Objective Moral Values

[fyrOM]

References to child abuse is not emotional. It is an act that does occur in our society. How can we categorise it as evil if objective moral values do not exist?? If morals are only subjective, that means that that particular act may be subjectively good for some and subjectively evil for others. If, as you claim, objective moral values do not exist, then you have to accept the absurdity of child molestation being categorised as "good" by those who subjectively believe it to be so.

I don’t believe in objective moral values. I do believe man as a social creature needed to find a way to get along with others from which stems our subjective moral system and from which stems our legal system.

I think you missed my point that your arguments against subjective morals are reaching and hence invalid. The if This then That is false thus the if This does not mean That then all the subsequent points you build on the That have no foundation and hence are likewise false.

Most rapist love to rape but your are blatantly wrong in your assertion that if only subjective moral values exist and if in his subjective moral value system raping is ok then he has done nothing wrong and therefore how can anyone punish him. You use this line of arguing to show a breakdown in a subjective moral system and hence validation for the existence of objective moral values…after all who would argue to the contrary and be seen to be defending a rapist. Maybe you are not purposely doing it but this inverse logic leading…you know That is bad and you certainly don’t want bad then you must mean you want This…ahh No I might not want That and you are correct so far But it does not necessarily mean I want the This…I could just Not want the That and the This and want something else altogether different.

If you consider the point that subjective moral values came out of necessity for man to have some means by which to interact with others in an acceptable manor. Note the word acceptable…to who. Your example of the rapist or child molester having their own personal subjective value system where it is ok to do some things does not negate the subjective moral value system and hence prove the existence of an objective moral values nor God.

The subjective moral system has its counterweight of taking advantage. I do not believe that most rapists truly have in their subjective value system that raping is ok…they know its wrong.

If you recall my earlier posts the subjective moral system is a natural progression from feelings for yourself and loved ones and empathy. If the rapist truly had it in their subjective moral value system that raping is ok then they would feel nothing was wrong if they found out their mother or sister was raped by someone else…it’s the done thing isn’t it. Further if this personal subjective system tells them raping is ok above all then they would see no wrong in raping their own mother or sister. From listening to the news you would have on rare occasion heard of such instances around the world. To that individual his personal subjective value system may in fact be telling him raping is ok above all but it does not make him right…you hear of these cases in the news very rarely because most people are not insane and their personal moral value system has not been warped by insanity. Such examples in no way negate the validity of the subjective moral vale system. The individual was defective and his use of logic was defective but lets not dwell on the minority fringe of the insane to prove or disprove a point.

Most rapist are not totally insane and would not rape their mother or sister and in fact would be very upset to hear that their loved one was raped yet have no problem in raping someone else. This does not negate the subjective moral value system. They don’t rape because they truly believe raping is right…they know its not…they are just giving way to the natural urge to take advantage…a corruption of the innate need to win system. They want to preserve their own while taking advantage of others. The subjective value system was setup on how to react with your own tribe and foreign tribes you might come across. The their own may mean their family clan or community hence the infamous case of the gang rape of Australian girls and never girls of their own racial group because in their view Australian girls were sluts who chose to have sex before marriage and hence that’s all they were good for. It is the take advantage they are giving way to not that they believe raping is good. It does not prove the subjective moral value system is wrong nor does it prove the existence of an objective moral system. It is a wrong on 2 levels. Firstly their limited definition of their own…living in Australia even the Australian girls form part of their community otherwise they are not part of the Australian community and in days gone by they would have been chased off and banished from the community if not killed by the community. Further if they went to a foreign land to visit it still does not make them right because they are taking advantage of the foreign community and no community wants to be taken advantage of hence they would also be chased off if they could not be killed by that foreign community. The urge to take advantage does not negate the validity of the subjective moral value system.

