Objective morality

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Bezant said:
Interesting thread topic.
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Yes it is.
My difficulty with the thread is that objective thinking is a lost art on CAF. Thus, objective morality is confined to the Ivory Tower where people enjoy discussions about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. Nothing wrong with that enjoyment.🙂
 
hazmat
**
that doesnt answer the question; scripture or “natural powers of reason” could be providing subjective morality. its not enough for you to like a source, and just say it makes things objective. i can flip a coin to make “objective” decisions, but i still made the personal choice to defer to the coin. how do you validate that morality in scripture is objective, what is the criteria used to differentiate objective from subjective? **

Scripture would be objective to the one who believes that God exists and would not deceive us. Obviously, between an atheist and a theist, the atheist is not going to agree. Scripture to the atheist would be purely subjective because it is based on a colossal deception. We rely on God’s judgment as superior to our own.

Yes, the natural powers of reason, when they are deceived, would be called subjective. However, the natural powers of reason, when they are not deceived, would be called objective. For example, it is an objective fact that when you plant a straight stick into a pond with part of the stick above water, the stick under the water from a side view appears to be bent away from the stick above the water. This is an objective truth correcting a subjective impression.

Flipping coins to decide matters of truth is not only subjective, it is monstrously stupid. 😃
 
youre still not explaining how you would distinguish objective from subjective. you just chose to accept one particular set of scriptures and are content with that.
 
hazmat

**youre still not explaining how you would distinguish objective from subjective. you just chose to accept one particular set of scriptures and are content with that. **

Give me an example of two sets of scripture and how I’d use subjective judgment to choose one over the other.
 
Obviously, the fundamental difference between objective and subjective judgments is not relevant to this thread’s topic. No matter. My final suggestion to readers is to look up objective and subjective in a collegiate type dictionary.
👋
 
Charlemagne_II said:
hazmat

how would one distinguish an objective morality from a subjective one?

Either by way of Scripture or by the natural powers of reason.

If one is not religious, the only instrument left is reason or intuition or common sense.

For example, everyone knows that lying is wrong. So is adultery. So is stealing. So is sodomy.

Most of the things we know to be objectively wrong are obviously wrong.
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Sodomy is not obviously wrong. In what sense is it obviously, morally, wrong? Just because it doesn’t produce offspring? And is it more or less wrong than persecuting those who practise it?

Lying is only wrong because of its effects in given circumstances. In the majority of circumstances, deception tends to be detrimental to interpersonal relationships, but what about the classic case of lying to the Nazis about sheltering Jews? Or lying to the Elizabethan authorities about harbouring Catholic priests?

And what about stealing a sheep - or even just bread - from a rich landowner to feed your starving family - a crime for which plenty of British convicts were transported to Australia during the 19th century?

Adultery is only wrong if it is not consensual and involves malicious deception - you have obviously not consulted with practitioners of polyamory in forming this judgement.
If anyone says they are objectively right, they have entered a subjective judgment; that is, they have decided by various mental excuses to justify wrongdoing.
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Does this include the judgements of those who think they are objectively right because their opinions are supported by ancient scriptures? I think I have demonstrated, quite simply, for that matter, the elasticity of supposedly concrete, objective moral strictures in varying circumstances.
They have decided to tell themselves a lie … the devil’s own first and favorite method of getting us into the subjective mode … as Adam and Eve discovered when it suited them to believe the serpent’s lie. :eek:
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Yes, the Biblical harbinger of knowledge is painted as deceptive and evil - that says a lot, really, doesn’t it?
 
Most people would agree that Hitler’s final solution was evil. And yet it has its precedence in the Bible, where God commands the Jews to wipe out the Amalekites. Kill them. Kill them all. Men, women, children, infants. Wipe them off the face of the earth. It’s one of the 613 commandments that God gave to the Jews.

