Objective Morality WITHOUT God

Good stuff thanks bros, so when Craig memes about about morality is he just ignoring Utilitarianism?

No, Craig's criticisms of the metaethical foundations of utilitarianism are legitimate. But most of the utilitarians simply don't care, and don't really engage with this (legitimate) line of questioning. The classical utilitarians, like Hume, Mill, and Bentham, generally had their hands in other topics as well, such as metaphysics, and so have better justifications for why utilitarianism is correct (as opposed to any other system of ethics).

In a certain sense the question is equivalent to asking if Objective Morality can exist without "The Eternal, Unchanging definer of Good," and of course the answer to that would be no.

The more interesting question is whether or not God is required to be a person (or persons for Trinitarians) for morality to exist. My inclination is yes, because morality requires a living authority.

Oh, Hare is another good read on the matter. He started out not really being anything, then eventually developed a system of preference utilitarianism, based on a conception of moral thinking that treats moral statements as universalisable prescriptions. He's basically Singer, but tackles the actual hard, metaethical questions, rather than jumping right to the practical applications. Read the Language of Morals and you'll see what I mean.

Thanks laddd

well god doesn't exist from a scientific standpoint (or a common sense stand point at that) so the whole discussion is fruitless.

Sam Harris is the St Paul of our time

>moral values are the product of natural and artificial selection acting on human populations over time
>different human populations have a variety of value systems and there is variation of values within each population
>populations with maladaptive values are selected against and go extinct while populations with adaptive values survive and reproduce into the future
>the value systems in existence today including every religion, worldview, and philosophy are the mere products of this selection process
>that is morality
>indeed all ideas and ideals are the product of this evolutionary process
>bad morals are weeded out as evolutionarily maladaptive
>we don't need God to explain morality, evolution does just fine thank you
>excuse me I have to leave the Secular Humanist support group early because my girlfriend has an appointment at the abortion clinic and it's on the other side of the city from her Marxism in Underwater Basketweaving course and you know how crazy the roads get with all those stupid Christians and Muslims driving their kids home from school long live atheism we are destined to triumph and rule the world

St Paul was successfull in spreading his philosophy, judeochrisitan-atheism is dying out.

I think you mean judeo-atheism.

Why do you need morality to be objective?

>social contract
Which everyone signed because it follows something already known to them.

Morality is incompatible with utilitarianism.

If there is no god then there can be no "ought", because man would have no telos.

I've always been very uninterested in morality, but I've noticed a certain peculiarity that many people around me seem to take some quantification of "happiness" as a guiding principle, even thrusting it upon others near religiously, and it really bothers me. Like their god is pleasure. For example, when we were getting hit over the head with the gay marriage stick the opposing side was practically shunted away without a chance on grounds of "hate", and the sole promotion of the condemners was "love", with no intensive reckoning on either the legitimacy of gays or the effects which legislation would have. The same goes for other forms of sexual deviancy, immigration, welfare and so on. How would you classify this?

>Utilitarianism
Say that you can actually prove the "greatest good" or whatever utility you want to aim at. Am I obligated in any way to act towards that? No, I'm not, and neither is anyone else. It's just words.

There is no objective morality even WITH GOD.

Christian morals don't give us definite answers to questions like "is it okay to steal a loaf of bread if you're starving?" or any other ethical dilemmas.

It's all smoke and mirrors.

>How would you classify this?
You already figured it out:
>Like their god is pleasure.

>"is it okay to steal a loaf of bread if you're starving?"
No it isn't, but it's also wrong not to give food to a starving person. There you go, bud.

>Thou shalt not steal
>Except when you need to
LMAO fucking useless.

I said it's not okay to steal, you fucking idiot.

So if you're the only moral person and have no food the right thing to do is starve?

The highest aim of Christianity is not the preservation of one's earthly life, as I assume you know. Also Matthew 6:25-33

Luciferianism/ LaVeyan Satanism

"Egoism"

"most atheists" don't say anything about morality of any kind. they just get on with their lives. without worrying if they are going to be sent to perpetual torment because of some perceived infraction of an ambiguous rule.

actually they see their therapists to make sense of their "guilt" and "anxiety"

what is the word "objective" doing here? what work is it performing?

adding a whole bunch of muddle and confusion to this 'debate'.

It simply means morality that you are actually obligated to follow, rather than a morality which operates on personal consent. And of course if there is no god there isn't any.

