Objective morality and why Subjectivism cannot work in ethics

[mymamamary]

Im going to bed now, If you wish, this discussion can continue tommorrow,

I hope I wake up and find out Romney won btw

He is a Buisnessman after all Sarah,

 

[Julia_Mae]

It’s why I’m doing more and more work with convicts. Something I never planned to do by the way but things have been evolving that way for some time.

You might call that some kind of merciful, spiritual thing … I just think if I can give a convict back some dignity through work, through being able to hold his head up high in society and take some pride in himself, if I can give him back some of his ambition, and show him a world where his goals in life can be achieved … there’s one less criminal in the world for me and my family to worry about

Sarah x

I’d call it the action of the Holy Spirit, something you opened yourself up to deliberately in your month-long prayer exercise and your meditation practice before that. But we believe that all humans have a spark of the Holy Spirit in them, all humans are holy, and all can … sort of resonate within themselves with what we call God.

I don’t believe in the supernatural, although I use the word. It’s all right here. It’s just… the noise to signal ratio is really high in the material dimension.

So, to bring this to the topic, whether one is a theist or not, that spark, whatever we call it, is something we can raise the power of and connect with this information, part of which I would certainly call the absolute morality: the features of which we agree on.

 

[Julia_Mae]

How do we verify that these particular things are “objective”?

I don’t know where this fear of “warm and fuzzy” comes from among Catholics. I just don’t get it.

I like warm and fuzzy!

 

[Julia_Mae]

It was on whether or not evil is a supernatural force, I recall winning as I always do. Sorry to sound cocky, but debating, especially philosophically is my forte…

um…no

Winning is worthless, BTW. What I see is that you preach instead of discuss, never listen and run away when there are points you cannot refute. So, I’m outta here because I didn’t realize it was a contest and I have no interest in playing. As for you, well, maybe you can “win” against other 15 year olds or whatever you are, but you’ll need to be much older before you even understand Sarah’s questions.

You don’t sound cocky, you sound childish and callow. You’ll be okay though. It’s a self-correcting problem.

 

[atheistgirl]

Here it is…

forums.catholic-questions.org/showthread.php?t=712250

Yeah, and I’m still waiting for you to produce your peer reviewed scientific journals for the evidence of evil as a force:

forums.catholic-questions.org/showpost.php?p=9789634&postcount=22



I guess if you ignore requests for proof and call that winning a debate, then hey … knock yourself out

But this is off topic so not sure why you want to derail your own thread

But, I was saying that the Church teaches that Conscience stems from the intellect, so scientists discovering this is not new to the Church btw.

Did you actually read the article you linked to?

Here’s a quote:

The Little Voice is very skilled at pretending it’s the voice of knowledge or wisdom when it’s really just another opinion.

Suggestions for dealing with The Little Voice

1. Notice – The first step is to simply become consciously aware of The Little Voice and notice what it’s saying.

2**. Identify – Reclaim your power. Remember that The Little Voice is not who you really are.**

1. Evaluate – Most of The Little Voice’s beliefs were acquired in childhood and may not have been updated in a long, long time. Determine whether The Little Voice is helpful in any given situation. If it is, great! But if it isn’t say, “Thank you for sharing,” and do what the real you knows is best.…

1. **Retrain – Teach The Little Voice some new ways to be “right.” **Train it to have positive automatic thoughts by using affirmations, guided visualization and hypnosis. For example, if The Little Voice reminds you, “Money doesn’t grow on trees,” automatically replace that thought with an affirmation such as, “Money is created by human energy and imagination, which is infinite.”

Hardly making your point for you is it

Considering the Catholic Church says this on Conscience:

1776 “Deep within his conscience man discovers a law which he has not laid upon himself but which he must obey. Its voice, ever calling him to love and to do what is good and to avoid evil, sounds in his heart at the right moment. . . . For man has in his heart a law inscribed by God. . . . His conscience is man’s most secret core and his sanctuary. There he is alone with God whose voice echoes in his depths.”

1777 Moral conscience, present at the heart of the person, enjoins him at the appropriate moment to do good and to avoid evil. It also judges particular choices, approving those that are good and denouncing those that are evil. It bears witness to the authority of truth in reference to the supreme Good to which the human person is drawn, and it welcomes the commandments. When he listens to his conscience, the prudent man can hear God speaking.

Kinda conflicts big time with point two in your article don’t you think

Sarah x

 

[atheistgirl]

Im going to bed now, If you wish, this discussion can continue tommorrow,

I hope I wake up and find out Romney won btw

He is a Buisnessman after all Sarah,

Nope, it’s in the bag for Obama.

Sarah x

 

[atheistgirl]

I’d call it the action of the Holy Spirit, something you opened yourself up to deliberately in your month-long prayer exercise and your meditation practice before that. But we believe that all humans have a spark of the Holy Spirit in them, all humans are holy, and all can … sort of resonate within themselves with what we call God.

I don’t believe in the supernatural, although I use the word. It’s all right here. It’s just… the noise to signal ratio is really high in the material dimension.

