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bobogeeg t1_j5ita4h wrote

I saw a video today that sparked my interest and I wanted to open up a discussion about objective morality.
The claim in said video was that atheists cannot have an "objective morality" if they do not believe in a god/religious laws (etc).
The comments had a lot of discussion about whether or not objective morality exists/if it can come from the inner self/etc but I didn't see any comments about how objective morality is bad.
Unless you can prove that there is a law/rule that would be objectively moral in every possible situation, objectivity is bad. Let me explain: Pretend there are no government laws and the only rules that define society are religious texts. Hypothetical text says: "You shall not kill." Many would consider this an objective moral posed to them by their god, right? But are there not some situations, no matter how rare, at least one, in which murder would be the moral thing to do? To murder one person to save the planet, even? This puts religious people with the above claim in a double bind because they must either concede that you must follow religious laws at all costs, even where it would cause harm, in order to be objective (which would be bad in the cases it causes harm) or they have to concede that in some cases you must break these rules in which they would not be objective.
Therefore, in response to the argument that atheists have no objective morality because they do not believe in a god, I say that 1. objective morality doesn't exist and 2. if it did, it would be bad.

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quiettown999 t1_j5ks0rg wrote

For me, morality exists in respect to the harm principle. The responsibility of the harm comes down to whether the human is aware/recognizes the harm as such. Is it always bad to cause harm? Religion requires there be a God that approves and disapproves of types of harm, and that it be obeyed. Why not discuss what harm individuals are willing to accept instead? This might be objective, or it may just be a construct of human society, of human perception. Good is relative to the human after all.

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DirtyOldPanties t1_j5j4cas wrote

I think objective morality exists and it could exist exist absent of God. The way I usually go about this is questioning why does one need morality? If we don't need morality then that's that and we can drop the issue. If human beings do need morality then there must be a reason why we need it. From there we can identify an objective morality that's appropriate for human beings.

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