Conservative pundits occasionally imply that other-directed human virtues, such as charity, compassion, and mercy, came on the scene only thanks to Christianity.\u00a0 No one has ever shown hospitality to a stranger or helped survivors of an earthquake in other cultures, it would seem.\u00a0<\/p>\n
St. Francis\u2019s sermons to the animals <\/a>must have really stuck, because our furry and feathered friends have at least one of those allegedly unique Christian virtues,\u00a0 according to Frans de Waal.\u00a0 His book, The Age of Empathy<\/a>, describes \u201cBengal tigers that nurse piglets, bonopo apes that help wounded birds to fly, seals that rescue drowning dogs, [and] a rhesus monkey [that] will forego the opportunity for food if pulling the chain that delivers it will electrically shock a companion,\u201d\u00a0 writes Andrew Stark in the Wall Street Journal<\/a>.\u00a0 Humans’ far more complex moral sense is rooted in our self-awareness and the awareness of our place in a social order, but the evolution of that moral sense long predated Christianity.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Conservative pundits occasionally imply that other-directed human virtues, such as charity, compassion, and mercy, came on the scene only thanks to Christianity.\u00a0 No one has ever shown hospitality to a stranger or helped survivors of an earthquake in other cultures, … Continue reading