In Search of Humanism Among the Primates - The Bonobo and the Atheist

I would recommend tis book to anyone who is thinking about what nature teaches us about the existence of God. De Waal is an atheist who is much less strident than some, who is also a good story teller. This makes him an easier read for people on the fence (I think) He does not hurl insults at the faithful but is gentlemanly in his tone. His books are also are full of information on our closest ape relatives including excellent anecdotes to illustrate his scientific findings. An enjoyable read in every way.

A courageous lesson of humility which goes against some crazy ideas which are more than rampant in a large part of the "civilized" world, based on factual observations and a credible and vast experience.
Should be recommended to be read by all 10th graders, all future theologists, philosophers, biologists, and parents..

I enjoyed this book very much. From many directions science is changing how we understand what it means to be human. This book is most readable, intelligent and moves us along in understanding who we are. It is hard to grasp and hard to accept as it is unsettling. But I believe we must come to see our human place as embedded - as part of this larger web of life. Then we can embrace the adjustments needed for survival. If we can do that we can then prosper as a species and also as individuals. How did we ever get so hung up on the idea that our best nature is 100% selfish and that our only meaningful activity is competition? Empathy and a sense of fairness are perhaps our best "competitive strategy". And it is always a pleasure to read observational stories about other animals.

I have read several works by Prof. de Waal. I always found them fascinating. This one, though, is a little too abstract and too philosophical for my taste. There are too many ruminations about morality, not enough interesting stories about bonobos which are the author's specialty. Yet it is only such stories, coupled with the relevant statistics concerning behavior, that could possibly cement his thesis that apes possess something of the kind.

I enjoyed the animal behavior passages of this book in providing evidence for altruism being part of our DNA, but instead of pointing out the detriments of religion, he gives a shrug and essentially says, "It's here, it's not going away, quit focusing on it."

This author is uniquely qualified to present his conclusions.
References to Atheism seemed slightly ancillary, to the the primary theme of Humanism among primates, and its' implication for humanity. Great book!

Dr. de Waal writes in a clear and vivid manner. The author avoids strong statements and in the end it gives a nice wrapping for the book. I strongly recommend this book for anyone who likes science with a touch of humanistic view of Nature.

Because the last chapter of "the bonobo and the atheist" is a sort of summing-up chapter, I hoped to read it and be able to at last get a grasp on what the author's message was. I had failed in that effort in the preceding chapters. Here in the last chapter a question is posed "what would a bonobo tell an atheist?" Well, one thing is that a moral society doesn't require religion. The bonobo would side with the atheist and argue that morality arose first and modern religion latched onto it. Morality is not a thin veneer over a nasty human nature - rather, our evolutionary background lends a helping hand without which we would never have gotten this far.
Maybe I am exposing my lack of perception but I found the rest of the book very hard slogging. Lots of good examples of animal behavior and how it jibes with some of our ideas of right and wrong. But for me, it was very hard to follow de Wall's ideas - he seems to write with a logic that doesn't conform with mine - I often had to read over passages two and three times to follow the message.
I have some friends who would be quite interested in the subject that de Wall addresses but I would not recommend the book because the structure and language is so muddy and the ideas so scrambled that his fine objective is seldom achieved. Others may say, however, the problem is mine - I can't absorb an involved, complex message. Could be.

And interesting concept, somewhat backed up with scientific observations by Mr. de Wall. My only complaint might be that the conclusions seem to be based on sketchy observations of a limited populace.

I enjoyed the first couple of chapters of this book, but from there on, found the book to be very redundant and boring. I gave it a chance until I struggled through the fifth or sixth chapter. However, I did not find it to get any better. I stopped reading at about that point and did not pick up the book again. I have no interest in finishing it.

If you removed from this book Frans de Waal's (1) opinions/interpretations of art, (2) opinions on classical music, (3) opinions on/reviews of movies, (4) diatribes (often sophomoric) against 'new atheists' (Dawkins, Dennett, Harris, Hitchens) - you'd be left with a fairly short essay on bonobos and human morality.

The few parts of the book that actually deal with bonobo behavior and humanism are interesting - unfortunately, they amount to a few anecdotes sprinkled among the four topics above.

Frans de Waal is a primatologist - I wanted to read about the search for humanism among primates, not detailed descriptions/interpretations of old paintings. Unfortunately, this book is heavy on the latter, sparse on the former.

The book's title is misleading.

The debate with the New Atheists in de Waal's book misses the point that the basic theories of human evolution are all wrong, making the issue of religion, and the god debate somewhat beside the point.
Whatever his disagreement with Dawkins, et al., De Waal, like most in the field of biology, lives in a Darwinian cocoon, and never really encounters the critiques of that theory, a theory so entrenched that scholars in the dozens embark on research careers based on false premises. It is not a plus in his book that he takes on the New Atheists, as I do, because his own assumptions aren't very different, and, as with Dawkins, his views of religion are based on Darwinism, a pseudo-science. Mr. De Waals, Darwinism is a pseudo-science.

We have pointed to the fallacy of thinking that 'religion' arose as some kind of evolutionary adaption, with a similar statement about the evolution of morality. It is entirely possible that `religion' in some sense has genetic correlates, a different statement from any claim as to its Darwinian evolution. We don't know how morality emerged in man, homo sapiens, and it's unproven to say that it evolves 'upward' from below rather than 'downward' from above. The question is simply ambiguous, we don't know how it happened. It is part of the immense disservice done to science, and secularists, by Dawkins, and not only he, by creating a kind of cultic belief system out of Darwin's theory. As late as the forties, pace Gore Vidal's classic, academic dissent of Darwinism didn't cause an eyeblink, but then the synthesis took hold. The theory of natural selection, Act II. The whole legacy of (Neo-) Darwinism has been based on a series of confusions, ultimately stretching back to the beginnings of Wallace's theory (not Darwin's), a theory he later rejected because it failed on the issue of human evolution, and morality.
It is entirely apt to conduct research on 'moral behavior' in bonobos. But we cannot assume that anything we find in the primates shows direct continuity with the human reality, a moral reality so complex that noone has been able to describe it, as Kant made clear in his attempts to do that. The evolution of man, we suspect, was NOT a directly continuous result of primate givens. But even so, the line from the earliest predecessors of man (who were not the same as the parallel Chimps) is hardly a clear result of anything we see in the earliest apes. There might well be direct strains of primordial similarity, for sure. But the overall result in man's moral behavior is not really clarified by evolutionary psychology. It simply isn't. It is something new in evolution. Where is the proof of Darwinian claims? There is none. We do not have a continuous chain of evidence for the emergence of human morality, and, most important, we don't really know what precedents there were in homo erectus, set aside the chimps for a moment. The step to homo erectus was decisive, but still primitive. The step to homo sapiens closed the case, as it were. How did it happen that such limited research with bonobos could enter the debates over religion, let alone the debates between theists and atheists. <!--more-->
The whole game is thus a feint, if not a fraud, to serve just this debate, and is phony. Dawkins' obsessive faith that the miracle of natural selection proves the foundations of atheism. It is a pipedream of reductionist scientism. We can't deduce how human morality evolved in man from any clear evidence in the record, and the evidence so-called from bonobos is beside the point. The primate anatomy prefigures man's anatomy, and no doubt morality as such has some early intimations in the earliest primates. But it does not follow that this can tell us anything about religion, or the earliest forms of morality in man. Chimpanzees didn't have religion. Religions are really complex constructs that emerge with civilization starting in the late Neolithic. The use of the term religion for the behavior of man in the Paleolithic is entirely possible if you redefine the terms, but that's the problem, we can't do that. Although Old Stone Age tribalisms might give some hints. That isn't really religions, but tribal spirituality. But OK. It is possible to backdate the term `religion', to some extent.

