Then how do we answer the theist argument - If there are no objective or absolute moral standards then every individual's moral spectrum is equally valid, and therefore practices, actions and habits like murder, sex assault, violence, mutilation, torture...[the list goes on] should be perfectly acceptable and not censored in human societies.

[I'm sorry if the answer is obvious but I don't know how to refute this one]

Morality is subjective, but there are objective means of figuring out what we should do. Research that goes into whether executing most or all criminals would actually help society. Whether ownign other Humans is ok. We know for a fact that torturing people at Guantanamo didn't help, because that's what the results show.

Then there's always the question "Would it be ok if I did it to you?". If your answer is "No", then you need to explain why you think you should be allowed to do it to other people.

YES, it is subjective.

That's unfortunate, but not as unfortunate as declaring that an imaginary being created objective standards. Not all methods of determining what is moral are equal. Religion is generally not one of the better methods.

Better systems are things like asking, what would I want the standards to be if I had to determine them before I was born not knowing my sex, health, wealth, race, or abilities beforehand. Or, what moral system will maximize benefits for the most people?

The answer I've always adhered to is along the following lines:

ASSUME "no objective or absolute moral standards."

I propose the following:

1. Most individual people, in most situations, want to avoid pain, and being sad, and dying. We each want to be happy.
2. For whatever reason - evolutionary or otherwise - most people are made happy by other peoples' happiness, and made upset when other people are in pain, and sad, and dying.
3. We enforce the rules that, roughly, maximize happiness. We don't allow rape because a) an individual being raped is having a horrible experience, and b) we don't want people to have horrible experiences. On some internal empathetic level we want others to be happy.

Ultimately, there may not be any absolute morality, but each individual has an internal sense of what makes them feel "good" and what makes them feel "bad." Most of us, in the long run, feel good when other people are feeling good, and recognize that if we allow practice X that makes the individuals it affects feel really bad, then one day we might be subject to practice X and end up feeling really bad. So, we ban practice X, and get the double benefit of 1) making it less likely to happen to us, and 2) making it less likely to happen to others.

First lets establish what evolution involves.

1.Cooperation

2. Force

3. Compassion/empathy

4. Cruelty

Unfortunately evolution is not a cognitive being it is a process, and all those traits work and overlap and compete. The only thing that matters in evolution is reproduction.

Now that is not to say it is all doom and gloom to make an excuse to say "what does it matter".

We do as a species, especially with our more evolved cognition can make a choice as to what we employ to get to resources and reproduction.

Morality has to change and does change otherwise we would still own slaves.

So it isn't a matter "it has no meaning". We as humans have the ability to lean to either our kinder side or we can use force to get what we want. That is also the good side of evolution.

So morality to me is simply that which causes the least harm.

We can accept a lioness protecting her cubs. We can accept the affection of our pets. So just because we evolved as part of an uncaring process does not mean we have to be emotionless killers.

No there are no moral absolutes. But at the same time we as a species can seek the overlap, like not steeling form your neighbor, wanting love from your family and friends. That good side of our evolution is what we can choose to appeal to.

Quote: If there are no objective or absolute moral standards

Oddly, as many times as I have asked, I've never yet had a theist of any stripe give me a valid example of such.

(January 26, 2015 at 5:07 pm)Blackout Wrote: Then how do we answer the theist argument - If there are no objective or absolute moral standards then every individual's moral spectrum is equally valid, and therefore practices, actions and habits like murder, sex assault, violence, mutilation, torture...[the list goes on] should be perfectly acceptable and not censored in human societies.

[I'm sorry if the answer is obvious but I don't know how to refute this one]

I don't see how relativism prevents one from saying than one thing is more or less moral, compared to another. Relativism can't reasonably be defined as 'all moral practices and principles are equivalent'.

When theists argue for God's literal, objective existence, they appeal to logical axioms that are considered necessarily true due to their structure. A similar process of reasoning is utilized when formulating ethical statements to be considered true or false. An ethical maxim such as the Golden Rule or its reverse ("thou shalt not do unto others...") is derived from an axiom such as "X is bad" where "bad" is defined, perhaps with more difficulty, by physical interactions that inflict pain or displeasure, though these are also blanket terms; we often realize there may be certain forms of pain or situations of displeasure where their presence is tolerated or even considered "good" in relation to the ends they serve. There may be no objective definition of "bad" but there are objective facts about reality that contribute to pain and displeasure in a sense that careful reasoning can disintegrate into notions of "bad" or "evil" found agreeable by most individuals within and across different cultures.

(January 26, 2015 at 6:33 pm)Pickup_shonuff Wrote: When theists argue for God's literal, objective existence, they appeal to logical axioms that are considered necessarily true due to their structure. A similar process of reasoning is utilized when formulating ethical statements to be considered true or false. An ethical maxim such as the Golden Rule or its reverse ("thou shalt not do unto others...") is derived from an axiom such as "X is bad" where "bad" is defined, perhaps with more difficulty, by physical interactions that inflict pain or displeasure, though these are also blanket terms; we often realize there may be certain forms of pain or situations of displeasure where their presence is tolerated or even considered "good" in relation to the ends they serve. There may be no objective definition of "bad" but there are objective facts about reality that contribute to pain and displeasure in a sense that careful reasoning can disintegrate into notions of "bad" or "evil" found agreeable by most individuals within and across different cultures.

[bold mine]

Does this mean there is some objective or "not so subjective" morality in every human society? And isn't the emphasised measuring of "pain", "bad" and "evil" a subjective opinion as well? - We could argue all day on what can be considered evil or not, and I'm sure AF members would disagree on the validity of some conducts as immoral or not.

(January 26, 2015 at 5:07 pm)Blackout Wrote: Then how do we answer the theist argument - If there are no objective or absolute moral standards

By pointing out that this down here

Quote: then every individual's moral spectrum is equally valid, and therefore practices, actions and habits like murder, sex assault, violence, mutilation, torture...[the list goes on] should be perfectly acceptable and not censored in human societies.

-Doesn't follow from that up there...and that they don't agree with such a statement anyway.

Done and done.