43）。進化生物學家馬克-雷德利在2005年寫道："總的來說，生物學家仍然承認自我犧牲行為是對達爾文自然選擇理論的一個主要挑戰"（註48）。

    人們提出了四種達爾文式的解釋，即個人的利他行為。(1）親屬選擇，（2）互惠，（3）獲得慷慨和善良的聲譽，（4）明顯的慷慨作為購買不真實的廣告的一種方式（註47）。漢密爾頓（W. D. Hamilton）在其發表在《美國自然主義者》（1963年）上的著名文章《利他行為的演變》中，將利他主義定義為以個人為代價幫助有遺傳關係的個人，並從達爾文原則中推導出來（註91）。漢密爾頓的規則rb>c，指出如果受益人和受益生物之間的關係係數（r）乘以受益人的健身收益（b）超過受益人的成本（c），利他主義行為就會進化。簡單地說，由於一個人的基因是與他的親屬共用的，提高親屬的繁殖成功率是基因自我增殖的一種方式（註32）。後來Axelrod、Hamilton和Trivers表明，合作（互惠的利他主義）也可以為無關係的個體發展（註27）。最近（在柯林斯書出版後），研究人員指出，一些形式的利他主義，如戰爭中的英雄主義，是針對非親屬的，成本很高（所以不能用漢密爾頓規則解釋），或者互惠是不可能的（所以不能用互惠利他主義解釋），但可以用群體選擇解釋（註57）。在第27-28頁，柯林斯討論並拒絕了進化論中關於利他主義的論點，但沒有適當的參考資料（註92）。他需要不到2頁的時間。柯林斯忽略了，一旦合作、幫助行為、同情和同理心成為我們行為和情感劇碼的一部分，那麼走向非互惠的幫助，甚至是對自己有代價的幫助，就是一個較小的步驟。柯林斯接受""螞蟻的利他主義 "在進化方面很容易解釋，因為激勵不育工蟻的基因正是它們的母親將傳給它們所幫助的兄弟姐妹的基因"（第29頁），但他說他沒有看到這如何能適用於 "更複雜的種群"。的確，複雜社會中的人類行為在很大程度上是達爾文的解釋所不能及的，因為今天的大型社會在過去從未存在過（註54）。然而，這並不是道德的神聖起源的論據。這意味著社會心理學等學科（註49,50,74）需要補充達爾文的解釋。柯林斯對這個問題的討論非常簡短，他討論這個問題時，好像研究已經停止了，但研究還在繼續（23，35，36，43，49，51，52，55，57，58，60，61，62，63，64，65，66，67，70，71，72，73，76，77，78，79，83，84，85，86，88，89，90），涵蓋了新學科，如大腦研究，經濟學和心理學，學科之間的邊界變得模糊（例如：神經經濟學 68，76）。此外，Zahavi（註24）和Susan Blackmore（註30）提出了親屬選擇和互惠的替代解釋。最近對動物的合作和利他主義的所有理論模型的概述是。(註18)，並在此討論了術語的定義。(註33). 一個開放性的概述是。生物學的利他主義。

    在我看來，柯林斯以神學為主的觀點阻礙了對道德進行開放性的科學調查。柯林斯太容易否定達爾文對利他主義的解釋了。另一方面，進化生物學家傾向於解釋 "太多"，甚至不知道人類社會中利他主義的實際程度，例如忽略了社會心理學。此外，柯林斯對互惠的利他主義（互利）有相當低的評價。也許這是因為我們在除我們自己之外的其他動物身上看到了它，而它不是 "真正的 "利他主義？這種態度是很不必要的。互惠倫理 "或 "黃金法則 "是幾乎所有主要宗教和文化（摩西、孔子、耶穌、穆罕默德）中的基本道德原則（註34）。一個不願意回報鄰居的人，會跳進河裡去救一個陌生人嗎？

    那麼主張b）"上帝把道德律放在人類身上 "呢？有什麼直接證據可以證明道德法則來自於上帝？是不是因為《聖經》和其他聖典中提到了道德法則，所以它來自上帝？那麼他必須證明，上帝直接啟發了《聖經》和其他所有包含道德律的聖書。不幸的是，柯林斯知道 "科學的工具並不是瞭解他的正確工具。(......)上帝存在的證據必須來自其他方向，而最終的決定將基於信仰，而不是證據"。(p. 30). 所以，柯林斯沒有給出一個直接的證據，證明道德法則來自於上帝。無論如何，我們需要上帝來做道德嗎？在另一段話中，柯林斯寫道："我們都有一種與生俱來的對與錯的知識；儘管這種知識可能被分心和誤解所掩蓋，但它也可以通過仔細的沉思來發現"（第243頁，我的強調）。雖然這種仔細的沉思並不能否定道德法則來自於上帝，但它證明瞭我們的道德原則不需要上帝。很可能宗教文本的作者也做了一些仔細的思考。柯林斯進一步指出。"一個人不需要是有神論者就能同意這些[生物倫理學]原則。道德法則對我們所有人說話，無論我們是否同意它的起源"。(p.244)的確，起源並不重要，特別是在一個世俗和多元的社會中。在達爾文主義之前的時代，哲學家大衛-休謨（1711-1776）已經認為，我們不需要上帝來做道德的事情。柯林斯似乎完全沒有意識到主張 "無神倫理 "的現代文獻（註28）。此外，他也沒有意識到反對宗教信仰的道德案例（註46）。那麼主張c）道德法則的神聖起源源于達爾文主義對道德法則的解釋失敗呢？從邏輯上講，道德法則的神聖起源並不源於達爾文主義無法解釋利他行為的假設。這將是 "上帝之隙 "解釋的一個變種。柯林斯在處理(智慧設計)ID時拒絕這種類型的解釋。因此，他在這裡引用這種解釋是令人驚訝的。邁克爾-貝赫的智慧設計的不可簡化的複雜性和柯林斯的道德法則之間有什麼區別？哲學家理查-喬伊絲（註44）提出了一個柯林斯完全忽視的重要問題：如果道德最終是進化的結果，那會不會破壞道德的權威？會不會是道德的進化起源為道德平反？如果不對這些問題進行調查，把道德的進化起源視為一種威脅是完全沒有意義的。道德的進化起源似乎與道德法則的普遍性完全一致。

    關於 "真正的利他主義 "的最後一句話。根據定義，基督徒不可能有真正的利他行為，因為他們的回報是在天堂的位置。對於基督徒來說，"別人不知道的小的良心行為 "是不存在的，因為上帝看到、聽到並知道一切。因此，柯林斯關於真正的利他主義的主張崩潰了。關於 "純利他主義 "的最後一句話：志願服務和其他利他行為也是積極情緒的強大來源（Argyle，2001）。幫助他人會使施予者產生快樂的感覺。有時，慈善捐贈與 "溫暖的光芒 "有關。給予支持而不是接受他人的支持也與長壽有關（Brown, Nesse, Vinokur & Smith, 2003）（註36, 37）。看來純粹的利他主義並不存在。

第四個問題是一個非常尷尬的問題：道德法則導致了燒死女巫的理由。令人驚訝的是，這發生在同一頁（第24頁），就在道德法則的定義之後！我完整地引用了這段話。為了不誤導柯林斯，我給出了這段話的完整引述。

"在一些不尋常的文化中，法律具有令人驚訝的外衣--考慮到十七世紀美國的燒死女巫。然而，當仔細調查時，可以看到這些明顯的反常現象來自於對誰或什麼是善或惡的強烈持有但誤導的結論。如果你堅信女巫是地球上邪惡的化身，是魔鬼的使徒，那麼採取這種激烈的行動難道不顯得合理嗎？"

柯林斯所說的 "法律 "是指道德法則。焚燒女巫顯然是由道德法則引起的。然而，由於《道德律》中根本沒有提到懲罰，懲罰怎麼可能來自于《道德律》呢？從《道德律》到懲罰是一個很大的跳躍。死刑與《道德法》的譴責和禁令相矛盾。令人震驚的是，柯林斯最優先考慮的是表明燒死女巫並不會使道德法則失效（註26），他懶得告訴他的讀者，他無條件地反對對所有人的所有酷刑或反對死刑。還是他忘了告訴我們？譴責300多年前的非人道做法應該是很容易的（註29）。異常 "似乎是指他們燒錯了人，而他們試圖遵循的道德律是好的。其含義是，今天的基督徒更準確地知道他們要燒哪些人。當時他們只弄錯了幾個小細節，就錯誤地處決了6萬人（註20）。一些不尋常的文化？歐洲獵殺女巫並不是一個單一的歷史事件，而是從蘇格蘭到特蘭西瓦尼亞，從西班牙到芬蘭，歷時300年（1450 - 1750）（註20）。柯林斯完全忽視了，燒死女巫並不是其他清晰合理的概念和原則的反常現象。這些可憐的人被指控殺害嬰兒，造成牛群不育，並通過魔法手段破壞莊稼，崇拜魔鬼，以及夜間飛行（是的，執行者認為女巫會飛）。一個普通的罪犯本來可以被監禁，或者是無痛快速的死刑。女巫對她們的鄰居有什麼危害？柯林斯認為魔法是有效的，而且已經被審問者證明瞭嗎？柯林斯是否認為嬰兒被殺，莊稼歉收是靠魔法？柯林斯是否認為魔鬼是存在的，而且 "與魔鬼的契約 "在任何情況下都被證明瞭？柯林斯是否認為以堅定的信念代替法律證明，就足以以最殘酷的方式處決人？真正的反常在於神學概念的抽象性和虛構性，如女巫、邪惡的化身、魔鬼的使徒。這就是問題所在。危險就在這裡。柯林斯在這幾頁中提供了最好的證據，證明瞭宗教所特有的虛構的、抽象的概念的危險性。一個密切相關的宗教概念是地獄中的永恆燃燒。他完全沒有嘗試對這種思維進行科學分析，相反，他是問題的一部分，他自己完全被抽象概念所迷惑（註10）。在關於生命倫理學的附錄中，柯林斯將道德法則描述為："我們都有一種與生俱來的對錯知識；儘管這種知識可能被分心和誤解所掩蓋，但它也可以通過仔細的沉思來發現"。(第243頁）會不會是執行者的道德判斷被分心和誤解所掩蓋了？柯林斯引用了幾乎所有文化和社會都有的四項道德原則。

