Does objective morality exist without god? Does it even matter since the majority of people have the same opinion on the moral values that can result in great harm? Since all the power is on the side of the people who believe that torturing child, for example, is morally wrong, does it matter if there is an objective moral truth concerning that issue?

I believe they exist with or without a god. The only reason we consider theism to contain objective morality is because we've axiomatically stated that the morality of God is objective. In the absence of such a being, we can build other moral systems also axiomatically derived from philosophical precepts that don't require a deity.

It wouldn't really matter if they were subjective or objective. You just need some basis by which to live your life or construct a society. Some people say without a God, there is no objective morality and your human rights can be taken away. This is a nonsensical argument as, even if there is a god who provides objective morality, your human rights can obviously be taken away by a malicious person or government.

No and no. Across populations there are statistically significant patterns of moral behavior but whether you define this objective or not will depend on your understanding of philosophy and science.

I think we can conceive of moral frameworks in which there are objective conclusions.

A simple model in which "The greatest good is that which has the highest benefit for Bladesman87". And in that framework, we can decide that hitting me is immoral, and giving me money is moral. Those two things could be seen as objective outcomes of the moral framework, it's just that the framework is arbitrary and I doubt anyone (although you're all more than encouraged to) would buy into it.

That is was objective wouldn't matter.

I see all atheistic versions of morality similarly. They don't matter in any ultimate sense.

does this not just cede moral relativism though? If we don't have objective moral standards how can we honestly talk about moral acts?

I don't think objective morals rely on god and I tend to think it matters.

To answer this question we have to have some sense of what we are talking about when we make moral claims. And there is no settled answer to this question in philosophy.

Take the statement, "The towel was dry." This is typically taken to assert that there is some object, a towel, and that that object instantiated the property of dryness. Now, take the statement, "The Holocaust was immoral." Grammatically this statement looks identical. While the Holocaust is not an object, it is an event and as such we can still refer to it. So, we might take this statement as also saying that there was some event, the Holocaust, and that that event instantiated the property of immorality.

The question is how to understand what we mean by the property of "immorality." Do we mean that there is some physical property of the Holocaust event that is wrongness? What is this property like? Or, if it isn't physical, then what else would it be?

One common answer is that there is no such property or object "immorality." Furthermore, while the two statements look grammatically identical, the moral statement doesn't actually refer to a proposition because the moral terms do not mean anything in the ordinary sense. This view is called noncognitivism because it says that moral statements don't have cognitive content (aren't propositions) and so cannot be either true or false.

Instead, moral terms are essentially emotive terms: terms that when used in a statement don't refer to a belief but rather express some kind of desire or emotion or prescriptive attitude towards some action or object.

The relation of noncognitivism and moral relativism is complicated. Some people think that moral relativism follows immediately from noncognitivism, but I think it is more complicated. So, for instance, it wouldn't be the case that on noncognitivism moral relativism would be true (as no moral moral theory would be either true or false on this theory). More to the point, it isn't clear that moral relativism or moral absolutism is even the right framework about which to think of moral statements on noncognitivist grounds.

We might think that a moral statement would be absolute if everyone (or nearly everyone) have similar emotive states towards the action or object referred to. But really, it doesn't change my own revulsion towards rape just because I know that it was accepted in some cultures. I recognize that they might have had a different emotional reaction, but part of my revulsion is towards that emotional reaction itself.

Furthermore, there is no question of me being inconsistent here. After all, I'm not saying that it is true that rape is immoral. Thus, I'm not saying anything (propositional) that can be inconsistent at all. Also, my revulsion is towards all rape (in this sense it is an absolute and not a relative moral "claim"). So I think this is at least one way to understand how to honestly talk about a non-objective morality, whether you view it as relativistic or not.

That's an excellent post and thanks for the link, I've started a reply about 4 times and deleted it so I'll be back to this.

the base is somewhere in the need of balance as things further away cause pain. it being about things being comfortable, good in that sense. our understanding of something, connected to feelings, make us to think if something is more or less right. the case to argue about is not so the bases but our understanding and knowledge of some case.

I'm not sure, but I lean towards yes, although not as strongly as I once did. I certainly think that it can exist without god. No one has a good argument that I've seen otherwise and it is trivially easy to present counterexamples.

