But of course it does.  If we ground our morality solely on what society accepts, then we could never judge a society to be immoral.

Did I say that I grounded morality solely on what a society accepts?  That is a misunderstanding of what I've been saying.  We are fully capable of rendering judgments of other people and their societies on the basis of our own subjective feelings about what is right and wrong.

But my point is that whether people adopt your metamorality and how they apply judgment will always be subjective.  A Muslim father in England recently had his daughter murdered for bringing shame onto his household.  She proved herself unworthy in the eyes of God by seeking to marry a shiite...

And he and they would be wrong.  Several points: (1) A person's worth is not diminished by engaging in wrongdoing; he still has the same worth even if we must treat him differently because of his misbehavior.

Since "worth" is social worth from my perspective, I disagree.  Wrongdoing diminishes a person's worth, and it is on that basis that society penalizes the wrongdoer--fines, incarceration, loss of voting rights, death, etc.

(2) A "pure" objective morality -- one not burdened by religious caveats other than the very basic ones I have outlined -- would require a conclusion that the daughter (assuming she is an adult) has the right to select a mate of her choice ...and thus has done nothing to merit punishment.  This right to select one's own mate is substantial enough that it could not be abrogated by a network of societal norms ...

Such behavior is immoral in the judgment of our culture and society--your judgment and mine--but even the victims of such crimes may share the judgment of their own culture that they are in the wrong.  We impose our moral judgments on those people, because their judgments are in direct conflict with ours over what constitutes fairness, worth, and proportionality.  That is why we have a legal system--to resolve disputes of this kind when they arise in the context of our culture and our values.

(3) If we decide to add religious caveats, the question would arise whether we should.  That would be a factual matter turning on the truth of the religion.  As a Christian, I would of course reject Islam as untrue...And one could question the basis for the caveats that are added to try to make the behavior seem moral under the objective framework I have set out.

I think that the Islamist could be perfectly happy with your "objective" framework, but being "equal" in the eyes of God does not mean that the person has the right to offend God or disobey his rules.

(4) Even if the marriage were considered wrong, the punishment is clearly disproportionate...

The punishment was disproportionate in your eyes, but you do not know how it would appear in the eyes of the father's peers.  His daughter was dealing a serious blow to his honor and the rest of his family by challenging his authority and judgment.  Our culture and society has reached a point where such rebellious behavior in a daughter is not considered impermissible, and so the law offered him no recourse. 
   

But they are not unequal in the relevant respects.  Beliefs to the contrary were simply based on an inaccurate view of the facts about the nature of women.

Not everyone agrees on what the facts are, and they aren't going to accept your view of them without a fight.  The struggle for equal treatment of women has been going on in the US since the birth of the country, and it isn't even over yet.  Even if you convince a bigot that women are equal to men in a factual sense, that bigot might still find solace in the judgment of God that women ought to be treated as inferior.  Didn't the Baptists make a very public ruling on this matter not so many years ago?  Wives must remain subservient to husbands in a marriage.  That doesn't mean that they are biologically or mentally inferior.  It is just how they see God's view in terms of their subjective interpretation of scripture.

She broke the rules and failed to obey her father.  Anyone who has read Leviticus knows the prescribed punishment.  Disobedience to parents is punishable by death.  Muslims take God's laws and the honor of parents very seriously.  Well, right-thinking Muslims, anyway.

I am sure there are plenty of other OT passages you can throw at me.  :)    A variety of distinctions could be made: it was a theocracy, the Jews had more direct experience of God back then, and God had in mind a special task of keeping the Jewish nation together, so God chose to impose some otherwise disproportional punishments.

Man, I don't get into those kinds of disputes, since I don't pretend that scripture is a basis for sound moral judgments. The question for me is whether a given behavior ought to be tolerated by the society that I live in, and it is quite the same for religious people, as well.  They just like to stamp God's name on all their judgments in order to justify overriding everyone else's objections.  So it is a worthwhile effort to thump Bibles and read passages to each other.  In the end, all they are doing is arguing for societal norms that they feel comfortable with.

Consciences are generally good at arriving at the correct moral conclusions.  The existence of a conscience is a manifestation of the existence of an objective morality.  But consciences are not foolproof and sometimes they are simply ignored out of self-interest.

If consciences were a manifestation of the existence of an objective morality, then our consciences would all dictate the same behavior.  They clearly do not.  Different people have different ideas of what constitutes shameful behavior that they ought to feel guilty about.  Once again, you just elevate your own subjective judgements to the level of "objective morality".

