Religion is a poor source of morality

[robvalue]

OK I've caught up on the replies, thanks guys

Esq: I think your objection is covered by my example above. I'd say, simply put, no one has the authority to say how much a life is "worth" or how much pain is "worth" or disease is "worth". I don't accept that there is a "correct" way to rate everything in a moral way. We have to evaluate what the whole point of morality is. Happiness? Survival of the species? What if it's the most moral thing to wipe out all life altogether? If there is some "objective" way to measure good versus bad, what if the calculation comes up that we're all better off dead? Basically, once someone makes a formula and starts putting fixed, numerical values on lives and aspects of lives, we have been dehumanised. I understand it may be necessary in certain situations to estimate potential outcomes, but I don't accept it can be anything more than a guide and is certainly subjective.

I mean, what is "best" for humanity? What is "best" for life on the planet in general? I'm quite strongly of the opinion that every other animal would be better off without us, so morally we should stop breeding. But even if I proved that scientifically, no one is going to care. This is the "no practical use" problem.

What if I told someone I'd done the calculations and morally we should kill their child for the general wellbeing of society? Do we do it by force?

This is all my opinion anyhow I may be wrong. I'm picking it up as I go. I'd be very interested to see anyone even attempt to "evaluate" me, to see how many points my life is worth. And then, why I or anyone else should care about that evaluation.

The other problem is that Sam is kind of treating each society as a single person, with a set of morals. At best he's only talking about an average, or societal norms. So where exactly you get your data or how you average it is also somewhat subjective.

If the point of all this is just to be able to say scientifically "we're better than you", then what has it achieved? If even I'm not interested in someone evaluation of myself in points, I doubt raging barbarians are going to give a toss. To be fair, I need to watch the rest of the video. I've watched the first half or something, and really a lot of what Sam says is troubling me. It doesn't seem quite logical, and relies on "appeals to common sense" in the middle of what is meant to be a scientific discourse. I still don't agree science can tell you what moral decisions to make. It provides neutral information. Something is not right.