Evolution cannot account for morality

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

Morality does utilize evolution indirectly.

People who mistreat other people get thrown out of tribes, or beaten or killed.  This makes it rather hard for them to reproduce, and their genetic line is more likely to die out.

People who play well with others generally prefer to hang out with like-minded people, and there is safety in numbers.  Survival is better in a strong, mutually beneficial community, and the individuals who live in such an environment are more likely to have strong, healthy, safe offspring.

There is a natural bias towards moral behaviour in successful communities.  Religion simply summarizes existing community standards in scripture and designates clergy to be teachers and enforcers.

This sounds reasonable, but I wonder if there's any scientific evidence. 

Does moral behavior lead to more offspring than, for example, a man who cheats on his wife and makes lots of illegitimate babies? Or a guy who lies to women to get them into bed? Or someone like Elon Musk, whose immoral acquisition of lots of money gets him dates? 

As I recall there was a paper a while back claiming that one in every 200 men is directly descended from Genghis Khan, famous moral exemplar.

There was that fertility doctor who secretly used his own sperm and ended up having like a hundred babies. 

In US culture, lots of people have babies but don't settle down into stable moral environments. 

It would be interesting to see some kind of scientific studies.

The trouble with a scientific analysis of the effects of moral behaviour is that, in science, you first have to define your terms. Since morality seems inextricably linked to culture, you can’t use the same parameters to study Genghis Khan’s behaviour that you would use to study that of your neighborhood philanderer.

Boru