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.
In his book The Selfish Gene, E. O. Wilson was the first to promote the theory of kin selection or, as he called it, sociobiology. Since then the term sociobiology has been dropped and advocates changed the label to evolutionary psychology. In The Moral Animal, Robert Wright popularized evolutionary psychology. He presented various “just-so-stories” about human behavior and attitudes that are consistent with the theory. Wright’s approach is similar to creationists that start with a narrative and look for examples to fit the theory. Human behavior is vastly more complex than groundhogs barking when a predator approaches.
For a more recent and fairly comprehensive critique of evolutionary psychology, I invite you to read this short article:
http://lesswrong.com/lw/2l7/problems_in_...sychology/
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.
In his book The Selfish Gene, E. O. Wilson was the first to promote the theory of kin selection or, as he called it, sociobiology. Since then the term sociobiology has been dropped and advocates changed the label to evolutionary psychology. In The Moral Animal, Robert Wright popularized evolutionary psychology. He presented various “just-so-stories” about human behavior and attitudes that are consistent with the theory. Wright’s approach is similar to creationists that start with a narrative and look for examples to fit the theory. Human behavior is vastly more complex than groundhogs barking when a predator approaches.
For a more recent and fairly comprehensive critique of evolutionary psychology, I invite you to read this short article:
http://lesswrong.com/lw/2l7/problems_in_...sychology/
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.