So far we have looked at your example of rape and it was a reasonable example to explore the subjective moral value system and taking advantage but there also exists situation where 2 different groups could have evolved 2 similar but not the same subjective value systems. For example some societies believe circumcision is a perfectly acceptable practice and some societies even extend this to female circumcision. A different community who does not share these values then has to decide…ie subjectively…what practices it finds tolerable and which not. In western societies male circumcision is tolerated while female circumcision is not. So to answer your question who is right if 2 competing subjective value system meat basically whoever is running the society gets to impose their subjective value system. A different example would be I doubt if a minority Christian group was living in Saudi Arabia they would be allowed to farm pigs even if the minority group promised to stick to one side of the town and not entice others. But of course it would be upto the local society to decide…ie subjective value…under what if any circumstances they would be prepared to tolerate their minority group. Like I said its all subjective and all relative but since people are basically people it is not unusual we have developed largely similar subjective moral value systems and in no way does it prove the existence of some objective moral value system let alone one directly stemming from God.

Some see the common values people have around the world…even when 2 communities may have never seen each other before…and attribute this common sense of right and wrong to objective values innate in man as we are supposed to be all created by the same God in His image. Did God create common ie objective moral values by creating common feelings of love hate sympathy empathy or is it that man is basically a similar creature all around the world on basic life things like love hate and empathy and taking advantage much like even animals in the wild…ever see that clip of wilder beasts locking horns to collectively push and bully a lioness to leave a little one of their heard whom she was trying to catch and eat. It really depends on your beliefs…it could be God just made it all that way…or it could be we evolved to be able to reason right and wrong from our feeling and logic.

[Vangelovski]

As far as I am aware, not all religions are based on the one God concept and native peoples in the "uncivilised" lands (Africa, Australia, the Americas, and etc.) who have not been (or before they were) converted by colonialist missionaries have (or had) their own laws and beliefs. Are (or were) the morals and values of these societies "objective" or subjective since they did not originate from the "word" of God - the Bible?

Secondly, where does God (the Bible/Christianity) stand on the age of consent and rape in marriage? I ask this because there are today varying laws in the world in regards to the age of consent and what may be permissible in some countries could get you serious jail time in places such Australia and is tantamount to paedophilia.

Indigen, why go further than the "Christian world". We have enough of our own subjective moral values to deal with, many which have come up in this thread. But if we must go to cultures in Africa, Australia, etc. the question remains - who or what is the source of their moral values?

As for your second question, I may be reading it the wrong way, but surely you think much more highly of my intelligence than Makedonin, who claims he never said moral values are subjective, but rather relative!?

[Vangelovski]

If the rapist truly had it in their subjective moral value system that raping is ok then they would feel nothing was wrong if they found out their mother or sister was raped by someone else…it’s the done thing isn’t it. Further if this personal subjective system tells them raping is ok above all then they would see no wrong in raping their own mother or sister. From listening to the news you would have on rare occasion heard of such instances around the world. To that individual his personal subjective value system may in fact be telling him raping is ok above all but it does not make him right…you hear of these cases in the news very rarely because most people are not insane and their personal moral value system has not been warped by insanity. Such examples in no way negate the validity of the subjective moral vale system. The individual was defective and his use of logic was defective but lets not dwell on the minority fringe of the insane to prove or disprove a point.

OziMak,

This undermines your entire argument that objective moral values do not exist. If the rapist believed his actions are good, then on what basis are you able to counter that? You yourself believe that moral values are subjective. How can it be that YOUR particular values are right and his are wrong? Because you are in a majority? That proves nothing in relation to good and evil. In order for you to know that his subjective moral values are wrong, there must be overriding objective morals that are beyond both yours and his personal subjective views, otherwise, how do you know that you are not wrong?

So that you do not accuse me of using 'scare tactics', we can turn to a positive example of "good". How do we know that giving a meal to a hungry person is good if objective moral values do not exist? Why should I give food to the hungry?

