The Bonobo and the Atheist Quotes

“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.”
― Frans de Waal, The Bonobo and the Atheist: In Search of Humanism Among the Primates

“Friedrich Nietzsche, who famously gave us the ‘God is dead’ phrase was interested in the sources of morality. He warned that the emergence of something (whether an organ, a legal institution, or a religious ritual) is never to be confused with its acquired purpose: ‘Anything in existence, having somehow come about, is continually interpreted anew, requisitioned anew, transformed and redirected to a new purpose.’

This is a liberating thought, which teaches us to never hold the history of something against its possible applications. Even if computers started out as calculators, that doesn’t prevent us from playing games on them. (47) (quoting Nietzsche, the Genealogy of Morals)”
― Frans de Waal, The Bonobo and the Atheist: In Search of Humanism Among the Primates

“Those who exclaim that “animals are not people” tend to forget that, while true, it is equally true that people are animals. To minimize the complexity of animal behavior without doing the same for human behavior erects an artificial barrier.”
― Frans de Waal, The Bonobo and the Atheist: In Search of Humanism Among the Primates

“When we see a disciplined society, there is often a social hierarchy behind it. This hierarchy, which determines who can eat or mate first, is ultimately rooted in violence.”
― Frans de Waal, The Bonobo and the Atheist: In Search of Humanism Among the Primates

“If you wish to expel religion from our European civilization you can only do it through another system of doctrines, and from the outset this would take over all the psychological characteristics of religion, the same sanctity, rigidity, and intolerance, the same prohibition of thought in self-defense.”
― Frans de Waal, The Bonobo and the Atheist: In Search of Humanism Among the Primates

“If faith makes people buy an entire package of myths and values without asking too many questions, scientists are only slightly better.”
― Frans de Waal, The Bonobo and the Atheist: In Search of Humanism Among the Primates

“Rather than reflecting an immutable human nature, morals are closely tied to the way we organize ourselves.”
― Frans de Waal, The Bonobo and the Atheist: In Search of Humanism Among the Primates

“Along with people in other creative professions, such as artists and musicians, many scientists experience this transcendence. I do so every day. For one, it's impossible to look an ape in the eye and not see oneself. There are other animals with frontally oriented eyes, but none that give you the shock of recognitions of the ape's. Looking back at you is not so much an animal but a personality as solid and willful as yourself.”
― Frans de Waal, The Bonobo and the Atheist: In Search of Humanism Among the Primates

“Having spent all my life among academics, I can tell you that hearing how wrong they area is about as high on their priority list as finding a cockroach in their coffee. The typical scientist has made an interesting discovery early on in his or her career, followed by a lifetime of making sure that everyone else admires his or her contribution and that no one questions it. There is no poorer company than an aging scientist who has failed to achieve these objectives.”
― Frans de Waal, The Bonobo and the Atheist: In Search of Humanism Among the Primates

“I consider dogmatism a far greater threat than religion per se.”
― Frans de Waal, The Bonobo and the Atheist: In Search of Humanism Among the Primates

“Our vaunted imagination is like a double-edged sword. On the one hand, it causes desperation in a situation in which an ape might remain unworried, but it also gives hope as it allows us to envision a better future. We look so far ahead, in fact, that we realize that our life will come to an end. This realization thoroughly colors our existence, leading to a permanent search for meaning as well as bitter jokes along the lines of “Life’s a bitch, and then you die!” Would we have developed a belief in the supernatural without this cloud hanging over us? A partial answer comes from research showing that the more aware people are of their own mortality, and the more they think about it, the more they believe in God.”
― Frans de Waal, The Bonobo and the Atheist: In Search of Humanism Among the Primates

“Perhaps religion is like a ship that has carried us across the ocean, having allowed us to develop huge societies with a well-functioning morality. Now that we are spotting land, some of us are ready to disembark”
― Frans de Waal, The Bonobo and the Atheist: In Search of Humanism Among the Primates

“Our northern brethren buried their dead, were skilled toolmakers, kept fires going, and took care of the infirm just like early humans. The fossil record shows survival into adulthood of individuals afflicted with dwarfism, paralysis of the limbs, or the inability to chew. Going by exotic names such as Shanidar I, Romito 2, the Windover Boy, and the Old Man of La Chapelle-aux-Saints, our ancestors supported individuals who contributed little to society. Survival of the weak, the handicapped, the mentally retarded, and others who posed a burden is seen by paleontologists as a milestone in the evolution of compassion. 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.”
― Frans de Waal, The Bonobo and the Atheist: In Search of Humanism Among the Primates

“Other primates, of course, have none of these problems, but even they strive for a certain kind of society. In their behavior, we recognize the same values we pursue ourselves. For example, female chimpanzees have been seen to drag reluctant males toward each other to make up after a fight, while removing weapons from their hands. Moreover, high-ranking males regularly act as impartial arbiters to settle disputes in the community. I take these hints of community concern as a sign that the building blocks of morality are older than humanity, and that we don’t need God to explain how we got to where we are today. On”
― Frans de Waal, The Bonobo and the Atheist: In Search of Humanism Among the Primates

“It seems safe to say that apes know about death, such as that is different from life and permanent. The same may apply to a few other animals, such as elephants, which pick up ivory or bones of a dead herd member, holding the pieces in their trunks and passing them around. Some pachyderms return for years to the spot where a relative died, only to touch and inspect the relics. Do they miss each other? Do they recall how he or she was during life?”
― Frans de Waal, The Bonobo and the Atheist: In Search of Humanism Among the Primates

