The main problem that I have is that, to take Original Position's post in context, objective morality would be mind independent and that seems impossible when God is defined as an orthodoxically defined God, independent of the universe with a will and mind of it's own. In this sense, while God is not a person, Homo sapien, the concept of God does contain parts, at least to the duelist, that make up a man, namely will and mind. Aaron tries to get around this by hazily defining objective morality as kind of built into the universe but by the theist's own admission the universe is constructed by a mind and a will, which pushes the question of subjective/objective morality to the othadoxically defined God by saying for which purpose was this 'objective morality' built into the universe by a will and/or mind and is this purpose objective or subjective?

I mean I don't know, but that's how it seems to me. There is an incongruence to say that god, an immaterial being with a will and mind who interacts with the natural world has objective morality while Homo sapiens are, according to the duelist, composed of immaterial beings with a will and mind informed by the natural world by a body has subjective morality.

I wonder if atheists find it self contradictory to split hairs over subjective/objective morality when they spend so much time cherrypicking history to find certain groups in the wrong.

Try digging into all groups some time.

The more I dig into history the more I discover all people contain some evil thinking just like God says in Genesis 6.

http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/...+6&version=CEV

Social science is descriptive, not normative. But morality is normative. I fail to see the value in presenting it in this manner.

It's objectively wrong because it fails to actually address the issue. You keep trying to talk about things that don't matter, and it leaves a very clear impression that you're not talking about the same thing as everyone else.

This is an example of precisely what I mean.

FWIW - I looked around a little while to try to find evidence of anyone else treating morality as a social science, but with no luck. There are articles about using social science to understand how people apply their moral viewpoints in various types of situations, but nowhere does anyone say anything along the lines of using social science methods to determine anything like an objective morality.

I think your viewpoint is an outlier by a significant amount and you won't be able to find anyone else defining objective morality in this way.

The first thing to point out about your defense here is that it contradicts an important Christian doctrine--the idea that God is free. Christians believe that God is perfect, but they also think that God is perfect by choice--he is not determined to act as he does by his nature. So I don't think they can say (consistently with their own doctrines) that God necessarily has the thoughts or feelings that he does. Thus, it is strictly speaking possible for god to act differently than he does.

Second, I don't think it ends up mattering much whether we think the objective moral measure comes from god's will or from god's nature. Whether morality is set by god's will or god's nature, the counterfactuals will be the same. We would say that if god willed other than he does, then what he wills would still be morally perfect because "morally perfect" just means "what god wills." But, in an exactly parallel fashion, if the part of god's nature that sets his preferences for human actions were different than it is, it would still be morally perfect (and so consistent with the claim that god must be a perfect being) because then "morally perfect" would just mean "the relevant bits of god's nature."

I know it was long, but if you think that epistemological objective morality is the same thing as moral relativism then you pretty clearly didn't read my post with any kind of care. Notice that I was claiming that divine command ethics is an example of an epistemological objective morality. Kantian deontology would be another example. Yet both of these are (correctly in my view) regarded as fairly extreme absolutist moral systems, about as far as you can get from moral relativism.

Now it is true that an epistemologically objective morality could also ground a form of moral relativism (which is why I raised the issue), but my point was that merely positing the existence of a god doesn't on its own solve this problem. If our worry is a counterfactual one--what if humans were different than they are and so had different moral preferences--then we have a parallel worry about god. Thus, if you think that god can save absolutist morality, then you should be willing to acknowledge that some accounts of human nature can also save absolutist morality.

I also want to clarify a common misconception about the type of view I am describing here. Just because morality is based on these more subjective or epistemological categories doesn't mean that morality is set by what we think is moral (i.e. "torturing babies would become moral simply by everyone agreeing with the claim that it is moral"). Marital rape used to be legal and generally accepted as moral in the U.S. Does that mean it was actually moral on this view? Not necessarily. We can't just decide that something doesn't hurt another person or ourselves, and we can't just decide that a certain kind of social structure is the right one to achieve human goals. It is not even clear that we can just decide on what our goals are.

This is why the scientific literature about the moral attitudes of humans across cultures, the outcomes of different political, economic, and social structures, and the neurological basis of human desires and goals is relevant to figuring out whether an action is moral or not. Some of our moral rules do seem pretty clearly morally relative (just because they are based on background institutions of marriage or property that are not universal). But other moral rules, such as rules around murder, or the golden rule, might be universal across human cultures (and thus not relative) because of some basic part of what it is to be human.

If that's the definition of objective morality than any coherent theory of morality must be subjective.

This. What theists want is not objective morality - where a human life always has intrinsic value and its wrong to kill it even for god (no matter how incoherent that is anyway) - they want a tyrannical absolutist morality where whatever a god says is right. Which as OP pointed out is still incoherent.

