(February 26, 2016 at 7:58 pm)Catholic_Lady Wrote:(February 26, 2016 at 7:47 pm)SteelCurtain Wrote: You are making yourself clear, just not in the way I think you mean to. You saying there is a concrete right and wrong, we just don't know what it is, but at the same time we are moving towards it--that's subjective morality.
I guess I just don't see how saying there is a concrete right and wrong can = subjective morality. I mean, that's what makes it *not* subjective in the first place.
And I never said we outright "don't know" what real right and wrongs are. I listed a few already - rape, theft, adultery, slavery, intentional killing of an innocent person. I 100% believe those are all objectively immoral. I believe anyone who thinks those things are moral are mistaken. Of course, there probably are other things we don't know are immoral yet, but that doesn't mean they aren't.
This line of reasoning, though, is easily undercut by several thought experiments.
The railcar experiment comes to mind:
There is a runaway railcar with nobody on it. You are standing at a rail switch, and the railcar is going to go down one of the two paths. On one side, there is a disabled school bus, filled with small children, kindergarten aged. On the other side is a disabled car with one man in it. The switch is currently oriented so that the railcar will hit and kill the children. You can pull the switch so that instead, the railcar hits the car and kills the one man. Or you can do nothing.
What is the moral thing to do?
(February 26, 2016 at 7:58 pm)Catholic_Lady Wrote:Quote:Especially if you cannot point to a reason why the direction we are moving is the right one. What if God's original plan was what he laid out in the OT? What if the Catholic Church had it right in the 15th Century?
What if the Catholic Church has it all wrong now, and the ultimate in morality is personal bodily autonomy?
When you define the ultimate objective morality as "I don't know what it is, but I know we're moving towards it"--then you've just cloaked subjective morality with a lot of hand waving.
This is more of a question of "why are you Catholic/why do you believe Catholicism is right." Not something I can ever put into words, since it literally involves my whole life and all my experiences/etc. The short answer is, given everything I've learned/seen/experienced, it makes sense to me.
Again, your subjective experience has informed your own understanding of what's "objectively" moral. Were you living 200 years ago, you understanding of what's objectively moral would be different. What we're saying is that your understanding of the objective moral "truths" is entirely shaped by the moment in time you live in. It's an ad hoc absurdity to assume that your current understanding is what god intended.
"There remain four irreducible objections to religious faith: that it wholly misrepresents the origins of man and the cosmos, that because of this original error it manages to combine the maximum servility with the maximum of solipsism, that it is both the result and the cause of dangerous sexual repression, and that it is ultimately grounded on wish-thinking." ~Christopher Hitchens, god is not Great
PM me your email address to join the Slack chat! I'll give you a taco(or five) if you join! --->There's an app and everything!<---
PM me your email address to join the Slack chat! I'll give you a taco(or five) if you join! --->There's an app and everything!<---