The assumption, due to the obsession of atheist humanists, is that morality was bottom up. Where's the proof? De Waal's vague arguments are absolutely not proof of anything.
The fact of the matter is that many biologists have always maintained that humans (homo sapiens) emerged fairly suddenly from homo erectus in thee 200k millennia BCE period onwards. And the anatomical transition seems to have had an additional behavioral transition, most significant. Hardware change, and then a software change, very sudden. After that language, moral something, and art, higher consciousness, a soul sense, and spirits beliefs take over. This is by no means proven, but it is simply significant that even many among the Darwin camp have conceded this point, so we are not obliged to share the assumptions, speculation, of Darwinists that homo sapiens evolved slowly from erectus, and ditto for early erectus. It is hard to proceed here, because we don't know the content of this so-called 'Great Explosion' (which no doubt had a long concomitant aspect of slowly evolving side factors. We can't be sure, but this model, freely granted by many Darwinists (cf. Richard Klein's books with their going so far as to posit punctuated equilibrium), in some cases pegged to the era of ten to 50K intervals for this great explosion in the closing period before the great Exodus ca. 50-60K BCE from Africa to a global speciation of sapiens.
Whatever the case, it is VERY hard to think that standard selectionist thinking can explain the complexity of homo sapiens. Those who protest exceptionalism have missed the point. Man has roots in chimps, in dinosaurs, in amoebas, but so what? He is exceptional because he shows transition crossings of factors such as language, differential consciousness, and finally morality. The issue of consciousness suggests the real core of religion coming into being. That has less to do with morality than with the ability to escape mechanical consciousness into real self-consciousness, and, perhaps later, into the final 'consciousness' sometimes pegged with the misnomer 'enlightenment'. But here's the mystery, that totally defeats Darwinian thinking, that potential was there from the beginning, but began to manifest with the arising of the religions of the yogic type, probably in the late Paleolithic.
Whatever the case, the issue of religion has been muddled by biologists, taking theism, or moral behavior as the defining characteristics. But monotheism was a very late development indeed and isn't relevant to discussions of early men, whose behavior may way have resembled earlier forms of what Paleolithic men exhibit in their beliefs in 'soul', magic, and spirit visitation.
We have to suspect that the anatomical frame of man suddenly began to acquire the characteristics of a hyper-body in the form of a 'soul'. We can't even define what we mean by that (and Kant gave a drastic warning as to either belief or negation there), but every generation of homo sapiens (until the coming of the idiots of modern scientism) ascribed to some belief in the human soul. The Kantian system allows one to derive the meaning of that in about a two line (controversial, but scientifically informed) demonstration of the mind and the faculties of space-time. It is thus not hard to guess why science can't even locate a `soul', a myth in decline at all periods, but always sensed. And, of course, the factor of language, a VERY complex instrument science can't even describe yet, was mixed in with all the rest. Now here we would like to know how much of this homo erectus had. It is hard to figure without this piece of the puzzle. But, whatever the case, there is no proof that the emergence of homo sapiens was bottom up, especially given evidence of such a rapid closure on the human definition. Sit down, and ask if you really believe that an instrument (take the Chomskian brand of theory here) of such subtlety emerged slowly over time as a piecemeal and random set of mutational changes. What is strange is that this belief it taken as science dogma.
I am sorry to say it, but the evidence suggests it was all top-down in some sense we don't understand. Here the creationists are themselves confused, and can't seem to apply their own myths to man's emergence, for the obvious reason that the Bible had no idea of evolution, and records only the interaction of Adam and Eve with a peculiar kind of serpent/devil. But, remarkably, that myth does record (I will risk saying this out of earshot of creationists) a curiously confused intimation of the results of emergent man, a developed consciousness with the issues of will, thence good and evil, and a loss of innocence. It is a curiously muddled tale, but one with echoes from some primordial era of man. It is highly probable that this hoary myth (clearly transmitted from yore and clearly pegged back via dozens of tales told to the Sumerian thence earlier sources) records something of the by then distant beginnings of human consciousness able to play the higher music of self-consciousness. This is not to pursue the Old Testament brand of religion, which always ends in useless confusions. But it is significant something probably still survives in the OT of man's earliest preoccupations. Indeed, in parallel India a far more advanced form of religion than the Canaanite/Egyptian/Sumerian nexus (?) that produced monotheism was emerging in India, and there we see the whole legacy of the instrument of consciousness brought to a kind of perfection in the onset of Buddhism (whose sources go very far back via Jainism, probably to the Paleolithic). This pure form of the saga of consciousness proliferates in other forms in a wider domain of culture in the beliefs in the magic, etc... But the Indian preserves something that is almost scientific in its precision.
The religion of monotheism is therefore not the issue for evolutionary psychology. Monotheism is a very late development, and, mirabile dictu, we see at once that its association with the Axial Age shows unmistakable evidence of top-down dynamics. The Axial Age is mystery, because it gave birth to both an atheist and theistic religion of monotheism, and much more than that, a veritable seedbed of cultural innovations, including secularism itself in the Greek case. That should tell us something: secularism and religion came into existence in parallel.
The issue of morality is very difficult to resolve, because we can't easily describe what human morality is, let alone how it might have evolved. Kant made the issue clear. We don't have to really explain morality, because it hardly exists yet. A set of beliefs and behaviors of the moral variety exist in all forms of men, but what do we mean by this? And here we are getting suspicious. We consistently reject design arguments because they invoke all the confusions of creationist, and, indeed, the religious confusions that came into being in the emergence of monotheism, in the Axial period (with anticipations before). Biologists have confused the issue by a tendency to equate morality with altruism, which is mechanized as nearly illusory as a byproduct of natural selection in the bogus theories of Hamilton et al. It doesn't work.
There is no way to reduce the whole of morality to the single trait of altruism, or, indeed, the phases of group consciousness and cooperative survivalism. That misses the point, that the Old Testament gets it better: the will, and associated consciousness emerges and with a sense of good and evil, however naive the whole game, wrongly but insightfully rejected by Nietzsche in another crackpot evolutionary scheme. But the Old Testament and Nietzsche both get a sense of a 'new man' or 'overman (projected on the future from past, perhaps)' or a new Adam with an incipient factor of (free) agency (if not free will) that must suddenly render judgments of good and evil. It is not hard to glimpse the primordial forms of that in earliest homo sapiens, whatever the facts. But the problem is that it is very hard to get free from a design argument. Ironically, the Old Testament makes the point that it wasn't god but a being (serpent??) of far lesser rank, with questionable morals no less, who taught morality! Nietzsche smelled this rat, but missed the point. A sort of buddhist view can help here: morality is not a mechanical set of rules but a phase of insight based on higher consciousness. The real clue. But to what? We can't conclude anything from this, but we must be honest to acknowledge that the emergence of higher consciousness in man is almost always associated with some kind of hermaneutic higher 'power', or guru. Usually, but not always. It is always possible that primitive man had a potential that he stumbled on in stages, in a kind of euphoria of self-discovery of his potential of consciousness, so like intoxication in its earliest phases (which no doubt involved a kind cave man tantra, the relation of sex and consciousness) More we cannot say. It is entirely possible that human higher consciousness appears from an unknown cosmic process unknown to us. It could be that the answer has been guessed at in a dozen works of science fiction. 2001 the movie, a great favorite of secularists, was actually a cleverly disguised design argument We have often talked here of Bennett and his view of the existence of demiurgic powers of nature, which we can discuss again later. The point is that supernatural theism can confuse the issue. A being in nature but at a higher level of technology than man can imagine could be involved in evolutionary transitions. We don't know.

But it is not reasonable to conclude from the false findings of evolutionary psychologists like de Waal anything whatever about religion from research on bonobos. Can't you sit down and look at the clear evidence of the Axial Age? That research into bonobos is of great value by itself, but its presumption to explain human religion is simply false.
The whole debate over theism and atheism is almost beside the point. We can't have a discussion in the confused context of biologists, and/or the New Atheists.

I ordered this book hoping for more information on the Bonobo behavior and its ties to "humanism." It started out that way, with wonderful stories of Bonobo behavior mirroring empathy, sympathy, etc. I was delighted. Then, about two or three chapters in, the author really does just get on a big soapbox about religion. It was so unnecessary and boring to read that I skipped ahead a chapter, but it was still going! It was a bizarre turn towards a defensive rant that stopped me dead in my tracks. I never finished the book and was disappointed that the promise of exploring nature's tendency towards empathy was not fulfilled.

This book was pretty bad, De Waal has a great grasp on primates and the sections discussing his expertise were wonderful. However his reflections on religion in society were pretty poorly thought out. In one chapter (chapter 4 I think) he compares male circumcision with female circumcision done in Africa. It was an offensive comparison, those poor girls have their sexuality ripped away with a broken bottle.
He is also quite hard on atheists despite the fact that he is one. He speaks of American atheists as overly vocal and "sleeping furiously". An interesting perspective of my country from a position I cannot take but also very ill informed and missing details that would make the strange activities he sees make sense. I wouldn't recommend this book.

The subject of the book is very interesting. Frans de Waal has a very nice style which makes for an easy read.
However, he does not convince me of his opinions, even though I share many of them. Mainly he does himself what he accuses other scientists of: cherry picking, confirmation bias and even stating his opinion as fact.

For example (I don't say I don't agree with some of the below, the point is the way he presents his ideas and opinions):
"Such behaviour is sure to be selected against" (page 76). Why is this sure? Is there any evidence? None that Mr. de Waal presents. It is just opinion.
"Faith is driven by attraction to certain persons, stories, rituals and values" (page 96) Is that so? Even though his book contains many references, he conveniently forgets to mention references whenever he states his opinion as fact.
"Isn't knowledge invariably good?" (page 137). Seems like a weird comment from a scientist. Knowledge is neither good nor bad. Knowledge can be used to do good or do bad

The book contains many examples like this. Also with the examples of animal behaviour, he seems to be picking the examples that suit him best, which give me the feeling he is cherry picking them.

Specific to the kindle edition: the book contains lots of references, by means of endnotes. These are not links, so if you want to check a reference you have to go to the end of the book and look up the endnote yourself. The same goes for the index: no links, so you have to find the page mentioned manually.

I really enjoyed reading this book, which I did with a sense of wonder at the ability of non-human species to act intelligently in solving problems and to behave ethically. But I'm still puzzled as to why the author chose this title, which would surely put off at least 80% of his potential readership?

It's not strident atheism. Far from it. If Frans de Waal is passionate about anything, it's about science. He's not averse to criticising other atheists (as well as complimenting them at times). I enjoyed his comment that atheists tend to vary in their stridency according to how bad their experiences were of religion were in their childhood, and often atheists are just replacing one dogma with another, often serially. Chris Hitchens started off as a Marxist, became a Greek Orthodox Christian, then an anti-theist ('God is Not Great') and finally a neo-conservative (and supporting the second Iraqi war).

It's not just about bonobos. It's also about common chimps. And gorillas. And baboons and other monkeys. And elephants, whales and dogs.

A wonderful book. I don't think de Waal has ever written a bad book.

The writer has much to say, and good credentials for saying it, but his book lacks focus and organization along the way. The observations and research on primates is fascinating, and his musings on art and morality are as well. I just wish he had tied it all together before the last sentence.

I feel like the title of this book is slightly misleading. While it is classic Frans de Waal writing--charming, voiceful, easy to read--the bulk of the material is more about explaining secular ethics and less about religion or humanism. Pulling from his long career in primatology (which admittedly shares a lot in common with his other books), De Waal spends the majority of the book outlining the evolution of ethics (through reciprocal altruism, kin selection, etc). He then uses this axiom to justify a morality that is separate from any deontological source.

Within the book, De Waal threads an analysis of a famous painting to literally illustrate his points, which is both effective and interesting. I feel as though De Waal accomplishes his goal of outlining a belief system that doesn't depend on religion yet isn't outright dismissive of religion either. He calls for a tolerance and 'middle way' that, in my opinion, is sorely needed in a time of polarization.

