Agnosticism IS the most dishonest position

[The Architect Of Fate]

Meanwhile, I find Peter Singer, a sophisticated moral philosopher, who thinks it's okay to rape disabled people.
https://www.currentaffairs.org/2017/04/n...led-people

So, I don't think it's Singer himself who is to blame for this bizarre idea, but rather it is that he staunchly advocates for utilitarianism. When most (reasonable) philosophers look at utilitarianism closely, they conclude that it is not a tenable position. But I also see where Singer is coming from, too: it's far more tenable than most other moral theories, and perhaps it has the fewest complications. Ethics is pretty messy when you get right down to it. At least someone is willing to stand knee deep in shit and try to argue for what may be right.

Well said

[R00tKiT]

No moral system is based on any religious premise.  Religious premises are added as relevant purported facts to moral systems open to all human beings regardless of their beliefs.  

For example, a person who believes that right and wrong are based on gods will and a person who believes that right and wrong are based on how happy something makes them.... are subjectivists. 

I don't think basing what's right and wrong on gods makes one a subjectivist. Scripture won't change you know, what Allah said in the Qur'an will never be altered. As of the "what if god said otherwise ?" Then yeah, the hell it'll be otherwise - except god will never say otherwise. If God's words are unchanging, that makes religious people morally absolutists.
The famous story of Abraham almost sacrificing Isaac is a good illustration of that, it's in the Hebrew Bible and also in the Qur'an. God literally asks Abraham to perform an unspeakably horrific act, Abraham obeyed God's command which in the end turned out to be a mere test of what comes first : our innate sense of morality or God's command?
The latter two don't actually diverge much : God didn't allow Abraham to perform the horrific act, but he still wanted him to put his word first. In the end, if God is the creator, he's the one who made us see these acts as horrific, so listening to this moral compass - that god put in us - or listening to god .. is the same thing.

Grounded in subjectivism, yes.  If god said otherwise, would it be otherwise?  As a person who refers to moral facts, I don't think so.  What is good is good no matter what anyone has to say on the matter, and what is wrong is wrong no matter what anyone has to say on the matter.  That's bound up in what it means for something to be a fact.

I don't think moral facts will get you very far on other issues. What distinguishes fornication/cheating from sex with a spouse? They refer to the same act, they're both consensual, but one is hugely immoral.

As for clear answers, there's a huge set of clear and simple answers to questions that are wholly and irreconcilably wrong.   Clarity is no certification of accuracy...and "god said so" makes nothing objectively right or wrong at all.  Islam is a moral nonstarter - from a realists perspective.  If you wanted to advocate for more reliable moral systems, then you'd need to start advocating for a moral system in the first place.  Following orders is not a moral system.  That you can't specify goodness outside of those orders very persuasively argues that you have no inherent moral sense, or compass, nor any moral agency whatsoever.  If it were true, ofc...which I strongly doubt to be the case.

I actually prefer to follow orders when it comes to skullfucking. Following orders is a very good moral system at least with the basic issues - rape, murder, fornication, etc. I prefer Peter Singer being told that he's not obeying god's law rather than respond with lengthy moral discussions of his utilitarian position. Singer is a good example where it's not worth it to think much about the intricacies of moral systems, we just know something is horribly wrong with his position. If you think Peter Singer shouldn't merely follow the order of not killing haemophiliac infants, you need to play in his territory, namely discussing and refuting utilitaniarism. And by doing so you're already giving his horribly wrong position some credit.
And religions of course go father than just following these primitive orders, they can build jurisdictions based on the holy texts to answer more complicated issues.

---

Why is it immoral to rape someone, Klorophyll?

Because it's harmful, I guess.

[The Grand Nudger]

Haven't seen you in awhile Vulcan. Caught ourselves another one, as you can see.

About standing knee deep in shit.......

That's a common state of affairs for human beings. Accordingly, rational moral systems address the inconvenient fact of exclusively suboptimal decision fields. In the context of happiness and necessity, for example...it's an open question as to whether killing a child is wrong. It's likely that singer would think that it was..in a vacuum. Life is not a vacuum. If you have to kill the one to make way for the other- and with total happiness as the "ultimate reference"...there is a real moral dilemma on our hands. Not just in the consideration of the act, but in the doing of it. Knowing (or believing, if we prefer) that what we are about to do is right even as every fiber in our body screams out that it's wrong.

