Objective Morality?

[Mister Agenda]

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

Why do you need such a solid answer? Why isn't 'you wouldn't want your spouse to commit adultery, even if you would never know about it' enough? Empathy may not be a cosmic principle, but that and fear are all that keeps us from being assholes. Without those, it doesn't matter how firmly based your moral code is, you won't follow it.

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Thanks, what a good argument for the soul.

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

No, I'm not and that's the point, they have an instinctual reaction to theft, murder and assault, man has a moral reaction to the same.

Our moral instincts are the beginning of our morality. They account for why we want to be moral. You don't have to teach a child a moral code for it to be aware that there's something unfair about another child getting cake while they go hungry. That instinctive feeling of outrage when someone else arbitrarily gets a benefit that you don't is why we're motivated to come up with a moral system that promotes fairness. Our empathy for others lets us conclude that we shouldn't do to them things we don't like done to us, and our morality is based on that as well.

We have instincts that aren't so conducive to social harmony, and we can observe the undesireable consequences of not restricting them, so we punish those behaviors and expect people to 'control themselves'.

It's a process. We used to think killing was okay, as long as the victim wasn't from our tribe. We used to think slavery was okay, as long as we weren't too cruel. Things that used to be acceptable, we come to realize are wrong: a little over a century ago, the age of consent in the USA averaged 10-12 years old (7 years old in Delaware). We know better now, because we've built on the accumulated moral insights of great thinkers over centuries, and in this case have arrived at the idea that a person should be old enough to understand the consequences of their actions before marrying.

Our moral reaction is not on a different plane than an animal capable of a similar reaction, ours is just more informed and nuanced.

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Killing is natural to a psychotic killer, they don't choose to be that way, it is unfortunate for them, it is counter productive and their act is not socially acceptable and quit illegal and nothing makes it OK.

It's true that a psychotic killer isn't 'wired right', usually from a combination of predisposition and being severely abused as a child, although there have been cases where a brain injury or tumor led to psychotic homicidal behavior. For the safety of others, they have to be contained.

I'm not following how you equate someone wired to do something that makes you go 'ick' with someone who makes you go 'for the love of mercy, stop stabbing me!'.

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Just because it may happen with animals doesn't mean it's a natural act. Actually it says that something in nature is messed up, for instance there is nothing productive about it in animals, it produces no offspring thus not moving the genes of a species on down the line, this is against evolution, if this behavior became the norm then the species would die off. Hey maybe this is what happened to the dinos, just kidding but you can see what I mean. I do not know what homosexuals find pleasing in such a relationship, what ever it is it would not be the same for animals they live by instincts and have no moral code.

It may be advantageous to a population for a small percentage to be homosexual...available to protect the young, still bonded to the group, keeping the population from getting out of hand. Evolution doesn't work on individuals, it works on populations. Or it may be a hiccup in prenatal development. We don't know yet. We do know that it's wrong to be cruel to people who aren't harming us.