On God-given objective morals

just_sayin

@MayCaesar
It seems to me you have conflated the idea that people can be moral without God with what objective moral values are.  If there is no objective moral lawgiver, IE God, then the source of moral authority then lies either with each individual or with a group of people.  In either way, there is no sense in which these moral values can be said to be 'objective'.  If each individual decides for herself what is right and wrong, then the moral values of a psychopathic mass murderer are just as valid as those who have more conservative values.  The same basic problem applies to group moral authority.  Different groups have differing moral values.  This can be seen in the many genocides that have happened.  One group thought it was OK to kill the other group.  I'm fairly sure the group that was being killed felt it was wrong to kill them.  They did not share their values.

If groups get to decide what are objective morals then when the majority said slavery was OK it was morally good to own slaves.  If you believe something can be the morally correct thing, even if societal laws disagree (such as with slavery, abortion, drug use, protest, free speech, death penalty, etc.), then objective morals do not reside with groups or the community and you are back to moral values at the individual level.  While some people may share some moral values, they may reject others, particularly if it is in their interest to do so.  If you believe rape is objectively morally evil, then know that from a pure evolutionary view point, rape allowed an individual to pass on his genes.  Rape was beneficial in the sense it fulfilled the law of the jungle and allowed the strongest to thrive and prevail.  But if you believe rape is wrong, even if it is biologically advantageous and even though some people feel that it is OK for them to do it, then you have no one to appeal to but the group.  But if you are on an island where the group says rape is OK, then to whom do you appeal?

While many people share some similar sets of values, when you claim they are 'objective' your claim fails because who is to say that some other individual or groups differing view point is less objective than yours?  There are no objective morals if there is not an objective lawgiver under whose jurisdiction we all are subject to.

MayCaesar

@just_sayin

Let me explore how generalizable your argument is. Would you agree that, if there is no objective physics law giver, then the source of authority on what the physics laws are lies either with each individual or with a group of people, therefore there is no sense in which they can be said to be objective? If each individual decides for herself whether gravity exists or not, can it be said therefore that no objective claims about gravity can be made, unless there is God that proclaims them? And if you disagree with this argument, then what makes laws of physics and laws of morals principally different?
To extend the analogy, it is worth mentioning that many early scientists were burned at a stake or otherwise punished for stating their views. The society did not share their values.

Here is my thinking on this. While there is no sense in that something is objectively "good" or "evil" since these are inherently value judgements and, therefore, are subjective - there is an objective approach to deriving the right moral values for the individual (it is not so obvious to me that moral values can be applicable to groups since decisions are always made by individuals, and even collective decisions are a mere product of a number of individual decisions). Objectivism demonstrates one such approach: you start with the obvious axiom that survival is better than death and proceed from there. I would suggest an approach more akin to Sam Harris', only Sam posits that there is a concept of absolute infinite bliss and absolute infinite torment and, if nothing else, anything that moves one from the latter to the former is moral - while I would say that morals are heuristical rules that one develops through observation and experimentation that aim at facilitating consistent achievement of outcomes leading towards happiness and away from suffering.

Let us consider a Universe in which there is no God (my assumption is that we live in such a Universe, although I may be wrong; the following argument does not really change based on God's existence, it only does based on people's belief in her existence). I live in a society. One day I observe an instance of rape, and it horrifies me: I see how much the victim suffers, I see how perverted pleasure of the perpetuator is, and I see absolutely nothing that would redeem such an act in a civilized society - and my reactions plus reasoning tell me that rape is, probably, something that the society should steer away from. Another day I talk to a loving couple that describe how much they enjoyed a romantic walk under the moon last night, holding hands gently and whispering sweet things to each other - this sounds extremely appealing to me, and I decide that it would be nice for this experience to be available to more people. This is how morals are born and aggregated: you make observations, see what consistently results in positive outcomes for people and what does not, and steer towards the former and away from the latter.

This seems to be a much more sensible approach to me than deriving morals from some intelligent authority, for, just like with science, a) your findings hold against the being's changing mind, b) your findings are testable, reproducible and falsifiable, and c) your can develop your system of morals and update it as you accumulate more and more data. With the former approach, on the other hand, there is nothing you can do but blindly accept whatever the authority tells you to do - and however morally repugnant it feels to you intuitively or logically, you have to accept it because the powerful being says so.

Finally, to your point on genocides, slavery and so on (let me remind you, by the way, that slavery in the Christian world was largely seen as a will of God; the scripture has not changed since then, people just changed their interpretation of it - a good question to ask, by the way, is what prompted their interpretation to change, and if that was not a new directive coming from God, then how they can claim to still derive their morality from God)... Just like in science, people can make mistakes when developing their moral values. It is absolutely possible to develop a moral system that, when practiced on the societal scale, will turn your nation into a hellscape - and it is possible to learn from such results and avoid repeating these mistakes. And the more observations people make, the better moral systems they can develop, and the better the societal outcomes will become. I do not see how this is a problem. If anything, this is the solution - solution to, among other things, all the brutalities people have committed guided by their Gods' directives. Gods' directives are outside of their control, so they have no choice other to blindly comply with them - while the process I have outlined is fully within their control.

