Perhaps in your alternate world., not in this one.

I have given express and detailed rationale, substantiated by examples and external resources. In almost every respect you have failed to attack my rational, only reasserting your unsubstantiated claims against my conclusions. And they are unsubstantiated. You have given no evidence, linked to no external resources, and made assertion after assertion. Anyone reading this could tell you that.

Of course this debate is not about homosexuality. You brought it up to divert from objective morality.

No, I brought it up as an example to demonstrate the subjectivity of morality. The point you have still not refuted is that weather discrimination against homosexuals is caused by fear or bigotry, both of those are expressly manifested as morality. They inform the moral judgement. Morality is at play here, and it is founded precisely on the subjective, irrational, and misinformed beliefs you are discussing. This is why so many people say that homosexuality is immoral.

Do you know why societies practice child sacrifice? No normal society can consider such an evil to be moral. Most societies that practice such savagery only do so in the context of their religion, to appease some deity. The people where this evil is practiced only go along not to become non-conformist. But no one would ever want to see his or her child sacrificed.

This argument is one fallacy after the other. Societies that would practice child sacrifice do so because they find it acceptable, which means they do find it moral. Your use of terms like "normal society" and "savagery" reveals your personal moral bias, yet you still have not given a single reason why your morality is objectively true or better than any other morality. You have no proof that those people actually disagree with the practice, nor even that they would not want their child sacrificed (though even were that true that would not necessarily reflect a moral view, but an emotional attachment).

And the Rocky Road Ice Cream was again TERRIBLE. OWN IT AND MOVE ON.

It was not, but at this point it is hardly relevant.

IMPORTANT POINTS YOU HAVE DROPPED

AKA: Your unsupported claims and my non-refuted (counter)points.

Universality means no exception. Neither universality, norms, or majority belief inherently constitute objectivity.

Morality exists outside of religion, and in fact predates all contemporary religions. The Bible is not a source of morality, but a reflection of what already existed and still exists independent of either Christianity or religion.

Relative morality does not necessarily follow from relative consequence, nor does absolute morality preclude a relative response. Absolute morality allows us to identify a thing as basically moral or immoral which in turn informs the nature of our response (i.e. positive or negative), while the relative consequence informs the extent of our punishment (i.e. social disapproval vs. the death penalty). Relative morality not only informs the nature of our response, but attempts to displace practical and discernible consequence in determining the extent of our response. Not only is this wholly unnecessary, but it is dangerous. This conflation of the role of morality and consequence is an express cause of disproportionate response.

It's one thing to say that it's possible to move towards something better, another thing is to say that we will. Throughout this post I will assume that human kind owns the capacity to learn from history. Whether this is true or not, I don't know.

That is an unfounded assumption. As individuals, we repeatedly reenact our own mistakes to our own detriment. As societies, we repeatedly reenact the same variables that culminate in collapse; no society has lasted forever, and they all fall for more or less the same predictable reasons. There is no reason to assume that a capacity for observing personal and collective history, which is itself arguably limited, translates into a capacity for altering our conduct accordingly. Historically and biologically speaking, there are a fair number of reasons to doubt it.

I hadn't really thought about this distinction, but I think it demands that we ask an important question. If there's a difference between what we think is morale and how we act then this difference needs to be investigated. I am not interested in why we act contrary to what we believe, I am interested in whether our thoughts or our behaviors reflects truth.

I think that is not necessarily the correct distinction to focus upon. Rather, why is it that our reason and action depart from one another? I would hesitate to conflate morality with knowledge of the probable best course of action. The former is frequently illogical (and thus clearly not derived from a logical process), while the latter a derivation of logic. In fact, I would contend that some of the discrepancy between our rational deductions and our actions is attributable to morality itself.

An important idea, I think, is that there's a difference between the best and an optimal. As I have already treated, I think an optimal course of action exists in every situation. Similarly an optimal society exists in every ecological circumstance. Whether an optimal society is the best society is an entirely different question.

Optimal and best are synonyms, so I have a difficult time following your distinction here. As I understand your point, the optimal society is a conceptual reality rather than an objective reality and you consider the best society to be one which progresses towards that optimal ideal. Fair?

We might not be progressing towards the best, but if we assume that evolution promotes better attributes then I believe that's the same as saying that the society will tend to achieve more optimals than an inferior society.

I do not think this follows, for rather the same reason as a better attribute does not lead to the best attribute. You have largely just changed the terminology here so by addressing the rest of your response I will also be addressing this, although do correct me if you disagree.

