Group prayer on Skype on behalf of our Christian members

[The Industrial Atheist]

ps://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/belief/2010/mar/19/darwin-reciprocal-altruism-vampire-bats





Contrary to what is often supposed, your prey – large mammals such as South American cattle – are quite good at detecting you and sometime you go an entire night without feeding. Then you are in trouble. Two nights without food and you are dead.
Vampire bats, in a manner that would I am sure have delighted Charles Darwin had he known of it, have developed an ingenious way round this problem. They hang around (sorry!) in groups but form reciprocal relationships with particular individuals. Suppose you and I are such a pair and you go a night without food while I have been more successful. I typically regurgitate a meal of blood for you. When next I go a night without getting a meal of my own you reciprocate by regurgitating a meal for me.


Evolutionary biologists call this reciprocal altruism. You scratch my back and I'll scratch yours. Now, reciprocal altruism isn't restricted to vampire bats. It is found in a number of long-lived species where individuals can recognise one another as individuals. Supremely, of course, it is found in humans

You may want to check your sources before you google search and try to find anything that agrees with your position.




This priest was using the example of the Bats to make a, for lack of a better term, 'spiritual' comparison.

I take it you and Tizheruk are in agreement with what the priest says?

That doesn't change anything it says. Like many UK priests, he obviously believes in evolution and other established science. So I don't really get the point of mentioning that he's religious and doesn't think Evolution COMPLETELY accounts for human moral behavior.

I was addressing the issue of: Do animals have morality.