Objective morality as a proper basic belief

[Little Henry]

Empathy has nothing to do with right/wrong.

Liking/disliking something has nothing to do with it being right/wrong.

Yes it does, because at the end of the day it is just my subjective opinion.

Subjective means preference, desire, taste...Not right or wrong.

What part is god supposed to play in morality other than the idea making otherwise good people evil.

??????

Without the idea of god there would be two more landmarks in New York. There'd be fewer wars and less division across the world and Turkey would not be leaving the twenty first century to head back to the 14th.
.
Religion does affect morality, but not in the direction you think.

Dont let facts get in the way of a cool story.


http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rabbi-alan...00766.html

[Astonished]

Well, if we define morality as the consequences of actions in terms of harm to living beings, then he's just flat wrong. But if we define it as what makes a vindictive sky fairy want to drown us or burn us, he's right.

[Little Henry]

 

As soon as you label a moral act right or wrong, you are already admitting that OM exists. Right and wrong ONLY exist in relation to facts. They dont exist in relation to subjective items.

Seeing that I didn't use the words right or wrong, I'm not sure what it is you're responding to.  It doesn't appear to be a response to anything I've written.  Instead, it appears that you're just bleating out a prerehearsed talking point like some sort of idiotic robot.  If you're not going to engage the subject of the debate, then don't bother me with your preformed little spiel.  I've heard it before.  You ignored the point about word usage not reflecting underlying reality, and made an explicit appeal to the notion that word usage determines underlying reality.  What the fuck are you reading?  It certainly isn't me.  You have failed to engage on any point made in my paragraph.  I note that you have evaded my call to provide a working explanation of morality.  I can only take this to mean that you don't have one.  In which case all you can do is state your conclusions and not the reasons behind them.  That results in bare assertions and question begging.  It doesn't get any more ipse dixit than that.




No response given.  I take it your opinions about objective morality being a properly basic belief is just another one of your "talking points," a conclusion devoid of any real reasoning behind it.

Evolution does not make morality objective. It is just an adaptation acquired to enhance the survival of species...not objective.

So morality cannot come from evolution.  Morality also cannot come from God.  That's two places that morality cannot come from.  You were offered a chance to provide an explanation as to where morality did come from, but you deferred.  I guess you don't know.  Which makes the source of all these strident assertions and bold talking points something of a mystery.  

Morality can come from evolution, but that does not make it objective.

If OM exists, the ONLY God can be the foundation OMV's.

You say that evolved morals are "just" an adaptation, that they are not therefore objective.  I disagree.  It is an objective fact that normal humans have five fingers on each hand.  It is also an objective fact that certain features of our brains exist as part of normal human development.  Just as it is an objective fact that our minds construct three dimensional vision out of stereoscopic two dimensional images.  It is a fact that the mind constructs moral imperatives as a consequence of our evolutionary history.  They are an invariant part of our mental landscape.  That means they don't vary from person to person because of arbitrary or random conditions dependent on each mind.  That is a more useful definition of the split between objective and subjective than on which side of the blood brain barrier the conditions lie.  Morality is an objective fact of our mental existence because of our evolution.  Those animals which felt an imperative to survive, survived.  Those which didn't, didn't survive.  That is how an ought is derived from an is.  Likewise, imperatives useful to a social species are embedded in our mental landscape.  To be human is to believe that fairness matters; harm matters; authority and loyalty matter; as does purity/cleanliness.  These are facts of human existence.  That they are computed by the brain does not mean that they are not objective with respect to the individual mind.

All what you have done here is described what evolution has given us as an adaptation for survival benefits. In no way does it make it objective that humans or any species OUGHT to survive or flourish or be happy.
Is it wrong if the humans species dont survive? Of course not.
You are begging the question. You start off with as many atheists do with an assumption that humans ought to flourish, survive. But this is not a fact, it is just a preference, desire.


Perhaps, if I were to do your thinking for you, what you mean is that while evolution can evolve imperatives that have an objective character, these imperatives are not 'moral' in some well defined way.  That I think is begging the question, asserting that imperatives of a moral character can only come from outside the brain.  That is not a foregone conclusion.  As noted, the moral features of our mental landscape are invariant across the species.  Thus they form a viable candidate for a functionally objective foundation for morals.  Their character as 'moral' imperatives is predetermined by our DNA.  That character is as much a part of our biology as having five fingers is.  It is not a mere preference that you have five fingers, nor is it as a mere preference that your moral opinions make themselves felt as they do.