The amount of moral courage it would take to kill a child so that some other child could be happy, in this hypothetical, isn't easily discounted.

---

I don't think basing what's right and wrong on gods makes one a subjectivist.

Basing a moral system on the specifics of -any- subject, including god, is the definition of moral subjectivism.  It doesn't matter what you think....because that's a fact...and I think we've already covered this.

Scripture won't change you know, what Allah said in the Qur'an will never be altered. As of the "what if god said otherwise ?" Then yeah, the hell it'll be otherwise - except god will never say otherwise. If God's words are unchanging, that makes religious people morally absolutists.
The famous story of Abraham almost sacrificing Isaac is a good illustration of that, it's in the Hebrew Bible and also in the Qur'an. God literally asks Abraham to perform an unspeakably horrific act, Abraham obeyed God's command which in the end turned out to be a mere test of what comes first : our innate sense of morality or God's command?
The latter two don't actually diverge much : God didn't allow Abraham to perform the horrific act, but he still wanted him to put his word first. In the end, if God is the creator, he's the one who made us see these acts as horrific, so listening to this moral compass - that god put in us - or listening to god .. is the same thing.

Scripture won't change?  Okay...but that's irrelevant.  I may always think that vanilla is better than chocolate, too.  Doesn't mean that it is.  

I see with my eyes, not a god...but lets run with it.  Lets imagine that it;s god "making us see".  Let's imagine that there's a switch in every human being that can utterly disable our moral agency.  If that switch is in the off position, and fucking allah comes around and flips it on, does that mean that a rape suddenly became bad?  Or was it already bad, and you just didn't see it?  I think that it would have to be the latter.  Nothing about the rape changed, the only thing that changed was whether or not I had eyes to see.

So..no, that's not the bad-making property of rape, for example.  Rapes are bad regardless of whether I can see them, and they would be bad even if I couldn't see them, or see them as bad.  Again, moral realist.  

Grounded in subjectivism, yes.  If god said otherwise, would it be otherwise?  As a person who refers to moral facts, I don't think so.  What is good is good no matter what anyone has to say on the matter, and what is wrong is wrong no matter what anyone has to say on the matter.  That's bound up in what it means for something to be a fact.

I don't think moral facts will get you very far on other issues. What distinguishes fornication/cheating from sex with a spouse? They refer to the same act, they're both consensual, but one is hugely immoral.

That's fine...that's fine.  You are certainly free to believe that moral facts won't get me far on issues, just as you are free to reject moral facts.  I think they will..I think that they're the only way to get anywhere in a moral system based on valid inferences.  

What facts, if any, would you refer to when determining whether (or why) infidelity is bad?

As for clear answers, there's a huge set of clear and simple answers to questions that are wholly and irreconcilably wrong.   Clarity is no certification of accuracy...and "god said so" makes nothing objectively right or wrong at all.  Islam is a moral nonstarter - from a realists perspective.  If you wanted to advocate for more reliable moral systems, then you'd need to start advocating for a moral system in the first place.  Following orders is not a moral system.  That you can't specify goodness outside of those orders very persuasively argues that you have no inherent moral sense, or compass, nor any moral agency whatsoever.  If it were true, ofc...which I strongly doubt to be the case.

I actually prefer to follow orders when it comes to skullfucking. Following orders is a very good moral system at least with the basic issues - rape, murder, fornication, etc. I prefer Peter Singer being told that he's not obeying god's law rather than respond with lengthy moral discussions of his utilitarian position. Singer is a good example where it's not worth it to think much about the intricacies of moral systems, we just know something is horribly wrong with his position. If you think Peter Singer shouldn't merely follow the order of not killing haemophiliac infants, you need to play in his territory, namely discussing and refuting utilitaniarism. And by doing so you're already giving his horribly wrong position some credit.
And religions of course go father than just following these primitive orders, they can build jurisdictions based on the holy texts to answer more complicated issues.

The question of your preferences is just max irony considering your moral subjectivism.  I don't care which you prefer, and didn't ask.  At issue was whether or not order following was a moral system.  It isn't.  You might prefer it, but that won't make it a moral system.

