One sentence that throws the problem of evil out of the window.

[The Grand Nudger]

For me this is just the difference between my willingness to be ruthlessly practical in implementing justice, where I hang back from codifying moral experience out of regard for the possibility of a difference in subjective experience which I just can't be sure of.  

Hey, we don;t know what we don;t know.  Right?  Objective morality, though, is a morality by reference to what we do know.  It's never not going to be true that there might be something we don't know.  Pragmatism, in this case, doesn't come down on the side of avoiding codification.  It's more an issue of our stomach for error tolerance.  Do we know -enough- about x, to say y?  I think that we do in many cases taken to be moral issues.  Someone else's experience may modify our knowledge to some extent...but I don't think that anyone's experience of rape is going to overturn the moral designation as bad...at this point.

You know nature is pretty good about diversifying its portfolio.  In general, sickle cell anemia is an undesirable condition but because of it, in the face of a malaria outbreak, at least the population pulls through and more sickle cell free individuals will be born to enjoy the good times.  It wouldn't shock me to find that some individuals are morally blind, only able to regard their fellow human beings practically as useful or detrimental to their ends.  Such individuals, though pariahs in the good times, might likewise pull through keep the population going in circumstances where cooperation wasn't getting it done.  Purely speculative on my part but it is why I don't assume we are all the same morally.

I don't think that anyone denies that there's a certain utility in evil or amorality.  I've certainly availed myself of it from time to time.  

So perhaps what you're calling objective morality is what we normals acknowledge as morally permissible or not.

Designations of moral permissibility implicitly contain nested moral designations.  What I'm talking about with objective morality are those things that can be established as moral facts of a matter.  Separate, perhaps (though not always) from things we feel are wrong but cannot identify a moral fact of the matter in.

Above, for example...CL's description of why it is wrong to rape a child. That;s not an objective moral statement. It;s explicitly and arbitrarily subjective and referent to some rules that god laid down. If god had laid down different rules, it wouldn't be wrong. Gods rules, the value god placed in us, and neglecting our divinely mandated duties. But where...oh where...was any mention of the harm it caused to the child? You know...the part that's objectively demonstrable?

That explanation gets it wrong in an almost fantastic way...god is wronged....not so much the child. That's why god can tell a believer to skullfuck his neighbor and steal their daughter, without being wrong. He's not wronging -himself-. Good ole legalism-as-morality. Particularly hilarious in that the laws referred to don't even exist. There is no "natural law" that sex is holy. If we have inherent value (and do we? ) it would be value wholly independent of a god by definition. What's wrong with disregarding human beings as human beings..in that explanation, apart from it being against the wishes of a fairy? Why do we have a moral responsibility to the weak..what will happen to them if we don;t protect them? Again..absent.

The answer to all of these questions is simple, apparent, and demonstrable. The problem, ofc, is that it cuts out god entirely...and so we see a person actively avoiding any coherent or objective explanation of why raping a child is wrong.

It;s as if someone had been asked what time it was, and they blurted out "PIXIES!".

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I want to take a moment, btw, to entertain the notion that we see and hear on these boards, that without god there would be no morality.  We laugh at that, because we know it to be risably untrue...however, is it any surprise that people who believe it, and describe morality as morality was just described...have within them some subset, however tiny, of people who lose their faith and can't cope..and go boom.  Of people who think that maybe god doesn't love these people over there and so he won't see what's done to them..and go boom....of people who think that god -told them to go boom-?

Not from where I'm sitting, it's not even remotely surprising.  These people, even the ones that aren't going boom...they have no fundamental understanding of morality whatsoever.  None.  Let that sink in.  They're one bad plate of lobster bisque away from hearing god tell them to kill their only son, or yours. The only difference between an extremist and a nice catholic lady, in this regard, is which one of them believes in their own nonsense the most, at the least opportune time.