Is there Objective Morality?

[food4thought]

That's fine. I'm leaving things open for you to disagree on the big point that matters to you, but I want to see if you agree with the concept. The big point you'll want to argue is about what is a matter of preference, and I'm not asking you to commit to that. We've agreed that the flavor of ice cream is strictly a matter of preference, and you've even said that God Himself could have his own personal preference, but no one is correct to prefer something that is strictly a matter of preference.

So here's the rub. I believe morality is a matter of preference. Any given "One ought not..." statement can only be justified by stating "I prefer that one didn't..." And so if you proved there is a God, all you'd do is tell me to do what God prefers I do, but you still wouldn't be proving a moral fact. Even God isn't "more correct" to prefer chocolate over strawberry ice cream, so anything else that is strictly a matter of preference He isn't "more correct" about either.

Did I prove that morality is subjective? No, I'm doing that elsewhere with Stevevw at the moment. I just answered your question about, "What if there was a God, would that make morality objective?".

I can agree to that in principal.

Before we move forward, though, I need to point out that I still believe that, despite your, and other atheist's, position that morally valuing conscious beings (to use terms that I remember being used in previous posts) are only capable of producing "subjective" morality, I still believe that the Theistic God, being the eternal (having no beginning or end) ground of all existence, is the source of objective morality for all existing moral creatures. Since there IS no existence without Him, and He is a moral Being, and He is the Creator and Sustainer of existence, then He is rightly the source of objective morality for everything that exists.

Now, whether that objective morality is a good morality or not in the minds of fallen, flawed, limited moral beings, is really immaterial... whatever they would prefer objective morality to be would have no bearing on what is objective morality for all beings in existence. To hold the position that the source and ground of all existence, including all beings in existence which are physical or non-physical, morally conscious or not... to say that He is not the source and ground of objective morality for all morally conscious beings in existence, is on dubious grounds, IMO...

If, in your mind, the Theistic God is not "objective", then the word really should never be used for anything, ever... and we might as well just eliminate the word from our vocabulary. Everything you think of as objective (physical laws, mathematics, whatever exists within reality), were all created and are sustained by a Being that you insist on calling subjective... so really, objective would be an utterly meaningless term for you.

 

[Bradskii]

I can agree to that in principal.

Before we move forward, though, I need to point out that I still believe that, despite your, and other atheist's, position that morally valuing conscious beings (to use terms that I remember being used in previous posts) are only capable of producing "subjective" morality, I still believe that the Theistic God, being the eternal (having no beginning or end) ground of all existence, is the source of objective morality for all existing moral creatures. Since there IS no existence without Him, and He is a moral Being, and He is the Creator and Sustainer of existence, then He is rightly the source of objective morality for everything that exists.

Now, whether that objective morality is a good morality or not in the minds of fallen, flawed, limited moral beings, is really immaterial... whatever they would prefer objective morality to be would have no bearing on what is objective morality for all beings in existence. To hold the position that the source and ground of all existence, including all beings in existence which are physical or non-physical, morally conscious or not... to say that He is not the source and ground of objective morality for all morally conscious beings in existence, is on dubious grounds, IMO...

If, in your mind, the Theistic God is not "objective", then the word really should never be used for anything, ever... and we might as well just eliminate the word from our vocabulary. Everything you think of as objective (physical laws, mathematics, whatever exists within reality), were all created and are sustained by a Being that you insist on calling subjective... so really, objective would be an utterly meaningless term for you.

Then you have an answer to the Euthypro dilema? Let's hear it.

 

[food4thought]

Perhaps an illustration by analogy would be helpful...

A true AI is designed to specialize in complex mathematical computations for navigating deep space. A hostile entity introduced a virus into the AI's all over the universe that caused the AI's to make erroneous mathematical computations at some level. In the absence of direct rewriting of the AI's code by the software designer (God), or, say, a copy of the rules of mathematics being available to the AI on an independent server (the Bible), or, say, the introduction of an advanced antivirus program into the AI's mainframe (Holy Spirit)... would the AI even be aware of why it's computations kept producing problematic solutions when it found itself not arriving at the destinations it was aiming at (a good, peaceful, prosperous society)? Would it correctly assume the problem was in it's computations (morality), or might it blame human error in the execution of it's computations (those darn other people are making a mess of things!), or be looking for abnormalities in space-time along it's path (poor me, placed in such difficult circumstances!)? I could go on, but you get the point...

