FRDB Archives

Freethought & Rationalism Archive

The archives are read only.


Go Back   FRDB Archives > Archives > IIDB ARCHIVE: 200X-2003, PD 2007 > IIDB Philosophical Forums (PRIOR TO JUN-2003)
Welcome, Peter Kirby.
You last visited: Yesterday at 05:55 AM

 
 
Thread Tools Search this Thread
Old 02-24-2003, 09:23 PM   #1
Junior Member
 
Join Date: Dec 2001
Location: Columbus, Ohio
Posts: 14
Default objective/subjective morality

I'm about to post this in a less friendly environment elsewhere. Can someone see any big gaping holes in my reasoning? Thanks...
------------------------------------------------------
Some people can get into the habit of thinking "objective" good and "subjective" bad. A few people of rely on their subjective interpretations of ancient prose to determine what an objective morality is. What a Mormon may consider a moral from God, a Baptist may deny based on the same texts.
I can claim a much more objective standard if I wanted to. In this moral framework whatever my best friend says is my moral standard. If he appears to change his mind, its ok since he sets all the standards by what I deem correct anyway. It doesn't matter that he is not omnipotent. Only that I assign him the authority to determine my morality. To me he has become omnibenevolent and so its not my concern what he bases his own standard on. And its objective in the sense that its not open to or colored by my interpretations. I'm not left wondering if my interpretations of what someone wrote about him would is enough to answer a particularly difficult situation. If I ask my friend what the correct thing to do in any situation is I take his answer as the moral thing to do. He is completely unambiguous is his replies. I can ask for a clear and concise clarification for any particular situation. I can ask if knowingly using an illegal copy of Windows XP that my sister installed on my machine is immoral and my friend can tell me exactly whether it is or not. Reading ancients text to see if using pirated software is immoral is a matter of interpretation. One person may be able to find support for or against with enough interpretation. I can't call God on the phone and say "Hey, I lied when the Nazi's came looking for Jews in my house, was that immoral?". I can ask my friend though and he will tell me "yes" or "no" directly.
The problem with this situation though is what if my friend tells me to do something to a loved one that I don't think is nice. He is my objective morality so how could I never see from a third person perspective that maybe this "objective" thing isn't necessarily a good thing.
And this is problem I see when some believers in a objective morality based on a subjective interpretation of a book looking at the women and children their god allegedly drowned during the Great Flood and saying "God determines morality so he can't have done anything immoral in that act. He creates good. He created us." Without the ability to stand back and look at the situation from another point of view, whats to stop something malevolent from becoming anyone's god if they can't question whether it is good because they simply define it to be so?
CyberPretzel is offline  
 

Thread Tools Search this Thread
Search this Thread:

Advanced Search

Forum Jump


All times are GMT -8. The time now is 12:26 AM.

Top

This custom BB emulates vBulletin® Version 3.8.2
Copyright ©2000 - 2015, Jelsoft Enterprises Ltd.