The Moral Argument for God

[TheRocketSurgeon]

What does "objectively moral" mean?

The definition has been posted in this thread many times. Here it is again:

Objective moral values are those whose truth is independent of individual, personal opinions or societal conventions.

You apparently missed my argument. You cannot define something into existence. My whole point is that your claim of "objective" morals exist only as a concept; the reality is quite different, as simply looking around will tell us.

Can anyone tell me? I keep hearing the term, but I can't think of what that might actually be, beyond a meaningless phrase to imply the existence of something that likely does not and cannot exist.

You can google the phrase and find dozens of articles that might help you.

You're presuming I haven't read what is claimed to be objective morality; I simply find it to be a ridiculous concept that falls apart under actual examination.

And yes, we are social animals. Our societies determine what is right and wrong behavior, but it's hardly objective, and often wrong [emphasis wrong]. Nature of the beast. We must all decide what is moral for ourselves, lest we agree with some principle (such as the form of slavery described in Leviticus 25:44-46) that is not suited to the empathy in a normal conscience. Humans are capable of both social-program type morality, and of self-determination. Sometimes a person self-determines to do harm, so societies come up with ways to punish and discourage such destructive behaviors. So we do determine morality subjectively, on both a cultural and personal level.

Right, so society is NOT the source of objective morality. Nicely done.

Correct. Society is the source of subjective morality. You can't have it both ways; you're claiming that objective morality is that which is found universally in societies, and then trying to say that societies have nothing to do with morality. There are some things that are so detrimental to societies that they are almost universal, but there's certainly no such thing as a universal rule of moral behavior among humans. As I said, there are always exceptions and variations.

Really, all the phrase "objective morality" does is attempt to assert that there is some universal moral law, as claimed in Romans, which is objectively not a reality when we look at the various definitions of what is moral throughout history and cultural studies. Some are more common than others, like not killing, because they are clearly destructive to societies, but every society has exceptions to the rule. The same is true for all the other items. The demonstration of the pro-slavery verses also demonstrates that even religious morality is not "objective", but shifts with time and cultures.

No, the phrase acknowledges the existence of something which we all recognize but struggle to accept as true or define. Even in this thread, opinions vary as to whether moral values are objective or subjective.

Is there ANYTHING you can think of that is ALWAYS wrong no matter what the circumstances?

You know the candidates: child abuse, rape, murder, racial discrimination...

Are you willing to hold that one or more of these is occasionally acceptable?

Not acceptable to my social/moral standards, which are informed by Humanism and the post-Enlightenment Western cultural viewpoint, no. But that's a far cry from "always wrong no matter the circumstances". I certainly do consider child abuse, rape, etc, to be wrong... but I'd have a hard time explaining to Joseph that he shouldn't have married Mary at 13-14, even though it's pretty much universally acknowledged that that was "marrying age" at that time. Today, it would be considered child abuse, and certainly not a basis for the alleged "greatest [morality] story ever told".

So the idea that the "Moral Argument" refutes anything is not only ridiculous, it's such an outright and obvious lie that the theist should spot it before making such an assertion contrary to the facts... but they never do. How sad.

To the contrary, the Moral Argument is the Achilles' Hell of atheism. The reason that folks in this thread struggle to refute it and why atheist organization spend money on billboards is because they have not been able to actually answer the questions:

Why is something really wrong and not just a matter of personal preference or group pressure?
How do you know if something is objectively wrong?

1) It is a matter of how much we, culturally, value a particular personal "right", and whether or not we consider a behavior from other cultures to be so harmful that we must attempt to repress it in other societies as well as our own; an example is our resistance to groups who believe the education of women is immoral, and who are willing to kill/kidnap women to stop it, in places like Afghanistan and Nigeria.

2) As should be clear, by now, there is no "objectively wrong"; there are only arguments to be made for the rights of every person, regardless of social prejudices. This concept of universal rights was almost unique in history when the British established the concept as a development of the Danelaw that became known as The Rights of Englishment, in its various incarnations throughout history and post-Enlightenment, and eventually wound up as the bulk of the US Constitution's Bill of Rights... and even that, we've had to expand almost continuously throughout our nation's history.

Robert Heinlein said it best, I think, in Time Enough for Love : "Sin lies only in hurting other people unnecessarily. All other 'sins' are invented nonsense. (Hurting yourself is not sinful -- just stupid.)"