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Bringing you atheist articles and building active godless communities takes hundreds of hours and resources each month. If you find any joy or stimulation at Atheist Republic, please consider becoming a Supporting Member with a recurring monthly donation of your choosing, between a cup of tea and a good dinner.
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I see no reason to continue debating with you until you retract your lies. Will you be retracting this statement? Will I be getting an apology?
@ Nyarlathotep
"I don't really know what to say, moral relativism is very real."
I mean I don't know what you're arguing for if its not for moral relativism.
I will apologize for my "lie" when you answer my question, so I guess never:
Will you be ok with me robbing you of all your possessions since it is based on my moral standard?
Of course I wouldn't be OK with that. If for no other reason then: I don't care where your moral standard came from. I don't care if you got it from a box of cereal, or if you think you got it from a supernatural creature. I just don't care.
@ Nyarlathotep
"Of course I wouldn't be OK with that"
By this reaction, you are demonstrating the existence of a moral standard. If morals are relative, you should be ok with it. If you say I "ought" to believe something, you are appealing to a moral standard. How do you know what I did was evil? Where do we get the idea of evil from? Something to think about...
As far as I remember, no one here has argued that moral standards don't exist. In fact, this has already been addressed by other posters.
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I never said I knew it was evil. I never said I thought it was evil. In fact, this is the first time I've used the word evil in this thread. Why do you keep making shit up?
@ Nyarlathotep
If you believe in moral relativity, you don't believe in personal moral standards. They wouldn't be standards, just personal opinions.
Also, If you don't think or know what I did was evil, why would you be mad?
You might argue that someone engaged in moral relativity has non-objective standards. Maybe even go out on a limb and say they have shitty standards. But to say they have no standards? That is pretty nutty.
If someone uses the standard anyone with an N in their name is an evil person. Sure I'd agree that is a shitty standard, but it is a standard none the less.
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Guess I won't be getting that apology?
All moral standards are relative, you seem bizarrely unaware of this?
Can you even give one example of an objective moral act, supported by objective evidence of course?
@sheldon
"All moral standards are relative"
What? Why should I believe that your moral standard is correct if the moral law is relative? That's like saying "truth is relative." If truth is relative, why are you asserting that is true? It is a truth statement in itself! Relative morality and relative truth has no explanatory powers.
One example of a non-relative moral law : do not murder (which means killing someone without any justification whatsoever).
If you do murder, you are committing a moral wrong.
Alice kills Bob because she doesn't like Bob's haircut. If we now apply the moral standard for murder you offered, we find that Alice didn't murder Bob. Because you required "without any justification whatsoever", and she has (perhaps shitty) justification; that crappy haircut.
@Nyarlathotep: In Joshb's defense, evidenced by his posts, he really does not know what the fuck he is talking about. It appears that he once heard something from the pulpit, believed it, and now he has come onto the site believing his version of beliefs would be a real challenge to atheists. He does not appear understand all the big words, you or others, are using, or anything anyone else posts in reply to his inane assertions. It's not his fault. God made him that way!
Does anyone else not see that the OP actually demonstrates how there cannot be objective morality?
Now that I think about it; that is kind of a re-occuring theme around here:
Theists come and demand that morality is objective, and in their arguments to defend that, they make statements to the opposite (that morality isn't objective). In the past Sheldon has suggested that perhaps they don't really understand what they are claiming. Being a cynic (and an Orwell fan) I suspect it is double think; let's hope Sheldon is right.
@He is arguing for "Absolute morality" and does not know it. He does not understand Objective morality.
"Moral Absolutism is the ethical belief that there are absolute standards against which moral questions can be judged, and that certain actions are right or wrong, regardless of the context of the act, the culture, the religion, or anything else."
We are what??? Three pages into this Bullshit and he has not yet figured out his own position. It's SAD So very SAD. Some people should not use drugs and try to chat.
It amuses me how frequently folks insist on the existence of objective morality. It amuses me how that objective morality changes over time. There likely are, after all, thousands of examples of objective morality changing on a regular basis. What is worn as clothing is an excellent example of this.
Unless, of course, this mysterious law-giver changes its mind on a regular basis about what it considers im/moral. If folks believe that is the case, I find it equally amusing.
I understand precisely what you mean, they insist they have access to objective morality, yet can never offer one example, and when you point out the obscenely immoral actions of their deity in the old testament, they claim that has been negated by a change caused by their deity being nailed to a cross.
Irony overload doesn't do such cognitive dissonance justice really.
@Josh
The standard that we can judge human morality against is, well being.
There are objective physical laws of the universe, that we are all subject to. In other words, we are all affected in almost identical ways. Things that harm my well being, will also harm others well being.
For me, I can state that: Life is preferable to death, health is preferable to disease, comfort is preferable to torture, freedom is preferable to slavery, keeping my possessions is preferable to having them stolen, etc, etc. These all harm my well being.
From this, it is easy to extrapolate, that the above is universal for the vast, vast majority of humanity.
Since I don't want to: be killed, have disease, be tortured, have my stuff stolen, etc, I can make the simple determination that no one else does either.
No gods necessary.
@Josh
Do you really need someone to tell you that causing unimaginable suffering to millions is a bad thing?
If this "standard" is the biblical deity, please explain why what Hitler did that was immoral, as the bible describes that deity committing genocide, and encouraging its followers to commit acts of mass murder and ethnic cleansing, often to steal land and resources, precisely as Hitler and the Nazis did?
All one has to do, is take a look at other social species.
Bonobo chimps, our closest cousins, have a pretty easily observable morality.
Bonobos will: share food with group members even if in short supply, they will protect other members of their group even if it puts them in harm's way, they will adopt orphaned babies, they show obvious sadness if a popular group member dies, they will punish violent group members, and much more.
Which god do bonobos get their morality from?
Evidence please...or be called liar. Cite the bible and be prepared for a first night in prison type shaming....
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