To say that there is an objective morality is to say that there is a single code of conduct that applies to all people at all times in all places.

I disagree. To say that morality is objective is to say that the rule for acting is generated by objective means.  An objective morality can take into account different circumstances, and sometimes different circumstances will change what is the moral thing to do.

Well, we do disagree on a couple of things.  I think that my definition more accurately capture what people think of as objective morality.  Your idea is that of moral relativism--that morality can vary according to circumstances.  I do agree with you that you need an objective means in order to implement an objective morality, but you have not proposed such a means.  Rather you merely offer declarative judgments of what is right and wrong based on your own sensibilities.  Your principles are not intrinsically objective, because they still require subjective interpretation to implement them.  What makes our morality subjective in the end is that we acquire our sense of values from individual experiences.  We share those with others of our culture, because we all share a common cultural experience, not because our collective experience is any sense "objective".

And we don't all share the same sense of fair play even within a homogeneous culture.  Many people consider it unfair to have capital penalty as a punishment for a crime.  Others consider it more than fair.  We in the US have had a longstanding argument over just what constitutes degrading and demeaning treatment of prisoners.  "Enemy combatants" can be subjected to extreme conditions in order to coerce information from them.  Is that fair?

There are more choices than fair and unfair.  One is treating people better than they deserve.  That is also a Christian ethic.  A kind of superlative morality.  You may not be obligated to treat people better than they deserve, but you could be a better person for it.  As could a society.

That's an interesting thought.  Why does it make you a "better person" to treat people better than they deserve?  For me, the operative phrase her is "than they deserve".  What gives you a sense of what people deserve?  Proportionality?  But I thought that proportionality was one of your moral cornerstones.  Here you appear to be saying that it would be "better" to override that judgment.  Better in what sense?

Even if there were a God, there is no particular reason to believe that you have any access to him or that he has any feelings at all with respect to the human race.  Even deism makes more sense that theism.

Some reason: He created them.  More reason if you posit the purpose of creating them as developing beings with whom God can associate.

It is very clear to me that morality exists for the purpose of developing beings with whom PEOPLE can associate.  To the extent that a god is involved, he is just an idealized person.  If I perceive someone as immoral, then I don't want that person to be around me.  If I were religious, then my god wouldn't want that person to be around him, either, and that would further amplify my moral outrage.
 

If you postulate that there is money in someone's wallet, that does not tell you its worth.

If you knew how much was there and the relevant valuation standards, though, you would know.

Exactly so, and that underscores the point of my analogy.  You don't really have any way of knowing God's judgment and valuation standards.  There is no objective method for discovering them.

I would say that you need to know what God's judgments of "worth" and "equality" are before you proclaim the objectivity of your method.  Just because God sees the slave as equal to the master, that does not mean that he intends for slavery to be abolished.  After all, many passages in the Bible seem to condone it, and few to condemn it.

Obviously, I have a different view of those passages than you.  Regardless, I am not attempting to anchor my objective morality to the Bible, although I do derive a few basic propositions from there.  I think it meshes well though, if you give the Bible the benefit of the doubt. :)

It would seem so if we could all just agree on which passages to derive our "few basic propostions" from, but that is everybody's subjective judgment, isn't it?  You just said that you have a "different view of those passages" than me.  Well, I'm in very good company.  There are plenty of folks out there who are theists like you and have a different view than either of us.  As I keep saying, you have no objective method for discovering God's judgments and valuation standards. 

You deny that it is guessing, but your denial is well-hedged.  If God could give guidance, I see no good reason why he wouldn't.

He has, to a large extent.  To some degree, there is the free will issue.  He revealed himself in the technologically backward past, where people would have no understanding of some of the more difficult issues we now face.  If He does not want to reveal Himself at this juncture, then we

Quote

In any case, the hypothetical makes the point.  If the situation in the hypothetical occurs and I find out I am wrong about the factual propositions of God's existence and His even having an opinion on worth-to-God, I will not adopt his morality where it conflicts with mine.  I fully recognize the subjectivity of my morality and morality itself.  If the situation in the hypothetical occurs and you find out you are wrong about the factual proposition of God's opinion on worth-to-God, you suddenly stop considering 'I should adopt worth-to-God as worth-to-Cimics' to be so obviously morally correct.  You, like me, will only readily adopt God's morality where it intersects with your own.

Again, you are assuming that God's assignment of worth might be different.  I start from the premise that God has assigned worth a certain way.

