Course taught by Wayne Booth, Winter 1998
Reading Notes by Adam Kissel

Religion and Science: History, Method, Dialogue, ed. by W. Mark Richardson and Wesley J. Wildman. New York: Routledge, 1996. See also some excerpts in my work for Williams.

The premise is that morality comes out of altruistic reciprocity which evolves genetically. But game theory shows that it is easy to learn reciprocity. [So the genetic effect seems less likely to be about reciprocity than about the ability to learn in the first place, which any animal already does on such a basic level. In other words morality and religion are consonant with our ability to learn, but not necessarily a genetic result. It's a genetic result of the smart people learning how to be altruistic among other things, at best. I'd say that morality comes more out of a culture of learned behavior, as described in IX, pp. 386-87. This is also just about Irons's point on 389.] Irons uses a Lamarckian theory of evolution.

For Irons, cultural evolution moves towards bigger and bigger non-kin groups; but it must stop once the world is one--and then start over again with new subgroups? [cf. Brewer on social identity]

One needs certain theological commitments before discussing morality: e.g. neo-Darwinian constraints that decide morality is only a "culture-genetic" phenomenon (see esp. 408).

It is vital to recognize the distinction, which Irons seems only to make obliquely, between "genetic and cultural evolution" (411). Also 419.

Jesus is, cultural-evolutionarily speaking, a kind of "mutation" who subverts survival ethics in favor of a model of love (via Theissen, 412, 413).

Christianity: "the nature of reality is such that the value and meaning of being human is most fully realized in self-investing behaviors that seek the most wholesome outcomes [in living lives]" (412-13). Theology builds on cultural anthropology (i.e. sociobiological athropology) which builds on sociobiological biology which builds on biology [then chemistry, physics, math?, and back to theology!]

They agree "that sociobiological reflection on moral behavior has a direct impact upon the myths and rituals by which all people conduct their livers, whether they are explicitly religious or not, and they agree that the nexus of myth-morality-sociobiology is a critical issue for further attention" (426).