Thoughts?

 

[Bradskii]

Perhaps an illustration by analogy would be help? I could go on, but you get the point...

It didn't and I don't. You don't need an analogy. Just confine your answer to God Himself.

 

[food4thought]

Then you have an answer to the Euthypro dilema? Let's hear it.

Whether or not the dilemma is true or false, whether or not the answer is one or the other, is simply beyond our little flawed human minds to discover. Let me explain...

If Theism is not true, then there is no grounds for objective morality that I can see. So the dilemma, in that case, is a meaningless one (piousness is based upon subjective human, not Divine, morals). If Theism is true, then, at least according to Judaism and Christianity (not familiar with Islam's take on this one), humans are "created in the image of God". Both would agree that, to some extent, the morality of God has been implanted in humanity, but later marred by the introduction of sin into the human psyche (soul). So, as beings whose basic shape of what is moral would (at least quite often) be similar to the Creator's, would we therefore be even capable of discerning what is objectively moral based upon our limited existence and basic design to be like the Creator's morals? No, we would not. So, really, the question is interesting to run our little minds in circles over, but it is either a meaningless dilemma, or the answer to it is far beyond our capacity to discern.

 

[food4thought]

It didn't and I don't. You don't need an analogy. Just confine your answer to God Himself.

Well, that doesn't exactly seem, at least to me, to be a helpful attitude in understanding another person's viewpoint...

 

[Bradskii]

Whether or not the dilemma is true or false, whether or not the answer is one or the other, is simply beyond our little flawed human minds to discover. Let me explain...

If Theism is not true, then there is no grounds for objective morality that I can see. So the dilemma, in that case, is a meaningless one (piousness is based upon subjective human, not Divine, morals). If Theism is true, then, at least according to Judaism and Christianity (not familiar with Islam's take on this one), humans are "created in the image of God". Both would agree that, to some extent, the morality of God has been implanted in humanity, but later marred by the introduction of sin into the human psyche (soul). So, as beings whose basic shape of what is moral would (at least quite often) be similar to the Creator's, would we therefore be even capable of discerning what is objectively moral based upon our limited existence and basic design to be like the Creator's morals? No, we would not. So, really, the question is interesting to run our little minds in circles over, but it is either a meaningless dilemma, or the answer to it is far beyond our capacity to discern.

Then we're back to the question you didn't answer. Or rather a point which you ignored: If we have no waying of knowing what objective morality is and no way of finding out, then it's a useless concept.

End of discussion.

 

[Bradskii]

Well, that doesn't exactly seem, at least to me, to be a helpful attitude in understanding another person's viewpoint...

I would have thought 'I have no idea what you mean' would be a great way to prompt you to try something else out of which I could make some sense.

 

[Moral Orel]

I can agree to that in principal.

Good enough.

Before we move forward, though, I need to point out that I still believe that, despite your, and other atheist's, position that morally valuing conscious beings (to use terms that I remember being used in previous posts) are only capable of producing "subjective" morality, I still believe that the Theistic God, being the eternal (having no beginning or end) ground of all existence, is the source of objective morality for all existing moral creatures. Since there IS no existence without Him, and He is a moral Being, and He is the Creator and Sustainer of existence, then He is rightly the source of objective morality for everything that exists.

Now, whether that objective morality is a good morality or not in the minds of fallen, flawed, limited moral beings, is really immaterial... whatever they would prefer objective morality to be would have no bearing on what is objective morality for all beings in existence. To hold the position that the source and ground of all existence, including all beings in existence which are physical or non-physical, morally conscious or not... to say that He is not the source and ground of objective morality for all morally conscious beings in existence, is on dubious grounds, IMO...

If, in your mind, the Theistic God is not "objective", then the word really should never be used for anything, ever... and we might as well just eliminate the word from our vocabulary. Everything you think of as objective (physical laws, mathematics, whatever exists within reality), were all created and are sustained by a Being that you insist on calling subjective... so really, objective would be an utterly meaningless term for you.