尊重自主權：理性的個人應該在個人決策中獲得自由，不受外界不適當的脅迫的原則。

正義：要求公平、道德和公正地對待所有的人

有利：要求以他人的最大利益對待他人

不害人：要求公平和公正地對待所有人。"首先不造成傷害"（如《希波克拉底誓言》）。

當應用於焚燒女巫時，所有四項原則都被違反了。柯林斯沒有看到這種聯繫。然而，在附錄中討論生物倫理學時，他似乎意識到了道德法則的一個問題。"明顯的危險是歷史記錄顯示，信徒有時會以上帝從未想過的方式利用他們的信仰，並從愛的關懷轉向自以為是、蠱惑人心和極端主義。毫無疑問，那些進行宗教裁判所的人認為自己是在進行一項高度道德的活動，正如那些在麻塞諸塞州賽勒姆的火刑柱上燒死女巫的人一樣。(p.271). 請注意，柯林斯沒有添加簡單的結論。"但他們進行的是一種非常不道德的活動"。好吧，如果上帝確實向人類灌輸了道德法則，他也沒能教給我們一個明確的道德法則。人類似乎普遍對道德法則教給我們的東西感到困惑。我們今天的情況有好轉嗎？柯林斯需要認識到，盲目遵循宗教文本中的道德命令不是解決辦法，而是問題所在。焚燒女巫只是這種問題的一個例子。

任何認為《聖經》等宗教文本中的道德律是一個清晰、明確、一致的概念的人，應該思考一下《舊約》中的道德律 "以眼還眼"（復仇）和《新約》中的 "愛你的敵人"（和解）（註42）。第五個問題：柯林斯關於道德的觀點使動物在道德上比人類低下。柯林斯寫道："儘管其他動物有時會顯示出道德感的閃光點，但它們肯定不是普遍存在的，在許多情況下，其他物種的行為似乎與任何普遍的正確感形成了巨大的反差"。(p.23, 5). 支援這一說法的資料在哪裡？這是對動物道德行為的公正和無偏見的評估嗎？如果以不偏不倚的方式來看，人類的實際行為是不值得驕傲的。許多人的行為與任何普遍意義上的正確性形成了巨大的反差（見上文）。這就需要對人類的道德法則提出更謙虛的主張。柯林斯補充說，人類有對與錯的意識，伴隨著語言的發展。事實上，動物的最大缺點是他們不能寫下道德規則。最大的優勢是，動物不能僅僅因為寫下了《道德法則》而假裝自己更好。動物在道德上是低劣的，這是柯林斯認為道德法則是書面法則的一個不可避免的邏輯結論。然而，動物行為研究表明，動物（靈長類動物）和人類之間的連續性比柯林斯想像的要強。動物確實表現出利他主義行為和合作（註12）。這不應該讓柯林斯感到驚訝，因為他知道人類和其他物種之間在基因層面上存在連續性。令人驚訝的是，柯林斯關於動物道德行為的問題是由於沒有完全接受人類是一個進化的物種，包括其行為。在靈長類動物中尋找類似人類的行為，與柯林斯自己在動物中尋找類似人類的基因頗為相似! 一本好書可以從Frans de Waal的《我們內心的猿》開始，特別是《靈長類動物和哲學家--道德是如何進化的》（11）。柯林斯的道德法則清單上的專案包括公正、善良和施捨。德瓦爾在談到公正性時寫道。"這與公平是智者在思考了一生的對、錯和我們在宇宙中的位置後提出的觀點完全相反"。(註15). 關於仁慈，弗蘭斯-德瓦爾寫道："基督教敦促我們愛鄰如己，給赤身裸體的人穿衣服，給窮人吃東西，照顧病人。不過，認識到這一點很好，在強調仁慈的時候，宗教是在強制執行已經是我們人性的一部分的東西"。(第181頁）而邁克爾-謝爾默則簡明扼要地描述了這一點。"進化在我們身上創造了這些價值，而宗教為了強調這些價值，把它們確定為重要的價值"（註14）。法蘭西斯科-阿亞拉（Francisco Ayala）將這種情況簡明扼要地描述為。"我自己的觀點是，我們是有道德的人，因為我們的生物學，但我們的道德體系是文化建構的"（註56）。最近，人們在烏鴉（Corvus monedula，一種鳥類）中觀察到施捨行為（註15）。

最後，將動物視為道德上有缺陷的生物會有什麼好處呢？它是否感覺更好？它能改善人類的狀況嗎？它能改善人類過上有道德的生活的能力嗎？

第六個問題：道德是先天的還是後天的行為，還是別的什麼？天生的還是後天的，還是兩者都有？柯林斯似乎更喜歡 "內在的道德法則"，但道德法則是如何 "內在 "的？他忘了，孩子們不斷地被他們父母的 "做 "和 "不做 "所影響。正如德瓦爾所說。"從很小的時候起，我們就受到了對與錯的判斷"（註22）。這些都是宗教/非宗教，以及道德/非道德的指示。要在這些類別之間劃清界限是很難的。然而，兒童通過這些教育互動瞭解到，行為有壞有好。除了卡斯帕-豪澤爾，沒有一個孩子能逃過這種接觸（註75）。因此，只考慮 "內在道德法則 "的一個來源是錯誤的。教育是 "內部 "道德法則的非常重要的來源。   結論

我不知道還有哪位有神論進化論者對進化論進行了如此出色的辯護，並對年輕地球創造論YEC和(智慧設計)ID進行了如此明確的拒絕。柯林斯並沒有聲稱生命有超自然的起源。與年輕地球創造論YEC和(智慧設計)ID相比，神論進化論是一種更有利於科學的宗教形式，儘管柯林斯對達爾文的利他主義解釋有強烈的異議。他需要重新思考他的道德法則論點，這不是一個連貫的論點，而且忽略了動物行為研究以及利他主義進化方面的大量現代理論研究。如果上帝確實向人類灌輸了道德法則，他也沒能教給我們一個明確而有力的道德法則。歷史記錄顯示，人類對道德法則究竟告訴我們應該做什麼非常困惑。而除了利他主義，人類肯定也被賦予了仇恨的能力。然而，柯林斯和進化生物學家似乎在一個問題上達成了一致，那就是人類不是普遍的利他主義者，經常表現得很自私，正如傑裡-科恩所說的那樣。"進化為我們建造了一個能夠允許行為靈活的大腦，我們可以利用它有意識地推翻我們的基因，教給我們美德的行為"。(註45). 我們現在需要的是討論一系列有益於整個地球的道德行為準則的優點，而不考慮其所謂的宗教或進化的起源。

 Notes

1.Truncated AREs (Ancient Repetitive Elements) are truncated at a precise base pair at the time of insertion; they are dead genes.

2.Humans and chimps have a different number of chromosomes. Chimpanzee: 2n=48 (n=24); humans: 2n=46 (n=23). The human haploid set consists of 23 chromosomes, but there are 24 different chromosomes, because the sex chromosome pair XY consists of two different chromosomes: X and Y. The sex cells (germ cells) have either an X or a Y chromosome, so sex cells have 23 chromosomes. Because, in the haploid state, two chimp chromosomes fused head to tail into one, humans have in the haploid state one chromosome less, and in the diploid state two chromosomes less. The chromosomes fused head to tail after the human lineages diverged from chimpanzee, gorilla, and orang-utan. Structural chromosome changes similar to those that gave rise to the human lineage happen today in humans and are the cause of diverse medical problems.

3.Absent is: Matt Young and Taner Edis Why Intelligent Design Fails: A Scientific Critique of the New Creationism and recent evidence: Mark J. Pallen and Nicholas J. Matzke (2006) "From The Origin of Species to the origin of bacterial flagella". Nature Reviews Microbiology, published online 5 September 2006

4.page 24. This is a quote from C.S. Lewis. The Moral Law is described on other pages as:

the existence of human altruism (p.169);

"the law of right behavior" (p.22);

"the Moral Law - the altruistic impulse, the voice of conscience (p.25,27);

"the motivation to practice this kind of love exists within all of us" (p.27);

"a command trying to get us to behave in a certain way" (p.29);

"instilled this special glimpse of Himself into each one of us" (p.29);

"the Moral Law within" (p.57) quoted from Immanuel Kant;

"inner voice that causes me to feel compelled to jump into the river to try to save a drowning stranger, even if Im not a good swimmer and may myself die in the effort" (p.28);

"we all have an innate knowledge of right and wrong" (p.243).

Elsewhere Moral Law is described as "unchanging moral duty".

