Conscience and the Moral Argument as Evidence for the Goodness of God.

[Fake Messiah]

As I explained many times, from humanistic perspective slavery is bad because a humanistic perspective is based on individual human feelings, and we know that slaves suffer. In Christian societies, the individual is not important, so that is why slavery was often acceptable (and many Christian apologists want it to come back) as is not allowing women to be educated, tolerance of other religions is not allowed, etc.

But there is no objective way for me to say that slavery is bad. I can only appeal to logic and humanistic appeals, which can easily be dismissed by a theistic mentality.

If you can appeal to logic, then you literally -are- saying that slavery is objectively bad.  People might dismiss it, but people often dismiss facts.  That doesn't change anything about those facts, it just tells you about that person.

Logic but inside of the cultural frame. Let's say there is a society where slavery is moral because they believe that their god said it was moral. Now you could appeal to human feelings that slaves are suffering, but if they believe that their god is real then individuals don't matter and you are the one who is dismissing the facts. So the only thing you could do would be to debunk their god because to them it is logical to do what their god wants.

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

This is wrong.  Nothing about atheism is incompatible with objective morals.

Honestly, you seem like a nice enough person, but you're advancing second-rate versions of age-old arguments that have been answered many times before.  There's nothing wrong with learning by doing, but it's obvious you haven't done your homework and read up on these things.

Answered but never refuted. :-)

There are plenty of refutations of the moral argument. If you choose not to avail yourself of them, that’s your own lookout.

Boru

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

@Nishant Xavier

Sherlock Holmes famously quipped: "There is nothing in which deduction is so necessary as in religion," said he, leaning with his back against the shutters. "It can be built up as an exact science by the reasoner.Our highest assurance of the Goodness of Providence seems to me to rest in the flowers. All other things, our powers, our desires, our food, are all really necessary for our existence in the first instance. But this rose is an extra. Its smell and its color are an embellishment of life, not a condition of it. It is only a Goodness which gives extras, and so I say again that we have much to hope for from the flowers.”

As a member in good standing of two chapters of the BSI (meaning my dues to both are fully paid), I am compelled to point out that Holmes wasn’t particularly good at deduction. He was primarily an abductive reasoner.

The evidence that he didn’t do well with deduction can be found above.

Boru

[Nishant Xavier]

Lol, I love Atheists. Sherlock Holmes (albeit fictional) is literally like the most famous deductive reasoner of all time, being after all an investigative detective. How does one be a Detective without Deductive Reasoning? Deductive reasoning is the process of forming premises (based e.g. on data) and then building a conclusion from those premises; both detectives and those interested in the question of whether God exists or not definitely have to make use of it. I'll start a thread on Design Detection subsequently, and how detectives and others use it, and why Intelligent Design, especially after the scientific discovery of DNA and the Genetic Code (ref. Stephen Meyer's Signature in the Cell), and Fine-Tuning, is based on a sound premise. 

Now, let's get back to our question of whether Morality is Objective vs Subjective. 
First, let's define with some examples Objective Truth and Subjective Feelings.

Subjective Feelings: I like tea, he/she prefers coffee. A purely subjective preference. Another e.g. color preferences. Morality clearly is not like this.
Objective Facts: that the Earth is round, that 2+2=4, that murder, rape, theft are objectively wrong etc. Even Michael Ruse, Agnostic Moral Philosopher cited earlier, admitted moral facts are like scientific facts (therefore objective) in reality, yet contradicted himself elsewhere by repeating the Agnostic/Atheistic perspective that morality is just about "reproducing and surviving", i.e. subjective. Morality is much more than that, as shown by the fact that moral obligation sometimes impels us to give up our lives and families to save those we love, as e.g. firefighters, soldiers etc do. 

Please note that (1) someone disagreeing with an Objective Truth does not suffice to make it subjective. Some believe the earth is flat, but that does nothing to change the Objective Truth. Rather, what matters in deciding whether a proposition P is objectively true or not is (2) whether P remains true even if largely everyone disagrees with it or not. In other words, let's assume there's a Rapist Island where 90% of the inhabitants believe rape is ok. If you believe rape would continue to be evil irrespective of that, then whether you know it or not you believe morality to be objective. Objective means mind-independent. It continues to be true even if some or even many people believe otherwise, like rape being wrong.

Now, let's take another example, this time historical, of Infanticide. Wiki says: "Infanticide was a widespread practice throughout human history". In fact, a study will show it was mainly Christianity that abolished it. Both Judaism and Christianity, to be sure, were against the practice, as evinced by numerous texts from both the OT and the NT (and extra-Biblica texts like the Didache, written nearly 2000 years ago, which condemns both Abortion and Infanticide), while many pagan or polytheistic religions both accepted it and even believed in killing children to offer them as blood sacrifices to certain gods. I can't give links for 30 days, so I won't, but you can read this on Wikipedia or any other Secular Encyclopedia.

