[BriggyDwiggs42]

You’re on the right track in seeing it as an evolutionary selection style system, but there’s another easier explanation along those lines as well.

OP is mistaking those values which reproduce themselves well with values which are Good. Upholding tradition is a particularly brutal example; its ethical consequences are entirely variable depending on what traditions are being upheld. The one thing that it does succeed in doing is reproducing the same social structure which, among other things, will raise new people to believe in upholding tradition. Those values which lead to their adoption by new people will stick, and those values which don’t are weeded out of the population. OP sees the mixed bag of values that result from this process and cherishes them as the word of god.