Understanding the roots of morality

[Josh]

The main evidence would be total, worldwide agreement on moral absolutes, such as “ends never justify means”, throughout history – and according behaviour. It simply doesn’t exist....

If we all had the same universal values written on our hearts, we would agree on all moral questions, not just on some.

But that's just what the Bible predicts we shouldn't find because it doesn't include the equation that men's hearts are wicked and that they routinely exchange the truth of God with lies.

So, from a Biblical perspective, what we should expect to find is a general outline of universal morality with all sorts of subjective contradictions between cultures. And, that's what we do find! We don't find completely alien moralities but we don't find universal agreement by fallible humans.

Especially when we look at aspects with less dramatic consequences than for instance murder, such as sexuality, the nonexistence of universal morality becomes evident. Sex and marriage, monogamy and polygamy, homosexuality and heterosexuality, etc.: no matter where you look and when you look, you will never find universal agreement about right and wrong here*. ..
*Before we spin in circles: we have discussed some predominant moral values and I’ve argued that a) they have a very pragmatic and naturalistic background, b) the supposed agreement on those values is often only superficial: we agree that murder is “wrong” but we don’t agree on what murder is (abortion? death penalty? war? honor killing?) and what “wrong” means. Neither do we agree on whether it is absolutely and always “wrong” to murder someone (how about a premeditated shooting of Hitler or Bin Laden in order to save thousands?).

It's true that some moral issues are more universally clear than others. The test issue you brought up (killing animals) is one of the more debatable, nuanced ones, and so therefor it's really an uphill battle to demonstrate my case with it.

The difficulty with this discussion that I see is that if there really are universal moral values, then one would expect them to make sense pragmatically- and that the more clear the value the more pragmatic it would appear. But this is exactly the data the naturalist would expect as well.

So we need to modify ourinquiry to isolate the distinctives that human values should have if there were only either a) naturalistic or b) supernatural causes for their existence.

Does that make sense? I think I have some ideas on how to approach that.

Even in societies with a predominant official handling of the issue there is a huge difference between the theory (what people are supposed to find right and wrong) and the praxis (what people really believe is right and wrong).

Again, this is what a Scriptural view would also predict and describe as the result of sin and naturalists and psychologists would explain as the complexities of the brain or societies.