Yeah. I think psychological arguments are the most convincing, though i'm not well read enough to elaborate on it very well. It should be self-evident that things such as torture, genocide or other sadistic acts are immoral by virtue of Reason. Only someone fucked up desires to commit such acts; the only people who desire to aren't normal people. They have mental deficiencies, fucked up childhoods, underdeveloped, a bad experience, a complex, or some pathological condition that makes them that way. This also applies to mass psychology as well. For example, the German people in WWII went blindly along with the Nazis.

I think you can describe and explain most "immoral" acts as being caused by some pathological condition or passion, but then that means you could argue that low IQ retards are totally slaves to their passions and impulses and essentially have no free will.

>And of course if there is no god there isn't any.
>Dude if there's no threat of eternal torture in hell then you can do anything you want!

>Most Atheists seem to spout this subjective morality bullshit
What are you talking about? Most contemporary philosophers believe in moral realism

Supremely undeveloped thoughts. /v/ philosopher.

Say I don't obey whatever little moral code you make up. What does it matter? I'm not bound by it in any way and you can never bind me or anyone else by it. There will be no reckoning and I'll never be held to account. Whatever arguments you give I can simply say, "No," and do whatever I wish. Do you dispute that?

>being such a cuck you still follow """morality"""
admit it, you have no fear of hell, but you are controlled by your social doctrines of guilt and shame. quintessential christian morality... you fear the retribution not of hell, but of the crowd, and of your pathological appetite for moralistic self-punishment...

I don't dispute that but the law enforcement will.

>Morality is the law
Get a load of this brainlet.

>LOL stupid Christians only obey God because they'll get punished
>Uhhh well if you don't obey my secular morality then... well the police will punish you, so there

Why don't you go and kill someone then, Raskolnikov? Test your theory. Transcend your social conditioning. Or if you want something less severe: next time you see an old lady shove her onto the footpath and see how you feel afterwards. Because morality is just a SOCIAL CONSTRUCT: you're conditioned by society, man; they've got you brainwashed, man; that guilt you feel is just fear of the crowd, man. Kys.

I wouldn't call law a set of morals. They're rules made from years of trial and error that help us be a more functional society. You are bound by those rules if you want to participate in it.

As far as Christians go they are pretentious and arrogant but I wouldn't call them dumb.

we are in times were individuals don’t form societies but are rather born into them

>You are bound by those rules if you want to participate in it.
You are not. All it means is that if you are caught then you may possibly be punished by other people.

>Dude if there's no threat of eternal torture in hell then you can do anything you want!
how is that wrong you retard, even if there’s objective morality tou are still free to do anything you want

And what is that anguished screed meant to prove? You've conceded, you've reduced morality to "how you feel afterwards", that the immorality of the action would be proven by the guilt I feel, which you would admonish me for ignoring because you see special significance in it. Most moral realists would not say that the morality of an action depends on how the agent feels about it, either before (as you're trying to provoke in me) or after (the guilt). You might say I'm less guilty or 'culpable' for the action, such as killing or raping someone if I have limited insight into my actions via insanity or something, but you wouldn't say that the act itself is no longer wrong.

So then, you have no sympathy for people completely outside the bounds of your morality. People who won't even abide by basic proscriptions against murder aren't really relevant to you. Almost everyone can agree that these things are wrong or otherwise undesirable, both from the point of view of being a perpetrator or a victim. But the vast majority of moral decisions human beings make are not so extreme. If you don't have a coherent set of beliefs about the nature morality, how will you make hard decisions. You might appeal to being "right" in some way, but without a coherent moral basis you are being presumptuous, perhaps even unjust by your own standards. If you decide to ignore this, what separates you from an amoralist?

That's what being bound by means.

Since you mentioned reason as one of your values, the rational thing would be to break those rules whenever the balance of risk vs reward tilts in your favour, right?

>he doesn’t know law is different in every country and is derived from a preexisting set of morals

A threat of violence does not bind anyone. You can simply accept the violence, avoid it, etc. It can't actually give a person an obligation to do something. Not even Christians believe that people are bound to obey God because they'll get punished. That's how fucking stupid you are.

You presuppose objective morality can somehow exist along with god but no religion it seems has actually put forth any actual morality historically.

>Since you mentioned reason as one of your values

I didn't. I only tried to answer the question of "Say I don't obey whatever little moral code you make up. What does it matter?".

>he doesn’t know law is different in every country and is derived from a preexisting set of morals

Here, let me quote myself: "They're rules made from years of trial and error that help us be a more functional society.".

>A threat of violence does not bind anyone.

No but the deed of violence does.