Consider this quote by Michael Ruse

"What I want to argue is that there are no foundations to normative ethics. If you think that to be true a claim has to refer to some particular thing or things, my claim is that in an important sense, normative ethics is false… the claims of normative ethics are like the rules of a game. In baseball, it is true that after three strikes the batter is out; but this claim does not have any reference or correspondence in absolute reality.” (Michael Ruse:1995:248-9)

If you deny OM exists, then your moral claims have no " reference or correspondence in absolute reality".

This is begging the question again.  I'll also note that I don't care much for analogies.  Analogies take points that are known to be in common between two things, and use that fact to infer that unknown points are thus likely also in common between the two.  This is a non sequitur.  While it is true that the rules in baseball are determined by individual minds, this analogy is silent on the question of whether or not they are dependent in the same way as the rules of morality.  As noted above, they are not, and so the analogy fails.  Even without the above information, it's inconclusive whether the two situations are in fact similar in the desired respect.  So I would suggest you drop the arguments from analogy and stick to providing actual reasoned responses.

It is not begging the question. He is taking the same path as you as describing morality coming from evolution. Thats all it is, an adaptation. It does not make it objective. 
You cannot derive an ought from an is.

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[edit]

"The position of the modern evolutionist . . . is that humans have an awareness of morality . . . because such an awareness is of biological worth. Morality is a biological adaptation no less than are hands and feet and teeth . . . . Considered as a rationally justifiable set of claims about an objective something, ethics is illusory. I appreciate that when somebody says 'Love they neighbor as thyself,' they think they are referring above and beyond themselves . . . . Nevertheless, . . . such reference is truly without foundation. Morality is just an aid to survival and reproduction, . . . and any deeper meaning is illusory . . . 

So really, claiming moral acts such as rape is just an illusion. They arent wrong.
[edit]

Is plagiarizing or quoting William Lane Craig without giving credit one of those "wrong" moral thingy's?

Actually its not William Lane Craig's quote. It is from Michael Ruse who is an atheist.

[Astonished]

Dude...if killing is objectively wrong, meaning always and in all cases across time regardless of who commits the act...and the person espousing this objective morality believes it comes from a deity that does exactly that thing so many times in so many ways...then doesn't that one singular example of that failure to be objective (BY DEFINITION) negate the entire idea of objective morality altogether? I really don't see how you can rationalize that. Otherwise it just becomes a 'do as I say, not as I do' appeal to authority and that's a recipe for immorality, not least because of how things being commanded need to be interpreted.

[Little Henry]

Little Henry Wrote: [url=https://atheistforums.org/post-1574217.html#pid1574217][/url][edit]

"The position of the modern evolutionist . . . is that humans have an awareness of morality . . . because such an awareness is of biological worth. Morality is a biological adaptation no less than are hands and feet and teeth . . . . Considered as a rationally justifiable set of claims about an objective something, ethics is illusory. I appreciate that when somebody says 'Love they neighbor as thyself,' they think they are referring above and beyond themselves . . . . Nevertheless, . . . such reference is truly without foundation. Morality is just an aid to survival and reproduction, . . . and any deeper meaning is illusory . . . 

So really, claiming moral acts such as rape is just an illusion. They arent wrong.

Congratulation your able to quote a Christian apologist . Which no more makes said assertions right .

Might help if you did a little research. It is from Michael Ruse......who is an ATHEIST.

[Little Henry]

I found it really funny that you all people attacked that quote about morality and evolution because it came from William Lane Craig.

It actually came from Michael Ruse, who is actually atheist.

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There no requirement for morality to have deeper meaning, or divine meaning..for it to have meaning.  

It matters to me, it matters to you, it matters to everyone.  It matters to the believers, even if there -is- no god.  It matters to people who do not even know that it matters, and to people and creatures who cannot possibly grasp what it is - because it determines how we treat them.  This is enough.  

I doubt your fact, there, at the bottom...though.   The bible and it's inconsistencies are an irrelevance to any actual objective morality, nor would an objective morality ensure that every moral judgement is cut and dry.  Moral disagreement would still exist, competing moral imperatives would still muddy the waters, sub optimal choice fields will still leave us with no moral course of action, and in some cases, a compelling interest to do the bad thing™will still seem to be sufficient to override moral concerns.  The moral competency of moral agents will still be variable, and the moral culpability of competent moral agents will not be uniform for all moral actions or outcomes.

In the absence of OMV's, that meaning is illusory.

[Astonished]

I found it really funny that you all people attacked that quote about morality and evolution because it came from William Lane Craig.

It actually came from Michael Ruse, who is actually atheist.

Uh...I didn't. I don't give a shit who said what. Is the content valid? That's what matters. Unlike the bible, which only gets people on its side because they think a specific source is responsible for it. Take that away and even you'd agree with us. But that makes the position dishonest and naive since that forces a believer to hold value in the identity of the author and not the content.

