xaoshaen wrote:Yamori wrote:xaoshaen wrote:Yamori wrote:I've given my reasons and explanations for why morality is objective in other discussions, and I've described my idea of what that objective morality is in good enough detail. It would be useless to go on, I'd just be repeating myself.
Well, you could actually try answering the objections raised to your rationale.
Whats the point? Anything I say will just be replied with, "Yeah, YOUR morality."
I've already replied to that point in another post, why do it again? I've stated why I think morals aren't relative to cultures or individuals already. We'd just go in circles.
Try and step outside of your own sense of morality. Justify it by something other than "I believe". Provide an external baseline by which all morality can be judged.
Why? Who says morality *is* externally based? I mean, looking at 'western morality', over the few hundred years, slavery went from 'divinely sanctioned' to 'horrible moral evil', and most of the West went from 'killl them for theft over a shilling' to banning the death penalty. The Bible stayed the same, so obviously people's opinions changed.
Morality is a social construct. Some things tend to be common across societies as basic rules. But when Sargon or Hammurabi or Solon passed laws against parricide, it wasn't based on the Bible, was it?
I've run into the people who claim 'if I wasn't a good Christian, who knows how I'd behave' -- like the only thing stopping them from rape and murder is the 10 Commandments. Personally, these people creep me out - I really wonder if they're sane, seriously.
I'm agnostic, and it isn't fear of hellfire that stops me from murdering people. I don't do it because random violence hurts everyone in society, including me. No God is involved in my morality, tho' I do admit Jesus had some good ideas, at least until Paul got into the act and took over the religion and screwed a lot of it up. Tho' the fig tree thing doesn't make much sense to me, and that was Jesus.
If I had to pick a religion I'm comfortable with, Rinzai Zen. Soto, not so much.
Kwatz!
--R.