My views on objective morality

[downbeatplumb]

What if we genetically engineered a sub group of humans that truly wanted to be slaves?

You don't have to. You can convince people that the cult leader is divine and they gleefully become slaves or, kill or whatever.

[Mister Agenda]

God only condones those things to a person who takes a completely literal interpretation of the OT and completely ignores the teachings of Christ in the New Testament. This is not Catholicism.

Is the thinking that those things are bad so God must not have ordered them and those parts of the Old Testament are just the writings of warlike humans trying to justify their actions by claiming God authorized them?

[Whateverist]

I don't see what connection God is supposed to have to morality. To me, it's mainly about the wellbeing of others. If god's opinion lines up with that, fine. If it doesn't, then I'll ignore it. So what use is it?

Or, to play angel's advocate, are 'objective' morals whatever God says they are -or is God just the champ at recognizing what is best morally?  

Also, might there be competing schools of equally good objective morals?  And if so, can we be sure God doesn't endorse them all?  How can we be sure?

[Nay_Sayer]

-snip-

You have no morality, It's based on whatever you think god considers normal which begs the question how do you know your god is moral?

[Cecelia]

A few things:

You state that we have a better understanding of god. Why? Not why do you think we have a better understanding of God, but what is it that caused us to have a better understanding? The church still gets many things about morality wrong. If Morals are objective, then morals never change. Why would today's church have better understanding than the church of yesterday?

And if they had a flawed understanding of god, then why trust anything they say? For example you're okay with considering homosexual sex 'immoral' because it's 'unnatural' (that's unfounded, but whatever). But you believe slavery is immoral because of God, despite God never saying any such thing.

Finally, how does one misinterpret God saying "Slavery is bad" to "Slavery is not bad!"

[Catholic_Lady]

Jor, it revolves around our belief that life is sacred and that we all have inherent, God given human rights that ought to be respected.

That is what you believe now, but why is that privileged over what people believed then?  You've essentially just said that your current view is superior because you believe it is superior.  Besides being the hallmark of subjective morality, that's a circular justification for believing that the prior generations' morals are inferior.  In other words, that's no justification at all.  Try again.

You're right, I do believe being against slavery and genocide is morally superior to being for it. If that means I think my morals are better than pre civil war America, Isis, and Nazism, then so be it I suppose. I have no problem with that. If I didn't believe they were superior, they wouldn't be my morals lol. 

With that being said, I think we have always had an inherent understanding that human life has value. The rationalization often was to say that certain groups of people weren't really fully human. That's partially how a lot of civilizations have justified genocide or enslavement. Now a days, many of us justify abortion with the same rationale - that a human being in the womb is not really human. I think in the future people will look back on it the same way we look back on slavery and the slaughtering of the indians. Of course, that won't begin to happen until we discover a different way of dealing with unwanted pregnancies that don't involve having to kill the fetus. We have a tendency to rationalize a lot of things when committing them is convenient or beneficial to us.

[Catholic_Lady]

You state that we have a better understanding of god.  Why? 

Well for one thing, Jesus coming helped change the people's understanding of God. When before we believed God was all for an eye for an eye, for example, we learned from Jesus that He actually isn't. He's about forgiveness and loving our enemies. 

Other than that, I think as time goes on we (as the Christian faith) grow and learn, and are constantly coming to new realizations and in turn, a better understanding.

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

You state that we have a better understanding of god.  Why? 

Well for one thing, Jesus coming helped change the people's understanding of God. When before we believed God was all for an eye for an eye, for example, we learned from Jesus that He actually isn't. He's about forgiveness and loving our enemies. 

Other than that, I think as time goes on we (as the Christian faith) grow and learn, and are constantly coming to new realizations and in turn, a better understanding.

And it doesn't trouble you even a little that an all-powerful Being took a couple of thousand years to get people to understand what he was really like?  I'm sorry, but that's a mug's game.  If it isn't God that has changed but only our understanding of him, then generation after generation went about doing the wrong things, and causing immeasurate suffering along the way.  Any reason God couldn't have sorted it out from go?  Think of all the needless pain and misery that could have been averted had the Ten Commandments been replaced with the Beatitudes.

Boru

[Catholic_Lady]

Well for one thing, Jesus coming helped change the people's understanding of God. When before we believed God was all for an eye for an eye, for example, we learned from Jesus that He actually isn't. He's about forgiveness and loving our enemies. 

Other than that, I think as time goes on we (as the Christian faith) grow and learn, and are constantly coming to new realizations and in turn, a better understanding.

And it doesn't trouble you even a little that an all-powerful Being took a couple of thousand years to get people to understand what he was really like?  I'm sorry, but that's a mug's game.  If it isn't God that has changed but only our understanding of him, then generation after generation went about doing the wrong things, and causing immeasurate suffering along the way.  Any reason God couldn't have sorted it out from go?  Think of all the needless pain and misery that could have been averted had the Ten Commandments been replaced with the Beatitudes.

Boru

Well we still don't fully understand. And we never will... at least not until we die and meet Him. But I do think at least overall, it will continue to be a slow, forward moving process as it always has been.   

Do I have a problem with that? No. I'm ok with not understanding why God does certain things the way He does. (goes to show, again, we are still far from fully understanding Him). I'm not God, I can't see the whole universe, I can't see past, present, and future at all once. I'm just one little human living in a tiny part of the universe for a tiny fraction of eternity. And so of course I'm not going to understand all the motivations of someone who knows everything and can see everything. Why should I think I know better? I don't know everything He knows, and I'm ok with that. I'm ok with not being at the top of the totem pole.

[SteelCurtain]

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.

I don't think I did, though. You are literally defining subjective morality and calling it objective. Your platonic standard is nothing more than your subjective moral standard at this time. As your understanding of god changes, so does your moral standard. It's also of note that your standard would also change with the Catholic Church's doctrine.

At some point, as the world moves farther and farther away from religion and Christianity specifically, it will likely be moral to do whatever it takes to win people's souls to save them from eternal torture from the Church's perspective. This is just conjecture, but it serves as a flagpost for subjective morality that I see as extremely likely.