Objective Morality Without God

[Rival]

What role does objective morality serve if you are neither going to act in accordance to it nor support those who do?

It serves as a third party objective rule by which to understand the world. Whether we agree with it isn't really the point, the point is that it exists independently of human experience and emotion. I think you may be missing the meta-point here of objectivity - it by its nature does not care about these things.

In day to day life almost no-one lives by objective standards and everyone who does will at some point break them unless he's a literal saint or angel. Objective morals often serve as a benchmark, an ideal, rather than what people actually believe or do. Ideally, most people believe in stopping animal suffering - in the real world we use all kinds of products from animal suffering and really don't care.

Often we don't support those who do because of the problem of people being too good. Studies have confirmed this - when one person in a group exhibits highly moral behaviour, he is hated because everyone else realises they are not living up to the same standards and it then reflects badly on them. Everyone prefers to live in an average society where sin and righteousness appear to be in some kind of balance, otherwise we hold people to either incredibly low or unrealistically high standards.

Yet in order to have standards at all we need an outside source, an objective source, even if we routinely ignore it.

 

[Koldo]

I think you've missed the point totally.

You would need to be God, that's the whole point.

Why?

 

[Koldo]

It serves as a third party objective rule by which to understand the world. Whether we agree with it isn't really the point, the point is that it exists independently of human experience and emotion. I think you may be missing the meta-point here of objectivity - it by its nature does not care about these things.

In day to day life almost no-one lives by objective standards and everyone who does will at some point break them unless he's a literal saint or angel. Objective morals often serve as a benchmark, an ideal, rather than what people actually believe or do. Ideally, most people believe in stopping animal suffering - in the real world we use all kinds of products from animal suffering and really don't care.

If God decreed that all rape is good, would you hold that as an ideal, a benchmark for what we are supposed to do?

 

[Rival]

If God decreed that all rape is good, would you hold that as an ideal?

We'd have to.

But it doesn't mean we'd like it. As with slavery in the OT, or other controversial sayings.

Certainly we live in a world where there is lots of suffering that the Divine seems to allow or even justify.

But I think you're still lacking nuance. If we want to take your example, marital rape was only criminalised in England, where I live, in the 1990s. A few years before I was born. Rape was traditionally defined as forcibly taking a woman's virginity and the act be completed. Prior to this rape was justified because women/young men are lesser human beings. As sun rise pointed out, our morals change, and this has happened with rape. So even whilst I agree, we are still taking a very 20th.c./21st. c. view.

But you're still just making my point, that humans are fallible and change our values and morals all the time and you need an outside source to come up with objective morals outside human experience whether you agree with them or not. Even if God set a bizarre standard of rape - and I am not aware of any such that has actually done so - it would still be objective because it came from God and in such a bizarre world with this pronouncement we'd have to agree it's good. That is how objective morality works, it allows for no relativity, no idea of circumstance.

In fact you have just hit on the origins of fundamentalism. God says it therefore... But it is objective.

Have you never seen how people deal with such things in the OT? These arguments are very old.

 

[Koldo]

We'd have to.

But it doesn't mean we'd like it. As with slavery in the OT, or other controversial sayings.

"Have to" in what sense?
It definitely wouldn't be my ideal.
Do you mean it would be yours?

Certainly we live in a world where there is lots of suffering that the Divine seems to allow or even justify.

But I think you're still lacking nuance. If we want to take your example, marital rape was only criminalised in England, where I live, in the 1990s. A few years before I was born. Rape was traditionally defined as forcibly taking a woman's virginity and the act be completed. Prior to this rape was justified because women/young men are lesser human beings. As sun rise pointed out, our morals change, and this has happened with rape. So even whilst I agree, we are still taking a very 20th.c./21st. c. view.

Which is of no consequence to what I am saying.

But you're still just making my point, that humans are fallible and change our values and morals all the time and you need an outside source to come up with objective morals outside human experience whether you agree with them or not.

How did you reach this conclusion?
Because one thing doesn't follow automatically from the other.

Even if God set a bizarre standard of rape - and I am not aware of any such that has actually done so - it would still be objective because it came from God and in such a bizarre world with this pronouncement we'd have to agree it's good. That is how objective morality works, it allows for no relativity, no idea of circumstance.

In fact you have just hit on the origins of fundamentalism. God says it therefore... But it is objective.

Have you never seen how people deal with such things in the OT? These arguments are very old.

Claiming that coming from God equals to being objective is just that... a claim. But it lacks substance to support it.

 

[Rival]

"Have to" in what sense?
It definitely wouldn't be my ideal.
Do you mean it would be yours?



