ShieldAxe wrote:The moral code certainly seems to have changed in significant ways. How is it absolute then?
Remember the guy from Matrix 2 who kept reciting cause and effect? Well, anyway, there's a cause and effect for every moral code. Regardless what the moral code is, it would have a corresponding moral effect on society based on its degree of adherence, widespread application, etc.. In principle, with enough knowledge of the effects of the many different moral codes, one could predict (at least in a statistical sense) the effect that a new moral code would have on society. For example, it's not so hard to imagine the effect of having a universal moral code that old people ought to die when they start getting too sick to care for themselves. Once that kind of moral code became universal, we can expect to see a society engaging in euthanasia practices, etc..
So, regardless of what society apts as their moral codes where the majority in that society support, the moral effects themselves are absolute. The moral codes themselves can change in significant ways, but the effects once recognized by society, push society to reconsider their moral codes. Therefore, I would suggest that moral codes are
attractor-like, and in that sense they are absolute. Since human civilizations evolve slowly over decades and centuries, the attractors (moral codes) are not yet firmly set in stone, but we already have many moral codes firmly in place (e.g., universal criminal laws). Given high speed communication and free transportation in the world, we'll see a much faster settling in on these attractors, and hence a common moral code will probably emerge if humans don't destroy themselves. Of course, moral codes will always vary as new circumstances arise (e.g., discovery of new technologies, population growth, environmental problems, etc.), but as the opportunity for new circumstances to arise begins to drop off (e.g., as technology growth levels off, population growth levels off, environmental issues stablize, etc.), then morality codes will become very fixed.
The fixed moral codes of the Hebrew Bible, I think, show this phenomena. By the time of the late Bronze age, human society in that region had become stable enough such that moral codes were thought to be obvious given the nature of their society. Despite all the changes our society has seen over the past 3 millenia, it is amazing how similar their moral codes are to our moral codes today. Yes, there's major differences (e.g., stoning an adultress), but given 3 millenia it just shows how stable those moral codes were after 100-300K years of modern humans living on the planet. That suggests that the world in a 100 years from now will have very similar morals that we do, unless of course there's some drastic unexpectant change (e.g., nuclear war, ETI discovery, etc.).
