Okay, a naturalistic angle. I like it. I should ping @BurnInHelena . She'll probably develop a crush on you for this :). >>Determining who who is righteous Why is surviving righteous? What's wrong with dying? After all, every single one of us dies, so it can hardly be immoral to die. Since it is the case that we won't live to observe or experience any possible suffering after the moment of death, what forms the moral obligation for us to do such and such with respect to our ancestors or our progeny? >>Your ancestors are you, and you are literally made out of the pieces of their essence In what way do you think your genes are your essence? My younger siblings are identical twins. If essence has any meaning at all other than 'genome', then their essences are very distinct. Most of philosophers throughout history would take essence to mean something closer to your personal identity. I think you'll find that a reduction of your essence to your genes creates a lot more problems for you than it solves. >>Seeing new organisms emerge with copies of your genes is like living beyond death I have had this thought before myself. I've heard others voice it, but I can never shake the intuition that it's just a bit of existentialist reaching. The thought that one has had children never quite eases the fear of death, and I'm not convinced personally (nor do I think that many are) that people get the real sense they live on in their children. We do in a romantic kind of way, emanating from the intense love that we feel toward our children, causing them to have a 'piece of us' in a sense. I won't deny the narrative reality of a racial inheritance or a 'race memory', but the concept that we live on through our kids feels like coping. >>All that lives on this planet is your family, you have different circles of family around you, and since they share more genes in common with you, you must place more value upon your more immediate circles than on those that dwell in the far periphery, You keep saying must, but where is the obligation? Why *must* you? I heard Bret Weinstein say once, "If you become aware of the game, why would you continue to play it?" He framed the entire 'game' you are discussing in the clever way of calling it a molecular spelling bee. If a string of molecules and their propagation is really what's at stake here, this is hardly motivating for an intelligent being to endure life's suffering for the sake of winning the spelling bee. >>all these circles around you are a hierarchy of the moral obligations you have to them, and sacrificing the organisms of a far circle for those of a close circle is not only a good move, but a moral commandment. A command from who? An obligation suggests some kind of punishment for flouting the commander. What's the punishment? Death? It's coming anyway. >>Thus is resolved the inherent flaw in every moral system, the lack of a hierarchy of moral priority Catholic systematic theology has a clear moral hierarchy. For that matter, so do Judaism and Islam. Most public schools have a legal hierarchy that contains more obvious moral structure than the naturalistic theory you are putting forward here. >>Racism is a morally necessary value I'm not sure you understand what morality is. An expedient is not a necessary moral. >> instinctive feelings of protection Absolutely, but an instinct does not a moral make. >>We have transcendence and higher powers What? You've said that your 'transcendent' duty is to the propagation of a string of sequential DNA information. This doesn't seem to transcend anything, and in fact, it leaves out most of the redeemable parts of nature obvious to even the most hardened atheist. @PS