Re: What would we be like,

"We are not born with an innate desire to nurture our children."

Almost every other mammal is. All sorts of animals nurther their children, even though they have no learned system of morals.

Why do you think humans would be an exception to this? Humans do still have certain instinctual drives. We like to eat and mate, we have a healthy fear of death. Why would we stop caring for our offspring just because we evolved intelligence?

James, I don't know if you have kids but speaking as a parent, in my experience there are protective feelings you experience that go wayyyyy beyond anything you were ever taught. I mean, my parents were very caring too but you don't really appreciate their feelings or protectiveness (which at times seems to go to irrational extents) until you are put in their place and really experience it yourself. Parental instinct is very real. Emotions become awakened that cannot be explained simply as learned behavior, IMO.

"Separating what is innate, from what is learned is extremely difficult to do, and I will assert, that most of the qualities that we admire so much about humans, are learned behaviors, not innate behaviors."

I would tend to agree with that. I guess that's what we have civilization for.

"we have a healthy fear of death."

'This fear is a learned condition.'

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The knowledge of what sort of circumstances are likely to result in death may be learned, but I would say the fear itself is not.

Even people who believe fervently in a very specific sort of blissful afterlife, who have in effect been taught all their lives NOT to fear death, will be in a state of extreme fear if confronted unexpectedly with the event.