If objective morality exists then shouldn’t we condemn God?
 
hazmat said:
how do you validate that morality in scripture is objective, what is the criteria used to differentiate objective from subjective?
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Good question. A related question, how does one decide which scriptures are still applicable in modern times (especially from the old testament). Some things are thrown out as having more relevance in the historical context but not in modern times while some others are invoked when one wants to show that there stance on an issue is “objectively right.”
 
grannymh said:
Ooops. I keep forgetting that I look at morality as specific actions whereas most posters see morality in value terms.
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Recently, to avoid confusion between the two, I heard some one using “morality” when talking about actions or rules handed down from an authority or conforming to some standard and “ethics” when trying to determine an appropriate set of actions given some set of values. The definitions of the two words are not completely separated, but it seemed to work.
 
Sair
**
Sodomy is not obviously wrong.**

It’s obviously wrong to most people. The people who find nothing wrong with it are usually the people who practice it. You know, “It feels good!” Tell that to prisoners who have been sodomized!

No doubt that is how sadists and masochists justify their craziness: “It feels good!”

The same could be said for assassins, thieves, adulterers, and chronic liars.

Anyone who lies to save an innocent person’s life is choosing the lesser of two evils. God will forgive. 👍
 
hazmat

**you would choose. **

No, you have obviously already thought this out and are ready to pounce.

So go ahead and pounce. What two sets of scriptures are you talking about? Then we can talk. 😃
 
If anyone should argue that there is no such thing as objective morality, then there is no such thing as morality at all. There are just things some will of approve of and others will not approve of. That means that you cannot hold anyone to an objective standard. That means you cannot punish serial killers or mass killers because, after all, there is no objective standard of right or wrong.

The notion that all morality is subjective is absurd on the face of it. Ask anyone who has been the victim of a subjective morality. Ask all the dead victims of the Holocaust, rounded up and slaughtered for their religion.
 
gentle_atheist said:
Most people would agree that Hitler’s final solution was evil. And yet it has its precedence in the Bible, where God commands the Jews to wipe out the Amalekites. Kill them. Kill them all. Men, women, children, infants. Wipe them off the face of the earth. It’s one of the 613 commandments that God gave to the Jews.

If objective morality exists then shouldn’t we condemn God?
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The Old Testament should not be taken literally but interpreted in the light of Christ’s teaching that God is a loving Father…
 
Charlemagne_II said:
hazmat

**you would choose. **

No, you have obviously already thought this out and are ready to pounce.

So go ahead and pounce. What two sets of scriptures are you talking about? Then we can talk. 😃
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it was a simple question so the answer came quickly. you asked “how [you’d] use subjective judgment to choose one over the other.” the answer is: you would choose. just by choosing either one (doesnt matter which), youre selecting what you prefer based on criteria you prefer.
 
tonyrey said:
The Old Testament should not be taken literally but interpreted in the light of Christ’s teaching that God is a loving Father…
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You are reading the Jewish Scriptures with a Christian bias, refusing to believe that it really means what it says.

In Murder Under the Cover of Righteousness the author, Shulamit Aloni, wrote:
Many of our children are being indoctrinated, in religious schools, that the Arabs are Amalek, and the bible teaches us that Amalek must be destroyed. There was already a rabbi (Israel Hess) who wrote in the newspaper of Bar Ilan University that we all must commit genocide, and that is because his research showed that the Palestinians are Amalek.
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So my question remains:

If objective morality exists then shouldn’t we condemn God?
 
gentle_atheist said:
You are reading the Jewish Scriptures with a Christian bias, refusing to believe that it really means what it says.
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“Christian bias” implies that Christianity is false because it rejects accept the preChristian and unChristian aspects of the morality of the Jewish Scriptures!
 
tonyrey said:
Your question assumes that the Jewish Scriptures reflect divine morality…
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On what basis do you deny that they do so, since Jesus Christ actively preached, according to the Gospel texts, that the Jewish scriptures were to be followed, to the letter and beyond?
 
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