Steven Pinker wrote an article on morality for the New York Times in January this year, called The Moral Instinct. It's a great summary of how morals and ethics could have evolved from a naturalistic, evolutionary perspective. I bring it up now, because it has been sitting in the back of my mind ever since I read it at the beginning of the year. Morals represent one of the remaining "strongholds" of the religious (or so they believe). They argue that you can't have morals without God. It's a case of the god of the gaps phenomenon in action - god has literally been squeezed out of most areas of life leaving religious apologists holed up in the more insubstantial, conceptual areas such as morals.
Then, along comes Steven Pinker and co, and they tear apologists' arguments in this area to shreds. I attended one of Pinker's lectures in January right after having read the article. He basically repeated his Authors@Google lecture verbatim which really disappointed me. However, afterwards we went up and asked him a few questions, which he dutifully answered. I then mentioned that I had just read his New York Times article and found it fascinating. It was very interesting to see how he visibly perked up and seemed a lot more lively at this mention. I throw this in with the fact that he often finds himself in the company of Richard Dawkins and other anti-religion freethinkers, and it makes me think that he is seriously moving into this area himself.
What actually sparked this whole little discussion about Pinker and his NYT article was that a colleague mentioned he was reading The Blank Slate and that it gave very scientific reasons for much religious thinking, so perhaps Pinker has actually been there all along and I just need to read more, which is never a bad thing! :)
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