My comment disappeared...

Hmm, let's be careful.

...who give God all the credit

Are you familiar with the problems of eye witnesses? This kind of testimony combines the problems of eye-witnesses with the problems of self-knowledge.

I have never head...

Christian notions confuse you - the 'knowledge of God' idea, projected onto atheism - atheists don't generally hold that a given knowledge determines conduct, especially not that scientific knowledge about evolution would determine personal conduct. Psychological knowledge might. Have you ever heard of SSS (secular society for sobriety)?

As to evolutionary cooperation, this presentation might interest you:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i3plwTxdSO4

Of course, that doesn't explain why we take care (put in effort to protect) of people from whom we cannot extract benefit. My hypothesis is that it arises in part from how human cooperation develop(s) - to a substantial extent in mammalian (emotional) layout of the brain. In more detail, we cooperate because we care (have emotional consideration for people), and because we cooperate, our quality of life improves - therefor caring (emotional consideration) is the lucky fluke that brings on the advantageous cooperation. Our taking care of (effort to protect) the weak (who couldn't and often still cannot provide us with advantage) is a side-effect, and in a sense puts us at risk - in order to stop taking care (effort) of the weak, we often need to stop caring (emotionally) about them, usually by suppressing emotional care generally - this then undermines beneficial cooperation.

You might want to read Simone de Beauvoir's writings on old age. Care of the weak is common in societies that have the free labour and resources to do so, but disappears as those resources become constrained, i.e. it is largely a human preference, but ends as necessary. Societies that prey on other societies often have quite nice internal configurations for taking care of their weak. (Fanon famously called it socialism of thieves,,,)

every hypothesis needs to be supported by evidence rather than simply being assumed true until shown otherwise.

While I certainly agree that the 'default position' is nonsense (more specifically, premise smuggling of the worst order, specifically, of the 'who are you going to believe, me or your own lying eyes' variety, and asks that an unfalsifiable hypothesis, namely ID, be falsified, before being rejected), assuming something to be true until shown otherwise (and often reinterpreting data with additional hypotheses) is quite standard in scientific practice - it is one way to generate new hypotheses that contain the insight of older, relatively successful ones.

moeg_en_moerig - sorry...

Thanks for suggesting me - sorry, have been busy with my own stuff (PhD, job, the like), but I can always make time to put bs in its place. I should point out though that my background is not biology - so I'd suggest that you scrutinise my suggestions first... All I do is apply a bit of logic, and check my intuitions and prejudices from time to time...

BTW, if you wish to contact me, I hereby give Jack permission to send my email to you if he has access to it via the blog, otherwise, via skype (moegenmoerig, possibly with underscores - haven't used it in a while)...

Implicitly comparing oneself to one's preferred diety (in your case, one Jesus Christ) - right now, the taste in my mouth is more Carlos Menem - he did the same during his third reelection bid. You are comparing yourself to him (JC, not CM) by claiming that you are explaining reality, and that he explained reality. I say this for the sake of your intended audience, as I'm fully confident that you knew what you were doing, yet I prefer to keep the discussion direct.

Of course, that kind of argument is more dispensationalist - the dispensationalists see themselves generally as the epitome of human morality. Such is their (your) humility.

EDIT: ADD:
Of course, that you have this (special) knowledge (that you are yet to show, and which I am to obtain by kissing your ring) sounds rather gnostic. The irony is delicious.

You understood well enough that my words were sarcasm.

But there is another matter. You were projecting when you accused me (and scientists generally) of seeking to be dispensers of knowledge (whether, as in your accusation of all knowledge, or of knowledge at all). Instead, my purpose is to be a partisan of a methodology (falsifiability), and to show when people who pretend to follow the methodology, e.g. yourself, don't.

That, and the propaganda together - just repulsive. The guy wants to imply that I don't work (I hold down a full time position while doing my studies, mainly by funky hours, to pay the bills, yet this bastard wants to imply that I don't earn my keep, and he, a lawyer, does.)

No, contemporary empiricism does not assume a duality between thought and things - you do - to you, a duality exists between thoughts (somehow non-material) and things (material). But bonus points for pulling the 'who are you going to believe, me or your own lying eyes' stunt (empiricism is somehow dualist... by not being dualist).

For your intended audience:
In materialistic empiricism, the general assumption is that thoughts are material (brain-states, changes in brain-state), that to varying degrees approximate the outside world, by virtue of their structure (the thoughts) as well as the structure on/in which they occur (the brain).

Will's little stunt here is to assert (ex cathedra - literally 'on authority of the pope,' but more generally, 'don't dare to challenge me, or else' - ex cathedra assertions are a gimmick that propagandists use when they think that they've gotten their opponents and/or audience sufficiently confused as not to challenge them, or at least that the addition of the ex cathedra assertion will result in such confusion) that thoughts are non-material (vs material things, i.e. dualism), and that empiricism is somehow dualist on that account, yet tries to avoid dualism by being monist (the opposite of dualist).

Notice that Will does not explain how trying to explain a situation from a dualist perspective leads to a problem. (S)He gives no premises that together would suggest such a conclusion (as obtained from use of the Modus Ponens and Modus Tollens, i.e. legitimate logic).

Notice also that Will is BSing about the naturalistic fallacy - Will claims that the natural fallacy consists of arguing that that which is outside nature (unmaterial) is inside nature (material). This implication is in fact a lie - the naturalistic fallacy consists of arguing that that which is natural is moral. As an example of a naturalistic fallacy, consider the following:

Humans naturally kill each other from time to time, therefor humans killing humans is moral.

We judge killing to be generally immoral despite killing being in our nature, and the naturalistic fallacy leads us away from this. This has nothing to do with whether thoughts are part of nature, nor for that matter whether in fact killing is part of our nature - the naturalistic fallacy can be represented as

For all A (A in our nature IMPLIES A moral).

I hope that this illustrates Will's lies amply.

Finally, notice that Will is probably a lawyer. After Will argued that free will implies limited predictability (a reasonable premise), (s)he concluded from that argument the converse of that argument - an abuse of logic known as affirming the consequent - to conclude that free will can be measured, and further (yet another abuse of logic) that free will is therefor non-material (pure ex cathedra assertion). If the facts are against you, argue the law (logic - or abuse it sufficiently).

When challenged on this faulty reasoning, Will started to imply that we denied that free will would lead to limited predictability (a lie, but oh well) - when the law is against you, argue the facts.

When challenged on this lie, Will resorted to propaganda tactics (e.g. bandwagon, plainfolks, and similar tactics, as I listed in response) and impugned my character - when the facts and the law are against you, denounce opposing counsel.

Your last? Excellent. But the fact remains, you seek to infer the causal condition (free will) from the consequence (mispredicted trajectory), and moreover that the consequence implies the causal condition. Given that, as we have repeatedly shown to you, other causal conditions exist to produce the consequence, you are guilty of affirming the consequent, a gross logical fallacy.

That is aside from your propaganda tactics (bandwagon, plainfolks, etc), etc. Another round of your friends voting comments? Hmm. And why do you insist on leaving the comment at the bottom of the page, rather than in response to the comment to which you are replying? Is it that you don't expect your audience to read the comments to which it is a reply? Again, your contempt for the intellects of your intended audience is showing. We obviously are not your intended audience. But unless Jack asks me not to continue with this, I'll continue to respond to your bottom comments to undermine your purpose.