objective morality

[Angra Mainyu]

Yes, I changed my vocabulary because I realized "subjective morality" was unclear, given that it could be taken as me supporting cultural relativism if read in isolation without my discussion about the standards for declaring mental illness and how I evaluate some as reasonnable or not. "Subjective evaluation of morality" seemed clearer, in that it does better reflect my sense of being agnostic on the existence of an objective morality we might one day converge to if it exists, while still making clear that I don't believe it can be revealed to us by some external or supernatural entity.
Sorry for not making that vocabulary shift clearer, but I'm not a philosopher, and neither a native English speaker, so I'm winging it as the discussion progresses.

Okay, no problem. But my issue was with the claim about what "subjective morality" means, not with "subjective evaluation of morality". While I don't find the latter clear, as long as it's not about objective or subjective morality, it's not the issue I was trying to address.

As for how to figure out moral truths, that's an epistemic matter, rather than an ontological one. While there are theistic metaethical epistemic arguments as well, the ones I was discussing here are theistic metaethical ontological ones (i.e., arguments involving moral ontology, not moral epistemology).

So, let's try to clarify my points:
On the OP: I was disagreeing with the points I believe the OP presented, i.e.
- that an objective morality must imply god (I believe there could be an objective morality that is discovered through social debate),
- and that there is necessarily such a thing as an objective morality (I'm agnostic on the subject, but at the very least I'm sure there's no revealed objective morality).
But I didn't participate much in that discussion because plenty explained that better than I did)

Okay, so you're not making a claim I would like to challenge there - unless you're suggesting that social debate is the only means of discovering moral truths if morality is objective, but you've not claimed that in the sentences quoted above.

More generaly, on the morality subject, I have two basic idea that I follow in my life:
1) I don't believe there is an objective morality already written somewhere that I just have to find. I don't believe in Kant's categorical imperative or things like that - a similar act can be moral or not depending on the exact situation. (like, lying to save a life would be moral)
2) I don't believe in cultural relativism either. I believe I can judge other cultures' notions of morality by applying basic rules like the golden rule and see if I consider their notions of morality really moral, just different from mine due to differing circumstances, or immoral and to be challenged (to get back to the beginning of our discussion, for example, religious prejudice against homosexuality).

1) I agree about lying. But that's not related to the issue of whether morality is objective.
2) I don't believe in the Golden Rule - I believe it's false -, but that aside, you do seem to be talking as if you believe morality is objective now, at least in the ordinary sense of "objective", when you say you would judge whether their notions of morality are "really moral" (i.e., whether their moral beliefs are true), or immoral (i.e., their believes are false); implicitly, you hold that there is an objective fact of the matter as to whether their beliefs are true, so it's objectivity and not culturally relative objectivity.
Morality would not be not-objective just because, say, in some situations, it's immoral to lie, and in other situations it isn't, or because in some situations, it's immoral to drive at 90kph, but in other situations it isn't, or because in some situations, it's immoral to shoot someone in the head, but in others situations, it is not, etc.

That's when the discussion about the evaluation of mental illnesses started that I decided to put my grain of salt, because I realized that the modern psychiatry practice of declaring an illness or not based on the effect on the patient quality of life stroke me as relevant to my point of view.

Okay. While I disagree about mental illness, it's a side issue and I've already made my point on the matter clear in my replies to your posts, so I'll leave it at that.

Hoping that's clear enough.

If I got it right, it seems to be.

 

[Bomb#20]

Put simply, belief in objective morals is required in order to seek to refine them.

Which is to say, "Before I search for Santa's workshop, I must believe there is a Santa Claus or I will never find it."

If objective morals exist, such morals would be absolute. There would be no refinement or more precise interpretation.

I think he meant refining his mental approximation of objective morals, not refining the objective morals themselves. It's similar to how we might speak of the laws of planetary motion being discovered by Kepler and later refined by Newton and further refined by Einstein -- it's loose speech, but not wrong. Of course the actual laws never changed, but our mental approximation of them got closer and closer.