My only criticisms, which are mild at best, are that he recycles some material from his other books and doesn't discuss humanism explicitly until the last chapter. But those quibbles aside, De Waal has created a persuasive and intriguing work that provides a secular conclusion that is inspiring, rather than polarizing.

Although I liked all the parts that contained his observations of the apes, he did not tell us anything new, all these traits about apes, especially bonobos are already known to most of us, especially the atheist community. We already knew apes, even other animals such as dolphins, elephants dogs and such have their own proto-moral codes that let them live in large groups, we already knew that morality has its background in nature and it's one of the main defense points of atheism versus religion, nature and evolution.

The disturbing thing about this book is that it was written with an extreme agnostic bias, I admit that its really rare, but some agnostics somehow manage to hate atheists with passion. Although they live their lives de facto as atheists or even materialists. The book portrays atheists and religious people alike, although it clearly distances communist atrocities from atheism it still dwells on the misconception that atheists are actually enjoying taking people's hopes and dreams from them by destroying religious arguments. I would like to remind again that NO ATHEIST HAS EVER KILLED RELIGIOUS PEOPLE IN THE NAME OF ATHEISM OR WITH THE GOAL OF DESTROYING RELIGION. Marxists/Communists/Socialists invented a religion to themselves, they worshiped certain characters like Marx and Lenin and completely disregarded rational thought, this should have been clarified by now, this was the main reason they opened up on religion and started attacking religious institutions.

Atheism and religion clearly has no equal grounds, both in power and history. Most atheists, after a period of anger go through the phase of understanding why religions exist and how they can coexist without being ostracized or beheaded or simply shunned, ergo they are the ones who ask for a middle ground, they are not on a crusade to destroy religion, they are on a quest to earn the right to exist.

Anyway, the second thing about the book is that it completely disregards human radicals such as sociopaths and psychopaths. These people almost exist everywhere, they are smart and well versed on manipulating humans and public opinion as a whole. And it is extremely common to see them using religion (and collectivist ideologies) as easy to access tools (in fact invent religions or ideologies that act like religions when they need). These apex-predators of the human-kind have no empathy towards other humans so see them as expendable useful-idiots in the struggle to achieve their goals. I don't think I have to go too much in detail about these people, everyone has a bit of an opinion about them by now.

Bonobos or any other lower ape, most probably because they don't have such advanced brains as humans ever exhibit sociopathic or psychopathic behavior, they may every now and then go rampaging on each other or manipulate each other for small gains, they are none the great planners or schemers. They may exhibit maybe-baby proto-sociopathic behavior indubitably but their cultures never develop complex enough to enable the proto-sociopaths/psychopaths they may or may not have within their groups.

I urge Frans De Waal to cease his irrational rage against atheists, reconsider his intellectual position by adding the human-only elements to the issue. After all we are a more advanced than apes, yes we have all the similarities even common points, but we are advanced, more complex and no one with the right mind can deny that. Ergo, we are not going to get our moral lessons from an ape, there can never be such an exchange, listen to what those atheist whom you shun are saying, they are asking for a new social order that is not based on religion, NOT PEOPLE TO GIVE UP THEIR FAITHS, all atheists admit (and even science backs this up) that not everyone under a certain cognitive strength can give up religion, and since we are not going to suddenly jump to 120+ IQ tomorrow, nearly all atheists admit that a NEW social solution must be found so that religious people don't run over atheists lives or each other for that matter, because no religion (especially Abrahamic ones) respect the existence of another.

I have to agree with the negative reviews of this book. It is often incoherent. It's one of the few books I've quit reading because it was impossible to discern the theme between the constant asides and diversions.

I enjoy the information about bonobos, and de Waal has some interesting anecdotes. However, the main themes of the book are not related to ethology, but to atheist bashing, evolutionist berating, psychologist mocking, and the genius of Hieronymous Bosch. De Waal is opinionated and prone to overgeneralization. I hope he doesn't do science the same way he writes books.

I was very disappointed that there was not more about the bonobos and their behaviour. The author diverged into diatribes against the active atheist movement and Richard Dawkins in particular. This detracted from his message and made me question his objectivity. I prefer my popular science with more science.

I gave 2 stars in my first review of this great book under the title Bug in the Kindle edition, hoping that I'd call attention to the issue (the notes are not linked) and that the publisher would correct it in an update.
Someone remarked that this was unfair to the author, so I'm now replacing my review. The book deserves 5 stars. But how can the poor reader complain when the eletronic version sucks? It is a technical issue, yes, but for this reader it's a serious one. I went through the notes only after reading the whole book (it was too much trouble going to the notes section and back; in an ebook in which the notes are not linked that's a real pain) and that was very frustrating.
This is a scientific book and immediate access to the notes is important.
Anyway, I surrender. The publisher, obviously, doesn't care. The author and the reader have been harmed. That's what is really unfair. But who cares?

When Frans de Waal speaks about his experiences with bonobos etc the material is fascinating and well worth reading. I was however disappointed with the repeated insertion of unbearably smug, snide put-downs of atheists for being strident and critical of religion (i.e. for presuming to so much as whimper in protest when the religious make a god of their faith and cram it down others throats) implying that with a few exceptions the religious do not deserve such pointed criticism and should'nt have their feelings hurt.

Cry me an ocean.

While the comments regarding the dangers of dogmatism, religious or otherwise are penetrating I am sure de Waals would be far less sanguine about religion were he more directly on the receiving end (as opposed to growing up infused with a mild Catholicism in tolerant Europe). As a homosexual reading de Waals material I felt akin to a Jew being lecturered about how nasty I was for presuming to criticise the Nazi's who are just misunderstood and would certainly reciprocate the deference shown to them if I would just divolve into silence. After all I should respect the fact the Nazi philosophy makes a lot of people feel good about themselves and so forth. It is Christians and Muslims who wave around a book that says people like me should be killed, the worst they have received in return from me or any other atheist in my experience is pointed criticism. When Dawkins totes a Kalashnikov de Waals will have a point and not a moment sooner.

The so called religious moderates may be a majority but for all the use they are restraining their fascist fundamentalist brethren they might as well not exist. When Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris and so forth start blowing people up in the name of their atheism or shooting young Christians in the face for placing faith (that is their subjective feelings) above investigation and enquiry then de Waals will be comparing apples with apples. Perhaps de Waals anthropological investigation might benefit by his donning a Burqa and spending a bit of time as a woman in Saudi Arabia or one of those other lovely countries where women are little more than beasts of burden as required by this religious imperative or that.

If you purchase this book be prepared to fast-forward through pages of anti-atheist dribble to find the gold nuggets.

Frans De Waal, a renown Primatologist, without taking sides, uses his primate studies and research to tell us why he thinks man may have derived proto-moral sensibilities, if not the very basis for his entire moral system, from his own animal instincts rather than from a belief in god, or through religion per se.

Accepting as a given that our psychological make up remains essentially that of social primates, and reasoning the rest of the way, this author appears to think this alone is quite sufficient to justify the level of morality found in contemporary man?

His argument is an uncomplicated straightforward one: Bonobos, our nearest animal relatives, constructed moral sentiments based on emotions, and instincts, and used them to develop a rudimentary system of animal morality — the same one seen upon inspecting almost any mammalian clan anywhere in the animal world. It is one that humans, being the cousins of apes, later piggybacked on, combining it with reason to develop, arguably, a more sophisticated and more robust human moral system.

Although science clearly played an important role in melding reason to man’s own proto morality, helping to further develop human moral sensibilities, it took religion to codify these sensibilities into rules that could be justified and rationalized as being good or bad, and then universalized into a fully functioning more abstract social-psychological reward-punishment system.

The larger questions of the book centered on the necessity, value and ultimate utility of such a larger moral system.

Based as it is on god-induced guilt and duress, the author wondered out loud whether a non-theist based morality, similar to that extant in the animal world, all on its own, was not itself quite sufficient if not better than, one constructed under celestial duress?

Some common ground is broken when it is realized that the context of knowledge, and the way knowledge is advanced within a given societal context, invariably plays a critical and decisive role in furtherance of moral development.

Thus, no one can disagree that in this regard, both religion and science have contributed their respective parts to man’s moral context and thus to man’s moral development and advancement.

Many of the author’s arguments mirror those in contemporary debates between atheists and religionists, and although a lot is left unsaid here, what a thought-provoking start to such debates. Five stars

The theory of evolution is that microscopic organisms evolved into whales in a period of about one hundred million decades. I use this unit because it takes 20 years for a fertilized human egg to create all of the cells in a human body. Using decades instead of years or seconds puts the amount of time for evolution in perspective. The theory of human evolution is that human beings evolved from apes.

