Objective Morality?

[Statler Waldorf]

The action is the same. The intent is the same. At the time of action, the adulterer was lying and risking the harm to others.

Well you can’t use intent because that would be nothing more than “thought crime”, and we all know how unbelievers hate the Bible because it punishes people for “thought crime”.

So now it is not only morally wrong to cause harm to others, but it is morally wrong to risk causing harm to others? So would it be morally wrong to drive a car because you then run the risk of running someone over?

So the act of having sex with someone behind the spouse’s back is not what is morally wrong, it’s the act of lying about it that is actually wrong? So if the guy never actually has to lie about what he did because he was never asked then he is innocent?

Saying it's OK because nothing bad happened is like pleading "not guilty" to attempted murder on the grounds that you failed and so no harm was done.

You are contradicting every definition you have given of morality thus far, if nothing bad happened then no harm was done to an individual or society, which are the two definitions of morality I have seen you give thus far. Are you willing to give a third definition that would include thought crimes such as intent?

1. The "problem" you see in my inability to "justify" the use of reason or morality is only a problem in your head. It isn't a problem for me or any other freethinker. It also, I'll venture, wasn't a problem for you prior to your introduction to TAG. The only alternative was that you were unable to function at all until someone told you "JesusWillsIt".

You can’t call yourself a free-thinker and then display a complete disregard for laws of reasoning such as the principle of sufficient reason.

2. The "solution" that you're so proud of boils down to saying "GodWillsIt n' stuff" (and spuriously dismissing all other gods but the one you just so happened to believe in all along). This simple-minded "axiom" actually does nothing to help us understand what morality is or why we use reason.

Actually there are extensive writings by proponents of TAG laying out exactly why all other gods also fail to account for the preconditions of knowledge. However, since that is not the topic of our discussion, and you do not believe in these other gods it is nothing more than a red herring; a way of trying to divert the attention off of your own worldview’s shortcomings.

3. Unless you are prepared to tell us that you were completely unable to function in life until one day you heard "GodWillsIt n' stuff" and then suddenly everything fell into place for you, this whole argument is pure sophistry and an attempt to justify post hoc what you believed all along because you know you've got fuckall for evidence.

Again, I am not sure what argument you are trying to refute, but it is not the TAG. TAG never states that the unbeliever is unable to function unless he believes in God. It simply state that the only reason the unbeliever is able to function at all is because he is doing so in a universe created by the God of scripture. It’s like saying, “the only reason you are even able to breathe is because air exists.” You are essentially responding to this by saying, “Nuh uh! I breathe just fine and I don’t even believe in air!” That may very well be the case, but that has nothing to do with the argument.

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These questions answer themselves and are no mystery. Whether an action is right or wrong (independent of its subsequent discovery), stems from whether it is objectively wrong to act in such a manner. You do not need god to act as a standard or anchor to a moral framework for it to be objective. Ethicists who work in this field recoginise this and there are well documented moral frameworks that describe an non-theistic basis for objective morality. Desirism and Contractatrianism are 2 such examples. Now they may be right or wrong, but should automatically be prefererd as simpler explanations to an unverifiable and meaningless god concept. What the theist is really saying is that there is an absolute morality decided by a god; which is holed by the Euthyphro dilemma. There are also many things christianity cannot account for however, but non-thesitic objective morality can. I can say that it is morally wrong:

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So is it morally wrong because ethicists tell you so or do ethicists tell you it is wrong because it is morally wrong? The dilemma applies to you too.

- to commit genocide

In the new convenient yes.

- to hold someone guilty for the crimes of our ancestors

For people to hold other people guilty of crimes they themselves did not commit, yes.

- to claim that babies are born evil

Nothing wrong with that.

- to hold that the worth of a man is not based on his actions but his beliefs

Who even says this?

- that you should receive infinite punishment for finite 'crimes'

Any crime against a being of infinite authority justly deserves infinite punishment.

- to rape victims of war crimes

That’d be wrong yes. I think secularists have more difficulty answering those questions than you imply. After all, if morals are based on our ability to live as a society, then it would not be morally wrong to commit genocide against the members of another society since it benefits your own society.

Furthermore to become a Christian you must borrow from our secular worldviews in order to make the decision. You are deciding that you like certain moral codes which predate but are also present in Christianity, dismissing others as 'overturned' by Jesus (though he never claimed that). Meaning you cannot account for the mroal decision to be Christian, by using Christianity. Thus Christianity cannot, and necessarily cannot appeal to its own moral validity.

There is no moral decision to become a Christian, so what on God’s green earth are you talking about?

The Christian decides to surrender his will on the basis of his values of mysticism, submission, sacrifice, faith and opposition to the natural – just like the atheist decides to affirm his will on the basis of his own values of rationality, honesty and support for the natural. And all these values can be rationally evaluated, putting the action of “following Christianity and sacrificing some of one’s values” on an inferior moral ground to following one’s personal values fully.

The Christian never decides to surrender anything, so again what are you talking about?

You obviously don't understand, homosexuality is quite natural. It may not be beneficial for the survival of a species, but then many things about humans are not...

It isn't your fault if you have never been told

So you are saying homosexuality is an evolutionary drawback since it doesn’t provide any advantage to the species?

It occurs in nature across the board... It has been observed in almost every species of mammal.

So has rape, so is rape morally acceptable now too because it is natural?

Are you saying this is evidence that these animals have souls, because they have an instinctive reaction to theft, murder, and assault?

I don’t want to speak for Godschild, but I believe he was saying that because humans have a level of dignity and morality not found in animals it was evidence for an immaterial distinction, namely the soul. GC please correct me if was wrong.

I still have not heard a solid answer as to why adultery is wrong if you don’t get caught.