Dawkins, Morality, and Religion Part I. Evolution of Altruism

Abstract

Richard Dawkins is more than a biologist and science communicator. He is a guiding light, whose books are designed to spread the scientific naturalistic world­view as the only and absolutely true one. It is especially evident in his later militant-atheistic works, little related to science as such which have a philosophical and ideo­logical pathos. The purpose of the article is to give a critical analysis of the moral ar­gument that Dawkins develops in those works, substantiating the fundamental areli­giosity of morality and the amorality of religion. One of the lines of argument concerning the evolution of morality and, in particular, the origin of altruism is consid­ered in detail. In order to understand better the contradictions found in it, the dynamics of the British intellectual’s views on these problems is traced in the context of sociobi­ological ideas and theories of the past half century. It is proved that in the sphere of evolutionary studies there is a more consistent and promising approach to the explo­ration of relationship between morality and religion than that proposed by Dawkins.