You gotta look at it objectively and subjectively.
From natures point of view morality doesn’t exist, it’s pretty obivous.
If a thousand children were killed by a bomber today, it wouldn’t affect nature at all. I use the word ‘nature’ because some of you think there exists some sort of ‘objective’ morality outside of the human mind.
Like another poster who said objective goodness must exist because the mother is abusing her child in the parking lot -, no it doesn’t, just because the crime is a vicious and ‘evil’ one doesn’t mean it’s inheritly ‘evil’ and immoral.
Now, if nothing is objectively wrong and immoral, how can we blame people for doing them since morality is only subjective anyway?
I say because deep down the murderers and molestors know damn well about our moral stance, and they’re probably working against it out of spite(long story cut short).
Now you might say, what if aliens come down and kill children thinking they’re doing us a favor, could we blame them since they’ve had no impact from our society at all?
Yes we can, the way the world works today, each society has to protect their own culture and rituals - even if those rituals involve killing children.
Because, nothing stops you from trying to change that other persons moral stance, let’s say they sacrifice kids in their own sick society, it’s still their own free will and it has no moral impact objectively.
Subjectively however, each society must protect their own interests, if another society or culture(or person from another culture) interfers with their ‘moral rituals’, they have the right to punish that person within their own set rules and standards.
BUT, and I stress this, I get that feeling inside when writing this too, “but killing children is such a horrible crime, it HAS to have some sort of objective moral value”, but sorry, it’s just your own empathy and the way your brain works that makes you rationalize that conclusion.
Nature is a cold and heartless place where no one has real value.
So basically(and yes, this post is way too long :P) I don’t know if morals have arosen because of empathy, genes, evolution or whatnot, but the point is it’s subjective and if we study humans and evolution and the human brain we might come to a logical scientific explanation to it(yes I don’t think this can be philosophized because we have way too little information to make a conclusion).