4a. This last type of altruism I call suicide-altruism. it doesnt make sense to me. Obviously, Collins ignored his inner-voice because he is still alive. It is not smart for a bad swimmer to jump into the river. How could a bad swimmer save a non-swimmer? Both could die. What about the moral obligation towards his family? Who takes care of his wife and children if he is dead? A good altruist is able to do many acts of altruism. The suicide-altruist cannot repeat his act. A stranger? The non-swimmer would likely be a member of his own group; not a complete stranger. Another question: would Collins jump into the water to save his dog? (99% probability that a dog has same genes as human). Another limitation: the altruist must have knowledge of a dangerous situation and the ability to save lives. Not all passengers of the Titanic were saved despite the altruistic motives of the rescue workers. The most severe limitation of altruism is when a ship sinks without a trace in the middle of the ocean and only God knows about it (but does not interfere). Pain, suffering and death will continue to exist in this world and no altruist can do something about it.

5.Could it be that this Christian view of animals has something to do with the lack of any human moral obligations towards animals? Saint Augustine argued categorically that we have no moral obligation whatsoever to animals. The English Jesuit Joseph Rickaby (1901) argued that human beings have no greater duties of charity towards animals than we have toward stocks and stones (21). For me personally, this animals-are-inferior-view is a reason to reject Christianity (13). However, from a scientific point of view, the problem with the anthropocentric view is that it is a dogma and is not open to empirical findings.

6.Collins quotes C. S. Lewis saying "a lie, a good resounding lie" (page 24). Calling an opponent a liar is unheard of in a scientific publication. Something weird is going on here. Maybe this style of thinking has something to do with the fact that Lewis is not a professional theologian, but a self-thought man. It is puzzling that a professional scientist bases his most important conclusions and decisions on a self-thought theologian.

7.from Michael Shermer (2006) Why Darwin Matters, page 133. (see short book reviews of Michael Shermer). Steven Pinker adds: "The Bible contains several injunctions from God to the Israelites to slay the occupants of towns they covet - except for the young women, whom they are to take as unwilling wives. Since then, religions have given the world stonings, witch burning, crusades, inquisitions, holy wars, jihads, fatwas, suicide bombers, gay bashers, abortion-clinic gunmen, child molesters, and mothers who drown their sons so they can happy be reunited in Heaven", page 143 in Intelligent Thought.

The Bible describes infanticide: God himself killed all the firstborn of Egypt at one time, among which were certainly many children: "For I will go through the land of Egypt in that night, and will smite all the first-born in the land of Egypt, both man and beast; and against all the gods of Egypt I will execute judgments: I am Jehovah. " Exodus 12:12; (Exod.12:29) (see: Old Testament Infanticide) It is well known to Muslims, Christians and Jews that Abraham was ordered to sacrifice his son and he was willing to do so. So God ordered infanticide and Abraham was willing to sacrifice his son. Collins would do better by being more modest about the Moral Law. Yes, infanticide is opposed to child care. But raising ones own children is also the opposite of the adoption of foreign children. The fact that the majority of people do not opt for adoption, but instead opt for having and raising their own children is predicted by Darwinism.

8."it is broken with astounding regularity" (p.23); "the Moral Law, and our obvious inability to live up to it (p.37); "We use this ability [free will] frequently to disobey the Moral Law" (p.43), "our innate knowledge of right and wrong can be obscured by distractions and misunderstandings" (p.243). That makes it not easy to establish the existence of the Moral Law because its absence can simply be explained by our obvious inability.

9.quoted by McGrath (2005) Dawkins God, p.74.

10.Witch burning could be a case of xenophobia, turn a single individual of ones own community into an enemy and dehumanize it in order to kill it in the most brutal way. Xenophobia is also known in chimpanzees. Frans de Waal (2005) pp 139-142.

11.Frans de Waal (2005) Our Inner Ape. A Leading Primatologist Explains Why We Are Who We Are, paperback 288 pp. Recommended! For example he points to the error of believing that since natural selection is a cruel, pitiless process of elimination it must produce cruel and pitiless creatures." (page 34-35). In Primates and Philosophers: How Morality Evolved (2006) Frans de Waal points out that the famous Darwinist Thomas Henry Huxley as well as Richard Dawkins say that human morality cannot not be handled by evolutionary theory! See also: Lee Alan Dugatkin (2006) The Altruism Equation: Seven Scientists Search for the Origins of Goodness. A general and very attractive introduction is: John Alcock (2001) Animal Behavior. An Evolutionary approach. See also: Steven Pinker (2006) "Evolution and Ethics" in John Brockman (2006) Intelligent Thought.

12.A dilemma for Collins: does he agree with Christians who believe that the movie The March of the Penguins "passionately affirms traditional norms like monogamy, sacrifice and child rearing"? (see: here). If so, did God implant these norms into penguins or is there a natural explanation? If God did implant these norms in penguins, then humans are no longer unique. On the other hand, if there is a natural explanation, why not invoke it for humans as well?

13.An exception seems to be Joan Roughgarden (2006) Evolution and Christian Faith, page 141, where he/she talks about the Christian responsibility to care for Gods creation. Furthermore, Christians are not known for their altruistic behaviour towards animal and plant species. E.O. Wilson (2006) proposes an alliance between science and religion to save Earths vanishing biodiversity in his The Creation: A Meeting of Science and Religion to stop the destruction of nature. Would Collins agree with extending altruism to all species of the earth?

14.Michael Shermer (2006) Why Darwin Matters, p. 130.

15.Frans de Waal (2005) Our Inner Ape: "It is quite the opposite of the view that fairness was an idea introduced by wise men after a lifetime of pondering right, wrong, and our place in the cosmos." (page 221).

kindness to the aged, the young, and the weak: Frans de Waal devotes a whole chapter on Kindness (chapter 5) in the same book. Almsgiving is listed in the Moral Law. Recently, almsgiving has been observed in the bird species jackdaw (Corvus monedula)! See: Food sharing in jackdaws, Corvus monedula: what, why and with whom? Animal Behaviour (Aug 2006). The other unique human properties awareness of right and wrong, language, self-awareness and the ability to imagine the future (Collins page 23) are found also in animals. See also Frans de Waals book.

16.Agreeableness in wiki.

17.M. Van Baalen and V. A. A. Jansen (2006) "Kinds of kindness: classifying the causes of altruism and cooperation", Journal of Evolutionary Biology, September 2006, page 1377. Also: "Explaining cooperation remains one of the greatest challenges for evolutionary biology, irrespective of whether it is altruistic or mutually beneficial." (33)

18.L. Lehmann & L. Keller (2006) "The evolution of cooperation and altruism - a general framework and a classification of models", Journal of Evolutionary Biology, September 2006.

 19.See for the details: [page no longer exits]. For a discussion and more figures see: [http://www.iidb.org/ does no longer exist]. For a free pdf see: Yuxin Fan, Elena Linardopoulou, Cynthia Friedman, Eleanor Williams and .Barbara J. Trask (2002) Genomic Structure and Evolution of the Ancestral Chromosome Fusion Site in 2q13-2q14.1 and Paralogous Regions on Other Human Chromosomes, Genome Research 2002 12: 1651-1662.

  20Brian P. Levack (1995) The Witch-hunt in Early Modern Europe, p.25. See also Execution by burning and Witch-hunt in wikipedia.

   21.Gary Steiner (2005) Anthropocentrism and its Discontents. The Moral Status of Animals in the History of Western Philosophy, page 114.

  22.Frans de Waal (2006) Primates and Philosophers - How Morality Evolved, page 172-173.

  23.(a) Bettina Rockenbach & Manfred Milinski (2006) "The efficient interaction of indirect reciprocity and costly punishment", Nature, Vol 444 7 December 2006, pp. 718-723.

24.Amotz and Avishag Zahavi (1999) The Handicap Principle. A Missing Piece of Darwins Puzzle, chapter 12. According to Zahavi, "scientists increasingly recognize that many altruistic activities observed among animals cannot be explained by the theories of kin selection and of reciprocal altruism. ... once one accepts that altruistic activities bring those who perform them a gain in status, then no further explanation for altruism is needed." p.149. The question remains how general status-altruism is.

25.Since Thomas Aquinas, theologians have claimed that the very fact that humans have a moral conscience can be taken as evidence for the existence of God (page 210, Victor. J. Stenger, 2007). The book has a useful chapter Do our values come from God? and an excerpt of the chapter is present here. Stenger agrees that universal norms exist, but they do not derive from God. A general overview of Moral Arguments for the Existence of a God. An example is: 26.Geisler & Turek (2004) write: "This Moral Law is our third argument for the existence of a Theistic God (after the Cosmological and Teleological Argument)." (p.171). Collins does not refer to G&T, but both are based on C.S.Lewis. "Someone must have given us these moral obligations" (p.170), "the moral law has been written on our hearts" (p.170), "everyone knows ..." (p.171) is precisely the same vague language Collins uses too. They do not even try to demonstrate why a Moral Law Giver follows from the existence of a Moral Law.

27.Geisler & Turek (2004) write "What has changed is not the moral principle that murder is wrong but the perception or factual understanding of whether "witches" can really murder people by their curses" (p.183). This makes punishment dependent on factual understanding, that is science! But the science was wrong! These persons were tortured to death for wrong reasons. G&T forget to explain how punishment follows from the Moral Law; why burning people is not murder or why it is not violating the Moral Law, why it is not morally wrong. G&T forget to reject torture, G&T forget to explain what kind of interrogation and punishment is morally acceptable. They make the all same mistakes as Collins, except that G&T make the link between Darwin and Hitler, whereas Collins does not (to his credit).

Dawkins selfish pitiless universe, is also expressed dramatically in River Out Of Eden (1995): "The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil and no good, nothing but blind pitiless indifference". Dawkins is quite wrong about that. Charles Darwin, following John Stuart Mill and David Hume, already claimed that morality has a natural basis, stems from human nature, not from any other nobler sources such as divinity or pure reason; sympathy also plays a crucial role in morality. However, no one before Darwin insisted, consistently and persistently, on the continuity of man and animal even with respect to moral faculties. And above all, Darwin pointed out how this can be established in a species, in humans in particular. The key was natural selection, and although Darwin had some grave difficulties for explaining altruistic tendencies in man, his message was clear: human morality should be explained as an adaptation. (Randal Keynes, Annies Box - Charles Darwin, his Daughter and Human Evolution, Fourth Estate, 2001. (review). See also: "Darwin on the Evolution of Morality". Some evolutionary biologists (Jerry Coyne) seem to agree with Collins that reciprocal altruism (you scratch my back . . .) is not true altruism, but a form of mutualism that benefits both individuals. Jerry A. Coyne Thirty years of the Selfish Gene, TLS, June 14, 2006.

Martin Nowak recommends Robert Axelrod (1984) The Evolution of Cooperation: "humans must cooperate on a global scale, requiring us to show wisdom, generosity and respect. A classic from which we may all learn is Robert Axelrods book", Nature, 25 Sep 2008. A revised edition appeared December 4, 2006.

28.Kai Nielsen (1990) Ethics Without God; Michael Martin (2002) Atheism, Morality, and Meaning, in which he argues that atheism can provide a basis for morality and that attempts to provide a basis for morality by a Christian worldview are seriously flawed. Richard Carrier (2005) Sense And Goodness Without God: A Defense of Metaphysical Naturalism (short section on secular ethics).

29."In 16th century Paris, a popular form of entertainment was cat-burning, in which a cat was hoisted on a stage and was slowly lowered into a fire. According to the historian Norman Davies, "the spectators, including kings and queens, shrieked with laughter as the animals, howling with pain, were singed, roasted, and finally carbonized." As horrific as present-day events are, such sadism would be unthinkable today in most of the world." Steven Pinker.

30.Susan Blackmore (2000) The Meme Machine, Oxford University Press paperback, chapter 12 (A memetic theory of altruism) and 13 (The altruism trick).

31."rudiments, echoes of the past, traces of vanished limbs, soldered wing cases, buried teeth - all that conglomeration of useless organs that lie hidden in living bodies like the refuse in a hundred year old attic" from: Loren Eiseley (1958) Darwins Century: Evolution and the Men Who Discoverd It, p.196.

32.David Livingstone Smith (2006) A review of Lee Alan Dugatkin, The Altruism Equation, Evolutionary Psychology 2006. 5(1): 45-46. (Evolutionary Psychology is an open-access peer-reviewed journal)

33.S. A. West, A. S. Griffin, A. Gardner (2007) Social semantics: altruism, cooperation, mutualism, strong reciprocity and group selection, EUROPEAN SOCIETY FOR EVOLUTIONARY BIOLOGY 20 (2007 ) 415-432. Definitions:

Altruism: a behaviour which is costly to the actor and beneficial to the recipient; cost and benefit are defined on the basis of the lifetime direct fitness consequences of a behaviour.

Selfishness: a behaviour which is beneficial to the actor and costly to the recipient.

Cooperation: a behaviour which provides a benefit to another individual (recipient), and which is selected for because of its beneficial effect on the recipient.

mutual benefit (helping): a behaviour which is beneficial to both the actor and the recipient

proximate explanations are concerned with the mechanisms underlying a behaviour (causation; how questions);

ultimate explanations examine the fitness consequences or survival value of a behaviour (why questions).

34.Ethic of reciprocity in wikipedia.

35.Michael Balter (2007) Brain Evolution Studies Go Micro, Science 2 March 2007: Vol. 315. no. 5816, pp. 1208 - 1211. Unique elongated neurons have been discovered in two areas of the human brain involved in aspects of social cognition such as trust, empathy, and feelings of guilt and embarrassment. Not only were those neurons unique to great apes, but humans had many more and they were markedly larger. Feelings of empathy and guilt are the necessary building blocks of human altruism and conscience, precisely those properties Collins ascribes to the supernatural.

36.Jeanie LercheDavis (2005) The Science of Good Deeds: "Scientists are searching to understand just how altruism -- the wish to perform good deeds -- affects our health, even our longevity." "Brain chemicals also enter into this picture of altruism. A recent study has identified high levels of the "bonding" hormone oxytocin in people who are very generous toward others. Oxytocin is the hormone best known for its role in preparing mothers for motherhood. Studies have also shown that this hormone helps both men and women establish trusting relationships." "Altruistic behavior may also trigger the brains reward circuitry -- the feel-good chemicals like dopamine and endorphins, and perhaps even a morphine-like chemical the body naturally produces, Fricchione explains. "If altruistic behavior plugs into that reward circuitry, it will have the potential to reduce the stress response." Fricchione, is associate chief of psychiatry at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. (this research searches the proximate causes of altruism).

37.The Power of Positive Psychology.

38.The macaque genome has also allowed for a detailed study of more subtle changes that have accumulated within orthologous primate genes. The average human gene differs from its ortholog in the macaque by 12 nonsynonymous and 22 synonymous substitutions, whereas it differs from its ortholog in the chimpanzee by fewer than three nonsynonymous and five synonymous substitutions. Similarly, 89% of human-macaque orthologs differ at the amino acid level, as compared with only 71% of human-chimpanzee orthologs. Science 13 Apr 2007.

39.Elizabeth Pennisi (2007) Genomicists Tackle the Primate Tree, Science 13 Apr 2007, is a summary of the meaning and lessons of the macaque genome.

40.Who is the most altruistic person in the world? Consider Melinda Gates (Co-founder of the The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the largest charitable foundation in the United States: 2006 spend: US$ 908 million) or Wangari Maathai.

41.Collins Moral Law is an exclusively human oriented list! No trace of animals and the rest of nature and our planet as a whole. A Christian who is aware of the global environment is Joan Roughgarden: One of major moral issues facing Christians today is how to care for Gods creation in view of the sheer magnitude of human activity on the planet (page 145 of Evolution and Christian Faith, 2006) (my emphasis). Indeed, the survival of the human species does neither depend on jumping-in-the-water-to-save-a-stranger kind of altruism, nor Mother-Teresa-altruism, but keeping-our-global-environment-healthy kind of altruism. "As Roberts makes plain, the history of fishing -- commercial fishing primarily and most flagrantly, but many instances of sport fishing as well -- is one of human selfishness persistently outracing attempts to bring it under control" (Callum Roberts: THE UNNATURAL HISTORY OF THE SEA reviewed here). Freeman Dyson: "Environmentalism has replaced socialism as the leading secular religion. And the ethics of environmentalism are fundamentally sound. Scientists and economists can agree with Buddhist monks and Christian activists that ruthless destruction of natural habitats is evil and careful preservation of birds and butterflies is good."

42.updated 12 May 2013. "Eye for an eye ..." inserted.

Text and Note 42 before update: If anyone thinks the Moral Law is independent of geography and history, I strongly recommend reading Jared Diamonds account of dramatic encounter between the Inca emperor Atahuallpa and the Spanish conquistador Francisco Pizarro at the Peruvian highland town of Cajamarca on November 16, 1532. Pizarro destroyed the Inca Empire for the glory of God and for the service of the Catholic Imperial Majesty: "We come to conquer this land by his [King of Spain] command, that all may come to a knowledge of God and of His Holy Catholic Faith; and by reason of our good mission, God, the Creator of heaven and earth and of all things in them, permits this, in order that you may know Him and come out from the bestial and diabolical life that you lead." (Jared Diamond, 1999, Guns, Germs, and Steel, page 74). (Please note that Jared is not anti-religious). The Spaniards had no moral problems killing the Emperor and 40,000 of his men on one day in the name of God. They had the same Bible as Collins and C.S. Lewis. Clearly, knowing the Bible and the Moral Law, is not enough to behave morally. On the contrary: it justified killing. Probably Pizarro had not read the Bible. In this case feelings of empathy, sympathy, fairness, altruism failed too. Some cultural factors independent of sympathy and religion must be invoked to explain his cruel uncivilized behaviour. Anyway, a time- and geography independent Moral Law seems highly unlikely. Anyone who thinks there is an absolute Moral Law true for all time and all places, should read the story of Pizarro and his men.

43.Peter D. Taylor, Troy Day & Geoff Wild (2007) "Evolution of cooperation in a finite homogeneous graph", Nature 447, 469-472 (24 May 2007). "Here we demonstrate that Hamiltons notion of inclusive fitness provides a natural way to understand evolution on such graphs, and that it provides simple analytical conditions for the evolution of any trait (including cooperation) for a large class of graphs. The primary process at work in such systems can thus be viewed as a case of interactions among related individuals as a result of limited dispersal."

44.Richard Joyce (2006) The Evolution of Morality, Hardcover, The MIT Press.

45.Jerry A. Coyne (2006) Times Online.

