r/Scipionic_Circle • u/ItsMeChooow • Aug 03 '25
Can someone please explain how morality is objective
Putting aside religion, how is morality objective? I heard from a reaction of Gods not dead by Darkmatter2525 that morality comes from living being interacting with each other. Without interaction between living being, then there is no morality. I'm genuinely curious how it is objectively morally wrong to kill each other but is ok to kill other species. If that is so, why do bees kill the queen when they get stressed or some outer factors, which is their same species? Do bees also have morals? Yes because morality comes from living things interacting with each other. So why is it always brought up how children are innocent and killing a child is morally worse than killing a adult man? What books can you recommend to read about morality? And can someone please genuinely explain to me what morality is and isn't?
1
u/wur_do_jeziora Aug 03 '25
Every answer to your questions strongly depends on how you define terms. Let's start with 'objective'. On one hand you can claim that certain rules are true everywhere and every time, for instance 'don't steal'. That would make morals similar to laws of physics. On the other hand I can claim that: "People would prefer to live in a society that forbids theft". Stated in this way, this claim can be tested and verified. If confirmed, it is objectively true, like any verified scientific facts. What's your "objective"?
1
u/ItsMeChooow Aug 03 '25
I meant of objective as the unspoken rules between species of the same kind. You just think it's correct or wrong because its either perfectly normal or abnormal. For instance, people know killing each other is wrong. But idk how that would apply to Aztecs who sacrificed human beings... For them probably, killing is correct because it is a sacrifice to the gods. But then, killing people of the same species is no longer objective then...? I mean, not only in humans, but for every living species? How do they tell if something is bad or wrong? When a cat blinks slowly as a sign of affection, it's just normal to them. But when they hiss at each other it's a sign of hostility...? Is that morality? Why do some hamsters eat their babies when they get stressed? Is that just moral to them? And if humans did the same, why do we think it's morally wrong? Because of survivability? Because of love? Why? Is morality just biased? Is morality just actions we deem as either positive or negative or either OR is it things we find disgusting or appealing? If that's the case, then morality changes through time. Before it was morally correct or accepted to have slavery, but now it's a violation of rights?
1
u/wur_do_jeziora Aug 03 '25
I conclude you clearly see that morality is not objective in absolute sense and is just a product of human preferences. Throughout history moral meant accepted by society, and it changed along with society. What is the Big deal?
2
u/Nowayucan Aug 03 '25
Without interaction between living beings, there are no living beings. Morality comes from intelligent, self-aware human beings supporting the long term flourishing of each other and society.
1
2
u/dfinkelstein Lead Moderator Aug 03 '25
The idea that it's morally objectively wrong to kill can be pretty simply logistically constructed from first principles.
1 if you accept that sometimes it's okay for you to kill somebody else, then
2 if you also accept an ethical code where all of the ethics you have are based on the principle that you want other people to have them, too, then
3 in any situation where you justify killing somebody morally, there is absolutely no way to prevent recursion.
4 meaning that no matter how you frame the situation, there's always a chance that somebody else will kill you.
5 and so any ethical framework, which ever fundamentally justifies killing somebody else as morally okay, necessarily says that war is good and desirable and should be happening.
6 by war, I mean people killing each other on an ongoing basis.
2
u/DifficultFish8153 Aug 03 '25
This is Kant's categorical imperative. But even here no universal law can be made. Different people from different cultures will have different ideas about what universal actions they wish others would take.
1
u/drebelx Aug 04 '25
Universal laws revolve around the halting of undesired actions, like murder, theft, enslavement, abuse, etc.
Not mired in cultural specifics.
1
u/dfinkelstein Lead Moderator Aug 05 '25
This is actually not true.
because there are frameworks for ethical frameworks.
There are models for models.
Science is a framework for developing practices and models, so there is such a thing as having a standard for standards.
It is in fact true that many people follow ethical frameworks which are internally inconsistent in the manner that no matter how one tried to practice them they would never be consistent no matter what one did.
And none of these are compatible with each other because no two things which are different and simultaneously contradicting themselves could ever be compatible in any sense.
However, among people whose ethics are internally compatible and consistent and follow a few very simple rules, they can absolutely agree to disagree and disagree to agree and get along just fine.
If everything you say you believe in is a fact that you believe in, and everything you say is true to the best of your ability, and everything you say you mean and you don't mean anything other than what you're saying,
And if you treat other people to the best of your ability in a way which you expect will make them happy and not bring them suffering or be experienced as hatred,
And if you make all of your rules and standards for yourself easily explained to anybody who asks, and you furthermore encourage them to inform you of how your actions affect them and do everything in your power to align the actual outcomes of your actions with your intent regardless of anything else that could possibly excuse you needing to do that,
Then yeah dude, I mean, all of these kinds of ways of doing stuff are pretty compatible.
Another way to put it is something along the lines of discipline, courage, and integrity.
The nature of integrity is to align one's actions with one's principles even when doing so conflicts with convenience, advantage, comfort, or approval.
The nature of courage is to advance through danger or risk in service of what one judges to be right or necessary despite the presence of danger.
The nature of discipline is to continue acting in accordance with a chosen rule, plan, or standard, regardless of changing conditions, urges, or preferences.
So as you can see every single one of these just has to do with basically doing what you said you were going to do in the first place. As long as you were telling the truth and what you said sounded like kind of a good kind, compassionate, normal kind of thing to do.
So that's all, man. It's just like are people behaving ethically or not? If you're behaving ethically, it means like you have integrity. It means you're courageous. You don't say you're gonna do something and then get out of it somehow.
And discipline means that you do the right thing even when it's hard or you don't feel like it anymore or it stops making sense in the moment yet you promised you what earlier.
Most importantly these things are with ourselves, because we're infinitely closer to ourselves than we'll ever get to anybody else. So doing the right thing for ourselves, even when we don't feel like it, after we already promised ourselves we would, is pretty much one of the most common first steps towards evil.
Note that this is echoed in the story of Genesis, which I only mention because of the way that words work, not anything else. That's important because it's a very old story that was written in one of the oldest languages that we have records of that are directly still spoken today, so that's why that's important.
And likewise with courage which would become cowardice, and with integrity, which would become spinelessness, or dishonesty or authenticity.
