Objective morality as a proper basic belief

[The Grand Nudger]

If we disregard god-dick-worship, yes.

There's no need to.  The dick worship is very demonstrably about harm.  I'm not telling you that they're right, you're not being asked to agree with them, I'm simply trying to establish, objectively...that when people talk about morality harm is an inescapable foundation.  Can we agree to that?  

But that requires accepting that caveat (and I hate lying or being a hypocrite about things so that has to be asterisked somewhere). Harm and well-being are the only reasonable metrics for judging actions and I would agree that something like moral relativism is bunk (for both subjective and objective reasons) and that basing a moral system on anything that exceeds the empirical realm (well-being in the afterlife being a concern, for instance) is also invalid because while you can objectively define this or that (homophobia, etc.), it's based on spurious, non-empirical concepts.

Again, no one is asking you whether basing a morality on harm pursuant to an afterlife is valid.  I'm only asking if you understand that it is still harm that they are referring to.  

Something about the language that I have to use here, however, still manages to make me feel uncomfortable about using 'objective' as the term here. Having to insert words like 'reasonable' and 'judging' into the mix like I just did there, just reek of the opposite of what you imagine when you think of objective since you tend to associate it with ignoring what people's opinions are about it.

Everything you say to me is an opinion.  Please stop using the word opinion as a spike.  Yes, it's our opinion.  Can opinions correlate to facts?  If they can, their being opinions is irrelevant. It is my opinion that harm is an inescapable foundation of morality.  That when we talk about something being bad...any of us, in any moral system, there is the implication of harm.  Would you agree that this opinion, of mine...correlates to a fact?

Like, I get why it's necessary to word it that way, there's just no way around it, I just think it can be done without using the word 'objective' for anything other than the 'what causes harm or well-being' part to minimize that off-putting effect.

If it's objective... it's objective.  Why not use the word?  What do you have against the word objective (seriously consider that this might be the stumbling block, not any rational objection).  

If you limit this to human beings only, that helps maintain a better balance with objective facts to support what actions promote well-being and minimize harm. Extending this to other creatures dips heavily into subjective territory even more so, so we'll leave that.

No, we won't, but we'll have to pick it back up after we've at least taken one step into the subject matter.  Can you allow yourself to do that?  When humans talk about morality humans are talking about a human morality.  It might apply to another animal, it might not, but it applies to humans.  That;s what we;re talking about.

Things like determining how severe a punishment should be (or whether or not it's even a good way of going about things) among other things are largely subjective as well even if supported by objective facts. So subjectivity plays an immense role in the process as well. Is there no way to either balance out what we call secular objective morality without making it sound loaded? I don't even think the primary name being objective is the right approach anyway because no one's going to go into it understanding intrinsically what you meant by it without having to hear your explanation of it. Secular morality alone should be sufficient, and would logically imply both objective and subjective criteria for determining the contents thereof. Naming it something that seems needlessly exclusionary is just another one of those things that feels wrong and makes me uncomfortable just accepting it as is. But it's just a name and I can call it whatever the hell I like as long as the principles remain the same.

Do you want to keep arguing against objective morality without knowing what ot is, or are you going to work with me?  Too much, too soon. It;s not a gun, nothings loaded, and good god what on earth are you worrying about it being loaded with?

Can you agree that we can establish an objective fact about morality?  That when people talk about something being bad, they are talking about it being harmful.  That's it, that's all we have to do to start.  Is that, in your opinion, an objective description of the subject of morality?