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I am proposing a simple, easily-defended reason for the 'good' and 'evil' in human behavior, and warning that our success as a species is destroying our world and can destroy us.

Evolution has no good or evil in behavior, only success or failure in surviving, reproducing and multiplying.

There is a genetic imperative programmed in our genes to multiply to the maximum by all means possible so to have "descendants as numerous as the stars in the heavens" Genesis 26:4. And Scriptures tell of the genocidal brutality in the conflicts between the walled city kingdoms of the tribes in the Promised Land. 2nd Judges

Evolution uses curiosity, courage, creativity, collaboration, competition and cruelty to perfect and replace the life forms on our planet. You see toddlers exploring. testing, creating, and also competing for power, possessions and territory. These are evolutions instincts that have created civilizations, and destroyed them.

We consider as natural and amoral the means used by animals to compete, exploit, and defend. When these same means are used by humans, we see them as good or evil depending on whether they help us or harm us, as individuals, communities, nations, and now as a planet.

The evolutionary instinct for greed and violence can serve personal, group and national interests. This instinct creates civilizations, and then it goes on to destroys them with the over-exploitation of resources, pollution of the environment, corruption that weakens defenses and allows the infrastructure to crumble, and socio-economic injustice that causes revolution and emigration.
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But our evolutionary instincts also include all that we consider good. To survive, our young children must get protection and be provided for. To thrive they must get love. Loving care is an essential evolutionary instinct that can extended beyond our species to our pets and gardens, to our farm animals and crops, and to wild animals and the environment.

We have a very large interdependent population of many billions consuming the resources and polluting the planet. Without wise, just and peaceful management of our resources and technology, and compassionate care for the people and our planet, our species is headed for self-extermination.

HOW OUR EPIGENETICS INTERACTIVELY CONTROL OUR GENETIC CODE AND OUR BEHAVIOR

We have in our DNA instructions to survive, reproduce and multiply which our epigenetics are continually adjusting according to our circumstances, our emotions, thoughts, and actions, and the many ways other people influence us, which now include the social media.

The genes that are controlled by our epigenetics can make us caring, generous, cooperative members of a community that wants peace and justice. Or the genes can be activated that enslave us to evolution's instincts for insatiable greed and merciless violence.

We have in our two closest primate relatives an example of the opposites in social behavior.

The matriarchal bonobos cooperate, share generously, enjoy life, and are at peace with the world. The bonobo matriarchs shape the behavior of young males entering their community to conform to bonobo social norms, which means being friendly to their own and other species.

The patriarchal chimpanzees brutalize their females into frightened submission, and have murderous wars with neighboring bands. Adult male chimpanzees exhibit vicious jungle behavior even when raised as pets, tearing off the faces, hands and genitals of humans, the way they would enemy chimpanzees.

Research has yet to be done on the difference in the genetics and epigenetics of bonobos and chimpanzees to explain this difference in their behavior.

It could be speculated that human warlike and criminal behavior is passed on in the epigenetics and can be reinforced, or not, in childhood and even changed in later life as shown by the prison program that has inmates train service dogs, and themselves do not re-offend

We change the epigenetics of our children and other people by our example, by our instructions, and by how we treat them. We also change the epigenetic programming of our dogs, but much less so our cats