Of course I wouldn’t. I wouldn’t care what they believe.
I don’t understand where your hangup is. Just because I think everybody has their own moral code doesn’t mean I don’t think their moral codes are bankrupt.
No, why would I? My relationship with my wife is between me and her. We know what is okay between us and what isn’t. Either of us violating our words to each other would be a betrayal.
If my wife, for instance, was raised to never be monogamous, then I wouldn’t have married her, right? She’s free to be poly if she likes, hell I wouldn’t even judge her for it, but I wouldn’t have put a ring on it.
I would save the woman, but I wouldn’t save her out of objective morality. I would use my own morality to save her. Again, I don’t understand your confusion on this point.
Are you literally smoking crack, my dude? What gave you the impression that I think other people are just “matter in motion” and that people don’t have value?
Lazy is what I’d call your nonsensical rhetorical questions. Which of my answers above is unsatisfactory?
Under your scenario there is no reason to behave morally to one another outside of a government threatening to throw you in jail.
Your system isn’t sustainable. There is no objective foundation for the way you treat people or how people treat you.
But that’s not how you behave. You behave as though you have objective bases for feeling moral duties from fellow citizens. You just don’t like to admit it because it would force you to analyze where that objectivity is derived.
Because if morals don’t exist then a concept like “value” doesn’t exist.
Value is the measurement of worth.
Worth is a moral term.
Under your scenario, you only “believe” that a woman has worth. You can’t prove it. You can’t ontologically show me why a person has worth.
And even if you tried, under your system, I can simply say- nope- don’t agree. I believe something else. And you would be powerless to claim I’m wrong.
And if there were no police force between us, your works devolves into the survival of the strongest and most ruthless.
I said morality is usually codified, whether through commandments or written law. i don’t need to explain the 10 commandments to you, I hope.
I then also said that morality is often derived from community norms. So some tribes are coo coo with slavery, but Americans and the rest of the civilized world aren’t.
No system is perfectly sustainable. Even religions disagree. Wars have been fought over it.
How do you know how I behave?
Sorry to burst your bubble, but the written law is an objective basis. Sure, we can disagree on the finer points, people do that with the Bible too.
As far as community influences, I don’t know if we can consider that objective. I will tell you this, though. I don’t refrain from murdering people because of Catholicism.
See, this is your hangup. You’re trying to ascribe some random theory or morality to what I said, when I never said these things.
Morality absolutely exists. I have a set of morals that absolutely exist in my head, and I can discuss them and share them with others, like my kids, to build their characters. that’s something that sticks around even after my brain is in the dirt.
Of course. I guarantee you there are people who don’t believe the woman has worth. And there are people whose only worth in the woman might be for ulterior motives, like sex, etc.
I never claimed to be able to do this.
So what you’re saying is if life was a video game, it would be badly designed. So what?
What I mean when I say objective is “a true statement whether anyone believes in it or not.”
So let’s take that coo coo slave tribe. They believe slavery is moral. But certainly they are not correct in their assessment.
Under your view, you have no way to claim that with them because you said the following.
But beliefs are not necessarily true, nor are they binding.
Now- let’s look at something really physical. A mountain. Whether I or you believe in the mountain in front of us, we can measure it, we can touch it, we can describe it, we can die from it…. It’s objectively there. It objectively exists.
I am arguing the same thing about morals.
Something like “love” isn’t measurable. We can’t weigh it. We can’t see it or bump into it. But we can describe it…. We can experience it. And we are rationale to believe it’s real and not a delusion.
But even the above is not enough to confirm love exists. What’s needed is a place to ground it. An explanation for its existence. So here we go.
God, as the ultimately supreme being, is the cause of these virtues. Because God is the ultimate or maximum of anything you can conceive, from him flow these virtues. Love, Justice, peace, mercy, beauty, etc…. And because we are his creatures, we can sense them emanate from him. These virtues are literally part of or accidents of (accidents in a philosophical sense) his nature.
Imagine an analogy of fire. If God was the fire, his virtues would be the heat and light that we feel.
PS - all of the vices are simply deviations from the virtues. So hatred is a deviation from love. Jealousy is a deviation from passion. Evil a deviation from Good.
But again- they are only imaginary. They may have utility but that doesn’t give them objectivity. It doesn’t mean your set are better or truer than mine. That’s the point I keep trying to make.
But I can.
I can tell you that man was made in the image of a deity. And that deity revealed himself. He affirms that we have worth and value. He sent his son to die for us even though we never deserved it.
He imbued in us, a part of him. The ability to think, create, speak, protect.
That’s why we have value and the ant or rock does not.
Again- I can explain why they are wrong, you can’t in your worldview.
It’s objective in the sense that different people can read the same rule, as opposed to “house rules,” but I get what you are saying.
I agree with this, but that doesn’t stop one culture from imposing their beliefs on others, because THEY BELIEVE IT.
