What are the “objective moralities/truths”? Is there a list?

[goout]

Christians:
this illustrates the scandal that fundamentalism causes for Christ’s Church. It makes easy objections for those who don’t like Christianity or don’t understand it.

And I really have more sympathy for atheist objections to the fundamentalist god than for fundamentalism. People should object to mis-characterizations of God and scripture.
It’s a sign that the inner moral compass is alive and working.

 

[Bradskii]

Bradskii:

If you think that there are some immoral acts that cause no harm, then we are done. There is no common ground.

You are going to have to link “harm” to some objective standard. You cannot merely mean physical injury to a living thing or cessation of that being’s existence. There must be some larger reality encompassed by the word “harm” that would include things like property, infringement of rights, and so forth.

If that is the case, you then need to have a method for prioritizing “harms,” otherwise your ethical system becomes rather whimsical and ineffectual rather quickly.

So, let’s begin by offering a workable categorization of “harm.”

Exactly. We need to know what each of us means. So here’s what I mean: If it can be shown that there is a negative physical or psychological result to a person or persons by any given action (or attempted action - you can’t discount attempted murder for example just because the guy was a bad shot), then harm has been done.

Now that needs a lot of discussion. There would be examples of harm bei g done whatever action is taken, but one would be morally correct.

But go for your life. Let’s tear into it and get an agreed definition. Because, and I can’t emphasise this enough, if, in your opinion, no harm has been done, then there is no immoral act.

 

[Dan123]

God is goodness itself.

What are you comparing God to to determine he’s ‘goodness’? Or is ‘goodness’ simply a synonym for ‘godness’ and not actually have any connection to the traditional use of the word ‘good’.

And yes the paradox does exist, saying ‘he can but he wouldn’t’ is still saying he can. If God could potentially change his nature then it’s not objective. If God did change his nature would that new nature become ‘goodness’ or would ‘goodness’ remain what it was previously defined to be? I imagine any change to God’s nature could only ever serve to make him less-good, which is why you pointed out he would never change. But that would mean there’s a definition of goodness external to God, so where did that come from?

 

[QwertyGirl]

Pregnancy isn’t a punishment of the fall. Increased pain in childbirth is.

That is such an ignorant concept.

 

[goout]

Goodness is personified in “other”. Otherness is objective. It is “other than I”.

You didn’t create yourself, or the universe. There is potency and act outside yourself. That should be an obvious concession for any rational human being. What is that? We call it God.

And we believe that “to be” is good. Or you could say “it is good to be alive”.
So the source and summit of this being is a good thing. And it is objectively “not me”.

 

[Dan123]

And we believe that “to be” is good. Or you could say “it is good to be alive”.
So the source and summit of this being is a good thing. And it is objectively “not me”.

Okay so we’re using a wholly different definition of the word ‘good’ then. I was using it in the sense of being positive or helpful or beneficial. I’ll admit it’s a tough word to really nail down but of course that’s the point of this whole thread really. You’re saying ‘good’ means ‘to be’. So if someone said they lived a ‘good life’ it simply mean they existed during their life. That’s an interesting take on it.

 

[goout]

goout:

And we believe that “to be” is good. Or you could say “it is good to be alive”.
So the source and summit of this being is a good thing. And it is objectively “not me”.

Okay so we’re using a wholly different definition of the word ‘good’ then. I was using it in the sense of being positive or helpful or beneficial. I’ll admit it’s a tough word to really nail down but of course that’s the point of this whole thread really. You’re saying ‘good’ means ‘to be’. So if someone said they lived a ‘good life’ it simply mean they existed during their life. That’s an interesting take on it.

Isn’t existence the most basic good that can be thought of?
If you don’t exist, this conversation and everything else has no meaning.

And if existence is the foundational good, it is a good that is not set in action by our selves. So we have a reference point outside ourselves, or something objective, from which all else flows.
You can believe in the Christian God or not, but it is hard to avoid this ultimate “otherness”. All we are and all we do and think is contingent.

It’s interesting that when God is asked who he is, he identifies as “I Am Who Am”, which points to this essential good of existence. Or “the act of to be” etc…

 

[Dan123]

Does leave us with some wordplay to clear up though. Can a bad thing exists? If a thing is bad but it exists is that a good thing? Or is bad things existing bad?

 

[goout]

We think of evil or bad things as a lacking or a void in the good.
There is no small amount of mystery here. How does an essential source of good allow for evil to happen?
There is a lot to contemplate.

One thing is for sure: the creature is not the creator. That can help us understand why evil happens.

 

[Dan123]

Indeed, I think we found the bottom of this particular rabbit hole, as it’s doubtful you or I are going to solve a question that’s baffled humanity for all its recorded existence, but a fun journey nonetheless.