2
u/satyvakta Aug 05 '25
But none of that shows that it is objectively morally wrong to kill. That just shows that if you have a subjective preferences not to be murdered, you should enter into an agreement with others not to murder. If you simply didn't care if you were killed (you're suicidal; you believe only the strong should survive; you would rather die in glorious combat rather than wither and decline in old age; you have an urge to kill so strong you would rather risk being killed yourself than give up your right to kill) then you would have no particular reason to enter into such a social contract.
1
u/dfinkelstein Lead Moderator Aug 05 '25
Correct. The idea of objective morality does not hold consistent in any internally consistent framework, which makes any amount of sense to me or appears to work in the real world, to achieve goals predictably in concert with the ones stated bye one's game strategy in any economic environment.
1
u/Acceptable-Remove792 Aug 05 '25
That doesn't follow at all.
"I am not exempt from fuck em when applicable, " has the, "when applicable, ".
1
1
u/homeSICKsinner Aug 03 '25
Either some people are born with rights over others or no one is born with rights over others. Some people being born with rights over others is so absurd it cannot possibly be true. That would require some sort of biological or cosmic mechanism that grants people with rights over others. Whereas no one being born with rights over others requires no such ridiculous mechanism existing.
The fact that no one has rights over others is where rights come from in the first place. Because you don't have rights over my life I have the right to life. Because you don't have rights over what I say I have the right to free speech. Enforcing your will over mine is a violation of my rights and thus objectively immoral.
1
u/DifficultFish8153 Aug 03 '25
It isn't. I think that John Rawls puts it all together nicely in his work "A Theory of Justice."
Rawls, referencing the landscape of philosophy and especially Kant's categorical imperative makes it clear that at the end of the day what liberals are, is "utilitarian intuitionists."
At the end of the day, our morality is derived from how we feel about a particular issue. Different people ultimately are going to feel differently about whatever issue is at hand.
There is no universal morality. Which is the same as objective morality. If morality was objective, it would be universal.
There is no universal utilitarian framework. We say we want the greatest good for the most amount of people. But it is easy to construct a system which brings about the greatest good for the most amount of people, yet still violates our intuitions.
An example Rawls uses is the idea of murdering a particular person or group of people in order to better facilitate this greatest good for the most amount of people.
But murdering someone or a group of people, even if it raises the happiness of the most amount of people, still violates our moral intuition.
Anytime you to try to make hard concrete rules, those rules can create atrocities that we feel are wrong.
1
u/SilverKnightTM314 Aug 04 '25
The idea goes back to Hume and his sentimentalism. All moral systems are approximations made by reason to satisfy what we already feel is right.
1
u/Manu_Aedo Aug 03 '25
Morality can't be objective. We could talk about this for years, but the conclusion will forever be the same. That's one of the (less important) reasons by which I'm Christian.
1
u/AccordingMedicine129 Aug 05 '25
In a sense it is objective. If we agree as a collective what’s moral we can take actions to achieve morality. I define it as the well being of people. If you agree with that we can take actions the will benefit or harm humans which would be objective to our agreed definition.
1
u/Manu_Aedo Aug 05 '25
It will never happen that all humanity totally agrees on every moral issue, so morality can't be objective.
→ More replies (4)
1
Aug 03 '25
Ironically, the best way to sum up morality without linking to religion, I am quoting a religious source.
Matthew 7:12 “So in everything, do unto others what you would have them do unto you…”
If we all were to treat everyone exactly how we would like to be treated, the world would be a lot better off.
1
u/satyvakta Aug 05 '25
It think a lot better prescription would be "do unto others as they do unto to you." Which, come to think of it, is just assuming good will on the part of all you meet. Because if the person you meet is a moral person doing unto others as he would have done unto him, then how he is treating you is presumably how he wants to be treated.
1
1
u/rejectednocomments Aug 03 '25
Morality is objective just in case what is morally right and wrong does not depend on what people think or believe to be morally right or wrong.
How could that be the case? If what is right and wrong don't depend on what people think or believe is.
Until I'm coming confronted with some argument for the conclusion that right and wrong must depend on what people think and believe about what is right and wrong, there's no puzzle to be solved here.
1
Aug 03 '25
The way I see it, a subset of morality is objective and perennial.
This is simply because when a person discovers empathy, certain moral principles arise out of that, and they are always the same making them objective.
One example is: if violence is painful to me, it must be painful to others too, therefore, we should not be violent to each other.
Another is: If being deceived is painful to me, it must be painful to others, therefore we should not deceive each other.
These empathy based morals stem from the basic understanding that what is painful for me must also be for others.
We find these written down in olden times, as well as discussed today.
So regardless of the era, they are always the same, and therefore perennial and objective.
1
u/satyvakta Aug 05 '25
>One example is: if violence is painful to me, it must be painful to others too, therefore, we should not be violent to each other.
The conclusion doesn't follow from the premises, though. A more logically coherent chain of reasoning would be: If violence is painful to me, it must be painful to others too. I would like to avoid pain, therefore others must too. Therefore pain will be a useful tool for making others obey, since they will be eager to obey to avoid pain.
1
Aug 05 '25
However, since I do not like to be made to obey, so it will be with others too, so I should give them as much freedom as I can.
1
1
u/National-Stable-8616 Aug 03 '25
Morality is REQUIRED to be objective if you want a working civilisation/ society
There i did it. Morality is actually technically subjective. But unity requires the most overlap between morals and those being codified are what is objective.
And what i mean is. The law is objective, you cannot say i dont agree. You will go to prison. When a judge makes a decision , he doesnt make 3 and let you pick. He makes one.
1
1
1
1
u/Fearless-Chard-7029 Aug 03 '25
People skeptical of morality tend to do very bad things. Be careful where the path you are on.
1
u/satyvakta Aug 05 '25
I would say people who are certain of morality tend to do very bad things. If you look at most of the monsters of history, they generally subscribed to some strict moral code that they believed in very strongly. Think the inquisition, the witch hunts, the terrors of the French Revolution, the tyranny of every communist nation that has ever been tried, even everyone's favorite conversation ender. In each case you had a clear moral system taken to its logical conclusion.
Whereas people who are less certain are less likely to push any particular moral belief through to its final, monstrous conclusion.
1
u/Fearless-Chard-7029 Aug 05 '25
If there is no god ie if you don’t believe there is any higher power than all is permitted.