So, to bring this to the topic, whether one is a theist or not, that spark, whatever we call it, is something we can raise the power of and connect with this information, part of which I would certainly call the absolute morality: the features of which we agree on.

I find I really like you Julia Mae.

You always make me go hmmmm, and I like that.

Sarah x

 

[Jaaanosik]

It is supernatural. I proved my point back in my debate with you on the existence of GOD. That is not a road that you want to travel down again, at least not on this thread. Objective moral, comes from the ONLY true GOD, JESUS CHRIST, so yes, it does come from without. I keep using the “Little voice” inside your head, have you done searching on that yet?

The issue is that everybody hears the little voice differently. The voice goes through person’s subjectivity. People do not recognize the objective morality.
Everybody suffers from subjective objectivity distortion.

What do you do when your well informed conscience tells you something different than Church’s teaching? Do you listen to your conscience or to the Church?

 

[sedonaman]

But now you have to ask yourself, WHY are those things always immoral. …?

Relativists reject morality until someone does something to offend them. Then all of a sudden they are talking about morality. – livingwordunity forums.catholic-questions.org/showthread.php?p=9621590#post9621590 post #20

If morality is relative as they say, how can there be a moral high ground that relativists claim they have?

 

[mymamamary]

Mrs. Mae, I do in fact understand what Is being said to me.

Also, I said that Intellect has to do a lot with conscience

ewtn.com/library/THEOLOGY/FR94304.htm

 

[InJesusItrust]

Mrs. Mae, I do in fact understand what Is being said to me.

Also, I said that Intellect has to do a lot with conscience

ewtn.com/library/THEOLOGY/FR94304.htm

I agree that intellect helps form a conscience. I posit that anyone who applies rigor to Catholic morality will have to agree with it. For instance, the pope’s insights into the evils of contraception are prophetic to our times. The problem is intellect is ignored in favor of subjective emotions. Everyone wants permissiveness, so even if the argument is sound, people will REFUSE to accept the conclusions. Many people argue that abortion should be allowed because we cannot “prove” that the unborn are human persons. Yet they ignore the obvious reasonable belief that you don’t kill what you can’t tell is a human person.

 

[InJesusItrust]

The issue is that everybody hears the little voice differently. The voice goes through person’s subjectivity. People do not recognize the objective morality.
Everybody suffers from subjective objectivity distortion.

What do you do when your well informed conscience tells you something different than Church’s teaching? Do you listen to your conscience or to the Church?

The Church because Jesus created it for us.

 

[cerad2]

Again, GOD is the author of human life, and if so chose, can and will take it away, although HE doesn’t unless there really is a suffienct reason, in this case, perhaps there was, We cannot interpret the Divine Intellect of GOD…

Uh oh. There goes that little inner voice again. In the not too distant future we will have the technological capability to create new races of intelligent beings. Will we really have the right to kill them just because we made them?

 

[Jaaanosik]

The Church because Jesus created it for us.

Good, just remember the Church says you listen and do what your well informed conscience says.

 

[mymamamary]

Uh oh. There goes that little inner voice again. In the not too distant future we will have the technological capability to create new races of intelligent beings. Will we really have the right to kill them just because we made them?

No, we will never have that tecnology, namely to make such a precise body and soul. Never. It will just be a robot at best.

 

[sedonaman]

thats too general. anything specific?

“What’s true for you is not necessarily true for me.”

Polylogism solohq.com/Objectivism101/Irrational_Polylogism.shtml

 

[cerad2]

No, we will never have that tecnology, namely to make such a precise body and soul. Never. It will just be a robot at best.

I won’t be around but it would be interesting to hear your thoughts on the statement you just made 50 or so years from now.

 

[edward_george]

I won’t be around but it would be interesting to hear your thoughts on the statement you just made 50 or so years from now.

Not really. All the technology that is ever humanly possible can ever generate a soul, the animating principle of a living being. We can make something that acts as though it has a soul, and simulates it quite nicely. But the soul is a primarily ontological reality, something which is inaccessible to empirical science’s observation and technology’s fabrication. But that, of course, doesn’t make it any less real.

-ACEGC

 

[mymamamary]

Not really. All the technology that is ever humanly possible can ever generate a soul, the animating principle of a living being. We can make something that acts as though it has a soul, and simulates it quite nicely. But the soul is a primarily ontological reality, something which is inaccessible to empirical science’s observation and technology’s fabrication. But that, of course, doesn’t make it any less real.

-ACEGC

Well said, thank you!!

 

[sedonaman]

…And since God doesn’t appear in Person to these people, they’re all subjectively interpreting what they think their God wants and what His objective morality is Which they then impose and enforce on others

Sarah x

We’ve been through this numerous times before and concluded that in the end, someone’s concept of right and wrong is going to be forced on the rest, otherwise there will be no order to society, only chaos. You might try imagining who would make the rules in an atheist colony, and whether those rule would qualify as being “enforced on others”. :sad_yes: