Also, not all of our actions has to have a survival mechanism or be directly related to our survival.
Morality is a human construct, Empathy is not. Countless animals have empathy. Other species of animals caring for completely different species which may not necessarily enhance their survival per se, but they have empathy to do so.
If predators have more species to choose from it could enhance the survival of a specific species if other species survived. So they would benefit by helping another animal of a different species to ensure their own survival.
However, William Craig has addressed this issue as well.
Kevin Harris: That brings up the question, Bill, of animals. From a Christian standpoint, perhaps God’s grace in the animal kingdom and animal companionship to man. Because we hear stories, and he relates stories of how dolphins have saved swimmers to no benefits to themselves. They weren’t fed a fish or given a treat for that. How dogs have often helped human beings, and things like that. From a strictly Darwinian view, you would say that’s where all this stuff came from and then we are back to the source. What about a view that this is all perhaps part of God’s good creation and providence.
Dr. Craig: Well, absolutely. I think that we do think that the animal world, as well as the human realm, is under the providence and planning of God, and if God knew that in order to have social animals that live in groups you would need to have these kinds of behavior. Then he could have designed the world in such a way that they would exhibit these kinds of behaviors. He says that’s why the dolphin will help the human swimmer to be saved; not because the dolphin gets something out of it in that specific case, but because this general kind of helpful behavior is useful to the dolphin species and helps it to survive. It just happens that in certain cases we are lucky to become the beneficiaries of this. Even among elephants and pigs, among any kind of social animal that lives in groups, you see this kind of cooperative behavior because it is advantageous in the struggle for survival. So, we are talking here simply about this kind of behavior that is exhibited by social animals, and as you said, I see no reason to think that God couldn’t have, in his providence, created animals in such a way that they would exhibit this sort of behavior for their own benefit.
Kevin Harris: Dr. De Waal makes a distinction between empathy and sympathy. CNN asked him, “By empathy, you mean that they feel each other’s pain?” De Waal says,
Well, feeling someone else’s joy is also empathy. Being affected by the laugh, as humans are, is a form of empathy. So empathy basically says that you’re sensitive to the emotions of others and react to the emotions of others.
Dr. Craig: And if I might interject here, that is where people who are psychopaths come in. They fail to exhibit this kind of empathy. They don’t identify with the emotions of others or react to the emotions of others. The reason a psychopath is capable of killing in cold blood without any remorse at all is precisely because he lacks this empathy with other human beings.
Kevin Harris: He says,
Sympathy is a bit more complicated. Sympathy is that you want to take action. You want to help somebody else who’s in trouble. So sympathy is a bit more specific, it’s a bit more action-oriented. Empathy is just a sensitivity. Empathy is not necessarily positive. If someone wants to sell you a bad car for a high price, he also needs to empathize with you in order to get you to buy it.
He goes on to the animal kingdom here, and says that you can see female primates, monkeys, and so forth, chimpanzees, who when one of them is giving birth some of the other females will gather around and they will crouch and do the same things she is doing, kind of in empathy. I have seen my own dogs do this. My dogs, when one of them starts scratching the other says, “I know, that feels good” and he starts scratching. Now, Bill, that is a huge extrapolation to say this is where we humans derive our empathy, and then this turned into morals and moral values and duties, when it’s just these naturalistic tendencies, and itches, and empathy things.
Dr. Craig: Well, just think, Kevin, if there is no God - imagine atheism. There is nothing beyond the natural world. The natural world is all there is. Then to me, it seems that De Waal is right, that this is all morality would be. I think it’s just extraordinarily difficult to see, in the absence of God, why on naturalism these forms of empathy and sympathy that human beings exhibit to one another are of any sort of moral significance. I can’t see why the psychopath does anything morally wrong on naturalism. He just doesn’t have this empathy that most other members of the species does, and so, he doesn’t exhibit this sort of cooperative behavior, but why on atheism does the psychopath do anything morally wrong? I can’t see any reason to think that. So, once you get rid of God as a transcendent anchor point and foundation for objective moral values and duties then, it seems to me, that morality is just a behavior pattern among human beings that originates, as you say, in scratches and itches and feelings of empathy. There isn’t any other foundation. Where else would it be found?
Read more:
http://www.reasonablefaith.org/Do-Animals-Display-Morality#ixzz414DAfihZ