Well I disagree about morals being physical geological objects.
Tongue in cheek comments aside, you’re right, I don’t believe morals are physical. Morals exist in the human mind. Animals don’t have morals. Or at least, only the smarter ones do if we want to go there. Even crows “hold court” for instance.
But morals are not a mountain. Love is not a mountain. Worth is not a mountain. So perhaps what you are driving at is I don’t believe there are objective versions of these things. And maybe, without giving it too much thought, I believe that’s true.
I agree, it doesn’t mean that. This is why humanity is at constant war with each other, is it not? It looks like all of history backs my interpretation, not yours.
It’s irrelevant to the discussion. I’m not discussing anybody’s “worth.” In fact, as I said above, I don’t believe there is a such thing as objective worth. Sure, the US dollar is a world standard that is tracked, but different people place different worths on money. Everyone has their own ideas of what things are worth, people are worth, football teams are worth. You can say that means worth is imaginary and not real if you want, but it doesn’t change the fact that there is no objective worth.
Who cares though? This discussion isn’t about making sense of the world through philosophical worldviews, it’s about what morality is, and whether objective morality exists.
This guy is part of your worldview just as much as he is mine. The fact is, he is part of the real world. any worldview that doesn’t include him would be patently false, right?
Like, I understand the philosophical discussion on statutory rape, the long history of girls becoming women much earlier, and how arbitrary an age limit is. This guy starts the discussion there and is on thin ice already. But then he goes full blown talking about fellating babies. Dude’s a pedo trying to justify it. He’s sick and should be kept away from kids.
So what is different about you saying he is wrong and me saying he is wrong?
See, this is where you keep getting hung up. These are his beliefs. This is undeniable. He’s outlining what he believes to us. He’s even perhaps saying he doesn’t know what he believes or how he feels.
But is he justified? Well, if I was a pedo, I might say yes. But I’m not so I’ll say no. Do you see how those 2 belief systems work? That’s exactly my point.
So do I think a child molester is justified just because they think they are? Hell no. Do I think a home invader is justified, or a raper, or a murderer? Hell no. Neither do you, I imagine.
And I’m imploring you…. Begging you to go one step deeper.
One side is OBJECTIVELY RIGHT. One side has more than “it’s my belief.”
Why you won’t take that step is beyond me. But I think I know why…. Because you would have to admit there is SOMETHING BEYOND OUR BELIEFS THAT CONFIRMS OUR BELIEFS ABOUT MORALS.
Objectively right according to the law? Sure.
Objectively right according to the Bible? Sure, maybe… I’m not sure what the Bible says about statutory rape, if anything. You probably know more on this point than I do.
Despite what this guy is saying, I don’t believe kids have the wherewithal to properly consent to these situations. I see these contacts as very one-sided, one person taking advantage of the other. And the younger the kid is the worse it gets, because they are more helpless.
Why is pedophilia evil? - because kids can’t give consent
Ok- why is not giving consent bad? - because not being able to agree to something creates a victim.
Ok- what’s wrong with being a victim? - we’ll, it means a person was harmed or experienced trauma.
Ok- why is trauma or harm bad for a person? - because people have value, worth, dignity.
Where do people get their value, worth, dignity and why does it matter?
Ahhhh…. The theist can answer this question beautifully. Your answer, I presume, would be “because other people believe they matter…”.
We have to go down the ad-absurdum argument rabbit holes to get to the meet and potatoes.
I can ground my response in an answer that is powerful. A God who created everything there is, specially created YOU with value, worth, dignity…. And to violate that is to violate Him.
Truth is agnostic or independent of sources. Makes no difference where or how you get to the truth. It only matters that you discover and hold to it.
I think every single human being knows there is a creator of all things. They just don’t like the implications. So they try to make the creator impersonal or dispassionate because it’s better for their conscious. It’s easier to say that our universe came from a multiverse or something like that.
Even if you changed the descriptors of those objects or the logic - you’d simply move the goalpost and derive the same basic answer.
Again- it wouldn’t really matter. At the end of the day, ontologically, a bachelor is what it is. Even if you modified the language you’d arrive at the same fundamental truth. The proposition would be contradictory.
Worth is not derived from having been created. The fact that you’re alive is worth enough.
I agree, but I’m not speaking on truth, I’m speaking on morality.
You can’t say objective morality is objective because it’s true. You can’t say the truth is true because it’s true.
Okay, I agree with you on the square, but you’re once again comparing morals to mountains. Once you’re out of the physical world and enter the realm of concepts, objective truth becomes much sketchier.
Yes, it’s a concept we made a distinction for because we deemed it relevant.
For instance, what is the word for someone who is single because their spouse died? A widow. We deemed that state relevant enough to define.
Now what is a term for someone who married, then divorced, then was a bachelor for a while, and then took on two wives and a pool boy? We don’t have a single term that encompasses that, because it’s a state that isn’t relevant enough to name.
