Yet again you show that your understanding of the drives of evolution are hampered by misunderstanding, that is why I urge you to update that knowledge.
You completely misunderstand survival of the fittest, using the naturalistic fallacy that treating the weak badly is a consequence, whereas it should be "Survival of the form that will leave the most copies of itself in successive generations." Which has nothing to do with killing the weak.
Self-preservation (in the selfish sense you invoke) is also not the prime mover for evolution, there are few species that do not cooperate to some degree to maximise their survival, opting out of that in a dangerous situation may save your skin in the short term but if the survivors find you it will not go well.
Fear and love are both adaptations for survival, and fear is not just a selfish drive, have you never felt fear for the fate of someone you cared for?
You continually ignore that empathy/love is just as much an integral part of evolution as any other drive, it cements families and brings about the surge of passion (endorphins-adrenalin) needed to defend them.
As for the wildebeest question (I left the debate for a short holiday in the New Forest), the reason I put them in was to underline that the love response is pan species, we are not special, as to their juxtaposition with god, I should imagine it is the same as mine, as I don’t see any proof of one.
As for atheism being the death of thought and inquiry? What rubbish! When it became obvious to me that I no longer had a shred of belief in a deity, it wasn’t because science had filled in all the gaps more that god was such a poor answer to the questions I was asking, and still ask.
I never said anything about killing the weak. Don't die attempting to save the weak, have more offspring. That's the logical path. I'm saying individual survival is justification that should bias toward having more offspring and not dying but doesn't. Remember, I'm thinking about how to proceed faced with dying myself to save the sickly or not. What does logic dictate? Certainly self preservation. Probabilities favor living and having more offspring. If you want to use evolution to justify your dying to save the loved one go ahead and show me. I don't care what science you use, the problem is you haven't come up with anything to justify dying.
I'm not talking about "a few species", I'm talking about an individual faced with a dying loved one and the motivation for his actions. I'm not thinking about evolution, science or a book someone wrote. If you want to bring science into it then give me the science for my actions because someone facing the death of a loved one very likely doesn't give a fiddle about what Darwin thought. Give me a rational justification, can you do that without a book, without someone's theory?
Let's understand something. There is no individual, political or religious system greater than the truth. Darwin, Dawkins and everyone else on the planet has the privilege of an eraser on their pencil. Peers have disagreed with Darwin, Spencer and Dawkins, tell me a 100 years from now which and how many of their theories will be refuted. Science is not an absolute!
"Fear and love are both adaptations for survival, and fear is not just a selfish drive, have you never felt fear for the fate of someone you cared for?"
If fear is an "adaptation for survival" then it is about the self so how can fear be anything but a selfish drive according to your own statement? Where's the proof that "love is an "adaptation for survival"? I'm giving my life for a loved one, where is the adaptation for survival"?
"Fear for the fate" is a fear of the unknown and fear of the unknown is about the self whether we are talking about person or a tree falling on our house.
So once you stopped believing in the existence of something greater than yourself you never returned to the inquiry. Right? If you are wrong than you will never know because your thought on the subject has ceased. So my statement is not "rubbish".
R