Fear of punishment is sufficient to explain morality

No need to apologize! I'm really busy too this week so my arguments will be sporadic. Maybe I should have posted this debate next week... I clarified in the comments section what I mean by "punishment", although I think we can have a good debate without focusing too much on one word. I am referring to pain that an intelligent agent inflicts on another in response to something they did. Remorse is a big factor in my argument, but it is not the answer in and of itself. Remorse is simply a pain associated with an action that we consider wrong, so the question we need to ask is "What is the source or remorse?" A reasonable answer is that we fear punishment, either from others, from the State, or from a higher power. If we act morally because we fear punishment, then morality is a direct result of the pleasure principle. Some have made the argument that everything we do is the result of seeking pleasure and avoiding pain. To a degree this is true, directing our behavior is what pain and pleasure are for. However, there are so many layers between seeking pleasure and our actual decision making processes that it is fallacious to boil any human behavior down to just the pleasure principle. The idea that we act morally because we fear punishment seems a little too simple to me, if morality were that easy to understand we wouldn't be having debates like this. Let's do an unofficial thought experiment. Imagine that, all of a sudden, murder became globally acceptable. Not God, not country, not even the family of the victim would reciprocate in any way. Could you bring yourself to kill another person? If remorse is simply grounded in fear of punishment, then we should imagine that killing another should be a perfectly acceptable, even if unnecessary, action. I am certain that a great number of people would not be able to commit murder even in these circumstances. Are these people all lying about their character? It's possible, but just like invoking the pleasure principle, it paints a very bleak picture of humanity. Finally, if punishment is the source or remorse, then it follows that any atheist who refrains from an immoral action in a situation where there is no chance of being caught isn't truly an atheist at all. My alternative to the source of morality is going to center around the idea of social groups, so it will help to give a little introduction to them in order to clarify my thoughts. We humans have two opposing social forces: one is a natural tendency to form groups. Whether its family, friends, religions, clubs, political parties or what have you, nearly all of us willingly belong to a number of social groups. A true, honest to goodness hermit is a pretty rare sight (but maybe that's because they don't leave their homes often…). There is also a tendency for us to repel others who are too "different". Supposedly there was an evolutionary advantage to having these opposing forces: the desire to group together allowed humans to survive beyond the means of any one individual, while the desire to repel helped ensure the creation of multiple, varied groups rather than one homogenous group. Sometimes, a grouping of people will become well defined enough that it can actually be given a name and considered an entity. For a group to be "well defined", there needs to be a well understood rule that determines whether or not a person is part of that group. For certain kinds of groups, like clubs, this rule is simple: if your name is on a list, you're in, otherwise, get off our property. Other groups, however, are simply defined by a quality of the person. One does not need approval of anyone to become a Christian, for example, only the right beliefs. This is an example of a "classification problem"; deciding whether X is Y. My philosophy is centered on the belief that this problem is unsolvable. There is no unambiguous, deterministic set of rules that will always yield the same answers for "is X a Y?" that any person would give. We use a combination of reason, experience, intuition, and pattern matching to determine whether one thing is another thing. In many cases we can't even explain exactly why we think that some X is Y, but we're darned sure that it is. Because of the unsolvability of the classification problem, sometimes new members of a group will have a slightly different conception about what that group is. Over time, this can result in the modern incarnation of the group being completely unrecognizable compared to the older version. If the older version still exists, then the same word can no longer be used to describe both, and thus new terms will evolve and the group will split into multiple, distinct entities. I've pointed out that social groups can be created, they can mutate, they can reproduce (split into factions), and obviously they can die if they are unable to hold on to their members. Because they have these properties, social groups are susceptible to the laws of natural selection. Hence, over time, you will expect to see social groups with more and more staying power. Religions, countries, political parties, and other such large social groups are the evolutionary leaders in this race. What I believe is that morality, rather than simply being a set of rules, is the definition of one of the most significant and inclusive social groups we belong to: the "acceptable person" group. We take pride in being part of major social groups. Being excommunicated from any such group is one of the most psychologically painful things we can experience. Why do we not murder, steal, rape, and assault on a whim? Not necessarily because of punishment, but because when we do those things, we no longer fit our definition of an "acceptable person". The thought of no longer being part of this group is incredibly painful. Of course we need to explain the people who do act immorally. Some people believe there is nothing wrong with taking money from others, as long as it is legal. The person who can make a buck by closing down a business loses no sleep over the thousands of employees who were laid off. The rest of us decent folk would not dream of being so callous. The difference comes in how our definition of an "acceptable person" forms. As we grow, we form an idea of how a person is supposed to behave. Our parents impose their morality on us, as do our peers, our faith, the media, and all of society. We need to take in all of this information and formulate a model that separates the good from the bad. It is no different than any other classification problem, such as when a child tries to determine what a "dog" is by seeing several entities that others call a "dog". Because it is a classification problem, and because of the conflicting moralities we are all exposed to, any one individual may wind up with a view of morality that is different from any they've been exposed to. Some people, for example, may start incorporating the idea that one should act in a way that benefits them, and if others are harmed because of it, it's their fault. This becomes part of their definition of a "how a person should act", and hence they are able to manipulate people in ways that others would consider immoral, without feeling any remorse. Others may feel that "its every man for himself", and the way a person should act is the way that keeps them alive. A person with this mentality may even go as far as killing another without remorse. For people like this, fear of punishment may be the only thing preventing them from committing murder, theft, rape, or assault. I feel that this view of morality does a better job of explaining why we choose to act morally without oversimplifying it or making morality seem like a farce.