Morality in Nature

[Esquilax]

Esquilax, if you should have read the contents of the article to which you linked. From the second paragraph on, the article clearly states, “Altruism in animals is not identical to the everyday concept of altruism in humans.” The article continues to elaborate on the very specialized use of the word altruism.

Of course; the article then goes on to, quite understandably, state that it will be restricted to this definition: "Altruism refers to behavior by an individual that increases the fitness of another individual while decreasing the fitness of the actor." It then goes on to detail that human altruism is defined by a conscious decision to do good; in essence, the reason the article uses a different definition is merely because we have no way of determining the motivations of an animal in any given action it takes. I don't exactly see this definition as unreasonable, nor is it contrary to the point I was making.

You seemed to be advocating the idea that in nature survival of the fittest rules, and this is rendered untrue by the examples given by Wikipedia of animals caring for those that are not the fittest; whether or not we can define their motivations in doing so, it's clear that your initial premise is a little flawed.

Perhaps if you guys better understood the history of kin selection theory and recent science debates about it, then you would be less likely to latch onto this highly speculative theory to justify your belief in materialist foundations for morality. You simply cannot ground a qualitative system of values in science. Science is methodologically restricted to quantitative inquires. As genkaus correctly pointed out, you can find secular moral system that do not reference religion. I find the adequacy of these systems wanting, but that is another debate.

I think you're ascribing motivations to me that I don't have; I only sought to correct you on what I saw as a basic oversimplification. I'm not pinning all my hopes for morality on science, because that'd be ridiculous; while I think that our morality is partly formed by our animal nature and what it has taught us about the world we live in, it's definitely more hit and miss than that, and not something science has any business in, really.

My point was that to characterize animal behavior as just "might makes right" or "survival of the fittest" is to skip over those parts of our evolutionary origin and position as a social species that informs part of our basis for morality.