If anything were wrong in singer's utilitarian formulation, it's probably the circumstance. As in it would be an awfully shitty world we lived in if the conditions of his argument were met. Where there's a necessity to do bad, and that specific bad, so that a greater good might follow. Thankfully, there's still enough room on this rock for it to be a hypothetical...though starving people make these sorts of calculations with some regularity.

Because it's harmful, I guess.

Attaboy.....and if you know that, you don't need to know whether a god exists, let alone whether a god likes it or ordered it. It's wrong for reasons that are still true regardless of any god existing or having any opinion of the matter.

[LadyForCamus]

No moral system is based on any religious premise.  Religious premises are added as relevant purported facts to moral systems open to all human beings regardless of their beliefs.  

For example, a person who believes that right and wrong are based on gods will and a person who believes that right and wrong are based on how happy something makes them.... are subjectivists. 

I don't think basing what's right and wrong on gods makes one a subjectivist. Scripture won't change you know, what Allah said in the Qur'an will never be altered. As of the "what if god said otherwise ?" Then yeah, the hell it'll be otherwise - except god will never say otherwise. If God's words are unchanging, that makes religious people morally absolutists.
The famous story of Abraham almost sacrificing Isaac is a good illustration of that, it's in the Hebrew Bible and also in the Qur'an. God literally asks Abraham to perform an unspeakably horrific act, Abraham obeyed God's command which in the end turned out to be a mere test of what comes first : our innate sense of morality or God's command?
The latter two don't actually diverge much : God didn't allow Abraham to perform the horrific act, but he still wanted him to put his word first. In the end, if God is the creator, he's the one who made us see these acts as horrific, so listening to this moral compass - that god put in us - or listening to god .. is the same thing.

Grounded in subjectivism, yes.  If god said otherwise, would it be otherwise?  As a person who refers to moral facts, I don't think so.  What is good is good no matter what anyone has to say on the matter, and what is wrong is wrong no matter what anyone has to say on the matter.  That's bound up in what it means for something to be a fact.

I don't think moral facts will get you very far on other issues. What distinguishes fornication/cheating from sex with a spouse? They refer to the same act, they're both consensual, but one is hugely immoral.

As for clear answers, there's a huge set of clear and simple answers to questions that are wholly and irreconcilably wrong.   Clarity is no certification of accuracy...and "god said so" makes nothing objectively right or wrong at all.  Islam is a moral nonstarter - from a realists perspective.  If you wanted to advocate for more reliable moral systems, then you'd need to start advocating for a moral system in the first place.  Following orders is not a moral system.  That you can't specify goodness outside of those orders very persuasively argues that you have no inherent moral sense, or compass, nor any moral agency whatsoever.  If it were true, ofc...which I strongly doubt to be the case.

I actually prefer to follow orders when it comes to skullfucking. Following orders is a very good moral system at least with the basic issues - rape, murder, fornication, etc. I prefer Peter Singer being told that he's not obeying god's law rather than respond with lengthy moral discussions of his utilitarian position. Singer is a good example where it's not worth it to think much about the intricacies of moral systems, we just know something is horribly wrong with his position. If you think Peter Singer shouldn't merely follow the order of not killing haemophiliac infants, you need to play in his territory, namely discussing and refuting utilitaniarism. And by doing so you're already giving his horribly wrong position some credit.
And religions of course go father than just following these primitive orders, they can build jurisdictions based on the holy texts to answer more complicated issues.

---

Why is it immoral to rape someone, Klorophyll?

Because it's harmful, I guess.

You needed a god for that?

[The Grand Nudger]

Well, there's the rub, he didn't. He knew that, and has said as much before. In grasping for whatever might be left of his objection he then contended that atheists were (somehow) wrong. Not sure how that's going to square now that he's concurred with "the atheists" about why rape is bad.

In a sane world, every bit of his confusion about atheism and morality and gods should be cleared up...but I suspect he'll see things differently, lol.

[vulcanlogician]

I don't think moral facts will get you very far on other issues. What distinguishes fornication/cheating from sex with a spouse? They refer to the same act, they're both consensual, but one is hugely immoral.

