How Dawkins made me a better person

Though you still have hangups. You talk like nature has intentions and that having false beliefs isn't natural Maybe you should read them again. Pick up The Selfish Gene. You are not compelled to become the strongest physical and mental person you can be. Your ancestors are marked in that they have all successfully reproduced. Those relations of your ancestors that didn't aren't here anymore. Some of that might be because of luck. Some of that might be down to having, on average, inherited the right suite of genes. Yes, dividing child care amongst the community is a valid strategy. Some species have specialised child carer castes even! Still - as with many strategies there are potential ways to exploit it and it might not be therefore evolutionarily stable. As with cheaters, a counter-strategy is required: In this case if you are seen to not be pulling your weight (ie., making the community work harder at raising your kids than you are putting back into the community) you will probably start to lose friends and allies. This might impact on your financially or socially which might result in a net reduction in reproductive fitness.This is especially true if we look at the current types of free communal child care system in place over the world. The best ones are extended family. But is it better to have 30 kids in 'care' under 1 adult and each other. Or to have two kids being looked after by two parents plus extended family, siblings etc? I think the latter, to be perfectly honest, if you want to convince me otherwise you'll have to do the maths.If it turned out it was better for our children to be cared for in large groups by specialist carers rather than by family, I would think that is the way we should do it. Some people would naturally deny the evidence because it makes them feel uncomfortable. Yeah - realistic wives would probably withhold reproductive privileges longer than a week if you gave their children to an outgroup to be cared for. Which is perfectly consistent with the evolutionary context the Great Apes have gone through. It's only not a problem as long as:1. Your wife remains good with it.
2. Your secretary remains good with itIf your wife is ignorant of things then you do have a problem. You have to keep a secret from another human. Humans are very good at detecting deception. Not, it turns out, on an individual case by case basis, but give them a pattern of deception (even if it is just a coincidence) and the suspicions will begin, and once the suspicions start, you are in a lot of trouble (especially if they are particularly deceptive about their suspicions). Then you may end up with no sexual partner, and a reputation for not being trusted. You come from a Roman Catholic background and it never occurred to you to have sex with teenagers despite the fact that you voice a sexual desire to do so? Odd. Maybe you should go back and read the Holy Bible again. Isaac married Rebecca when she was at most 14. Some people think Rebecca was actually only 3 at the time of marriage. Religious justifications for marrying teenagers are rampant throughout history and I'm surprised you missed it.But I agree - the strange HIGHLY MODERN cultural norm of partnering up with someone of similar age and definitely not going below 16/18/21 is biologically weird. But then, living to 85 is biologically weird too and I'm happy with that state of affairs. What do you mean by 'wrong'? Without defining that you are stuck. If you are going to define 'wrong' in terms of what other animals do, you are going to be committing some very questionable acts.And why the arbitrary 'animal kingdom' what's wrong with getting morality from plants?Anyway - you can try engaging in mass rape and seeing how that works out for your reproductive success. You may find that social animals want to defend their sexual resources and the investments they have made and it is in their interests to dissuade cheaters. Those human laws are just the interests of society not just each individual. This occurs in the animal world too. There are some animal structures in which only one male in the group has mating rights for example. Thus any other male engaging in sex with a female would be 'wrong' and would be punished by the group (stupid Walrus laws, they might think to themselves). If you had read any of Richard's words you would know that his position is that we should try to avoid to live in a raw Darwinian society. You would find then, that Richard would not enact the depraved child raping promiscuous rape 'n' murder fest that you seem so keen on. I, and Richard believes that things that seem to be a rational benefit to society, despite it's possible immediate negative impact on the self are morally correct because it makes society better to live in which is where we live which is desired.The religious believe that something is right if a powerful enough person says it is. Hopefully she will understand. Sarah understood when Abraham slept around, and King David would, I'm sure, be proud.

The Brights wouldn't. They'd be smart enough to leave it to the secular charities that are already established experts in charitable aid and who many Brights and atheists and agnostics and Christians and Muslims and Marxists and Capitalists already donate to.