RE: Where are the Morals?
October 12, 2014 at 6:03 pm
(This post was last modified: October 12, 2014 at 6:03 pm by Surgenator.)
(October 12, 2014 at 12:28 am)Harris Wrote:(September 24, 2014 at 2:11 pm)Surgenator Wrote: First off, an absolute moral law is moral always for everyone.
Agreed
(September 24, 2014 at 2:11 pm)Surgenator Wrote: Giving examples of possible absolute moral laws doesn't prove they're absolute.
Inanimate objects do not have morals. Moral is purely a human quality. Several studies show that animals also have sense of empathy. However, empathy in animals is not a match with the human empathy.
Morals, essentially, centred on human conscience and empathy. The concepts of good and evil are the products of universal feelings that all adult human equally share. It is universally accepted that:
saving life of some innocent human,
to look after an orphan,
to help someone to bring him out from his burden of credit,
to help young and alone lady so she can develop a nice family life and avoid life of a prostitute or a mistress,
not to treat animals badly in order to have fun with their lives,
or to give someone any kind of help without thinking of having any benefit out of that help is universally accepted as moral.
I disagree that morals are a purely human quality. Primates have shown behavior and understanding of fairness. Elephants show empathy. Your claim that other species empathy doesn't match our own is unfounded. Where is your evidence that humans have the greatest empathy here on this planet? Please don't waste your time by giving a specific examples because that ignores all the amoral examples. Your evidence should apply to the human race as a whole.
Again, the morals humans develop doesn't make them absolute or universal. Human morallity has and still is developing i.e. abolishing of slavery, condoning racism, condoning sexism, marriage equlity, etc... The fact that human morality evolves with time and geographically dependent means human morality isn't absolute or universal. If there is an absolute morality, we humans are (hopefully) approching it.
Finally, you assume that absolute morals exist. You haven't showed that.