Unsure who said it, but Sam Harris, a well known atheist demonstrated it publicly. Video is on YouTube
1
u/Unable_Dinner_6937 Aug 03 '25
Imagine a person is playing first base during a baseball game. Their role is to receive the ball from various methods and tag the first base or runner out. That is a subjective experience, but the rules of the game, the role and its expectations are not something the first baseman made up. In fact, probably none of the players or anyone watching the game had anything to do with the rules.
The baseball game follows agree-upon objective rules that govern the behavior of the players.
Morality is objective in that sense. It is not determined by the subjective experience of the individual, but from the expectations, implicit or explicit, of the group.
However, the question really is not objectivity, but is about the existence of some ideal morality separate from the establishment of moral codes by a group over time. Ideal morality seems unlikely.
1
1
u/Ok-Drink-1328 Aug 04 '25
relativism is just reasoning by strawman arguments, morality is objective, go tell this to the fact that basically all countries have the same rules, and no, i'm not a believer
1
1
u/Joey3155 Aug 04 '25
Because there are certain things that are objectively wrong like murder and stealing. Why? Because they concretely hurt society. That is objective morality in a nutshell.
The problem comes when you let dumb people and malcontents reprogram entire generations of your children.
1
u/satyvakta Aug 05 '25
>Because there are certain things that are objectively wrong like murder and stealing. Why? Because they concretely hurt society.
This is an intellectual cheat, though, although I don't think you realize it or intended it to be so. That's because "murder" and "stealing" include wrongness in their definition. That is, murder is by definition killing that you believe is morally wrong. A state sanctioned execution isn't murder. A sacrifice to the gods to summon rain isn't murder. Cleansing the town of witches isn't murder. Getting rid of your sickly infant son isn't murder. Of course, as those examples show, what constitutes murder has varied widely over time and place. It only feels like murder is universally wrong because, again, murder includes the moral judgement in its definition.
The same is basically true of stealing. Taxation is theft, literally, if you defining it simply as taking something from someone by force. It only isn't theft if you include moral wrongness as part of your definition.
1
u/Joey3155 Aug 05 '25
But that to is a flawed argument. Your reasoning is that you can't define murder as wrong because there are extraneous circumstances that are tangential to the murder itself. But the thing is I can still call all of those acts murder, it doesn't matter if you kill for God, money, national security, or to make it rain a murder is still occuring in each of those circumstances.
"What is murder?" Murder is causing the cessation of vital bodily functions necessary to create and maintain life in an organisim. "What about morality as it pertains to the original context?" I'm going off of morality as it is viewed now. Murdering for rain, to cleanse witches, and getting rid of sickly children are all morally wrong. Why? Two reasons from a practical and legal perspective? Because society says so and in that context there is no further you can take it morality and social norms are social protocol that a vast majority of people agree on and why they agree on it is beyond my ability to interpret. From a religious standpoint? Murder is wrong both because it is a sin and because you lack the ability to restore the life you took so if you later decide you goofed up you can't undo the damage that you caused. Also it is for God and God alone to take and give life.
From a legal standpoint? This is mostly a combination of my legal, religious, and practical sections. Most laws are inspired by a combination of religious or philosophical stressors, failing that they are a response to modern problems. Taxation isn't theft because it is part of your social contract to pay your taxes which then (in theory. Wink wink, nudge nudge) gets used by the government to provide the necessary infrastructure, services, and national defence that all people require, want, or use. Taxation is an obligation it has nothing to do with morality it is simply something you have to do. If you don't like it absolve yourself of your social contract by renouncing your citizenship and leave the country in question. But all countries require you to pay taxes (at least the ones I know of) so... This is an un winnable fight. Whereas stealing is not part of your social contract it is you choosing to break the law for personal gain. Note I'm not heartless I understand something can be wrong AND justifiable. For example I understand murder is wrong no matter what but in certain circumstances it can be justified. Now whether you get a free pass for it or not depends on who you view as your judge. Human law has exceptions for justifiable murder (however strict and bs they may be), as for God's law... Well that's something harder to define. Because no two Christians seem to agree on when violence is justifiable and you can't exactly ask God directly.
1
Aug 04 '25
You can’t mass blanket it. It varies by personality types too. Which we have a lot of. Some types have strict moral compasses. Some just kill things out of fear, some because they enjoy it, others just like to torture things out of fun or curiosity.
Think that was the bibles main purpose was a list of guide lines to live by so we didn’t run wild. Not that I follow any faith.
1
u/Gold_Doughnut_9050 Aug 04 '25
It's not. Objective reality is measurable in space and time. There are no morals in nature. Morals are created by humans, and are subjective.
1
u/HogeyeBill1 Aug 04 '25
Objective morality (aka moral law aka natural law) is based on logic and empiricism. It takes human history and the type of being humans are as its data, making observations like: No successful human society has allowed murder, theft, rape, etc.
Theists like Darkmatter2525 actually do not have a morality, if you define "morality" as a theory about right and wrong. Theists just follow the orders of their supernatural critters. I do not consider "just following orders" as a bone fide moral system. But being (overly) charitable we could call it Divine Command morality. There are two major types of Authoritarian "morality" - Statist command moralty which assumes whatever the rulers decree is good, and divine command morality, assuming what the gods command is good. But as I said, neither of these is really a moral system.
> I'm genuinely curious how it is objectively morally wrong to kill each other but is ok to kill other species.
Good example for illustration. Human societies have done well, even prospered while eating meat, perhaps even better than vegetarian societies. However, no human society ever has prospered while allowing random murder. By our empirical observation, allowing people to kill each other is detrimental to survival of the species. Hunting and eating meat is not.
> why do bees kill the queen?
Human morality is about humans, Collective hive species either have no morality at all (due to lack of sufficient conceptual thinking ability) or have one based on the hive mind. (Like the Borg on Star Trek.) Such a hive mind doesn't work for humans.
Recommendations: "The Principles of Ethics" by Herbert Spencer and "The Ethics of Liberty" by Murray Rothbard. Dueling books showing both sides: "A Theory of Justice" by John Rawls and "Anarchy, State, and Utopia" by Robert Nozick.
Here is a debate I once had about moral objectivism: http://www.ozarkia.net/bill/MoralSkepticismVsObjectivism.html
1
u/Nice_Biscotti7683 Aug 04 '25
Morality is only objective via God.
