what are we supposed to say again when christians ask us where we get our morality?

[Esquilax]

You seemed to imply we were only concerned with beings capable of moral thought yes. We can alter the emphasis though and allow them in if you like.
It’s morally wrong to torture animals because it hurts the animal and it is pointless? Why is it morally wrong for someone to inflict pointless pain? What if the person gets a lot of enjoyment out of it? I do not believe they would find it pointless then. What if they just think you are wrong? Is there a morlal imperative for them to follow your definition of morality? It just seems like you have an inherent knowledge of what is good and evil and you are contriving some sort of ad hoc definition of morality in order to hopefully support what you already know is good and to condemn what you already know is evil.

It's a simple logical deduction, Stat; what, does the idea that someone might have reasons for being moral frighten you? The question you have to ask when considering moral action is "what would my world look like if everyone was allowed to do this?" And you don't consider it from your perspective alone, because you aren't the only living thing and morality isn't just about what you want, but from the perspective of living beings. Why should inflicting pointless suffering be immoral? Well, because a world in which we allow everyone to inflict pointless suffering is a world that's demonstrably worse off for each individual person. As it stands, most of us at least know somebody who is a victim of crime, imagine that played out in a world where there aren't any restrictions on it.

The sociopaths and psychopaths that so often get brought up in these discussions, the "what about those people who like hurting people?" folks that you theists think are some clever counter to the idea of context-based ethics, they aren't representative of the entire population, and more importantly, bringing them up misses the point anyway, because I'm not claiming that morality is derived from any one person's enjoyment of a given situation.

There are probably people out there who'd take great pleasure from killing people; unfortunately for them, we live in a reality that isn't just some solipsistic fantasy, and their ability to seek out the things they enjoy must necessarily stop when it starts impacting others because that too would effectively hamstring the social landscape we've erected for ourselves.

Well allow me to extrapolate then; therefore would the lives and well-being of more intelligent people hold more moral value than the lives of less intelligent people?

In a sheer potential sense, yes, I suppose so. However, within the system I'm discussing any harm done to a living being is to be avoided, making this a moot point. That said, you probably agree with me: in a binary situation where you have to save one person and let another die, would you save a healthy man, or one in a permanent coma? Would you save ten citizens, or ten life-sentenced prisoners?

Moral dilemmas are supposed to be difficult and uncomfortable, but just because there can be a hierarchy when we're backed against a wall doesn't mean the whole system isn't valuable. Especially since you have to add in a set of additional metrics anyway, like one's right to self determination; I mention that one in particular because I know your next move will be to propose a scenario to me in which we harm a certain group of people to advantage another, as though this will be a problem for what I'm saying. I hope to obviate having to explain yet another element of this system to you.

I am sorry but I simply have to disagree. When an athlete is training and getting stronger they will experience pain in their muscles. Something good is actually happening however. Also, what about the people who enjoy pain? I am not one of them but we both know such people do exist.

Yes, and what's actually happening when those athletes train is that their muscles are tearing and being replaced by additional muscle tissue; it's not exactly the happiest of things in the world, now is it?

As to masochists, you're falling prey to a common misconception that they enjoy pain in general, which simply isn't true. If you stabbed a masochist they wouldn't enjoy it, because this is more than a simplistic "pain is good," thing; it'd be more accurate to say that masochists enjoy consensual pain that they can meter through various safety practices and safewords. And even if we took what you say as true, we also sometimes take a person's well being to be more important than what they might want to happen anyway; when a person is a suicide risk or a self harmer they generally aren't just allowed to continue without observation and help for a reason.

That may be the case; although the earliest confirmed copies of the Analects we have postdate Christ by over 150 years and even postdate manuscripts of the Gospel of John. Be that as it may, all humans have a knowledge of the truth so Confucius was certainly capable of getting it right (Romans 1). However, in Matthew Jesus was referencing the Ten Commandments which significantly predate Confucius.

And there are Babylonian and Egyptian iterations of the golden rule that seem to predate the old testament by quite a margin.

You did not answer my question though. I hope you address it later on.

Did you ask a question? You just said that what I was saying sounded familiar.

You’re begging the question, I asked you why someone should put the well-being of others above their own and you answered by saying because it makes things better for everyone. I get that, but that does not answer my question. Why should Joseph Stalin have treated others as he wanted to be treated when he became the most powerful man on Earth by doing exactly the opposite? If all that exists is matter and there is no life or judgment after death I think you’d have a difficult time convincing anyone in his position they should do anything different than what got them to that position in the first place.

And again, morality isn't about one person's benefit. The fact that I'd have a hard time convincing Stalin to step down from power for the benefit of others isn't a black mark against my reasoning; people can behave immorally, what a shocker! The fact that some people will decide to act immorally for their own personal benefit is no more a rebuttal to what I'm saying as it is a rebuttal of your own moral beliefs; after all, we both live in a world where this happens.