[fyrOM]

Defective people with defective logic need not be considered as I have said in the previous post but I also argued that common subjective values can and do spring up in different communities because they stem from our ability to care for our loved ones and have empathy and logically deduce that if I don’t want x happening to me or mine then it stands to reason that other guy over there probably would not want x to happen to him or his loved ones. I may choose to take advantage of him or his loved ones but it would not alter the fact I know its basically wrong…and not from some higher power.

Likewise if I would be very grateful for a meal in hard times I can reason that most starving people are grateful receiving a meal.

But your example touches on survival and in some instances a starving person will kill you for your all your food and not just gratefully accept your one meal.

All very subjective and all the result of logical reasoning.

[Vangelovski]

I may choose to take advantage of him or his loved ones but it would not alter the fact I know its basically wrong…

Exactly, but if you do not know it from a 'higher power' the question is, how do you know that it is evil? How is the question.

In relation to feeding the hungry, why should one care about them if it does not personally benefit them? So what if they are grateful?

[fyrOM]

Exactly, but if you do not know it from a 'higher power' the question is, how do you know that it is evil? How is the question.

Oh really…come on…

logically deduce that if I don’t want x happening to me or mine then it stands to reason that other guy over there probably would not want x to happen to him or his loved ones.

As to the hungry…again logic and calculated risk…within a society it can solidify unity but it also has the positive effect of reducing crime…less minor crimes occur in societies that have a reasonable safety net than those that coldly say fend for yourself..and you could be that next mugging.

[makedonin]

Let us start with the old Euthyphro Dilemma which goes like this:

“Are morally good acts willed by God because they are morally good, or are they morally good because they are willed by God?”

Strong case can be made that the Bible is subscriber of the second one!

What God commands must be morally good, or you are wicked in his sight!

Here is one interesting example:

1 At that time, Judah left his brothers and went down to stay with a man of Adullam named Hirah. 2 There Judah met the daughter of a Canaanite man named Shua. He married her and made love to her; 3 she became pregnant and gave birth to a son, who was named Er. 4 She conceived again and gave birth to a son and named him Onan. 5 She gave birth to still another son and named him Shelah. It was at Kezib that she gave birth to him.

6 Judah got a wife for Er, his firstborn, and her name was Tamar. 7 But Er, Judah’s firstborn, was wicked in the LORD’s sight; so the LORD put him to death.

8 Then Judah said to Onan, “Sleep with your brother’s wife and fulfill your duty to her as a brother-in-law to raise up offspring for your brother.” 9 But Onan knew that the child would not be his; so whenever he slept with his brother’s wife, he spilled his semen on the ground to keep from providing offspring for his brother. 10 What he did was wicked in the LORD’s sight; so the LORD put him to death also.
Genesis 38:1-10

Obviously Onan did not obey the command in Deuteronomy 25:5-10 thats why he was killed.

The point of the story above is plain and simple, do what you are told to do, other wise you are going to be considered wicked in the sight of the Lord and be put to death!

You can also look at the absurdity how some people are teaching their children:

It was late in the day and Beth's father asked her to please take the kitchen trash and set it in the garbage place beside the house. Well, Beth knew that the garbage was going to be picked up the next day and that the garbage cans had already been taken out to the front of the house, so she put the kitchen trash in a big garbage bag and set it out by the curb.
That night, dogs tore open the garbage bags and made a mess. When Beth's father saw what happened, he punished Beth by pulling the heads off of all of her dolls.
Later, Beth asked her mother why she had been punished when she had just been trying to do what was right. By way of explanation, her mother told her a story. And this is the story she told:

One day, there was a man named Judah who had a young son named Onan and an older son named Er who was married to a woman named Tamar.
Because Er was a bad person, God killed him.
Seeing that Er had died without having any children, Judah went to Onan and said, "Onan, go to your brother's wife, put your penis in her, and make babies because your brother didn't."
Onan knew that any child he had with Judah would be Er's child and not his, and he didn't like that. So when he put his penis in Judah, he didn't put the spermies in her but spilled them all over the ground so that no babies would grow in Judah's tummy.
This made God so mad that he killed Onan, too.

