Richard Dawkins provides us with a fascinating analysis of the origins of conscience which shares some of the features of theological and philosophical perspectives on conscience. He is closer to the Christian view of conscience than we might think.

In The Selfish Gene and again in his television programme The Genius of Charles Darwin, Dawkins argues that we have an evolved intuitive sense of right and wrong, what he calls a “lust to be nice”. “The lust to be nice has been hard-wired into us from the time we lived in close kinship groups”, he concludes in his television series, where a kinship group is a close family or tribe.

 We often present Dawkins as fundamentally opposed to the Christian view, but this isn’t the case. Dawkins argues for an innate tendency coming out of millions of years of evolution. The opposite of this is not Christianity, but Freudian and behaviourist psychology that sees morality induced by early upbringing, not long term evolution.

This hard-wiring Dawkins speaks of is very close to Aquinas’ view that we have an innate tendency because of our rational natures – a disposition to be nice. Of course, Aquinas is arguing God put it there and Dawkins that evolution created the gene of niceness, but the result is the same thing.

Dawkins poses himself a puzzle. Whereas animals display reciprocal altruism, where you groom my back and I groom yours, nature is basically self-interested. The selfish gene is the self-promoting gene in a long run battle to survive. So we can explain reciprocal altruism quite easily in biological terms as a survival strategy to make sure my close family help me in time of difficulty so that our genes survive.

But what of non-reciprocal altruism? What of the overwhelming empathy we feel when someone cries, and the desire to jump into a swollen river to save a drowning stranger, who will never repay us?

Dawkins calls this moral sense, the desire to sacrifice self for strangers as “a misfiring of our selfish genes”. They misfire because they arise from self-interest, the reciprocal altruism of the kinship group, but then get applied to everyone around us.

“Our misfiring selfish genes mean we do not ape the nastiness of nature…we rise above our origins”, Dawkins argues. In this he actually echoes Darwin. Darwin was not a social Darwinist – he didn’t believe the weak should go to the wall in the battle to survive. He wrote that “human beings are the only species able to escape the brutal force that created us”. We transcend the survival battle through conscience and the moral sense. We give to others, help strangers, support charities. We are the only species that demonstrates non-reciprocal altruism.

And there is a second interesting similarity between Dawkins’ and Christians’ view of conscience. There are two views in philosophy and theology on human nature. Roman Catholics argue we are basically good (Aquinas: we have an innate tendency “to do good and avoid evil”). We are made in God’s image so reflect God in our knowledge of good and evil. Contrast this with the evangelical view derived from St Paul – we are innately sinful. We inherit the sin of Adam after the Fall and have developed a sinful nature. We are born into sin, not goodness. “Nothing good dwells within me” argues Paul “I do the very thing I hate”. And “I am sold as a slave to sin” (Romans 7:14). We are born innately selfish and sinful.

Dawkins sides with the Roman Catholics – we have the moral gene which means we “transcend our selfish genes”. Humans are basically good. “We don’t ape the nastiness of nature but extract ourselves from it and act according to our values”, argues Dawkins. The selfish gene, the self-promoting gene, has given us both reciprocal and non-reciprocal altruism. Like many Christians today, and Butler and Newman before us, Dawkins argues goodness is innate to humankind an evolved innate sense of right and wrong.