This is a subject that is similar to that of meaning because so many conceive of morality as something that needs to be transcendent; it needs to be eternally inscribed in the heavens for it to have any significance. If this were not the case than how could our concept of morality be anything other than relative? What is to stop someone from killing another in cold blood if the moral code is of this world alone? It is only your code against mine after all - who mediates and determines which is right?
It is my opinion that there doesn't really exist an absolute morality - not in the transcendent way of thinking about it anyway. What does exist is a "moral sense" which has evolved to ever greater levels of complexity as we humans have evolved in societies of ever greater complexity. I do think there is an element of truth involved in the notion of "social contract", but it is not nearly the whole story.
Consider the eye: For a long time people have marveled at the seemingly impossible complexity of this organ, and could not conceive that it is the product of a line of random mutations. How could something so perfect come about through the unconscious means of evolution? Yet, by observing the eyes, or "eye-spots", of simpler organisms we see how this does in fact occur. The following image shows the eyes of various animals within the phylum Mollusca.
Similarly, we can observe simpler systems of morality (though it might be better to call it proto-morality) in other species of socializing animals; even in fish!
What could be an easier meal for this shark than to just close its mouth and ingest? But that would come with a price: it could no longer rely on those little dental hygienists to clean its teeth. Even here we see cooperativeness and trust. Just imagine the degree to which human society is more complex than this, and you could imagine what kind of moral sense must be in action!
And let's not pretend that in the notion of God morality is neatly wrapped up and presented to us. If you're going to look for transcendent absolute morality in a supreme deity than there are a couple of questions that need answering. First of all, how does God decide what is to be absolutely moral and what is to be absolutely immoral? It seems to me that there has to be a choice. How does he make this choice? More importantly, what prevents him from changing his mind? If he could change his mind than how is this 'absolute'? If he is powerless to change his mind than something more powerful must be binding him to make this choice; the implications of that scenario lead to absurdity!
No, I have to accept that morality is a natural phenomenon, but it is no less powerful because of that. We can no more divorce ourselves from our moral sense than we could divorce ourselves from our reliance on oxygen; in that sense morality is indeed absolute. Of course, one could point out cases where people act in contradiction to the moral standard, but I think that in some of these cases there are a complex myriad of factors that work to overcome the moral sense, and in other cases there is something pathological at play.
Finally, we fool ourselves to think that morality is something which must not be relative. There are things such as rape, slavery, and genocide which are truly absolute in their immorality, but for most other things morality is, by degree, relative.
Imperfect though it may be, this is what I have worked out so far.
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