Before we proceed, how's about you let me talk before you start telling what my position is and what's wrong with it?

 

[stevevw]

The same way I label Brussels sprouts 'nasty'. Words have meanings. Some, like bachelor, have very specific meanings that can be checked as facts. Others, like 'nasty' are value judgments made by people.
This dictionary dodge is a waste of time.

I am not sure this can be equated to morality though. Nasty sounds like a feeling you have or an opinion you have rather than a moral objection or condemnation. It doesn’t seem to matter as much as how we act morally.

Can one? No one seems to have addressed how.

I think I have said it a dozen times now. Our intuition is a good starting point. This red flags us about a moral situation being wrong. We can then use rationality and logic to see if there is a better/best way we can behave morally as opposed to other ways of behaving and this will highlight the moral truth of that situation.

Fetuses are alive.

What do you mean alive. Are you saying they are not human?

First trimester abortions are not immoral

is that an objective claim or just your opinion. This is what I mean by people cannot help but speak and act like there are moral objectives. You have made an objective claim that “First trimester abortions are not immoral”. This is not your opinion but a moral truth you are professing. So even subjectivists cannot help but make objective claims about morality even if its that its "not immoral" to do something.

We know this is just not true!

Not sure what you have been reading. But most philosophers agree that there is a set of core morals that just about everyone if not everyone agrees on. Like torturing a child for fun,

The disagreement objection: Disagreement about morality is a bit overblown. Pretty much everyone agrees that there’s something morally wrong with torturing children for fun, that we ought to keep promises, that being kind is usually better than being cruel, and so on.

* Second, areas of apparent moral disagreement, such as the arguments over gay marriage, often rest on a disagreement about non-moral matters: for instance, whether same-sex parenting causes children psychological distress.

* Third, disagreement about a topic isn’t itself a reason to think that there’s no truth there. People disagree about physics, especially between cultures, but nobody takes that to be a reason to doubt physics. Most people - or everyone - could just be wrong.
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskPhiloso..._there_good_arguments_for_objective_morality/

So as I have mentioned with abortion the moral objective is "preserving and respecting life" and not taking innocent lives. You claim a moral objective that abortion isn’t immoral. We all know that the moral issue here the killing of innocent “Human Life”. I would say that most people who are pro-abortion will believe the Foetus is not a human life. If they did they would hestitate to have an abortion. So they actually agree on the moral that “Human Life” is precious.

So if medicine can inform us about what is human life then we have an objective. So in some ways you implicitly know there is an objective by the fact that you make the cut off line the First Trimester. You obviously base that on medical advice. But is it really the case. Can it be another cut off line where the Foetus is a human life?

If so why can’t we investigate that? But also why not err on the side of caution and say humans are fallible; we are not all knowing for we may have this wrong. Our subjective opinions are not a good basis for making such important moral decisions on.

 

[food4thought]

This communication you have with him; how does this work? Are there actual voices in your head? Or do you get your information from a book written by flawed humans who claim it to be the word of God and you have faith they were telling the truth; how does this communication work?

First, some necessary background to give you an opportunity to understand why He communicated this way... Due to the consequences of sin, and God's perfect moral character (more on this if you want to discuss it), humans are born, when it comes to our relationship to God, basically deaf, and unable to detect him with any of our physical senses. We are born, as the Bible tells us, spiritually dead to God (unable to relate to Him). He didn't originally create us this way, but that is what we have become.

To solve this, God has, over the centuries, repeatedly broke into our world in ways both widely known and individually personal. Sorry, but this background is pretty important for you to know if you are to rightly understand my answer.