"You see, Dear One, God tells us that it is more important to do what you are told than what you think is right," her mother said. "That's why you got in trouble."
Beth thought about this for a moment. Then she smiled and hugged her mother. All her questions had been answered, and she would be much more obedient from then on.
Source

The above absurdity shows that the so called "natural law" or the ability to decide what is good or bad which should be given by God to each human is rendered invalid.

By the way, on the end Tamar ends up having two children from the Father of Onan and Er. (Genesis 38:13-30) . Judah thought she is a prostitute.

David from whose seed the Messiah should have come out, received one of this children (Perez) as predecessor.

Matthew 1:3 in his zeal counts Pheres as predecessors of Jesus. (See also Ansear 7 and notice the absurd explanation of the alleged wisdom.)

What one sees here is the fact that if God has the need, he overlooks his own rule which says:

And if a man lie with his daughter in law, both of them shall surely be put to death: they have wrought confusion; their blood shall be upon them.
Leviticus 20: 12

other wise Judah and Tamar should both have been put to death by God, just as Onan and Er were, and with Tamar and Judah both children would have perished as well. Thus the Messiah would have been left with out predecessors, at least from Judah.

Obviously God needed the seed of Pheres for the upcoming Messiah, thus he overruled his own command or "objective moral", which renders the given moral command as subjective and not objective one!

That is just another case that the "commanded morals" in the Bible are only than good cause God commands them, but he has the power to bend them as he wills.

That renders those command as non objective morals.

[Vangelovski]

Oh really…come on…


As to the hungry…again logic and calculated risk…within a society it can solidify unity but it also has the positive effect of reducing crime…less minor crimes occur in societies that have a reasonable safety net than those that coldly say fend for yourself..and you could be that next mugging.

OziMak,

Logically deducting that something may or may not be beneficial to you or someone else does not prove whether it is good or evil. I could logically deduce that investing in shares would be financially beneficial for me, but that does not show any moral worth, i.e., where investing in shares is inherently good, evil or neutral.

[Vangelovski]

Makedonin is such an amatuer - atheists should all be ashamed of him! He couldn't even explain, let alone argue, the Euthyphro Dilemma!?!?

Article by William Lane Craig (who has put it to paper much better than I could have - this is part 6 of 6, I recommend reading the entire piece as it directly relates to the question of objective moral values)

http://forums.carm.org/vbb/entry.php?126-William-Lane-Craig-s-Moral-Argument-for-God-Part-6-The-Euthyphro-Dilemma

The most popular objection raised against the moral argument is essentially a challenge to basing moral values and duties in God. The objection, first recorded in Plato’s dialogue Euthyphro, goes as follows: either something is good because God wills it or else God wills something because it is good. If it is good just because God wills it, then what is good becomes arbitrary. God could have willed that hatred and jealousy be good, and then we should have been obligated to hate and envy one another. But that seems implausible; at least some moral goods seem to be necessary. But if we say instead that God wills something because it is good, then whether something is good or bad is independent of God. In that case, it seems that moral value exists independently of God. If God were not to exist, then objective moral values and duties would exist anyway.

The Euthyphro Dilemma can thus be construed as an argument for Atheistic Moral Platonism. Now we’ve already seen that such a theory has major deficits. This suggests that the dilemma allegedly forcing us to such a position is a false one and that we may escape the horns of the dilemma by finding a third alternative. I think that an appropriately formulated divine command theory of ethics, such as has been articulated by Robert Adams, Philip Quinn, William Alston, and others, supplies such an alternative: our moral duties are constituted by the commands of an essentially just and loving God. For any action A and moral agent S, we can explicate the notions of moral requirement, prohibition, and permission of A for S as follows:

A is required of S if and only if a just and loving God commands S to do A.

A is forbidden to S if and only if a just and loving God commands S not to do A.

A is permitted for S if and only if a just and loving God does not command S not to do A.

