Ah, Platonists, always putting ideas before existence instead of the other way around.
And all because the Greeks adopted a script without also adopting the sounds' meaning, creating a frame of reference that was removed from reality. But... that's a different story.
What fresh silliness is this? Funny that you would talk of being 'removed from reality'...
The West Semitic Abjads that became the Greek Alphabet had already made the leap from representation of object to pure abstract of sound. The very fact of them being abjads mean that they no longer represented the word themselves. True they started out as A is for Apple, B is for Bear (of course not representing vowels though), but this direct connection between a word and its initial sound had long ago been lost. So the Greeks were already adopting an abstract system to begin with.
I find it odd, and frankly a bit insulting to Middle Eastern civilisations, that you think an abstract frame of reference 'divorced from reality' had to be created. Have you ever read the Epic of Gilgamesh? Or read up on near eastern mythology or Astrology? The Egyptians had major gods that essentially embodied concepts like Ma'at for truth, or broad Indo-European ideas like Rta for right conduct.
Anyway, what do you think modern theoretical physics is doing other than putting abstract models ahead of reality? Essentially we are taught none of our observations are completely reliable, since they change depending on our speed and so forth, or that the act of observation alters the observed state. They try and base it on empiric observation, but fashion a reality to which the observations are asked conform to; an idealised state is essentially assumed which our observations are taken to imperfectly reflect - as in the Perfect Gas Laws or concepts of pressure. Does this not sound awfully familiar?
See, value judgments aren't rocket science, nor do they depend upon metaphysical authorities.
Nature knows many different survival strategies and forms of "fitness", admittedly, and even anti-social behaviour has roots in natural selection (such as the mimikry of a sociopath, or mass rape in war zones).
But if a species evolves to survive by means of cooperation and bonding, there's a limited number of configurations that will be successful, and these remain consistent even in non-human species.
What makes homo sapiens so interesting is our capacity to expand upon the humble social impulses we inherit: whereas nature supplies us with social responses that simultaneously trigger displays of intense solidarity AND lynch mobs (both based on feelings of reciprocity), recorded history shows that we *are* gradually improving our social interactions, if at a snail's pace. The death penalty is, for the most part, a thing of the past. Torture is no longer regarded as a legitimate means of punishment. Some countries even realize that the very concept of justice as revenge only creates more dangerous monsters, and gradually starts to seek to re-socialize rather than de-humanize inmates.
Marriages are no longer ownership contracts placing women in utter socio-economic dependency. Monarchies are no longer the default form of rule.
As I told you before, to measure one thing against another as an improvement, requires a third thing against which both must be measured that one conforms to more closely than the other.
In morality, this must be an absolute moral state or at least the concept that such a thing exists. If morality is determined by convention, it is merely my preference vs yours. How are we "improving social interactions"? If the Third Reich ruled the world, would it not have been improvement then to euthanise the genetically defective? That exact same argument could then also have been made, and probably fits mechanism of natural selection much better. Be careful of the company you keep.
No, there is no Progess if nothing to progress to. There would only be what is, and whatever way that developed would then be perceived as 'progress' retrospectively. Morality conceived along those lines is no morality at all, merely the facetious and Jingoistic acceptance of whatever you agree with as if so. This is how we breed more clever devils, or create Men without Chests in Lewis' parlance.
] And for an interesting, but decidedly non-Christian, yet Jewish legal evaluation of this, you might want to read the treatment of this account presented by Alan M. Dershowitz in his book, The Genesis of Justice. I'm sure that one who is as academically and as legally minded/trained as yourself would appreciate Dershowitz' comments (although I'm not saying that his are the only ones we might consider--no, but I'd consider his first, in this case.