Is there any moral rule which is not subject to the situation, the society, and the culture in which it is relevant?

What does "subject to" mean? Is there a situation, a society, or a culture in which you think it's moral to rape somebody for fun?

 

[Bronzeage]

Which is to say, "Before I search for Santa's workshop, I must believe there is a Santa Claus or I will never find it."

If objective morals exist, such morals would be absolute. There would be no refinement or more precise interpretation.

I think he meant refining his mental approximation of objective morals, not refining the objective morals themselves. It's similar to how we might speak of the laws of planetary motion being discovered by Kepler and later refined by Newton and further refined by Einstein -- it's loose speech, but not wrong. Of course the actual laws never changed, but our mental approximation of them got closer and closer.

Is there any moral rule which is not subject to the situation, the society, and the culture in which it is relevant?

What does "subject to" mean? Is there a situation, a society, or a culture in which you think it's moral to rape somebody for fun?

There are cultures and societies where rape is sometimes considered a just act to commit. There are places where a woman who is discovered outside her home and far from the protection of her family is fair game for the rapist. The rapist is not considered at fault. Whether the rapist has fun in the process is a matter of conjecture. All morality is subject to the culture and all human acts maybe immoral in one place and moral in some other.

We do not refine morals. We refine our definition of who is a member of our group and thus protected by our common moral code. This may appear to be a refinement to some and a degradation to others. We discourage the stoning of adulterers in most places, because we decide it is not a crime which deserves death. We're proud of our refined morals, which put a high value on life. Another person thinks we are decadent for this and believe it will lead to a weakening of family and social bonds.

This argument that there is some objective standard of behavior by which humans are compelled to behave simply does not stand up to close examination, no matter how many apparently horrible actions may be proposed.

 

[Wiploc]

How do you refine something that is objectively true? It would be like saying "ice melts at zero degrees centigrade, can we refine that somehow?" Doesn't that defeat the whole idea of it being objective?

Not by definition. As near as I can tell, something is objective if it is true regardless of what anybody thinks about it.

Example: I'm a utilitarian, so I think rape is wrong because it has a strong tendency to make people unhappy. That's the rule: if it increases unhappiness, it is wrong. Doesn't matter what people think about that; it's still the rule. If I quit being a utilitarian, it wouldn't change the rule. That rule is therefore (arguably) objective.

Now, suppose we could change people so that they liked being raped. Then rape would increase happiness; it would be good.

Objective truth is not necessarily universal truth or unchanging truth. There are different tests for those.

 

[Tom Sawyer]

What about gang rape? Five out of six participants enjoy it.

 

[apeman]

How do you refine something that is objectively true? It would be like saying "ice melts at zero degrees centigrade, can we refine that somehow?" Doesn't that defeat the whole idea of it being objective?

Bronzeage explains the situation just below where you placed your original question.

In effect we refine our ideas about what constitutes objective morality, it's an acceptance that we don't necessarily know the objectively right thing to do for any given situation, that our opinion of what is right need not be the same thing as is actually morally right.

 

[apeman]

apeman,

Would you please addressed the objections raised by Bomb#20 and by me?

Also, by the way:

1. Could you please explain why you think God is required for there to be objective morality? What if God does ont exist? Are then moral matters, not objective matters? Does a moral error theory obtain? What do you think happens without God?

2. Do you think God is required for there to be objective illness? If you make a difference, objectivity-wise, between morality and illness, do you know why you make that difference? If so, please explain.

3. For that matter, do you think God is required for there to be, say, objective horseness? (i.e., the property of being a horse) If you make a difference, objectivity-wise, between morality and horseness, do you know why you make that difference? If so, please explain.

I've already explained why God is required for objective morality. Morality lives in motive, that would imply that for morality to be objective its is required that the world is mind dependent (it is necessary that the world is made by mind in order for it to contain motive)

I think that illness could exist in a world without a God because illness isn't mind dependant (setting aside the fact that I think the whole world is mind dependent...but I can imagine a Godless world where there is illness but no objective morality.....this also explains my feelings about your "horseness" question).

