Why "mysterious ways" don't matter.

[SteveII]

I wasn't really concerned with 'objective morality'. What I saw in Esq's comment was a blanket statement about the nature of what we call real and how the distinction between subjective and objective things is a matter of aspect. Here is the quote:


The statement takes for granted a materialist ontology, a dead philosophical position. From a purely scientific perspective matter is largely undefined. There is no symbol in physics for matter. One can safely assume that the symbols and operations refer to something fundamental on the backside, but not everyone makes the assumption that it is 'matter' or even that 'matter' is itself sufficient by itself to serve as a monistic substrate.

So you were investing way more meaning in what I said than what I did. My point was far more literal: a thing that objectively exists continues to do so when it isn't observed. If I throw a rock over my shoulder, that rock will still be there when I turn around. It's not dependent on my or anyone's mind to exist.

Meanwhile, we define "subjective" as something based on personal opinions or feelings. Steve II was proposing a moral system that disappears the moment god's mind is no longer in play, meaning that it's sustained by god's mind. That seemed to me an awful lot like a subjective moral system tarted up with the word "objective" to give it more heft.

That's all.

I never said that morality ceases to exist without God. I said objective morality ceases to exist without God because without the possibility of a transcendent being, everything about our experience is subjective--including any moral code we have evolved.