46.R.A. Sharpe (1997) The Moral Case Against Religious Belief, SCM Press, paperback 102 pages. Sharpe is professor of philosophy at the University of Wales, Lampeter. He does not believe in God for moral reasons and argues that in some ways morality is corrupted by religion.

47.Richard Dawkins (2007) The God Delusion p. 219.

48.Mark Ridley (2005) How to read Darwin, p. 79, Chapter 7 The social and moral faculties. However, Ridley lists four possible solutions: kin selection, reciprocal altruism, group selection and cultural factors.

49.According to the Empathy-altruism hypothesis, if you feel empathy towards another person you will help them, regardless of what you can gain from it. See: E. Aronson, T.D. Wilson, A.M. Akert (2005) Social Psychology (5th ed.).

50.An example is the Bystander effect. The bystander effect (bystander apathy) is a psychological phenomenon in which someone is less likely to help somebody who needs help when others are present than when he is alone.

51.Dan Jones (2007) Moral psychology: The depths of disgust, Nature 14 Jun 2007.

52.William T. Harbaugh, Ulrich Mayr, Daniel R. Burghart (2007) Neural Responses to Taxation and Voluntary Giving Reveal Motives for Charitable Donations, Science 15 June 2007. Editorial: Cant Buy Me Altruism by Adam Hinterthuer, ScienceNOW Daily News, 14 June 2007. A voluntary gift to the needy (philanthropy,charitable giving) can be motivated by pure altruism or "warm glow". To test for the pure altruism and warm-glow motives, we used functional magnetic resonance imaging.

53.ID biologist Jeffrey Schloss (1998) also focuces on extreme forms of altruism: "My overall conclusion concerning biological explanations of altruism is that they work reasonably well for behavioral patterns of rational actors in general and for some philanthropists but have nothing to contribute to our understanding of the more extreme forms of altruistic behavior." from chapter Evolutionary Accounts of 54.Altruism & the Problem of Goodness by Design in: Mere Creation. Science, Faith and Intelligent Design, p.252.

A critical difference is population size. Chiefdoms arose around 7,500 years ago and consisted of several thousands to several tens of thousands of people. That size created serious potential for internal conflict because, for any person living in a chiefdom, the vast majority of other people in the chiefdom were neither closely related by blood or marriage nor known by name. See: Jared Diamond (1999) Guns, Germs, and Steel, page 273. Although Diamond does not discuss altruism, population size created also a challenge for altruism. Neither evolutionary biologists nor Collins seem to be aware of the factor population size.

55.Carl Zimmer (2007) In Games, an Insight Into the Rules of Evolution, NewYork Times, July 31, 2007

"Dr. Nowak and his colleagues found that when they put players into a network, the Prisoners Dilemma played out differently. Tight clusters of cooperators emerge, and defectors elsewhere in the network are not able to undermine their altruism. "Even if outside our network there are cheaters, we still help each other a lot," Dr. Nowak said. That is not to say that cooperation always emerges. Dr. Nowak identified the conditions when it can arise with a simple equation: B/C>K. That is, cooperation will emerge if the benefit-to-cost (B/C) ratio of cooperation is greater than the average number of neighbors (K). "Its the simplest possible thing you could have expected, and its completely amazing," he said.

Francisco Ayala (2007) Darwins Gift: To Science and Religion.

57.Holly Arrow (2007) The Sharp End of Altruism, Science 26 Oct 2007.

"From an evolutionary perspective, altruism--acts that benefit others at a personal cost--is puzzling. Some influential theories that address this puzzle are kin altruism, the tendency to help blood relations; and reciprocal altruism, the tendency to help people who are likely to return the favor. Neither explains generosity to non-kin when costs are high and reciprocation unlikely. Heroism in warfare is an example. Explaining such extravagant altruism via indirect benefits to altruists and their kin has proved difficult. A growing body of work seeks instead to explain altruism with models that include selection on both individuals and groups."

"Altruism flourishes only in the company of outgroup hostility (parochialism), with war as both the engine of this coevolutionary process and its legacy. For a compatriot, the parochial altruist who risks his life is a shining knight, whereas the outsider encounters the sharp end of this altruism."

"Evidence that intergroup violence killed a nontrivial proportion of our ancestors (5) has fueled interest in war as a force for robust group selection. War is a strong candidate because people kill each other based on group membership."

Jung-Kyoo Choi and Samuel Bowles (2007) The Coevolution of Parochial Altruism and War (Science, 26 Oct 2007): "Our game-theoretic analysis and agent-based simulations show that under conditions likely to have been experienced by late Pleistocene and early Holocene humans, neither parochialism nor altruism would have been viable singly, but by promoting group conflict, they could have evolved jointly."

"Late 19th-century scientists as diverse as Charles Darwin (The Descent of Man) and Karl Pearson (Fortnightly Review 56, 1, 1894) recognized war as a powerful evolutionary force that might foster social solidarity and altruism toward the fellow members of ones group."

58.Joseph Henrich and Natalie Henrich (2007) Why Humans Cooperate. A Cultural and Evolutionary Explanation, Oxford University Press.

59."A man who was merely a man [not the Son of God] and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher.", (page 224) is a quote from C.S. Lewis. This is an argument from authority. Founding morality on authority, does not answer the question why a behaviour is morally good. It is question begging. So, authority cannot be the ultimate foundation of morality. It is amazing that a scientist (Collins) believes that authority is a good argument.

60.J. McKenzie Alexander (2007) The Structural Evolution of Morality, Cambridge University Press, hardback 310 pages.

61.Joan B. Silk (2007) Chimps dont just get mad, they get even, PNAS August 21, 2007 | vol. 104 | no. 34 | 13537-13538.

"Humans are the most cooperative species on the planet, and the most punitive. This is no coincidence.". "The results of these experiments suggest that chimpanzees are predisposed to impose sanctions on those that harm them."

62.Donald W. Pfaff (2007) The Neuroscience of Fair Play: Why We (Usually) Follow the Golden Rule, Dana Press, Hardcover, 300 pages. "The whole focus in these pages is on the possibility that some rules of behavior are universally embedded in the human brain - that we are wired for good behavior. He claims hes surveyed the worlds religions and found some variant of the Golden Rule in every one, leading him to conclude that this trait is likely to be under some sort of genetic control." Reviewed in Science: "The Neuroscience of Fair Play successfully highlights important issues in a young field of inquiry. Although readers may find much to disagree with in Pfaffs account, clear formulations of their objections will help advance the study of possible biological bases of morals.". My view: there is a danger to explain social and anti-social behaviour by neurogenetic bases, which amounts to saying: social behaviour is caused by the brain and anti-social behaviour is caused by the brain, and if there is an imbalance beween the two the outcome is social or anti-social behaviour.

63.A. Knafo et al (2007) Individual differences in allocation of funds in the dictator game associated with length of the arginine vasopressin 1a receptor RS3 promoter region and correlation between RS3 length and hippocampal mRNA , Genes, Brain and Behavior, OnlineEarly Articles. The authors argue something like that there is a gene for altruism.

64.Edward O. Wilson, and Bert Hölldobler (2005) Eusociality: Origin and consequences, PNAS September 20, 2005 | vol. 102 no. 38 13367-13371

"In this new assessment of the empirical evidence, an alternative to the standard model is proposed: group selection is the strong binding force in eusocial evolution; individual selection, the strong dissolutive force; and kin selection (narrowly defined), either a weak binding or weak dissolutive force, according to circumstance."

65.David Sloan Wilson, Edward O. Wilson (2007) Rethinking the theoretical foundation of sociobiology, The Quarterly Review of Biology, December 2007, vol. 82, no. 4 Free Access

"In this article, we take a "back to basics" approach, explaining what group selection is, why its rejection was regarded as so important, and how it has been revived based on a more careful formulation and subsequent research. Multilevel selection theory (including group selection) provides an elegant theoretical foundation for sociobiology in the future, once its turbulent past is appropriately understood."

65.Dan Jones (2008) Human behaviour: Killer instincts, Published online 23 January 2008 | Nature 451, 512-515 (2008)

"In an intriguing turn, Raine and his USC colleague Yaling Yang have recently pointed to a link between homicidal behaviour and the capacity to follow moral guidelines. Over the past six years, brain-imaging studies aimed at understanding moral judgements have illustrated the crucial role of the emotional feeling that comes with violating moral codes."

67.Michael Balter (2008) Why Were Different: Probing the Gap Between Apes and Humans, Science, is an interesting overview.

"We are just primates with a particular combination of traits," says Bryson. "Seeing how all those traits came together and exploded into our current culture is really interesting."

68.Peter Politser (2008) Neuroeconomics: A Guide to the New Science of Making Choices. This discipline is not concerned with moral choices, but economic choices.

69Crime in the United States, Hate Crime Statistics, Family Violence (pdf). As far as I know there are no altruism statistics.

70.Manfred Milinski & Bettina Rockenbach (2008) Human behaviour: Punisher pays, Nature, News and Views, 20 March 2008. "The tendency of humans to punish perceived free-loaders, even at a cost to themselves, is an evolutionary puzzle: punishers perish, and those who benefit the most are those who have never punished at all.".

Original article: Anna Dreber et al (2008) Winners dont punish, Nature, 20 March 2008.

71.Elizabeth W. Dunn et al (2008) Spending Money on Others Promotes Happiness, Science, 21 March 2008.