 

[apeman]

Put simply, belief in objective morals is required in order to seek to refine them.

Which is to say, "Before I search for Santa's workshop, I must believe there is a Santa Claus or I will never find it."

If objective morals exist, such morals would be absolute. There would be no refinement or more precise interpretation.

Is there any moral rule which is not subject to the situation, the society, and the culture in which it is relevant?

Your first point is correct.

Our refinement lies in the search for objective truths, objective truths themselves would be absolute....so for instance , there is never an occasion where killing people for fun is morally acceptable. So we agree again.

Killing people for fun should not be acceptable (morally speaking) for any society or culture.

 

[apeman]

What about gang rape? Five out of six participants enjoy it.

Exactly, morals should not be based on the greatest happiness principle, they should be based on the idea that other people (and animals to a degree) have souls made by God and that we should respect those God given souls...though we need not respect their actions. It seems we have a right to fight those that seek to destroy us for instance.

 

[Tom Sawyer]

What about gang rape? Five out of six participants enjoy it.

Exactly, morals should not be based on the greatest happiness principle, they should be based on the idea that other people (and animals to a degree) have souls made by God and that we should respect those God given souls...though we need not respect their actions. It seems we have a right to fight those that seek to destroy us for instance.

No, that's a fairly stupid thing to base it on. We should base it on common courtesy and respect for them as thinking and feeling human beings, not because of their midichlorian levels.

 

[Angra Mainyu]

I've already explained why God is required for objective morality. Morality lives in motive, that would imply that for morality to be objective its is required that the world is mind dependent (it is necessary that the world is made by mind in order for it to contain motive)

I already addressed a similar reply of yours here, but you didn't address my reply.

But I can do it again:

1. You say morality "lives" in motive. If by that you mean that whether some behavior is immoral depends (at least partially) on motive, sure (if not, what do you mean?), but that in no way implies that it is required that the world is made by a mind in order for morality to be objective, or that it is required that the world be made by a mind in order for it to contain motive.
If you have other premises, I would ask you to complete your argument, else it's a non-sequitur.

2. Your argument here is not an argument from objective morality to the existence of God. Rather, it's an argument from the existence of motive in the world to the existence of a creator of the world. But since the actual world contains everything that exists, how would there be a creator of it?
In other words, how do you get a creator of the world, given that any creator is in the world?
But if you are using "world" in a restricted fashon, what is that fashion?
a. In other worlds, what <i>proper subset, or part[/i] of causal reality cannot contain motive without a creator?
b. Let "actual world", or AC, stand for all that actually exists, including any creator of anything. Then, the AC contains motive. Does the AC have a creator? How? Remember, any agent that exists is in the actual world. In short, why does God have motive, but needs no creator?

3. Regardless, let us say for the sake of the argument that there is some agent with motive that creates the universe that we see, and which contains every other agent with motive. Let us stipulate here, and for the sake of the argument, that for some reason (or rather, for no reason, but no matter), a universe containing motive requires a creator, but the creator does not require a creator.
Then, for all we know, that creator may well not be God (i.e., not an omnimax (i.e., omnipotent, omniscient, morallly perfect) being), and in particular, not morally perfect.
Purely for example, that creator might not even care about morality. It might have completely different values, and it might just be having fun running the universe and letting some primates evolve morality, some aliens from another planet evolve some analog, or whatever. But there are a zillion combinations in which

So, you have not shown in any way that objective morality requires God.

Side note: if by "God" you do not mean an omnimax being, please explain what you mean by "God".

 

[Bronzeage]

Which is to say, "Before I search for Santa's workshop, I must believe there is a Santa Claus or I will never find it."

If objective morals exist, such morals would be absolute. There would be no refinement or more precise interpretation.

