My views on objective morality

[J a c k]

Get used to saying "President Trump?"

***shudder

Although, after watching the debateshitshow tonight, other than Kasich, Trump scares me less than Rubio or Cruz.

I had to turn it off. I was literally feeling sick.

[Whateverist]

My gut reaction to the title of the video: "where do good and evil come from" was to ask "where are they now". Point to some "good". Better yet, show me some "evil". All you can do is to point to a person who has done some heinous thing or show the heinous act itself.

So what are good and evil? Are these things acts or persons? If good and evil are acts, are the good and evil anything beyond the acts? Does it exist in itself in some potential state until it is called on by an act? Does the evil bring the act about or is evil simply something we call a heinous act?

If evil exists as persons, is everything about an evil person evil? Did the evil hijack the individual and use him like a host? What is it you people say about distinguishing between the sin and the sinner? Surely you don't think people themselves are the embodiment of evil then.

Yeah, before I can be arsed to worry about where good and evil come from, I need more information about what exactly we are looking for. Show it to me so I know what we are looking for.

[robvalue]

I hold that morality is a value judgement, and not a measurement. Value judgements are subjective.

They only become objective if we arbitrarily select one thinking agent to do all the judging, and call their subjective morality objective.

The idea that morality is somehow inherent is, to me, absolutely nonsensical. I've never heard anyone define objective morality in a way that is coherent and useful. The biggest problem is definition. Some people define morality to mean something entirely different to what I consider it should be about. Morality is about achieving certain goals, and those goals help decide what actions are "good" and "bad". If we don't agree on the goals, or someone refuses to state what the goals are, no useful discussion can continue. The problem is with entirely circular definitions; "good" is things that are "good". It doesn't mean anything. "We all know what good means" is similarly useless, when clearly we don't agree. You can't say something is objective without properly pinning down what it actually means, and without the use of vague, subjective terms.

"Unchanging" doesn't automatically mean desirable, or useful. Neither does "external" or "independent".

I did a couple of video replies recently on this subject, so I'll put them here. They cover a lot of these issues and I've not received a rebuttal from either party.

http://youtu.be/jJ46w6J10GI

http://youtu.be/bjcjWr23EW0

http://youtu.be/-41jGxs1nCE

[Bob Kelso]

In which case you are asserting that there is an objective standard, but that we don't know what that standard is?  If so, how do we know there is an objective standard?

I think the more civilized we become, the more clearly we are able to understand certain things. Thousands of years ago, perhaps most of humanity didn't see slavery as being wrong. (or maybe deep inside they did, but chose to ignored it or tried to rationalize it). Whatever the case, now a days we know better, and have come to understand that human beings have the inherent right to their own lives.

Hold the phone. Are you suggesting that a supreme being was incapable of setting out his objective standards in a way that people of any time could easily understand? 

I've heard variants of this argument before, and, in a paradoxical way, it seems to revolve around a subjective, evolving, understanding of a supposed objective truth.

[robvalue]

My biggest problem is why I should care, if there is "one true objective morality".

What does it matter? What use is it? If it doesn't line up with what I think morality should be about, I'm just going to ignore it. I don't take orders from anyone. It's entirely amoral to do so.

If God meant to give us all the "same morality", he has failed. Simple as that. He could have done it, and done it properly. He didn't, so I can only assume it wasn't important to him. If he wants us to have "free will" and to think about morality for ourselves, then he wants it to be subjective.

Giving us free will then ordering us to ignore it and obey men speaking for God or else we'll be punished, is the methodology of a lunatic.

Most problematic of all: no two theists agree on what this objective morality is.

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

In which case you are asserting that there is an objective standard, but that we don't know what that standard is?  If so, how do we know there is an objective standard?

I think the more civilized we become, the more clearly we are able to understand certain things. Thousands of years ago, perhaps most of humanity didn't see slavery as being wrong. (or maybe deep inside they did, but chose to ignored it or tried to rationalize it). Whatever the case, now a days we know better, and have come to understand that human beings have the inherent right to their own lives.

But even in the New Testament, both Jesus and Paul endorsed slavery (Jesus tacitly, Paul overtly). Paul even went to far as to return an escaped slave to his owner.

If Jesus was God incarnate, and Paul the receiver of direct revelation, wouldn't they both have grasped that slavery is morally wrong? Since they clearly did not, we can bolster the case that scripture, rather being the word of an ultimate moral lawgiver, simply reflects the societal mores of its time: the Bible endorses slavery because the society in which the Bible was written endorsed slavery. If slavery was morally wrong in either a societal or religious sense, why isn't there a passage which reads something like, 'Take not ye a man into bondage, neither shall ye have a woman or her children as bond servants. Not for debt nor crime not for being taken in war shall ye put fetters on thy fellow man, for this is an abomination unto Me'?

Instead, we find scripture on who merits enslavement, what slaves should cost, and how to treat and beat them. This doesn't really sound like something passed onto us by a moral lawgiver.

Boru

[robvalue]

Indeed, and we have people on this forum still using it to justify slavery being moral.

The bible is very clear; slavery is allowed. Either morality is subjective and now slavery is considered immoral (mostly); or slavery was, and still is, moral.

Or you just ignore the bible and make up whatever stuff you want, which is again entirely subjective.

[robvalue]

My challenge to anyone is simple:

1) Define what morality means, using terms that aren't subjective. If you can't do this, what you are taking about is not objective.

2) If you manage this, tell me why I should care about it.

[Catholic_Lady]

Objective morality has been discussed many times on these forums, and many times by me. A lot of times I feel like I have a hard time trying to explain objective morality or why objective morality makes sense to me, which in turn helps make the existence of a god make sense to me.

Usually when people have a hard time articulating about stuff they claim to understand, it's because they really don't have a solid understanding of it. And I suspect this to be the case here with you as well.

I think you just want to believe there is an objective morality originated by God, or you are psychologically conditioned with the intuition that objective morality must exist. But neither means that it does. At least not one coming forth from God.

No, I have no reason to want to believe anything. I believe in it because I do. Because it makes sense to me. Not because I "want" to. Life would probably  be easier if I didn't.

[Catholic_Lady]

I think the more civilized we become, the more clearly we are able to understand certain things. Thousands of years ago, perhaps most of humanity didn't see slavery as being wrong. (or maybe deep inside they did, but chose to ignored it or tried to rationalize it). Whatever the case, now a days we know better, and have come to understand that human beings have the inherent right to their own lives.

But isn't this the very definition of subjective morality? It also begs the question: What if our understanding changes again?

No. You must have misunderstood me. Subjective morality means there is no concrete right and wrong. What I'm saying is I believe there is a concrete right and wrong and always has been and always will be, but we may not fully agree with it or acknowledge it. Because as the video explains, we believe morality does not come from us, but from a higher law maker who made these laws. You are right, in the future perhaps we will regress in that way and slavery will be more accepted again in all societies. Will that make slavery good? No. Slavery has and always will be evil because it is an objectively, inherently evil act. Because it takes away the inherent right a human being has. That's what I believe.