Which is of no consequence to what I am saying.



How did you reach this conclusion?
Because one thing doesn't follow automatically from the other.



Claiming that coming from God equals to being objective is just that... a claim. But it lacks substance to support it.

What would you describe as objective then? What outside source would you go with?

I'm pretty sure outside of time and space, having total knowledge of every being and outcome and not being bothered by emotion makes one as objective as possible but whatever I guess.....

 

[Koldo]

What would you describe as objective then? What outside source would you go with?

I'm pretty sure outside oft time and space, having total knowledge of every being and outcome and not being bothered by emotion makes one as objective as possible but whatever I guess.....

To put it simple: the concept of objective morality is nonsensical if it is taken to mean anything other than 'intersubjective morality'. For morality is not physical, nor does it exist in a realm dettached from our world, it is not out there to be measured by some observer, not even a supreme observer.

 

[Rival]

To put it simple: the concept of objective morality is nonsensical if it is taken to mean anything other than 'intersubjective morality'. For morality is not physical, nor does it exist in a realm dettached from our world, it is not out there to be measured by some observer, not even a supreme observer.

Oh. I think you've totally missed what 'objective' means here then, even though I've repeatedly qualified it.

 

[Koldo]

Oh. I think you've totally missed what 'objective' means here then, even though I've repeatedly qualified it.

You have said that coming from God entails it being objective, which is a baseless assertion. It doesn't follow that an objective observer, not even God, can determine, nor decree, what is objectively moral.

You have said that objective morality entails being outside the human experience and emotion, but such claim is nonsensical for morality exists in the realm of the subjective, where our memories and emotions reside.

 

[Rival]

but such claim is nonsensical for morality exists in the realm of the subjective, where our memories and emotions reside.

This is your problem, you believe axiomatically that morality is subjective. Did you read the OP? I don't think you understand what is meant by objective. God is emotionless and therefore not subjective, it makes sense that without emotions and not being part of human experience he is objective and can therefore make objective statements, not bound by bias, emotion and human nature. How is this hard?

 

[Koldo]

This is your problem, you believe axiomatically that morality is subjective. Did you read the OP? I don't think you understand what is meant by objective. God is emotionless and therefore not subjective, it makes sense that without emotions and not being part of human experience he is objective and can therefore make objective statements, not bound by bias, emotion and human nature. How is this hard?

It is not hard, rather it is nonsensical.
For an objective observer, no matter how objective he is, can't make objective claims about what is moral, in the very sense of the word 'objective' you are using.

 

[Rival]

It is not hard, rather it is nonsensical.
For an objective observer, no matter how objective he is, can't make objective claims about what is moral, in the very sense of the word 'objective' you are using.

I give up. Happy new year.

 

[osgart]

Morality is very simple and is true regardless of subjective opinions and feelings. Morality is based on fairness to everyone's well being according to their deservedness and trustworthiness in the virtues. Everything immoral is vice and runs contrary to virtues. Everything moral is according to virtues. Virtues are the meanings associated with quality of character that brings trustworthiness and deserve into well being. Vices are what cause damage to love, trust, deserve and well being.

All these nuances, and arguments miss the plainness and simplicity of morality and moral truth. Language itself can confuse and obfuscate the utter simplicity of moral truth. Because of moral truth people are morally responsible for their own actions.

There's quite a lot of philosophical rubbish about morality, making what is simple seem complex and unclear.

 

[Ella S.]

Best argument so far. You really get to the heart of the issue.

But I think you are trying to bake a pantheist cake, and then eat the cake (as a traditional theist). You can't have your cake and eat it too.

If God is "The substance of everything. He's not a subject, but all subjects and all objects." Then the suffering of a starving child in Africa is the suffering of God. But you also want to portray God as a figure who is outside of objective reality. Some creative intelligence. What does some creative intelligence care what an African child suffers? Maybe God is trying to create Trump's America or something.

In which case, it's fine that this kid starves a little bit.... so long as American capitalism is allowed to prevail.

You know. Because more good comes of it.

I know you are dissatisfied with such an ethical vision. But I'm curious precisely what makes such a vision dissatisfying.

There is a sort of monism to much of Christian theology that's similar to Panentheism, which they adopted from Platonism. That's because he's both immanent and transcendent. I don't think this is a contradiction, though.

I am both immanent within my fingernails and transcendent of them, in that the rest of my body that it comes from is so much more. That's generally how I see the two working together in theology; the universe is a part of God but it isn't all of God. (Edit for clarification: Which is to say that, from a theological point of view, objective reality is a subset of the subjectivity of God, not apart from it.)

