Atheism and morality

[Rahul]

I also like to see others benefit from my actions at no positive gain of my own. But technically speaking, I wouldn't say I'm altruistic, because seeing others happy *is* my reward, and thus, "altruism" as we know it in its purest form, doesn't apply to me (or others I'd argue, unless they're indifferent to the positive outcome their actions had).

*sighs* Ok, I think the disconnect we are having in this discussion is that you are coming from human based psychology.

I never really cared for that. I had to take a class or two in college but it never really interested me. Don't get me wrong, I understand the benefits to humanity by exploring it. But I feel the same way about advanced mathematics. Very important, not my thing.

My personal interest that I study as a hobby is evolution. I've read a TON of books, studies, papers about evolution. While reading all I can find about evolution I've encountered, quite a bit, discussions about evolutionary psychology.

So I'm coming from a different starting point.

In evolutionary psychology "altruism" is something that an animal does that contributes to the survival of another animal with either a potentially detrimental affect on their own survival or no increased survival benefit at all.

Evolutionary psychology doesn't go into "feelings". So from that aspect, if I give food to a hungry person, or money to a homeless person, I'm deducting my own personal resources to give to another human/animal with no apparent benefit to my own potential survivability or the survivability of my close kin.

If we start talking about human psychology, sure, let's start talking about emotions and feelings.

Feelings don't really crop up when we are talking about why one Rhesus monkey shared food with some other, non related Rhesus monkey with no obvious benefit to itself.

In human psychology I think the literal definition of altruism is just as improbable as the definition of "perfection". It's an abstract concept that doesn't really exist.