(March 30, 2021 at 2:08 pm)Angrboda Wrote: I had nine of my ten fingers amputated. By any measure that is a violent act, so it seems that being a violent act alone isn't enough to make rape wrong. Seeing as you followed it with, "therefore," it seems that was your implication.
By analogy, capital punishment is a violent act against a person, therefore it is fundamentally wrong. Now there may be objections to capital punishment, but I don't think it being a violent act would be what makes it wrong.
Someone could hold the view that rape is wrong, while capital punishment and amputation (that is motivated towards increasing the well being of the person who's fingers are being amputated) are right. Just because violence is not a supergreat criterion for identifying possible moral absolutes, doesn't mean there aren't any moral absolutes.
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@Superjock I don't see any way that a god existing and passing forth commandments could have any bearing on whether something is fundamentally right or wrong. Read this.
After we realize that belief in God has nothing to do with realizing moral facts, we have all our work cut out for us to show how we differentiate right from wrong. The point is, we care what is ACTUALLY right or ACTUALLY wrong. We don't need an immaterial being to decide and then coerce us to do one or the other.
I personally see things in a non-naturalistic way. That is, I see good and bad as a spectrum that exists independently of the natural world. Kind of like centimeters. No "centimeter" exists in reality. But we still use centimeters to measure things IN reality. And we measure precisely when doing so. Likewise, I think "goodness" is a definite concept... just like the centimeter is definite. We could use another unit of measurement (say inches) but in the end, either of these units of measurement measure the same thing, and make the same exact measurements.
But not all atheistic moral realists think the way I do. Some want to say, "moral facts are natural facts."
"The moon is influenced by Earth's gravity." --- this is a natural fact. "Something about rape is why rape is wrong." Is another natural fact, so say the naturalists. The "wrongness" of rape is a feature of rape. Like craters on the moon are features of the moon. The wrongness is right there, waiting for us to observe it with our telescopes and microscopes.
So there you have it, OP. Two ways to get to moral realism without a god. But the REAL challenge is finding out what a god has to do with morality in the first place. Or if there is any way to say, "God exists, therefore morality." I don't see how it can be done.
