Take a look at this recent interview with Frans de Waal, conducted by Benjamin Hale of Religion Dispatches, in which the primatologist and ethologist again argues for the biological basis for moral values and behavior.

Citing social animal behavior, de Waal posits that justice, morality, altruism, empathy—noble notions we tend to think of as being particularly human, and therefore antithetical to “animal nature”—are not “unnatural,” but rather are deeply rooted in our primate past; that the good in us is as instinctive a part of our biology as the bad.