Many people think the theory of evolution is a fact, and call it common descent. They justify this with the nonsense that the word theory has a different meaning in science than it does in other areas. Fact or theory, there is no theory that explains common descent. There are only theories that explain the adaptation of species to the environment. These theories are natural selection (Pierre Louis Maupertuis), epigenetics (Jean-Baptiste Lamarck), orthogenesis (Wilhelm Haacke), natural genetic engineering (James Shapiro), and facilitated variation (Marc Kirschner and John C. Gerhart). According to Evolution Revolution: Evolution is True. Darwin is Wrong. This Changes Everything., Charles Darwin's only contribution to evolutionary biology was to popularize natural selection, and Darwinism is some kind of atheistic cult. De Waal is not a Darwinist:

"With the increasing popularity of the gene's-eye view, however, these distinctions were overlooked. This led to a cynical outlook on human and animal nature. The altruistic impulse was downplayed, ridiculed even, and morality was taken off the table entirely. We were only slightly better than social insects. Human kindness was seen as a charade and morality as a thin veneer over a cauldron of nasty tendencies." (location 472)

"Veneer Theory used to be the dominant biological view of human nature. It regarded kindness as either absent or an evolutionary misstep. Morality was a thin veneer barely able to conceal our true nature, which was entirely selfish. In the past decade, however, Veneer Theory has succumbed to overwhelming evidence for innate empathy, altruism, and cooperation in humans and other animals." (location 605)

Darwinists want an evolutionary mechanism that has the potential of explaining common descent. Natural selection offers more hope of this than epigenetics and natural genetic engineering. The fact that blacksmiths develop big arm muscles is an example of the complexity of life. If blacksmith's children were born with big arm muscles, it would mean there was some kind of connection between the blacksmith's arms and his gonads, making organisms more complex and harder to explain. Likewise, the fact that non-human animals solve problems and plan ahead, empathize with other creatures, have a sense of fairness, are altruistic and compassionate, crave and give affection, and can recognized faces is evidence against natural selection. De Waal even gives an example of apes responding to public opinion. However, this is all evidence for human evolution. The author believes in human evolution, but to his credit acknowledges the evidence against it:

"At the same time, however, I am reluctant to call a chimpanzee a 'moral being'. This is because sentiments do not suffice. We strive for a logically coherent system and have debates about how the death penalty fits arguments for the sanctity of life, or whether an unchosen sexual orientation can be morally wrong. These debates are uniquely human. " (location 261)

If you do not obey moral laws, you risk going to Hell when you die. This is why moral laws come from God, not from evolution and our mental abilities. One of the reasons I believe in life after death is that people who don't believe, almost without exception, don't discuss the matter knowledgeably, intelligently, rationally, and honestly. The following quotes from the author is evidence of his lack of knowledge, intelligence, and rationality:

"Without God, moral rules are `nothing but euphemisms for personal taste,' exclaimed the rabbi, waving his hands above his head as if throwing pizza dough." (location 1259)

God exists because value judgments are real. If you like vanilla and I like chocolate, it is true that we have different values. It is true because we are embodied spirits and not a collection of molecules. If we are a collection of molecules, there is something different about us but it is not that we have different values. If an honor killing makes you happy and disgusts me, my values are better than your values. If it is true that murder is a sin, then God exists. This is what the rabbi was trying to say.

"At one level, God's existence is an absolute certainty for many, but at another level it always remains open to criticism. Religion is called "faith" precisely because trusts things unseen."(location 2814)

There are two kinds of knowledge: faith and reason. In faith, you know something is true because God is telling you. In reason, you know something is true because you can see the truth of it. Belief in life after death is a matter of faith, but we know from reason that an infinite being, called God in Western religions, exists.

"If we weren't put on earth by God, so the thinking goes, we'd lack purpose." (location 1419)

The author thinks our purpose in life should be self-realization, not trying to get to Heaven. One of the great mysteries of life is that people who try to make themselves happy tend to be unhappy, and people who try to make others happy tend to be happy. But the goal of making yourself happy is an intelligible goal. We can understand what millionaire playboys are trying to achieve. But the goal of self-realization is literally unintelligible. We can realize our potential in different ways. The problem of life consists precisely in deciding how to realize our potentials. It is quite true that if there is no life after death, we would lack purpose. The way the atheist Jean-Paul Sartre put it was this: "Man is a useless passion."

Re: The bonobo, the atheist, the primatologist and the pope

I finished reading what the bonobo would say to the atheist just as the conclave of cardinals was preparing to convene in Rome to select Pope Benedict's replacement. What better time to have one of the world's wisest primate ethologists remind us of morality's "humble beginnings". Far from anti-religion, de Waal seeks to replace notions like original sin with a more scientifically justifiable "bottom up perspective" according to which "morality predates religion". Rather than "imposed from above or derived from well reasoned principles...", sensitivity to others, concern for "fairness", "love of harmony" and other "moral laws" derive from "ancient capacities" of apes with a deep history of social living. If our "incredibly superstitious species" is receptive to Christianity it is "because of our evolved grasp of the value of relationships, the benefits of cooperation, the need for trust and honesty..." Far from nihilistic, de Waal's wonderfully literate, disarmingly candid, and wonderfully entertaining romp though the animal origins of morality bears a potentially promising message. As the Australian anthropologist Les Hiatt once commented (writing about de Waal's predecessor, the evolutionary anthropologist Edward Westermarck who a century earlier, on the basis of far, far less evidence about other animals, similarly sought to trace morality's origins): "The policy of expanding amity symbolized by the dove, may be something of an evolutionary novelty; but when the hawks hover, it is comforting to remember that (amity's) roots in the human lineage run very deep". Nor is it just a matter of hoping so. As de Waal points out, there is considerable evidence that it is so. I loved this book.

I am extremely disappointed in this work. I know someone who is bothered both by the fact that I am an atheist, and by my insisting the evolution does not require personal confrontations between rivals; one might just have a better immune system. A liberal Christian, he believes in evolution, but doesn't have much understanding of how it works. I had hoped to be able to recommend this book, thinking that perhaps hearing it from a noted scientist would be more effective than hearing it from me. I am certain that he would love this atheist-bashing book if I were crazy enough to recommend it, but that would be like handing him a stick to beat me with.

Frans de Waal is supposedly an atheist, but he certainly doesn't like other atheists. I sometimes wince at some of the things militant atheists say, but he doesn't seem to approve of atheism at all. Of course, believers can be tactless too, but that's o.k. I'm not certain if we are supposed to hide our lack of belief behind evasions like: "I'm not a church-goer, but Jesus was great teacher." And he goes over and over the idea, with a little Protestant bashing thrown in. He has a good point that religion is close to universal, but if he would like atheists to tread a little more lightly, he might try setting a good example.

I really don't see what this has to do with his supposed main point about the evidence of morality in animals. He is arguing that the basis of morality is "bottom-up," arising from our nature as gregarious animals with significant parental care for offspring, and is only refined and strengthened by philosophy and religion. I loved that part of the book, although I'm probably a pushover on that subject. De Waal offers a mixture of research and anecdotes, mostly from apes, but also including other animals such as elephants.

Three stars meaning the very good mixed with the very bad. I may try his earlier, similar book Good Natured in hopes of finding something I can recommend. I understand that doesn't include the tirades about atheists.

De Waal's goal in this book is to show that, contrary to "top down" theories of morality that require a god or some other entity to lay out and enforce moral rules, morality has its roots in our biology. To do so, he cites observations and studies of animals, notably bonobos and other primates, that show moral characteristics such as empathy or community welfare.

De Waal makes his own position pretty clear from the beginning. He says, "Perhaps it's just me, but I am wary of any persons whose belief system is the only thing standing between them and repulsive behavior. Why not assume that our humanity, including the self-control needed for a livable society, is built into us?"

He allies himself with Hume's moral theory, which takes "moral sentiments" as its starting point. The Humean argument, as against Kantian moralists, is that without such moral sentiments as sympathy or empathy, morality can never get off the ground -- you cannot construct moral rules or any kind of compelling force for morality out of reason alone. Reason serves to help us construct moral standards, but in doing so it serves those moral sentiments.

De Waal then cites animal behaviors that exhibit exactly the kind of moral sentiments that Humean theory calls for. Some of the examples are observations in the wild -- e.g., chimps, both male and female, who adopt unrelated orphaned young. Others are from controlled experiments -- e.g., chimps again, who prefer options in which they share rewards with another chimp rather than being the only one rewarded for their actions.

Not surprisingly these behaviors are more prevalent among primates than among other animals. But de Waal does cite examples from other mammal species, e.g., elephants, dogs, whales, etc.

He resists the temptation to suppose some mechanism completely different from human moral thinking is at work -- "I personally adhere to a different law of parsimony, according to which, if two closely related species act the same under similar circumstances, the mental processes behind their behavior are likely the same, too." And he cites evidence of such complex cognitive behavior as planning and problem-solving to counter any blithe claim that animals are acting only out of "blind instinct."

He doesn't claim though that any animals show morality at human level. Specifically, he excludes complex concerns for the community, especially at the level of considering how "anyone" should be treated in a given set of circumstances -- the kind of universality that moral theory is typically built around. That seems a level of complexity and abstraction that non-human animals do not display.

Of course we could accept that animals, like bonobos and others, behave morally without accepting that human morality can be independent of religious belief. It simply could be that among the differences in human morality (and de Waal certainly admits that there are differences) is the role of religious belief in providing a kind of seal of righteousness or validity to human moral codes, beyond the emotion-driven behaviors of animals.

But even that position is one that narrows the difference, to accept that animal behavior is in any sense moral. Perhaps the defender of religion's role would argue that, even granting everything de Waal observes and says, we should only grant the title of "morality" to codes that are ordained by religious beliefs.

De Waal's opponents here are certainly religious fundamentalists. But he is no friend of the "new atheists", like Sam Harris. He rejects even the program itself that Harris proposes in The Moral Landscape. As so many others have also pointed out, there are many scientific facts about human evolution and behavior -- their factualness is no guarantee of their moral validity. De Waal also is suspicious of the kind of militant atheism of scientists like Harris and Richard Dawkins. Granting the evils of religious fundamentalism, why the fervent attacks on religious belief altogether? And why get so worked up in proselytizing a negative, a non-belief? De Waal is himself an atheist, but he doesn't see good reason to be a militant atheist. And he expresses respect for a broader spiritual aspect to human life.

