Atheists only vote please: Do absolute MORAL truths exist? Is Rape ALWAYS "wrong"?

[Alex K]

I'm not fond of the topic at all, it triggers too many emotions especially by those affected, especially since the OP has such a strong agenda of some sorts and ignores
all the subtlety that such a delicate topic requires. I don't like the taste of that.

[Fidel_Castronaut]

Absolute morals do not exist but I think rape is always wrong in every instance I can think of.

Others may disagree and there might be an instance where it isn't wrong and I can't think of it.

I'd also like to remind the OP that you can't stipulate who can and can't reply to your threads. I know you only want opinions from atheists but anyone can comment here.

Thanks.

[miniboes]

My apologies if what I say below has been said before, I have not read the whole thread.

I think there are absolute and objective morals, here's why:

I think all morals are based on conscious creatures, as if something cannot experience it has no interest in morality. A world with no life, with only rocks, or even a world with only rocks and plants, would have no morals. I think this is a pretty safe thing to say.

However, once you get conscious creatures, I think morals can be objective, Sam Harris does a very good job of explaining it in his book The Moral Landscape.

Let's say we take the worst possible scenario; the most possible suffering for everyone. I cannot think of anything worse than that. If that is objectively the worst possible scenario for all conscious creatures then everything that moves away from that is moral and everything that moves towards that is immoral. As rape causes suffering for the victim, I think it can be objectively considered immoral. In a case where the victim enjoys the rape, however, would not necessarily be immoral.

Basically I think there is one big absolute moral truth; to minimize suffering is good, to increase suffering is bad.

I am not sure if this is an adequate explanation, feel free to ask questions.

[Ryantology]

There are people and belief systems, such as the Abrahamic religions, that do not censure rape as an immoral activity.

There are no such things as 'universal moral truths', and I see no need to cite such a fantasy to say that I think something is morally incorrect.

[Ben Davis]

[TreeSapNest]

So the question... Does absolute universal moral truth exist? Is there ANYTHING where it can be said that it is morally true universally?

Nope. Only the world we make for ourselves.

[Whateverist]

Well that did the trick. Now I'm bored and tired and ready to sleep. Hope you find the confirmation for your bias that you're looking for so ardently. Reality and I will get on just fine without you.

And I hope you find that justification for rape

But I was't looking for it, don't desire it and remain as repulsed by rape as I've repeatedly already told you. Somehow my indifference to your project of classifying actions we do not approve of as universally and objectively wrong, keeps leading you imply that I would support rape in some circumstance. You're wrong of course and I've explained clearly enough for a 5th grader to follow. Wait a minute .. what grade are you in?

[Alex K]

Wait a minute .. what grade are you in?

Religion - the eternal kindergarden of the mind

[TreeSapNest]

you might explain when you think rape is good? ...or simply admit it is universally absolutely a moral wrong regardless of opinion, and that this truth transcends the human race.

I know morailty is a difficult subject and it seems to you like you have stumbled upon a clear indication that what you believe is true, but you have missed where the reasoning faulters.

Rape is always harmful, at least for people who don't enjoy dom/sub. It is always harmful in that circumstance regardless of what you or I or anyone else thinks about it. So it might at first seem that an absolute moral truth is found. But morality isn't about whether something is harmful. It's about whether something is right or wrong. Whether there is in fact a rule or a command to be followed regarding a particular behavior.

[Esquilax]

I'm sure I'll go through the rest of this thread and find something objectionable to respond to at some point, but before that I guess I'll give my position.

While objective morals don't exist- even under the theist framework where god hands down morals they aren't objective, but we'll get to that later- there is an objective reality from which one can derive their morals. There is a basis that is objectively real; we are evolved creatures, with social grouping and cooperation as our survival niches. We are also biological creatures, with a series of needs and wants that are uniform to our species and most others. From those two things, our evolved nature and the necessities of our survival, objective standards can be found from which our morality can hang.

These are simply brute facts of our existence: life is generally preferable to death, pleasure is preferable to pain, health is preferable to sickness or injury, and so on. They're general rules, there are contexts in which they come into conflict with one another and one must be selected over another, but that doesn't invalidate their usefulness in general. Simply pointing out one specific situation in which one of those rules is not true, as I'm sure you're tempted to do, theist OP, will not make them any less true for the majority of situations.

So now we have a basis, with the recognition that individual parts of it may come into conflict in time. From there, we can evaluate individual acts, in context, and see whether they violate that basis. Let's go with the OP's example: is rape wrong? Well, it causes harm with no overriding benefit, so... yes. Rape is wrong. Furthermore, I doubt anyone could provide a context in which rape does not violate our objective basis, so for the time being, in our current reality on planet earth, I would argue that rape is always wrong.

Now that we've established that, let's take a look at the theist claim, specifically that god's moral commandments comprise some objective moral truth. This is, bluntly, utter nonsense. God is not objective. God is a subject, a being with a mind precisely the same as humans are. If human morality is supposedly subjective, because humans are subjects and it's only their opinions, then how is it any different from god? God, who is a subject, and for which his moral commands are his opinions?

This lofty perch that theists occupy, where they claim to have some high ground where morality is concerned, is entirely illusive. It's pretend; they've mistaken "subjective, from a position of asserted authority," with "objective." Perhaps it's just a mistake, but I can't help but be suspicious, given that their chosen baseless redefinition happens to help them hide the big hurdle to their argument; demonstrating that god actually earns his authority. Bit convenient.