[Little Henry]

Empathy does not make a moral act right or wrong.

It may make it desirable, preferable, but not right or wrong.

And how exactly are you so sure of that?  What means have you used to determine that you have the correct objective morality?  Don't tell me you accepted it on faith?

How does a feeling or desire make something right or wrong?

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Well, if we define morality as the consequences of actions in terms of harm to living beings, then he's just flat wrong. But if we define it as what makes a vindictive sky fairy want to drown us or burn us, he's right.

So it is a fact that harming living beings is wrong?

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Dude...if killing is objectively wrong, meaning always and in all cases across time regardless of who commits the act...and the person espousing this objective morality believes it comes from a deity that does exactly that thing so many times in so many ways...then doesn't that one singular example of that failure to be objective (BY DEFINITION) negate the entire idea of objective morality altogether? I really don't see how you can rationalize that. Otherwise it just becomes a 'do as I say, not as I do' appeal to authority and that's a recipe for immorality, not least because of how things being commanded need to be interpreted.

I am not arguing for moral absolutes. Rather objective morality. Big difference.

IN terms of Christianity, if Christianity is true, God does not murder, he simply removes people from this temporal existence to another location.

God as the author of life has the right to redeem life as he sees fit. He has no obligation to you or anyone to prolong ones existence in this world.

[Astonished]

And how exactly are you so sure of that?  What means have you used to determine that you have the correct objective morality?  Don't tell me you accepted it on faith?

How does a feeling or desire make something right or wrong?

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Well, if we define morality as the consequences of actions in terms of harm to living beings, then he's just flat wrong. But if we define it as what makes a vindictive sky fairy want to drown us or burn us, he's right.

So it is a fact that harming living beings is wrong?

It is a fact that it is harmful and that humans value health and harmony over pain and misery (barring some massive defect). I already said there's no absolute or objective morality, whatever you may want to claim to the contrary, and I don't even have to go outside of your own philosophy to prove it. There's no authority saying what's 'right and wrong' but what's 'good and bad' in terms of health and its synonyms and antonyms. If there's another quantitative metric on which to base morality, I have never heard of it. The aforementioned vindictive invisible sky fairy commanding this and that while wantonly doing the exact same things and not seeing the hypocrisy there need not enter the equation.

Let me break it down to the level of the average person I expect to converse with on this subject. Someone walks up to me and says they want to rip my scrotum off and stuff it into my mouth. I say I would prefer they not do that. They ask me why. I tell them that it would hurt enormously, so much so that I might drop dead from the shock, or from blood loss. They ask me why they should not do that. I tell them that if they attempt to do this, I will violently defend myself. They ask me why I would do that. I tell them that if given the choice I would go to just about any length to prevent the experience of great pain and death for as long as possible. They ask why. I tell them that pain and suffering are the worst experiences a person like myself can go through and something in me, not simply the certain knowledge of how badly I would turn out under the circumstances they had previously threatened, but an instinctive sense of self-preservation would motivate me to act even if I was in a state of depression or something which would make me prefer death or contemplate suicide. They then ask why I did not threaten them with the same mutilation upon first meeting them. I say that because I understand how badly that would hurt me, my sense of empathy makes me opposed to the idea of causing another person such grief. They ask why that is of any significance, or if I would because it would benefit me. I say that again, my empathy will cause me to seriously consider the consequences of my actions and that bringing harm to anyone would need to seriously outweigh the negative effects, and not just personally, because I will experience guilt and that is harmful to me. I offer to agree not to do this to them if they will make the same agreement, in the interest of not having to sleep with one eye open, a knife in each hand, with locks and chains over wherever I decide to lay my head at night.

So there it is. It's based on what you value; living over dying, health and harmony over pain and suffering, the idea of live and let live rather than paranoia and mistrust, security over fear, fulfillment over apathy, intellect over idiocy, rationality and reason over superstition and delusion. It's really sad how frequently the religious will be convinced that they are on one side of each of these and yet they're so far on the other it's amazing to those on the outside looking in just how far down the rabbit hole they are.

[Cecelia]

Empathy does not make a moral act right or wrong.

It may make it desirable, preferable, but not right or wrong.

There is no such thing as a moral act.  Only what we perceive as moral. 

You cannot objectively define morals, you can only subjectively define them.  For example: Why is being gay wrong? 

"Because God Says so!" is a subjective answer.  Why is what god says so moral?  If God says "Murder your children" is it immoral to not murder your children?
"Because it's against nature!" is also a subjective answer.  Why is going against nature immoral?  If it's one's nature to kill, is it immoral NOT to kill then?
There's only subjective answers to the question.