Altruism - the great puzzle

Like sex, altruism is a great mystery in the life sciences, especially in the case of humans (because of is generous expression). Neither kin selection nor reciprocal altruism seem able to explain the scale of human societies, their cooperativeness, their often unselfish nature. Several years back David Sloan Wilson and Elliott Sober wrote Unto Others: The Evolution and Psychology of Unselfish Behavior to offer their own model, which works within a multi-level selection paradigm which suggests that cooperation and altruism are favored at the level of groups, above and apart from their benefit to the individual. In my argument with Steve Burton of Right Reason about the role of Christianity on the values and morals of our society these issues have lurked in the background. Steve has made repeated references to the New Testament, and the uniqueness of their ideas. I have repeated several times that though I think Steve ...