Quote:Louis says:The second group of critics to Dawkins' ideas are not evolutionary biologists, but lay-people who are for some reason offended that we evolved to be anything but good neighbours, kind, helpful people who are not predisposed to prejudice or malice. Dawkins, and many of his supporters, have made the obvious leap from biology to psychology, reasoning that since the human brain is an organ and evolved for a specific purpose (mainly hunting gazelles on the savannah), it makes sense to look at it from an evolutionary perspective. Evolutionary psychology seeks to put human behaviours in a biological context. Reactions to this have been very strong, as people now see the mind as their last refuge from the "unweaving"..."Scientists have told me my echinacea won't help, my star-sign doesn't matter, there are no helpful spirits in the wings, but they can't tell me I don't have a soul, since that's a purely introspective judgement." The new disciplines of cognitive neuroscience and evolutionary psychology have started to assault that last stronghold of peoples' illusions about what they want the world to be like (as opposed to the much more impressive way it really is.)Thank you. That was extremely well stated. And I very much agree. The PCing of science is how I think of it. Darwinism at it's very core is designated "survival of the fittest", which is inherently competitive. Simply means you have winners, and losers. In today's PC climate it is not polite to admit that there will be losers. You have to make nice and support self esteem. Which has exactly nothing to do with whether or not a gene survives.Excuse me Mr. Cheetah Gene, we know you are a really good gene, even though this is a codfish body, that's not your fault, and so we, the codfish body, being good genes and all, because we understand that you are trying really hard and it's the effort that counts, have decided that you may live and flourish here.Lynne