Are their universal morals across all cultures?

[Epidemic]

I say yes.

Murder, defined as taking of another one's life outside of self defense, defense of others, and or retribution in the heat of the moment.

Stealing defined as knowingly taking something of value from another with permission or implied consent.

Cheating on spouse = with out consent or implied consent sleeping around with others after promising faithfulness.

Intentionally Killing the innocent = (self explained) Some people will do this outside of their clan but with in the clan, group, tribe... is frowned upon universally. The people with the exception are usually hypocrites in that they find it wholey unacceptable when it is done to them.

[vass0922]

what about cannibals?
Granted I don't think they kill within their own tribe but certainly "murder"

So mostly universal I would agree...

[Epidemic]

I do not believe that there are many canibal tribes left. but they would be an exception. Except for the fact that there were running conflicts between the tribes (making it with reason) which would change it from murder to enemy casualty.

[Mike]

I actually think some cannibal tribes are left. Heard about it from a history teacher a few years back. I will do some googling later.

[J-Excel]

This must be a continuation of the moral relativity debate from another thread. Basically, some people think that morals are God-given and absolute while others think morals are defined by the masses within a society.

Yes, some morals are pretty consistent across cultures. Like murder. It's pretty obvious why murder would be considered immoral.

But some are not consistent across cultures. In some cultures it's immoral to marry first cousins. In other cultures it's expected. In some cultures it's immoral to have pre-marital sex. In others it's widely accepted. In some it's even expected. There are even different sets of morals between sub-cultures within a culture.

And morals aren’t consistent across time. In the US it used to be immoral for women to show a lot of flesh, almost to the extent of some Islamic countries. It’s widely accepted now. Not long ago homosexuality was considered immoral in the US. It is accepted by most people now. People that lived in the 1800's would consider us pretty darned immoral. Can human sacrifices be considered murder? It was common in some cultures in the past, so even murder isn't beyond being moral.

Basically, if we can point to other cultures as being immoral and other cultures can point to us as being immoral then it’s pretty obvious that morals aren’t absolute.

[Epidemic]

Ahh but future moral codes consider human sacrifice universally abhorant.

I believe our morals evolved (as i think you would agree). But the test which was used in the past is being relativized. To where we no longer have to think of the why something a moral code may have existed before dumping it.

Relativism is a shortcut to moral evolution. Yea I think that is what I mean?

[Epidemic]

I believe the existing canibal tribes are not allowed to kill anylonger. but they do eat their dead to make their dead loved ones part of them. Almost universally Ickkkkky but not universally immoral IMO.

[Theophylact]

Yeah, well, there are a lot of exceptions to not killing human beings. Mostly they're of the "not really human" type: not my tribe/race/religion.

But human sacrifice, even of loved ones, is also an exception. Though infrequent, it has lots of precedent.

And the prohibition against incest, once widely thought to be another "universal", turns out not only to be remarkable common in practice but even compulsory, at least in certain cultures, for royalty.

As for male homosexuality, one has only to read Homer or Plato to realize that it was an admired behavior in at least one culture.

Still, certain behaviors (lying, murder) tend to work against the survival of a society as a whole, and others (incest, homosexuality) work against the passing on of healthy offspring (or any at all) and so would be expected to be selected against.

But if human beings didn't have a complex genetic makeup, you'd think that such behaviors would have been evolved out of the race by now, if they hadn't had some compensating payoffs...

[Epidemic]

Using historical references holds no weight to prove that at one point in history something was accepted, at least as far as I am concerned Morality is an evolutionary process. When something does not stand up to scrutiny it is eventually removed from the current moral code. However I feel relativism goes too far as it is usually employed. It is used with out thought.

Human sacrifice did not stand the test of time. it does not change the rain patterns, it does keep the pests away from your crops.

Homosexuality's immorality will follow the dodo into history AFAIAC. It hurts no one, (it does spread disease a bit more AFAIK)

But if human beings didn't have a complex genetic makeup, you'd think that such behaviors would have been evolved out of the race by now, if they hadn't had some compensating payoffs...

It has a great payoff. it takes alot of good looking men off the market and takes alot of manly looking women off the market. Leaving my available babe ratio higher.
Therefore it is a moral act if I get better looking babes to look at me seriously.

Ok oK I am sorry I know Gay women are not all manly and all gay men are not fabio.

[ClubMed]

You would have to wait until the end of time to find out which 'morals' become universal and which are discarded.

Since we cannot do that we are forced to take into account history (i.e. experience) when we look at moral universals.

Moral universals change over time, and they are sometimes different in parts of the world. So we have 'particulars' that we must look at also.

Murder is wrong, yet it was okay to kill Jews and any political dissenters in Nazi Germany. So killing Jews was a particular (individual) universal moral in a certain place (Nazi Germany) during a certain time.

Since morals take place within time, we must take into account 'history' which is recorded time. If morals were to take place outside of the concept of time, then you could ignore history when looking at morals.