Religious morality isn’t invalid because it’s subjective, it’s invalid because its founding premise (the goodness & power of God, hence his authority to proscribe morality, I’d say) is false.
This doesn’t invalidate atheist morality until you invalidate *its own *founding principles (currently, this seems to be summed up as “everything works out best for everyone altogether if we’re all nice to each other”, I think.) That’s what has to be attacked if you wish to invalidate atheist morality.
I think i’ve raised this objection with you before, but I can’t remember what came of it.
Anyway, in some cases yes, atheists can, in that we are able to see the results we expect (or don’t) and so judge the effectiveness (if not the validity) of our morals. Religious people must take the metaphysical results of their actions on faith.
What? This is just a hopeless disanalogy. In any case, even a god’s morality wouldn’t be “objective” - he would just be another subject to offer an opinion on the matter. One might as well say that there is an objective no.1 piece of music of all time.
Agreed, but just who is equating “subjective” with “invalid”, exactly? How is a subjective opinion logically inconsistent? I am saying that my own morality is subjective, just that yours is too.
Just to clarify, if I were to provide a candidate explanation for how a form of morality might evolve in a social hominid, would this count as a “real basis”? It sounds like you would count every morality as “arbitrary” to some extent (including religious ones, since they begin by accepting arbitrary premises such as “gods exist”, too).
If so, I’d actually agree. For example, chimp morality is profoundly different to human morality with regards to killing male strangers as soon as you meet them, and those differences can be said to have evolved somewhat arbitrarily. If I were a chimp, I’d kill male strangers as soon as I met one. Since I’m a human, I don’t. Is either response “objectively” or “non-arbitrarily” wrong?
Then it’s not invalid, but unsound, and even then, only in your opinion.
Erratum: objective best piece of music of all time.
True, on both points. Must be more precise.
You are missing the point again. No one other than me is being mischaracterized. I’m being asked to justify other people’s prejudices.
The point of this is not that theist morality is objective. The argument is about the consequences of a sudden loss of belief that morality is objective.
This in a nutshell was the tack I took in the OP.
The moral training begins as a child. Did you when you developed your morals suddenly decide it’s ok to hit people or pull Sally’s hair? Did you decide that stealing is actually ok? If not, you may have come up with an intellectual reason for your behavior, but you didn’t really substantively change the morals as they were inculcated.
Well, I’ll familiarize myself with it, but it doesn’t offend me in any way. That’s a strawman that people keep pumping.
That’s another straw man. That wasn’t the crux of the argument at all. The crux of the argument was that the main pillar of cultural upbringing disappears therefore the rest of everything must be called into question. It was about an existential crisis. No matter how many times I say this people ignore it, preferring the narrative that the victocrats of the offenderati manufactured.
Sure, I don’t have any disrespect for your decision. Reading disrespect into what I wrote is reading more than was intended. The central thought in my mind when writing it is that atheism has no cultural system in place by which to inculcate morality. Atheists like to dismiss the pedagogy of morality provided by a religious upbringing as though it’s a valueless crutch. I agree with you about blind faith btw. Is it possible that it is you that is levelling stereotypes at me, and not the other way around?
When I read the bible, the God of the bible doesn’t seem to be saying that. One of the most interesting interpretations of Abraham and Isaac on Mt. Moriah that I have heard, that put a lot of things in a different light for me, was that God didn’t have Abraham go up there to sacrifice Isaac. He had Abraham go up there so that he could illustrate the point that he would not ever ask him to sacrifice his son.
Again? Where else in have I done so, given that my only previous post was on the first page?
Which I assume has happened to you regardless of whether gods exist or not, since a god is just one more subject to offer his opnion on the matter or what is moral.
Like I said, if you suddenly feel like taking or destroying the life of another human, you might suffer from a condition similar to psychopathy. If you are still repelled by the idea of doing so, this might be because your cognitive abilities and emotional reactions have evolved in a certain way. You said you’re reading Pinker - keep at it.
Well, they can object, but I am done giving time to the straw man. I stated that it wasn’t my intention, and I’m going to simply ignore anyone that wants to argue the straw man.
Yes, that was part of the point of my OP, to dismiss the value of all pedagogy as the experience of pedagogy of the hypothetical character in the OP had all been a lie, or more accurately, simply wrong. Yes, there are some genetic differences between Muslims and Christians, but mainly because of tribal adoption of the different creeds.
What are you referring to?
Yeah, but the way you described it wasn’t meaningless either, it was full of meaning. He used the word meaningless over and over. Why should I listen to the words of someone who thinks that what they are talking about is meaningless?
