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.
bobogeeg t1_j5ita4h wrote
Reply to /r/philosophy Open Discussion Thread | January 16, 2023 by BernardJOrtcutt
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.