 

[goout]

The search is the thing to appreciate. The search itself tells us something about morality. The fact that no one person has fully apprehended the good tells us something.

 

[o_mlly]

All truths are objective. Reality is singular and independent of what we may think about it. Knowledge that conforms to reality is true. Knowledge that does not conform to reality is false and always, therefore, subjective.

Morality is also objective in the same sense as truth. If we know a thing then we know its four causes of being – material, formal, efficient, and final cause. If we agree on these four causes of human beings then we will also agree on moral truths. In as much as agnostics or atheists agree on the causes and purposes of our being, we can agree on moral truths. But because Catholics believe that our formal and final causes are more extensive than agnostics or atheists believe, our moral code will also be more extensive.

 

[Bradskii]

Bradskii,

Would you agree that the aim of your ethical thesis is to structure a society where its citizens can run wild and act on whatever impulse, desire, taste, sentiment, reason religion, philosophy, worldview, itch, etc. they happen to have without destroying each other? Like, a mass of balls rolling in whatever direction they want without colliding into each other?

Christi pax.

Of course. I am looking forward to the day when I can rape and pillage with impunity. In between sarcastically answering dumb questions on religious forums of course.

 

[Bradskii]

Second, Bradskii is somewhat selective on his application of the harm principle. He wouldn’t, for example, cite harm as the determining principle where a woman’s right to not be inconvenienced supersedes the actual harm done to the human being she chooses to abort.

That’s not true. There are obviously negative implications in having a baby if you don’t want one. So you balance the harm resulting in going through with the pregnancy versus having an abortion.

Now, if like me, you don’t consider a blastocyst to be human, then we only consider the potential harm to the woman in either having or not having an abortion (including, in either case, psychological as well as.physical harm).

If the foetus is late term, then other consideration need to be taken into account.

But harm is the deciding factor.

 

[goout]

HarryStotle:

Second, Bradskii is somewhat selective on his application of the harm principle. He wouldn’t, for example, cite harm as the determining principle where a woman’s right to not be inconvenienced supersedes the actual harm done to the human being she chooses to abort.

That’s not true. There are obviously negative implications in having a baby if you don’t want one. So you balance the harm resulting in going through with the pregnancy versus having an abortion.

Now, if like me, you don’t consider a blastocyst to be human, then we only consider the potential harm to the woman in either having or not having an abortion (including, in either case, psychological as well as.physical harm).

If the foetus is late term, then other consideration need to be taken into account.

But harm is the deciding factor.

The problem is, that’s arbitrary not objective.
It’s a little like shooting into the woods at unknown movement.
You’re not sure if it;s human, but you want a deer, so let’s shoot and give the benefit of the doubt to me.

 

[Bradskii]

It’s objective in the example I gave. There is objectively a difference between a few cells and a baby about to be born. Whether we class the cells as human or not is not something on which we are going to agree.

So where there is disagreement on definitions, we agree to disagree and move on.

But that does not stop us trying to agree on a definition of harm.

 

[Escabrosa]

This is a definition problem then and the dilemma is still false per the definition of Church fathers, Catholic doctrine and old Jewish scholars. The Aesity of God doctrine answers your questions. God has always existed and is unchanging. The metaphysical essence of God is existence, i.e. God is ‘being’ itself.

The way I came to understand it was realizing that goodness itself=God, a simplified rendition of the above. Instead of thinking of God as an anthropomorphic being, I started with the idea of perfect goodness, an abstraction of sorts, and realized that this is what the Church refers to as God. This was my revert epiphany.

Ironically, Sam Harris helped me along the way by showing that we can arrive at the conclusion that there is objective morality through secular reasoning. He wrote a book and did a Ted Talk on it. If there is objective morality, then there is conceivably objective goodness, and so on.

 

[Dan123]

If there is objective morality, then there is conceivably objective goodness, and so on.

He defines morality as that which contributes to the well-being of sentient creatures. If that’s your definition then you can make objective claims regarding that which is why several of us keep coming back to definitions of things being important. I appreciate you had an epiphany but I don’t personally see how an idea like perfect goodness means an entity which embodies that idea must exist.

 

[Escabrosa]

I appreciate you had an epiphany but I don’t personally see how an idea like perfect goodness means an entity which embodies that idea must exist.

I see another definition problem here. I’m thinking along the lines of ‘essence and existence are the same in God’ (Aesity). What exactly do you mean by “entity”? I’m sincerely asking.

 

[Lucretius]

I only asked you if the primary objective behind your ethical theory was a kind of harmony within a pluralistic society.

I don’t see how that’s a dumb question.

Christi pax.