Daniel, I'll check my sources for the citation you requested.

If most members of our closest animal cousin species repeatedly evidence a behavior, due to instinct and upbringing, and humans evidence the same behavior across cultures, it is also likely due to instinct and upbringing. That is, for example, there is an instinct for fairness and, in each troop or culture, the parent instructs the child 'how we do fairness here' and the adults in the troop or culture generally evidence that behavior and show anger when that behavior is not evidenced by others.

It doesn't seem to me to make any difference that humans also have the ability to speak or think words as part of the process, such as, "This is what we ought to do" or "This is what I ought to do" or "This is what you ought to do." "Fairness" is an "ought" that "is" throughout many primate species, including humans.

You are correct, of course, that a high-powered study can allow conclusions to be made. But the vast majority of published research is for much smaller studies. In this case, they studied just six chimpanzees and twenty children.

The study Mr Horn links to is not clear in its statistics, which is
probably one reason it wasn't published in a major ethological journal.

Frans de Waal is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, one of the most prestigious bodies a US scientist can be nominated to for membership. The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) is a prestigious publication, and members of the academy are considered of such stature in their fields to have their articles published in PNAS with only editorial review. It's on the level of getting one's article published in Science or Nature.

Please let me know where you find that the article is not clear in its statistics.

Mr. Horn has placed his personal goalpost for what he considers morality:

A story of a rare heroic and fatal self sacrifice doesn't seem like a reasonable definition for morality for a lifetime for the majority of people. I know that Catholics have big thing for martyrs, but that 'goalpost' is a mile high.

Yeah- we use drones.

I tend to be a moral cognitivist (subjectivist), but not an ethical relativist, much less a moral nihilist.

Josh said:
"Nothing very instinctual about it, this is not an evolutionary
understanding of human ethics. I suppose you could say that God has
given people an instinctual desire to act in the correct ways, or a
desire to use 'right reason' to arrive at the conclusions you want. This
immediately runs into the problem of why different people have
different instincts, or different reasoning faculties. It fails to
explain why people have different natures and begs the question of what
morality is and what the correct interpretation of 'human nature' is."

Seems perfectly clear to me. It explains why such a moral exemplar as Paul had no problem with slavery as long as slaves were treated reasonably well.
Michael Newsham

My opinion comes from everything I've read and everyone I've spoken to. But I realize that all only counts as anecdotal since I haven't formally researched the topic or derived it from research. Another clue is the dearth of atheists in jail. Yet another is the reaction (as you see here) from atheists when one mentions Rosenberg or his book. It's kind of like the reaction from philosophers when one mentions Thomas Nagel and his latest book, only much less famous.

One of the challenges is the vast difference between existential nihilism (There is no intrinsic purpose or meaning to life.) and moral nihilism (No action is intrinsically moral or immoral.) and the tendency, particularly of Christians, to conflate them.

If you are seriously interested, I could best point you in a few directions. These folks might know of some specific research on atheists and their moral metaphysics. (Plus, they could be interested in having an article at Strange Notions.)

The first is Christopher Silver at Non-Belief in America Research. He's done his dissertation on his categorization of atheists into six categories. The second is Dan Finke, a professional philosopher and adjunct professor of philosophy. His dissertation was on Nietzsche and he thus knows a thing or twelve about nihilism. He blogs at Camels with Hammers.

Fortunately, Mr. Horn has placed his personal goalpost for what he considers morality:

humans often display altruistic techniques that go far beyond what we see in the animal kingdom. Consider the case of Arland D. Williams Jr., who allowed other passengers on Air Florida Flight 90 to be rescued ahead of him after the plane crashed in the Potomac River. The wreckage shifted before Williams could be rescued, and he ultimately gave his life so strangers could live. I’d like to see a study that shows some chimps are willing to let others go ahead of them if they are being chased by a crocodile.

In an ethological study, a meerkat is observed engaging in vigilance behavior. It stands on its haunches and watches for predators, while the other meerkats of its extended group forage, in the presence of pups. This increases the meerkat's physical profile, and unfortunately it is singled out by a hawk. This meerkat notices the hawk and shrieks, alerting its fellows to danger. They scurry with the juveniles to the burrow while the vigiliant, having been targeted by its bipedal profile, is killed by the interloper.

This is a relatively common observation. A study this year actually demonstrated that vigilance behavior is directly detrimental to the vigilant meerkat.
(Peter Santema , Tim Clutton-Brock
Meerkat helpers increase sentinel behaviour and bipedal vigilance in the presence of pups. Animal Behaviour, Volume 85, Issue 3, March 2013, Pages 655–661)

This, and numerous similar ethological studies of meerkats, actually got published in a physical journal; this is significant, because the peer-review process is demonstrably better for paper journals. The study Mr Horn links to is not clear in its statistics, which is probably one reason it wasn't published in a major ethological journal.

You might argue that the meerkat never intended to die; well, it's not clear from the anecdote that Mr Williams did, either. I'd contend that Mr Horn is setting the goalpost for morality fairly close to the scrimmage line.

In science, one never makes such generalized conclusions based on the results of one study.

Never say never. In practice, this depends study quality and the feasibility of replication. The question of whether or not a study is generalizable is dependent on things like power, lack-of-bias and statistical significance. (In biomedical science, we will sometimes change general practice guidelines based on the results of a single high-powered study.)

Koko anecdotes, don't really prove anything about gorillas or gorilla morality in general. They prove that Koko is sweet. Testing any other hypothesis leaves you with an n of 1.

if we really thought chimps were moral agents, then why don’t we say chimps that maul people’s faces are evil?

But this can't just be because we don't think chimps are moral agents at any level. To illustrate: if a Yanomami warrior in the Amazon kills an intrepid explorer, would we simply call him evil? I think that most people would regard him and his actions in a similar way as those of a berserk chimp. It is more an issue of neither comprehending the nature and extent of our moral prohibitions, and not the Yanomami or the chimp demonstrably not being a moral agent.