I started out by only being able to see that there could be, and possibly should be, a God. But He was quietly present and speaking to me, in His own way, my whole life. But it was not until I was handed a Bible in my mid-twenties that I began to see this in retrospect. The Bible was the first way that He spoke to me in a way that I could recognize, even though it was just words on a page at first. Long story shortened as much as I can, as I read the Bible, and listened to others help me understand it better, I began to have a better understanding of who He is. At some point along the way, I began to really believe that He existed, and started to speak to Him sincerely. Not long after this, I decided to ask Him in, to "come on inside", so to speak. At this point, things really changed drastically for me. Not long after this, I did, yes, begin to hear His voice, definitely not audibly, and not really even in my mind, but out of the depths of my soul (or, subconscious, if you insist). I was given information about circumstances I had no natural way of knowing, and sometimes told to do things that didn't immediately make sense to me, that turned out to be really good decisions. The capstone of it all, though, at least to me, was that when I listened for Him, and spoke to Him, what I can only describe as a pure, clean, liquid light would well up in my heart.

You obviously have a much more toxic view of mankind than I

Don't get me wrong, I do see many good things in people (myself and others), but how can you describe the situation on a worldwide scale as anything but toxic? And, as we become more and more capable of doing both good and evil on a more powerful scale, I just see the likelihood that some idiot in power (and we all know this happens more often than we'd like to admit, right?) will push the red button, and send the whole world over a cliff. This is not even to take into account the fact that, individually, if there is no God, and no afterlife, we are all doomed to die sooner or later.

If God knows everything, he would know what would convince me

So God must jump through your hoops, and give you some candy, before you'll listen to Him? Even though He does love you as His child, that doesn't mean it would be good for you, or for His other kids, for Him to acquiesce to your demands by jumping through a hoop or two and giving you a few pieces of candy in order to get you to acknowledge Him, let alone listen to Him, now does it?

For me it wouldn’t make a difference. If God did exist, and was as powerful as they claim, and wanted complete control of my life, this would be the same as an alien from another planet much more powerful than I wanting to control my life; to me they would be the same oppressors.

And there it is, "same oppressors". Your own words. I find it interesting that you don't see why that is EXACTLY the reason He doesn't do that...

If God existed and wanted me to worship him, bow down to him, give him constant praise, and grovel at his feet in a way that I wouldn’t ask of my dog, I would only do this if forced I could never do this out of love because I don’t love that way. As a human being who has spent his life with the freedom, and freewill to pave his own way, and accomplish my own goals, I can only love those who have love and respect for me; and if you respect me you would not want me to worship you and spend eternity kissing your feet;

Lot's of problems with this paragraph, but understandable given the way things are presented in certain passages of the Bible, without understanding a greater context to them. To try to keep it brief, I'll just say for now that I think you have a pretty dark view of my relationship to God, and what He expects from a relationship with us.

I would have to be in a very dark place to want to be with somebody like that; I would have to be a completely different person than I am now. I would basically have to be replaced with a robot, a slave mentality, or something with the mindset of a domesticated dog in order to desire such a dark and sinister relationship.

That is not the relationship I have, nor is it one that resembles anything other than a conflation of certain events in heaven and earth that are recorded in Scripture, being a means of communicating to us how incredible the events spoken of really are, with the totality of redeemed people's relationship to God. I won't hold that against you, because there are quite a few Christians that share this misunderstanding.

I could never apply Deity status to another person,

Again, that statement is... Precisely. The. Problem.

but if he is good, an audible voice from the clouds would definitely be a good start in making such a case.

No, sadly, it wouldn't. In order for you to experience the relationship of being His beloved child, ironically, you first have to recognize Who you really are a child of. Even if you spent all kinds of time talking with your dad, and obeyed him outwardly for a time, at least in some areas, if you really thought he was an idiot clown, and also a psychotic tyrant, that relationship, over time, is doomed. I hope you can see that, unless you are able to come to terms with Who He REALLY IS, something deep within you will always resent the authority He has over you, no matter how loosely He holds it. This happened once already in heaven, and we are currently living out both the consequences of that, as well as a sort of cosmic trial to demonstrate the wrongness of that resentful, arrogant rebellion.

If He is not, in your eyes, God not just by His eternal existence, presence, power, and knowledge, but also by His perfect moral character, your relationship to Him will inevitably be broken by you rejecting Him and, once again, going your own way. If He is all those things, than any reasonable being would allow Him to be the one that guides them all through an eternity of blessedness.

