Christian apologists frequently try to argue that morality and altruism can't be explained by science or evolution and hence require a supernatural explanation -- their god, naturally. But what if altruism and reciprocal behavior can be modeled mathematically? What if the development of altruistic behavior can be predicted and described with such a model?
That's what Martin Nowak is working on and there's nothing more fundamental to nature than math.
People who are open-minded are beginning to realise that the results of our paper are beautiful: simple mathematical models based on standard natural selection are sufficient to explain the evolution of eusociality or other phenomena in social evolution. The strange mathematical contortions of inclusive fitness theory are unnecessary. In other words if you are interested in a mathematical description of evolution, a situation can never arise in which you would need an inclusive fitness approach.
...Without a mathematical description, we can get a rough handle on a phenomenon but we can't fully understand it. In physics, that's completely clear. You don't just talk about gravity, you quantify your description of it. The beautiful thing about mathematics is that it can decide an argument. Some things are fiercely debated for years, but with mathematics the issues become clear.
Source: New Scientist
Morality is one of those things which religious theists -- and Christians in particular -- tend to insist are inexplicable in nature. According to them, only something supernatural like their god could possibly explain why morality exists. Other examples from this category include life itself, complexity, the life-friendly positioning of our planet, and so forth.
If, however, there is a mathematical model which explains and even predicts how eusociality, social evolution, and reciprocal altruistic behavior evolve, then the legs are completely cut out from under that argument. It's already a bad argument which is undermined by so much evidence from both observations of both humans and a variety of animals, but math is a lot harder to argue against.
Unfortunately, not all of Martin Nowak's ideas are quite so level-headed and well-reasoned:
In my opinion, a purely scientific interpretation of evolution does not generate an argument in favour of atheism. Science does not disprove God or replace religion. Evolution is not an argument against God, any more than gravity is. Evolution explains the unfolding of life on Earth. The God of Christianity is "that without which there would be no evolution at all".
Everything Martin Nowak says here is only potentially true under certain definitions of "God" and "religion" -- definitions which do not happen to be those which are most popular and common in the West today. What he says is potentially true, for example, if "God" is a vaguely defined deistic deity which has no interaction with the universe. But hardly anyone seems to take that sort of deity seriously.
Martin Nowak's error is far more serious in his failed attempt to redefine the nature of Christianity. The God of Christianity is not simply some supernatural precondition for evolution; it's a personal, omniscient, omnipotent, creative being which loves us, sent a "son" to be killed so we could be saved, is highly interested in and interactive with the world around us, and so on. Much of that is indeed undermined if not disproven with science -- something Martin Nowak certainly knows, thus the redefinition of "God" and "Christianity" to the point of pointlessness.
But of course, such redefinitions are absolutely critical for scientists like Martin Nowak to maintain the extreme compartmentalization necessary to both understand the extent to which nature explains nature yet also believe that nature has some sort of super-natural origin. He wouldn't be able to get away with redefining science, but lots of people will give him a pass if he redefines religion in ways that are vague and positive-sounding.
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