[xabotage]

I don't help the poor as a hobby or because I was told to. I help the poor because I have compassion and empathy. Animals also demonstrate these same pro-social behaviors, and I'm pretty sure none of them are Jewish or Hindu.

[williamtrask]

I think the big question here is “why do you and I have compassion and empathy when many (many!) in human history have not?”

Related: do animals act pro-socially because of rational scientific rigour or because they blindly inherit behaviours from their peers/ancestors?

[xabotage]

Empathy is a survival strategy that benefits society as a whole whereas sociopathy is a survival strategy that benefits the individual. Humans are complex and diverse enough to display both sets of behaviors within the population.

I thought it should be fairly obvious that social instincts are "blindly inherited," I can't imagine why you think that any institution, scientific or religious, would need to manufacture them.