"This study provides initial evidence that how people spend their money may be as important for their happiness as how much money they earn and that spending money on others might represent a more effective route to happiness than spending money on oneself." [this is weak altruism, not strong altruism because it is about disposable income (income remaining after bills are paid). Question: why should altruism make people happy? If altruism makes people happy, is it still altruism? Material costs, immaterial benefits. GK]

72.Constance Holden (2008) Smart Birds Lend a Beak for Food, Science 28 March 2008.

Corvids--including ravens, crows, and rooks--are among the smarty-pants of the bird world. Now scientists report that rooks, like chimpanzees, can cooperate in food-getting tasks.

73.Michael McCullough (2008) Beyond Revenge: The Evolution of the Forgiveness Instinct. "Psychologist Michael McCullough argues that the key to a more forgiving, less vengeful world is to understand the evolutionary forces that gave rise to these intimately human instincts and the social forces that activate them in human minds today." (info).

74.Stephen G. Post (editor) (2007) Altruism and Health. Perspectives from Empirical Research, Oxford University Press, 480 pp. (info): "Does a kindly, charitable interest in others have health benefits for the agent, particularly when coupled with helping behaviours?".

75."... the normal route by which children acquire folk psychological abilities is through their encounters with stories about people who act for reasons ..." Erik Myin in a review of Folk Psychological Narratives by Daniel D. Hutto in Science (2 May 08)

76.Herbert Gintis, Samuel Bowles, Robert T. Boyd, and Ernst Fehr (2006) Moral Sentiments and Material Interests: The Foundations of Cooperation in Economic Life, (Economic Learning and Social Evolution), The MIT Press, Paperback - Sep 1, 2006. "This book presents social science at its interdisciplinary best: an exhilarating mix of game theory, evolutionary biology, experimental economics, cultural anthropology, grammatology, and policy analysis. It will change our views of how biology and culture together determine social behavior." (Daniel Kahneman, Princeton University, Nobel Laureate in Economic Sciences).

77.Greg Miller (2008) Your Brain on Ethics, Science, 9 May 2008.

78.Ming Hsu et al (2008) The Right and the Good: Distributive Justice and Neural Encoding of Equity and Efficiency, Science, 23 May 2008.

Using brain imaging to setlle age-old questions about morality, justice, emotion.

79.Book review of Kwame Anthony Appiah (2008) Experiments in Ethics, Harvard University Press: 2008. 288 pp.

The review can be viewed for free as I noticed with this link: "In the past few decades, scientific interest in moral behaviour has surged. Psychologists, neuroscientists, evolutionary theorists and behavioural economists have begun to turn their experimental methods to understanding the ways we arrive at moral judgements."

This time its personal, editorial Nature 453, 697 (5 June 2008). "Collins also deserves credit for making the ethical, legal and social issues of genomics a high priority at the NHGRI. He says he is particularly satisfied with recent passage through Congress of the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act, for which he had long been a passionate advocate. "

81.Samuel Bowles (2008) Review: Policies Designed for Self-Interested Citizens May Undermine "The Moral Sentiments": Evidence from Economic Experiments, Science, 20 Jun 2008.

"The example points to a shortcoming in the conventional economic approach to policy design: It overlooks the possibility that economic incentives may diminish ethical or other reasons for complying with social norms and contributing to the common good.", etc. Very stimulating review.

82.The first recipient of the Templeton prize for "Progress in Religion", $85,000 , was Mother Teresa of Calcutta, in 1973. Templeton: "The list of moral qualities that Templeton thought science should be looking at was entirely characteristic of the man: "ethics, love, honesty, generosity, thanksgiving, forgiving, reliability, entrepreneurship, diligence, thrift, joy, future-mindedness, beneficial purpose, creativity, curiosity, humility, and awe." Nature, Obituary: John Templeton (1912-2008). The relation of belief in God, happiness and altruism is profoundly disturbed by the publication of her letters in: Mother Teresa: Come Be My Light. See: Time: "for the last nearly half-century of her life she felt no presence of God whatsoever".

83.Ara Norenzayan and Azim F. Shariff (2008) The Origin and Evolution of Religious Prosociality, Science, 3 October 2008. A very useful overview of the association between religion and prosociality (altruism). The authors defend the hypothesis that religions facilitate costly behaviors that benefit people of the same group. This effect depends on reputation. The authors present predictions which are tested experimentally against evidence. Although the main thesis is pro religion, and the authors supports it with evidence, this not a severely biased review.

84.Samuel Bowles (2008) Being human: Conflict: Altruisms midwife, Nature 456, 326-327 (20 November 2008).

"Generosity and solidarity towards ones own may have emerged only in combination with hostility towards outsiders".

85.Martin A. Nowak (2008) Generosity: A winners advice, Nature 456, 579 (4 December 2008).

"In both, mathematical analysis shows that winning strategies tend to be generous, hopeful and forgiving. Generous here means not seeking to get more than ones opponent; hopeful means cooperating in the first move or in the absence of information; and forgiving means attempting to re-establish cooperation after an accidental defection. These three traits are related. If I am generous, it is easier for me to forgive, and also to be hopeful and take the risk of cooperating with newcomers."

86.Samuel Bowles (2009) Did Warfare Among Ancestral Hunter-Gatherers Affect the Evolution of Human Social Behaviors?, Science.

"But taking all of the evidence into account, it seems likely that, for many groups and for substantial periods of human prehistory, lethal group conflict may have been frequent enough to support the proliferation of quite costly forms of altruism."

87.Jocelyn Kaiser (2009) White House Taps Former Genome Chief Francis Collins as NIH Director, Science, 17 July 2009; Jocelyn Kaiser (2009) Questions About the Language of God, Science, 17 July 2009.

88.Tim Clutton-Brock (2009) Cooperation between non-kin in animal societies, A review. Nature, 5 Nov 2009.

89.Marc Bekoff and Jessica Pierce (2009) Wild Justice. The Moral Lives of Animals, The University of Chicago Press, 204 pages.

"Bekoff and Pierce reveal that animals exhibit a broad repertoire of moral behaviors, including fairness, empathy, trust, and reciprocity. Ultimately, Bekoff and Pierce draw the astonishing conclusion that there is no moral gap between humans and other species: morality is an evolved trait that we unquestionably share with other social mammals." (info)

By Michael Balter (2010) Foster Care for Chimps, Science, 5 Feb 2010. "A new study of these primates in the wild suggests that they are far more selfless than scientists have given them credit for, though some researchers have their doubts. The team has observed 18 cases of adult chimps in (over 27 years of observations) adopting young chimps whose mothers had died."

The name "Hamilton" or the word "kin selection" do not occur in the book! Collins mentions E. O. Wilson, On Human Nature (1978), in which Wilson "explains how evolution has left its traces on the characteristics which are the specialty of human species like generosity, self-sacrifice, ... " (wikipedia).

He mentions and rejects E. O. Wilsons arguments for altruism. He further rejects 3 other arguments for altruism without bothering to give names, quotes or references. On the other hand he refers or quotes 9 times to 5 books of C.S. Lewis.

      Other reviews of The language of God

David Klinghoffer (2006) The Human factor. A man of science faces Darwin and the Deity. Klinghoffer is a senior fellow at the Discovery Institute. Comment: Klinghoffer did not tell why ID is true. Klinghoffer ignored chapter 5, where Collins presents the most beautiful evidence for common descent!

Sam Harris: The Language of Ignorance is a review by philosopher Harris, which attacks Collins philosophical and theological views and completely ignores the important fact that Collins provides superb creationism-resistant proofs of common descent, and that Collins rejects ID! Harris review is ill-considered, and unbalanced.

Robert Pollack (2006) "DNA, Evolution, and the Moral Law", Science 29 Sep 2006 Vol 313 pp.1890-1891.

Pollack writes: "I consider myself a religious person". He reads Collins Moral Law as "the presence in himself and others of "the Moral Law". He does not notice the two different meanings of Moral Law Collins uses. Further: "surely I would not want to make of this subjective emotional experience [Moral Law], however ubiquitous, evidence of the sort that a scientist marshals to confirm a hypothesis." (against Collins), but later he states: "The Moral Law may well be Gods presence among us" (agreeing with Collins). "The Moral Law ... cannot be reduced to a DNA sequence, not even to the whole human genome." "But if the Moral Law were not written in DNA, then why would DNA be the language of God at all?". [good point!] "Collins has done a brave thing in laying out his own religious convictions in a way that permits him to appeal to his fellow evangelical Christians to cease their war with nature and to accept the facts of life as discovered through science." [good point!]

Patricia Pearson (2006) The God debate, Toronto Star, Oct. 15, 2006. Is a review of The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins and The Language of God by Francis S. Collins.

Thomas Dixon (2006) The carbon and the Christian, Times Literary Supplement, 20 Dec 2006. "Yet this strumming, sentimental Christian geneticist will do more to promote the acceptance of Darwinism in modern America than any number of polarizing and polemical atheistic tracts could hope to do." "From a more theological and philosophical perspective, however, Collins is unwise to base his Christian apologetics, as he does, on the supposed inability of science to explain the Moral Law within each human heart".

Victor J. Stenger (2006) A Weak Effort to Reconcile Science and Religion. "No doubt some believers reading this book will be reassured that a prominent scientist is able, in his own blinkered mind at least, to reconcile science - especially evolution - with Christian belief. But it is a weak effort. If the author wished to make any significant scientific and theological statements, he would have done better to refer to the latest literature on cosmology and evolutionary psychology, and to consult theological sources besides an author of childrens literature."

