Human Fairness: Innate or Evolved?

by Brian Thomas, M.S. *

Evidence for Creation Evidence from Science Evidence from the Life Sciences Man Was Created by
God Man Was Recently and Miraculously Created in the Image of God
How does it make you feel when you put forth just as much effort as the next guy, but he receives twice
the reward? Unfair! But how did people acquire the sensibilities involved when assessing fairness?
Certain animals recognize unequal rewards too, prompting researchers to try and unravel the origins
of fairness.
Publishing in Science, Sarah Brosnan from Georgia State University and Frans de Waal of Emery
University reviewed studies on fairness in animals.1 Their review unwittingly exposed reasons why
those who cling to a bias of naturalism may never discover the real roots of fairness.2
They wrote, "The human sense of fairness is an evolutionary puzzle. To study this, we can look to other
species."1 But shouldn't good science begin solving a human puzzle by investigating humansthe very
subject at hand?
Right off the bat, the naturalistic doctrine of man having evolved from primates has steered these
researchers off course. They study apes' senses of fairness simply because they believe man evolved
from apes. This is like studying an abacus to unravel the origins of smart phones simply because one
believes the former evolved into the latter. In fact, each device was independently constructed, like
apes and men were.
The researchers' bias manifested itself throughout the report in just-so statements like, "The pressure
for increased cooperation combined with advanced cognitive abilities and emotional control allowed
humans to evolve a complete sense of fairness."1 What experiments demonstrate this? Noneit is
merely a historical assertion, which by definition science cannot even directly investigate or observe.
The study authors then proposed that fairness evolved in order to supply certain benefits to
organisms, like warning them of the dangers of cooperation, or enabling them to enjoy the fruits of
sustained cooperation. In one experiment, caged chimpanzees receive food rewards when they
cooperate fairly. However, these benefits do not explain the origin of fairness any more than the
benefits of driving a car explain the origin of cars.
The mere possibility of benefit never supplies a mechanism to access that benefit. Real people
invented cars to access the benefit of faster transportation, but they were able to think ahead,
imagine, plan and execute. Nature does none of these things. Why not simply infer that a personal
Creator invented a sense of fairness and placed that innate sense into certain animals and man?3
After all, the researchers found good evidence for creation in the fact that only certain birds or some
monkeys or select apes recognize fairness, but other members of their respective groups do not. If
fairness really evolved, then why didn't all members of a related group inherit it instead of just some?4

And by what means was nature supposed to have installed this sense? The study authors wrote,
"Natural selection works on every individual's relative advantage compared with others," then they
explained how nature might have selected those individual primates which were able to "compare
one's gains with those of others."1 But this rhetoric defies reason.
For example, it still doesn't answer the question: Did the ability to compare gains just magically appear
in those individuals that nature supposedly selected? Also, it assumes that natural selectionwhich
could only select physical entities, namely whole individual organismssomehow selected the nonphysical attribute of fairness.
Plus, often monkeys with and without a sense of fairness live in similar environments today, indicating
they bear similar selective pressures. Proponents of selection as the creative cause of fairness need to
explain why similar environmental stresses wouldor how they know outside factors were different
enough toproduce fairness in one kind of monkey but none in a neighboring kind. From the creation
perspective, God could have made some animals with certain senses, like fairness or for that matter
electroreception, and others without it, just to display His creativity.
Naturalism's off-track circular reasoning and leaps of logic give its adherents an unfair disadvantage
when they try to unravel the origins of fairness, which we can attribute to God's creative decisionmaking.

References
1.Brosnan, S.F., and de Waal, F.B.M. Evolution of responses to (un)fairness. Science. 346 (6207). Published online before print, October 17, 2014,
accessed October 21, 2014.
2.Naturalism is the philosophy that nature alone explains everything, thus defining a reality with no supernatural elements allowed.

3.The terms "fair" and "just" should be distinguished, with fairness comparing two similar objects or situations, and justice comparing a moral act or
thought with God's objective moral law. Romans 2:15 notes that man has a conscience that notifies him when an act or thought misaligns with that which
is right. See Budziszewski, J. 2011.What We Can't Not Know. Spence Publishing Company: Dallas, TX. Scripture does not indicate that animals have a
conscience or the sense of justice to which a conscience refers, but appears to leave open the possibility of them having a sense of fairness.

4.Thomas, B. 2013. The Unpredictable Pattern of Bioluminescence. Acts & Facts. 42 (4): 17.
* Mr. Thomas is Science Writer at the Institute for Creation Research.