I agree that many animals, especially the primates, show ethical behaviour. So much so that it is obvious that the difference between our behaviour and theirs is a matter of degree. However that degree is very large.
"Actually some social insects will also self sacrifice for the colony."
I understand that, but it has nothing to do with my questions.
"So are bacterium who do not self sacrifice or otherwise have morals that I can tell, are bacterium not created by God because they have no morals ?"
How do you get that from my post? I said nothing about all creations of a God having morals. Nor did I say that all organisms without morals are not made by a God.
The statement I was questioning was 'If Evolution is true then there are no morals to follow'.
This is an untrue statement.
We as humans have a set of morals we consider worthy of following. Some consider them to be absolute in all respects, some consider them to be relative in all respects and still others consider them to be a collection of both absolute and relative morals.
Now, now matter where those morals originated, we *do* have them. They are a big part of our social structures.
God may have given them to us directly, God may have let us develop our own set of morals through Evolution or God may not exist and our morals are a direct result of Evolution. If God has not directly contributed to our morals then he/she can safely be ignored for this argument. This leaves us with two considerations. God exists and gave us our morals, or God does not exist and our morals are the product of a natural process. The only process we understand and recognize that is both necessary and sufficient to produce behaviour patterns in organisms is Evolution (the uppercase 'E' signifies I am speaking to biological evolution, not to abiogenesis or the evolution of stars or the Big Bang). There may be other natural processes out there that will do the job but we have yet to encounter them.
If God exists and we have a set of morals then God could have given them to us. He could also have produced many organisms to which he did not supply a set of morals. However this isn't my point.
If God does not exist (or allowed Evolution to supply us with morals) and we *do* have the set of morals we have, which some consider absolute but others do not, then those morals must be the product of a natural process. As mentioned above this, at this point, would be Evolution.
If Evolution is true and we are nothing more than technologically advanced apes our morals would not change since they must be the result of Evolution.
The argument that, without God, we would necessarily act out our 'animal nature' (to some this means acting like our ape relatives) is false.
> I agree that many animals, especially the primates, show ethical behaviour. So much so that it is obvious that the difference between our behaviour and theirs is a matter of degree. However that degree is very large.
Agreed. Scarlet the cat (Google for the story) demonstrates that often enough *cats* show greater capacity for altruism and knowing self-sacrifice than humans.
> If Evolution is true and we are nothing more than technologically advanced apes our morals would not change since they must be the result of Evolution.
Untrue. The process of evolution has led to the human species beign able to examine possibilities and project outcomes such that we can have some fair notion of long-term cause and effect, with a consequence that we develop a sense of empathy. (This appears to be well in advance of what the other critters think, though until we develop telepathy, we can't be sure.) Also, humans have developed the ability to record history, and can thereby learn from the past as we project scenarios into the future.
Thus, morals may (and do) change over time, as the result of our ability to learn from the past. What worked, what did not, how do present and projected future conditions work into that.
200 years ago, slavery was moral. 150 years ago, exterminating entire, inoffensive mammalian species was moral. 100 years ago, the wimmins not voting was moral. 65 years ago, carpet bombing enemy cities was moral. Morals change as we advance and learn.