Now, apart from being a Great Accomplishment of Christianity (Emperor St. Constantine the Great outlawed it after his conversion to Christianity), it shows that many people, and sometimes even whole societies for a significant time, can believe something wrong to be morally acceptable.

The question: was infanticide ok just because it was legal in those societies? If you had lived in those societies, where it was perfectly legal to kill babies, and you would face no legal or societal consequences for killing children, would you do so? After all, if morality is subjective, then in those societies, it was perfectly moral to kill babies, for e.g. by "exposure", as it was called (just abandoning them, so that they would eventually die). [Later on, Clergy instituted orphanages to care for such abandoned children.] If you say, Yes, then ok. But I wager most of you would say, No.

And why? Because deep down we all know, through our God-Given Conscience, that moral Truths are objective facts. Societal Consensus does not determine Moral Truth. Another example, if you had lived before Lincoln, Wilberforce, etc (inspired by their Christian Faith) helped liberate Slaves, and knowing what you now know, would you believe it was ok to own a slave just because it was legal to do so? And again, if you answer no, as I think most of you will, then once more it clearly shows Morality is an Objective and Universal Truth not determined by any human law.

And yet, such Objective and Universal Moral Truth must originate with some Authority, just like every human law originates from civil authority. It follows that they originate from a Higher Power, A Supremely Good Being, just like Alexander Hamilton said in the quote I cited earlier on.

God Bless.

[Nay_Sayer]

Deep down we all know, through our FSM-Given Conscience, that moral Truths are objective facts. Societal Consensus does not determine Moral Truth.

And yet, such Objective and Universal Moral Truth must originate with some Authority, just like every human law originates from civil authority. It follows that they originate from a Higher Power, A Supremely Good Being, The name above all names, The Flying Spaghetti Monster.


I continue to pray for you Xavier. Dark forces have you.

RAmen

[Simon Moon]

If you can appeal to logic, then you literally -are- saying that slavery is objectively bad.  People might dismiss it, but people often dismiss facts.  That doesn't change anything about those facts, it just tells you about that person.

Logic but inside of the cultural frame. Let's say there is a society where slavery is moral because they believe that their god said it was moral. Now you could appeal to human feelings that slaves are suffering, but if they believe that their god is real then individuals don't matter and you are the one who is dismissing the facts. So the only thing you could do would be to debunk their god because to them it is logical to do what their god wants.

Just because they believe it is moral, does not make it so.

If actions by a moral agent, harm the well being of people, the action is immoral.

There are secular moral systems, that are objective.

[Neo-Scholastic]

Answered but never refuted. :-)

There are plenty of refutations of the moral argument. If you choose not to avail yourself of them, that’s your own lookout.

Boru

Sorry for the lack of clarity. My reply was directed at the assertion by @Angrboda that nothing about atheism precludes objective morality. Technically, that is true in only of very trivial definition of atheism...the lack of belief one that I consider entirely disingenuoius. Be that as it may, Freidrich Nietzsche and Fyodor Dostoevsky pretty much nailed it IMHO. If God is dead, everything is permissable.

[Astreja]

The question: was infanticide ok just because it was legal in those societies?

Much better questions:

Was it moral for the god of the Bible to toss Adam and Eve out of Eden for disobeying a command despite the fact that at the time of disobedience they did not yet possess the moral knowledge to know that disobedience was bad?

How about the Noachide flood?  Is it morally acceptable to drown millions of living beings because of a perception that everything has somehow turned evil, even the kittens and bunny rabbits and puppies?

What about David's infant son?  WTF was going on there?  Why kill the baby and not the adulterous, murderous David?

Oh, and that Jesus nonsense too.  How is it even possible  for one person to pay another person's moral debt?  As I see it, anyone who willing accedes to substitutionary atonement, letting Jesus pay their alleged (and allegedly unpayable)  debt, has taken the real "Mark of the Beast."

No, Mr. Xavier.  Don't go lecturing us about morality when you practice a grossly immoral creed.

[Angrboda]

There are plenty of refutations of the moral argument. If you choose not to avail yourself of them, that’s your own lookout.

Boru

Sorry for the lack of clarity. My reply was directed at the assertion by @Angrboda that nothing about atheism precludes objective morality. Technically, that is true in only of very trivial definition of atheism...the lack of belief one that I consider entirely disingenuoius. Be that as it may, Freidrich Nietzsche and  Fyodor Dostoevsky pretty much nailed it IMHO. If God is dead, everything is permissable.

Your opinion, wrong as it is, is noted.

[The Grand Nudger]

The kind of person you can’t turn your back on, lol.