My views on objective morality

[God of Mr. Hanky]

Honestly, they kind of go together. Objective morality makes sense to me. For example, it makes sense to me that feeding a starving child is objectively good, and raping a vulnerable child is objectively evil. To me, it makes 0 sense to think those things are just matters of opinion, and that there is no concrete truth behind them. Like, "well, I think raping kids is immoral, so it's immoral to me, personally... but if someone else thinks raping a kid is good, then that person is not wrong/incorrect in their thinking, because there is no true or real answer." That makes no sense to me. It makes 0 sense that moral/immoral behaviors are no different from a person's taste in food or favorite color.

You've been conflating matters of opinion and taste with behaviors which are sociable or anti-social. Murder is anti-social, and since sociable behavior is an important component of the human survival imperative for most humans, then murder is bad for most people. When you commit a murder, you commit an offense against society, which is why it doesn't matter what your opinion is or that you enjoyed killing your victim, all societies will outlaw murder. This fact does not in itself make murder, nor rape, nor child exploitation, nor the embezzlement of public funds objectively immoral - no, they are simply anti-social, which society will outlaw because society represents and protects what is social against those who would act against it. Anti-social behavior isn't considered wrong by all, therefore it's not objectively immoral - if it was, then nobody would be killing, raping, embezzling, etc.

I feel there is something inside of us that helps us distinguish between objective good from objective evil (at least on the more obvious issues) and even people who do horrible things have to come up with all kinds of justifications to tell themselves that what they're doing isn't actually bad (think Holocaust). I feel like we have somewhat of an inherent understanding between good/evil, and that we know we should strive for good.

Well of course we have an inherent understanding of sociable vs. anti-social behavor, and that is because we have the genes of animals which are highly evolved to live in complex societies - nothing magical about that.

From here, if you dare (and I know you won't) we can compare anti-social behaviors to Catholic rules, some which Catholics and other Christians want to enforce on all Americans. There's contraception, which is a no-no to Catholics, but it never harms existing persons, and it helps keep populations at managable levels - therefore, sociable, and most Western countries don't outlaw it, they're definitely not objectively immoral. The same with abortion. So then, CL, how do you reconcile these facts on the above, which you consider to be wrong, but are not by the evidence "objectively wrong"? On forcing unfortunate women to carry an unwanted child to term, even when it ruins her life or harms her physically, this is certainly an anti-social side of your religion, but I know you aren't going to admit that lobbying to strong-arm them with the law is anti-social, for all the harm it causes very real people who you don't want to understand. You also declare "fornication" as objectively immoral, but the evidence sheds a sociable light on this when done safely, not anti-social.