Morals

[ecolox]

However, separate people place value and meaning on each other, creating value and meaning subjectively. Just because it is subjective doesn't mean it isn't value and meaning.

When it is said that life is meaningless without God it means...you can live a giving life but because life is unfair - it won't matter. You won't be treated how you deserve to be treated. Thieves are off living the high life and charitable people are dying from starvation. God gives life meaning by ultimately setting things right. E.g. charitable people who are dying from starvation rely on the notion of God in order to continue being charitable while starving or being treated poorly. Without God in mind, people in the long run tend to focus on making sure they are treated well, whether they deserve it or not. This subjective "substitute" for meaning that Adrian describes isn't really a substitute. It doesn't enable a person to live poorer and more charitably than the people around them. (The substitute is meaningless.)

Also true that if we make up morals, we can justify genocide. The thing is, we don't make up morals at all. Morality as far as we know is a cumulative reasoning exercise that whole societies develop.

Hitler led Germany, what was a civil society, into being a genocide machine in no time. The idea that society is safe, gradually improving, and stable (from genocide, etc) because morals are a "cumulative reasoning exercise" is delusional.

The idea that everyone should be treated equally is becoming the dominating idea, and thus changing the morality slowly but surely.

The 20th century was the bloodiest century ever (from deaths by atrocity per population).