Is there any moral rule which is not subject to the situation, the society, and the culture in which it is relevant?

Your first point is correct.

Our refinement lies in the search for objective truths, objective truths themselves would be absolute....so for instance , there is never an occasion where killing people for fun is morally acceptable. So we agree again.

Killing people for fun should not be acceptable (morally speaking) for any society or culture.

Here is where your argument runs aground. You use the word "should." Who says so? Who is speaking? Are we to take your word as our command?

 

[Bomb#20]

Is there any moral rule which is not subject to the situation, the society, and the culture in which it is relevant?

What does "subject to" mean? Is there a situation, a society, or a culture in which you think it's moral to rape somebody for fun?

There are cultures and societies where rape is sometimes considered a just act to commit. There are places where a woman who is discovered outside her home and far from the protection of her family is fair game for the rapist. The rapist is not considered at fault.

That's really more of an answer to "Is there a situation, a society, or a culture in which they think it's moral to rape somebody for fun?" than an answer to the question I asked.

Whether the rapist has fun in the process is a matter of conjecture. All morality is subject to the culture

If your description of certain cultures and societies is illustrative of what you mean by "subject to", then everything from physics and biology to archaeology is equally "subject to the culture". There are cultures and societies where lightning is considered the anger of the gods, where humans and gorillas are considered unrelated, where ancient bones are considered sacred relics of honored ancestors by the descendants of invaders who murdered the owner's actual descendants.

and all human acts maybe immoral in one place and moral in some other.

So you're saying to rape somebody for fun will be moral if and only if it happens in a place where the locals think it's moral? To your mind, "moral" means "locally approved"? And therefore when somebody asks you if you think some act is moral, you'll answer by checking whether the people around you approve of it and conforming your opinion to theirs?

We do not refine morals. We refine our definition of who is a member of our group and thus protected by our common moral code. This may appear to be a refinement to some and a degradation to others. We discourage the stoning of adulterers in most places, because we decide it is not a crime which deserves death. We're proud of our refined morals, which put a high value on life. Another person thinks we are decadent for this and believe it will lead to a weakening of family and social bonds.

Are you suggesting that the criterion for a matter to be objective is whether people disagree about it?

This argument that there is some objective standard of behavior by which humans are compelled to behave simply does not stand up to close examination, no matter how many apparently horrible actions may be proposed.

Which argument are you talking about? Who the heck ever suggested that any objective standard of behavior is a standard of behavior by which humans are compelled to behave?!? If people were compelled to be good then there wouldn't be a whole lot of reason to have discussion forum dedicated to talking about how to recognize when people are being bad.

 

[Bronzeage]

Is there any moral rule which is not subject to the situation, the society, and the culture in which it is relevant?

What does "subject to" mean? Is there a situation, a society, or a culture in which you think it's moral to rape somebody for fun?

There are cultures and societies where rape is sometimes considered a just act to commit. There are places where a woman who is discovered outside her home and far from the protection of her family is fair game for the rapist. The rapist is not considered at fault.

That's really more of an answer to "Is there a situation, a society, or a culture in which they think it's moral to rape somebody for fun?" than an answer to the question I asked.

Whether the rapist has fun in the process is a matter of conjecture. All morality is subject to the culture

If your description of certain cultures and societies is illustrative of what you mean by "subject to", then everything from physics and biology to archaeology is equally "subject to the culture". There are cultures and societies where lightning is considered the anger of the gods, where humans and gorillas are considered unrelated, where ancient bones are considered sacred relics of honored ancestors by the descendants of invaders who murdered the owner's actual descendants.

and all human acts maybe immoral in one place and moral in some other.

So you're saying to rape somebody for fun will be moral if and only if it happens in a place where the locals think it's moral? To your mind, "moral" means "locally approved"? And therefore when somebody asks you if you think some act is moral, you'll answer by checking whether the people around you approve of it and conforming your opinion to theirs?