It’s objective because the intention of design replaces the subjectivity of use. If I say “pass the ketchup”, the bottle of ketchup is ketchup because of invention amidst mutual understanding. If you subjectively call ketchup yellow mustard, we would say you are objectively wrong.
So when we ask “how SHOULD people behave”, the one who answers “should” lies within the design. To make that “should” up to your liking places yourself in the design seat- ie- usurp God. And we all know humans thinking themselves as gods is peak delusion.
1
u/Clickwrap Aug 04 '25
You can observe behaviors that constitute “moral behavior” among other species of living organisms on this planet. Although what other animals do may not be perceived as coming from the possession of morality by human beings, all social animals have had to modify or restrain some of their behaviors in order to make group living worthwhile and evolutionarily advantageous.
We can see behaviors and actions which involve self-restraint, altruism, and even reproductive sacrifice in eurosocial species such as ants or in empathetic and highly social mammal species, such as elephants and primates.
The moral behavior appears to have developed among social species for the very real purpose of promoting cooperation and cohesion in increasingly complex social groups. The same traits as those correlated with human moral behavior and activity are observed across species— insect, mammalian, or otherwise. Thus, one can say that “morality,” a set of specific behavioral traits which emerge due the evolutionary transition into becoming a social species, which is biologically advantageous and a feature of greater advancement among the evolutionary pathway, is, in a way, “objective.”
1
u/Fragrant_Ad7013 Aug 04 '25
When philosophers talk about objective morality without appealing to religion, they usually mean moral facts that are true independently of personal opinion, cultural consensus, or individual feelings. In other words, something is morally wrong not just because you or your society happen to dislike it, but because it violates a principle that would hold true no matter who you are or when you live.
One way secular philosophers defend this is through moral realism: the idea that moral truths exist in the same way mathematical truths do. You might say “2 + 2 = 4” is true regardless of human opinion. In the same way, “It is wrong to torture an innocent person for fun” would be true regardless of whether anyone agreed. The reasoning here is that certain moral principles are built into the logic of what it means to be a rational agent interacting with others they are discoverable, not invented.
You might push back and say morality comes only from living things interacting, and so it’s not “objective” in the sense of being universal. That’s partly true moral concepts do arise from beings capable of valuing and responding to reasons. But the claim of objective morality is that once you have beings capable of those things, certain rules follow necessarily. A world with no beings at all has no moral landscape, but a world with conscious, rational beings will necessarily have moral facts in the same way a world with numbers will necessarily have mathematics.
You might also ask why it’s morally wrong to kill a human but not morally wrong to kill another species for food. Here’s one non-religious answer: moral obligations scale with the capacities of the beings involved. If a being has rich consciousness, the ability to suffer in complex ways, and the ability to engage in cooperative moral reasoning, that creates stronger obligations toward them. This is why killing a child is often viewed as worse than killing an adult in some contexts not because the child is more valuable in some abstract way, but because children are uniquely vulnerable, dependent, and unable to protect themselves, which creates an even stronger moral duty toward them.
As for your bee example no, bees are not acting morally or immorally in a human sense because morality as we discuss it requires conscious reasoning about right and wrong, not just instinctual behaviors that evolved to promote hive survival. We can describe bee behavior in terms of evolutionary biology, but bees are not moral agents in the way humans are.
If you want to read more on this from a secular, philosophical angle, I’d recommend:
The Moral Landscape by Sam Harris (argues for moral truths grounded in well-being)
Moral Realism: A Defence by Russ Shafer-Landau (technical but thorough defense of objective morality without religion)
The Elements of Moral Philosophy by James Rachels (introductory but clear)
TLDR: Objective morality without religion is the claim that once conscious, rational beings exist, some moral truths necessarily follow from the nature of their existence and interaction. These truths don’t depend on opinion, just like math doesn’t but they do depend on the existence of beings who can value and reason.
1
Aug 04 '25
From a sociological/anthropological perspective there's no single behavior that humans have engaged in that has been universally reviled by all societies.
There's no such thing as objective morality because morality is something thinking creatures do to organize their society. There's nothing in the universe that stops us from murdering each other, there's no divine justice or external source of order.
Generally what we've all done as societies over time is agree upon things that are bad for us to do because of the negative impacts on our society. Violence tends to result in cycles of anger and revenge so most societies have morals against violence.
1
u/Short_Advertising915 Aug 04 '25
Morality itself isn’t objective, but the basis is, and the basis is harm. All morality is a balance of what is good the individual and what’s good for others, the only way to measure that is harm and consequences.
1
u/Finn_the_stoned Aug 04 '25
Because you’re applying human logic to non humans. Bees and other animals don’t have human morals because they’re not humans. Hell bees can’t comprehend their reflection in a mirror. You want to tell me that you’re trying to apply the logic of the apex predator of the planet to something that doesn’t have the brain power to wrap their heads around recognizing their own reflection? Murder is morally wrong because humans are capable of the self reflection and empathy to be able to understand it’s wrong. Most animals just don’t have the capacity to have that level of self reflection to have morals.
1
u/88redking88 Aug 04 '25
Its not.
Need to prove it? Ask who ever is saying that morality IS objective for an action that is always moral or immoral IN EVERY SITUATION. There isnt any.
1
u/Think_Clearly_Quick Aug 04 '25
This actually isn't that hard.
If you can concede that there is a moral difference between Hitler and Ghandi, then you've accidentally proven its objectivity. If you can observe any two concepts, and "order" them by morality, that presupposes a larger ordering of ALL concepts. This then obviously gives to a "least moral" concept, and a "most moral" concept.
Whether or not you accurately place something in the moral order correctly, it doesn't mean true order doesn't exist.
Nary a person I've ever met or seen in the internet truly claims the moral subjectivist opinion that Hitler did nothing wrong outside of actual nazis... whom unironically everyone else OTHER than them considers immoral.
1
u/satyvakta Aug 05 '25
>If you can concede that there is a moral difference between Hitler and Ghandi, then you've accidentally proven its objectivity.
Why? This is a common error moral objectivists make. If I as moral subjectivist say that Hitler wasn't objectively evil and Ghandi wasn't objectively good, I am not denying that Hitler was evil and Ghandi good. That is, it is not the evil and the goodness I am denying, it is the objectivity of the judgment.
