Deconversion and some doubts

[GrandizerII]

Are we next going to have a debate about what is meant by "created or made"? You've made it very clear in this thread that you believe in a Good that is akin to a rule-maker and that "explains" the moral oughts and ought nots. Without that Good, not even rape can be morally wrong.

It seems that’s exactly what I have to do.

Created or Made, implies something that didn’t exist at one point, that was later brought into existence. It’s not applicable to something that has always existed.

Oh, come on, you know what I meant. Jesus was the Begotten Son, yet no father really gave birth to him, because the term "begotten" isn't meant to be taken literally. Same thing with my usage of the term "maker" in this context.

I indicated that I subscribe to  a platonic conception of Good. I don’t view Good as something created or made, but as something eternal and always existing. So when you accused me of believing in a rule-maker, this isn’t true, because I don’t believe in any moral rule that was created or made.

But you believe in moral rules, and you believe in this entity called Good/God who is the "ought-giver". When I say "rule-maker", I don't mean for it to be taken literally.

Terms like "should" and "must" also imply obligations and duties. And society has been good at imposing these obligations and duties.

Society is good at imposing legal laws, and punishment for breaking them when caught. But legal and moral are not synonymous. There are things that we view as immoral that are not illegal, such as cheating on your girlfriend.

I'm not just talking about written laws. I'm especially talking about unwritten rules that are imposed on members of a society that have nothing to do with the legal aspect. And in fact, speaking of cheating, the backlash against Ashley Madison is a good example of how society imposes moral oughts on its members. Cheating is wrong because, for example, it involves deception and causes emotional harm to others (or whatever reason you wish to employ given whatever moral axioms are being adhered to). In today's society, this is a very bad thing, so our society says that you ought not to cheat on your partner. An ought was given, and it was given by society, by people just like you and me.

And in general, when you were a child, you were probably told by your parents that you ought not to steal, ought not to hurt others and ought to be kind to people. At school, teachers gave you oughts. At church and elsewhere as well. As you grew up, you started to reflect on some of these things and further realized what made something like stealing to be discouraged, and so you became your own ought-giver as well. But nowhere in any of these scenarios was there a God entity living in some weird realm telling you that you ought not to steal. Your inner voice stems from who you are, shaped by your genetics and experiences. It doesn't come from somewhere out there.

Outside of legalities, society opinions resemble that of the opinions of twitter.  You probably don’t care about any of your behaviors that I might personally find distasteful, just like I don’t.

But these socially-held opinions hold power, enough to have a serious impact on people. Case in point: the Me-Too movement (which I'm all for, to be clear).

You might hope that society possesses a greater sense of reverence for it’s supposed moral authority, when in reality it’s pretty impotent . One only has to think of  the Trump era to see what I mean.

Society is not a monolithic group of people who think all the same. It's a tangle of views of all sorts, but whereby one set of views seems to hold more power than some other set of views in a lot of cases, and some views are strongly based in reason while others are irrational. But nothing about this changes the fact that oughts come from members of this society, people like you and me.

You seem to have a problem with separating "X is wrong" from "One ought not to do X", and this paragraph shows it very well. If you can't, for a second, condition yourself to separate the two statements from each other to see my POV, you will never get it.

To say X is morally wrong, implies that one ought not do X. If I tell my friend its morally wrong for him to cheat on his girlfriend, I don’t need to add therefore he ought not  cheat, that is already expressed in indicating that it’s wrong. In fact adding an ought when saying it’s wrong would be redundant. The meaning of something morally wrong is contingent on it being something that ought not have been done.

Not necessarily. You could easily acknowledge that X is wrong but still not care about its wrongness enough to tell your friend they ought not to cheat. Either way, you are the one, in this example, giving an "ought not", not some Platonic Good entity.

This is everyday moral language, the basis for why the is/ought dilemma exists, etc..

Actually, the is-ought dilemma is that you can't logically get from "X is wrong because <insert reason>" to "one ought not to do X".

Now some atheists like yourself might be trying to invent some new moral language in which you can make moral statements that don’t imply an ought, but this attempt is barely even coherent.

Here we’ll try and show that incoherency simply.

You dropped your wallet, I’m about to take it, and will likely get away unscathed.

Stealing your wallet is morally wrong. This implies that I ought not steal.

Only if that's how you feel. Otherwise, stealing my wallet is wrong, and that's that.

Now if you think you can render stealing here, as morally wrong without implying that I ought not steal, I’d like to hear you do so?

No, I'm happy to tell you you ought not to steal my wallet, and I don't even need to give a moral reason for that. I could simply impose an ought not on you for purely practical or egotistical reasons. It's my damn wallet, and I want it back.

But if you stole my wallet, then it seems like you probably did not impose an "ought not to steal" on yourself.

What makes stealing here morally wrong?

I don't have a comprehensive answer to that. I just intuit that it's wrong (in most cases, at least). But a simplified answer will be something along the lines of you're taking away that which belongs to me and depriving me of that which I rely on for my survival.

Are you just trying to use the term morally wrong as synonymous with something like causes harms to others?

Better than saying X is wrong because some Entity arbitrarily says so.

If so, what does calling it immoral add to what your saying here, that indicating that it harms others doesn’t?

It probably doesn't, it's just one extra word to emphasize the consequences of doing X.

And here, you do it again. So let's be clear here on what I'm saying. What I'm saying is that X may be intrinsically wrong, but that society generally creates the "oughts" and ought nots".  

That’s silly, if things are intrinsically wrong, why would individual societies need to create their own individual ought and ought nots?

Because rules are created by rational beings, not by ideal/abstract entities. "X is wrong" does not mean "one ought not to do X" until/unless someone utters that statement.

Shouldn’t you ought not do things that are intrinsically wrong regardless of what your society thinks?

Of course. Did you see me say otherwise, or are you still misunderstanding me?

Societies can endorse and support things that are intrinsically wrong, ought I go along with society, or my conscious here?

If society is that shitty, you go along with your views of course. You become your own ought-giver. Easy.

No society thinks that you ought not do wrong, because of society imposes this obligation on you. This imposing transcends society, is seen as binding even on those that are not a part of ones society too.

Baseless claims.

When I tell my friend he ought not cheat on his girlfriend, what I am not saying is that he shouldn’t cheat because societies says you ought not do so. I’m appealing to some morality that transcends any sort of social authority

And based on that morality, you have set and imposed an ought not on your friend. The ought/ought not is coming from You.