Sorry, I’m very late in joining this party, but… does anyone really act as if morality is solely received and objective? What is it, really, that’s currently - right now - constraining you, or any normal, sane person from picking up a brick and cracking some skulls?
I don’t believe it’s the fear of punishment by the law, or the fear of divine judgment or retribution, even in the case of very religious people.
Well I have no desire to kill anyone outside of Halo anyway. 
In fact my profession is a healing art, that incidentally requires a great deal of empathy.
However, the point was not so much that the hypothetical WOULD kill someone, so much as they COULD kill someone due to the lack of restraint. Keeping all options open rather than committing to any restrictions on behavior.
But they COULD kill someone even with the restraint, yes?
Actually when I was a kid, I would’ve cracked more skulls if I was less afraid of my Mom. In some ways I wish I had because I let people torment me when I could’ve fought back, so the tormenting didn’t end. It wasn’t a fear of pain or damage because I am quite durable and have a high pain tolerance and knew that then. It was mainly fear of parental consequence so deeply ingrained that it was not rational. As an adult, I tossed out the teachings of my parents for a while because I didn’t trust anything they said. Because of my selfishness I hurt a few people, and decided that I didn’t want to live like that anymore. So now, it is not authority, but to say that authority did not play a part in it is silly. There are many things I don’t do because they are illegal, that I think should not be illegal, and I would do them if they were legal. Not necessarily rape and murder, but some things. I still find that some of the injunctions due to authority make sense to me as I grow older. I didn’t just one day transcend the need for authority.
Clearly, but there is a difference between someone who feels an injunction not to kill someone, and someone who doesn’t. There is a wide gulf between not doing it because of a moral pedagogy, and not doing it because you don’t want to mop up the blood.
I don’t see that it is. Your argument was that morality couldn’t be objective because people disagree about it. The counter-argument is that people disagree about objective reality all the time. (Assuming such a thing exists.)
Well, this is getting away from the OP, but if you consider God as the creator and source of reality, then He also created things that are objectively true. Arithmetic might be objectively true, but 2 + 2 = 4 is objectively true because God created it that way.
So God doesn’t exactly have an opinion; He is the authority. But this is a side track, as the OP is assuming atheism.
This is fine, but the necessary consequence of this is that any morality is just as valid as any other. The Holocaust and the abolition of slavery are equally valid (or invalid) - just based on different, subjective moralities.
No, evolution is almost tautological as a basis for morality. ‘Whatever leads to greater numbers of fertile offspring’ only works if you accept that ‘greater numbers of fertile offspring’ is the summum bonum.
Yup, that’s pretty much it.
No.
As I recall, I think you are correct. There are instances where you can see the results of your actions, and others where you can’t.
This can be true of both atheist and theist morality. If I assume that everyone would be happier if I follow the Golden Rule, then I cannot live out my life twice, once following it and once not, and compare the results. Similarly, if I assume that God wants me to donate 10% of my income to charity, I can see whether or not the money is wisely spent, but if there is no God, then I will never know that my assumption was incorrect.
Of course, if I assume that I should do such-and-such because it will assist in the survival of the human species, I have to take it on faith as well, as I won’t be around to find out if I was wrong about that either.
Regards,
Shodan
Assuming the antecedent again. Plus there’s a disconnect - why question “the rest of everything” until you’ve got a reason to?
Did you read Existentialism is a Humanism yet? It’s a short piece.
No, that’s begging the question. Atheist morality has to be established as valid first. You are merely asserting it.
Because otherwise, you are taking it on faith.
Regards.
Shodan
Can you expand on this? Would a baby born of Muslim parents adopted by a Christian family start to show Muslim tendencies, whatever those are, in later life? Perhaps we’re using the word “genetic” in different ways. My claim is that there is no objective influence, but rather that a baby will grow up believing whatever his parents purport to believe and this is completely independent of any evidence for or against the existence of a god or gods.
This earlier statement of yours:
I take some minor issue with the word “entire”. There are numerous quotes, even of Jesus himself, that aren’t really very kind at all.
Well, nobody’s forcing you. I’m only addressing the reflexive brain-switching-off attitude you expressed, twice.
Sure, i’d agree with that. Atheism alone certainly doesn’t imply we can see all ends of our actions, even if we have a temporal restriction. But - and of course i’m generalising - I would wager that the amount of theists for whom their moral beliefs have effects on the metaphysical level is larger than the amount of atheists who, because of their particular moral beliefs, have a similar inability to know the results of what they do.
That’s true, but i’ve frankly not come across any evolutionary moralists, and i’ve heard of only a few.