> 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.
"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.
Methinks thou hast misunderstood my statement.
Remember the context of my post - I was talking about the creationist idea that without God human morals would be no different than the (creationist strawman) idea of 'red in tooth and claw'. I was also directly addressing the logic behind the statement 'If Evolution is true then we would have no morals'.
I was not suggesting that human 'morals' have not changed over time. In fact I have made exactly the same argument as you more than once. If you check my post you will notice that I divorced my argument from the qualification that morals are absolute, relative or a combination of the two. Obviously if morals are relative they will change over time.
The argument I made was that the *origin* of our morals does not change what we consider to be moral. Our society has the morals it has whether those morals were given to us by God or if they evolved along with our brains and our society. The change I was talking about was the change between origins. I was not claiming that morals are static.