Very dishonest reply indeed.

this is my last post to you since you can only cherry pick my replies and keep acting childish and not read my replies but trolling with my replies.

"You can ascertain something only when it is free of any individual influence, in other words ‘Objective.’ "

This is the problem you sprout such nonsense as the base of your argument from start as a fact then you wonder why it does not make sens with what everybody else says.

Please prove this statement true, show me that there exists at east 1 thing which is free from your own influence or knowledge gained.
Everything is depending on YOUR knowledge with regards to YOUR morality.

You keep making very stupid statements and establish them as facts as your basics without providing anything to support them at all.

"If you say that your method of morality can achieve certainty then by definition it is objective."
By your stupid wrong assertion it is objective. By definition means that you actually defind something.
But you just claim something without supporting it.
Just like you claimed that god is love when in reality he show no love at all.

"You said(jeff): “EG' deciding between killing 1 brother or an other brother is a problematic moral dilemma. but deciding between killing one loving brother or killing 2 murderers is a much more easy choice.”

Why should there be any moral dilemma about killing one of your brothers. It is evidently IMMORAL to kill any of your brothers. The example is not clear."

No, the example is clear, it just that you do not want to answer it with you method since you don't have an answer.
If you are in a position that you are forced to kill 1 of your 2 brothers, which one would you kill?
Your method or mine give no real moral position on that dilemma. Both of the choices are equally evil choices and thus we do not have a position for it not because they are evil but because they are EQUALLY evil.

"This is absolutely OBJECTIVE. Killing 2 murderers to save your brother is MORAL. Nobody would disagree on that. Why do you say it’s subjective."

This is why this discussion is over, I replied to you already in the next few lines just after this but you chose to ignore it.:

"There is no objectivity though, there might be a case where with the right knowledge and logic the position of killing your brother might be a better moral position.
Like for example, your brother is infected with a disease (will die soon) and if left alive can infect the entire world with a deadly disease.
In that case with the new knowledge, the better moral position is to kill your brother then killing some random 2 murderers.
(still subjective to the person feelings but the good moral person will most likely take that choice)"

Thus given the SAME situation of choosing between killing your brother vs 2 murderers with this NEW knowledge the moral thing to do changes. New knowledge= subjective to new knowledge or experience.
Proving you yet again are incapable of making a serious discussion because you refuse to understand or even read what the other person is saying.

You are just incapable of making a meaningful debate and you proved it.

You are the one not knowing what subjectivity means and you displayed it in every post you make.

At a minimum; for morality to be objective, you would need to be able to list a set of rules. The rules would need to be in a form that anyone could use the rules to determine what is moral in a given situation. Furthermore, the rules would need to have the character that anyone who used them to determine what is moral in a given situation would get the same answer as anyone else who used these rules.

I have never seen such a set of rules, therefore I assume morality is subjective.
Furthermore I'm guessing that no such set of rules is possible.
Finally, I'd bet that even if you had such a set of rules, that everyone could use them to come to the same conclusion, that some people would not agree with the solutions they generated from these rules, which opens a whole new can of worms.
So until further notice I see no reason to treat morality as anything but subjective.

Valiya,

You asked "Does this mean right and wrong are subjective? That what is right for A may be wrong for B."

That is actually exactly the case. I could list countless examples from history where that is exactly the case. But the example that is quickest to my mind is a quick comparison of the American Revolutionary War and The Banana Wars. Let me explain. The revolutionary war was obviously fought by the Americans against the British. What would become the U.S was a British colony, and fought to rid themselves of the british for economic reasons. In the Banana Wars, several colonies the U.S got from Spain in the Spanish-American war, had rebel factions trying to expel American forces because of economic reasons. Ironically we stopped them to protect our interest in the area which were exporting thier agriculture. Hypocritical? You betcha. But eventually we decided that colonialism itself was wrong.

Further more, here's an example of how right and wrong as defined by religion switches. Mathew Hopkins is perhaps one of the most prolific serial killer the world forgot about because, in his time, what he did wasn't considered wrong. But here it is in a nutshell. He hunted "witches", and him and hist assistants in the process, have 324 confirmed registered kills of women. But because not all his victims were registered, speculation puts the number closer to 450. And how he did it is the worse. He would torture them with devices like the "breaking wheel" (a human was tied to a large wheel and spun, while the torturer would swing a hammer to break the victims bones) and the "rack" (a device designed to pull and dislocated the joints, sometimes completely amputating them) to extract confessions. Sometimes if a victim held out, further "tests" could prove they were witches, some of which included throwing them in water to drown or inflicting burns and lacerations to see how they healed. And because the christians considered paganism and witch craft the worst offense transcending human law, these tortures could be carried out publicly in full view of the public. Once a confession was extracted or "proof" of guilt accumulated, the women were often publicly executed as well by burning or hanging.