But, since even Satan, in close proximity to Him, seeing the creation of an entire universe by Him, resented His authority over himself... couldn't accept God as God, but in rebellion chose to try to take over (the only way that makes any sense is if Satan really didn't believe that God was actually God, because He had to know that a rebellion against a real God wouldn't end well)...

If we can't exercise a little trust in who He is, it's not going to end well. No eternity of unbroken peace, love, and joy. If we really want such a thing, we have to follow the One who can provide the leadership necessary to bring it to pass, and keep it going indefinitely. We have to have faith that what He wants is, actually, what we would want of we knew and understood everything perfectly. That can't happen apart from faith, at the very least in the here and now.

Hebrews 11:6 But without faith it is impossible to please Him, for he who comes to God must believe that He is, and that He is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him.

 

[Bradskii]

First, some necessary background to give you an opportunity to understand why He communicated this way... Due to the consequences of sin, and God's perfect moral character (more on this if you want to discuss it), humans are born, when it comes to our relationship to God, basically deaf, and unable to detect him with any of our physical senses. We are born, as the Bible tells us, spiritually dead to God (unable to relate to Him). He didn't originally create us this way, but that is what we have become.

To solve this, God has, over the centuries, repeatedly broke into our world in ways both widely known and individually personal. Sorry, but this background is pretty important for you to know if you are to rightly understand my answer.

I started out by only being able to see that there could be, and possibly should be, a God. But He was quietly present and speaking to me, in His own way, my whole life. But it was not until I was handed a Bible in my mid-twenties that I began to see this in retrospect. The Bible was the first way that He spoke to me in a way that I could recognize, even though it was just words on a page at first. Long story shortened as much as I can, as I read the Bible, and listened to others help me understand it better, I began to have a better understanding of who He is. At some point along the way, I began to really believe that He existed, and started to speak to Him sincerely. Not long after this, I decided to ask Him in, to "come on inside", so to speak. At this point, things really changed drastically for me. Not long after this, I did, yes, begin to hear His voice, definitely not audibly, and not really even in my mind, but out of the depths of my soul (or, subconscious, if you insist). I was given information about circumstances I had no natural way of knowing, and sometimes told to do things that didn't immediately make sense to me, that turned out to be really good decisions. The capstone of it all, though, at least to me, was that when I listened for Him, and spoke to Him, what I can only describe as a pure, clean, liquid light would well up in my heart.




Don't get me wrong, I do see many good things in people (myself and others), but how can you describe the situation on a worldwide scale as anything but toxic? And, as we become more and more capable of doing both good and evil on a more powerful scale, I just see the likelihood that some idiot in power (and we all know this happens more often than we'd like to admit, right?) will push the red button, and send the whole world over a cliff. This is not even to take into account the fact that, individually, if there is no God, and no afterlife, we are all doomed to die sooner or later.



So God must jump through your hoops, and give you some candy, before you'll listen to Him? Even though He does love you as His child, that doesn't mean it would be good for you, or for His other kids, for Him to acquiesce to your demands by jumping through a hoop or two and giving you a few pieces of candy in order to get you to acknowledge Him, let alone listen to Him, now does it?



And there it is, "same oppressors". Your own words. I find it interesting that you don't see why that is EXACTLY the reason He doesn't do that...



Lot's of problems with this paragraph, but understandable given the way things are presented in certain passages of the Bible, without understanding a greater context to them. To try to keep it brief, I'll just say for now that I think you have a pretty dark view of my relationship to God, and what He expects from a relationship with us.



That is not the relationship I have, nor is it one that resembles anything other than a conflation of certain events in heaven and earth that are recorded in Scripture, being a means of communicating to us how incredible the events spoken of really are, with the totality of redeemed people's relationship to God. I won't hold that against you, because there are quite a few Christians that share this misunderstanding.



Again, that statement is... Precisely. The. Problem.



