No matter how you slice it, Creationism always comes back to a magical God who knows everything, can do anything and has purposes for doing things that we don’t always understand. How can a Creationist ever be soundly refuted? If worse comes to worst, a Creationist can always say, “God foresaw everything, including this conflict between Bible-believers and evolutionists. He must have planted all the evidence for evolution as a means of testing us, to separate the truly faithful from those who rely too much on logic.” (The more I think about it, the more likely it seems to me that some people actually think around these lines.)

That’s why, I think, that it is often said that Creation science is an oxymoron.

We can revisit your own initial example as an illustration. We say ‘up’ and ‘down’ without explicitly referring to the Earth’s surface, although the Earth’s surface is indeed the standard against which we are implicitly measuring. But then go into space, and suddenly up and down are (more obviously) subjective. And yet, ‘up’ and ‘down’ still have meaning — not absolutely, perhaps, but they are still words that help us to communicate (in this case, to convey ideas about direction).

In other words, while there is no absolute ‘up’ or ‘down,’ we can still say ‘up’ and ‘down.’ You’re right, their everyday usage needs a standard outside of ourselves — but that standard is the Earth, not some abstract code that specifies ‘up’ and ‘down.’ In the same way, ethics do not need a heavenly lawgiver to specify ‘right’ and ‘wrong,’ just a standard outside of the individual.

Let me ask you: who is this ‘we’? Perhaps I feel that not head-hunting is morally wrong because it means I am treating my slain enemy with less respect that he deserves. And, as you hinted with your aside on religion, there are others who would indeed take moral issue with clothing — it is not ‘right’ for a woman to bare her torso, for example, because it incites lust.

If I had a lower opinion of your ability to reason I might go on to ask “So is it simply the majority that determine what is morally right and wrong, then?” because that seems to be the implication. But I know that’s not what you mean.

At the same time, though, if you can point to the cross-cultural similarities in ethical frameworks and say, “This is evidence for absolute morality,” then I can point to the cross-cultural differences and say, “This is evidence against absolute morality.” Your statement about defective morality is premised on the assumption that morality is absolute, which makes it a circular argument.

It’s important to remember that very few traits are determined by simple Mendelian genetics — for example, height in humans (and probably beak length in soapberry bugs) is influenced by a huge number of genes, each of which contributes a little to the overall phenotype. These are called quantitative traits, and the phenomenon of multiple influences is called polygenism. In other words, it is doubtful that the soapberry bug population’s allele set went from [A,a] to [a]. I see no loss of information. But no, I wouldn’t say there was a gain of information either.

‘Almost all organisms use DNA to encode their genetic information, which is transcribed into RNA and then translated by a single universal genetic code into protein sequence.’ (Evolution. 2007 by Nicholas H Barton et. al p.66)

If you read the Wikipedia article on ‘information’ you will come across the following

“Information is any type of pattern that influences the formation or transformation of other patterns. In this sense, there is no need for a conscious mind to perceive, much less appreciate, the pattern. Consider, for example, DNA. The sequence of nucleotides is a pattern that influences the formation and development of an organism without any need for a conscious mind.”

For further information on ‘information’ (no pun intended) I recommend ‘In the Beginning was Information’ by Dr. Werner Gitt (Director of the German Institute of Physics and Technology).

But let’s work with these concepts as presented (patterns in the DNA which represent protein sequences) and apply them to the Soapberry bug situation. It is not that the reduction in length per se of the beak is a loss of information. It is the reduction in range of sizes. Some allele (let’s call it ‘A’) was the DNA ‘pattern’ that gave rise to long beaks. Another allele (let’s call it ‘a’) gave rise to short beaks. In the pre-1926 population, since there were both long and short beaks present there were more patterns in existence (both ‘A’ and ‘a’) in the genome. So the set of patterns – the information – was {A,a}. After 1926 ‘A’ was removed (lost) so the genome is now left with only ‘a’ – leading to short beaks. In other words we start with a set of patterns {A,a} and end up with a smaller set of {a}. We end up with less ‘patterns’ than we started with.
Now evolution is supposed to be a process that over time makes more patterns in the DNA. This has to be the case since over time new functions, systems and processes have emerged (ex. sight, flight, fur, feathers, hearts and lungs were not there in the beginning but – supposedly – arose over time through a certain process.) In other words, when you say you ‘believe in evolution’ you are talking about a story of how long long ago (3.5 billion years) the first life arose. This life had no eyesight, flight etc. But over a long time, through this process the life form changed so that it eventually gained these new functional properties. And these functional properties are stored as information in the DNA. Thus the set of patterns in the DNA would be increasing. What I was saying is with the Soapberry bug is that this observed process of going from a set of DNA patterns of {A,a} to {a} cannot be this gain. The set of patterns is shrinking not growing. They are not observing the process that they think they are by citing this case. They get away with it by equivocating what they are talking about.

You might then look for societies that have died out due to everyone murdering each other. I don’t know if there are any, but I would also argue that the theory doesn’t need them. Because societies are made up of individuals, who are constantly making decisions and have the ability to change behaviours, societal evolution doesn’t need to happen across generations like organismal evolution. So, ethics can be established at the very start of a society’s life, as a bunch of people come together and quickly realize that they can each secure greater security for themselves by establishing rules that apply to all of them — even though the social contract might cost them some freedoms. Then it’s just a matter of conveying these rules to the children, and voila! You have your ethical system.

And then of course we have ethical values that differ from culture to culture, such as the status of women and what they are or are not allowed to do. Or how about sex selection? Polygamy? Racism? Societies can function with OR without these, which is why different cultures have different stances on such issues.

As for Russell, he probably takes offence because his reputation is damaged by the “slander” of those religious people. I guess I can’t really speak for him, but if it were me, I would be outraged not because they had trespassed against an absolute moral law, but because they had done harm to me. It just so happens that in so doing they violated some societally accepted tenets, which gives me the weapon I need to fight back (verbally).