Objective morality as a proper basic belief

[Astonished]

I gave you a definition of a secular objective morality.  More than a definition, I gave you a primer.  We couldn;t agree on definitions because you kept insisting on definitions that would be amenable to our religious moral absolutists, because philosophers...who have for centuries been religious moral absolutists, insisted on that use of the term.  Insisted on those standards.  They never made sense...but obviously that didn't stop you from parroting them here, in a discussion with me, about secular moral objectivity - you're a product of your culture.

Your entire objection is the objection of a religious nitwit.  The same objection levied at every secular morality by every religious nitwit.

"That's like, your opinion, man. "

Are you so stubborn, and so desperate to believe that you have completely rid yourself of what took centuries of religious indoctrination over successive generations to accomplish at a cultural level...that you won't entertain the notion?

You gave me YOUR definition. I rejected it because of a fundamental conflict I pointed out that you failed to resolve (you're welcome to keep trying but if you want to keep spewing the same shit, we're in no better a position than that of a theist and skeptic). I went elsewhere to see if I could resolve this via someone who does this for a living and, I was unpleasantly surprised to find out, nope, no solutions out there. If you can find one, please, I invite you, cite and post, and I'll give it due consideration. I no longer trust your capability to do this on your own so forgive the eye-rolling if you want to keep jabbering on. Ironic how you used the Dude (shittiest movie ever, BTW, you have SUCH great taste, big surprise) to illustrate what you're incapable of understanding.

[The Grand Nudger]

You gave me YOUR definition. I rejected it because of a fundamental conflict I pointed out that you failed to resolve (you're welcome to keep trying but if you want to keep spewing the same shit, we're in no better a position than that of a theist and skeptic).

Isn't that like......just your opinion, man?
(can you see now why that objection is pointless, lol?)

I went elsewhere to see if I could resolve this via someone who does this for a living and, I was unpleasantly surprised to find out, nope, no solutions out there.

Then look harder.  Search for William Lane Craig, for example, debating a secular objective moral theorist.  Maybe it'll appeal to you since the secular objectivist is shitting on a christer like it was his job.

If you can find one, please, I invite you, cite and post, and I'll give it due consideration. I no longer trust your capability to do this on your own so forgive the eye-rolling if you want to keep jabbering on. Ironic how you used the Dude (shittiest movie ever, BTW, you have SUCH great taste, big surprise) to illustrate what you're incapable of understanding.

Oh, now you;ve got a problem with the dude -and- secular objective morality?  Pistols at 5 paces.  

[Astonished]

You gave me YOUR definition. I rejected it because of a fundamental conflict I pointed out that you failed to resolve (you're welcome to keep trying but if you want to keep spewing the same shit, we're in no better a position than that of a theist and skeptic).

Isn't that like......just your opinion, man?
(can you see now why that objection is pointless, lol?)

I went elsewhere to see if I could resolve this via someone who does this for a living and, I was unpleasantly surprised to find out, nope, no solutions out there.

Then look harder.  Search for William Lane Craig, for example, debating a secular objective moral theorist.  Maybe it'll appeal to you since the secular objectivist is shitting on a christer like it was his job.

If you can find one, please, I invite you, cite and post, and I'll give it due consideration. I no longer trust your capability to do this on your own so forgive the eye-rolling if you want to keep jabbering on. Ironic how you used the Dude (shittiest movie ever, BTW, you have SUCH great taste, big surprise) to illustrate what you're incapable of understanding.

Oh, now you;ve got a problem with the dude -and- secular objective morality?  Pistols at 5 paces.  

Dude, an infant could shit on WLC. And there wasn't a single likeable character in that entire fucking movie. I have to give a shit about at least one person to care about anything that happens in the fucking thing. Also the thing with the woman using him as a sperm donor to become a single parent intentionally is something that bothers the fuck out of me because of personal experience. But that's, like, my opinion, man. Sure, I could point out how I think growing up without a two-parent home or a parent or at least surrogate parental figure (uncle, aunt, depending) so that both sexes are represented is not beneficial to the child, but if my subjective experience in that regard is an outlier to all other empirical data, well, fuck-a-doodle-doo, that does me no good deferring to objectivity.

[The Grand Nudger]

I get it, you're angry.  

If you'd like to start over from the very beginning on what makes a secular objective morality objective, we can do so.  