Does Islam teach the same distinction between consensual/immoral that you are advancing right now? It doesn't.

Consider the case of Nuran Halitogullari, a 14-year-old girl from Istanbul who was abducted on her way from the supermarket. She was raped over the course of six days and then rescued by police. After being reunited with her family, her father decided that she had dishonored the family by having been raped. He then exercised what he regarded as his rightful authority. As he told a newspaper reporter, "I decided to kill her because our honor was dirtied. I didn't listen to her pleas; I wrapped the wire around her neck and pulled at it until she died." Such "honor killings" usually go unpunished. That's because the cultures in which they are committed regard them as justified.

But I do not regard such killings as justified. They are wrong. But show me a piece of scripture from the Quran that expressly forbids such a murder. There isn't one. Sadly so, because Nuran's life ought to have been spared. If you get your sense of justice from the Quran, you are morally BLIND. What distinguishes right from wrong is not scripture, but rather, our own good senses. And whatever scripture that teaches that we rely on it, RATHER than our own good senses is reprehensible. Your holy book is the cause of far more wrong than right. There is some valuable and very true stuff in your holy book, sure. But not enough to account for all the evil it contains. But it not only contains evil... it makes possible evil that would have otherwise never have existed were it not for such-and-such commandment in your holy book. No theist or scriptural literalist has a right to criticize an atheist's sense of morality. Period.

[R00tKiT]

Basing a moral system on the specifics of -any- subject, including god, is the definition of moral subjectivism.  It doesn't matter what you think....because that's a fact...and I think we've already covered this.

I don't know where you got this definition from. You have divine command theory in the literature, you know. This theory is considered absolutist, given that, as I said before, scripture is unchanging and eternal.

Scripture won't change?  Okay...but that's irrelevant.  I may always think that vanilla is better than chocolate, too.  Doesn't mean that it is.  

I see with my eyes, not a god...but lets run with it.  Lets imagine that it;s god "making us see".  Let's imagine that there's a switch in every human being that can utterly disable our moral agency.  If that switch is in the off position, and fucking allah comes around and flips it on, does that mean that a rape suddenly became bad?  Or was it already bad, and you just didn't see it?  I think that it would have to be the latter.  Nothing about the rape changed, the only thing that changed was whether or not I had eyes to see.

So..no, that's not the bad-making property of rape, for example.  Rapes are bad regardless of whether I can see them, and they would be bad even if I couldn't see them, or see them as bad.  Again, moral realist. 

The matter of god suddenly intervening and changing rape from bad to good just doesn't happen, think of that as an empirical fact of some type. It's just like saying why should one trust gravity when in any second an alien supernatural entity can switch the gravity button off. Or why should I cross the road if traffic lights are green/no traffic considering the possibility of an invisible bus accelerating at 200 mph while I'm crossing. These are all empty hypothetical scenarios, what we really have is an unchanging scripture that instructs one not to rape, how hard can that be?

I agree there might be a "bad-making property" about rape that makes it inherently repugnant/immoral, but it's a very basic example. And there philosophical positions that rationalize that too, such as the utilitarian one I just mentioned. If moral realism is solid regarding rape, I don't see how it would work in less obvious cases.

That's fine...that's fine.  You are certainly free to believe that moral facts won't get me far on issues, just as you are free to reject moral facts.  I think they will..I think that they're the only way to get anywhere in a moral system based on valid inferences.  

I already said that these so called moral facts, aside from obvious issues such as rape, do beg the question. Why would anything have an objective moral tag? Even in the case of rape, I would say that, with stone cold rigor, it would be hard to squeeze a bad making property out of the act, if the rapist sadly silences the victim and prevents any manifestation of pain/discomfort, or even make the experience consensual/pleasant with some doses of drugs, nothing at the scene tells there is something bad happening.

What facts, if any, would you refer to when determining whether (or why) infidelity is bad?

It's bad because it's .. infidel I think? Regarding facts, I wouldn't go farther than the husband's reaction when he catches his partner in the act, and how simple his moral system suddenly becomes when witnessing the tragedy unfold.

The question of your preferences is just max irony considering your moral subjectivism.  I don't care which you prefer, and didn't ask.  At issue was whether or not order following was a moral system.  It isn't.  You might prefer it, but that won't make it a moral system.

