Well, this contention of yours would be not be in agreement with a number of atheist posters here who have suggested that their moral capacity is not something they can rationalize or choose- to them, it is innate and unavoidable. So one of you appears to be wrong.
Doesn't seem all that complicated to me. We, like the other apes, have a hard-wired set of social behaviors. Because our brains have evolved the ability to engage in more abstract thought, and because our social structures and relationships are correspondingly more complex (a "moral zeitgeist"), we have the option to deviate ever more widely from those instincts. We no longer have to live like the other apes, but we still have the same basic set of instincts.
That a modern human can perceive a short term advantage to
his offspring in a particular behavior (and may act in an "immoral" way to express it) in no way negates the reality that we carry the genetic program of our forebears, when such actions would have resulted in a decreased chance of his genetic success. The fact that we can identify a genetic basis for our feelings and beliefs doesn't make them any less real.
Some of your comments seem to indicate that you think evolution based morality started when we became identifiable as humans. This is not correct. The effect of society (like religion and so on) on our genes is recent, and, I think, relatively trivial.
To put it yet another way, my current ability to abstractly think of other humans as "rocks" (if I were to choose that option) in no way undermines the reality that my brain, and the instinctive behaviors that it produces, evolved in a time when the possession of genes that favored "smashing" other humans would have had a negative selective pressure on said genes. IOW, being good just feels good to me because of my genes. Don't need a reason. It isn't a calculation all the time. I am quite capable of recognizing both that my genes make me feel a certain way
and that I can come up with rational reasons for those feelings in the here and now.
IOOW, the current cognitive reality of most humans most of the time is that certain behaviors just "feel right", despite their biological origin in a "selfish" gene and their subsequent social codification in a variety of different ways.
Why you feel the need to tie such "good" behavior to a deity is your problem, not mine.
Capt.
Is it getting solipsistic in here, or is it just me?
™ Version 4.2
(1)