Natural Selection for Altruism

Morality has a neural basis, and both morality and rationality depend on limbic-prefrontal connections. Morally loaded behaviors such as altruism are found in our primate lineage, where they provided selective survival advantages for the natural group.

So much for the religious mythology that God handed down absolute moral edicts! Well, anyone endowed with the logical-empirical cognitive attitudes that render the thinker resistant to religious inculcation could have told the sociologists and neuroscientists that small children exhibit concern for others and that much of our moral framework is learned.

Reactions to Haidt's article: on Edge by Michael Shermer, David Sloan Wilson, Sam Harris, and PZ Myers . Bulldust about atheism and morality . Haidt Hype . Misunderstanding the New Atheism . NewScientist "If morality is hard wired in the brain - What's the point of Religion?" . Morality Gene?

biological evolutioncognitiongeneticsmoralitynatural selectionneuropsychologyneurosciencephilosophypsychologyscience