Jack Haas (2006) Francis S. Collins: A Spokesman for Today, Essay review by Jack Haas, Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith, Volume 58, Number 4, December 2006. "One patient challenged him to reconsider the God question and he visited a Methodist minister who pointed him to C. S. Lewiss Mere Christianity. Collins was particularly attracted by Lewiss Moral Law argument."

Paul R. Gross (2007) Mammoth in the Garden. Why the Harmonization of Science and Religion is a Strong Human Need", Skeptic, February 21st, 2007. "Francis Collins is a devout Christian who cherry-picks the Bible that he insists is Gods word".

Catherine H. Crouch (2007) Not Too Simply Christian. Two approaches to apologetics (Catherine H. Crouch is assistant professor of physics at Swarthmore College), Christianity Today March/April 2007, Vol. 13, No. 2, Page 26. "Another limitation of Collinss book (...) is his choice of evidence to examine, which is a rather narrow slice of all the evidence that might be considered. Collins essentially gives the same argument for belief that Lewis presents in Mere Christianity: the Moral Law - the human instinct that right and wrong come from outside the individual, rather than simply being defined by each individual with reference to him or herself - points to the existence of One who is the source of right and wrong."

Robert J. Richards (2007) Reason and Reverence, American Scientist March-April 2007. "Collinss persuasive attempts are so well-intentioned and his tone so congenial that you want to believe, but ultimately his efforts are unlikely to succeed with either group. [accomplished scientists and committed believers]. ... Throughout his book, and especially in his discussion of stemcell techniques, one detects the man of science in Collins struggling with the man of religion. He desperately wants reconciliation between reason and faith but seems not always aware of the price each side would pay".

David Brash (2007) The DNA of Religious Faith, The Chronicle of Higher Education, Volume 53, Issue 33, Page B6, 20 April 2007. A review of several books, including Collins book. "Is there really one moral law?" [very good!]. "Collins is greatly impressed, nonetheless, that people have a single, deep, shared knowledge of right and wrong, which he might find less impressive if he were more familiar with basic sociobiology. He seems not to understand that infanticidal male behavior in langur monkeys does not preclude the use of "altruism" at other times, and by other species, as a means of mate attraction, or that the evolutionary biology of kin selection is based on identity of genes via common descent, not just in ants but in any sexually reproducing organism. Taken together or in various combinations, kin selection, reciprocal altruism, group selection, third-party effects, and courtship possibilities, as well as simple susceptibility to social and cultural indoctrination, provide biologists with more than enough for the conclusion: God is no longer needed to explain "Moral Law."." I think Brash underestimates the explanatory problem caused by infanticide which is the opposite of altruism. One needs good predictors for the appearence of infanticide and altruism, otherwise it are just-so stories.

Sam Harris (2010) The Moral Landscape. How Science Can Determine Human Values contains a devastating critique of Francis Collins views on morality and belief (pp. 160 - 174).

      Further Reading

(ascending chronological order)

Curriculum Vitae Francis Collins at National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI).

An Interview with Francis Collins (2004): "I had no idea, really, who Lewis was. The idea that he was a scholar, though, that appealed to my intellectual pride. Maybe somebody with that kind of a title would be able to write something that I could understand and appreciate." "And the argument that Lewis made there - the one that I think was most surprising, most earth-shattering, and most life-changing - is the argument about the existence of the moral law."

Interview with Francis Collins by Counterbalance Meta Library, undated but must be before 2005.

Interview with Francis Collins by Stan Guthrie: Creation or Evolution? Yes! Francis Collins issues a call to stand on the middle ground. Christianity Today, posted 1/16/2007.

Interview with Francis Collins, April 17, 2008, The Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life. Quote: "To focus on a particular area of nature where our understanding remains incomplete and say, well, God must have done something miraculous in that spot, is actually, I think, to make God much too small."

Double interview with Richard Dawkins and Francis Collins in Time magazine Posted Sunday, Nov. 5, 2006. Very interesting!

Francis Collins in wikipedia.

Nicholas Wade Scientists Complete Rough Draft of Human Genome, New York Times June 26, 2000

Nicholas Wade Genetic Code of Human Life Is Cracked by Scientists, New York Times June 27, 2000.

Building bridges - An American geneticist advocates a rapprochement with religion, editorials Nature 13 July 2006 p.110.

Genomics luminary weighs in on US faith debate, Nature, News, Vol 442|13 July 2006 p.114-115.

The Composition of Life is an animation explaining the genetic code of life (New York Times).

A nice Timeline of the discoveries in genetics from Mendel to the completion of the Human Genome Project (New York Times).

Elliot Sober and David Sloan Wilson (1998) Unto Others. - The evolution and psychology of unselfish behavior. Philosopher Elliott Sober and biologist David Sloan Wilson provide a panoramic view of altruism throughout the animal kingdom.

September 2006 special issue of Journal of Evolutionary Biology about altruism.

Literature about Theistic Evolution on the introduction page of this site.

Peter Hammerstein (2003) Genetic and cultural evolution of cooperation, The MIT Press. This book addresses the role of cognition and emotions in human cooperation, reciprocity, the puzzle of friendship, the origins of human cooperation and the cultural evolution of cooperation, etc.

Lee Alan Dugatkin (2006) The Altruism Equation. Seven Scientists Search for the Origins of Goodness, Princeton University Press, hb p.188. This is an accessible account of the history of the altruism debate from Darwin to Hamilton. The influence of Hamiltons rule on evolutionary biology has been as great as the impact of Newtons laws of motion on physics.

Frans de Waal (2006) The animal roots of human morality, New Scientist 14 October 2006. "We insist that morality is something uniquely human that goes against our nasty, natural instincts. Yet many animals also have an inbuilt sense of fair play and can show compassion to others in their group, argues Frans de Waal".

Marc D. Hauser (2006) Moral Minds: How Nature Designed Our Universal Sense of Right and Wrong, Ecco: 2006. 512 pp. (Harper Perennial 2007). Review: Nature. See also Introduction page of this site.

Cornelia Dean Faith, Reason, God and Other Imponderables, New York Times, July 25, 2006

Reason to Believe A leading geneticist argues that science can lead to faith THE LANGUAGE OF GOD reviewed by Scott Russell Sanders, Washington Post Sunday, July 9, 2006; Page BW05

Interview with Francis Collins in the National Geographic February 2007 pp 34-39. (not online)

Philip Lieberman (1991) Uniquely Human The Evolution of Speech, Thought, and Selfless Behavior : "The unique brain mechanisms underlying human language also enhance human cognitive ability, allowing us to derive abstract concepts and to plan complex activities. These factors are necessary for the development of true altruism and moral behavior."

Philip Clayton and Jeffrey Schloss (eds) (2004) Evolution And Ethics: Human Morality In Biological And Religious Perspective, 339 pages. Contributions from scientists, philosophers, theologians. Most authors are positive about evolutionary explanations of altruism. (info)

Neil Levy (2004) What Makes us Moral? Crossing the Boundaries of Biology, Oneworld Publications.

Christopher Boehm (2001) Hierarchy in the Forest The Evolution of Egalitarian Behavior: "This book will be a key document in the study of the evolutionary basis of genuine altruism."

Nigel Barber (2004) Kindness In A Cruel World: The Evolution Of Altruism, Prometheus Books 416 pages. info. Reviews: About.com; Peter Lamal in Skeptical Inquirer, May 1, 2005.

Laurence Tancredi (2005) Hardwired Behavior: What Neuroscience Reveals about Morality Cambridge University Press hardcover 240 pages. info.

William D. Casebeer (2005) Natural Ethical Facts: Evolution, Connectionism, and Moral Cognition (Bradford Books) (Paperback). See Amazon Customer Review.

David Sloan Wilson (2007) a review of The Altruism Equation: Seven Scientists Search for the Origins of Goodness (Lee Alan Dugatkin); Primates and Philosophers: How Morality Evolved (Frans de Waal); and The Evolution of Morality (Richard Joyce), American Scientist, May-June 2007.

Richard Dawkins (2007) The God Delusion has chapter 6 The roots of morality: why are we good? devoted to altruism. Dawkins lists four solutions to altruism, two different from Ridley.

Victor J. Stenger Do Our Values Come from God? The Evidence Says No. (date 2006?)

Trey Popp (2007) Bad Samaritans: On the Universal Capacity for Doing Harm in Science & Spirit May/June/2007, reviews three books: (1) James Hollis Why Good People Do Bad Things; (2) Jacob Needleman Why Cant We Be Good?; (3) Philip Zimbardo The Lucifer Effect. Please note that these are useful additions to Collins book, because Collins does not discuss why people do bad things. We need that to understand human behaviour.

Philip Zimbardo (2007) The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil (Random House).

"Why Situations Matter. We want to believe in the essential, unchanging goodness of people, in their power to resist external pressures. The Stanford Prison Experiment is a clarion call to abandon simplistic notions of the Good Self dominating Bad Situations. We are best able to avoid, challenge, and change negative situational forces only by recognizing their potential to "infect us" as they have others who were similarly situated."

Stephen J. Pope (2007) Human Evolution and Christian Ethics, Cambridge University Press.