No, sadly, it wouldn't. In order for you to experience the relationship of being His beloved child, ironically, you first have to recognize Who you really are a child of. Even if you spent all kinds of time talking with your dad, and obeyed him outwardly for a time, at least in some areas, if you really thought he was an idiot clown, and also a psychotic tyrant, that relationship, over time, is doomed. I hope you can see that, unless you are able to come to terms with Who He REALLY IS, something deep within you will always resent the authority He has over you, no matter how loosely He holds it. This happened once already in heaven, and we are currently living out both the consequences of that, as well as a sort of cosmic trial to demonstrate the wrongness of that resentful, arrogant rebellion.

If He is not, in your eyes, God not just by His eternal existence, presence, power, and knowledge, but also by His perfect moral character, your relationship to Him will inevitably be broken by you rejecting Him and, once again, going your own way. If He is all those things, than any reasonable being would allow Him to be the one that guides them all through an eternity of blessedness.

But, since even Satan, in close proximity to Him, seeing the creation of an entire universe by Him, resented His authority over himself... couldn't accept God as God, but in rebellion chose to try to take over (the only way that makes any sense is if Satan really didn't believe that God was actually God, because He had to know that a rebellion against a real God wouldn't end well)...

If we can't exercise a little trust in who He is, it's not going to end well. No eternity of unbroken peace, love, and joy. If we really want such a thing, we have to follow the One who can provide the leadership necessary to bring it to pass, and keep it going indefinitely. We have to have faith that what He wants is, actually, what we would want of we knew and understood everything perfectly. That can't happen apart from faith, at the very least in the here and now.

Hebrews 11:6 But without faith it is impossible to please Him, for he who comes to God must believe that He is, and that He is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him.

This is nowt but apologetics. Which is not allowed in this section of the forum. Let's stick to the op.

 

[VirOptimus]

-snip-

I think I have said it a dozen times now. Our intuition is a good starting point. This red flags us about a moral situation being wrong. We can then use rationality and logic to see if there is a better/best way we can behave morally as opposed to other ways of behaving and this will highlight the moral truth of that situation.

Rationality and logic does not mean its "objective" if you dont have a chain of "objective" moral facts. As you cant show that there are "moral facts" your reasoning is, well, void of content.

 

[food4thought]

This is nowt but apologetics. Which is not allowed in this section of the forum. Let's stick to the op.

I'm doing nothing more than responding to the questions posed as best I can, in an attempt to be understood as accurately as possible. I have taken some extra time and space to flesh out the "why" behind my position on this thread's question, and my faith, so thanks for bearing with me a bit. And yes, I know I'm the one who brought the question of Theism into the discussion, but honestly, the answer to the question of Theism determines the answer to the question of "objective morality's existence...

If we are not in a Theistic universe, the question of "objective morality" is either, or both, meaningless and/or unanswerable. If we are in a Theistic universe (and my experience of a relationship with God through Jesus Christ is something that supports that viewpoint), then we can at least discuss the question of whether the existing "objective morality" is good or not, even if we don't always have perfect clarity on what it looks like in every situation (but that WOULD be a discussion for another thread, which I'm sure already exists somewhere around here).

Personally, I think I've said enough here... going further would probably continue to draw us into a different discussion entirely. As far as my thoughts on whether objective morality exists, I think I've stated my position with at least some clarity, and you guys seem to generally get (not necessarily meaning you agree with) my main point that I reiterated in the second paragraph of this post.

Thanks to all of you who have engaged with me so patiently, and also for giving me some "food4thought" to digest.

 

[food4thought]

Good enough.

Before we proceed, how's about you let me talk before you start telling what my position is and what's wrong with it?

Just trying to save you some time writing something I really think you may have written... but if I'm wrong, sorry for wasting your time reading it.

 

[food4thought]

I would have thought 'I have no idea what you mean' would be a great way to prompt you to try something else out of which I could make some sense.

Yeah, sorry, I didn't read your post carefully enough, got in a rush to reply, and made a fool of myself. One of those moments that demonstrates why I don't always know or do the right thing despite the availability of God's guidance... if I can't spend a few more seconds to be sure I understand your short statement, then it should be no surprise to anyone that I don't always take the time to ground myself in God's guidance before speaking, writing, or acting... just sayin'

 

[Kylie]

...

Could you fix up your quote tags please?

