My views on objective morality

[Whateverist]

 When believers come on here and strike a condescending tone I get royally pissed off.  But when the person who holds those beliefs is as sensitive not to be provocative as she is, I can't understand the aggressive impulse some showed in this thread.  Of course being human and over reacting is always possible and understandable.

I think the condescension that comes from certain theists rubs off. Makes you expect it every time you have a discussion with any theist. So, you will have one that actually does downplay the immorality of rape (after all, there are verses in the Bible in which God is encouraging it), but it doesn't mean that every believer is okay with rape or defends it as a moral action. 

The problem, to me, is not so much condoning rape, which LC is not doing. The problem is that the idea of 'free will' is really just a way to shift responsibility for the problem from the creator to the created. Being omni-everything includes being omni-responsible. Authority without responsibility is not authority at all. The 'fact' that humans have free will (and I've already pointed out a couple of flaws in that assertion) does not absolve higher authority from its responsibility.

Since I only look at the bible as allegory entirely divorced from the physical world I would explain the rationale of the God character thus:  

Humans as garden variety mammals lived in a state of grace of sorts.  (Empirically we would just call it a state of nature but, hey, this is an allegorical account; got to leave that shit outside.)  But then God, which isn't really an entity 'out there' in the world at all, decided to create man (where man = the conscious mind).  God sacrificed Himself, for He was the former jockey of our bodies, to give birth to the conscious mind.  With it, humans were able to consciously weight pros and cons and delay his reaction in the process.  This gave him an enormous advantage in the garden he shared with all the other animals.  With it he gained the capacity for moral knowledge - something God possessed only instinctively.  The catch was that while God was able to cede the steering wheel to the conscious mind.  He couldn't also transfer the instinctual wisdom of the ages, the wisdom to make a fulfilling life.  It wasn't God being stingy.  God just isn't omni-anything.  He did what he could.  He stepped aside.  But like it or not wisdom remained locked up inside himself.  So to this day man still must pray or reflect or whatever you want to call it in order to commune with God to share in His wisdom.

[Tiberius]

That's true, you didn't in fact call the actuality of her femininity into question at all

Bullshit he didn't. He used "she/he" and "her/him" instead of just "she" and "her" at least twice in his post. There's literally no reason to do that if you have accepted the notion that she is a woman. It was a subtle dick move, but a dick move nonetheless. He then tried to "shame" her defenders by claiming that the only reason they are kind to her is because she has "big jugs". That's not only a wildly inaccurate assertion, but it's disgustingly inappropriate.

[Thumpalumpacus]

I just horrified myself; I didn't realize how long this was, I'm sorry guys.  

I read every word, and it was well-put.

[Losty]

Meh...people aggressively defend CL on this forum all the time. Often when she doesn't appear to need to be defended and more often when she is actually wrong (IMO) and her opponents just happen to be being a little bit mean. And I do think some people do it just because she's sweet and pretty. I like CL and I don't think she needs an army of angry defenders every time someone is harsh with her when she puts herself into clearly hot topic debates. I find it annoying and hypocritical that a lot of these same people who defend her are mean to other forum members. CL is a big girl and if she doesn't want to debate these topics or if she doesn't want to debate them with people who aren't gentle enough with her then she doesn't have to.

[LadyForCamus]

I just horrified myself; I didn't realize how long this was, I'm sorry guys.  

I read every word, and it was well-put.

Oh, thank you Thump! Good to know it made sense to other people besides myself, lol. [emoji106]

[Thumpalumpacus]

Meh...people aggressively defend CL on this forum all the time. Often when she doesn't appear to need to be defended and more often when she is actually wrong (IMO) and her opponents just happen to be being a little bit mean. And I do think some people do it just because she's sweet and pretty. I like CL and I don't think she needs an army of angry defenders every time someone is harsh with her when she puts herself into clearly hot topic debates. I find it annoying and hypocritical that a lot of these same people who defend her are mean to other forum members. CL is a big girl and if she doesn't want to debate these topics or if she doesn't want to debate them with people who aren't gentle enough with her then she doesn't have to.

White-knighting happens for a lot of different reasons. I think CL's smart enough to not need a single defender, and I'm confident enough in her good nature that she will take tough questioning without getting butthurt about it. So far that's seemed to work; her and I get along without compromising our obviously different views on matters one bit.

That's all I really ask for from a person, online or in real-life -- be decent. I don't care what you believe, I'll be happy to discuss it if you can do so politely, and so long as those conditions are met you will receive all the courtesy you can ask for and then some.

And if she's a bad girl, I'll happily punish her for it.

[LadyForCamus]

That's all I really ask for from a person, online or in real-life -- be decent. I don't care what you believe, I'll be happy to discuss it if you can do so politely, and so long as those conditions are met you will receive all the courtesy you can ask for and then some.

Hmmm...the word "cuntmuffin" comes to mind. [emoji13] But in your defense, I'm fairly certain he deserved it.

[Whateverist]

But she doesn't need rescuing because she is a woman. She needs support because she is seriously out nunbered as a believer here. I came to her support because she asked me to. She was feeling overwhelmed by the negativity and didn't feel anything she could say while still be true to herself would help. I'm not the only one she asked, nor is she the only one I've ever supported when asked.

[Whateverist]

Oh shit, now Thumper has taken down his avatar! Was it something I said???

[Kiekeben]

There's an angle we haven't talked about yet.  If there is NO God, then what is the real difference between "subjective" and "objective"?  Wouldn't "subjective" morality be a product of determinist chemistry, brain function, DNA, environment, etc. anyway?  In other words, wouldn't the "subjective" sense of it be simply the experience of it, and the "objective" sense of it be the actual mechanism of moral thought and behavior?

It seems to me that the LACK of God makes an objective morality way more likely than the existence of one.  The only problem is that our objective morality, so far as we are concerend, might be completely arbitrary-seeming anyway.

Unfortunately, the words "objective" and "subjective" are used in more than one sense, and I'm not sure you mean the same thing by them here that CL (following the video by Peter Kreeft she referred to) was using. 

In these type of discussions, subjective usually seems to mean "dependent on the attitude or response someone has." So for instance, if I say "ice cream tastes good," my statement is subjective because what I am claiming depends on my response to the ice cream. It is not a statement about the ice cream's properties in themselves so much at it is an expression of my attitude toward those properties. A chemist could examine the make up of the ice cream thoroughly and never find the property of goodness in it. And if you think the ice cream tastes bad, there is nothing the chemist could investigate in the ice cream to determine which one of us is right and which one wrong - there is no fact about who's right and who's wrong.

Something is objective if it does not depend on someone's response to it. That the ice cream measures one pint, for example, is objective. So is the fact that I like the ice cream and you don't (that's an objective fact about us). 

I say morality is subjective because I think that claiming that something is morally good or bad, etc., depends on one's attitude towards that thing. It is not a claim about the properties of the thing itself, independent of what anyone feels about it. So, although I maintain that torturing someone for fun is always wrong, I do not mean by that that there is a fact about the action of torturing someone that makes it wrong - such that one could determine by examining the action itself that it really is wrong, and that anyone who disagrees is making a factual mistake. In saying it is always wrong, I am merely expressing my complete disapproval of it.

Note that saying morality is subjective does not mean one cannot claim that it is absolute in the above sense (where one can maintain that something is always wrong). Nor does it mean one does not take it seriously: I'm every bit as passionate about preventing such torture as someone who believes it is objectively wrong might be.

As to God, I don't see what he has to do with it either way. His existence wouldn't make morality objective, and his nonexistence isn't the reason it's subjective.