“if two closely related species act the same under similar circumstances, the mental processes behind their behavior are likely the same, too. The alternative would be to postulate that, in the short time since they diverged, both species evolved different ways of generating the same behavior.”
― Frans de Waal, The Bonobo and the Atheist: In Search of Humanism Among the Primates

“In a world divided by chimpophiles and bonobophiles, we all had a good laugh when Stephen peeled his banana. (62)”
― Frans de Waal, The Bonobo and the Atheist: In Search of Humanism Among the Primates

“Imagine you’re a writer, and you have decided to offer your readers a firsthand account of the politically correct primate, the idol of the left, known for its “gay” relations, female supremacy, and pacific lifestyle. Your focus is the bonobo: a close relation of the chimpanzee. You”
― Frans de Waal, The Bonobo and the Atheist: In Search of Humanism Among the Primates

“Elephant altruism on the Kenyan plains. With her tusks, Grace (right) lifted the fallen three-ton Eleanor to her feet, then tried to get her to walk by pushing her. But Eleanor fell again and eventually died, leaving Grace vocalizing with streaming temporal glands—a sign of deep distress. Being matriarchs of different herds, these two elephants were likely unrelated.”
― Frans de Waal, The Bonobo and the Atheist: In Search of Humanism Among the Primates

“For those who do not wish to blame this sordid history on science, and prefer to speak of pseudoscience, it will be good to consider that eugenics was a serious academic discipline at many universities. By 1930, institutes devoted to it existed in England, Sweden, Switzerland, Russia, America, Germany, and Norway. Its theories were supported by prominent figures, including American presidents. Its founding father, the British anthropologist and polymath Sir Francis Galton, became a fellow of the Royal Society and was knighted well after having espoused ideas about improving the human race. Notably, Galton felt that the average citizen was “too base for the everyday work of modern civilization.”11 It took Adolf Hitler and his henchmen to expose the moral bankruptcy of these ideas. The inevitable result was a precipitous drop of faith in science, especially biology. In the 1970s, biologists were still commonly equated with fascists, such as during the heated protest against “sociobiology.” As a biologist myself, I am glad those acrimonious days are over, but at the same time I wonder how anyone could forget this past and hail science as our moral savior. How”
― Frans de Waal, The Bonobo and the Atheist: In Search of Humanism Among the Primates

“The bonobo would first of all urge the atheist to stop “sleeping furiously.” There is no point getting all worked up about the absence of something, especially something as open to interpretation as God.”
― Frans de Waal, The Bonobo and the Atheist: In Search of Humanism Among the Primates

“Along with people in other creative professions, such as artists and musicians, many scientists experience this transcendence. I do so every day. For one, it's impossible to look an ape in the eye and not see oneself. There are other animals with frontally oriented eyes, but none that give you the shock of recognition of the ape's. Looking back at you is not so much an animal but a personality as solid and willful as yourself.”
― Frans de Waal, The Bonobo and the Atheist: In Search of Humanism Among the Primates

“This is more like the scientists I know. Authority outweighs evidence, at least for as long as the authority lives.”
― Frans de Waal, The Bonobo and the Atheist: In Search of Humanism Among the Primates

“I felt like a toilet frog during the last three decades of the preceding century. (38)”
― Frans de Waal, The Bonobo and the Atheist: In Search of Humanism Among the Primates

“The fact remains, however, that humanism is nonreligious, not antireligious. Tolerance of religion, even if religion is not always tolerant in return, allows humanism to focus on what is most important, which is to build a better society based on natural human abilities. The outcome is the ongoing experiment in the West of an increasingly secular society. Like that of tectonic plates, the shifting is extremely gradual. Humanity cannot and will not change on a dime, and it’s also not as if religion is an alien influence. It is very much our own creation, part of who we are, fully intertwined with our respective cultures. We had better get along with it and learn from it, even if our goal is ultimately to set out on a new course.”

Excerpt From
B007Q6XKEY EBOK
de Waal, Frans
This material may be protected by copyright.”
― Frans de Waal, The Bonobo and the Atheist: In Search of Humanism Among the Primates

“Morality has much more humble beginnings, which are recognizable in the behavior of other animals. Everything science has learned in the last few decades argues against the pessimistic view that morality is a thin veneer over a nasty human nature. On the contrary, our evolutionary background lends a massive helping hand without which we would never have gotten this far.”
― Frans de Waal, The Bonobo and the Atheist: In Search of Humanism Among the Primates

“This is also why the bonobo disagrees with anyone who pits evolution against morality, such as the well-known American neurosurgeon Benjamin Carson, who has claimed, “Ultimately, if you accept the evolutionary theory, you dismiss ethics, you don’t have to abide by a set of moral codes, you determine your own conscience based on your own desires.” The problem with such statements is that if humans everywhere develop a sense of right and wrong, one of our deepest desires must be to live in a moral world. Carson assumes that morality goes against our nature, and that our desires are all bad, whereas the whole point of this book is to argue the opposite. Thank God, if I may, we share with other primates a background as group animals, which makes us value social connections. Absent this background, religion could be preaching about virtue and vice until it became blue in the face, we’d never get its point. We are receptive only because of our evolved grasp of the value of relationships, the benefits of cooperation, the need for trust“and honesty, and so on. Even our sense of fairness derives from this background.

Here the bonobo would side with the atheist and argue that whatever the role of religion in morality, it’s a Johnny-come-lately role. Morality arose first, and modern religion latched onto it. Instead of giving us the moral law, the large religions were invented to bolster it.”
― Frans de Waal, The Bonobo and the Atheist: In Search of Humanism Among the Primates