Answer:

Oxytocin

http://www.cnn.com/2011/12/27/opinion/zak-moral-molecule/index.html?hpt=hp_bn9

Flawed experiment - the fact that oxytocin is present when a person shares money does not mean that oxytocin caused the person to share money. It could just as easily be the other way around, that sharing money causes a release of oxytocin. In fact, that would make more sense to me - oxytocin is the same chemical released when a mother breastfeeds her baby, but you wouldn't say that the oxytocin causes the mother to feed the baby.

"The DM1 to DM2 transfer is understood to be a measure of trust, while the DM2 to DM1 transfer measures trustworthiness. By taking blood from participants, we found that the more money denoting trust DM2 received, the more oxytocin his or her brain made".
So there is more oxytocin BEFORE DM2 gives any money back.

So that could just as easily mean that receiving a gift causes the release of oxytocin. Someone who receives a gift has more oxytocin and also is likely to give back more...that doesn't prove that oxytocin caused the person to give back more. To prove that oxytocin caused generous behavior, you would have to give the group of patients injections of oxytocin, give the control group placebo injections, and see which group gave more generously and whether the results were statistically significant. Apparently no one who runs these type of experiments has ever taken a real statistics class.

That's the concept I was trying to remember from my statistics class back in high school - correlation does not equal causation.

What's more "moral" than a mother breastfeeding a baby? What lessons does it teach about human bonding, ideas about the "perfect moment," care, nurturing--the actual meaning of these, the hint of them in future interactions or projects?

Instead of the Freudian fort/da game or the primal scene or the mirror stage (prime candidates for such exemplary moments from psychoanalysis), this attachment to the breast (on the part of the baby) and to the baby (on the part of the mother), seems like a good candidate for an exemplary moment of human morality (and not just a good "part-object" viz. Karen Horney). And who is to say that the anticipation of breastfeeding, of seeing the baby, doesn't initialize release of "mothering hormones?" It does. The hormone prolactin is already present too. A lactating breast needs pregnancy hormones.

http://mothering.com/pregnancy-birth/ecstatic-birth-the-hormonal-blueprint-of-labor

See also the short article, "The Science of Mother Love":

"Alan Schore, assistant clinical professor in the department of psychiatry and biobehavioral sciences at UCLA School of Medicine, a major conclusion of the last decade of developmental neuroscience research is that the infant brain is designed to be molded by the environment it encounters.

"...the most crucial component of these earliest interactions is the primary caregiver - the mother. 'The child's first relationship, the one with the mother, acts as a template, as it permanently molds the individual's capacities to enter into all later emotional relationships.' Others agree. The first months of an infant's life constitute what is known as a critical period - a time when events are imprinted in the nervous system." http://mothering.com/parenting/the-science-of-mother-love

In Daniel Quinn's novel Ishmael, he talks about a sign of a species' decline as the mothers refusing to suckle the young. Imagine a generation of humans who lack any experience of initial nurturing at the breast. Seems like a possible recipe for raising a generation of sociopaths.

are never or only rarely breastfed.

I thought it was Jimminy Cricket?

I like your answer best,

The question makes an unproved assumption that's not necessarily correct - if God makes us moral, why are there so many weird and immoral religious people?

That question drives me nuts, because it hints that people who aren't religious can't be moral, which is of course ridiculous.

Yeah, it's a loaded Q, assumes God exists. Kind of like when did you stop beating your wife...

...not to imply the existence of God, or the necessity of God to create morality, but rather because that is how it is usually worded by the theists who claim that there can't be any morality without God. The point being that there are plausible biologic explanations that negate the need for God.

No criticism meant of you, it's just all too common of a precept. And Richard Dawkins points out that we've evoloved to help one another as a means of furthering the species. God had nothing to do with it, it's seen in other species also who have no idea what religion even is.

Morality has NEVER come from God.

It has often come from some man or woman CLAIMING they got it from God. Actually a lot of conflicting moral "codes" have come this way.

Interestingly in ancient times, for the most part, morality and religion were separate. Greek and Roman gods didn't care much how you lived your life. As long as you sacrificed to them they were mollified. If you killed someone that was not really any skin off of their noses. They had no special love for mankind other than a source of sacrifice and maybe amusement.

The Hebrews were the ones that came up with the idea of a "moral code" given by a God who actually cared intrinsically about humanity.

Greeks and Romans got their morality from philosophy. They had to give REASONS why we should act in certain ways. If you claim you got your morality from some God then what more reason is there to give? That's why the Lafferty's morality and Warren Jeff's morality and, yes, Joseph Smith's morality were all different than the prevailing "Christian" morality of the day. The only reason they had to give was "God told me."

I brought up Joseph Smith's sexual-predator antics with teenage girls to my brother the TBM institute director. He said, "God commanded Joseph to do that," and that ended the discussion.

That's the difference between God-given morality and morality derived from philosophy--in the God-given case the discussion ends immediately.

molecules or not, it comes from human beings. good and evil. not superhuman beings breeding and populating galaxies.



http://www.amazon.com/Lucifer-Effect-Understanding-Good-People/dp/0812974441/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1323974524&sr=1-1



if you want, watch the movie "das experiment" based on the same Stanford experiment from a few decades ago. watch the one in german. much much better than the hollywood version.


http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0250258/