Dick in the Dock Part. 8: Moral Fortitude

In this chapter Dawkins talks about morality and how it evolved. Or rather behavior patters and social “norms”. Morality as morality is somewhat more elusive. If we were to take natural selection seriously (and it seems apparent Dawkins does not) it offers us a fairly stark morality: self-preservation and procreation, and a concentric chauvinism to one’s self, one’s clan, one’s race and one’s species. Any thing outside this is by natural selection, “immoral”.
Dawkins does attempt to demonstrate that much of what we consider to be “moral” at least at some point was connected to this principle but may now be a “misfiring”. But this is precisely what he thinks religion is aswell. Yet for some reason (or perhaps more likely no reason) he thinks that some of the misfires are good and some are bad, why? If he has an explanation, he certainly does not bother to share it with us.
Of course the very concept of a “misfiring”, assumes on some level an absolute standard. And any absolute standard in the realm of what is traditionally thought of, as “morality” must come from God. I must admit, I thought Dawkins would come up with some lame argument as to why this is not the case, but in fact he essentially capitulated. That is probably because Dawkins is not much of a fan of moral absolutes any way. He instead prefers what he calls “utilitarianism”.

Al: Mummsy, can I shoot Prof. Dawkins now?
Mummsy: No dear that would be wrong.
Al: But we can use his meat to feed these starving children.
Mummsy: Well, I guess it is all right then.

The problem of course is that utilitarianism is hogwash (that's American for “rubbish”). It is simply a shell game with ends and means. But if the end does not have an absolute backing up its validity it is no more a grounds for morality then anything else.