What are we talking about, when we talk about morality.  You and I refer to harm.  The religious, in a hilariously twisted way, refer to harm.  Our empathy...refers to harm.  In fact, you can't go anywhere in the moral landscape and not hear about harm, harm, harm.  Now.  I didn't make it that way.  I didn't choose for my empathy to respond to harm.  I didn't choose for those religious people, or their religious beliefs, to refer to harm.  It's not just my opinion that you and I refer to harm, that the religious refer to harm, that our empathy responds to harm.  The subject of morality, across people with moral disagreements and disparate moral foundations appears to be referant to harm.  Our biology, itself, appears to be referent to harm. 

The subject of morality, or at least one of them, is harm.  Harm is what we are talking about when we try to decide if something is bad. 

Would this, in -your- opinion, qualify as an objective fact?

[Astonished]

I get it, you're angry.  

If you'd like to start over from the very beginning on what makes a secular objective morality objective, we can do so.  

What are we talking about, when we talk about morality.  You and I refer to harm.  The religious, in a hilariously twisted way, refer to harm.  Our empathy...refers to harm.  In fact, you can't go anywhere in the moral landscape and not hear about harm, harm, harm.  Now.  I didn't make it that way.  I didn't choose for my empathy to respond to harm.  I didn't choose for those religious people, or their religious beliefs, to refer to harm.  It's not just my opinion that you and I refer to harm, that the religious refer to harm, that our empathy responds to harm.  The subject of morality, across people with moral disagreements and disparate moral foundations appears to be referant to harm.  Our biology, itself, appears to be referent to harm. 

The subject of morality, or at least one of them, is harm.  Harm is what we are talking about when we try to decide if something is bad. 

Would this, in -your- opinion, qualify as an objective fact?

If we disregard god-dick-worship, yes. 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. 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. 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 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. 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.

[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?

[Qwraith]

@OP

Forgive me as I don't have a complete understanding of the Abrahamic religions, let alone Christianity, but I don't understand how you can get to objective morality even with God. Dude regularly calls for acts of genocide or commits what we would consider heinous acts all the time. Then it turns around and commands us not to kill? How is that not subjective? He could command anything and it would be considered morally right. Before you start claiming OT OT, why does that make a difference? Guy's a flip flopper.

[Amarok]

@OP

Forgive me as I don't have a complete understanding of the Abrahamic religions, let alone Christianity, but I don't understand how you can get to objective morality even with God. Dude regularly calls for acts of genocide or commits what we would consider heinous acts all the time. Then it turns around and commands us not to kill? How is that not subjective? He could command anything and it would be considered morally right. Before you start claiming OT OT, why does that make a difference? Guy's a flip flopper.

Oh it's super duper uber special nature which is arbitrarily referred to by men and seemingly picked by men . That somehow make his commands right .Refer back to my earlier comments on why this is BS . Divine command theory is bull as is divine ontology .

[The Grand Nudger]

@Qwraith

An objective morality -can- tell you not to kill and simultaneously compel you to war.  There's no need to flip flop on the issue.  I think a more salient observation of the moral status of god in reference to those commands were -why- god told them to do what they did.  In each and every case, they had it coming™.  Yes Katie, even the women and children.

We're not actually disputing objectivity, we're disputing the objective fact of their having had it coming.  We're criticizing any morality, subjective or objective (or otherwise), that includes sex trafficking and genocide as righteous reprisal or preemptive war or..more commonly, a legitimate real estate business model.

[Angrboda]

Also, it is not because God says so. It is not his opinion. Rather they derive from his nature.

The idea that morality can derive from God's nature is philosophical twaddle. The concepts of good and evil are about actions, not about being. A given action is either good or bad. Right or wrong. A person's nature is morally neutral. The idea that a being is essentially good or evil is incoherent. And that applies to God as well. There is no such thing as a being that is "good incarnate." If God has free will, even if he is essentially good, then he has the capacity to do evil. Either that, or you're abusing the notion of free will. So you cannot derive the necessity of God's actions being moral from his nature. If God does not have free will, then he's just an automaton. You can't derive morals from the behavior of an automaton. This idea that morality derives from God's nature is incoherent and unworkable, despite being a popular dodge. You're back to Euthyphro's dilemma, with God's commands being either arbitrary, or based on a standard independent of God. In no case do you have objective morality being derived from God.