Why am I doing your homework again?

As is the case with most things, a little bit of both.
(also it seems two posts is the length of time to get off topic ;)

My relatives are moral people, if that helps...

Relative. Anyone who believes in universal morality believes in an unchanging human nature and a monolithic human race with no internal differences.

"My relatives are moral people, if that helps..."

But is the universe?

Also, relative morality doesn't mean that there isn't a (socially constructed) global culture of norms and morals, especially in the current time period where diplomats from all over the world frequently meet and publish declarations on these subjects.

It is both. There are clearly a core set of human values shared amongst all human cultures and civalisations. Outside that core there is a delightfully huge amount of variability that gives us all countless opportunities to kill people with the reasuring belief we're in the right.

What are these 'core values'?

I agree with Octavious here, and one of these "core values" would certainly include the legal equality between men and women IMO, that is still not guaranteed (i.e., Saudi Arabia's policy against women being allowed to drive is immoral from whatever perspective you look at it).

If it's not guaranteed then how is it a 'core value' shared by all civilizations?

Furthermore don't universal values have to also be timeless? Or am I confusing things?

It's not, but I consider my values to be superior than Saudi Arabia's in this instance. Coming to think of it, why does a country that is practically floating on oil prohibiting ANYONE to drive?
Anyways, Saudi Arabia probably has a whole bunch of laws and values that are different from my own, but I'd probably just consider them to be that: different, and not necessarily inferior.

"But is the universe?"

Is it what?
A person? Possible but unllikely..
A relative? Suppose it could be. Uncle Cosmos has a certain cachet...
Moral. Yes. It expands equally in all directions, without fear or favour.

lol YadHoGrojaUL.

@ Putin

It would be hard to make a definitive list without knowledge of all the cultures of humanity, and even then it would look like a list of the blatently obvious. But the idea that there are no shared values at all strikes me as being hugely unlikely. If you could tell me of a corner of humanity that believes the slaughter of their children isn't at least morally suspect you may be able to convince me, however.

may I suggest that morality is the product of human reasoning

"nature", which is universal is amoral, that is it is neither moral, or immoral

for example, the "laws" of physics are universal, eg light will behave in the same way
in any part of the universe.

so I suspect that morality is a relative concept

@MajorMitchell
That seems contradictory right? If morality is a product of (human) reasoning, then how can the outcome change? If it does, then would that imply that somebody is reasoning incorrectly?

" If you could tell me of a corner of humanity that believes the slaughter of their children isn't at least morally suspect you may be able to convince me, however."

In order to answer to that I have to ask, again, are what you call core values timeless, or have they been built over time? At any rate there many countries that use children as soldiers in war even today, and the Bible is not squeamish about calling for the death of children, so if this is a core value where did it come from?

Unless I misread that statement and what you are saying is nobody advocates killing their own children, but even then, we have 'honor killings' and whatnot.

And just an FYI, I am not saying that killing children could be acceptable, only that it has taken humans collectively quite a long time to get to the point where it is largely deemed unacceptable except by some countries with severe developmental issues and young populations. The only thing unchanging about human beings is that is that its morality has consistently evolved and become more 'progressive', expanding to include concern for greater and greater categories of people and even non-human organisms.

lol Putin is arguing that relative morality is the only way morality can be. Irony, anyone?

No, not really. No more ironic than saying it is impossible for motion to completely cease.

@ dubmdell - Are you Alanis Morissette?

There's a certain disconnect. Let me look into a better word than "irony."

It's clearly relative in practice. Consider the pro-life vs. pro-choice argument. Both take a strong moral stance, one holds that all life is sacred, the other that a woman has the right to choose for herself what is best.

Both are logical, though competing, moral codes that would move society in a different direction. The difference, of course is that one of these doctrines also argues that morality is NOT relative, in fact that it is universal and not subject to change or choice. By that argument, any differing morality is "immoral."

I would speculate that most religious types believe in moral universality.

This is a great question, but unfortunately I think I am a poor responder for your survey, because my views on this topic are so complicated I'm not sure I can even post them here.

I will try to sum up the conclusion:

It is possible that there are universal morals, but no one probably knows exactly what they are if they exist. I do believe they exist, but I do not believe anyone has it exactly right. In the meantime we do our best through reasoning to reach quasi-universal standards to apply in our own moral pursuits, but all more edicts we write for ourselves must never be strict unbending rules, instead, guidelines prioritized in order of importance. After that you apply consequentialism to test your results and continue to modify.

An example of a nearly-infallible guideline would be the moral equality of all people.

So.... uh. Short answer? Universal, except maybe not. And even if there is universalism, there are important lessons to be learned from relativism, such as mutual respect and interpersonal harmony.

@Orthaic's original post: Go read Joseph Campbell's The Power of Myth. It explains a lot about different themes portrayed universally and since the dawn of man.

I'm with Putin, morality is completely socially constructed and thus relative. The temptation is, when considering a complex question like this, to say "oh there's a middle ground and its somewhere in there." The fallacy of the golden mean, it's a very tempting mistake to make and it seems intuitive which is why it seems strange to dubmdell that Putin would not take a middle of the road position.

Frankly in reading/listening to all the new theist/atheist debates, I think this moral absolutism/universalism question is where the secular humanist side hasn't come up with a muscular defense of relativism. Indeed many keep trying to assert a humanistic universalism, like Sam Harris, and it's just clunky and weird. One of the few who doesn't do this is Arif Ahmed.

It seems obvious to me that morality is dictated by whats best for the greatest gain of the species. The perception of what that is changes slowly, but if we can cite evidence that morality has changed over human history, does that not prove that morality is relative?

I think slavery is a pretty good first direction to go if you buy that argument. Nowhere in the {modern, first, civilized, choose your adjective} world is slavery still practiced under the law (queue the counterexample from Putin, I know you have one :P ), so doesn't that suggest moral relativity?