If anything were wrong in singer's utilitarian formulation, it's probably the circumstance.  As in it would be an awfully shitty world we lived in if the conditions of his argument were met.  Where there's a necessity to do bad, and that specific bad, so that a greater good might follow.  Thankfully, there's still enough room on this rock for it to be a hypothetical...though starving people make these sorts of calculations with some regularity.

Springer's conditions might actually be met in the future, namely regarding the issue of eugenics. If the world population really reaches unbearable levels, we might see utilitarian policies enforced to reduce the useless portions of populations, the ultimate goal being the greater good.

So if one finds the slightest trouble dismissing Springer's arguments in his moral system, he might as well just toss the whole system.

Following orders may not be a sound moral system per se, but I think it's a starting point regarding the really obvious issues : unlawful killing, rape, etc. I don't think ruling out unlawful killing should be based on any moral system that could be brought in question, the don't kill imperative is more than enough, at it squares well with our inherent moral sense.

You needed a god for that?

I didn't, I never claimed I did. And if you think that invalidates my position, you didn't understand it.

---

Does Islam teach the same distinction between consensual/immoral that you are advancing right now? It doesn't.

It does, pal. Read the first verses of An-Nur chapter. Any sexual act outside of marriage is condemned obviously, and that's true with christianity/judaism too I think.

---

But I do not regard such killings as justified. They are wrong. But show me a piece of scripture from the Quran that expressly forbids such a murder. There isn't one. Sadly so,

You could've just asked instead of asserting :
[81:8/81:9] And when the girl [who was] buried alive is asked. For what sin she was killed

Burying girls alive was the traditional way of conducting honor killings back then, it's something well-known Islam forbade this stuff in its earliest days.

[The Grand Nudger]

I don't know where you got this definition from. You have divine command theory in the literature, you know. This theory is considered absolutist, given that, as I said before, scripture is unchanging and eternal.

Yes, ofc divine command theory exists.  It's an explicitly subjectivist moral theory.  That right and wrong are determined by some subjects edicts.  That the divine king never changes his mind doesn't change what that moral system is. Unchanging and eternally subjective.

The matter of god suddenly intervening and changing rape from bad to good just doesn't happen, think of that as an empirical fact of some type. It's just like saying why should one trust gravity when in any second an alien supernatural entity can switch the gravity button off. Or why should I cross the road if traffic lights are green/no traffic considering the possibility of an invisible bus accelerating at 200 mph while I'm crossing. These are all empty hypothetical scenarios, what we really have is an unchanging scripture that instructs one not to rape, how hard can that be?

If something is wrong and unchanging, it will always be wrong.  

I agree there might be a "bad-making property" about rape that makes it inherently repugnant/immoral, but it's a very basic example. And there philosophical positions that rationalize that too, such as the utilitarian one I just mentioned. If moral realism is solid regarding rape, I don't see how it would work in less obvious cases.

The same as any other rational statement works in any case.  

I already said that these so called moral facts, aside from obvious issues such as rape, do beg the question. Why would anything have an objective moral tag? Even in the case of rape, I would say that, with stone cold rigor, it would be hard to squeeze a bad making property out of the act, if the rapist sadly silences the victim and prevents any manifestation of pain/discomfort, or even make the experience consensual/pleasant with some doses of drugs, nothing at the scene tells there is something bad happening.

Yes, I know you said that.  You can reject moral facts if you like - I'm not trying to convince you that they exist.  If you do reject moral facts, though, you can't avail yourself of them.  Things have objective tags™ to differentiate them from the subjective.  Both realism and subjectivism are cognitivist theories...they differ only in what set of true propositions are morally relevant.

Do you think that it might be the case that you're hard pressed to state any bad-making property of rape on account of your own ignorance?  Ignorance about rape or about bad-making properties?  Or is this just preening..and in point of actual fact, in mere reality, it;s not hard for you to think of bad-making properties to rape at all?  

It's bad because it's .. infidel I think? Regarding facts, I wouldn't go farther than the husband's reaction when he catches his partner in the act, and how simple his moral system suddenly becomes when witnessing the tragedy unfold.

