Wednesday, December 30, 2009

The Religious Do Not Have an Objective Moral Standard

An apparent hit-and-run commenter thought (if you can call it that) to bring in the ol' objective morality tripe:

Morality must be linked to some truth, yup the big "T-word." Sorry, you can't get away from it. What is the truth? That's a whole 'nother discussion.
I'm almost disappointed the commenter did not quote Dostoevsky, but I'm also unsurprised that he (assuming the commenter is a male) chose to introduce a big, vague concept - capital-t truth - without describing it at all. Instead, he wanted to skip away blithely with cotton in his ears and holy lenses distorting his sight.

The poor commenter's point has been refuted since the time of Socrates, yet people STILL raise the point continually, as if it's news. Anyway, perhaps people will review this video before they think again of posting the "I-have-an-objective-standard-of-morality-while-your-morality-is-all-a-matter-of-personal-opinion" rubbish.

I hope it shuts them up, but they don't respond well to reason, so I doubt it.



As has been noted before, the objective morality of the religious usually and conveniently projects the moralizer's personal preferences onto "what God wants."

2 comments:

  1. It's interesting how most people need there to be an objective moral standard. As a species we don't deal well with uncertainty, and I suppose the lack of a definitive guide for behavior is disturbing.

    Even the self-appointed atheist spokesmen like Dawkins spend an inordinate amount of time defending athiests' morality. This despite the fact that even if it were true that one can't be moral without God, that's just an appeal to consequences.

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  2. G*3, I agree that it's interesting. It's also complicated.

    I differ with you on your comment regarding Dawkins. My sense of his argument has been not that atheists are oh-so-moral but that religion does not confer morality.

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