It's a hypothetical.  If you want me to stick to what I believe to be true, then the argument kind of stops at 'God is a fictional character and cannot assign or create anything.'

That your and my notions of morality are violated by the idea that God might assign worth differently is some indication that God DOES NOT assign worth differently.

It is also an indication that neither one of us believe we should automatically adopt worth-to-God as worth-to-us.

If worth were assigned differently, then we would be different.  Think of a dog and his human master.  The dog may consider his human master worth more than fellow dogs and that of course has consequences for how the dog acts.

Yes !  And worth is a subjective concept, assigned by sentient beings (subjects.)  Even if God is the sentient being in question, worth-to-God remains subjective.  The consequences for how the dog acts is EXACTLY the way in which morality is subjective - subjective valuing of outcomes leads to a system of ideas of right and wrong conduct.

Quote

If there is a God with opinions about how humans should behave it is obvious he has NOT made those opinions clear.

My point is that God does not have to make these opinions clear.  All we need to know is that God values humans greatly and equally.

How can you possibly put those two sentences together and not see the contradiction ?  We may need to know it, but we don't know it.

You've never heard of people who are mad God?  Or Satanists?

All of the people I've met who were mad at God still thought of him as right and good.  The mad at was a temporary thing, a venting of frustration.  They still thought everything happens for a reason and that God had a plan.  Show me a theist who believes God holds (moral opinion X) and that God is wrong and I'll be amazed.  What I see instead are theists who believe God holds (moral opinion X) and that theists who believe God holds (moral opinion Y) are wrong. 

The only Satanists I have met have been online, and they are basically misnamed.  Or at least the ones I met were:

"LaVey wrote The Satanic Bible (1969) and other works which remain highly influential, though controversial, among avowed Satanists. LaVey rejected the Black Mass, cruelty to animals, and a literal deistic belief in, or worship of, Satan, instead considering Satan as the human instinct within ourselves, which is what LaVeyan Satanism celebrates. He supported a view of human beings as animals, and rejected many social structures that he believed inhibit natural human instincts."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satanism

Quote

How would causing someone a great deal of pain get me short term happiness ?  I could only see this in a revenge-type situation.

In other words, you don't want to imagine what seems to you to be an incoherent hypothetical.  You just want to say that it is not possible that causing someone a great deal of pain would give you short term happiness.  You don't want to explore the "what if" because you do not see the "what if" as a rational scenario.

Or I stated where I would find it difficult to imagine and still answered the question in the next sentence...

"What if" giving someone else a great deal of pain could cause you short term happiness?

Then I (would I still be I ?  dunno) may choose to harm others to please myself, and would probably (and hopefully) be locked up as a psychopath.

As for how you could take pleasure in someone else's pain, perhaps you are just not being imaginative enough.  What if you were a sadist?

If I were a sadist I would look for a masochist so we could both be happy, I think.

Or perhaps, what if you could make ten million dollars at the price of someone else suffering excruciating pain for a day?  Would you do it?

Talk is cheap, but I wouldn't do it.  If the other person wanted to do it for a substantial portion of the money, knowing what they are getting into, then I guess I would.
 

Quote

In any case, no, it wouldn't be moral, because I like to live in a cooperative society.  Causing others harm needlessly does NOT engender a cooperative society.  Behaving as you would like others to behave does.

My hypothetical assumes you wouldn't get caught, and everyone else acts like they otherwise would act.  So your cooperative society is intact, you just flout it long enough to gain a huge advantage with no adverse consequences.  Do you still think there is something morally wrong with behaving that way.  Why, exactly?

Yes, because I am not behaving in a way that engenders a cooperative society.  Regardless of whether or not there would be no actual adverse consequences, if I imagine myself as being in one of the others' shoes, I would wish for them not to do it to me.  Therefore I don't want to do it to others. 

And intrinsic worth exists like the number of objects.  That you are not capable of seeing it does not mean it is not there.

But you keep claiming you do see it - that you know it is there.

Also, God is a unique observer.  Everything is dependent upon Him.  All of reality is in His minds eye.

Then all of reality is subjective, by the definition of the word.  It is 'existing in the mind; belonging to the thinking subject rather than to the object of thought.' 

Quote

So you also believe in objective taste ?

Taste meaning what?  As in food? Or more as in style?  Broccoli has a certain taste.  Different people taste it differently but there are certainly objective properties of broccoli that produce the taste.

Similarly, there are objective properties of reality (by my worldview) that produce outcomes to actions.  Two people can experience the exact same properties of broccoli that produce the taste, one will say it tastes good, and one will say it tastes bad.

