Evolution of Altruism

Now they might not be kin, but evolutionarily speaking the time from when humans lived in familial tribes is a blink of the eye. In fact, the entire duration of the human species is trivial compared to its evolutionary ancestry.Do we observe altruistic behavior in other mammals? Or other kingdoms? (I think we probably do.) Given that fact, humans being placed in situations where altruism benefits other humans only distantly genetically related has no bearing on its development any more than computer-generated boobies giving young men hard-ons relates to the instinct's evolution.

I'm not sure exactly what you are saying would be coming before hunter-gatherers, as the only other option that comes to mind is starvation. It seems appropriate to think that prior to the rise of civilization all our ancestors human or otherwise were probably hunter-gatherers, scavengers, or something of the like.The point I was getting at is that the origins of some of our basic behaviors need not have originated with humans at all. After all, evolutionarily the vast majority of ourselves are other species.For instance, lets suppose that we have a 95% genetic similarity to our progenitor ape ancestors. If we can see apes sacrificing themselves to protect their ape family members, why should we assume that the soldier who leaps on a grenade to save a fellow soldier far genetically removed gets that behavior from their 5% human DNA? It could very well have developed with fish for example and just hung around thereafter.But to summarize some of the points made in this thread already:We have not established that altruism is selected for, mainly due to a rather fuzzy definition of altruism itself. Are bees altruistic by having stingers and the will to use them? If it is a genetic imperative, does it stop being altruism? Is an instinct for mutual defense that happens to get someone killed altruism?Until we can adequately describe altruism the question isn't really able to be addressed.

Were you going to argue that humans are much more usual when compared to other animals? On a more serious note, I don't really get your point. Are you suggesting that the bees understand that they are not going to have offspring and thus decide to die for the greater good? And to have suicide stingers?It seems to me that if a species can develop self-sacrificing behaviors as beneficial to a group, then why not others?

So basically you don't have an argument against it, you simply have a bias and contempt toward the entire field on which modern biology rests. Because of this you are going to rail against arguments that haven't been made and then conclude...Well, what *is* your alternative explanation? Magic?

Actually, that is an extremely scientific way of operating. The vast majority of scientific models of the world are not without their margins of error, and I don't think any can claim to be beyond improvement. Yet scientists will use the useful predictions of these models in the absence of more accurate theories; in essence, since nobody has a better explanation its the one we use.This is how and why hypotheses become theories become laws. And this perfectly explains why you are what you are (YEC, IDer, etc). You view the scientific method and the proven track record of predictive and explanatory power of evolutionary theory as on par with magic. Furthermore, you don't actually offer an explanation but content yourself with complaining loudly about wide-ranging and complex fields of which you have slim to no education or experience, much less formally recognized qualifications.