[froboz]

Well, Harris has been out-of-date for decades in anthropological circles, I'm afraid. He's a fun read, but I wouldn't take his books too seriously at this point. It's pretty well understood now that a strict economic materialist framework doesn't explain why people do what they do (humans are _not_ rational actors, by any stretch of the imagination), but he was never able to allow himself to think outside his Marxian box.

Granted, I've only had a cursory look at Bennenson, Ryan, and Jetha, but they're a couple of psychologists and a medical doctor, none of whom seem to have a deep background in cultural anthropology. Unsurprisingly, their works appear to fall back on the usual just-so stories taken from sociobiology and evolutionary psychology.

TL;DR: I respectfully disagree with the implication that these sources are strong counterarguments to the article's thesis.

[kstenerud]

I've definitely noticed a tendency in modern times, especially among Americans, towards all-or-nothing-ism. Someone's work is either completely right, or completely worthless. All you have to do is poke a few holes, and then you can dismiss the whole thing as nonsense. Usually, it culminates in an insular attitude of "I don't need to see the evidence to know it's wrong."