Tuesday, April 8, 2014

Those dirty rats...

I'm taking a break - probably pretty brief, but still a break - so instead of actually writing... well... anything, I'm just going to post something I found interesting and send you off to read it.

In a simple experiment, researchers at the University of Chicago sought to find out whether a rat would release a fellow rat from an unpleasantly restrictive cage if it could. The answer was yes.

So, if morality cannot exist without religion (which I don't believe myself), would this study suggest that rats have some form of religion? It seems more likely to me that the basic underpinnings of morality (empathy and fairness) are part of our biological heritage.

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