The Golden Rule ? Sense or Bullshit?

[genkaus]

You saying "murder is wrong" is subjective, not objective. The concept of objective morality is that it exists in separation from the subjective experience. It would be universal (literally) and held to be true in every civilisation on every planet in the universe. As it doesn't rely on those civilisations, it would have predated them. It would exist even if there were no civilisations. Going back to my original question (that you mocked) it would have to have come into existence at some point after the big bang.

Except it didn't, because it doesn't exist. "Good" and "bad" are evolved concepts and utterly subjective.

And this would be a perfect example of a common misconception regarding objective morality. As a matter of fact, this is how theist's view objective morality. However, objective morality is not the same thing as moral realism.

Morality is a completely conceptual field. In that sense, it can never be truly mind-independent. Concepts cannot exist without there being a mind to conceive of them (unless you subscribe to some form of idealism) and this is true not just for morality but to fields like science, math and logic as well. So if that's your standard of objectivity, then you might as well regard all of the above as subjective.

On the other hand, the reason we regard the other fields as objective is because their content is based on the object of consideration (what is being studied) rather than the subject of consideration (the person doing the study). As for being based on experience - the field of science is based on experience as well. The trick to making it objective is to eliminate the subjective aspects of that experience. The same way that math, logic and science do not predate civilization, we shouldn't expect morality to do the same.

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The Buddha taught about enlightenment which contains non-conceptual awareness. Did you study this at varsity too?

You do know that Buddha never actually came to China, right?