Can morality be objective?

What we call morality is just trying to convince people how we think they should act. That is why it seems universal, since we are all human.

How do we know what God's morality is?

Because it's do what He says or he'll kill you.

You don't know that.
Because negative and positive feelings are facts about existence. They objectively exist. We don't have a complete science of what causes them, but there's no reason to believe that one can't be developed with appropriate knowledge of the correlation between brain states and world states.

He told us.

>morality can be objective because opinions objectively exist
hurrrr *pukes on self*

As the Ancient Greeks thought morality is designed by laws.

>Because negative and positive feelings are facts about existence. They objectively exist. We don't have a complete science of what causes them, but there's no reason to believe that one can't be developed with appropriate knowledge of the correlation between brain states and world states.

Could you explain this further?
If I feel negatively about a person's behavior towards me, and harming them will make me feel better, does that make it objectively moral?

He created existence, therefore He holds the right to dictate the terms of existence.

That's circular logic, my fellow. A right's power is based on morality, because if something is your right, then it is rightful (moral) for you to have it. If you're trying to prove the existence of morals, don't use morality to do so. What you're saying is "respect morals because of morals"'

All logic is circular

Read the rest of my post too. The main point is the last sentence.

The idea of morality itself comes from the idea of universal law. If there is no objective morality then there is no morality at all. It is not a question of wether or not morality is objective or subjective, but wether or not morality exists at all.

I personally believe it does exist.

No, if there is an objective reality we cannot ever know it directly. The best we can manage is empiricism, and you can make an empirically based morality by studying how best to encourage human flourishing.

Even if God has access to objective morality, /you/ don't have access to his mind. All you have is what some book tells you.

Yes, it is.

Let me try to prove it for people who don't understand:

So words are symbolic of meaning, right? So if we're talking about 'morality', I think we can agree that it refers to how one ought to treat oneself and others, the establishing of boundaries for coexistence. If you don't think that's what morality means, I don't care, because that's what I'm talking about.

When we're talking about how we ought to be, we are making a value judgement about how things ought to be, or what's a preferable state of being. If we're talking about preferences, then we should be able to derive those from human nature.

Everyone would prefer to be happy. No one prefers to suffer, unless that suffering is conducive of happiness. In this context, happiness is tautological of preferability, and suffering the opposite. Anyone would prefer their highest state of happiness, as long as they were able to relate the meaning of the same concept, or achieve the same state of being.

Establishing all this, we can further deduce that if the ideal state of an individual is the happiest state, then the ideal state of the world, or the set including all individuals is the happiest state of those.

Based on this we can establish a framework that encourages us to act for social benefit and discourages us from or directly excludes any action that is strictly irreconcilable with our ideal world or universal maxim of good, such as murder.

Because this world cannot be achieved unless everyone accepts the framework of good, then that means that everyone ought to accept it, to make the ideal world into a reality.

Low energy!

It makes evolutionary sense to be nice to people and not go around murdering shit all the time. Known murderers/thieves/etc get less chance to breed. Thus basic morality makes objective sense.

That's ethics not morals

>objective?
For those who are objects--things--their is objectivity.
Intelligent people note and accept "subjectively-fabricated objectivity."

Yes, read "Mere Christianity" by C.S. Lewis.

Ethics is the study of action.
Saying that something is unethical is just saying that you "shouldn't do it/ it shouldn't be done."
Saying morality is objective, or rather, that there are objective moral facts, is like saying that there are some states of the world that are worse than others, based on the actions that people take leading to those outcomes.

If you believe there are no objective moral facts, then you believe all possible states of the world are equal in value and desirability. Which would be absurd.

You would quickly drop a moral relativist position if someone was punching you in the face.

>you believe all possible states of the world are equal in value and desirability

Wouldn't the desirability of a state be a subjective thing though?
Someone punching me in the face is subjectively bad to me, but subjectively good to the person punching me in the face?

Or I am not understanding?

plato.stanford.edu/entries/moral-realism/

kys weeb

>If you believe there are no objective moral facts, then you believe all possible states of the world are equal in value and desirability.
Can you explain what you mean by that further?

>Which would be absurd.
Why?

