Moral Brain, Moral Bible: Neuroscience Explains Biblical Morality

Abraham asks God at Sodom: " Can the judge of all earth not do justly ? " Abraham`s otherwise unexplained sense of justice comes from behavioral adaptations in human brain evolution which contributed to human survival. Thus greater empathy of mother for infant would have contributed to greater chances for infants of such empathic mothers to survive. In consequence , over many generations a tendency toward empathic behavior would have become wired-in to our human genome. As this empathy generalised to other humans it becomes the basis for " Thou shalt love thy neighbor"and for " Do not oppress the stranger for you were strangers in the land of Egypt". Examples will be presented in which other biologically based behaviors involving altruism , kin selection, xenophobia and sibling rivalry are shown to underlie Biblical behaviors associated with morality. Nevertheless, biology can only explain how our brain makes moral decisions, not which moral decisions we should make.