Evil

[TheRocketSurgeon]

To the last question: if I think something is moral, given the beliefs I have, then it is moral to me. Simple as that, it is a judgement call. If I knew my intent was to do the "right thing" at the time, then it was a moral action. I may look back at previous actions, when my ideas about what is right and wrong has changed, and think those actions would be immoral if I did them now. It's about intent. Can we agree it's about intent? If you don't think morality is about intent, we really are discussing entirely different subjects and it's not surprising we don't agree.

This is why I'm so concerned with definitions. If I find out now that you don't think morality is about intent, this whole discussion has been us talking past each other and will continue to be.

Major kudos for bringing up this point. I think one of the inherent problems with even trying to discuss "objective morality" with Theists, especially the "revealed religion" kind, is that often we are talking about completely different things. We think of it in terms of intent: "did I do my best to behave in the manner that I believe is the right thing to do, trying to do no harm while trying to accomplish things I wish, even if I may need to learn more about how to accomplish that goal". They think of it in terms of sacred rules and conformity to those rules; "we know the One Right Way to Live™, and morality is measured by the degree of adherence to the sacred code".

In other words, even though they call operation from a Godly Rulebook "objective" morality, it means nothing to them (at least, not in the sense that we mean the term) when we point out that it is in fact subjective and has even mutated with time, because they're using a different set of premises than we are.

If you think I'm insulting the latter group by calling them conformists, you're wrong. Even if you accept that humans, not gods, define that code, it is nevertheless an agreed-upon set of rules that at least attempt to provide a set of "right behaviors" for that society, and by which everyone can measure their degree of moral behavior simply by "sticking to the rules". When I was at USAFA, we had the famous Honor Code, that many know are central to life as a cadet: "I will not lie, steal, or cheat, nor tolerate among us anyone who does." What most people do not know is that there is a second line to the Honor Code, which says, "Furthermore, I resolve to do my duty and to live honorably."

When we learned that, we were told by the officer who accepted our oath that, if we simply follow the second part, we needed not worry about the first. Much of social morality, I find, comes down to a sense of what is honorable. If you believe strongly in a sense of the reverential/sacred and value conformity/stability and a sense of heirarchy or "place" in your social circles, then you are what I think of as "conservative-minded" (not necessarily in the political sense, but the concepts do dovetail)... whereas if you are the type who prefers to question everything, value progress and have a desire to shape things in a new way in an attempt to make it better (at the risk of making it worse), and place individuality and individual happiness over the cohesion of the whole, then you are what I think of as a "liberal-minded" type.

From that, it follows that the idea of "what is Honorable" will differ, between the two types of mindset, and it is as incomprehensible to the former type that the latter type says "How dare you tell women they should be submissive to their husbands" (because the woman who defines her own life independently of men challenges their comfortable sense of social order and place for both genders, which is why conservative men and women speak the same way about it; it's not just about wishing to dominate, and in fact many conservative-minded men are not "naturally" leaders, so their churches have to have seminars to teach them to "be the head of the household") as it is to us when they say that women who don't wish their kind of life (or to have a man at all) are dangerous/evil. We are talking past one another, working from a completely different set of fundamental assumptions about what makes Honor, and thus morality.

They have (subjectively!) decided that what matters, in terms of this personal honor code behavior which we tend to tag moral behavior, is adherence to that which they have accepted as the highest form of guidance for human behavior, and they are genuinely disturbed that others reject it, seeing that as the essential definition of immorality. We, on the other hand, see honor code behavior in terms of how our behavior impacts others, not a list of rules, which is why in our view you cannot be immoral out in the middle of the desert, or marooned on an uncharted island, where there are no other people to affect (the Last Man On Earth principle) through your behavior. But the "objectivists" would still find it easily possible to behave immorally, since the code follows them and has no regard for other humans, except as defined within that code. And that sums up our primary objection to their code, where we see that it disregards other people: genocide, slavery, etc. And why it baffles us that they cannot be as horrified by the presence of these things in the code as we are. It's why ISIS really does believe what they are doing is moral: to them, they are following their Godly Code to the letter, which includes violence and intimidation toward other tribes of apostates, an attitude which is incomprehensible to our liberal-minded types and is a major violation of the (updated) code followed by our conservative types.