New religion

[DeistPaladin]

(1) There is no objective measure of morality, as this depends on individual choice and convictions.

I'd first like to know what you mean by "objective measure of morality" and what you think this would be like. Perhaps I'm wrong here but what distinguishes objective from subjective is whether the quality of something is measurable independent of a being's personal feelings, tastes or judgment.

Things like mass, velocity or temperature are measurable in an objective sense. These things can be mathematically measured by instruments and expressed in agreed upon units of measure like degrees with temperature.

So if morality is objective, does this mean we might be able to measure moral action in degrees or some other unit of measure? Does this mean we can plug numbers into a spreadsheet and determine with precision the most moral course of action?

Now you may laugh at this but there was one attempt that I know of at such a system. Jeremy Bentham attempted to articulate a system by which we could measure the pleasure in the universe generated by an action vs. the pain it generated. Actions could be determined to be moral or immoral accordingly. The obvious problem is how does one mathematically measure such qualities?

(If you do set a standard -as per your definition- why is that true?)

Fair question. I came by my three rules thinking about why I reacted the way I did to certain things. When I found myself saying "that's not right", I asked myself why it wasn't. The three rules were not things I created by rather born of a way to explain and predict what would or wouldn't be right. I found they seem to more-or-less cover all the bases.

Now, I admit even my rules require some subjective evaluation. Are some lies morally justifiable? What are the rights of others and how can they be weighed against the needs of the community?

My current view is that morality is subjective, as understood by our very use of the term "moral judgment" and qualitative assessments as "good" or "bad". These are terms not often used when calculating objective measurements.

Let me be clear that morality being "subjective" is not to say "anything goes". We still can make logical arguments as to why we feel that something is moral or immoral and refine our understanding and moral judgment in this way.

Subjective evaluations are still evaluations.

The existence or lack thereof of a god is further a separate issue from whether morality is objectively or subjectively measured. If morality is indeed objective, then units of measurements can be discovered even if God does not exist. If morality is subjective, then what God feels about a certain action is still a subjective evaluation from a being's point of view, regardless of how powerful, wise or benevolent that being may be.

This is one reason why GodWillsIt is unsatisfying to our understanding of moral issues. This is not objective morality but surrendering subjective judgment to another being.

It gets even shakier when you consider that, from my view, deferring to "God" is like deferring to an imaginary friend. This is another reason why GodWillsIt is unsatisfying an answer and doesn't advance our understanding of morality. You may say "my God says slavery is wrong" but a Christian southern plantation owner before the Civil War felt his imaginary friend said slavery is OK.

It seems to me that everyone's imaginary friend tells them what they want to believe anyway.

(2) We are becoming more “moral”.
It would seem to me that the first two arguments cannot both be true for to make a judgement you need a standard.

You make a valid point. If we are to say that we're becoming more moral, we must first believe that such things like war crimes, aggressive warfare, sexual harassment at work, slavery, and other issues we've so far discusses are "bad" things. I'm perfectly comfortable evaluating them as "bad" and therefore coming to my conclusion that things are "better" now. How about you?

OK, let's take an issue you might feel more comfortable debating. Our society is now less hostile toward homosexuality then in previous generations. I evaluate this as "getting better". Bullying people, driving them to suicide, forcing them to be what they are not, destroying their happiness, infringing on their rights, and other problems created by a homophobic society are all what I would call "bad".

How about your view? Can you explain to me why love is evil when the body parts are similar? Can you explain to me why tolerating people with similar body parts doing things to each other is such a horrible evil as to justify the evils I articulated above?

You see, this is how we advance our understanding of morality. We debate the issue in a rational fashion.

Yet you judge previous moral standards although they were the ones that were considered appropriate at the time (their preferences) and thus we cannot judge them as it was “agreed” that they were right. How can you now judge them. If you do, you assume that there is an ultimate right and wrong that is slowly being “revealed”. Where does this standard originate?

Let me put to rest now this idea you and others have that I think that morality is determined by majority rules. I don't believe that and have never said otherwise.

I've said before that the existence of God doesn't make much difference in our discussion of morality. If it turns out that God has given me this conscience by which we evaluate "right and wrong", what then? Does that make our conscience any better or worse than if it were simply the product of our evolution as community beings that depend on each other to survive and therefore we developed said conscience as the means for survival?

But let's suppose that you're right and there is a god who is watching over us now, who prescribes our moral behavior and judges us by how we adhere to it. How has God determined this code of morality?

If God has invented the code as a celestial lawgiver, that things are good because God commands them, this is not objective morality by definition. This is a being inventing arbitrary laws.

If God has determined the proper code, as a celestial judge, and things are commanded by God because they are good, then morality exists outside of and independent to God. That which is "right" or "wrong" would continue to be so regardless of whether God changes his mind, goes away to another universe or turns out never to have existed at all.

This is called "Euthephro's Dilemma". Sophisticated Christian apologists try to escape it by babbling that "the essence of moral goodness is bound into the very nature of God". In addition to the problem of WTF does that even mean and how have they managed to determine this, this is begging the question. They define God as "good" and that's how they know God is good.

This is just one reason why religion is neither necessary nor helpful to understand morality.