Changes

:You really have bought into evolutionism hook, line, and sinker.  Altruism is not limited to parents caring for their young.  Animals adopt orphaned young of other species.  Primates share food with unrelated animals in their group, help the injured, etc.  None of these things improve individual survivability, and are thus counter-evolutionary. [[User:RodWeathers|- Rod Weathers]] 09:20, 18 December 2008 (EST)

:You really have bought into evolutionism hook, line, and sinker.  Altruism is not limited to parents caring for their young.  Animals adopt orphaned young of other species.  Primates share food with unrelated animals in their group, help the injured, etc.  None of these things improve individual survivability, and are thus counter-evolutionary. [[User:RodWeathers|- Rod Weathers]] 09:20, 18 December 2008 (EST)

::Actually they do provide for evolution.  It does not really matter what the act is, just as long as it does not reduce the chance of the population having genetic spread.  You have to think about altruism in terms of gene dispersion, what helps it spread and what helps it survive, thus favoring evolution.  If organisms share among each other then the genes will survive and spread at an increased rate than organisms that do not.  Another piece of evidence that shows that altruistic behavior falls in line with evolution is the evidence that parallel and convergent evolution are functions of altruistic behavior between two populations (part of the environmental selective pressures).  I believe the point you are missing is that a single mutation in an organism is not enough to cause an evolutionary shift, that mutation must spread; therefore evolutionary shift is based on population and not the individual thus supporting altruistic behaviors due to their impact on the population's survivability over the individual.  Perhaps you can counter this argument with some explanation as to why altruism can not be beneficial to evolutionary theory.  I would agree that if the organism sacrifices itself before producing offspring then the behavior would counter evolution, however when one removes learned social constructs, you will see that the time an organism develops altruistic behaviors is often after the organism is able to reproduce.  As for the comment about buying in, I am a biochemist, if I did not understand evolutionary theory then most of what I study would make no sense, such as seeing the similar metabolic pathways in different species with only slight, and progressive, modifications to differentiate them.--[[User:Able806|Able806]] 09:40, 18 December 2008 (EST)

::Actually they do provide for evolution.  It does not really matter what the act is, just as long as it does not reduce the chance of the population having genetic spread.  You have to think about altruism in terms of gene dispersion, what helps it spread and what helps it survive, thus favoring evolution.  If organisms share among each other then the genes will survive and spread at an increased rate than organisms that do not.  Another piece of evidence that shows that altruistic behavior falls in line with evolution is the evidence that parallel and convergent evolution are functions of altruistic behavior between two populations (part of the environmental selective pressures).  I believe the point you are missing is that a single mutation in an organism is not enough to cause an evolutionary shift, that mutation must spread; therefore evolutionary shift is based on population and not the individual thus supporting altruistic behaviors due to their impact on the population's survivability over the individual.  Perhaps you can counter this argument with some explanation as to why altruism can not be beneficial to evolutionary theory.  I would agree that if the organism sacrifices itself before producing offspring then the behavior would counter evolution, however when one removes learned social constructs, you will see that the time an organism develops altruistic behaviors is often after the organism is able to reproduce.  As for the comment about buying in, I am a biochemist, if I did not understand evolutionary theory then most of what I study would make no sense, such as seeing the similar metabolic pathways in different species with only slight, and progressive, modifications to differentiate them.--[[User:Able806|Able806]] 09:40, 18 December 2008 (EST)