Correction - amorality. Science is like that.

GP, "tell me even one single moral principle that can be derived from evolutionary science". There are lots of them. Some off the top of my head:

- Be kind to your neighbours.
- Look after your spouse.
- Don't eat your children.
- and even: join your local church.

Any rule of thumb for living that enhances the odds of your genes perpetuating themselves is "derivable" from evolution. Whether you would call those rules of thumb "morals" is to me a matter of personal taste.

All these rules, if they are actually taught and followed, are in place because over thousands of years because the people who followed them lived, and those that had other rules died out. So people who are nice to their neighbours tend to do better than those that aren't, and there are some good theories as to why joining a church has the same effect. It not like most of us have a whole pile of choice about whether we followed them, either. Most of us a suspicious of strangers, most of us are naturally nice to our neighbours and are recoil in distaste when we see people on television who aren't, most of us, when given no alternative form of justice, would take an eye for an eye.

I realise this all sounds a bit odd to someone like yourself who thinks in terms of "ought and ought not". But odd or not that is how we in the other half see it. Personally, I find "be nice to your neighbours because they may be nice to your when you need it" far more persuasive than "be nice to your neighbours because God said so".

The perplexing thing to me is Richard Dawkins knows all this. He knows a good many of us a naturally spiritual, and he knows there are benefits to being so. Yet he rails against people who see the world through the prism of their spirituality. Its sort of like railing at a Negro for being black, or an Intuit for being white.

More of the same old "evolution is a religion too" drivel. Argue from the position of believing in an imaginary friend if you must, but don't try to impute the same type of silliness to scientific reasoning.

To borrow from (and paraphrase) a like-minded poster in another forum - atheism is not a religion just as baldness is not a hair colour.

Michael Ruse wrote:

"But not in America! It was founded by people (the Puritans) who were determined to have their own religion, and right down to the present religion plays a major role in the lives of many (most) Americans."

In stating the above Michael Ruse subscribes to another myth. The first English colonists in what is now the United States were in Virginia. The first permanent settlement there was in 1607. Massachusetts was first settled in 1620. Massachusetts had a state church until the nineteenth century. The Virginians with their declaration of rights in 1776 were responsible for the First Amendment to the United States Constitution which prohibits an establishment of religion and has been interpreted to mandate separation of church and state.

The present contest in the United States to a large degree is between those who would break down that separation and those who would keep it. The Puritans embody one tradition, and the Virginians another. The creation/evolutionist controversy is only one episode in a continuing struggle between Americans with different views on the relationship between religion and state.

GrahmY et al,

Important Note:

The Struggle between Evolution and Creation: An American Problem
Michael Ruse. Issues. Victoria: Mar 2008. , Iss. 82; pg. 11, 3 pgs

Copyright Control Publications Pty Ltd Mar 2008

Cited: Proquest [Online]

Please note, that Control Publications holds copyright on this article. Also, in Australia self-plagiarism is frowned upon. I suspect Florida State would agree.

Myself, I tend be careful at conferences and avoid venturing too close to material intended for a journal. I have for received permission, on the one occassion, on behalf of a Singapore-based journal, to use a table I produced for OTEN/SBS.

Michael,

A big, bad secular humanist would not be so unethical.

Also, this most recent contribution is way out of context with your contribution to ISIS [Vol. 82 (4), December 2007). I do agree with you that the "Selfosh-Gene" is brilliant and Dawkins' writing should focus on his areas expertise - He isn't very good at cultural anthropolgy, either.

Interesting, you claim, in ISIS, that it is the evangelical believers, rather than the athiests, who are attracted to Dawkins' latest book. Might Dawkins have created a Piltdown Man? Where the religions, especially halleujah ones, say the scientists "said", when orthodox practitioners said no such thing.

As I have said before on OLO posts, Dawkins should have edited an anthrology using subject experts. There is an excellent example this approach with Harry Wolf, in ISIS, c. 1961, on Quantification In Science.

Sells,

Trust it only an oversight, but I didn't receive a reply to post, whereas I did put some effort into some of the research my retort:

http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=7323&page=0#113075

Incidently, in ISIS Michael states that Darwinism should not be linked to atheism.

rstuart - you say "Any rule of thumb for living that enhances the odds of your genes perpetuating themselves is "derivable" from evolution."
That statement implies that perpetuating our genes is a good thing. You might like to think that the perpetuation of your genes is a good thing but there is nothing in evolutionary science to say that the perpetuation of your genes or the genes of anything else is good.

As far as evolutionary theory goes whatever happens is what happens and whether that is life or death is neither here nor there. End of story.