Since our moral duties are grounded in the divine commands, they are not independent of God.

Neither are God’s commands arbitrary, for they are the necessary expressions of his just and loving nature. God is essentially compassionate, fair, kind, impartial, and so forth, and his commandments are reflections of his own character. God’s character is definitive of moral goodness; it serves as the paradigm of moral goodness. Thus, the morally good/bad is determined by reference to God’s nature; the morally right/wrong is determined by reference to his will. The divine will or commands come into play as a source of moral obligation, not moral value. As necessary expressions of his nature, God’s commands are not arbitrary, and so we need not trouble ourselves about counterfactuals with impossible antecedents like “If God were to command child abuse . . .” On the customary understanding, counterfactuals with impossible antecedents have no non-vacuous truth value. Even if we reject the customary semantics and allow that some counterfactuals with impossible antecedents may be non-vacuously true or false, how are we to assess the truth value of a statement with an antecedent like this? It is like wondering whether, if there were a round square, its area would equal the square of one of its sides. And what would it matter how one answered, since what is imagined is logically incoherent? I don’t see that the divine command theorist is committed to the non-vacuous truth of the counterfactual in question or that anything of significance hangs on his thinking it to be non-vacuously true or false.

If the non-theist should demand, “Why pick God’s nature as definitive of the Good?” the answer is that God, by definition, is the greatest conceivable being, and a being which is the paradigm of goodness is greater than one which merely exemplifies goodness. Unless we are nihilists, we have to recognize some ultimate standard of value, and God is the least arbitrary stopping point.

The moral argument thus brings us to a personal, necessarily existent being who is the locus and source of moral goodness. It thereby complements in an important way the conclusions of the cosmological and teleological arguments.

[makedonin]

Makedonin is such an amatuer - atheists should all be ashamed of him!

Atheist would certainly care for your opinion, sure they will!

And about being amateur , look who is talking now, someone who can't even try to write something which is his own opinion but when challenged leaves other to do the work he ought to do!

Copy and paste is what every child can do, you don't need to be intellectually mature for that, and by copy pasting you are not per Default in position that you understand what you have posted.

Article by William Lane Craig (who has put it to paper much better than I could have)

Do you think that Craig understands what he writes. Perhaps you?

Before you spam around with apologists, first try to answer to the previous posts, or don't even bother me anymore. Since you did it, I will just point out another link where others can read about this dilemma.

Indigen, why go further than the "Christian world".

Because the Christian world does not consist the whole humanity, and when discussing something objective you can't remain adherent to some bias or subjective belief such as Christianity.
Objective morals if they exists should be somehow know to all men, and not just to Christians. Obviously not only Christians claim that they have contact with God who has given them moral standards.

As for your second question, I may be reading it the wrong way, but surely you think much more highly of my intelligence than Makedonin, who claims he never said moral values are subjective, but rather relative!?

You failed to point out where did I stated that the moral values are subjective! When you do that, I will than reconsider your alleged intelligence, until than I will only consider you as religious zealot that babels around with out much substance.

PS. You and Craig should first deal with the Predestination doctrine before you go on and bother with morals or anything else.

Romans 9:11-24 renders any given Moral in the Bible invalid, cause:

Yet, before the twins were born or had done anything good or bad—in order that God’s purpose in election might stand: 12 not by works but by him who calls—she was told, “The older will serve the younger.”[a] 13 Just as it is written: “Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated.”
Romans 9:11-24

Or

Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ. 4 For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. In love 5 he[a] predestined us for adoption to sonship[b] through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will— 6 to the praise of his glorious grace, which he has freely given us in the One he loves.
Ephesians 1:3-6

Morals that ought to prescribe what is good or bad according to which humans should work in daily life are rendered invalid in face of the above passages.

Good luck with that!

[fyrOM]

OziMak,

Logically deducting that something may or may not be beneficial to you or someone else does not prove whether it is good or evil. I could logically deduce that investing in shares would be financially beneficial for me, but that does not show any moral worth, i.e., where investing in shares is inherently good, evil or neutral.