Book Description: "Can the origins of morality be explained entirely in evolutionary terms? If so, what are the implications for Christian moral theology and ethics? Is the latter redundant, as socio-biologists often assert? Stephen Pope argues that theologians need to engage with evolutionary theory rather than ignoring it. He shows that our growing knowledge of human evolution is compatible with Christian faith and morality, provided that the former is not interpreted reductionistically and the latter is not understood in fundamentalist ways"

Robert A. Hinde (2007) Bending the Rules. Morality in the Modern World from Relationships to Politics and War, Oxford University Press. 287 pp.

"In Bending the Rules, Robert Hinde addresses the controversial and timely subject of how the behavioral sciences apply to the study of morality. In contrast to moral philosophers who focus "on how people ought to behave," he concentrates on "how they think they should behave and how they actually behave." "Second, the author argues that there are certain moral principles found in all cultures." Reviewed in Science. Robert A. Hinde is the author of Why Gods Persist: Scientific Approach To Religion and War: A Cruel Necessity?: The Bases of Institutionalized Violence.

Roy F. Baumeister (1999) Evil. Inside Human Violence and Cruelty, Scientific American Library.

"murder, rape, street crime, war, petty cruelty, emotional abuse, wife beating, government repression, racial and ethnic hatreds."

Arthur G. Miller (Editor) (2005) The Social Psychology of Good and Evil,The Guilford Press, Paperback 498 pages.

"why people engage both in behavior that is extraordinarily harmful to others and behavior that is extraordinarily beneficial".

ADL Blasts Christian Supremacist TV Special & Book Blaming Darwin For Hitler (ADL also denounced Coral Ridge Ministries for misleading Dr. Francis Collins) August 22, 2006

Thomas Jay Oord (Ed.) (2007) The Altruism Reader. Selections from Writings on Love, Religion, and Science, Templeton Foundation Press, paperback.

Andrew Michael Flescher and Daniel L. Worthen (2007) The Altruistic Species. Scientific, Philosophical, and Religious Perspectives, Templeton Foundation Press.

Elof Axel Carlson (2008) Neither Gods Nor Beasts. How Science Is Changing Who We Think We Are, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press, Hardcover, 200 pages.

"Traditional views of human nature focus on the supernatural, defining us as creatures with souls, minds, and spirits that transcend our physical attributes. In this provocative book, distinguished scientist and historian Elof Axel Carlson argues for a different understanding of ourselves based on our biology-cellular organization, genetics, life cycle, evolution, and our origins as a species. This interpretation would not negate our capacity for imagination, spiritual and emotional yearnings, or aesthetic appreciation for art, music, and literature. Carlson challenges educators, the media, and public policy makers to integrate the evidence from science more fully into our understanding of ourselves."

Francis Collins (2008) RETROSPECTIVE: Victor A. McKusick (1921-2008), Science 15 Aug 2008:

"In August 1969, at the International Conference on Birth Defects in The Hague, McKusick proposed that mapping all human genes would be useful for understanding basic derangements in birth defects."

Francisco J. Ayala (2003) Biology Precedes, Culture Transcends: An Evolutionists View of Human Nature, Zygon, Volume 33 Issue 4, Pages 507 - 523. Published Online: 7 Jan 2003. I conclude from the abstract that Ayala accepts a biological basis for our moral sentiments, but the moral codes are products or our culture. Of course are the moral codes a product of culture if you define the moral codes as written codes: moral sentiments expressed in language.

Kees Keizer et al (2008) The Spreading of Disorder, Science 12 December 2008.

"The broken windows theory (BWT) of Wilson and Kelling suggests that signs of disorder like broken windows, litter, and graffiti induce other (types of) disorder and petty crime. We found that, when people observe that others violated a certain social norm or legitimate rule, they are more likely to violate other norms or rules, which causes disorder to spread. The mere presence of graffiti more than doubled the number of people littering and stealing"

Denis O Lamoureux (2009) Evolutionary Creation (Paperback), Lutterworth Press, 514 pages. "Graduate school training at the doctoral level in both theology and biology led him to the conclusion that God created the world through evolution". From the same author (2008): Evolutionary Creation: A Christian Approach to Evolution.

Marc Bekoff and Jessica Pierce (2009) Wild Justice. The Moral Lives of Animals, The University of Chicago Press, 204 pages.

"Bekoff and Pierce reveal that animals exhibit a broad repertoire of moral behaviors, including fairness, empathy, trust, and reciprocity. Ultimately, Bekoff and Pierce draw the astonishing conclusion that there is no moral gap between humans and other species: morality is an evolved trait that we unquestionably share with other social mammals." (info)

Francis Collins (2009) Can Science and Religion Co-Exist in Harmony?, Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life June 22, 2009

"Then theres C.S. Lewis point that I discovered while reading the first chapter of Mere Christianity, "Right and Wrong as a Clue to the Meaning of the Universe." Where does this notion of morality come from? Is this a purely evolutionary artifact, where we have been convinced by evolution that right and wrong have meanings and that were supposed to do the right thing, or is there something more profound going on?"

"you would also have to postulate that God intentionally put a defective gene in exactly the place where a common ancestry would say it should be."

Marco Iacoboni (2009) Mirroring People: The Science of Empathy and How We Connect with Others (Paperback).

Matt Young (2009) Francis Collins and the God of the Gaps, posted July 19, 2009.

The Intersection of Faith and Evolution: A Civil Dialogue with video of panel discussion.

Evolution, the Bible, and the Book of Nature. A conversation with Francis Collins. Interview by Karl W. Giberson, Christianity Today posted 7/10/2009

Francis Collins: fit to head the NIH? Los Angeles Times July 29, 2009. For: Francisco J. Ayala, against: Michael Shermer.

Frans de Waal (2009) The Age of Empathy: Natures Lessons for a Kinder Society, Harmony (Hardcover). Reviewed in: Nature 460, 41 (3 September 2009).

Elizabeth Pennisi (2009) On the Origin of Cooperation, Science 4 September 2009: Vol. 325. no. 5945, pp. 1196 - 1199. An overview of cooperation in systems from microbes to humans.

George C. Cunningham (2009) Decoding the Language of God. Can a Scientist Really Be a Believer? A Geneticist Responds to Francis Collins, Prometheus, Amherst, NY.

"fellow geneticist George C. Cunningham presents a point-by-point rebuttal of The Language of God, arguing that there is no scientifically acceptable evidence to support belief in a personal God and much that discredits it."

Francis S. Collins (2010) The Language of Life: DNA and the Revolution in Personalized Medicine, Harper/Profile: 2010. 368 pp/288 pp. Reviewed in Nature (21 January 2010) and Science (12 Feb 2010). Both reviews are positive.

Robert W. Sussman and C. Robert Cloninger, Eds. (2011) Origins of Altruism and Cooperation. Springer, New York, 2011

Jonathan Haidt (2012) The Righteous Mind Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion, Pantheon, New York, 2012. 441 pp.

Review: John T. Jost (2012) Left and Right, Right and Wrong, Science 3 Aug 2012. The review is very critical but very useful.

Review: by Thomas Nagel The New York Review of Books: "Haidt is a social psychologist, and he sets out his descriptive theory of the origins and nature of morality and of moral disagreement. But the books overall point is partly normative, not just descriptive. Haidt makes definite recommendations of a clearly moral nature, and he seeks to support them with the help of his descriptive findings about morality. These two aspects of the project do not fit easily together."

Simon Gächter (2012) Human behaviour: A cooperative instinct, Nature 20 Sep 2012:

"psychological studies have suggested that moral judgements are often made intuitively, and because many people view freeloading on other peoples contributions as morally blameworthy, it is plausible that moral intuitions support cooperation. ... Rand et al. show that this extends to cooperation: in their experiments, people under time pressure contributed significantly more than those who made their decisions with no time limit or with a forced delay. Thus, it seems that forcing a person to decide more rapidly – by intuition – increases their tendency to cooperate. ... The authors have demonstrated that, on average, our intuition is to cooperate, but further studies are needed to understand the variation in this behaviour between individuals."

The most dishonest thing to do is quoting Francis Collins ("the spiritual worldview provides another way of finding truth") to support an anti-evolution book: The Death of Evolution: Restoring Faith and Wonder in a World of Doubt by Jim Nelson Black

Francis Collins Does evolution explain human nature? Not entirely. (2009?) Templeton website.

W. David Winslow (2011) "... the best book I read on this subject was The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief by Collins." My thoughts on science and faith in God, blog.

Joshua Greene (2013) Moral Tribes: Emotion, Reason, and the Gap Between Us and Them. "Our brains were designed for tribal life, for getting along with a select group of others (Us), and for fighting off everyone else (Them)." Joshua Greene is the director of Harvard Universitys Moral Cognition Lab.

Collins: Stop Abusing Baby Monkeys: "THIS PAST NOVEMBER [2014], at a convention center just outside Washington, D.C., PETA supporters disrupted a special address by Francis Collins. As the NIH director began his presentation–celebrating the 20th anniversary of the Association for Molecular Pathology–two women began shouting, "Why do you cause the suffering of baby monkeys, Francis Collins?," a reference to an NIH lab that has been measuring the psychological impact of removing young rhesus macaques from their mothers. A security officer escorted the women from the crowded room, as they yelled "Shame on you!" while holding signs that read, "Collins: Stop Abusing Baby Monkeys." Science 23 Jan 2015

About Collins as a NIH director: "His religion never became an issue–he followed Obamas order to loosen rules for stem cell research, which some Christians oppose, and has defended fetal tissue research despite criticism from antiabortion groups." source: Jocelyn Kaiser (2019) Franciss way, Science, 16 Aug 2019.