>It can't actually give a person an obligation to do something.

What? Ever heard of forced labor?

I'm not an expert on morality. I'm still in a formative stage. I have my own prior beliefs on it - as of now I believe there is a 'natural law' that is a basis for morality.

Let me try again:

Morality is a loaded word. Morality means different things to different people. THE THREAT OF ETERNAL PUNISHMENT IS NOT REQUIRED FOR MORALITY TO EXIST.

What is right is moral, and what is wrong is immoral. It is self-evidently true that progress, advancement, or development is better than degeneration or regression.

What advances or makes better is GOOD.
What degenerates or makes worse is BAD.

When something goes from being in a state of order to chaos, that is degeneration. Its bad.

When animals evolve and develop larger brains, higher intelligence and more advanced characteristics that is GOOD. Evolution is good.

>From this point it should be clear that incest is not good. Babies that are the product of incest, especially sibling or parent/child are genetically inferior. That is degenerate, its not good, therefore it is immoral. People who have incestuous relations are impulsed by their passions; passion isn't rational. Reason would show that incest is not good.

There's one rule. Thou shalt not commit incest.

I can't be assed writing more for other universally agreed upon things like murder, genocide, torture, etc. Just think: passion, chaos, degeneracy, not good.

Reason is how someone can understand what is good and what is not good. People with greater intelligence are able to understand abstract ideas, reason, and control passions more than less intelligent people. People who can't, wont see reason, or were motivated by a passion (revenge, anger, etc) are degenerate chimps with low IQs. They let the world act upon them. They're slaves to their chimp brain impulses. The implications of this aren't very nice.

I was just speculating - i'm not an expert on psychology. I believe guilt and shame aren't entirely social constructs. Psychopathology might offer a model for what is moral and immoral, at least with some acts. Remember, the normal brain - a fully-functioning brain free from mental illnesses and other disorders - is better than one that has these problems. One that does is degenerate. Not good. Blah blah blah, draw your own conclusions.

>INB4 dude you're a determinist.
>Saying it like its a bad thing.

pure ideology

read pomo

UPB by Stefan Molyneux is all you need

>THE THREAT OF ETERNAL PUNISHMENT IS NOT REQUIRED FOR MORALITY TO EXIST.
you're confusing two canards here. one is about moral behaviour, the other is about moral realism. the "eternal punishment" thing is about the debate over whether or not people need metaphysical threats looming over their heads to behave "morally". the existence of an objective reality, and whether you believe it is dependent on god or not, while related, is distinct.
>What is right is moral, and what is wrong is immoral. It is self-evidently true that progress, advancement, or development is better than degeneration or regression.
for whom? what is progress? very whiggish...
is progress an end in itself? when we say something has "progressed" we mean it has changed in a way that we like, that is desirable to us. when we say something has declined, we mean the change is undesirable... but it can only be desirable or undesirable to a conscious being with motives, needs and values. these vary wildly.
>When animals evolve and develop larger brains, higher intelligence and more advanced characteristics that is GOOD. Evolution is good.
was it good before a being with sufficient intelligence, social and motor skills was able to discover the forces of evolution and pronounce them "good"?
you should already be aware that evolution does not work toward larger brains and greater intelligence in all circumstances. you've heard of the concept of "evolutionary fitness", yes? traits that increase a creature's "fitness" to their environment are preserved and proliferated, while traits that aren't, for very simple causal reasons, do not.
evolution isn't human, so it doesn't share our biases. neither does basic chemistry, for that matter - we just don't both ascribing much moral value to rocks and the forces which work upon them.
>Just think: passion, chaos, degeneracy, not good.
dummy.

is this satire?

Any attempt to establish a moral system from within the physical reality is pathetic. The only relevant "moralists" nowadays will claim that a compassionate ethical system is benificial to subjects just as it is for society.

You can't tell from the pictures?

>Misinterpreting everything of what I said and refuting me based on technical errors that don't significantly change what i'm arguing.

>for whom? what is progress? very whiggish..
Brainlet tier response.

The point is that we are here on this planet right now. Its totally up to you to be skeptical about why we should strive for progress and advancement over degeneracy. That should be self-evident, but w/e, that's cool, you do you.

Reason of the highest order is an ideal. Even the most intelligent, rational people aren't perfect. Morality is also an ideal. In realty no one can ever be completely moral and abide by minute moral laws deducted from such a system. Society sets a baseline level of morality that is acceptable through a dialectical process. One could argue that that baseline keeps dropping. Transgenderism is degenerate but we now accept it, for example.