When theologians say that God is free they mean that He is free from anything outside Himself which is something true of nothing but God. They don't mean He is free in an arbitrary way. The Bible says God can't lie and that He can't sin. So He is bound by His own nature though it's questionable whether our language is adequate to express what that actually means.

If God is a necessary being then He could not have been different in nature. If He could have been different then He isn't absolute because His nature would not be absolute. So your argument boils down to "There are no absolutes". Apply your argument to a realist moral position that says there is an absolute, impersonal moral code. Same result. It could have been different, therefore it isn't absolute, therefore there are no absolutes. As finite, flawed, sinful humans we can assert there are no absolutes without fear of being proved wrong. But then we have to understand the consequences.

You're being willingly stubborn.

In social science, statistical significance within a population (on any kind of issue - whether political, economic, social etc.) is indicative of an objective view on such matters. There are many moral issues for which this is the case, blatantly demonstrating a thread of objectivity within morality.

Furthermore, my viewpoint is not an outlier at all. It is the opposite in fact. There is countless research from various social science fields such as - business ethics, law, sociology etc. - as well as various hard science fields such as neuroscience and molecular biology - on many moral issues. Many of them demonstrate various threads of objectivity within the monolithic construct of morality.

This is not to say that morality is entirely objective either, but simply that there are many answers to moral issues which are agreed upon objectively.

It's entirely possible (nay -- it's probable) that I didn't quite follow what you're putting forth. It's also entirely possible (nay -- it's absolutely true) that I fired off that post in haste. So let me elaborate on my viewpoint to see if it brings more clarity.

What I read in the following it what specifically sounds like moral relativism:

As far as I can see, the bolded is precisely what moral relativism says. That is, morality is dependent upon the culture. Since culture is dependent upon collective understandings, it's certainly not subject to the whims of the individual. This is epistemologically objective. That fits the definition, but the since we now have moral relativism included in a category that is described as "objective" I'm already skeptical of the value of this category.

Furthermore, let's now ask the question of what moral system can fail to be epistemologically objective? That is, what moral system is subject to the whims of the individual? That would be some sort of individualist morality (which I guess is an extreme version of moral relativism).

[Here, I point out that I don't think that a divine command theory, at least under the Christian understanding of God, would qualify in the sense that God is not subject to "whim." That is, God is theologically constant and consistent and does not violate his nature. I'll say more about this below.]

For this reason, I'm not quite sure that trying to describe morality in terms of "epistemologically objective" is actually helpful or meaningful.

Does this at least clarify my objection?

The counter-factual God seems to me as a basic rejection of Christian orthodoxy. God is good. But what if he's evil? Then he's not good, and you're talking about a different god. In the same way, God is immutable (constant, not subject to whim). His actions flow from his character, which is essential to his being. So you can have your parallel worry, but it seems to me to be nothing more than a rejection of a description of God.

Furthermore, we have examples of cultures that are different from ours and where they accept things that we strongly disagree with. We have examples cultures that accept things like "honor killings" even though we would view such an action as being wrong. And it seems to me that for anything action that is viewed as morally wrong, there's some culture which finds it at least morally neutral, if not morally good. So I'm not sure that constructing your argument in this way is ultimately successful.

Again, this would allow you to claim that the sun objectively travels around the earth, and not the other way around. Original Position has defined for you the term "epistemologically objective" and I think you should really use the full phrase in your positions, because it will help you to clearly indicate what you're saying. As I noted, an inch is simultaneously objective and not objective (that is, it's epistemologically objective, but not ontologically objective).

When you say that "statistical significance within a population is indicative of an objective view on such matters," I doubt that most social scientists view your usage of "objective" as being consistent with what they mean it to be. There are objective descriptive claims, but that's not the same as having objective normative claims. And again, when we're talking about morals. If you want to talk about descriptive ethics, you're talking about people's understanding of morality, and not morality itself.


How about you cite something, and you use that citation to convince me that you're talking about normative, and not descriptive matters.

I think NotReady's last response is very close to what I had in mind. Whether it's consistent with Christian doctrine generally speaking I have no idea, my sense is that Christian doctrine is quite elastic.

The question isn't what if God was evil, but what if he were different. The idea that he's different means he isn't the same as he is now is like like duh obviously territory. That's the whole point of a counterfactual.

I chose "God is evil" as a particular choice of what it might mean for God to be different. If God were different, you would be talking about something else.

The distinction is that the counterfactual position of "what if people felt differently" is actual made manifest in reality by specific persons and cultures.

I am "god." I am good. Omnipresent. Omniscient. All of that.

There are possible universes wherein goodness exists alongside evil. Maelstroms, as it were. But goodness can be found there.

Does goodness allow for rebellion? Can I, as God, animate this universe without violating my nature? Must I abandon my children because they are far from home? How far do they need to be before I turn my face from them?

Maybe God is free, as you say, but still determined to act as he does "by nature."

He IS God, afterall.