Atheist Psychology

It's fairly common to hear Atheists claim that morality is an artifact of evolutionary development. It's a necessary fable if Atheists are to claim their morality is actual but not objective in the sense of asserted externally. EvoDevo, as it is called, is a nonsense science which is 100% founded on story-telling about how certain human characteristics and traits could have evolved, if you give your imagination full free rein.

One of the claims is that infants have moral principles embedded in their immature psyches.

Anyone who has ever had children (or even has seen a child) knows that they are entirely self-centered in every possible way, until they are acculturated by the outside influence of adults. That is hardly evidence for an inherent morality due to evolution. But here there is a study which claims that babies are, indeed, possessed of the tools of morality:(note 1)

"Here we show that 6- and 10-month-old infants take into account an individual's actions towards others in evaluating that individual as appealing or aversive: infants prefer an individual who helps another to one who hinders another, prefer a helping individual to a neutral individual, and prefer a neutral individual to a hindering individual. These findings constitute evidence that preverbal infants assess individuals on the basis of their behaviour towards others. This capacity may serve as the foundation for moral thought and action, and its early developmental emergence supports the view that social evaluation is a biological adaptation."

Now how should we evaluate this assertion? The observables are that an infant prefers a helping individual to a hindering individual or a neutral individual.

Why is the actual, necessary conclusion not that the infant sees, cognitively, which individual is most likely to HELP get what the infant wants? When the infant wants something, the infant recognizes the practicality of preferring the individual that will be most likely to satisfy its wants. There is absolutely no (zero, none) morality involved here. The observations prove (if anything) the direct polar opposite from the conclusion drawn by the protagonists: that infants are consequentialists/pragmatists. The acquired preference is completely self-serving.

The study's false conclusion is forced onto the data by the obvious need to support the ideological conclusion. There is no possible way to find the study's conclusion to be necessary and driven by the observations.

The data has been hijacked by the necessary narrative which these "scientists" want to prove.

Unsurprisingly, this faux science is being used by Atheists who uncritically use its claim as evidence. It is evidence, alright; evidence of the lack of critical logical analysis which inheres in Atheist "reasoning", even in what is called "science".

Note 1: I took the study's summary and conclusion at its face value; I did not pay the $32 required to read the entire paper.