What part of my response do you think is satire?

this

cdn.media.freedomainradio.com/feed/books/UPB/Universally_Preferable_Behaviour_UPB_by_Stefan_Molyneux_PDF.pdf

...

>I am not bound to act morally therefore an objective criterion to judge my acts can not exist

Please think before posting stupid shit

>Muh self-evident muh self-evident... stop arguing with my points... stop pointing out """technical errors"""... they don't change anything anyway...
90% of the mutt masses don't agree with your notions of progress. I already challenged you to provide a coherent definition of progress. My own definition was that progress and decline are simply value judgements about change, based on what the observer stands to gain or lose.

We are on this planet right now, yes. We have recently discovered lot of the wonderful progress that improved our quality of life is also contributing to global forces that are going to significantly and violently reduce it, as well as irrevocably destroying large portions of the environment and life that currently exists on this Earth. Suddenly I have a new value judgement on these previous "self-evident" progressive things, based on the different consequences - for my own wellbeing and of things I value - that I've learned of.

Similarly, depending on one's values and circumstances, the social acceptance of transgenderism can be apprehended either as a sign of progress or decline.

>90% of the mutt masses don't agree with your notions of progress

Value based judgements aren't truth. Who gives a fuck what mutts think. Progress isn't a value judgement, I provided my reason.

>Similarly, depending on one's values and circumstances, the social acceptance of transgenderism can be apprehended either as a sign of progress or decline.

VALUE JUDGEMENT.

Progress isn't linear. Just because something has the potential to go wrong doesn't mean its not progress. It could be the best of all alternatives.

even if god exists he makes value judgements dummy, if he decides anything is good or bad.

lets say progress really is an innate property of the universe (like entropy, though that doesn't seem very "progressive" to me). so there is really changes that are INNATELY progressive, regardless of how we judge them. even so, how are we then to detect these? or to employ them? how can we? we have already established that people vary extremely in what they consider progressive. how would you or i be able to tell what is progress or what is decline? there is no way for us to do it without making a value judgement. take the global warming example i made - we can observe a series of events that initally seem almost wholly beneficial, and then later we are confronted with information that adds serious negative consequences. does that mean it was never actually progess in the first place? that it was, in fact, always decline and degeneracy, but that we simply didn't have the information to be able to detect it?

PLEASE, if i am wrong, point me to your proof that progress exists and is not a value judgement. enlighten me. i need education. if there really is progress and it is good, then i should like to contribute to it. but until then, i could be doing harm for all i know.

All ethical theories converge to a common sense tainted with personal beliefs in the end and in practice, ethical problems are solved more through a kind of recruiting based on discourses (I doesn't really matter if they are rational or not), where what is acceptable or desirable slowly becomes so because the majority of people in a community decides so (a majority that gives no fucks about ethics as a philosophical field). Why even care about this shit? If you want to solve a specific problem in ethics, pick up a sophistry manual and try to convince people you are right.

Well usually you start with some important axiomatic values commonly accepted by most human beings like: respect for Autonomy, respect for Justice (Rawlsian veil of ignorance), respect for Happiness (most people want happiness so we if value their Autonomy we should value this), respect for the Environment (this is really only instrumental to keeping humans alive and happy but is important in the modern era) and then work from there.

It's not really different from any other field where you have to start with some axioms. For example in the sciences people operate under the assumptions that the universe is logical and regular and really real and not just a dream.

There is no justification for the greatest possible good because such a justification would be a greater good which is contradictory. Ultimately you must rest upon axioms.

>Can Objective Morality exist without God bros?
Yes. In fact, objective morality can *only* exist without god. If god exists, anything is moral.

aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/morality.html
aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/god.html

The issue I see with objective morality is that nothing is truly objective until it is completely imposed and enforced regardless of will.
The natural laws of the universe, for example, are objective. Go ahead and try to escape from the laws of physics, regardless of who you are, you won't be able to. If you follow these laws you are rewarded indiscriminately and if you disobey you are punished indiscriminately, there is no in between. Now can the same be said for morality? Absolutely not.

Could these "natural laws of the universe" that you hold in such esteem have any relation to the "morality" you revile?

You expect me to believe that the speed at which an apple falls from a tree has anything to do with morality?
Seems unlikely to say the least.

The same eyes that watch that apple can watch other things if they so choose. Cause and effect is indeed universal.

kant

>aynrandlexicon

>Thinks he can derive an ought from an is
Oh boy