Yes.

Don't accept the premise of your statement here. I'm also not sure what you mean by "mattering" here. Do you mean, would people act differently if they knew that what they were doing was objectively morally wrong? Probably.

if some combination of evolutionary biology and sociology (or neurology? maybe that's too low level) were to demonstrate that there was some common underlying normative principles that were common among human cultures, would that count as "objective"? Sort of along the same lines as the idea of a "universal grammar" in linguistics

I ask because I always feel like I'm mixing up definitions of objective/subjective and absolute/relative or "universal" in this context.

In any case, if such an approach counts as objective (but clearly not universal in the same way that the law of gravitation is thought to be universal) then I would answer the question yes, but I'm not sure if I'm answering a slightly different question then what was intended. (i.e if it was asking if morality akin to the universal law of gravitation exists without God)

The non-cognitivist stuff is fascinating. My guess is that in a non-cognitivist approach it doesn't make sense to speak about absolute/relative unless somehow emotions are taken to be some kind of universal or ontologically fundamental thing, and I would guess most of the proponents of that view don't see it that way?

Stop using 'objective' when you mean 'absolute' please. A better question would be if objective moral values can exist with a god.

Seems like a lot of people need to brush up on their Nietzsche.

How so?

They're asking questions that he answered.

So what was his answer?

i.e. don't just throw out a name, tell us his ideas and why you think they're correct.

Seems like a lot of people need to brush up on their uke_master imho.

You can learn more, and more quickly, via Google or Wikipedia than by asking me questions. Besides, based on post #6, I'd be surprised if you weren't already familiar with Nietzsche's work but had rejected it for some reason.

Answer to the thread title obv depends on how we're defining lots of the words in it, but I would say no, objective moral values do not exist without a god, and this fact does matter. I am skeptical of the existence of objective moral values for the same reason that I suspect you are skeptical of the existence of fairies, and I think the non-existence of objective moral values matters for the same reason that it would matter if people believed in fairies. I think holding false beliefs about the universe tends to interfere with the pursuit of one's goals.

Hitler found the Jews revolting. Actually, he found everything non-Aryan revolting.

How might one go about doing so?

C'mon, dude, you're better than this.

Okay? The second sentence isn't really true, but regardless, I'm not seeing the relevance here. I'm presenting a particular understanding of moral language as not being about stating propositions, but as having some other function, for example as expressing an emotional attitude. Your case is not a counterexample: Hitler was expressing his revulsion towards the Jews in his speeches when he would use moral language to condemn them.

The relevance is that if morality (call it moral language if you like) is just emotion then what's the difference between people's emotions? I see no basis for saying Hitler's emotions are wrong. And he did a lot more than express revulsion.

What's your basis now? If God, please explain how your morals can be objectively grounded in God.

I like your previous posts here but I think that discussions of morality which omit the evidence of the physical sciences are largely fruitless and misguided.

To throw some science in here: The evolution of altruistic traits and negative emotional responses to behaviour that threatens the species or the individual stems from our evolutionary strategy or 'evolutionary path' - just to remove any implication of 'intent' in there. There are many species who's evolutionary path has taken them down an entirely predatory track, where cannibalism is the norm and no level of altruism, hence morality, is present. Why have these evolutionary paths diverged so greatly?

Resources and predators. Amount of resources and predators present in a particular species' habitat will largely determine whether they work together to harness those resources, or whether they continuously fight over the scarce resources available - hence take an evolutionary path that equates to eating everyone they come in contact with.

With all of this in mind, and an understanding of 'the selfish gene' - every animal (including us) is more likely to kill those whose genes are more distant from their own (i.e., other species and people outside of one's family), than they are to kill those whose genes are more similar to theirs (i.e., members of the same family or species, and/or even individuals who come from the same group/town/country etc.) - we may begin to see morality through a lens that views it as more of a function and less of an 'objective' philosophical truth.

Respectfully and what?

Just because our development thus far is a result of evolutionary pressures it doesn't mean we have to confine discussions of morality to explaining how things are. Surely one of the questions is how we derive an ought from is and this just seems to make it irrelevant.

I'm not sure it's appropriate to equate morality with altruism, self interest and consequentialist theories of morality don't have altruism as their premise.