Exquisite book. Frans de Waal is a superb writer and primatologist. De Waal's analysis, logic, and use of facts to support his theses are very rigorous. Altruism in apes, Neanderthals, elephants, and other creatures is proven. De Waal discusses paleontology, evolutionary biology, anthropology, philosophy, Christianity, art history, religions, etc. "This communitarian heritage is crucial in relation to this book's theme, since it suggests that morality predates current civilizations and religions by at least a hundred millennia" (pg. 56).
The greatest public defender of evolution this country has ever known was Stephen Jay Gould (pg. 102). Turtles are a favorite of the Dalai Lama, because they supposedly carry the world on their backs (pg. 5). They (bonobos and chimpanzees) show that our lineage is marked not just by male dominance and xenophobia but also by a love of harmony and sensitivity to others. Since evolution occurs through both the male and the female lineage, there is no reason to measure human progress purely by how many battles our men have won against other hominins (pg. 13).
The first to propose human descent from the apes was Jean-Baptiste Lamarck in 1809 (pg. 59). Carl Linnaeus placed Homo sapiens firmly within the primate order... Queen Victoria judged the anthropoid apes "painfully and disagreeably human" in 1835 (pg. 101). Contributing to Thomas Henry Huxley's reputation as the slayer of religion is his invention of the term "agnostic," meaning that he wasn't sure of God's existence... Huxley described himself as a "scientific Calvinist," and much of his thinking followed the somber, joyless precepts of the doctrine of original sin (pg. 36).
[After describing Ardipithecus ramidus] But why take any living ape as a starting point? The apes that are around today have had as much time to change as our own species has had since we split. People often think that the apes must have stood still while we evolved, but genetic data in fact suggest that chimpanzees changed more than we did. We simply don't know what our last common ancestor looked like. The rainforest doesn't permit fossilization - everything rots away before it gets to this point - which is why we lack early ape fossils. Nevertheless, we can be sure that our progenitor would fit the common definition of an ape:... we descend from apes, just not from any of the current ones (pg. 60).
The Vatican never formally condemned Darwin's theory or put his works on the list of forbidden books. Resistance to evolution is almost entirely restricted to evangelical Protestants in the American South and Midwest (pg. 91). No less than 30 percent of Americans read the Bible as the actual word of God (pg. 102). "Strictly speaking, there is no certainty; there are only people who are certain," said Charles Bernard Renouvier.

Frans de Waal is a very accomplished primatologist, and in addition, he also possesses the rare gift for elegant prose. This book reinforces the growing scientific perspective that morality is not the exclusive domain of homo sapiens, and instead is a result of evolution. Indeed, the study of animal behavior has revealed that primates and apes exhibit rudimentary forms of morality such as reciprocal altruism, co-operation, and a sense of fairness/justice. Although the book title features the bonobos prominently, it actually discusses the ethology of other animals including elephants and capuchin monkeys, representing a rather comprehensive view of the building blocks of moral behavior throughout the animal kingdom.

While I appreciate his attempts to weigh in on the philosophical and sociocultural implications of a bottom-up morality especially in the vein of humanism, I find it somewhat puzzling that he inveighs a tone of stridency towards the so-called New Atheists. For one, he shares a lot in common with Richard Dawkins. Both of them are zoologists/ethologists by training and both have an uncanny ability to traverse effortlessly between highbrow cultural analysis and the technical minefield of scientific discourse.

Although chimpanzees are the most well-studied human relative, it turns out that bonobos are at least as phylogenetically equidistant from our species as the chimps are. I couldn’t help but extrapolate and think of the implications of De Waal’s insight into bonobo behavior with respect to the spectrum of human political tendencies: you have the lefty hippie types who believe in free love (bonobos) and then you have the hawkish war-mongering conservatives (chimpanzees). One thing that I took away from the bonobos is that sex can and does serve positive non-reproductive functions.

Besides impassioned diatribes against the New Atheists, as and when he can, De Waal also takes a stab at Dawkin’s genes-eye view of evolution, especially in light of nature and morality. I find this somewhat perplexing as it is quite clear to anyone who has read Dawkin’s Selfish Gene that descriptions of genes as being conscious and intentional agents is at best, metaphorical. I’m sure that ultimately, Dawkins would agree with De Waal that humans and other primates need not be consciously motivated by selfish desires, even if the outcomes of moral evolution were shaped by selfish means.

The older I get, the more I find myself subscribing to the Humean as opposed to the Kantian school of thought. Recent advances in cognitive science and neurobiology corroborate with that of animal studies, further cementing the idea that Descartes wasn’t quite on the right side of the rationality argument.

I agree with De Waal that understanding the need for religion is a far superior goal to bashing it. However, even if the existence of God isn’t provable, unlike him, I do find that question rather important and interesting. Works by the likes of Dr. Andy Thomson show us why religion needs to be studied as a phenomenon that has co-evolved with humanity and its cultures. I also think that it’s important to figure out why, as De Waal discusses in this book, communities based on secularism disintegrate much faster than those based on religious principles. Why is it that sharing a religion dramatically raises trust? The question is not so much whether religion is true or false, but how it shapes our lives, and what might possibly take its place if we were to get rid of it.

The Dutch scientist may have grown up with a milder religious upbringing in Europe. And in a sense he’s probably right that a harsh childhood fomented by religious indoctrination is related to the extent of bitterness and contempt for religion after deconversion. But De Waal completely fails to even objectively probe or discuss the negative externalities of religion; invariably, his views are commensurate with that of the typical liberal academic apologist and relativist. For one, I am tired of the argument that the crusades/inquisition was just a front for political or colonial ambitions, and that religion had no role in it.

I like how we’re slowly beginning to build up a story of how religion came to be. When our ancestors lived in small groups, similar to primate groups, everyone knew everyone. When surrounded by an intimate community, we had reasons to follow the rules and get along with each other; there were personal reputations to uphold.

It was only when our human ancestors aggregated in ever-larger societies, that these face-to-face mechanisms fell apart. With bigger groups came the need for bigger gods. This framework is highly satisfying from an intellectual standpoint, analogous to when Dawkins explained how replicating machines arose from a “primordial soup,” such that one could so clearly see and understand the continuity of life. In this case, the study of animal behavior has revealed a continuity in moral evolution and the latest insight into the enigmatic bonobos have shed much light on the foibles and triumphs of the human condition.

THE BONOBO AND THE ATHEIST
In Search of Humanism Among the Primates
By Frans De Waal
Publisher: W.W. Norton & Company
Review by Tim Campbell

I liked too much of the book and agreed with too much of what author and primatologist Frans De Waal has to say to be overly critical, but there are a few areas in which we disagree!

On the positive side, I agree with his assertion that morality is a bottom-up evolutionary development and decidedly not a top-down set of rules "given" to humanity by a deity or group of deities. I also agree that religion seems to be a cultural side effect of evolution, invented by humans in order to "bolster the existent social order". Also to enable the ruling class to remain as rulers!

De Waal has worked for years with non-human primates: mostly chimps and bonobos. Both apes are very close to humans on the evolutionary bush and all three of us share a number of basic underlying traits. Traits that may well demonstrate the basics of social order, which then evolved into a system of descriptive and prescriptive "morals", reinforced in part by our own nature and in part by the authority given to religion.

According to De Waal, there are two kinds of morality: one-on-one--how we behave toward other individuals and how they behave toward us specifically--and "community concern"--how our behavior affects society at large. Observing our close cousins--the other apes--and not coincidentally our more distant cousins the elephants, De Waal concludes that both of these characteristics are present in them and are therefore likely traits that were passed to us by our common ancestors, not "given" to us by the gods.

Such traits that we have mistakenly assumed are unique to humans--altruism, empathy, sympathy, and finally morality--are observed definitively in the behavior and testing of chimps and bonobos.

He is not a Pollyanna however. He discusses the sexual promiscuity among bonobos as a peace-making social effect, but also points out that bonobos can also be territorial and aggressive. However, the bonobo society is a matriarchal society whereas chimpanzee tribes are very much patriarchal. It is this basic difference between the two non-human primates that is an interesting aspect of this study and testing. De Waal's descriptions of ape behavior and the interactions between ape and scientist form the most fascinating sections of the book.

On the negative side, De Waal criticizes the apparent anti-religion meanness of the so-called neo-atheists: Dawkins, Hitchens, Harris, et al. Even though he has lived extensively in the United States, he appears to be somewhat sheltered from the anti-science anti-humanist rantings and political maneuvers of the fundaloon crowd. After listening to these folks attack and use the same foolish arguments over and over, while trying desperately to force the government and education system to accept their pre-science tribal myths as fact and "sound science", I understand Dawkins's frustration. I do not suffer fools either and the hard-core bible-thumping extreme fundaloon tribes are fools. If hitting them back offends De Waal, he should remember that almost 50% of the American public disbelieves biological evolution. This is due to the volume of dishonest garbage that emanates from the creationist crowd.

That said, I would also point out that I agree with De Waal that debating the existence of God IS a futile if not silly enterprise. The same arguments go back and forth, nothing is actually resolved or proven either way, and both sides claim victory! Nevertheless, by debating the existence of God, atheists are at least given the opportunity to explain WHY they do not accept the myth stories of religion. The theists have thousands of pulpits and venues for pushing THEIR beliefs and agendas. These debates provide something of a forum for rebuttal.

Later in the book, De Waal accuses the neo-atheists of lacking imagination, that to them, "all that matters is empirical reality, that facts trump beliefs...neo-atheists are like people standing outside a movie theater telling us that Leonardo DiCaprio didn't really go down with the Titanic."

Sorry, but that is complete nonsense. De Waal is mistaking the suspension of disbelief that moviegoers engage in when watching a movie with atheists insisting that there was no magical global flood, that it is unlikely that Jesus was a god who was conceived by magic and rose from the dead after being executed. One simply has to read Dawkins's THE MAGIC OF REALITY to see clearly that Dawkins at least is very comfortable with that form of magic that is illusion and entertainment.

Ok, enough of my criticism of this book and Mr. De Waal's opinions! I love the book!

He is certainly aware of the differences between humans and the other apes. While apes do practice policing and "rudimentary forms of community concern", it is in that radical step up from personal interests that "human morality begins to depart from anything else encountered thus far".

And this is, I believe the essential point of the book.

We ARE unique, but we are ALSO apes. We CAN be aggressive and violent, but we can ALSO be peacemakers. As an atheist, I can say that we HAVE evolved. We HAVE developed morality and this morality has evolved over time and in different environments according to the needs and desires of specific peoples. Caring for each other, mourning our dead, helping those in need are traits that came from within and from without, but not from above.

This is a book that should be read more than once!