People can be immoral. I know: so what? If the fact that people don't have to follow what I believe to be our moral metrics is a problem for me, then it's equally a problem for you, so I guess that all our ideas of morality must be wrong because not everyone follows them, huh?

What if we only did these things to other societies? We could still have things functioning in our society while treating the people in different societies terribly. This is what the entire antebellum slave trade was based on, whites figured out that as long as they enslaved the people from a society thousands of miles away they could still behave “civilized” in their own society and even benefit from the free labor. Was that morally wrong? This social contract utilitarianism sounds great but ends up being inadequate and rather arbitrary at times.

So, like, do you just seize on the first potential contention you think of, and then stop thinking of what comes next? Because from where I'm sitting, we live in a world that has benefited greatly from international cooperation and communication, and solely detrimented from international conflict. How much of our technology is developed by blended international teams? How much have we all gained from sharing our knowledge? All this stuff stops if we start sealing our borders and preying off of others.

Slavery is another one of those things that gets brought up a lot in these debates, and again the response is simple: self determination is an important concept for humans, both logically in terms of how it aids us in finding fulfillment in our lives, which in turn gives us a greater chance of being of benefit to the group, and psychologically. Additionally, slavery is bad for the slaves from numerous angles, and once again, morality isn't just about you, and it isn't limited to just one group or another.

Everyone participates in morality in some small way. It doesn't just stop at our doorstep. Why is this so difficult?

It’s only complicated if God does not exist because it’s then rendered incoherent and arbitrary.

Nope. Moving on.

So? I do not see how that creates a moral imperative to do what is best for everyone rather than the individual. Furthermore, are you say that any act that benefits the society is by definition morally good?

That really depends on what you mean by moral imperative, Stat; I've already discussed the benefits, both personal and social, to following these moral metrics. If that's not enough, if you're looking for some externally derived force that should make us follow them, then there isn't one, and it's you that's begging the question by expecting that one should exist.

As to your second point, the answer is no, because morality is inherently contextual and I could not possibly account for every scenario one might dream up. Broad, blanket generalizations aren't very helpful here.

What does that have to do with him? He was quite prosperous and I do not see how you can judge anything he did as being morally evil if there is no transcendent law-giver who owns everyone. If this life is all we are given and we all end up feeding the worms then why not put our self-interest above all other things?

Because morality isn't just about the individual, Stat. You keep attempting to ignore my definitions and force me to address this issue from a stance that you know I don't hold, which is weird. As to all this transcendent law giver nonsense, I find that a little hilarious; you're presenting Stalin to me as though his opinion differing from mine is a problem for me, and then to show how your system is better you appeal to... someone else's opinions.

It doesn't matter how magic that someone is, that's what you're doing. And so my question to you is, if god told you to become the next Stalin, would it be moral for you to do that?

Why ought we to do so? I do not see how you are arriving at that.

Because we have a survival drive as a species that compels us to set up our descendants to survive? Because we love our children and would like them to live in a better world? Because we're naturally empathetic beings due to our evolutionary path as social animals?

No, I do good deeds now because Christ’s redeeming work made such actions possible, my fellow men are created in the image of God, and I am commanded to do so by He who owns all of creation. That seems to make more sense than sacrificing my well-being for other sentient bags of tissue whom may or may not even exist in the future, whom may or may not even benefit from my sacrifices, and who may or may not be kind to other sentient bags of tissue.

Do you also not ever eat food because it may or may not taste good? Uncertain does not equal meaningless, Stat.

It was not answered though, you simply say because it helps everyone out, but I am asking why should a person help everyone? Simply because you say so?

Because helping people leads to real, objective benefits in our lives, according to criteria determined by our existence as biological entities that exist in an externally derived, objective world!

Yes it is. Sentient is defined as “having the power of perception by the senses; conscious (Webster’s)”; so it follows that if you are not conscious you are not sentient.

If I shake you while you're asleep, you'll wake up; your sense of touch is still active. If I make a loud noise, you'll wake up; your sense of hearing is still active. If I shine a bright light in your eyes, you'll wake up; your sense of sight is still active. etc etc.

Additionally, as I mentioned previously, there's a reasonable expectation that you'll return to full consciousness at a later time, and so your existence as a sentient entity has at most been suspended, not completely stopped. We're still capable of applying moral metrics to that person because in time they'll return to consciousness and have to deal with the repercussions of things done to them while they were asleep.

How? If the two people never got caught then how can you say they did anything wrong given your utilitarian definition of morality?

Having broken a social contract and gotten away with it, it's possible they may do so again.

Is there a way to opt out of these social contracts or are they forced upon everyone? Who determines what’s in the contract? This just seems like a garbled mess.

Sure, you can opt out, but if you try to do so by negatively impacting other people they'll want to stop you, as it's in the best interests of everyone to do so.

And there's no "who," involved in what does into the contract, it's a system that changes and hopefully improves over time as we learn more and make mistakes.