The general principles of our shared moral code are:
Not harming others
Being fair
Being loyal to a group
Respect for legitimate authority
Exalting what's pure, clean, and holy
All of these principles are rooted in our emotions and are therefore not separate from our minds. Not causing harm to others and helping when we can are the natural result of the joy we feel when aiding others, and the empathy and sympathy we feel for each other. Fairness comes from the anger of wanting liars, cheaters, theives, traitors, etc. to get what's coming to them. Moral intuitions are rooted in our deepest emotions. And they are as universal as our emotions. Those who argue in favor of objective morals rely on our universal emotional reactions to support their argument. William Lane Craig asks, "Are the values we hold dear ...mere social conventions akin to driving on the left versus right side of the road or mere expressions of personal preference akin to having a taste for certain foods or not?". The fact that morals are things "we hold dear" indicates the emotional basis of these values. Lane continues: "Or are they valid independently of our apprehension of them,...?". The examples Lane uses of moral wrongs shows they are not "independent of our apprehension of them": Nazi Holocaust, incest, child rape, child abuse, and torture. We all experience a negative emotional response to these acts that tell us they are wrong. They just "feel" wrong and cannot be independent of how we feel about them.
What differs from one culture or society to another or one person to another is how these five principles are ranked in importance. Religious extremism may rank respect for religious authority as the most important. This allows followers to set aside their natural inclination not to harm others and ignore their own ideas of fairness. "Goodness" is following the rules of that authority without thought or question. Obedience becomes a higher law than conscience. This is the danger of an objective morality that is independent of what anyone (even you) thinks or feels about it. By subduing his natural emotional attachment to his child Abraham becomes "good" because of his willingness to obey when asked to sacrifice him.
Religion is not alone in it's extremism. Loyalty to a group can lead to racism, sexism, etc... Extreme pacifists can make decisions which seem contrary to common sense. Any time these general principles are construed as absolute rules, with an absolute order of importance, morality suffers. Realizing that there are no sets of rules which cover all the unique individuals and situations we may encounter in life doesn't mean we're accepting a form of situational ethics where everything is subjective and relative. It simply means we see the need for a situational conscience that looks for a healthy balance in our universal principles applied to the personalities and circumstances involved in each individual situation. Our priorities for those principles may change in each situation as well. Thankfully, our shared emotional responses give us a vast area of agreement about what is right and what is wrong.
I've come to the conclusion that morality consists of two parts; one seems objective and the other is subjective.
The first part I call "labeling"; this seems objective and we find nearly universal agreement within the human race on how certain things should be labeled (as "good" or "bad"). For example, 'Is it good for a parent to protect their child from harm?' The universal reply would be "Yes". (The rare exception, someone who says "no" would universally be labeled as mentally ill and therefore would not disprove the objective nature of labeling). Given any single issue, as a general principle, mankind will view it objectively.
Another example would be, "Should we obey legitimate authority figures (parents, police, government, all the way up to God himself)?" Again, as a general principle, we objectively agree this is a good thing.
The second part of morality I call "weighting". Weighting involves assigning a weighted value to an action. It's giving priority to one good action over another. For example, God asks Abraham to sacrifice Isaac. Now Abraham has two good moral issues to weigh: 1) protect his child from harm (which is objectively a good thing) and 2) obey God (which is also objectively a good thing). The decision that each of us as individuals would make if faced with these choices may differ because we are subjective about attaching a weighted value to each of the two moral goods involved (protecting our child, obeying legitimate authority).
If you look at any moral dilemma and listen to each side of the argument, you will see that each side is choosing a moral good. The differences between opposing sides are about which 'good' outweighs the other. We agree that both things are good, but disagree about which one is best.
Edward Westermarck wrote the following in 1906 concerning the origin of moral values:
"The objectivity ascribed to judgements which arise from our unconscience as intuitive knowledge comes from the similarity of the mental constitution of men.
Our moral consciousness is part of our subconscience, which we cannot change as we please. We approve or disapprove because we cannot do otherwise.
Owing to their exceptional importantance for human welfare, the facts of the moral consciousness are emphasied in much higher degree than would be ordinary subjective facts.
As clearness and distinctness of the conception of an object easily produces the belief in it's truth, so the intensity of a moral emotion makes him who feels it disposed to objectivise the moral estimate to which it gives rise, in other words, to assign to it universal validity.
There are different degrees of badness and goodness, a duty may be more or less stringent, and merit may be smaller or greater. These quantitative differences are due to the emotional origin of basic moral concepts. "
thinker