I will work from the definition that a utopia is a society where everyone is happy. [...] As Stephen Hawking said, intelligence is the ability to adapt to change. Maybe there's an infinitude of optimal societies at any given moment. To decide which one of these is optimals is the best is practically impossible [...]. However, I do believe that all utopias have similarities, one being the ability to adapt. I think it's important to view utopias not as an end from which point on nothing needs to change. This world is built upon change so obviously, no rest can be found. Life is struggle. Despite this, I still think it's possible to sustain a society where everyone is happy.

Utopia was a poor word choice on my part; optimal or ideal would have been more accurate to my intentions. What I was trying to convey is this: Adaptation is a response to a constantly changing environment, a fact upon which I think we agree. My point is that because the circumstances are changing, the attributes that would constitute the genesis of the ideal society are also constantly changing. In effect, when the environment is altered the ideal society as concept must also be altered; consequentially we cannot be evolving towards that concept because it is not fixed.

I don't think we are moving towards a specific society, but I do think that if we are improving, some specific qualities will tend to emerge. Evolution does not promote growth towards an end situation but it does promote growth of something. As a society progresses through time it will take its stand against different challenges. Culture is different than nature. As our societies grow old we will overcome challenges. But unlike in nature, we can remember events that happen rarely, and we have an unique ability to predict. In the very long term, societies will cultivate a capacity to identify problems, a quality of adaptability will emerge, but most importantly, societies will tend to be selected for their ability to be in tune with the present moment. I think the only way we can learn this is by seeing how not doing so leads to failure. That is, learning this is contingent on an ability to learn from history.

The issue is that there is really no evidence to suggest we are improving. Furthermore evolution does not promote the growth of something, it dictates the conditions for survival and perpetuation. Adaptation is not the same thing as growth. Culture is not different from nature, because it is a byproduct of nature itself. Societies today already respond to the present, to as great an extent as they ever have and are likely to do; evolution is an immediate pressure, not delayed. Countless societies have come and gone, and we have been privy to the details of their emergence and collapse... yet this has not led to societies lasting longer or evading collapse. That process remains highly predictable, and there is no reason to suspect it should change; evolution has never produced anything of permanence.

I think some qualities simply can't be avoided. Some qualities are shared by all utopias, and if we can learn from history these qualities will emerge. So I think it's misleading to say that nothing but immediate pressures will affect cultures. Immediate pressures is the only force affecting nature, but this might not be true of human cultures.

As observed already, there is no basis to assume we do learn from history nor is there a basis for conceptualizing human culture as an unnatural occurrence.

To reiterate, we won't evolve towards some end point, but we might learn how to live in accordance with facts, we will learn how to adapt succesfully. I don't believe we can live by ten commandments, but I do believe can thrive by cultivating a specific kind of mind. We have to live in accordance with facts, there is no way around this. The only way to ensure that we will always live like this is to cultivate open-mindedness and practice adaptability. We could call this a set-in-stone rule, but I think that would be missing the point. A utopia won't be static. Quite on the contrary actually, it will be highly dynamic, changing as needed in an ever changing envirronment.

By defining a particular state of mind you are identifying an end point, a destination that you presume humanity to be progressing towards. Human beings can certainly become more or less well-adapted to their changing environment, but there is no real basis to presume we would ever evolve to the optimal condition you describe. Effectively, the mind state you describe is one which is capable of learning from history to identify the optimal course of action in order to more rapidly adapt to changing circumstances; it would be conscious and intentional adaptation. That sounds fantastic in theory, but I see no indication to suggest our capacity for adaptation to be increasing in rapidity let alone becoming a product of conscious awareness; do you?

The existence of optimals is crucial. The fact that they exist proves that there's a possibility for betterment. If we indeed can learn from history we will progress towards something resembling a highly dynamic utopia. This contradicts the notion that morale behaviors are accidental consequences of internal processes. If we learn from history, our internal processes will have a change in quality. Morale thoughts won't just be subjective, our morale minds will evolve towards something that is the best. We will cultivate states of mind that are conducive to acting in accordance with facts. So if we can learn, behavior won't just be accidents of subjective thoughts. Behaviors will tend towards being more in tune with reality at the present moment.

The optimal exists as a subjective concept only, and has no actualized basis in objective reality. The problem in using your theory of the eventual optimal is that it presumes a non-demonstrated capacity for moral and actuary self-regulation. What we do known definitively through science is that neuro-biological process do determine at least some human behavior, and I think my extension from that foundational knowledge retains its integrity. Human behavior is not a rational response derived from objective reality, but a response to objective reality through the subjective reality of human neuro-biology. It is not something we have ever controlled, nor is there any basis upon which to claim we are beginning to or ever will do so.