Sacrifice: bringins evolution and religion together?

Many links have been made between religion and science or, actually, have tried to make. In this specific article, the link is made through sacrifice; in our conception, a very irrational and savage practice. In this sense, Sarah Coakley, in his inaugural lecture in Cambridge, critics the Girard conception about sacrifice; in specific the base upon his theory is made, that is to say, that the conflict is provoked because we humans desire the same things. She starts on the base of evolutionary theory.

His conception of sacrifice is made thanks to the collaboration with Martin Nowak, professor of biology and mathematics at Harvard University. They start on the basis of a new principle in evolution: the co-operation, in other words, the advantage of fitness given to other individuals in deterioration of his own. This principle is much related to the results of others scientist, like Lynn Margulis, in which the evolution of eukaryotic organisms is originated by a process of symbiosis. The radical argument, for this to be a totally new hypothesis in evolution, is that the individual advantage cannot explain the process of co-operation.

Coakley made is essential point in that in the history of evolution you can read along a principle of co-operation, a line of sacrifice. Finally Coakley hope that these concepts of co-operation and sacrifice will bring evolution and theology together starting on the basis that this two operate in parallel worlds.