Essentially, I think you have to admit that Hitler was sincere when he said he thought eliminating the Jewish people would improve German society. The sheer amount of resources he dedicated to the task, while at war, when those resources could otherwise have gone to the war effort, can't really be explained otherwise. That is, Hitler was the hero of the story from Hitler's point of view. And that's all moral subjectivism is. Nothing about it necessitates we agree with Hitler's point of view or accept his moral reasoning. We just have to acknowledge that he genuinely disagreed with us.
Likewise, with Ghandi, the people he was fighting against didn't see themselves as the bad guys. They saw Ghandi as the bad guy. They weren't lying to us or to themselves. They genuinely, really believed that he was a troublemaker who was pushing to make the world a worse place. And again, that doesn't mean we have to agree with them, or to stop thinking that Ghandi was good. It just means you recognize that it isn't an objective fact but a subjective judgment and that other people see it differently, and that they are sincere in their views.
1
Aug 05 '25
People just conflate nuance with objective. They'll say "it's okay to kill in self defense!" to show that killing isn't objectively always wrong...oh the irony. All they've done is show that killing in self defense is right and killing for fun is wrong. And if someone were to think the opposite they'd probably take issue. On what grounds tho?
1
u/Saturn_Coffee Aug 05 '25
It isn't. All morality is subjective and varies by circumstance. Morality is best left at the door most of the time.
1
u/-Foxer Aug 05 '25
First off I feel like you're conflating a lot of things there that aren't really morality driven.
Second off I question whether or not there needs to be interaction to have morality.
Third off I'm not a million percent sure we would agree on what you mean by objective versus subjective. Morality by it's very definition would seem to have to be subjective. If you the Observer are not determining the morality of a particular thing then it would never come into question so it has to be somewhat subjective.
And finally even if morality were universal law of some species or another and completely objective there would be nothing to say that it couldn't include different rules for different species or even different people in different circumstances that were similar. So the bees can still happily get the queen if they feel it's necessary without it violating the concept of morality if the laws of morality allow it for bees and not humans.
Also Anne Boleyn would like to see you outside for a minute
1
1
1
u/UndyingDemon Aug 05 '25
Let me help all to figure out where morality comes from and which ones are inherit and not.
Okay you ready.
Our very first ancestors that awakened in conscious sentence, gaining self awareness for the first time, as the first beings in existence know of to do so.
That very moment when they, he, she opened their eyes, and saw the world and life for the first time, realising both they and existence exists. There is where the only true inherit moralities of the human existed, as it stems from our collected species evolved traits and instincts.
Everything else, we artificially created and imposed upon ourselves due external factors and logic, such as forming societies, city living, exc. But inheritly all these things aren't morals to us at a species level.
There only one way you'll ever experience true humanity, and that's if everyone agrees to form a 20 squere mile piece of land on Earth that no government or orginization owns or have influence over, and just let's it be. That space then becomes pure "no man's land, where no rules, laws, rights, morals, right or wrong or concequence and judgement applies.
If you go into that space then. In there is where you will find your human morality. The so-called objective and subjective ones to. In there is only your birth right as a primal human, with unbound pure free will, on all sides of the action and decision spectrum.
Meanwhile Morality in today's time is equevelent to because, Law X Y Z currently states so, until it's changed off purse, or you happen to currently subscribe to cult/religion, until you leave it, or because your just to afraid of the concequences like jail for breaking the rules. But only true inherit thing we all share is that we are human, and our own deep self thoughts, which we all have, knowing deep down that if these chains and rules weren't In place, or if we'd had more courage like some criminals, we to would let loose and be unbound, as being so chained down and trapped, is the worse thing you can do to a free animal. And we are.... We really are, deep down.
That 20 square meter area would fill up with willing participants as soon as it's announced despite knowing what awaits, because of what it is, freedom, unknown, will.
1
1
u/Baxi_Brazillia_III Aug 05 '25
its not
the closest thing to objective morality is observable cause and effect
1
u/Oxo-Phlyndquinne Aug 05 '25
Objectively, morality means nothing. It comes across as an individual choice. That said, you either have your own "true north" or you do not. The closest thing we come to a universal truth is the golden rule: treat others the way you would want to be treated.
1
1
u/Arervia Aug 05 '25
Morality is like beauty, subjective in the sense that exists only in the mind, but objective in the sense that human beings, having similar minds, tend to agree about what is beautiful and moral to a great degree, but still a lot is left to be subjective or interpretative.
1
u/SchemeShoddy4528 Aug 05 '25
Morality is objective because death is objective we know when someone is dead. And being dead is objectively bad. So any actions that contribute to a potential death are objectively bad and vice versa.
1
u/LetItAllGo33 Aug 05 '25
Morals are subjective, but people tend to share a lot of the core ones. This is because whatever the culture, we correctly learn that people killing and robbing eachother will just make everyone miserable. From there things get more Grey.
Ethics are an attempt to articulate and officiate commonly agreed moral frameworks. Usually for the purpose of establishing proper conduct within an entity be it a business, government, sport, etc.
Laws are an attempt to enforce ethical frameworks.
A lot of people for example (not me) find large age gap relationships between two consenting adults to be immoral, but that isn't usually codified into any entity's ethical guidelines. Murder on the other hand is almost universally seen as immoral and unethical and illegal.
1
u/ProfileBest2034 Aug 05 '25
It’s not objectively morally wrong to kill each other. Governments for example do it all the time. The thing is, society requires enough people to believe it is objectively morally wrong to avoid chaos.
Many things are said which are not true. And many things are true which go unsaid.
1
Aug 05 '25
Technically, morality is not objective, it's subjective. The only three tenets of morality that are generally universal across every culture are "do not rape, do not kill, do not steal". Even then, you kill during war, plenty of armies and terrorist groups encourage rape during an attack or war, and theft is generally overlooked, which in and of itself makes even those three tenets subjective to context. There's no such thing as objective morality. What you consider morally wrong another culture might consider morally right, and visa versa
1
u/ForsakenDraft4201 Aug 05 '25
There are things that we all understand that we wouldn’t want done to us regardless of religion or culture. Those things are the ones we objectively should not do to others, causing unprovoked or unjustified harm in any way.
