Sun God: I guess that's why "The Da Vinci Code"

That book, first of all, wasn't some kind of "atheist bible". It slammed pretty hard on Opus Dei, but (spoiler alert) the real bad guy at the end wasn't the Opus Dei guy.

abb3w: Duh. Because the West is being challenged by Islamic religious fanatics, and the Christian religious fanatics are making ID-iots of themselves with their Evolution opposition. Common sense dictates looking for another alternative, and Science is bigger than Taoism/Buddhism in the West.

This is a better reason for the publishers being willing to publish more "anti-god" stuff.

The problem is that while Science has been stepping onto traditional religious turf by explaining the universe, it hasn't yet stepped up to taking a rigorous look at morality. (Probably because there's no obvious big money in it.)

Ummm .... They are.

unfortunately, it is mostly being published in papers dealing with evolutionary biology and psychology. Essentially they are endeavoring to understand why certain behaviors are favored over others.

One example ^{(^)}
Another example ^{(^)}

Sure, those two studies (the first articles I found in a very brief search) are about birds, but they reflect very "human" style behavior. Which, from an evolutionary standpoint, gives evidence that behaviors that enhance the survivability of a group tend to proliferate, and those behaviors that don't enhance survivability of the group or individual or a group, tend to disappear.

Huge chunks of "morality" can be predicted based on how beneficial those moral codes will be to group survival. On top of that, there are seemingly paradoxical behaviors which will each enhance survivability, but are mutually exclusive. For example, the behavior of some men to try to have sex with every female they deal with, as opposed to men who have solidly monogamous relationships for a lifetime. Each potentially enhances the chance of DNA proliferation, although in a different way.

The difference between the scientific approach and the religious approach is 1) The religious approach adds in random nonsensical rules and demands you follow all the rules 2) The scientific approach looks for the reality of the situation, and doesn't condemn you to hell for not doing what they tell you to do.

// emergency at work.. gotta go...I'll be backk