Replacing Religious Morality

[henryp]

Of course, the laws of objectivity would also be subject to God's will, so whatever logic you're trying to apply may or may not count? So maybe it is objective, because God says that's what objectivity is?

In fact, all rational and logical arguments would go out the window, because if there happened to be a God, they may no longer be rational or logical based on various whims?

Precisely.

I don't know if you remember this, but way back when, this nonsense all started because you said God's moral laws weren't objective. Now you've said 'precisely' to the idea that God's moral law could be objective.

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You don't like pain? Nobody does, by definition! Great, now you have an objective moral right there: inflicting pain (we can add some qualifiers for the masochists in the room) is immoral. You don't want to die? Most people don't, so let's go there too!

There is no reason to care what humans as a whole want. If you don't want pain, then the 'objective conclusion' is that YOU should try to avoid YOURSELF having pain. It isn't a moral, it's just a reasonable response to stimuli.

Now, perhaps you are in a situation where a group of people get together and agree not to hurt each other. That's a fine law, and follows the idea of avoiding pain for yourself.

Someone outside your group comes up and starts a fight. You don't want pain, so you try to inflict pain on them fast and hard enough on them so you don't suffer pain. Again, follows the idea of avoiding pain for yourself. Empathy is there. You realize he doesn't want pain, but his not wanting pain and your not wanting pain are not equal to you.

You talk of natural empathy, but where you see it is in well-constructed societies where the individuals of the populace are heavily invested in others not trying to hurt them.

If my family has 2 cars, I don't really need a 3rd. But it'd suck a lot to lose one of the 2 I have. So no car stealing as a law gets my thumbs up. That's society in a nutshell. The personal gains of going outside the system fall far short of the personal gains of the system falling apart.

This is 'our' cushy middle class first world. But that world is hardly representative of humanity. If you look at the very poor, the very wealthy, and the very powerful throughout history you find people who don't have the same investment. And they gain nothing from looking at things as 'we' like you do, and not surprisingly, your notions of treating others feelings as equally valid does not/has not interested them.