We do not refine morals. We refine our definition of who is a member of our group and thus protected by our common moral code. This may appear to be a refinement to some and a degradation to others. We discourage the stoning of adulterers in most places, because we decide it is not a crime which deserves death. We're proud of our refined morals, which put a high value on life. Another person thinks we are decadent for this and believe it will lead to a weakening of family and social bonds.

Are you suggesting that the criterion for a matter to be objective is whether people disagree about it?

This argument that there is some objective standard of behavior by which humans are compelled to behave simply does not stand up to close examination, no matter how many apparently horrible actions may be proposed.

Which argument are you talking about? Who the heck ever suggested that any objective standard of behavior is a standard of behavior by which humans are compelled to behave?!? If people were compelled to be good then there wouldn't be a whole lot of reason to have discussion forum dedicated to talking about how to recognize when people are being bad.

Please stop using the word objective. It erodes your argument.



It appears you have a fundamental misunderstanding of morality and its function in society. A moral code defines proper behavior within a group and further defines the sanctions put upon those in the group who violate the moral code. The critical word here is not morality, but group. It maybe prohibited to kill a fellow group member, but there is no sanction for killing a member of a separate group. This destroys the idea of an objective prohibition against killing, since who can or cannot be murdered is subject to group identity.

Moral codes are crafted so members of a group can live together in harmony and cooperate. This is why the prohibition of murder and theft within the group is a universal foundation of all moral codes(repeated for the gazillionth time). There is always conflict when groups interact or merge. Someone will find the normal dealings of the other to be offensive. The group with political power, economic power and sufficient numbers, will win out, but in general, moral codes devolve into a lowest common denominator code.

This is seen when the state takes over enforcement of the moral code. A family is no longer allowed to avenge the death of a loved one. This function is now reserved for the political powers that exist and society demands these functions be applied uniformly. This means a family group may not seek revenge for lesser crimes such as theft of property or seduction of a daughter. The family is not even allowed to kill their own family members, even for purely internal offenses.

None of this is objective. All remains subjective to the definition of the group and who is entitled to the protection of the moral code, and what is done to those who transgress.

 

[Staircaseghost]

And if "independence of mind" meant "not relativized to optional conceptual schemes or historically contingent social norms", that would make independence of mind, philosophically speaking, a real BFD.

And what organ of the human creature secretes cultures and norms and conceptual schemes? The pancreas?

When we are talking about whether or to what extent the truth of some beliefs is contingent on attitudes or conceptual schemes or preferences or cultural norms, we are talking about whether such beliefs are (in a non-trivial sense), dependent on the content and constitution of minds. Philosophy has been haggling over this for quite some time now, from Plato vs. Protagoras to Sokal vs. Derrida. It was in all the papers.

Among the equivocation going on is the endless refrain that morality being objective means it's mind-independent which in turn means morality would have to remain in place even if all sentient life went extinct. (And proceeding from that lemma, therefore, if (equivocator is a theist) then (objective morality implies there's a god) else (absence of morality from a lifeless world implies morality is subjective).)

How would you go about explaining the error in that eternally recurring fallacy by assigning varying numbers of apostrophes?

Whatever downstream equivocations are going on -- and trust me, I need no convincing that theists pathologically equivocate on this topic -- there is no original sin to be found in talking about objectivity in terms of mind-dependence, since that is indeed what the term means. [eta: I should hasten to add in this case it's far from clear exactly how to parse Apeman's structure here, or if there's a discernible structure at all. In a recent post he appears to say that morality is mind-dependent and objective, which is just downright odd. If it really is the case that's he's equivocating between trivial and non-trivial senses, then that should be pointed out. But you cannot say someone is equivocating between two senses unless there are, in fact, two senses.]

The way to block the foundation-of-morality --> God inference is to simply restate the second horn of the Euthyphro dilemma, attach a generator to the theist, and provide limitless renewable energy to the third world as they try to squirm off it.