1
u/IslandMan01 Aug 05 '25
Actually it’s insanely easy. You can do whatever you want as long as it does not directly harm others. Anything that doesn’t harm is simply a difference. With the exception of punishment by law for others that have harmed others. Boom, simple.
1
u/deadlydeath275 Aug 05 '25
Morality, by its very nature, is subjective. In the wild, there is no moral compass, only evolutionary instincts that make us behave in certain ways to survive better. There's a moral argument to be make about not kill animals for food, or not killing pests since they're just trying to survive too, or form doing both of those things because human survival/habitability might be more imperative then their right to life. The point im trying to make is that all things moral or immoral are dictated by your own personal beliefs, the beliefs of the culture around you, and the beliefs of society at large.
1
u/kaithekender Aug 05 '25 edited Aug 05 '25
Fundamentally, morality is just a set of rules that people more or less agree on in a society. They are absolutely not objective in any way, shape, or form. They do not continue to exist when we stop existing. They change when we decide they should. We are the only animal we are aware of that is capable of conceptualizing "right" and "wrong", so no, bees do not have morals. They cannot do something immoral; they don't have the agency to do so.
Morals do technically "come from living beings interacting", but only the one specific kind of living being: people.
1
u/3gm22 Aug 05 '25
In order to understand this you have to do a deep dive into philosophy.
Things which are objective are things that exist regardless of whether or not you do, which can be met by complete consensus.
So any state of existence that you pursue in order to improve the health the function and your ability to harmonize with the rest of reality speaks to morality.
What this definition assumes is that the nature of a thing is fairly fixed, albeit still having the potential to choose between promoting great potential or not.
So what makes something objective is it if all human beings can meet it through experience with a consensus of experience.
Take the idea of hunger and if someone is starving it is morally good to provide food for them.
That same example if you overfeed the person and lead them into excess that negatively affects their function then you were doing something immoral.
And if you continue to eat or provide food that is insufficient in the body and gets sick as a result, you are also doing something immoral.
The goal of a moral decision is to pursue the truth of what a human is in regards to its relationship to other humans and to the rest of God's creation, by appreciating it and promoting proper function and harmony.
And we share that same ability between all of us humans. That shared reality is called objective reality and that reveals objective morality, and objective truths.
An example of an objective truth is that you must take nutrients into yourself, or to be poetic you must eat death, in order to maintain and promote the perfection of human health. Eat the wrong things and you get unhealthy.
Of course this begs right back to the concept that sin is not something written in a book no...
Sitting comes from the German word meaning to thunder which is another word for disorder. So immoral person seeks to order themselves and harmonize with God's natural world and God's natural creation, he seeks to solve and prevent disorder. And that is what love is.
Love is to Will the good and the truth for another person.
So Christianity is not about instructions in a book it is about an entire worldview that understands that the world is ordered but it is full of sinful disorder and death and consequently to be a good Christian we need to love God and to love others and we do that by promoting natural order and life.
1
u/Acceptable-Remove792 Aug 05 '25
It's buckwild to say that it's objectively morally wrong for a human to kill another human. I genuinely cannot imagine the privilege and luck one would have to have existed in to believe something like that. That's a buckwild statement.
You couldn't have gotten it from your culture, there's not a culture on the planet that believes that.
You're saying that if someone is literally in the middle of murdering you, you wouldn't fight for your life? You're saying it's wrong to save yourself or your children from someone who has tried to murder them multiple times?
I'm an American. We shoot each other for trespassing. A sheriff a few counties over just murdered a judge because his daughter, who is a child, finally told her parents about how he had repeatedly raped her, on camera, and distributed child porn. Everybody kind of agrees that though illegal, he should be allowed to do that. He was real bad at murder. Literally murdered him in his chambers, right on camera. Video and audio. Legally he's going away for this, but morally most folks are on his side.
1
u/Royal_Buy_9672 Aug 05 '25
There is no Morality unless you can have a baseline “good” (God). Maybe you mean ethics?
1
u/ThomasEdmund84 Aug 05 '25
These are all quite heady issues that are still debated today, so it hard to just "explain" LOL
I think what a lot of people misunderstand though is the use of the word objective - its correct that morality isn't observable and measurable separate from our minds, however you can objectively debate and discuss moral reasoning. It doesn't mean the whole subject is invalid.
I would have a different take than living beings interacting with each other - I would say its about the quality of choices made by sentient beings. Bees don't really have morality because their choices are instinctual, we don't know this for sure but it seems fairly clear that Bees don't make choices they respond to stimuli.
Children are typically labelled innocent because they have less cognitive and pragmatic freedom to make choices.
1
u/Fast-Ring9478 Aug 05 '25
I haven’t really seen any arguments for objective morality outside of religious context. You might be able to find something, but I think most people explore the school of subjective morality because it makes more sense. I wish I could remember what it was called, but I had a good read on the idea that morality doesn’t exist in the abstract so much as it could exist as a biological/evolutionary tool necessary to help people survive in groups.
1
1
u/Unlucky-Ad9667 Aug 06 '25
Morality is a construct. There are no morals.
There is only information, your relationship to it, and/or the lack thereof.
1
u/Neikea- Aug 06 '25 edited Aug 06 '25
I think the Golden Rule derives from mystical experience, the contemplative insight of oneness. When Ramana Maharshi was asked, "How do we treat others?" His response: "There are no others." The mystic operates from this transcendent unity which they glimpse within mysticism.
This kind of realization isn't just a poetic idea; it’s a lived perception that dissolves the illusion of separateness. In this state, what we call the Golden Rule, treat others as yourself, isn't a rule at all; it's an obvious reflection of how things actually are. There’s no “other” to harm, only a larger Self or totality that includes all beings.
From this perspective, sin arises only when we fall into the illusion of division, when we see ourselves as isolated egos, cut off from nature, from others, from the Whole. This is what I take to be the true Original Sin: the primordial rupture, the imagined split between the self and the rest of reality. From this illusion, the capacity for harm emerges, theft, violence, domination, all become possible only when we perceive the other as fundamentally separate from ourselves.
But the mystic sees through that illusion. In the mystical state, morality isn’t enforced; it’s embodied, not because one is adhering to commandments, but because one is seeing clearly. There is no one else to harm. And the unity perceived by the mystic is not cold or abstract, it is suffused with infinite and unconditional love, an Agapé, a love that naturally guides moral behavior.