Quote

Objective movie qualities ?  If you believe things have objective values that cannot - even in principle - be measured, how do you believe anything is subjective ?  <scratching head>

That WE cannot measure them does not mean they cannot be measured.

So it cannot be measured and yet you claim to know its value ?

And the failure to be able to precisely measure something does not mean it is subjective.  You cannot precisely measure the value of pi as a decimal number, but it is an objective concept.

You can precisely define pi without referring to the opinions of any particular subject.  You can give a method for determining its value to closer and closer approximations, both mathematically and graphically, without referring to the opinions of any particular subject.  For 'objective worth' you give no method of objectively determining it even in principle; it IS, itself, a subjective opinion of God's.

But you said: If what society thinks is inconsequential, then God's judgment is inconsequential.  It is society that must maintain and enforce morality.

Perhaps you can explain how you can subjectively judge a society when morality is based partly on your subjective feelings and partly on what the society thinks.  How do you know which part is controlling on the issue which you judge?  Is that determined from your subjective viewpoint?  Or from the society in question?

I don't think that societies are quite the same as individuals, but one can evaluate the behavior of groups on the basis of one's own feelings of right and wrong.  Your mistake is to jump to the conclusion that, because society plays a significant role in shaping our feelings of right and wrong, I am claiming that our subjective feelings are whatever society dictates to be right and wrong.  Clearly, we develop feelings of conscience from a variety of sources--family, friends, church, community, school, and so on.  Individual, idiosyncratic conscience is the regulator of "right" and "wrong" feelings, and that is shaped by experience. 

Moral restrictions are rules that tell us how to interact safely and comfortably with other people.  We feel that there is something "objective" about morality, because we need a set of shared values in order to have that good social interaction.  Hence, morality is always being adjusted and fine-tuned in our own minds, and it is the subject of negotiation with others when there is a perceived difference in values.  Social authority is a big influence on what determines that shared set of values, and what greater social authority is there than God?  Divine authority trumps secular authority.  Hence, we use God in our moral negotiations with others.  Whoever can slap the label "God's Will" on the moral issues they are promoting comes up the winner.  Religious skeptics spoil the negotiation strategy, because they don't accept the "God's Will" as an important factor in determining morality.  So my religious friends are always asking pointed questions about why I don't want to steal things, torture babies, or rob banks, as if they would do such things in the absence of belief in a god.

Wrongdoing diminishes a person's worth, and it is on that basis that society penalizes the wrongdoer--fines, incarceration, loss of voting rights, death, etc.

Your reasoning would fit in nicely with the Bush doctrine of indefinitely holding "enemy combatants."  They have no worth so they have no rights.

Indeed, isn't that just what the people in power have been arguing? Myself, I think that the enemy combatants have been deprived of their rights under both US law and US ideals about rights and freedoms.  I consider the current bunch in power to be highly immoral and corrupt, because their behavior does not agree with my values and what I think society's values should be.

No, wrongdoing does NOT diminish the person's worth.    People should be treated differently who violate the rules not because they have less worth but because our respect for the worth of their victims or potential victims (or even their own in the case of attempted suicide) requires the different treatment.

Sorry to disagree, but I think that the different "required treatment" follows from their diminished social status.  If you willingly harm other people, then you will be deprived of rights that everyone else is presumed entitled to on the basis of their equal status.  Social privilege is linked to social status in every human society.  That is fundamental.

But again, a question arises whether these rules make sense just taking into account God's valuation of human beings.  As I have pointed out earlier, the moral framework I have set out is non-authoritarian, and thus wholly objective, rather than authoritarian and therefore subjective as to God (of course, there is Ben's criticism that it is still subjective as to God, but as I respond to him, all of reality is subjective as to God in that event).

I think that your concept of "objective morality" is unclear and different from what people normally mean by that term.  To the extent that it is not authoritarian, it turns out to be little different from what most of us have been calling "subjective morality".  That is, there are general principles that act as moral guidelines, and one's interpretation of those principles can vary. 

(4) Even if the marriage were considered wrong, the punishment is clearly disproportionate...

The punishment was disproportionate in your eyes, but you do not know how it would appear in the eyes of the father's peers.

Immaterial.  The punishment is clearly disproportionate from an objective standpoint.  His feelings and social standing are hurt, she dies.  Objectively measurable difference there.