This only poses a restatement of the question.  If fidelity is implicitly good and infidelity..implicitly bad...why is fidelity good?  Again, any fact that you might refer to? Above, you refer to consequences surrounding the partners mental state.  Infidelity is bad because it hurts people.  Harm, here again.  If infidelity didn't harm the partner...say in the case of a healthy open marriage - then it would lack that bad-making property.  It wouldn't be wrong. Some silly god insisting that it were wrong in the absence of any bad-making property would simply be mistaken.

This is all massively hilarious in the context of your religion, with it's one sided plural marriage and sex slaves. Relationships where the bad-making properties do exist are seen to be good and right and perhaps even sanctified - all the way up to fucking a child bride. Meanwhile, relationships without the bad-making properties are dogmatically insisted to be wrong. Does god have this wrong, or is it just the silly people that wrote your silly magic book who got that wrong, and god is gritting his teeth waiting for you all to die and end up in hell?

It's worth thinking about if you have any concern for your soul.

Springer's conditions might actually be met in the future, namely regarding the issue of eugenics. If the world population really reaches unbearable levels, we might see utilitarian policies enforced to reduce the useless portions of populations, the ultimate goal being the greater good.

We may.  

So if one finds the slightest trouble dismissing Springer's arguments in his moral system, he might as well just toss the whole system.

Why?  The accuracy of a moral proposition isn't determined by how much a person wants to avoid the consequences of that proposition.  This is a basic logical fallacy.  Things are not made false by how much we want to avoid their truth.  Your silly god is purported to have killed quite a few people, presumably some were babies, for the greater good. I'm not exactly itching to go all sophie's choice on the world..but we may one day find ourselves facing this moral dilemma, as we both agree above. Here again I want to restate that some people already do (and countless more who already have and are long since dead).

In that event, and simply assuming that the argument is solid for sake of conversation..I'd invoke a fundamental and inalienable right of all moral agents. The ability to be wrong, to fail. To refuse to do the right thing, by that metric. This is exactly what your silly god is purported to do when he shows human beings mercy rather than justice. Do we really disagree here? It's possible that there are good and right™ things to do that you and I could never do..right? Your silly god told abraham to kill his son...for the sake of argument, assume that killing isaac would have been the right thing to do, since gods say so is the good-making property. I still couldn't do it. I would refuse to kill my son no matter who asked. I would refuse to kill my son even if he were some cartoon villain literally worthy of death. It will always be a bad bet..to bet on me..killing my son. Are there things you wouldn;t do even if god told you not to..or does this order following mentality of yours have no floor?

Are you one bad plate of shrimp away from skullfucking your neighbors' kids and imagining that you'd done a good thing?

Following orders may not be a sound moral system per se, but I think it's a starting point regarding the really obvious issues : unlawful killing, rape, etc. I don't think ruling out unlawful killing should be based on any moral system that could be brought in question, the don't kill imperative is more than enough, at it squares well with our inherent moral sense.

It's not that it's not a sound moral system, it's not a moral system at all.  Following orders..is just following orders.  Those orders may be moral, or they may be immoral.  You keep talking about an innate moral sense....but if you had one, you wouldn't need orders as a starting point.

I don't need them at all.

[The Architect Of Fate]

I don't know where you got this definition from. You have divine command theory in the literature, you know. This theory is considered absolutist, given that, as I said before, scripture is unchanging and eternal.

Yes, ofc divine command theory exists.  It's an explicitly subjectivist moral theory.  That right and wrong are determined by some subjects edicts.  

The matter of god suddenly intervening and changing rape from bad to good just doesn't happen, think of that as an empirical fact of some type. It's just like saying why should one trust gravity when in any second an alien supernatural entity can switch the gravity button off. Or why should I cross the road if traffic lights are green/no traffic considering the possibility of an invisible bus accelerating at 200 mph while I'm crossing. These are all empty hypothetical scenarios, what we really have is an unchanging scripture that instructs one not to rape, how hard can that be?

If something is wrong and unchanging, it will always be wrong.  

I agree there might be a "bad-making property" about rape that makes it inherently repugnant/immoral, but it's a very basic example. And there philosophical positions that rationalize that too, such as the utilitarian one I just mentioned. If moral realism is solid regarding rape, I don't see how it would work in less obvious cases.