TRC
6/24/2013

A book about religion and morality from the hands of one of the foremost primatologists in the world. In this brilliant book, written in a lucid, essayistic style that is personal and even conversational, De Waal defends his thesis that morality is not an invention of religion, but that religion is a cultural scaffolding that builds upon and enhances biologically innate moral rules. Even more, De Waal acknowledges that religion is so deeply engrained in human nature that it has become one of the defining characteristics of humanity. Interestingly, De Waal's conclusions resonate deeply with the findings of the cognitive science of religion (De Waal hints to this resonance himself in the final chapter). I am curious to see where this will go in the future.

Moreover, even though De Waal explicitly admits he is an atheist himself, he argues against the militant new atheists (whose behavior he slightly controversially but with reason describes as having a religious zealousness), that religion should perhaps not be done away with before atheists are able to come up with an equally solid and generally convincing scaffolding. Not surprisingly, some of these atheists, such as Sam Harris, have already responded to De Waal's view with ridicule. Such a response is unfair and does not do justice to the fact that De Waal is trying to bring into practice what he preaches throughout the book: that cooperation and mutual support ultimately serves the future better than polarisation and detachment.

This is a highly interesting multi-layered book: it is a book about the biological and evolutionary roots of human morality; it also is a book with numerous anecdotes showing how moral behavior is already displayed by non-human primates and even other animals like elephants and dogs; and it is a philosophical meditation on what it means to be human.

De Waal is ultimately an optimist. He dismisses the idea that humans are born evil and that morality is meant to keep our evil tendencies in check. He believes that humans are social and highly empathic animals, being born to cooperate and support each other. But De Waal is also a realist in that he recognizes that such cooperation and support is extremely volatile and often very difficult to maintain.

And as a philosopher of religion and a theologian, taking science and evolutionary theory very seriously, I wholeheartedly agree with De Waal's analysis and conclusions. I believe this is a book that atheists and religious believers can and should read and discuss together in an attempt to build an edifying and mutually enriching discourse that serves a brighter future.

First of all let me state at the beginning that I do not agree with every conclusion drawn by De Waal, with every implication of his many primate anecdotes, or with every criticism he makes of atheists authors like Dawkins. However, this is simply a wonderful book and a joy to read. De Waal's calm reasonable approach just makes sense to me. The writing is good and he makes well thought out points.

One of the struggles I have with virtually all animal studies and experiments attempting to tease out what or how animals minds work is that it is hard for me to imagine how anything that results doesn't just rely on many unproven assumptions or anthropomorphic projections. Since they can't actually tell us we will never know what they are "thinking".

However, De Waal makes a strong case that our moral instincts are just that, insticts arising from bottom up processes and not from top down rules that are implemented by rational humans or divine declaration. I find his presentation fairly convincing and worth considering no matter what your beliefs.

This book has the store's "Search Inside" feature and I recommend you preview it before buying, but in any case I highly recommend this wonderful book. Well done.

Frans de Waal is probably the least defensive atheist in the world. A large part of the book supports a subordinate thesis that: it's not science versus religion that is behind the very visible attacks on science and religion - it's dogmatists.

Dogmatic people of all stripes cause needless trouble. I felt a great recognition of truth when I read that, and it gives me hope for the future. According to de Waal, some of the most militant atheists are former dogmatic religious nuts. Sometimes a can't-allow-disagreement-with-me person changes their team, but they don't lose the underlying personality trait.

But enough about that. Bonobos are fascinating, smart as heck, and offer great grist for thinking about human behavior. de Waal provides ample evidence that morality pre-dates the bonobo-human split - that bonobos have identifiable testable concepts of morality.

Moreover, that there are two basic forms of morality - that which he terms 'etiquette,' which can easily be forgiven in young individuals and is culture-driven (yes, in bonobos too), and that which seems to be encoded in our DNA - "Ape not kill ape" and the like.

Can't recommend this book highly enough. It really expanded my ways of thinking about the world.

To review this book, I have to start with this video:[youtube=[...] the author of The Bonobo and the Atheist, Frans de Waal narrating the video. What we see here is a clear demonstration of a Capuchin monkey protesting about receiving what she perceives as an unfair reward, or at least, a reward that isn't equal to what the other monkey is getting.What the The Bonobo and the Atheist is about is the question of whether certain animals, especially those closest to humans, have any sense of fairness, of right and wrong. The monkey experiment indicates that many do.

De Waal has been studying animal behavior for decades and his conclusion is that morality is something innate in social animals, like apes and monkeys, and humans. It's what he calls "bottom up morality." Instead of the popular theory of "top down morality" in which people need to be taught about things like cooperation and fairness, de Waal makes the case that such feeling are an evolutionary necessity for animals that like in social groupings.

To support this thesis, he takes the reader through numerous experiences of various animals cooperating to obtain a reward. We meet elephants who work together to pull too ends of a rope to get some food. In this experimental setup, if just one elephant pulls on the rope, it unravels and the elephant gets nothing. Only by cooperating and pulling together, can they get the reward.In another experiment, two chimpanzees are confronted with a box containing a treat. Only one chimp can access the box while another has the tool needed to open the box. Only if the second chimp passes the tool to the other can the box be opened. If chimpanzees were motivated totally by selfish desires, the first chimp would keep all of the treat for himself, since the second chimp can't reach the treat once the box is opened. Instead, he invariably shares it with the second chimp.

There are more stories like this about chimpanzees, bonobos, and other primates acting to keep the peace among their group and enforce rules that appear to be universally understood by everyone. The behaviors he notes include consciousness of guilt and even justice. It's a great read and I highly recommend it.

De Waal makes a strong and readable case for the biological root of what we have come to term as morality. He provides persuasive and fascinating examples of animals that do things against their immediate self interest to assist fellow tribe members. Of course, it's part of a larger conception of self-interest, where what's good for the group is good for the individual.

The only problem with the book is that de Waal wraps up this argument in about 80 pages. He then proceeds to make the same argument, with different examples, over and over again. A sharper editing pen would have trimmer 200 pages off this book, perhaps added a DVD of animal behavior (Google de Waal's presentations, which have absorbing videos) or more illustrations.

Book Review: “The Bonobo and the Atheist” by Fans de Waal, W.W. Norton & Co., 289 p., 2013.

Review by Mark J. Palmer
Associate Director
International Marine Mammal Project
Earth Island Institute
Berkeley, CA
[...]

Dr. Frans de Waal doesn’t want to change your religion. He does, however, want to change some misconceptions about our human ethical and moral values; values he feels are very much a part of our evolutionary heritage. He finds his evidence in some remarkable studies of the bonobo (known also as the “pigmy chimpanzee”) and the chimpanzee, our closest evolutionary relatives.

There are several books out by noted scientists that cast aspersions on beliefs in religion and God. De Waal is frankly appalled by some of these claims – he feels, while he himself is not a believer, that religion is an important social institution bringing many benefits to the human race. He sees no reason to disparage those who believe.

But he does take issue in his new book, The Bonobo and the Atheist, with the oft-repeated notion that our sense of morals and sin are the products of human constructed religion. He believes our ethics and morals are in fact based on evolutionary processes that promote cooperation and the moral high ground. Our ape ancestors, he believes, were in fact highly moral in many ways, and he sees that morality echoed in our close cousins in the primate kingdom.

His new book outlines an amazing series of experiments as well as observations in the field of wild apes to point out just how important fair play is for these primates. Indeed, some of the sharing shown by individual chimps and bonobos in captive experiments puts our own behavior to shame.

Bonobos and chimpanzees will adopt and rear orphans as their own offspring. In one instance, Dr. de Waal trained a female chimp to use a baby bottle to feed an orphan, replacing her own inadequate milk supply. She subsequently used the bottle to feed her own offspring as well. In ape communities, members are often observed trying to calm the group down following an altercation. They appear to sense what is “right” and “wrong”.

Chimps and bonobos appear to mourn for their dead kin, including mothers who lose their babies. Upon the death of an elderly female of the group, the mourning becomes universal for the whole group. It is the older females that maintain the group emotionally. Male chimps being harassed by other males in the group will flee to the arms of the oldest female for comfort and support.

Just to cite one example of Dr. de Waal’s many experiments that bring out the sense of fairness in chimps, he had two chimps in adjacent cages. One chimp would get to choose from two different tokens. If he chose one color, he would get a treat, but the adjacent chimp would get none. If he chose the other color, both would get treats. Very quickly, the chimp controlling the treats would choose the tokens that brought treats to both of them. Dr. de Waal and his colleagues conducted many similar variations on this experiment. Indeed, chimpanzees understand the concept of fairness very well.

Dr. de Waal’s ruminations on these issues of religion versus our genetic inheritance are wry and convincing. His descriptions of ape behavior are easy to follow, like a conversation over dinner with an old friend. He does not belabor the reader, but draws the reader into his thinking, built over time with his extensive and groundbreaking work with chimps and bonobos.

Indeed, so convincing is his book, that he leaves one big question unaddressed: If chimps and bonobos lead such moral and ethical lives, should we be keeping them in captivity to conduct experiments on them? Or should we be doing more to keep them safe in the wild? (Needless to say, wild primates are among the most endangered species on Earth.)

As I write this, the Nonhuman Rights Project has gone to court in New York on behalf of several individual chimpanzees being held in cages in that state, attempting to establish that these “nonhuman persons” should have a right to liberty and peace, free from captivity. [...]

The question of nonhuman rights for animals is a large one. The writings of Dr. Fran de Waal and other researchers who work with these animals are an important part of growing public unease with seeing these animals in zoos and circuses, kept there for our amusement. Is that “right” or “wrong”?

I picked up this book with little idea of its theme - I was in the middle of writing a talk on Neanderthal man in the UK and from my own visits to very remote human people last century I knew that the anthropologist's take on early humans was terribly flawed. They (anthropologists) should be forced to look not at the storeian Indians but at Asian people living in Ice Age conditions today and having a meaningful and sustainable life. Actually, some of the early travellers across the USA lived and survived conditions not much better than in Mongolia or tibet in 1940. We can argue for ever about whether having central heating, infinite amounts of stuff, infinite amounts of food and so on is a better or worse way to live.

