(March 2, 2016 at 6:47 am)Mr.wizard Wrote: My problem with the idea of an objective morality being "out there", is how would we know if we found it? What exactly are we looking for?
It may be unknowable. There's problem an objective answer to "why does the universe exist?" But we, for sure, don't know it with any confidence. Given all the possible statistical interactions between all current and future humans, and all current and future aspects of the environment, there is probably an ideal behavioral code which would lead to an ideal outcome for humanity. But that's, obviously, an unknown function.
This is part of the human condition: that given any circumstance, we can't know the details so we hedge our bets by playing odds-maker. But this is no more true for morality than for economics, or for weather, or for many other highly complex systems.
With regard to God, one could almost DEFINE God in terms of those hidden objective truths: God is that (whatever it is) that caused the universe. The will of God is that moral system (whatever it is) that we can say might hypothetically give us our ideal outcome as a species.