 

[Moral Orel]

Just trying to save you some time writing something I really think you may have written

What makes you think I would write the things you imagined I would say? Have you read a lot of my posts around here to get a feel for what my arguments are and how I present them?

but if I'm wrong, sorry for wasting your time reading it.

It certainly is a waste of time. You know how hard it is around here to find someone willing to have an honest conversation? Everyone wants to guess what the other person is going to say instead of just talking and listening.

Are you interested in an honest conversation? Do you want to understand what I think and why I think things are the way I think they are, or are you only interested in convincing me to agree with you? I mean I get the sentiment. I argue to win too. But if I don't understand where you're coming from, then I haven't really argued effectively.

 

[stevevw]

Please don't be facetious. Locking a girl up for a year is obviously worse than locking her up for an hour. The point at which it becomes immoral (it certainly is at one year) is a personal decision. Printing out a ticket on your office printer is not going to get you the sack. Printing out two thousand probably would. Breaking the speed limit by one mph won't see you losing your license. Breaking it by 50mph might.

Can I possibly be any clearer? For every moral act, there is a continuum where one could say that this is worse than that. Or this is better than that. For every single act. There are no exceptions. And I mean none. But your position is that every single moral act can be defined as absolute. And we're well over 1500 posts and no-one has given any indication whatsoever how that is even possible, let alone how it could be done.

This is because I have already explained that an objective (moral truth) is not the same as an absolute. This explains to me why you mention "Black and White". You think my position is this don't you. If so it is you who are building a strawman. This is an example of where I have addressed this matter. It may be that you have not seen these.

As early as post #210
Once again you are confusing absolute and objective morality. For example under absolute morality you can never kill regardless of the circumstances. Whereas under objective morality there will be an objectively right action for each changing circumstance.
As recent as #901 to you.
I think I have already answered this so I wasn't ignoring things. Perhaps you did not understand my answer. Here it is again. Objective morality allows for changing context and is not a fixed morality like absolute morality or (Kant’s deontology).

So in one context stealing for fun is objectively wrong and in the different context of where a person may steal medication to save a child’s life it is objectively right to take the medication. It’s the same with the other example I gave that it’s objectively wrong to kill for fun and its objectively right to kill a crazed gunman about to kill a child.

So perhaps this is something we haven't discussed enough.

We can all agree that an act is morally wrong. There'd be some acts where you'd need to be either insane or a psycopath to say that it isn't. Does that make it objectively wrong? Not in the slightest.

I agree the logic doesn't follow.

Because if you can't nominate a specific point where any given act becomes immoral then it becomes a personal decision. Which makes it subjective.

I also don't think that follows either. Just because you cannot find the exact spot doesn't mean there is no exact spot. Applied to science we would have to say because we cannot find life in the universe there must not be life in the universe.

We do know that morality has severity so this must affect the degree of wrongness. We see this in law which is a form of an objective. Murder 1 is more severe than manslaughter and self defence. Because there are variations in how we determine morality as in degrees of severity doesn't translate those variations being subjectively determined. They are still determined by rationality and logic.

I think thats the crux of the matter. You are misinterpreting or misunderstanding what objective morality is. You are attributing "Moral Absolutism" to objective morality. As mentioned I have explained my position on this in the above post links.

There's no getting away from this point. You either tell us how this point is determined or concede that it's subjective. This is where the rubber hits the road. You need to answer this.

whoo thats a big demand. Now your telling me what is objective or not. Look I have explained everything, its in the posts. I can't keep repeating things. I know appealing to popularity or status is a fallacy. BUt it seems I am having to resort to this to bring some logic in. So I am trying a different tact.

So you know I have linked the "Phil paper" showing that that for every philosopher that doesnt support objective morality 2 philosophers do and most of these experts in this field agree that moral realism makes sense. They don't think that the moral realist (ovjectivist) is disillusioned.

So my question is why would the vast majority of experts in the field think that if there were no such thing as moral truth or realism. I know its a fallacy but sometimes an appeal to expert opinion is a better one than others because its grounded in some qualification in understanding the topic.

 

[stevevw]

Could you fix up your quote tags please?

Was it the one to essentialsaltes or one of yours.