A Levite and his concubine

[Lek]

Are you kidding me? I have no objective evidence to show that human beings are biological entities? That they work from roughly the same physical set up? That pain signals injury, and that sickness causes us to suffer? That reality is a thing?

Are you seriously telling me that we have no objective evidence that demonstrates these things to be true? And if not, then you're just factually wrong here.

Np. I agree with you said here. There is some objective evidence on your side, but there is also objective evidence to show that murder, for instance, can be beneficial to the world.

Yes, I know; people violate moral rules. But morality isn't a question of single examples, is it? It's not "Oh, someone can commit murder and get away with it, I guess murder is moral then." Morality concerns the whole of humanity, not individual members of it. If it was acceptable for everyone to commit immoral acts and benefit from the suffering of others, would the world be objectively better, or worse?

I think the world would be worse.

Sure, individuals can. It's an unfortunate consequence of being alive. But if everyone led immoral lives, if it was morally acceptable to do so, the world would be demonstrably worse off, and in fact society itself may become untenable.

Can you demonstrate how the world would have been better off it the Romans had not conquered most of the known world at the time by the sword? And be objective please. The same goes for if the European settlers and the US government had not massacred native Americans.

Not entirely true: altruism, relationship building and charity are also central parts of our natural behavior. You can even see it in other animals.

In fact, your claim is fairly baselessly misanthropic, here. It would take me but a moment to supply you with charities, stories of self sacrifice and bravery, lots of evidence to the contrary. In fact, I myself volunteer as a tutor to teach people to read. It doesn't benefit me in any way, but my psychology is wired to feel happiness at helping others, and the same is generally true for other people too. Yes, you get jerks and selfishness and villainy, but that's just testament to the fact that people aren't just a homogenous single character trait; we're a chaotic patchwork of heuristics and shortcuts programmed into what is, at best, an overclocked primate brain. This is exactly what you would expect if morality was a learning process derived from natural realities, and exactly what you would not expect in a world where morality is an iron clad set of dictates from the opinions of a god.

I guess when you say that your psychology is "wired" to feel good about helping others, that means that you learned to feel this way, since morality is a learning process. It seems that maybe the Romans learned that trampling everyone around them is good morality. Maybe they actually believed they were doing the wrong thing, but did it anyway....[/quote]or maybe they figured it was actually benefiting the whole world.

Go ahead and brush that off as a result of sin. I know you want to. But your unsupported, ad hoc rationalizations carry no weight until you can demonstrate the existence of sin, and sinful natures.

Yes, and that thing inside him is called "empathy and enculturation." He is empathetic to the harm he will cause the person he steals from- he himself wouldn't want someone to steal from him, so why should he be able to steal from someone else?- and this is reinforced by the fact that he was born and raised in a culture that prizes that empathy, and denigrates those who steal.

It's simple stuff, but you have to be looking at the real world and how people actually work, rather than searching for magic answers to fit a conclusion you've already decided was correct, because it's in a book you like.

Actually, it is pretty simple. Do I really have to reference an objective study to show that children are selfish? Children generally adopt the morals that are instilled in them by parents, teachers and role models. Accepted morality changes in societies over time. Fifty years ago in the US homosexuality was almost universally unacceptable to society, but is now accepted by majority. The same goes for abortion and other sexual morality. People tend to adapt their moral outlook over time. Unless you purposely hold to an unchanging morality, it's going to become relative to you. And what you've been saying supports my contention that morality is subjectdive.

Simply untrue. All of the psychological and behavioral research says otherwise, and you don't seem to even want to support what you say, so... why should I even entertain your wild, baseless claims?

We've just shown that morality is learned and that may people don't believe in or follow your ideas of what is moral or not. In fact, life on this world involves a daily struggle of good against evil, or right ways against wrong ways as you might call it. This struggle goes on inside of us as well as outside. There's a continual struggle within us about whether to do the right thing or the wrong thing. There's definitely no inherent tendency naturally built into us to do the right thing. I don't see where you have shown that it's logical or objective to support the assumption that your moral beliefs are correct. Evidently many great civilizations didn't share your view of morality and they benefited the world in many ways.