I know what your thinking. What is the point of this example. It showcases that a long standing moral tradition can be as faulty as anything else. And if you think Islam is safe from this behavior, you only need but do a simple Google search to watch a video of two teenage girls, buried to thier necks, executed by rocks thrown to thier head by thier friends and family. I'll admit, i saw them, and they are graphic and not for the faint of heart. You can witness them crying, and see thier blood spurt and smear in the sand as thier community doles out shariah punishment for the unforgivable crime of "provacative" dancing. But my question is, though these cases are all very horrible... what if the people who wrote the laws allowing such behavior were full of shit. We know most of Hitler's and Stalin's laws were absolute bullshit designed to eliminate political rivals and "undesirables". Knowing full well that the Q'uranium is literally the ideas of Muhammed as penned by a scribe, can you possibly prove that he wasn't just as full of bullshit as the leaders of the early Catholic church who condoned witch hunts, or even Hitler who hunted the Jews? And please for the love any gods who may be out thier, don't say because it is perfectly written. As if spell checking a book written in poetic prose is some proof of divine nature.

My morality comes from my ability to empathize.

I am not homosexual but what I have in common with homosexuals is the fact that my sexual preference isn't something I chose, just like them, I have no choice in what I am attracted to. When a holy document claims that homosexuality is wrong then it's akin to saying god will castigate those for the very way that god himself made them. Which is far too illogical for me to even contemplate.

Good and evil are subjective. They are concepts that only exist in the human psyche and we all have to deal with them, even if we don't agree with the existence of such. I firmly believe that religious morality has played a very important role in our evolution, but I think it's a product of our evolution, not a product of our creation.

Does a lion consider what is good or evil when it kills a zebra? Is it worried about the life it is taking? Many animals kill their own because they are competition. It is only empathy and governments that prevent us killing our neighbors today. We are all competing for the same things on a daily basis. If it was a choice between killing or dying would you hesitate? I hope not, regardless of empathy or religion or what mood you're in at the time. And if you did hesitate, end of discussion, my time is wasted.

Valiya,

At the very least I can say that, aside from how we arrive at the conclusion, i think we agree on many moral rights and wrongs.

I personally don't agree that's sexuality should not be publicly show cased. And for the record, I'm not one hundred percent sure on many of the specifics of the case involving the two teenage girls. Some time has passed since I read the story and viewed the video. All I can really recall from the article is it involved 2 girls dancing in the rain near a river in either Iraq or Afganistan. However, evendors though I may agree with you that public fornication is wrong, I see a hard time definin it. For example, if a couple copulates in a parking lot, there's no way that can be misconstrued. It was their goal to be public about it. But however, let's say a couple decides to have sex in their backyard, and some nosy neighbors decide to look over the fence and witness it. Does that now constitute publicly fornicating? To me it doesn't quite, as they were on the confines of their property, and anyone nosy enough to peer in is breaking their privacy. Or what if a couple in a taller building is witnessed through a window?

To me, obviously not all offenses are the same. If a couple were to engage in privacy and perhaps a person or two happens to witness, is not nearly the same as a couple who decides to go at it in say, a resturant. Nor do I feel that death is really an acceptable punishment in any case. Perhaps a fine for those caught being blatantly crude, and a slap on the wrist for a couple witnessed on their property. If we went solely based on Islam, we would have to kill them all.

Velyia you are a typical christian. You completely ignore the fact that the biblical god kills and has its followers to do killing in its name. The ancient sacrafices were not excluded from the hebrew god. How is it moral for the hebrew god to kill and not other religious freeks to do so? Jeff is completely right is his arguments. You have gone against your own beliefs in your posts. You have judged. According to the bible judgement of others behaviors and or beliefs are for god alone. Your responsibility as a christian (acording to the bible) is to judge what is right or wrong for you and to spread the word of love and forgiveness period. Morality must come from the individual or it is nothing. Iff a lie hurts another than it will eventually hurt you. That is reality. That is the moral standard to follow. You cannot say that you do not lie nobody can. So how is it any different for a thiest to lie than an athiest? Oh that's right a thiest can say sorry and believe that christ will take that sin from them. That way they can continue to do harm, because if you do not carry your own mistakes you are doomed to repete them. An athiest judges his/her own self and leaves the judgement of others to themselves. That is how we can not say that homosexuality is wrong. As for desieses they are not caused by homosexuality. They are caused by uncleanlyness. For example, if you have ever used the bathroom and not washed, you contribute to the desiese factor. You are not without mistakes and your beliefs are not without mistakes. Judgement of others opens a door to be judged. You do not fully understand the damage that religion morality brings.

Valiya,

A few posts up, you said, "My intention here is to show that your basis is fluid and unreliable. It changes with time, place, situations, and perspectives of people. Therefore, weak."

You have drawn a conclusion that the basis upon which Travis builds his moral code is weak. That is quite a leap and it is purely opinion. In it, I hear that you consider the moral code by which you live stronger (better?) than that of a non-muslim.

You have said and iterated that the focus of this discussion is not the morality of specific actions, rather that upon which morality is built. But let's consider specifics for a moment. If a non-Muslim agrees with you on the im/morality of definable / describable behaviors, then is your morality stronger because of its source?

You arrived at you moral code via your religion. Someone else arrives there via a different method. You can change your mind as can the other person.

Hypothetical question: if you were to de-convert from islam, would you still think murder is immoral? If not, then I suggest you stay a Muslim :-) If so, then your moral code is something inside rather than outside of yourself. It is something you have decided upon, not something some other entity decided for you.