Is that not how we, humans, learn everything? By going into the world, trying things and selecting those that work and discarding those that do not? Is that not how the civilization has come from the barbaric past to modern prosperous and generally peaceful societies? Or is it that God has been doing a lot of pondering, sending humanity gradually changing directives? Took the wisest creature in the world long enough to figure out that slavery is a little problematic...

Dee

 Well to me the superiority of secular morality is pretty obvious.



To me  secular moral systems are progressive and inclusive religious moral systems are regressive and divisive.

Secular moral systems are there to serve the interests of the participants while religious moral systems are merely the arbitrary pronouncements of an assortment of unproven supernatural entities.

It's an interesting point May brings up regarding this attitude of " anything goes" without a god given moral code ,the religious always think this  is a sound argument while it demonstrates clearly that without an all seeing supernatural entity watching their behaviour religious people are admitting they would resort to barbaric behaviour.

Morality is derived from from empathy ,fairness and cooperation and is ever evolving and changes with societies.

Take the Christian religion, that also evolves although more slowly with our ever changing societies, the Catholic faith as an example bears no relation to the church of 100 years ago , religions move a  lot more slowly in change and I suggest most Christians totally ignore the majority of its teachings.

Religious people sacrifice their humanity on the altars of religion.

The bible is one of the most immoral books ever  going by its content, the bible and its words were used to justify slavery by " godly christians" in the US.

Tell me how in a country like the US that identifies as a Christian nation that blscks were still segregated and brutalised, victimised in the US by these so called " christians" under  their " superior moral systems" right up to the 1960's?

 It took American Christians that long to figure out that it was immoral.

Of course Muslims also claim a superior moral system to others yet in chop chop square in Riyadh , Saudi Arabia every Friday beheading,  left hand amputations and floggings take place because a furious Allah is deeply concerned about how women dress, sexual preferences, drinking of alchohol etc,etc.

It's remarkable when the word objective by the religious  as its nearly always used in the absolute sense as in it has to be universal.

Suggesting that enslaving people was morally correct is obviously on all levels morally wrong, to me this is objectively true disregarding what a minority of individuals might say.

Remember also that Chritians believed that it was morally correct to keep slaves and justified such by quoting Jesus as in " slaves obey your earthly masters" why bother taking anything seriously regarding moral theories by believers.

Barnardot

@Dee ;Secular moral systems are there to serve the interests of the participants while religious moral systems are merely the arbitrary pronouncements of an assortment of unproven supernatural entities.

Thats exactly what I was going to say so Im with you on this one. But to be fare though you have to put it all in to perspective. In there day those Christian morals were just secular morals that were a reflection of the mirror of society. It was normal for men to treat women like dogs and lock them in a room when there on the rags and to kill homos. So fast forwood to nower days and the Christians believe the same morals because there to scarred to change what was written by God. They just dont want to change.

But heres the twist though. Thats what they say and proberly convince them selves about. In realty though the real reason they have all those backwood morals is this and I have to fess up here. Yes I did fall off the wagon and got suckered in to being a Christian for a year. Then I realized what a heap of crap it was and that all the members of our church were so weird it wasn't funny any way. They had all sorts of hang ups and fears and hatreds brewing in side them. So I realized then that thats why they become Christians. Its because it suits there mind set which is real primitive just like people used to think 2 thousand years ago. And thats the real reason why they dont change there morals. Other wise of coarse the Pastas and Preachers will loose ther congregations.

just_sayin

Barnardot said:

@Dee ;Secular moral systems are there to serve the interests of the participants while religious moral systems are merely the arbitrary pronouncements of an assortment of unproven supernatural entities.

Thats exactly what I was going to say so Im with you on this one. But to be fare though you have to put it all in to perspective. In there day those Christian morals were just secular morals that were a reflection of the mirror of society. It was normal for men to treat women like dogs and lock them in a room when there on the rags and to kill homos. So fast forwood to nower days and the Christians believe the same morals because there to scarred to change what was written by God. They just dont want to change.

But heres the twist though. Thats what they say and proberly convince them selves about. In realty though the real reason they have all those backwood morals is this and I have to fess up here. Yes I did fall off the wagon and got suckered in to being a Christian for a year. Then I realized what a heap of crap it was and that all the members of our church were so weird it wasn't funny any way. They had all sorts of hang ups and fears and hatreds brewing in side them. So I realized then that thats why they become Christians. Its because it suits there mind set which is real primitive just like people used to think 2 thousand years ago. And thats the real reason why they dont change there morals. Other wise of coarse the Pastas and Preachers will loose ther congregations.

Sigh.  You are missing the obvious.  No one is claiming that you have to be religious to be morals.  What is being discussed is that if there is OBJECTIVE moral truths, then they can not come from nature, individuals or groups.  Nature is just reactions to natural phenomena.  Its a response, not a moral choice.  Individuals and groups can differ in what they deem 'moral' as your argument above proves.  Therefore OBJECTIVE moral values can not come from individuals or groups.