Moral standards

[Esquilax]

This is a circular argument. You are basically saying - life is valuable because we are able to consider and determine morals, and those morals carry weight because they come from life with value. Life gets value from the morals it conceives, morals get value from the life that conceives them. Similar to the "Bible is truth because the Bible tells me so" argument.

It's not circular, it's just that one is contingent upon the other to have any possibility of expression, and therefore must inherently value that which allows it to be expressed. It's also not what I'm saying, in totality. I was speaking within the context of the question you asked, which was about morality itself. From the standpoint of the continuation of morality, moral actors are a must. But that's not the only reason morality values life, it's just a function of the fact that morality is constructed by thinking agents.

To expound, morality values life because it is a construct of life; living things are moral actors, and the purpose of morality as an evolved principle (which it is) is the growth and maintenance of social groups. To see why this is so, simply imagine a universe devoid of life from the outset. Does "immoral" mean anything in a world where immoral acts could never possibly be performed, nor even considered?

In a way, "morality values life because living things construct morals" is roughly as circular as "humans value air because air allows humans to be alive." Of course you value that which you depend upon.

Also, romantic love is a great example. Rape is considered immoral, considerably also unromantic, yet it could give the same results to the survival of the human race. And yet we value treating a woman as a person with inherent worth and dignity. Saying that morals strictly come from some evolved sense of cooperation for survival falls short.

Except that you're excluding some very obvious points, mostly that the gene propagation that evolution depends on requires a stable population to begin with. Humans evolved as social animals, and a large part of what allows us to form a cohesive society is a level of minimum trust, which sexual assault is a detriment to. More harm is done, less trust is formed, group cooperation breaks down in a human species that evolves to promote sexual assault. I hope I don't have to explain why that is.

This is off as well. What I am proposing to you is that treating life with dignity is a concept that remains consistent even after life has passed. The idea that torture can be an act involving no pain is an attempt to redefine the word "torture" and is a sidestep to the idea that I am proposing. Torture must be the act of deliberately causing discomfort. Im not pulling my dictionary out on this one because I think that we are both intelligent enough to understand what the term implies with any life form.

On your latter point, I suppose you're right, but what I was getting at is that what one species would find torture might be beneficial to another, and hence the metric for that specific act of torture is different for that other species.

As to your former point, the best you could say is that, had beings existed at one point and then ceased being, that to those beings treating life with dignity was a moral good. It's kind of a weird hypothetical because at the point at which there are no beings around, who is having this discussion on morality? Morals require moral actors in the same way that chess requires a board.

A hazy line to draw, particularly with your first parameter.

It's a general rule, designed for general purposes. It'd be foolish to never reconsider your position based on context because then you'd have effectively sealed yourself off and decided that the only scenarios you'll consider are the ones you already have considered. You don't know everything, and thus you can't make all encompassing blanket pronouncements on an issue.

More importantly, exceptions aren't a weakness, they're an acknowledgement that the world we live in is complicated.

I don't see that. I see general rules of morality being thrown at me as a way to brush off a difficult question for any atheist to answer. When these rules are put into a specific context they often fall short. It is one things to put a bumper sticker on your car or tattoo a quote on your shoulder. It is a much different thing to deal with the complexities of life and what it presents.

What, exactly, is the question supposedly being avoided?

My point here being that without specific moral standards people tend to fall into a moral relativity which, when tested, actually exposes itself as "whatever is easiest and makes me feel good at that point in time."

Situational morality is different from moral relativity, in that the former actually contains some general principles that persist, plus the possibility that some moral claims can in fact be wrong. Moral relativity doesn't do either of that; this isn't a claim that whatever I think becomes moral merely because I think it.

When you have a specific set of moral standards that you are expected to uphold, even when it is hard to do so, there is no excuse. And when you fall short of those standards, there is no ignoring it. This is why many people look at Christians and pull the hypocrite card, because there are high standards.

No, people pull the hypocrite card on christians because they set themselves up with rigid, unthinking dogmas that don't take into account a rapidly evolving world and yet are somehow divinely inspired, and then break them whenever it's convenient.

But I love how proud you are of never being able to change your mind or accept new information with regards to your moral system. That really does shine the perfect light on just how asinine your initial question was.