Nothing is objective where there are conflicting values.  As I said earlier, morality is subject to constant negotiation.  Legal systems exist to resolve those negotiations in nonviolent ways.  You don't share the father's values, so you condemn his behavior as "objectively" wrong.  That is nothing more than rhetoric.

Social learning can occur.  Just as we did not always know all the principles of mathematics (take calculus for example), understanding morality can be a learning experience.  The principles of calculus were true before humans understood them, and so are the principles of morality.

If you want to go with a math metaphor, fine.  Let's think of moral justice as some kind of complex equation that gets solved, where the outcome depends on how you instantiate the variables.  How you instantiate the variables is the subjective part.  An "objective morality", in the sense that we normally use the term, refers to a situation where the same values are plugged into the same equation all the time.  You seem to have decided that one can call morality the same if we just regard it as a fixed equation no matter what values you plug into the formula.  Do you see our disagreement?  It is basically terminological.  There can be no objective "right" or "wrong" when people cannot agree on how to weight their moral variables.

People can be ignorant of the facts.  That ignorance does not change the facts.  As for God's judgment, since He values men and women equally, then they should be treated with equal respect, in marriage or out.

But people disagree over what constitutes "equal respect", and God's judgment is whatever one imagines it to be.  Men and women have differences, and there is consideral disagreement over how those differences should be accomodated socially.  For example, does a woman have the moral right to terminate a pregnancy without the consent of the male who impregnated her?  Does the blastocyst have a right to become a child if the host mother does not want it to develop into a child?  Does a fetus have the right to be born if its birth would kill the mother?  These are situations where the facts can be clearly known, but the moral answer is not objectively obvious.

Well, we do disagree on a couple of things.  I think that my definition more accurately capture what people think of as objective morality.

Even if it does, that does not make my use of the term improper.

Is different usage "improper"?  Unless all parties agree to the same usage, it can be misleading and confusing.  I don't see many of our differences as substantive.  They are mainly terminological.

That's an interesting thought.  Why does it make you a "better person" to treat people better than they deserve?  For me, the operative phrase her is "than they deserve".  What gives you a sense of what people deserve?  Proportionality?  But I thought that proportionality was one of your moral cornerstones.  Here you appear to be saying that it would be "better" to override that judgment.  Better in what sense?

People can do more than the minimum morality.   Risking your life to save someone else, for example.  Or forgiving a debt.  God showed the way to performing actions beyond basic morality with the sacrifice of Christ on the cross.  Treating people better than they deserve would be to act more like God.  Worth, equality, and proportionality describe a moral floor.  You shouldn't fall below it, but you can certainly exceed it, and as Christians, treating people better than they deserve would show our own appreciation for what God has done for us.

I think that the religious story attempts to capture a very important principle.  The "eye for an eye" equation of the OT, gets us into endless cycles of violence/retaliation.  It is very natural for humans to see proportional reciprocity as valid in the abstract, but they seldom agree on what is proportional in practice.  The Christian principle of going the extra mile has the effect of cutting off that cycle by denying the need to reciprocate.  It makes society function more smoothly in the end when people go out of their way not to be provoked.  You don't need God to understand that compromise and turning a blind eye to insult usually works out better in the end.  Gandhi turned the logic almost into a science.  His "satyagraha" strategies very effectively undercut the efforts of his opponents to rationalize their violent behavior, and they strongly influenced nonviolent protest in the turbulent 60s, especially in the Civil Rights Movement.  This isn't acting like God, though.  It is acting like we would want God to act.  That is how such things find their way into lots of religious scripture, not just Christian scripture.

...You don't really have any way of knowing God's judgment and valuation standards.  There is no objective method for discovering them.

Well, there is.  Revelation (i.e. Bible).  We know from there that humans were created in God's image.

If the Bible were a reliable way of knowing God's judgment, then everybody would interpret it the same.  They do not, and that is just speaking about people who accept the Bible as morally authoritative, by no means the majority of people on the planet.  Interpretations of scripture are notoriously subjective.  I repeat: there is no objective method for discovering God's judgment and evaluation standards, just an ongoing dispute over who gets to promote which "objective standard" as God's will.

Beyond that though, we know that God values us because He created us.  Otherwise, He would not have created us.  We can infer that all humans are equal in the eyes of God because such an inference is logical in light of what we know about human biology.   Thus, even without revelation, merely by postulating God, we can infer the moral cornerstones in the objective framework that I have set out.