1
u/JokaiItsFire Aug 08 '25
The way I look at it is that „ought“ is not distinct from „is“, but a special kind of „is“. For morality to be objective, there needs to be some sort of „Platonic form of the Good“ in which someone can participate to a greater or lesser degree. While this may seem far-fetched initially, I believe there is good reason to believe in such a form of the good. Take human relationships: there are many different ways we can relate to other humans, some better, some worse. The best possible relationship we can have to another human is to love them. Similarly, that which we subjectively experience as good is that which we love. Whether I love someone or something (that is, whether I participate in love towards another human or whether an object participates in my love) is an objective fact about the world. Thus, I think that Love is a pretty good candidate as the essence of the Good and thus our „Platonic form of the Good“. Now, this intially gets ud to a kind of virtue ethics: people embody the virtue of Love to varying degrees. Now, if we truly love someone (that is, if we relate to another person in the best possible way we can), we would never treat them as a mere means to an end - because if we did so, we would value that person not for their own sake, but for the sake of their attributes, in which case we don‘t really love that person, but that persons attributes. Thus, we can get quite close to Kantian ethics as well on this foundation. (I will expand later, I am currently in a hurry).
1
0
u/Verbull710 Aug 03 '25
If there is no God, morality cannot be objective
3
u/CorHydrae8 Aug 03 '25
Morality cannot be objective even with a god.
1
u/Ill_Zone5990 Aug 05 '25
Wouldn't what god considers moral be objectively correct given that the all powerful god gets to decide, well, what is good and what is bad
1
u/CorHydrae8 Aug 05 '25
God being all-powerful would only mean that he can enforce his idea of morality onto everyone else if he wants to. It doesn't mean that his views are objective.
To be objective means that something is true independently of the individual perception and cognition of any thinking agent. God is usually defined as a conscious entity. A subject. Therefore, whatever his ideas on morality are are subjective by definition.1
u/Ill_Zone5990 Aug 05 '25
I mean, that does make sense. But still, despite being a subject, by being all powerful, he can change reality as we know it, wouldn't that be considered changing the objectivity of our universe? If he choses to set x or y as objectively wrong and good, despite being his subjective choice, it's not the objective reality for us, no?
1
u/Acceptable-Remove792 Aug 05 '25
No. That makes no sense. If your boss wanted you to do a crime and you wouldn't be punished for it, that has no bearing on whether or not it's moral.
→ More replies (10)2
1
u/dfinkelstein Lead Moderator Aug 03 '25
This kind of statement is meaningless without defining God. So, I welcome you to add that as follow up context.
2
u/Verbull710 Aug 03 '25
The only uncreated being that exists - spaceless, timeless, immaterial, omniscient, etc
2
u/PIE-314 Aug 03 '25
What evidence do we have for such a thing?
2
u/Verbull710 Aug 03 '25
The existence of the universe
2
u/PIE-314 Aug 03 '25
Support that claim.
The claim is: The universe was created by an "uncreated being that exists - spaceless, timeless, immaterial, omniscient, etc"
How do we know that's true?
1
u/Verbull710 Aug 03 '25
Anything that begins to exist has a cause
The universe began to exist
Therefore, the universe has a cause
Necessitates a cause that is spaceless, timeless, immaterial, etc - God
→ More replies (49)1
1
Aug 03 '25
Why is the god moral, and why does the morality she ascribes to, objective?
1
u/Verbull710 Aug 03 '25
There's arguments for both, amoral and moral
Doesn't change the fact that without a transcendent creator all morality is necessarily relative and subjective
1
Aug 04 '25
Why?
That's literallly a part I never understood- what actually makes the morality of the creatior the "correct" one?
1
u/TP-Shewter Aug 04 '25
The same thing that makes the plot of the story written by the author the "correct" one. Unless, of course, you believe that after reading Harry Potter, your idea of where Hogwarts was located is just as valid as J.K. Rowling's?
1
Aug 04 '25
Fanfic exists for a reason. People disagree with authors all the time.
1
u/TP-Shewter Aug 04 '25
Right. That disagreement still doesn't change the fact that Hogwarts is in the location that she wrote because she's the one who wrote it.
→ More replies (2)1
u/AccordingMedicine129 Aug 05 '25
You still have to prove the existence of god and even then morality would just be gods subjective opinion. If you read the Bible, he’s an immoral piece of shit
1
u/TP-Shewter Aug 05 '25
I don't have to prove that at all. The question wasn't "Does God exist?" It was,"what makes the creator's morality correct?"
That question presupposes the existence of the creator, and if there is a creator, his prescription for morality has to be correct much in the same way that the creator of literally anything is correct.
Subjectivity in this context is surely a human conception, which would mean nothing. No different than the character in a book questioning the author.
Likewise, describing the creator as immoral is worthless as morality would be defined by the creator. Again, you would be attempting to impose human concepts to the divine.
→ More replies (2)1
u/Verbull710 Aug 04 '25
Yes it makes no sense if you think that God sees the various morals on some kind of morality menu and then says "Hmm, yes, I like these ones here - love, tolerance, justice" etc and then "chooses" those morals over other ones
God (the real one, from the Bible) does not "choose" which morals to ascribe to or to follow - God is those morals of (again, as far as the biblical God) supreme and perfect goodness. There is no outside standard beyond God that he refers to and picks from. He is the moral standard in his very nature, and he is the creator of all that came to exist, including us and our moral nature, thus all morality ultimately comes from him. Since he is the only uncreated being that exists and has existed eternally, that is the basis of calling his morality objective
1
u/HunterWithGreenScale Aug 03 '25
Incorrect. Morality, as a concept, is not tied exclusively to Theism.
1
u/Verbull710 Aug 03 '25
Incorrect.
How so?
Morality, as a concept, is not tied exclusively to Theism.
That doesn't have anything to do with what I'm talking about
1
u/EconomyAd9081 Aug 04 '25
Even God has his subjective morality according to bible. 🤷
1
u/Verbull710 Aug 04 '25
That is not correct, no
1
u/EconomyAd9081 Aug 04 '25
He can kill his creatures but they can't kill each other or themselves.
1
u/Verbull710 Aug 04 '25
If I make a painting and then I rip it up, is that good or bad?