>You would quickly drop a moral relativist position if someone was punching you in the face.
You know some people pay for that, right?

plato.stanford.edu/entries/moral-realism/

Easy. If something damages your soul it is objectively immoral.

What if it's an evil soul?

The soul is like a newborn babe. It becomes corrupted by the actions of those who posses it. A soul itself cannot be evil.

So is it wrong to kill a corrupted soul? At what point do you tell your kids santa isn't real?

You can't kill a soul. You can send your soul to hell.
>muh consumerist liberal Santa Clause is the same as the soul
t.retard.

Why can't you do both? Maybe spirits pick up souls as an energy source and if you can't control it it steals that life force.

The soul is eternal. Whether your soul is in a state of suffering or serenity is another thing entirely.

How many soul units can I measure the damage by?

Yeah but you're neglecting heart, mind and strength.

No.

Sam Harris figured it out by looking through a microscope and finding the morality gene.

Praise the Lord, my soul;
all my inmost being, praise his holy name.

Do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather, be afraid of the One who can destroy both soul and body in hell.

Does god read Veeky Forums?
Does your pastor?
Who are you trying to earn Good Boy Points from?

I can guarantee that the answer is yes.

Is it a money-back guarantee?

Yes.

Ethical relativism is such a fucking joke lmao. Yeah, the truth of whether or not it's okay to kill an innocent child is dependent on the subject not the object...

Morality that isn't objective isn't morality at all.

see

>can morality be objective

With universal authority. Which we got rid of when people misinterpreted post-modernism (most people think universal authority ended when we stopped believing in "God").

With modern and post-modern thought, we realized humans create authority via social arbitration. Despite the fact that that sentence says, "Humans create authority via social arbitration", most people will instead read, "Facts are made up bullshit as long as I think otherwise."

Morality is not a physical constant or property. It doesn't not exist outside of human thought like an iron atom does. There is no such thing as "morality" without a sentient, sapient creature thinking about it. Morality is a social construct. Now, despite the fact that that sentence reads, "Morality is a social construct," most people will instead read, "Morality is absurd non-sense that doesn't matter." When combined with, "Facts are made up bullshit unless I think otherwise," you arrive at some truly remarkable distances of reaching where people will decide, "The only morality that matters is the morality I think is important."

In short, the only reason you struggle with this idea of "moral objectivity" is because you have a fucking huge ego.

Morality is ALWAYS objective, because morality is a macro-social interaction whether people who primarily absorb philosophy from television and teen-novels think so or not. The authority provided to that interaction aby the arbitration of society is still authority. Morality is not subjective simply because a multiplicity of morals and morality systems exist. Morality is not subjective simply because it is also mutative.

What you meant to ask was, "Can a singular moral system have universal authority in human civilization?" And the answer to that question is, "Yes, but first a singular human social order would have to exist, and then everyone would have to agree to it."

This is stupid because that's still not objective morality. All it takes is a single person to disagree and you're right back to square one.

Lmao so cultural relativism.

>all it takes is a single person to disagree

No, it doesn't. Congratulations on not being able to read and/or immediately inverting things.

Social arbitration creates authority. All it takes is most people to not actively seek to change or resist the established morality. Even if most people disagree with it, as long as most people adhere to and uphold the expectations (which is literally what happens if you bother to look outside), the morality functions.

And even if they do, it doesn't fucking matter. Morality is mutative. If it changes, you have a new, objective morality. You are conflating "standards of social conduct decided upon by majority acceptance" with "authority imposed by extrahuman force which is irresistible".

Lmao so stuck in the 1930's at best, modernize your thought fuccboi

>actually defending moral relativism

You do realize that there isn't a single legitimate ethicist in the world that takes cultural/moral relativism seriously, right? Like, have you even taken ethics 101?

Has anyone ever refuted post-structuralist relativism?

Christians: You can't have morality without spirituality
Atheists: Sure you can
Christians: No you can't
Atheists: I assure you, you can
Atheists: By the way, the deformed, retarded and elderly should be euthanized and the deformed and retarded aborted whenever possible
Atheists: Also, morality is subjective

Only thing in the universe that is permanent is God's existence if he even exists. Our objective morality and laws of nature are entirely up to the whims of god but his existence is constant.

>this strawman
Aren't Christians supposed to be honest?