Anyway, I picked up this book to see where bonobos might lie - in psychology and behaviour - compared with recent human societies. I learnt that the usual citation of chimpanzees as nearest to human society is flawed: bobobos are nearer (and nicer). But the most interesting thing I read was that a monkey tribe (not apes) had together raised a Downs syndrome youngster. So much for the great divide between animals and humans. Bonobos are not nasty brutish animals going around murdering each but have empathy.

The author's style is brilliant - so readable. It was a great find.

This is a fascinating insight into the lives of our primate relatives, and de Waal makes a powerful case for human morality arising from evolution rather than religion. The author isn't against religion per se, but rather asks how can both believers and non-believers find inspiration outside religion to lead a good life.I listened to it on Audible, and the stories truly came alive through the narration.

This is a fascinating book, beautifully written. Both I, (myself a zoologist by training) and my non-scientific husband really enjoyed this book, and found it full of truly interesting ideas. I strongly recommend it to anyone interested in the ways in which we human beings are similar and dissimilar to Bonobos and Chimps etc. A wonderfully rich book, and written with the wisdom of someone who has explored ideas in an open-minded way for many decades.

. . . but in the case of The Bonobo and the Atheist: In Search of Humanism Among the Primates by Frans De Waal, I'll make the rare exception. De Waal weaves his knowledge of primates against the warp of human belief-based, religiously motivated, behavior in such a well crafted narrative, I had to stop more than once to remind myself I was reading nonfiction, as opposed to enjoying a good work of literary fiction. In fact, I began on page one and read the thing straight through from cover to cover--something I rarely even do with John Sanford, or even Dean Koontz. The main lesson of the book--that religion and superstition are not prerequisites for the creation, maintenance, and preservation of a "moral" society--is a proposition I've supported most of my life. De Waal now offers empirical proof, supporting this position through experimentation with, and observation of, our hairy, marginalized, distant cousins. Or then again, might it not be we, the hairless apes, who forage so far removed from a "best practice"-based civilization of our own reputed "humanity," so very tainted by arrogance, hubris, and unfounded pride (such as our less than sterling reputation as a species bears much sad testimony)?

Best book I've listened to in ages. Very enlightening to know that what so many odds us have felt about animals is finally being proven correct. They're much smarter and emotional than we ever realized but we knew in our hearts. Thank you!!!

De Waal is a world-leading primatologist. His studies have led him to think that intelligent, social species have developed what we might call moral instincts, because cooperation enhances the transmission of their own genes into subsequent generations. He argues very persuasively that the roots of morality lie in evolution, and that religious notions are layered on top of that, and are not themselves the source of morality.

Slow clap, Frans de Waal. I can’t find a single thing in your book I disagree with. Doubly impressive since you made bold, paradigm-shifting cases about morality’s innermost fount and the blow-your-mind similarities between humans and bonobos (and chimpanzees, too).

de Waal is one of the world’s most famous primatologists. He is the Director of the Yerkes National Primate Research Centre and a Professor of Psychology at Emory University. In the academic world, this man is a big deal.

For me, the primary message of The Bonobo and the Atheist is that the building blocks of morality are far older than humanity itself. Morality’s origins are so old, in fact, that they can be clearly seen in our closest living ancestors: chimpanzees and especially bonobos.

View complete review here: [...]

While there are some profound insights to be discovered in this book, there are too many times when the author seems to manipulate definitions, quotes and facts to suit his agenda. One of these is a redefinition of the word, “aggression”. According to my dictionary, it means a “hostile attitude or behavior: threatening behavior or actions”. But, according to de Waal, a distinction has to be made between the behavior of an animal engaged in predation as opposed to it displaying such comportment for the hell of it, though both actions, regardless of their underlying motivations require no small amount of violence or hostility. Why the distinction? De Waal quotes Konrad Lorenze, which should be good enough for me and you.
Another example is when de Waal dismisses “the golden rule” as a basic guide to moral behavior because “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you” could allow someone to impose his or her own personal quirks or tastes on those who don’t share likewise share them. Sure, but there are versions of the Golden Rule (in Judaism and Buddhism) which phrase the maxim as “What is hateful to you, do not to your fellow man.” or “Hurt not others in ways that you yourself would find hurtful.” So the option of one trying to force his personal predilections on others who wouldn’t cotton to them is thwarted. I can’t believe that de Waal is unfamiliar with these other versions and the fact that he ignores them makes me doubt his trustworthiness.

De Waal attempts to source human's morality in instincts we evolved to better ensure the survival of our groups. It is a selective morality according to De Eaal, where outside groups are not cared for. It is what he describes as "a bottom up view of morality" that is built into our genes. Too simplistic regarding our morality being a psychological state, but as ever de Waal is fascinating when describing bonobos.

Let me start with an admission: I didn't finish reading this book. Please take that into consideration when reading my comments...

I love bonobos and I'm an atheist, so I expected to submerge myself into a great read, but I'm struggling with this one. Reading de Waal's book is uncomfortable. I feel like I've walked into a private argument between people who evidently have spent years sniping at each other from afar -- but now de Waal has decided to take it to his opponents, personally.

I wanted de Waal's insights to help explain why people think they need religion to be moral, but I have no idea what the hell he's talking about. He'll write a bit about apes, and then take off into an argument with "theoreticians" or (gasp!) "scientists" who evidently have tried to make points with which he disagrees. Who are these people he is criticizing? Is this another one of those arguments between humanists, skeptics, free-thinkers, and atheists? And what did they say that has pissed him off so much?

I get it that he doesn't agree with the strident "new" atheists. I understand that a segment of the atheist community finds Richards Dawkins a bit, well... a bit too much. And Christopher Hitchens is an acquired taste, especially when he's at his angry best. (Disclosure: I enjoy reading Hitchens, and I value the time I saw him speak - a couple of days before he was told he had stage four cancer.) Are you with me, reader? If you don't know what I'm talking about, de Waal's book will make absolutely no sense to you. Even though I know some of the arguments of the popularized atheists Frans opposes, I still got lost when he started into people I don't know.

De Waal has so much insight to add to the discussion of evolution, science, morals, and religion. It's too bad he had to waste his book (and his readers' time) engaging in personal attacks against fellow atheists.

De Waal used this book to indulge his personal arguments, and it seems like he did it without paying due respect to his readers. If he fully respected his readers, he would have demanded the honest services of a better editor. At least, a good editor might have warned de Waal that he was taking too much liberty in indulging in esoteric arguments without preparing the reader. Or maybe they should have categorized the book as "Comparative Non-Religions 401," so novices like me would know what we were getting into.

I write this with a heavy heart, because Frans' work with apes was groundbreaking, and we owe him tons of respect and appreciation. But I'm going to have to move on, to writers who demonstrate a bit more respect for average, every day readers.

This book makes a strong case for humanism. I thought the way the author demonstrated our emotions and morals with chimps, bonobos, elephants and even dogs made a great case for humanists. I would recommend this book to anyone looking for an explanation to where our morals developed. Great book!

Unlike de Waal's previous book, "The Age of Empathy", this new book lacks a unifying purpose; a cogent writer's vision. De Waal spends much of his book railing against the "neo-atheists", saving most of his vitriol for Sam Harris and the late Christopher Hitchens. At one point de Waal even sullies himself by suggesting that strident atheists may have perhaps suffered as altar boys. Of course, de Waal never seems to take into account all of those atheists who feel discriminated against or threatened by religious fundamentalists. If religious fundamentalists are feverishly trying to reshape public policy according to their anti-science dogma, then this is all news to de Waal. De Waal even downplays the war on science, and at times seems to suggest that it may be a phoney war. That de Waal happens to live in a state well-known for attacking science in public schools through anti-evolutionist, anti-science legislation, is really quite amusing. At times de Waal even directs his anger toward scientists and the scientific method. Oh, and amid all of this chaos, including a particularly annoying and recurring Bosch meme, the author even manages to find a bit of time to talk about the great apes. You know, I read this entire book and I still don't really know what it was all about. The Bonobo and the Atheist: In trying to do too much, Frans de Waal did nothing at all.

I loved this book! Frans de Waal fills his book with great examples of how bonobos, other mammals and humans are similar. He uses humor, history, philosophy, and scientific data to effectively educate, intrigue and entertain his reader. He also offers a very balanced view of both religion and atheism. Unless one is a fundamentalist (religious or atheist), it is easy to love this book.

The general thesis is presented cogently but still cannot explain how our instincts and synapses explain mammalian morality . That this

Morality exists in apes seems evident. How biologically this evolved Is ,for me, still unexplained. Often in our world although fairness

Seems inborn, might and wealth make right. Perhaps becoming more of a community through iPhones,etc. May lead different

Outcomes than our present societal inequality.

That's all I have to say. I would recommend it to others. I like that he does not vilify or promote religion, but explains its is needed by many people as part of their social & psychological stability.

I love this subject, and appreciate this author's contributions to the field. I drove my husband and daughter crazy, constantly reading them passages because I couldn't keep it to myself!
The writing is not the best, and he needs a better proofreader and editor.

De Waal's book is confused and confusing. Between good stories about moral behaviour of bonobo's and other social animals he tries to unfold a wide view of mankind's ethics - but he does this by wild hits towards people that he dislikes, like Dawkins, Harris and Hitchins, and also at science as a whole. His arguments are unconvincing and he contradicts himself quite often, in my opinion.
If you want you can read my commentary at Dawn Forsythes review, which I share entirely.
Hans van den Berg, biologist, The Netherlands

De Waal spends more time grinding his axe against new atheists than describing primate research and subsequent insights on the evolution of morality. His reader is expected to believe that Catholicism has no quarrel with evolution, that creationism is limited to the American Protestant South and Midwest, and that atheism is dogmatic. He warily brings out the arguments against atheism citing the worst instances of secular totalitarian regimes, the fundamentalism of hard atheism, and 'all the good' done by religion. One must simply recall that good is also done by secularists, that Hitler's army wore "god on our side" on their belt buckles, that Nazism included Nordic race myths, that Stalin took full advantage of an Orthodox church set up to worship a godhead dictator and that unbelief is skepticism and open mindedness to new evidence, a willingness to change ones mind given new evidence, and a far cry from dogmatic.