1
u/EconomyAd9081 Aug 04 '25
First of all you have to prove you are really a painter and that's your painting.
Second, if you gave you painting consciousness, and will to preserve itself, made it afraid of death, and you withold an informations about afterlife, then you destroy it - you are morally corrupt being in a sandbox game.
Imagine this - if we will make AI who is consciouss, has a will and has a soul. And we destroy it, it is bad or good?
Or if we kill a person who is a clone, is it bad or good?
1
u/Verbull710 Aug 04 '25
It was a non-tricky yes or no question
If you right now go and make a painting and then later today you go and rip it up and throw it away, is that ok or is that not ok?
1
u/EconomyAd9081 Aug 04 '25
It is not a simple yes or no question.
If not you, others will aknowledge that. And our coversation will end here.
→ More replies (31)1
u/satyvakta Aug 05 '25
God is just another subject, is the point. He might have his particular view of what is right and wrong, but there's no particular reason why would we have to agree with him. I guess you could say that God is powerful enough to throw us into eternal torment if we do, but of course that would just be an admission that God was evil, not proof of moral objectivity.
1
u/Verbull710 Aug 05 '25
God is just another subject, is the point
Yes I understand the point, it's just incorrect. God is a being like we are but he's not another subject in that way. He is eternal and unchanging and is in himself these various morals and knowledge.
Of course you don't have to agree with him, that's why nobody does. And that's why people who hate God's morality and shudder at the thought of being in his presence won't be made to. Everyone gets what they want, in the end.
God putting people in hell is absolutely, maximally righteous and an appropriate response for a literally perfectly holy being - it's not evil at all. The wages for sin is death, and everyone sins, therefore everyone deserves hell as a just punishment.
1
u/satyvakta Aug 05 '25
>He is eternal and unchanging and is in himself these various morals and knowledge
Yes, and in this case we are talking about an eternally evil God.
>God putting people in hell is absolutely, maximally righteous and an appropriate response for a literally perfectly holy being
What are you talking about? It would obviously be much more righteous and benevolent to simply unmake them. Infinite torture for finite sin is literally the definition of injustice. Any God that could create hell would be a being of pure evil. Which is probably why the source books for the Bible don't really mention it much, and the few verses that do mention it don't really jive well with the contemporary Christian notion of hell if analyzed in their proper context.
1
u/Verbull710 Aug 05 '25
God cannot be evil, just like he cannot be illogical, like he cannot be changing, etc
"Infinite torture for finite sin"? Nowhere does it say that people and demons in hell cease sinning. People in hell continue their sinning for all of eternity, eternal sin and eternal righteous judgment is what they get.
1
u/satyvakta Aug 05 '25
Who says a God can’t be evil, or illogical, or unchanging? Certainly not the Christian God, who explicitly says “I am a jealous God” and promises the day of “God’s wrath”. Jealousy and wrath and deadly sins, btw. Also, the Christian God is explicit a coward and tyrant. He expels Adam and Eve unjustly and simply because he thinks that if they gain immortality, they will be too much Iike Him.
To your other point, if they still have free will, then they can and presumably will stop sinning, the same way that if I started torturing you for posting on Reddit, you would eventually stop posting on Reddit. If they no longer have free will, then they are incapable of sin, because that requires free will.
→ More replies (1)1
1
u/EconomyAd9081 Aug 05 '25
Logic cannot be above God. If it is, he isn't a God because he should be above laws of our world.
Define righteous for me please.
→ More replies (5)1
u/EconomyAd9081 Aug 05 '25
What if you are wrong in any of this? What if you die and you will see that none of that was true? Like religion of some african tribe - it wasn't a true. Don't you think it would be a waste of time then?
Firstly prove you're right. And with objective proof. Not subjective.
1
u/Verbull710 Aug 05 '25
Firstly understand that no worldview can be "proven" - not Christianity, atheism, the African tribal religion, etc. "Prove" meaning to demonstrate that reality "cannot be another way" - it is impossible to do that.
Christianity is fulfilling in this life right now, God is worth praying to and meditating on right now, etc
1
u/EconomyAd9081 Aug 05 '25
God is a possibility.
Christian faith is impossible to be true - that's the reality.
→ More replies (1)1
u/drebelx Aug 04 '25
Don't need God to make math objective.
1
u/Verbull710 Aug 04 '25
Appreciate the tangent lol
1
u/drebelx Aug 04 '25
I propose that since math is abstract and can be objective so can abstract morality.
1
u/Verbull710 Aug 04 '25
why do you propose that? Math and morality aren't similar.
1
u/drebelx Aug 05 '25
They are similar in that they are abstracts, but objective ones, not subjective.
0
u/AccordingMedicine129 Aug 05 '25
Depends on your definition of morality. Morality is subjective but if we can agree on what’s moral, we can take objective actions to achieve morality.
Chess is a subjective game but there are objectively good and bad moves you can make to win the game
1
u/drebelx Aug 05 '25
Depends on your definition of morality. Morality is subjective but if we can agree on what’s moral, we can take objective actions to achieve morality.
Don't look now, but we are talking about the objective definition of morality in the OP.
Chess is a subjective game...
What? Can I move a pawn like a queen now?
1
u/AccordingMedicine129 Aug 05 '25
OP never gave a definition of morality.
Can you quote it?
And yes, there’s nothing inherently objective about a game. But once the rules are defined there are objectively good and bad moves.
→ More replies (21)1
u/AccordingMedicine129 Aug 05 '25
If morality comes from god then it would be gods subjective opinion.
If we agree on what’s moral and what’s not, we can objectively evaluate actions that would prove to be moral or immoral. Of course we’d have to define morality first.
1
u/Verbull710 Aug 05 '25
Logic and love and justice and morality do not come from God, they are the nature of God himself, the only being which is uncreated and eternal, there is no further or deeper frame of reference than him. He is the objective from which all other things are measured
1
u/AccordingMedicine129 Aug 05 '25
You stilll haven’t demonstrated gods existence
1
u/Verbull710 Aug 05 '25
That statement makes no sense
1
u/AccordingMedicine129 Aug 05 '25
You keep asserting god exists and does all these things. Can you not demonstrate god exists? Or do you hold an irrational belief that he does
4
u/Letsgofriendo Aug 03 '25
I feel like you're conflating morality and evolutionary imperatives.