Why be good?

[Brian37]

I'm headed off to work this morning, but I promise to read each and every post in this thread. I may not respond to ALL of them since there is a lot of repetition.

BTW, I did see the headline at washingtonpost.com regarding the 500,000 year-old murder uncovered by scientists.

Half a million years isn't very long in the evolutionary scheme of things, but still, one has to wonder why we haven't changed very much.

Could it be that evolution doesn't play a role in the development of objective moral values?

If not, where do these things come from? Why be good?

Perhaps there are some answers in the posts I haven't read yet, so I'm looking forward to getting back to my computer later today.

Thanks for all your thoughts, everyone. This is great.

What do you mean we haven't changed? In what context? 500,000 years ago we didn't have doctors or computers. Just a few hundred years ago slavery existed. 

I would only say that religion ALL RELIGIONS have a tendency to scream bloody murder when their social norms are challenged.

Evolution, not old comic books, not fictional sky heros. Evolution explains why humans behave the way they do. Religions do not explain anything but local social norms. Our behaviors good or bad, are in our evolution. Religion exists as a gap fill argument.