Maximizing Freedom is the Goal of Morality

I think you're claiming too much here. All your quotation from Pinker claims is that evolution has endowed us with certain characteristics that are essential to forming a moral sense. But gaining a moral sense requires more than that. Just as we aren't born able to understand and speak language, we aren't born with a moral sense - if we grow up isolated from other people during our formative years we aren't capable of acquiring either skill.By the way, I'm impressed that Laurie Anderson is a friend of yours. How long have you known her?

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'I can't even fit all my wife's clothes into a suitcase for travelling. So you want me to believe we're going to put all of the planets and stars and everything into a sandwich bag?' - q3psycho on the Big Bang

Maybe I'm being stupid, but isn't that what moral philosophy is all about? Surely as soon as you start to question the moral code you've been brought up with, your first step has to be to understand what morality is really about, and that means not just observing what it is, but also what it should be.

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'I can't even fit all my wife's clothes into a suitcase for travelling. So you want me to believe we're going to put all of the planets and stars and everything into a sandwich bag?' - q3psycho on the Big Bang

As your last two topics have been entitled: and I think you might find it useful to read a couple of essays by John Stuart Mill called Utilitarianism and On Liberty (if you haven't already). I think you'll find them enlightening (and give you some additional ammunition in these debates ).The first link below is the Wikipedia article on John Stuart Mill; the second is the article on his essay Utilitarianism; and the third the article on On Liberty. The latter two have links to electronic copies of the essays. John Stuart Mill - Wikipedia
Utilitarianism (book) - Wikipedia
On Liberty - Wikipedia

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'I can't even fit all my wife's clothes into a suitcase for travelling. So you want me to believe we're going to put all of the planets and stars and everything into a sandwich bag?' - q3psycho on the Big Bang