As for dissatisfaction, someone once told me that if we have an objective purpose or there is objective meaning in the universe then they don't want to know it. They said that they would find whatever the answer is to be dissatisfying, either because it's too simple or because it goes against what they already personally find meaningful.

For me, some of my dissatisfaction from this particular answer is that it's not really an answer in an ethical sense. It doesn't tell us how to make the world better to prevent these tragedies or give us hope that it will be better, unless you follow the belief all the way to the Resurrection and even then that's through the apocalypse where everything decays to a fantastically horrific point. Instead, the answer justifies the very suffering that I'm wanting to put an end to.

Of course, not everyone is dissatisfied with such an answer.

 

[Ella S.]

An atheist of course has an approach to morality which does not take God into account. An atheist does have to make up their own morality to suite themselves, atheism being a sole venture on the whole.
Most of it might be common to the morality of most of humanity, religious or not, but atheists would disagree amongst themselves about what is moral or not in many cases.

Christians also disagree about what's moral with other Christians and Jews also disagree about what's moral with other Jews, would you say that they also make up their own morality to suite[sic] themselves?

I'm not sure that I would. I'm not sure it's fair to generalize all atheists as doing so, either. You're talking about a specific portion of atheist existentialists, which is a specific portion of atheists as a whole.

I'm an atheist and yet I draw my morality from living in accordance with logic, as the Stoics did. I might disagree with other atheists, but I also agree with many other Stoics, some of whom are theists.

 

[Augustus]

My question is: "If morality IS objective, could God's pronouncement be the thing that makes it so?"

I tend to think: no.

If an omnimax God created the world then he creates the rules. It's like a game.

Morality would be like a game mechanic , and, even if the players can't directly view what is happening under the bonnet, there would be objective way to maximise this, as in a game.

The only reason the concept of morality would even exist is because the God made it so, and there could be no morality apart from this.

In my view of things "stealing is wrong" or "stealing is bad" aren't true simply because God says so.

In my view, stealing is wrong for reasons. Personally, I see a plethora of things wrong with theft. It causes suffering. Arguments could be made that we are entitled to the fruits of our own labor. Plenty of reasons stealing is wrong. And if THOSE REASONS explain why stealing is wrong, then God's forbiddance of it has little to do with the objectivity of the statement: "stealing is bad." God's pronouncement that stealing is forbidden has nothing to do with the rightness or wrongness of it. Even if God exists and created the universe, his commandments cannot be what makes things right or wrong.

Why is stealing from strangers wrong when it benefits our in-group (and weakens an out-group, a potential future threat)?

One common problem with systems of ethics, particularly of the humanistic kind, is trying to make a case that these rules apply to all and we have moral obligations to sacrifice our own well being for the benefit of strangers.

Why shouldn't the powerful leverage their power to benefit them and theirs though? That is what animals do after all. They may have to temper their ambition to some degree to avoid upsetting the apple cart, but that's still just maximising self-interest.

I can make subjective arguments about why they should, but these are basically ideological fictions and can never be objective (and are arguably just the moralisation of the self-interest and perhaps jealousy of the less powerful).

To me, the search for an atheistic objective morality is largely about the need for some groups to believe their subjective preferences are “rational” rather than being culturally conditioned and based on ideological fictions.

 

[Brian2]

That sounds like the entire humanity in a nutshell.

If we don't have definite rights and wrongs it is easy to live that way, do as we feel and figure it out later.

 

[Brian2]

Christians also disagree about what's moral with other Christians and Jews also disagree about what's moral with other Jews, would you say that they also make up their own morality to suite[sic] themselves?

I'm not sure that I would. I'm not sure it's fair to generalize all atheists as doing so, either. You're talking about a specific portion of atheist existentialists, which is a specific portion of atheists as a whole.

I'm an atheist and yet I draw my morality from living in accordance with logic, as the Stoics did. I might disagree with other atheists, but I also agree with many other Stoics, some of whom are theists.

Yes I suppose I should not over generalise about atheists or anyone else for that matter since people in religions might have very different ideas from others in the same religion.

 

[Koldo]

If we don't have definite rights and wrongs it is easy to live that way, do as we feel and figure it out later.

Swallowing someone else's moral commands, not having to throughly think for oneself what constitutes a moral/immoral action, makes life much simpler.

 

[Brian2]

Swallowing someone else's moral commands, not having to throughly think for oneself what constitutes a moral/immoral action, makes life much simpler.

Yes and no. We can come across situations where our authority seems to be saying X and that is not how we think and feel about the situation.