(Note also in passing that in the counterfactual case of a universe with no sentient life we’ve recurred to the crude causal sense of "makes", as though subjectivists about some domain assert that our minds reach out and cause changes in the things themselves, in the way sunlight causes things to be warm. Subjectivists about probability do not believe our evaluations telekinetically reach out and physically change what card will be drawn next! Not even if they are theists. Copper would be a conductor even if counterfactually there were no electricity, and glass would be fragile even in the counterfactual that there was nothing in the universe to smash it.)

So getting someone to admit that mental illness's mind dependence (in the trivial sense) is not a knock on its objectivity (in the non-trivial sense) is not going to force them to the realization "how silly of me to have thought morality's being mind-dependent or not was at all philosophically interesting."

True, assuming they are going to react to the fact that the "trivial sense" of "mind dependence" is the phrase's sense, and the "non-trivial sense" of mind dependence is some sense other than "dependent on mind", by choosing to continue labeling that non-trivial concept "mind dependence".

Wait, what? Was a dependent clause deleted in an edit? Because it looks like you just said that the non-trivial sense of something is sometimes not a sense of that something. But everything that is a sense of something is a sense of that something, even, and especially, the non-trivial senses.

If a person's goal were clarity, he would choose a different label.

In context, when someone claims that e.g. aesthetic taste is subjective, I have never in my adult life encountered either the claimant or a listener who interpreted the mind-dependence claim in the trivial sense of "judging is a thing only minds do", rather than the non-trivial sense that the truth of such judgments is being alleged to be in some sense contingent on norms, attitudes etc.

The question remains, why would anyone be committed to retaining the use of such an ambiguous term, unless he was also committed to retaining the use of some argument that relies on that ambiguity?

Because that is what the term means, and because in context it is not ambiguous? I’ve sat in philosophy classes with all kinds of characters, but never once did I see someone think that the big to-do over Protagoras saying “man is the measure of all things” was merely about whether the act of measuring something requires a measurer. People generally seem to grok that what’s being challenged in conversations like these is the independence (or lack thereof) of the content of the measurement from the measurer, not of the act of measurement itself. And if it turns out his confusion really is between two senses, the thing to do is say so, not deny that one sense ever existed at all.

 

[apeman]

Exactly, morals should not be based on the greatest happiness principle, they should be based on the idea that other people (and animals to a degree) have souls made by God and that we should respect those God given souls...though we need not respect their actions. It seems we have a right to fight those that seek to destroy us for instance.

No, that's a fairly stupid thing to base it on. We should base it on common courtesy and respect for them as thinking and feeling human beings, not because of their midichlorian levels.

Regarding human life as having an element of the sacred about it raises its value a bit above something due mere "courtesy and respect", don't you think? Courtesy and respect doesn't extend to people you don't wish to impress for instance, whereas the "sacred" can extent to any old prick.

 

[apeman]

I've already explained why God is required for objective morality. Morality lives in motive, that would imply that for morality to be objective its is required that the world is mind dependent (it is necessary that the world is made by mind in order for it to contain motive)

I already addressed a similar reply of yours here, but you didn't address my reply.

But I can do it again:

1. You say morality "lives" in motive. If by that you mean that whether some behavior is immoral depends (at least partially) on motive, sure (if not, what do you mean?), but that in no way implies that it is required that the world is made by a mind in order for morality to be objective, or that it is required that the world be made by a mind in order for it to contain motive.
If you have other premises, I would ask you to complete your argument, else it's a non-sequitur.

2. Your argument here is not an argument from objective morality to the existence of God. Rather, it's an argument from the existence of motive in the world to the existence of a creator of the world. But since the actual world contains everything that exists, how would there be a creator of it?
In other words, how do you get a creator of the world, given that any creator is in the world?
But if you are using "world" in a restricted fashon, what is that fashion?
a. In other worlds, what <i>proper subset, or part[/i] of causal reality cannot contain motive without a creator?
b. Let "actual world", or AC, stand for all that actually exists, including any creator of anything. Then, the AC contains motive. Does the AC have a creator? How? Remember, any agent that exists is in the actual world. In short, why does God have motive, but needs no creator?

