The Origin of Morals

I say that I got my morals sitting on the lap of my mother, but that's less than half true. Like most things about us, morality is the product of evolution--modified a bit by culture and personal experience. Morality is Mother Nature's way of making it possible for mammals to live near one another. It has to emerge from natural selection. Science offers no alternative.

One might argue that morality can't be genetic because it isn't identical from person to person. But that is like arguing that walking on two legs can't be genetic because a few people are born without legs and some well-trained people can run faster than others.  

You can see something like a moral nature in other mammals. Wolves live in family groups and do their best to take care of one another. A lone wolf is as lonely and desperate and ultimately as dead as Ayn Rand. 

Among humans each tribe is bonded together by morality, and infants, according to psychologists, exhibit aspects of moral behavior while very young.