Right now, in almost every cell of your body, you have genetic data which makes up your DNA. Your genes determine how your body develops and functions. You own your particular set of genes because millions of years of evolution through natural selection have singled out the best features for continued survival. But the game of survival is always changing and the same features that your ancestors had a billion years ago may be useless for you today.
Morals, being a set of rules for conduct within society, work in much the same way as genes. Beginning as far back as our mammal ancestors, behavior among groups has tended toward harmony, but the conditions for that harmony are always changing. Some species, like horses, arrange themselves automatically into detailed hierarchies, while others, like monkeys, work better in general class systems. Approved behaviors within each system vary, but it is clear what actions will help an individual get along in their community and what will get them ostracized.
Some species of monkey have social grooming behavior. Who does the grooming is not always a simple measure of who is lower on the hierarchy. Many times, monkeys will groom their peers in exchange for food or sex. Meanwhile, monkeys who do not pull in their share of gathering or lose in fights can be ignored completely during grooming time. While rudimentary, you can see a form of morality at work within such a society.
It would be wrong to say that morality is in our genes. Rather, our entire code of morals is itself made of a kind of social DNA. The communal values that existed in our primate ancestors stayed with us as we left the jungles of Africa and spread throughout the world. But as we changed and grew into new types of societies, our moral base had to change as well. Hunter-gatherer morals gave way to morals that approved of more sedentary lifestyles that agriculture affords. As specialists, bureaucracy and class systems developed as a result of increased sedentary lifestyles and population density, morals had to change to cover that ground, too.
The selection factors for moral genes are different today than they were a thousand years ago. Once, the Church handed out relevant and meaningful moral guidelines and laws, but social sentiment has always resisted stagnation. The advancement of technology and politics rendered many religious viewpoints irrelevant, while the same technology allowed public knowledge to spread and human rights to develop, thus creating a rift between how the Bible taught people to treat others and how they felt was actually decent behavior. In the end, the public changed the church’s interpretation of it’s own morals, demonstrating the social origin of morality over any divinely inspired version.
An example of this can be found in the Catholic Church’s official stance on the Jewish people. Once completely ostracized from large cities and communities on command of the Church, Jews gradually found themselves accepted into society by citizens who were apathetic to the Church's opinion. It wasn’t until Jewish integration had reached a tipping point that the Church officially changed its position on the matter and formally recognized Jews as worthy citizens.
None of this happens over night. Like evolution itself, social change takes a long time. Bad ideas are filtered out over multiple generations. Good ideas are bred in through positive reinforcement. Many institutions, such as religion and nationalism, work to spread and solidify a stagnant moral structure, but society is moved forward by more than just cooperation. While it could be argued that religion still has a solid grasp on morality, when one looks at the source material and compares it to the current state of affairs, it's clear that long strides have been taken. Paradigms are crumbling into dust. Knowledge and technology snowballs and begets new lifestyles, new ways of sharing information, and new lights to see the same people in.
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