Absolutism is a social construct

I was sitting in Starbucks not long ago when 3 teenagers came over and asked if I would answer a couple of questions for an assignment they were working on.  They were teenagers from a local Christian school putting a survey together.  "Sure," I said.

Question 1: Do you believe there is an absolute right and wrong?
My answer: No.
Question  2: Do you believe there is such a thing as right and wrong at all?

The second one is a trick question.  Right and wrong seem to be related to what a society wants to have as their values.  Thus, the answer to the first question.  Given that reasoning, then the second question is only a reiteration of the first.  Of course, societies everywhere want to dictate what people can and cannot do as they live together in communities.  The oldest law code discovered, the Code of Hammarapi from Sumeria, governed people living about four millennia  ago.  Their sense of right and wrong matched what they expected about their culture.  I don't have to worry about most of that today.  For example, a law specifying damages for my bull goring my neighbor's child is not a concern I have - at all.  Rules about slavery and flooding my neighbor's fields fall in the same category.  Right for them, not a concern for me.

So, is there a right and wrong?  Only if I'm living around other people and we have to get along.  I understand that others see matters differently from me.  So, I allow for that and follow their rules in the interest of cooperation, but not in the interest of right or wrong.  Sometimes people live with things they don't fully agree with because the laws that exist may be the result of compromise.  It's not pure right and wrong, it's a compromise measure, so we live with it.

Explaining all that probably wouldn't make too much sense to teenagers at a religious school for an assignment that would lead them to tally percentages of people who believe or don't believe in right and wrong.  Life is not dualistic like that.  It has contingencies.  Right and wrong change over time and exist only when people want to live together cooperatively.  Otherwise, nature dictates necessity and that is not a matter of right and wrong, but of survival.  That's why I answered the second question with "probably not."  I just didn't want to explain to teenagers with preconceived notions derived from religion.