@Silmarien, Oh ok, so basically in this back & forth topic you have been a few layers deeper on this than I have been, I think I get it now.
I do believe in objective morality, in the sense that I believe that human morality is an intrinsic part of human nature and not purely a result of cultural prejudices. (This does not necessarily mean a one size fits all approach to morality, however.).
Ok than we can stop debating about this one because we agree on this.
My difficulty lies in the fact that I'm sympathetic to a somewhat Platonic version of divine command theory, and yet remain unconvinced that theism is necessary to explain moral intuitions...I agree with William Craig Lane that if morality is not grounded in some objective reality (i.e., God), it is ultimately arbitrary.
I'm not sure if we agree on this as well but I always thought that Craig goes too far with the argument (and I never use it...to the extent that he does). Ok so maybe basically I'm saying I think the Divine Command Theory itself goes too far. I agree that 'What us humans are' proves that objective morality exists, that we (humans) are literally a product of this objective morality composition, who are trying to decipher the reasons for our objective morality compositions. I believe the bolded
(i.e., God) becomes a strong possibility but I think that Craig goes too far when he states it as the straight up undeniable conclusion. On top of that, I get sick when people use the 'If God commanded it it's moral' argument. It's my innate objective morality that has caused me quite a few wrestling matches with the Bible. I've come up with some answers, but that's a different topic.
...but I have not yet found arguments against naturalistic metaethics to be terribly compelling! Except perhaps observations about the role that cooperation plays in evolution.
Well here's where I feel like I can write an entire book about how homo sapiens make no evolutionary sense whatsoever, mostly based on our habits of how we are a complete train wreck for nature itself. Why would nature create a psychopath species that does nothing but destroy nature? We relocate other species in nature so that we disturb natural predator/prey balances, we destroy natural forests, pollute lakes/rivers/oceans, I'm sure you can imagine how long the list can just go on and on. But I can imagine a person objecting...what does this have to do with human objective morality? I believe it has everything to do with it. I'll word it like a poker player, our morality 'Swings' are WAY too big!
The right/wrong objective moralities of apes, crocodiles, bison, etc, are all inside of a narrow enough scale that they obey nature to the point where they do not destroy it. I just can't help but be convinced that naturalism (nature) does not make sense anymore if it goes ahead and gives rise to a species that does nothing but wreak havoc on itself (nature), thanks to our much too wide right/wrong morality scales. At least it becomes in my mind way less coherent than the God theory at that point. Our human objective morality scales swing way further to the 'Good' side then any other species...but the fact that is swings way too far to the 'Bad' side is the problem (as far as naturalism making sense goes). The bad part of the human morality scale can swing so far that we no longer care if we destroy the planet, or even if we destroy our own backyards. The bad half proves that naturalism has a self mutilating psychopath species. Maybe you can square that with naturalism, but I can't.
It's the exclusiveness of it that is shocking. Homo sapiens are the only species out of the countless amount of species that are outside of this narrow right/wrong morality scale, that is just weird according to probabilities. How many species have humans caused to go extinct now? Did we cause global warming? And how about this C.S. Lewis style argument that it makes zero sense that living creatures would be created with desires that have no corresponding way to satisfy those desires! From the beginning of human history there is this peculiar desire for this 'Thing' that lives beyond the planet called God. (Lewis argues that that is proof of God, that surely there has to be a corresponding way to satisfy that God desire, or else it would not be there). But getting back to the self mutilating naturalism species, thanks to this wide right/wrong morality human scale, combined with this strange 'God' evolutionary desire, we now have nut cases out there who would love to usher in Armageddon by starting a nuclear war or biological war (also thanks to the creative intelligence that naturalism gave to the psycho species in order to create nukes and advanced biological weapons).
Our curiosities make no naturalistic sense either. What other species on Earth wants to set foot on Mars? Better yet, what species would risk death to try to make it there? Kind of like the dead bodies scattered on Mt Everest, just because people wanted to reach the top to say that they did it, again, pretty strange evolutionary exclusiveness going on there! And by total naturalistic chance, this human species that happens to have by far the most wild curiosity, along with this strange evolutionary fake concept of a God outside of the planet...also happens to live on a planet in a goldilocks zone for exploration which can satisfy it's human curiosity about the universe, or if our fake evolutionary God instinct kicks in I should instead say satisfy our curiosity about 'God's brilliant universe.'
My difficulty is specifically due to the fact that all we have to go on is the human condition, and it is immensely difficult to determine how much of what we are is a result of evolutionary processes. I do think that there are universals within our species, but I have trouble declaring those universals to be objective truths. It's the problem inherent in the finite trying to comprehend the infinite.