3. Regardless, let us say for the sake of the argument that there is some agent with motive that creates the universe that we see, and which contains every other agent with motive. Let us stipulate here, and for the sake of the argument, that for some reason (or rather, for no reason, but no matter), a universe containing motive requires a creator, but the creator does not require a creator.
Then, for all we know, that creator may well not be God (i.e., not an omnimax (i.e., omnipotent, omniscient, morallly perfect) being), and in particular, not morally perfect.
Purely for example, that creator might not even care about morality. It might have completely different values, and it might just be having fun running the universe and letting some primates evolve morality, some aliens from another planet evolve some analog, or whatever. But there are a zillion combinations in which

So, you have not shown in any way that objective morality requires God.

Side note: if by "God" you do not mean an omnimax being, please explain what you mean by "God".

I can't make it any simpler than saying for morals to be objective truths it is required that we exist in a mind beyond ourselves.

The Creator is the foundation of the world (if He exists), He need not be in it in the way we are (ie, it may be in Him).

The Creator is a necessary being, whose morality is a necessary part of His inevitability. Good morals are creative morals because they build civilisations (insofar as civilisations are greater creative entities than more basic societies ). In other words, in order for the Creator to exist He must be the father of the correct morals, they are needed for the greatest creativity.

 

[apeman]

Your first point is correct.

Our refinement lies in the search for objective truths, objective truths themselves would be absolute....so for instance , there is never an occasion where killing people for fun is morally acceptable. So we agree again.

Killing people for fun should not be acceptable (morally speaking) for any society or culture.

Here is where your argument runs aground. You use the word "should." Who says so? Who is speaking? Are we to take your word as our command?

If you believe that some societies are of a higher order than others it is required that you believe some morals are higher than others. In which case one set of morals has more truth than another set ..so even if you have trouble believing in God you can believe in truth...or do you believe all societies are equal, that we can not possibly measure any difference in life potential between different societies?

 

[Tom Sawyer]

No, that's a fairly stupid thing to base it on. We should base it on common courtesy and respect for them as thinking and feeling human beings, not because of their midichlorian levels.

Regarding human life as having an element of the sacred about it raises its value a bit above something due mere "courtesy and respect", don't you think? Courtesy and respect doesn't extend to people you don't wish to impress for instance, whereas the "sacred" can extent to any old prick.

Why would you only show courtesy and respect to those whom you want to impress? That's a horrible attitude. Everybody merits those as a result of being human beings, not as a result of being someone you want to look good infront of.

 

[Bronzeage]

Here is where your argument runs aground. You use the word "should." Who says so? Who is speaking? Are we to take your word as our command?

If you believe that some societies are of a higher order than others it is required that you believe some morals are higher than others. In which case one set of morals has more truth than another set ..so even if you have trouble believing in God you can believe in truth...or do you believe all societies are equal, that we can not possibly measure any difference in life potential between different societies?

You start a sentence with the word "if" which gives me the impression you think I agree with the statement. I don't believe I ever mentioned orders of morals or their relative elevations. Nice try.

You also assume I have trouble believing in God, which is another misapprehension on your part.

As I stated before, your appeal to the authority of God puts you in an impossible position. Since the rest of us do not have access to the information you have, we must take your word for it. The word of an omnipotent being loses some of its salesmanship when filtered through the brain of a human.

One of the problems of the "God said so" morality is that there's always some other guy who says the same thing, but his morals allow him to stone adulterers and cut the hand off of a thief. Occasionally one of them will surgically remove the clitoris of a prepubescent girl. In each of these cases, we are assured God has sanctioned it all.

If we go with the One God idea, then a singularity cannot be in disagreement with itself. Therefore, either one or both of the humans are wrong. How can we measure any difference in life potential between different societies when each society claims the same authority?

What is "life potential"?