what should i even say?

[FreeTony]

Start by imagining this scenario: There is one human left on the Earth, living on an island with just plants to eat. Can he commit an immoral act?

Most Christians would reply yes, as the man can still break some of Gods laws. I myself would say no because he can't cause harm to anyone else, and any harm he causes himself is either his own choice, or not his fault.


Another question you can ask your Christian friends is this: How do you know God is moral? Given you only have his rules to go by, you can only assess his morality by his adherence to those rules. He could be evil and given humanity an evil set of rules to follow. It is impossible to know whether the set of rules given to you are moral or not.

Most Christians have made the judgement that God is good. How have they done this?

[Jacob(smooth)]

No, you're wrong. The moral act is to use a proportionate level of force. If you are trying to kill me I am morally justified in trying to kill you.

Justified, yes, but I hope we can both agree that the ideal way for that situation to end involves no loss of life, yes?

Indeed. But let us suppose for the sake of argument that I don't agree. That I feel the symmetry and "natural justice" of an eye for an eye makes my position the moral one, and that your position is naive and illogical, based on a concept of the value of life which has no basis in nature, where the cruel law of survival of the fittest rules supreme.

I've made a case, and so have you. Besides that your version of objective morality is the one you happen to believe, what makes it more objective than mine?

The above is a bald statement of opinion on what is moral, underpinned only by a fairly vague concept. But then, so was yours.

So what we have here is my belief on morality vs yours (subjective).

But there isn't a disagreement- again, I hope - on what the moral pinnacle is, in that situation. The existence of less moral possible solutions doesn't mean we're working from a subjective base, it just means we often fall short of the ideal on questions of morality. I'm not arguing that we don't have subjective values, just that there are objective truths to be known about the world we live in, and that because of this, all of those subjective opinions aren't equal. Some can just be wrong, and one can be more right than another.

But what MAKES them more or less right than each other? Is it the degree of correlation with the universal truths? Or is it simple consensus? You and I both believe in the sanctity of human life, but that merely means you and I agree, not that it's an objective truth. Amble over to the vegan discussion you'll find people convinced that the sanctity of animal life is an objective truth. Are they wrong? Or merely people who believe in different objective morality?

[Esquilax]

Indeed. But let us suppose for the sake of argument that I don't agree. That I feel the symmetry and "natural justice" of an eye for an eye makes my position the moral one, and that your position is naive and illogical, based on a concept of the value of life which has no basis in nature, where the cruel law of survival of the fittest rules supreme.

I've made a case, and so have you. Besides that your version of objective morality is the one you happen to believe, what makes it more objective than mine?

Well, there we get into the business of presenting argument and evidence. It's not hard to do; leaving aside the obvious flaw in the way you've presented survival of the fittest (it's not a moral concept and even if it is, it doesn't quite work that way in humans. ) there's still the matter of internal consistency, as it applies to you yourself.

Do you want to die? No, I doubt it. Most everyone feels that way, it's written into our biology. Given that you value your life, and you can predict that the majority of others do as well- not to mention the obvious utility of experiencing things versus gambling it away on a potential afterlife- then it's fairly simple to include the taking of life as an immoral act.

Now, you basically have two ways of going about that; either you can extend the "please don't kill me," premise over the rest of your species, upon which time you've gained an internally consistent moral principle (subject to adjustment for context, of course) or you can expect it to be fulfilled for you, but not for anyone else. At that point, you have an inconsistent moral position, which therefore fails as a logical position. Special pleading is a fallacy, after all, and I doubt one could make the case for being allowed to kill whomever they wanted while preserving their own life.

But what MAKES them more or less right than each other? Is it the degree of correlation with the universal truths? Or is it simple consensus?

The former. Granted, when it comes to the vegan issue you bring up, that's a more complicated discussion, and one where I wouldn't terribly mind a bit of speciesism rearing its head, since we're the only species capable of this level of consciousness... that is an enormous argument we're skirting around, though.