The same as any other rational statement works in any case.  

I already said that these so called moral facts, aside from obvious issues such as rape, do beg the question. Why would anything have an objective moral tag? Even in the case of rape, I would say that, with stone cold rigor, it would be hard to squeeze a bad making property out of the act, if the rapist sadly silences the victim and prevents any manifestation of pain/discomfort, or even make the experience consensual/pleasant with some doses of drugs, nothing at the scene tells there is something bad happening.

Yes, I know you said that.  You can reject moral facts if you like - I'm not trying to convince you that they exist.  If you do reject moral facts, though, you can't avail yourself of them.  Things have objective tags™ to differentiate them from the subjective.  Both realism and subjectivism are cognitivist theories...they differ only in what set of true propositions are morally relevant.  

Do you think that it might be the case that you're hard pressed to state any bad-making property of rape on account of your own ignorance?  Ignorance about rape or about bad-making properties?  Or is this just preening..and in point of actual fact, in mere reality, it;s not hard for you to think of bad-making properties to rape at all?  

It's bad because it's .. infidel I think? Regarding facts, I wouldn't go farther than the husband's reaction when he catches his partner in the act, and how simple his moral system suddenly becomes when witnessing the tragedy unfold.

This only poses a restatement of the question.  If fidelity is implicitly good and infidelity..implicitly bad...why is fidelity good?  Again, any fact that you might refer to? Above, you refer to consequences surrounding the partners mental state.  Infidelity is bad because it hurts people.  Harm, here again.  If infidelity didn't harm the partner...say in the case of a healthy open marriage - then it would lack that bad-making property.  It wouldn't be wrong.

Springer's conditions might actually be met in the future, namely regarding the issue of eugenics. If the world population really reaches unbearable levels, we might see utilitarian policies enforced to reduce the useless portions of populations, the ultimate goal being the greater good.

We may.  

So if one finds the slightest trouble dismissing Springer's arguments in his moral system, he might as well just toss the whole system.

Why?  The accuracy of a moral proposition isn't determined by how much a person wants to avoid the consequences of that proposition.  This is a basic logical fallacy.  Things are not made false by how much we want to avoid their truth.  I'm not exactly itching to go all sophie's choice on the world..but we may one day find ourselves facing this moral dilemma, as we both agree above.  Here again I want to restate that some people already do (and countless more who already have and are long since dead).

In that event, and simply assuming that the argument is solid for sake of conversation..I'd invoke a fundamental and inalienable right of all moral agents.  The ability to be wrong, to fail.  To refuse to do the right thing, by that metric.  Do we really disagree here?  It's possible that there are good and right™ things to do that you and I could never do..right?  Your silly god told abraham to kill his son...for the sake of argument, assume that killing isaac would have been the right thing to do, since gods say so is the good-making property.  I still couldn't do it.  I would refuse to kill my son no matter who asked.  I would refuse to kill my son even if he were some cartoon villain literally worthy of death.  It will always be a bad bet..to bet on me..killing my son.  Are there things you wouldn;t do even if god told you not to..or does this order following mentality of yours have no floor?

Are you one bad plate of shrimp away from skullfucking your neighbors' kids and imagining that you'd done a good thing?

Following orders may not be a sound moral system per se, but I think it's a starting point regarding the really obvious issues : unlawful killing, rape, etc. I don't think ruling out unlawful killing should be based on any moral system that could be brought in question, the don't kill imperative is more than enough, at it squares well with our inherent moral sense.

It's not that it's not a sound moral system, it's not a moral system at all.  Following orders..is just following orders.  Those orders may be moral, or they may be immoral.  You keep talking about an innate moral sense....but if you had one, you wouldn't need orders as a starting point.

I don't need them at all.

Obedience isn't morality

[The Grand Nudger]

OFC, but even if this nutbar disagrees and says it is...again..the conversation should at least serve as an explanation for something he imagined to be impossible when he joined. We get religious assholes all the time who bluster their way through a bunch of garbage about how if god didn't exist, there would be no objective morality..but it's clear in their unfamiliarity with what that term even means that they need to seek out atheists to find it.