The ghost of morality in science

Simply put, morality is a ghost that doesn't like to be scienced, and science has been trying its best to make morality go away.

The basic point from the scientific viewpoint on morality is that it does not do anything. Morality by its definition resists scientific explanation. If there's an explanation to why we do things morally, it becomes imaginable that we do something else morally, or not, and either way, "morality" can be seen as a ghost that doesn't do anything.

Think of the marital morality of the praying mantis. Is it moral, or not, for the female mantis to eat the male mantis after marriage? It is in their nature, with a deep reason. Praying mantis evolved to have this kind of strange and cruel (viewed by a human) morality. If they evolved in some other way, they would have a different morality.

Since it's imaginable that praying mantis might have evolved to be a less bloody species with a less bloody marital morality, praying mantis moralists cannot defend their husband-killing morality as something necessary, or having universal value, but simply consider it as a part of their historical accident.

Think of the life-defending morality of... pretty much every creature on earth. Most creatures avoid getting killed. Is it because there's a moral law saying that they must act this way? No. It's a necessity of probability and evolution: all life must be self-preserving, otherwise it soon dissolves into un-life. Thus, a random sample among all creatures on earth must almost certainly be self-preserving.

Thus, under the gaze of science, morality either dissolves into a historical accident, or a scientific necessity.

To treat historical accidents with the amount of universal seriousness that we treat morality is absurd. To feel how absurd it is, imagine telling lions to stop infanticiding because it's "immoral", or penguins to stop raping (among other perversions) because it's "immoral".

To treat scientific necessities with the amount of universal seriousness is kind of pointless. To feel how pointless it is, imagine telling people to keep having children because it's "moral". Purely from evolution, people who are genetically disposed to be more fertile will become more prevalent, and thus keep human population high.

Thus, as more and more things fall under scientific explanation, the places where morality can be imagined to do anything shrinks. The end point, if it can be reached, is a full scientific description of the world where no morality exists.

Nobody is conscious and the world works beautifully.

Nobody acts morally and the world turns smoothly.