title: Morality is real, objective, and natural.
abstract: To make the case that morality is real, objective, and natural, it will be argued, first, that morals exist in human nature as part of our evolutionary heritage; that morality involves how we think and act toward other moral agents in terms of whether our thoughts and actions are right or wrong with regard to their survival and flourishing; and that moral progress is real, quantifiable, and the result of our improved understanding of causality in the social and moral sciences in the same manner as our understanding of causality has progressed in the physical and biological sciences. A moral starting point is the survival and flourishing of sentient beings.
authors.affiliation: Skeptic Magazine, Altadena, California, and Chapman University, Orange, California.
authors.forename: Michael
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Shermer
mesh_terms: D005075:Biological Evolution; D006801:Humans; D009014:Morals; D026684:Personal Autonomy
keywords: morality; natural; objective