Christian morality delusions

[The Grand Nudger]

It's late so pardon my sloppiness. I'm glad I was able to see your perspective. Just because it's a mystery now doesn't mean it can't be knowable, just that it is currently.

If it's just a "not currently known" then we're back to something that we could know.   A redundant mystery morality is redundant, and still not objective.  

If you are a moral realist and moral realism contends that our moral propositions refer to facts of things as they are, not as they once were. Please explain to me, without an objective morality how we ever decided socially that slavery was wrong? Without another standard objective to the societal standard why would a societal standard change?

The short answer is moral failure. 

The long answer is that if you really dig in you'll often find that a given society certainly -doesn't- think slavery..for example, is kosher..only that alot of unkosher things are cool so long as you're doing it to The Other Guy™.  Needling in further, you'll see the appraisal of slavery change as you more closer and closer to the core of one's family, and then one's self.   Some may interpret this as a pyramid of self interest, and to an extent that's so, but self interest, just like our affection for our families, friends, and fellow tribe mates is a compelling motivation to "get it right", so to speak.  The important bit in all of this, is that the core of why some x might be wrong is often present, and it's a failure to extend that principle to it's sensible limits that routinely produces such a failure, as our spotty agency routinely produces failure elsewhere for exactly this (and many other) reasons regardless of what moral schema we adhere to.   

To the point of verifiability, I see what God would tell us as independently verifiable but why does that negate the need? What if what we knew ourselves (disease comes from bad smells) is wrong (or amoral to an objective morality) because it can't be properly verified and measured. by waiting several hundred years and someone inventing the microscope, we now know diseases come from bacteria. Just because we know what is moral for us individually, doesn't mean that it's a morally right truth. Just because we think we have a good societal standard for what is right, doesn't mean it will stand the test of time to prove to be a morally right truth.

I'm not concerned with tests of time, as I mentioned..I'm a moral realist, not a moral eternalist or moral absolutist.  Sure, though, we could always get our facts wrong.  This is true of anything.  With an objective morality, there is at least the possibility and means to realize this.  With a mystery morality, not so.  

If a sliding scale is good enough evidence for you then I can accept that. I learned a lot about moral realism so thanks. I still believe a more rigid yardstick to be an improvement.

I think it's amusing that moral facts become a sliding scale.  If so, okay, but if so, any other purported fact is no more and no less of a sliding scale.  Including any purported fact of or by your own rigid yardstick.  The rigidity of your yardstick, it;s only (allegedly existent) defining feature.... will amount to what, precisely, if it's units of measure are inaccurate?  Looking at the cheat sheet of this "rigid yardstick"... I think that you're going to have alot more trouble than myself on each count raised above by you..is it actually rigid, or is it the changing morality of a society expressed as the whim of the divine?  When you asked me why society was once gung ho on slavery.  Well, to a certain extent, because everyone's favorite rigid yardstick said it was cool, and a mystery morality was good enough for them.  Until it wasn't, and when it wasn't, it was by those objective facts of the matter of slavery itself that the injustice of the practice was made clear in contradiction to so many measurements made by that rigid yardstick. Moreover, the rigid yardsticks explanation for illness..was demons, even though that rigid yardsticks betters already knew better without a microscope, and certainly knows much better with one.

How were they to know..using that yardstick, that slavery was wrong?  That illness and bacteria have a causal relationship? How were they to overcome moral failure conceptualized as virtue and piety? How were they to overcome ignorance conceptualized as timeless revelation? This is the danger of referring to somethings longevity as though whatever were long lived must then be true, rather than justifying one's propositions by reference to facts which are.

This is a great time to re-approach the OPQ. You are not referring to an objective moral authority. You are referring to a mysterious divine authority, and prefer that and argue for it in opposition to an objective moral authority, which you deride as a sliding scale. Just keep that in mind the next time the compulsion to say "because I believe in an objective moral authority" crops up. The people you're discussing the matter with probably have a greater commitment to objective moral values than yourself. Particularly in that you have no commitment to them whatsoever.