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Why the need, and what does 'guarantees' mean?
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Well ... you could just roll the dice.
You need to be able to justify your choice of one set or principles over another. Acquinas (who is perhaps the most important source of natural ethics) saw this guarantee in god. Thus for him, humans had a natural propensity to marry and found a family. From this, he then argued to the best of sexual arrangements (monogamy, fidelity, and so on). His argument is, at each step, sustained by god. Later forms of natural law argument back away from god, but in doing so, they leave a gaping hole in the middle.
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Is it thought that creating this 'natural morality' would be a way of preventing others adopting the 'immoral' methods of evolutionary success?
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It is possibly a way of preventing the exercise of rival methods. It may be that it redefines what is meant by 'success'. The Church, for example, could not define success in genetic terms: clergy were, at an early state, forbidden to marry and have legitimate children. Many of the moral rules that they introduced - and in particular the extension of the concept of incest - were at least in part aimed at shoring up the political and economic control of the papacy over the warlords. Institutional reproduction was more important than genetic reproduction.
(Ernest Gellner argued that the modern state has made geldings of us all; the power of lineage had to be broken before more modern institutions could take charge of social life).
So to some extent I agree with you when you say that morality is always reducible to self-interest. However, things get tricky when you try to identify what self it is that is being referenced.