We are not as special as we imagined to be, at least not in the moralistic sense. Delightful, tongue in cheek references to the religious claims of morality. Morality is much older than religions, and definitely more than 6000 years old.

Fran's de Waal knows his primates and I wish he'd spent more time in this book talking about bonobos. Instead, he rails against the New Atheists and evolutionary theory. I'm no expert in evolutionary theory, but even I can point to obvious mistakes. For example, he talks about what genes intend (they intend nothing, because they are not conscious beings with plans and motives). He thinks that altruistic behavior is proof that people and other animals are somehow rising above their genes. He just doesn't seem to get it. And, he's not an expert. I wish he'd stuck to what he knows, especially given the title of the book.

The author conflated superego/emotion based morality with ego based morality. We acquired the former like other animals such as Bonobos. The latter because we chose to. Although he argued for the case of atheist, he actually reinforced the role of religion: this or that tribes are with me or against me. Not always a good thing, nevertheless, Bonobos are in zoos and we are not.

I hate wasting time writing about books I don't really like that much, like this one, so this will be short I hope. All the Bonobo stuff is interesting, and all the data about how they do so many human-like things like showing empathy, sympathy, compassion, contritiion, altruism, etc. is all very interesting. Of course the gap between humans and bonobos (a new species, not a subspecies of chimps, by the way) is enormous, which has much to do about why they are in cages and zoos and we are not. The author seems to want to make the point that morality preceded religion because it evolved. It's just in us. Thus I found him dogmatic about this since he never sought to explain just HOW all that evolved into us, especially in light of the fact that natural selection (surival of the fittest) makes no concessions to love, altruism, kindness or anything else that might form the basis of morality other than social utility and practicality. The author just states dogmatically that morality just evolved--simple as that. Would that it was all so simple. Scientists and philosophers have been trying to explain the emergence of altruism for a long, long time. I believe the author would probably include altruism along with the morality that he emphasizes so much, but the argument over altruism among scientists and philosophers is a bottomless pit, and he has steered clear of that word and just speaks of morality. Maybe not everyone would agree with me, but altruism, love and morality are all very closely connected concepts, and no one has yet come up with a satisfactory explanation of how they all arose within the human animal, or bonobos, along with the dog-eat-dog reality of natural selection. But there they all are within us, and Mr. de Waal, when you get right down to it, really just says that they're there and not how they got there. Was there a miracle mutation that popped up altruism and morality way back when and the lucky species in which it occurred survived midst its nasty environment and now there's altruism all over the place?? Or did God plant it there at some point? And speaking of God, de Waal speaks of God an awful lot. Probably every chapter has a little or a lot about why God didn't invent morality because he doesn't exist. In fact he makes this point clear so often that it is clearly an agenda item. But he's a good atheist. Dawkins and Hitchens are bad atheists, a new take on the good cop/bad cop routine. Perhaps this is to make him more likeable and persuasive to people of religion. Anyway, all the anti-religion stuff gets tedious and repetitive. But the bonobo stuff is good.

The book was doing just fine until page 182, when the author mentioned, briefly, Aristotle. To clarify, on page 182, Frans refers to Aristotle's writing as in support of utilitarian ethics, which could not be further from the truth. Not only did Frans mischaracterize the Nicomachean Ethics (not mentioned by name, despite being the first text ever written on ethics, being the founding document of an entire school of ethical thought, etc), but he mischaracterized it when its central theme- that of morality being a matter of emotions and how we respond to them- is the same as FRANS'S OWN DAMNED BOOK!!!!! In referring to eudaimonia, Frans has confused the answer to "Why be moral?" with "How to be moral." Frans has quite obviously never read the text, based on how he clearly had no idea what Aristotle wrote about. In writing a book on morality, Frans would have done well to read the first book written solely about it, but did not. The great tragedy here is, of course, that Frans's own book would have been all the richer for referencing it, and I hope that one day he does. His writing will be richer for it.

Some time ago I reviewed the book What Darwin Got Wrong by Jerry Fodor. I gave it one star because I disagreed with what Fodor was saying. Maybe I should revise that rating because compared to this book here I was at least able to form an opinion because I was able to understand the points that Fodor was trying to make. With De Waal's book, I'm just dumb founded and the problem seems to be on the book's end.

Although De Waal seems to hold Darwin in high regard I wonder if he ever read The Origin of the Species - not because of its content but because of the form. In each chapter Darwin picks a topic, poses a question, suggests an answer and then proceeds to explain the evidence and arguments that support his answer. Like in chapter one he picks the topic of domestic animals, poses the question - why are they so useful to humans, suggests the answer - because humans selected the useful traits through 'unnatural' breeding and then he explains what exactly he means and what his evidence is.

Unfortunately De Waal did not take a note of this kind of approach. He wanders aimlessly from topic to topic, never making it clear what his point is, never mind presenting evidence for it:

- He seems to think that everybody understood Darwin wrong, attacking Huxley and Dawkins for their views but fails to present the 'correct' view of Darwin.

- He often poses the question of whether religion is necessary for our society, bashes endlessly on people who think it isn't (Dawkins, Hitchens etc.) but never says explicitly that he himself does think it's necessary and never explains why.

- He goes to great lengths to portray altruistic behavior as genetically coded into primates but fails to even hint to a conclusion on what it means for humans (the way Ridley was able to do in Nature Via Nurture).

And so on. All this not in separate chapters but intertwined with anecdotes about his experiences with primates and ad hominem attacks on people he dislikes in a huge messy stream of consciousness.

The really frustrating thing is that at any point I thought he would start making sense. He shares a story on a jealous chimp and you think he's going to talk about emotions or something related but no, he jumps to Darwin and how Huxley misunderstood him. Later he mentions how mathematicians and game theory tried to explain morality and I thought - this will be interesting - I wonder what was the general idea, what did the early theories get wrong and how we learned from it but no, he ends the topic within one paragraph with Von Neumann's quote on nuking the Russians. Was von Neumann saying that based on his research or just as his political opinion? Was it a major view of the game theorists? Did we/they learn something from it? We will never know because De Waal just follows up with an unrelated animal anecdote and never comes back to the topic.

When I was a kid, my older siblings teased me:

- Would you like some candy?
- Yes!
- We don't have any candy... would you like some ham instead?
- Yes.
- We don't have ham either, would you like some tea perhaps?
- No, I'd like....
- Well it does not matter because we don't have tea, so maybe you'd like...

And so on. It drove me nuts.

This book feels just like that.

Exquisite book. Frans de Waal is a superb writer and primatologist. De Waal's analysis, logic, and use of facts to support his theses are very rigorous. Altruism in apes, Neanderthals, elephants, and other creatures is proven. De Waal discusses paleontology, evolutionary biology, anthropology, philosophy, Christianity, art history, religions, etc. "This communitarian heritage is crucial in relation to this book's theme, since it suggests that morality predates current civilizations and religions by at least a hundred millennia" (pg. 56).
The greatest public defender of evolution this country has ever known was Stephen Jay Gould (pg. 102). Turtles are a favorite of the Dalai Lama, because they supposedly carry the world on their backs (pg. 5). They (bonobos and chimpanzees) show that our lineage is marked not just by male dominance and xenophobia but also by a love of harmony and sensitivity to others. Since evolution occurs through both the male and the female lineage, there is no reason to measure human progress purely by how many battles our men have won against other hominins (pg. 13).
The first to propose human descent from the apes was Jean-Baptiste Lamarck in 1809 (pg. 59). Carl Linnaeus placed Homo sapiens firmly within the primate order... Queen Victoria judged the anthropoid apes "painfully and disagreeably human" in 1835 (pg. 101). Contributing to Thomas Henry Huxley's reputation as the slayer of religion is his invention of the term "agnostic," meaning that he wasn't sure of God's existence... Huxley described himself as a "scientific Calvinist," and much of his thinking followed the somber, joyless precepts of the doctrine of original sin (pg. 36).
[After describing Ardipithecus ramidus] But why take any living ape as a starting point? The apes that are around today have had as much time to change as our own species has had since we split. People often think that the apes must have stood still while we evolved, but genetic data in fact suggest that chimpanzees changed more than we did. We simply don't know what our last common ancestor looked like. The rainforest doesn't permit fossilization - everything rots away before it gets to this point - which is why we lack early ape fossils. Nevertheless, we can be sure that our progenitor would fit the common definition of an ape:... we descend from apes, just not from any of the current ones (pg. 60).
The Vatican never formally condemned Darwin's theory or put his works on the list of forbidden books. Resistance to evolution is almost entirely restricted to evangelical Protestants in the American South and Midwest (pg. 91). No less than 30 percent of Americans read the Bible as the actual word of God (pg. 102). "Strictly speaking, there is no certainty; there are only people who are certain," said Charles Bernard Renouvier.

I really enjoyed this book and the information about non-human primate behavior. I do take some issue with de Waal's digs at atheism, which I think reflect an ironic lack of empathy. It is clear that de Waal does not understand the deeper motivations of what he calls "neo-atheists," leading me to doubt he has experienced the discrimination that is so pervasive against atheists. Notably, de Waal's thoughts on neo-atheists are entirely unrelated to any of his research. For most of the book, however, he sticks to analyzing actual research and scientific theory. So if you can get past/skip/ignore his thoughts on atheists, which are honestly very little of the book, the rest of the content is really interesting.