Nonsense.  All you are saying is that God values everything, because he created everything.  He values people no more highly than he values ants and trees.  When we look at biology, we see that there are differences everywhere.  Some people are strong, some weak, some smart, some stupid, some attractive, some unattractive, etc., etc.  We aren't all born with the same abilities or advantages in life.  Some are exposed to horrible circumstances, whereas others live out their lives in relative comfort and security.  Life is unfair, and that completely undermines your argument. 

It would seem so if we could all just agree on which passages to derive our "few basic propostions" from, but that is everybody's subjective judgment, isn't it?

Mine would be the minimum necessary to formulate an objective morality.  One which all those who share the religion would agree.  In addition, Jesus himself said the law and the prophets hang on two commandments.  Loving God and loving your neighbor as yourself ("neighbor" as Jesus makes clear, meaning everyone).  Those would be consistent with the three principles I have set out.

Nice sentiments, but you seem to have missed the point.  Your position really reduces to subjective morality.  It is just that you want your particular judgments to be branded "objective" and to therefore trump those who claim to have moral standards that do not agree with yours.

Just because people have different views about what the Biblical text means does not mean those differing views are equally valid.

By what criteria?  I keep asking you for such criteria.  What is the objective method for determining "objective morality"?  You only offer your own subjective opinions, which you then declare "objective".

That's your explanation of Divine Silence?  Well, we've been over the free will issue before, and I can only reiterate my take on it.  I see no coherent argument that God's absence robs of us our free will any more than it robbed our Jewish and Christian ancestors when he showed up to "explain" things to them.

It did rob them of some of their free will.  And, as SJ has explained elsewhere, God's presence entailed the imposition of some specific dos and donts would not otherwise have been imposed.

I don't see how his appearance robbed anyone of their free will.  They still had the ability to sin and disbelieve, according to the Bible.  God didn't need to show up in person to give us all a sense of right and wrong.  He certainly didn't show up anywhere but among the Jews, according to your favored scripture.  So he didn't do a very complete or effective job of getting his word spread out to all those he ruled over.

...It's not as if Jesus would have had no historical precedent for commenting on the barbarity of [slavery].

He might have, and we might simply not have a record of it.  Maybe it was not a frequent topic due to the audience he spoke to.  Perhaps he considered other things were more important to talk about.  There is simply no basis for concluding that he condoned it.

Jesus didn't think that slavery was an important issue?  It was to slaves, and its morality had already come under criticism in the public record of those times.  The fact that Jesus was relatively silent on the issue speaks volumes.  It suggests that the people who created the scripture didn't think of slavery as immoral.Did God not understand that the ambiguity in the Bible would be used to justify slavery in future generations?  On the one hand, you see the Bible as a method for understanding God's will.  On the other hand, you find all sorts of excuses for ignoring its obvious lacunae.

You don't get it.  It is not about missing the cow.  It's about the fact that nobody would dare try to get the cow out of the way.  It has the right of way in all traffic.

And that's because cows are considered special, right?

Yes.  I would consider "sacred" a variety of "special". 

Still, except for the Jains (which views all life sacred), cows are special.  You give a lot of practical reasons, but those are your own right?  The reverence given cannot be completely explained by those practical reasons.  And the reverence given is, well, irrational.

I was giving my personal opinion of why the special reverence for cows arose in India.  Clearly, the practice goes back many centuries, because there are "nandris"--statues of sacred cows--around ancient Hindu temples.  You may call it irrational, but most religious beliefs are.

Oh, but it is.  The dharmic tradition is much more conservative in that people are expected not to try to rise above their station in life.

The Hindu variant right?  But not the Buddhist variant.  Or at least some looking on the internet suggests there is a difference there.

I honestly don't know much about Buddhist attitudes towards castes.  In India, Christians in some areas came to be identified with the Brahmin class, and that is one reason that many untouchables find it attractive to convert.

And even so, within your caste, the principles of worth, equality, proportionality, etc are applied.  This of course is consistent with the history of humanity failing to draw the equality correctly.  As humanity progresses, it realizes that these are arbitrary and undraws them.

By "correctly", you mean as God sees it.  But we only have your word and your personal take on scripture to support God's view.  That's how you want it, isn't it?   

...All societies seem to have a concept of murder, even if they draw the lines differently.  That points to at least an objective core moral principle.  And as I have said earlier, there is social learning.  People realize that a line excluding someone from equal status is arbitrary and irrational and that line is undrawn.  Dueling is an interesting example that goes to worth rather than to equality.  But it is a violation of the recognition that humans are made in God's image.

That depends on who is describing God's image.  I imagine that his image will always fit the preconceptions of the locals.  Not very "objective".