Argument from Conscience

[robvalue]

Slippery use of the word "moral". If an outside agency is just handing out instructions about what is and isn't moral, then the distinction is arbitrary from our point of view unless we have some way to evaluate the items on the lists. It may as well be "apple" actions and "banana" actions. The agent could reverse the lists, or mix them up, and they would still be "moral" and "immoral", because it says so. If we have no way to measure "morality" ourselves, then we can't possibly know what these lists mean and are just mindlessly taking orders.

Of course, the implication is that these lists also just happen to coincide with what are helpful and harmful actions from our point of view; in other words, the morality of consequences. That's the slippery part. There is no way to deduce such a correlation without analysing the lists ourselves and confirming the actions are actually in the right list. To just announce the lists must be right because the outside agent is always right because it says it's always right is circular reasoning. I don't give a fuck if outside agent X tells me that biting everyone I see in the street is "moral". Unless I can have it explained to me why I should do this, I'm not going to do it, because I know it is harmful.

"God" morality has it all backwards. It's simply observing the common ground we tend to find in our own morality, declaring this to be amazing and labelling it magic. It's not amazing at all, or even surprising, if you study evolution. It's no use announcing that there "must be a correct moral standard", because that doesn't mean there actually is one; and even if there was, it becomes "apples" and "oranges" again if we can't assess it ourselves. That's if we had had any way to find out what it is, which we don't. We have millions of people all with their own interpretation of "objective religious morality" and no way to show who is "right" without looking at the consequences of actions. Assessing consequences is going to vary from person to person. That is the reality, whether people accept it or not. Morality is not a simple matter of good and evil actions as religion would like to have us believe. We live forever in the grey area.