Morals Come From Evolution

So I'll start by defining Morality: "A set of social standards that are followed for the sake of society" so lets talk about evolution for a seconds. Evolution, When it's divided into it's main parts, Consists of gene mutation and natural selections. There are other metrics used for evolution, But they're all describing the same effect, So the metric doesn't necessarily matter as long as it's accurate. I'm not here to prove a common ancestry or that evolution made all species to date. I'm only here to talk about the part of evolution that we can prove. Gene mutations are a fact. Even evolution deniers agree with this. Natural Selection is also a fact. Some people disagree on how natural selection works on a detailed level. But everybody agrees that it happened. The basic picture is that organisms develop random mutations. These mutations affect how well an organism does in nature. Organisms with hampering mutations tend to die without reproducing a whole lot, While organisms with strong mutations tend to reproduce a lot more. This causes a shift in the distribution of certain mutations and said mutations become slowly adopted through the species through reproduction. That's it. This factually prove process is what I am claiming caused morality. So how did Natural Selection give us morals? This is where it gets fun. It is well known that evolution has formed a lot of organisms into community species. Organism that have these tendencies will take actions that are not only beneficial to them, But the group as well. This is the axiom of morality. Group behaviors. It does not take much imagination to realize why group behaviors were heavily favored in natural selection. Anybody who has ever studied chess in great length knows that outnumbering your opponent makes you stronger. So now we have group behaviors that look pretty close to morality, But what's to say this leads to anything other than survival of the fittest? This comes down to how natural selection works. Some people think of natural selection as a static arbiter that rewards the strongest organisms, But it's actually not so simple. The state of natural selection is contingent upon nature itself. Every selected organism lived because it conquered nature in some way. Their evolutions allowed them to ignore certain dangers. This created a domino effect. As group species became stronger. The pressure of nature became fewer. Organisms were less and less required to rely on brutality to solve problems. Technology formed and the human organism reached a point where killing in cold blood was no longer necessary. This is what caused our modern day morality. My opponent is right to say that morality evolves. This is further proof of my claim. A moral value is one that we derive from these survival behaviors. Incest, For example, Poisons the gene pool and causes the species who participate in it to die off. This means that anybody who violates this moral will die, And the people left over will hold this moral. This is why we see an almost universal agreement upon moral values. It's not that morals are objective per se. It's more like the subjective denial of a moral results in your death. This can be applied to other morals as well. Cannibalism leads to death on two fronts. The first that eating your own species shrinks the species, The second is that eating your own species gives you a disease and kills you. As humans have gained more intelligence. We've learned to apply these morals to other situations that evolution did not intend. So what we end up with are a set of intrinsic morals that are part of evolution and some subjective morals that are based on our evolutionary instincts. This is why some of our morals don't seem to line up. It's not that morals are intrinsically right or wrong. Some morals are beneficial or harmful and humans use this as a jump off point to create their own man made morals. As long as the fit the harm/benefit model, They fall into the moral subject. My last point is that moral behaviors have been found in other animals. This shows that morality came from nature in some way or another, So this is evidence that we cannot appeal to any type of external source for morality. In order to deny my claim with intellectual honesty, One would have to either propose external explanation that also applies to animals, Or they would have to propose that morality is completely subjective and created by the human mind apart from evolution. Since the human mind was created by evolution, I don't see how the second claim could be proven. No onto your critiques. Your definition of morals appears to hinge upon a person's conscience. I reject this line of thinking, Because people's consciences often do not align with moral values. You said: "One's definition of morals ought to change. " This is covered in my current statement. People created definitions based off tendencies they got from evolution. So while you're correct to make this claim, It only supports my position. You said: "Take competition. The idea that species have to progress based on the concept of one species being dominant, " Competition is explained by evolution and exists within our moral framework today. It is moral when it benefits and immoral when it harms. This easily fits within my model and is not a problem. As for the dominance part. The dominance is only on other non human species. Each moral system is only meant for that species. So the domination point is not part of morality at all. You said: "our conscience will not permit us to take a gun and shoot a horse" That's because we're a social species and horses have been domesticated into our social framework. That's why you'll shoot a bear but not a horse. Horses work with and depend upon us. Bears are not within our social framework and attack us, So we kill them in order to benefit the species. This fits nicely into my model. You said: "Or a crippled man, Just because we happen to be superior. " But we don't kill crippled people? Why is that? Because they're part of our social group. This just further proves my point. Nothing in evolution makes us kill crippled people. This is somewhat of a red herring. You're taking survival of the fittest and applying it to things that don't happen in natural selection and distracting from the fact that it's a human behavior. The important question isn't if a cripple person gets shot, The question is "does society condone it? " The answer is no, They don't. This goes back to what I said about bad mutations not reproducing. A person who did this probably would not reproduce more than a person who doesn't. You said: "The fact is, More than the debate over whether we should be allowed to kill a horse just for the sake of "progress", " This is another red herring. Can you prove that killing a horse is progress? If it's for meat to save your life, Then how is it immoral. Society doesn't shoot horses for fun. People do it and one person's actions is not morality. The thing that makes my model true isn't just the fact that it explains morality. It also explains people who don't act morally. No other system can do this. If morals were external and intrinsic. Then NOBODY would ever shoot a horse for fun. But since that's not the case, It shows that morality is prescribed randomly. (aka gene mutations) and shaped by natural selection. I'm almost out of writing room, So sorry if I missed anything. I had to cover a lot of points to make sure I"m being thorough. Your floor.