Ahh yeah it does…we generally don’t believe in bashing people for sport not because some higher power told us but because we can deduce that being bashed is not good and hence some other person being bashed will probably not feel good about it and will cause disunity in the community which directly affects our survivability as a disunified community is an easier prey to external threats…a lot of it has to do with just plain logic and as most communities stem from kinship if we value our families and those of our siblings and the families of their partners it makes sense to have logical acceptable rules of behavior…no God in sight.

What is good or evil…only what God told you it is or what we subjectively choose to define as good or evil based on our subjective logical reasoning. Its good because we say it is…its bad because we say it is.

[makedonin]

Vangelovski, if someones going to polish your face, are you going to open your Bible and try to find an answer how to act and react?

What will be your choice? Eye for an Eye or turn the other cheek, or kill the guy and ask Jesus to forgive you?

Which is objective moral in the above case according to your doctrine?

Can you be independent and decide for your self or are you going to ask your Priest about it?

Can you ever be independent if you need to rely on supernatural advice on how you live your life?

I don't think so.

By the way, will the boy in the following story be forgiven?

When I was a kid, I used to pray every night for a new bike. Then I realised, the Lord doesn't work that way. So I just stole one and asked Him to forgive me ... and I got it!

If yes, why and how does that align with the "objective morals" if not why not?

[Risto the Great]

Why should I give food to the hungry?

Well, you should not if it is a matter of defending your nation. If nations were created by God and we follow the warpath of the Israelites as an example of God's will, there would be an objective moral compulsion to make the enemy suffer. So, even if something is intrinsically evil, its action can be justified whilst realising some other greater good.

For example, giving it to your daughterinlaw or sisterinlaw so some ancestor of the Messiah could be created. A ranking of objective moral values seems to exist in the Bible. If something is truly evil, it should stay that way in my mind.

I really wish Vangelovski and Makedonin could be nicer to each other. Some of Makedonin's observations may well be the work of an amateur, but they are thought provoking for an amateur like me. Same goes for Vangelovski.

The article by William Lane Craig was a little difficult. I will read it again later but fear I may have to read some other text where he believes moral atheistic platonism is dis-proven.

If the non-theist should demand, “Why pick God’s nature as definitive of the Good?” the answer is that God, by definition, is the greatest conceivable being, and a being which is the paradigm of goodness is greater than one which merely exemplifies goodness. Unless we are nihilists, we have to recognize some ultimate standard of value, and God is the least arbitrary stopping point.

A very negative way of dealing with this would be to replace "least arbitrary" with "most convenient" because there will never be a precise measuring stick so it may well be best to leave it to the mystery of God.

[fyrOM]

Vangelovski, if someones going to polish your face, are you going to open your Bible and try to find an answer how to act and react?

What will be your choice? Eye for an Eye or turn the other cheek, or kill the guy and ask Jesus to forgive you?

Which is objective moral in the above case according to your doctrine?

Gotta love it.

[Vangelovski]

Ahh yeah it does…we generally don’t believe in bashing people for sport not because some higher power told us but because we can deduce that being bashed is not good and hence some other person being bashed will probably not feel good about it and will cause disunity in the community which directly affects our survivability as a disunified community is an easier prey to external threats…a lot of it has to do with just plain logic and as most communities stem from kinship if we value our families and those of our siblings and the families of their partners it makes sense to have logical acceptable rules of behavior…no God in sight.

What is good or evil…only what God told you it is or what we subjectively choose to define as good or evil based on our subjective logical reasoning. Its good because we say it is…its bad because we say it is.

None of this demonstrates something as good or bad. Its still your subjective view/opinion which can be different to someone elses. You've gone back to arguing subjective moral values as determined by social conditioning, which when followed through to its logical conclusion can lead to a society that considers bashing as good - i.e., the Nazi's.