Baby genocide: why not?

Men and women are historical beings. Religion has dominated our thinking for the great majority of history, so it would be foolish to discard its influence on our thought today. Nevertheless, nowadays we see a tendency by some to overestimate this remnant of religious influence. Some have even argued that the only reason we feel moral outrage towards evidently evil things, like the killing of babies for the sake of population control, is because of the remnants of religion. 

Their argument goes somewhere along these lines. If one is a fully rational being, than he or she would have no reason to object to the killing of babies for the sake of population control. However, most of us do feel moral outrage when thinking about baby genocide. Thus, we are not completely rational beings, which means we must not have ridden our worldview completely of religious thought. 

First of all, I believe the first premise of that argument is incorrect. I think it is perfectly possible to argue against the killing of babies on rational grounds. The fact that we have decided that population control is the goal to strive for is in itself not necessarily rational and even if we accept that as a goal, there are probably more rational alternatives than baby genocide to achieve it. However that is not the objection against the argument that I will make here. Instead I will argue against the claim that religion must be the source of our “irrational” outrage. I would argue that that is a hasty claim and that an alternative source of our outrage, human biology, is more plausible. 

To understand this, I will first establish why the claim that religion is the source of our moral outrage towards killing baby’s does not work. For if we accept that claim, than its logical conclusion would be that this outrage would not exist if it were not for religion. So if we could find an example of a being that feels moral outrage, but is not influenced by religion, then the argument would lose much of its plausibility. 

I believe there are two examples of which even the most ardent believers in the influence of religion could agree on that they are not (yet) influenced by religion: animals and babies. Research has shown that both of them show signs of morality and an aversion to killing their fellow species. The fact that these non-religious beings show moral outrage as well, suggests that religion can not be the (sole) source of it, for that would not explain why beings that can not possibly have been influenced by religion show these same feelings. 

So we need to find an alternative source of our moral outrage. A more probable source of our moral outrage towards could be that it simply comes from our nature. This view is supported from the field of evolutionary biology, since there are evolutionary reasons to assume a natural source of our morality. For example, groups of animals take the interests of their group into account and don’t just consider individual interests have a higher chance of survival as a group than groups of animals where it is all for themselves. Thus groups of animals that take the group into consideration and have a moral compass will survive more and become evolutionary successful. Thus it is not implausible that nature and evolution are the cause of our moral outrages. 

So to conclude, the claim that religion is the source of our aversion to baby genocide is likely false. Biological factors seem a more probable cause. So although we can’t escape the fact that religion still has influence on our worldview, we should not overestimate it either.