Alas, I have been very sick and have not had the energy recently to get involved in this very interesting philosophical discussion after throwing it in a direction I have a lot to say about. People have been doing an excellent job, but there are a couple of concepts I have not seen mentioned.

> We are referring to something outside the system. In a sense, we are saying that if nobody existed, if nobody ever existed, it would still be wrong for a person to kill another person in cold blood.

I believe completely the opposite. The concept of morals is a creation of society and biology. It is biologically based and was created, by evolution, to advance the survivability of the species. Without society, morals are meaningless, and would never exist. Don't steal, don't kill (members of your own "tribe"), treat everyone as you would have yourself treated...all of these are necessary for a society to exist, and without them we would not be where we are today as a species. To believe that they exist outside ourselves, to believe they have some natural "rightness", is an understandable fallacy given the genetic hardwiring of our brain to follow these rules, but it is still untrue.

And in a great cycle of positive reenforcement, the society you live in shapes those morals to its own ends and teaches them, and punishes those who can not abide by them. Morals make society possible, society teaches and enforces morals. There is nothing divine about it. You seperate culture (differences in societies) and true morality, and say they are two seperate things. I say hogwash, they are deeply interrelated, and are meaningless seperated.