A personal morality

Hey, Ignatius, you might want to actually read the opening post and some of the responses before you blunder in. I just checked each page, and no one has been speaking about whether or not there are "absolutes" (whatever that means). It would be very helpful if you were to address the points that people are actually raising, not make up some argument that no one is trying to establish.

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Actually, if their god makes better pancakes, I'm totally switching sides. -- Charley the Australopithecine

But if stealing in certain situations is ultimately good and sometimes bad that would mean that there actually is an objective morality. Just a harder one to define.
Stealing is only good in these situations blablabla , killing is only good in these situations blablabla.
What I understood is that moral relativism means that everyone makes up their own morality, and not that in some situations a normally bad action might be good in some situations.Edited by Neutralmind, : No reason given.

But if I felt that way only because I thought there was something real in this world that said stealing is bad in situations when you don't need it to live. Because if there really is no such thing as "morality" and just voices in my head why would I need to obey it?Edited by Neutralmind, : No reason given.

double post bug...Edited by Neutralmind, : No reason given.

"crashfrog
Moral relativism is simply the recognition that morality depends on the situation. Is it right to steal? No, but what about stealing to feed a starving family? Moral relativism is simply the recognition that moral situations are often complex and nuanced, and simple statements like "thou shalt not steal" fail to encapsulate the proper response to every situation."You Kant understand!

that doesn't mean theres an objective morality, that just means that the reasons the stealing was done for the in a persons view a good reasonyou really don't understand moral relativism at allit would be a good thing for a person to steal bread for his family so they don't starve to death, but would the baker feel the same when it robs him of money to provide for his family? and in the culture is it considered evil or good to steal if your family is suffering? no one makes it up, they realize that a static morality doesn't work, such as "thou shall not kill", or murder as they mean, well what about self defense? is that murder? or is it?when there is only one way to do something i think that might be the only time we have an absolute morality

Ignatius, you might want to add some substance to your posts. Actually address the points being raised with counter points instead of irrelevant asides and humorous one-liners. Otherwise, you are going to end up being banned by one of our moderators with a low level of patience.

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Actually, if their god makes better pancakes, I'm totally switching sides. -- Charley the Australopithecine

I really don't want this topic to go down this way. Life can be meaningful to the individual no matter if it has an ultimate goal/destination or not.Edited by Neutralmind, : No reason given.

I imagine some poor soul will find meaning in my words...

I imagine they would have to be pretty poor souls indeed.

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Actually, if their god makes better pancakes, I'm totally switching sides. -- Charley the Australopithecine

No. It just means you're wrong about what "good" and "bad" mean.Look at it this way. Is it bad to eat peanuts? I don't think most people would say so, in fact, they might point to the numerous nutrients and health benefits of peanuts to suggest that peanuts are good to eat.But what if you have a peanut allergy? Then it would be very, very bad for you to eat peanuts, even if they're good for everybody else. Where's the "objective" morality of eating peanuts? Good or bad? Do we say that peanuts are objectively good, and force the guy with the allergy to eat them, or do we say that they're objectively bad, and prevent anyone from eating them?Or don't we conclude that the morality of peanut-eating depends greatly on who's to do the eating? That it's relative, in other words?Don't get hung up on "good" and "bad." Moral relativism doesn't mean that good and bad don't exist. It means that determining which actions are good and which are bad depends on the situation, and it's not something that you can make universal rules about. But you could never list every single situation where stealing was OK; you could never identify a set of shared characteristics that encompassed every single situation where it was moral to steal. So clearly we're still not dealing with "objective morality" that's universally true for all people in all situations. We're still at the point where, ultimately, it comes down to your individual conscience. That's a common misunderstanding. You were lied to by your church*, and by moral busybodies who wanted to prevent you from seeing how reasonable moral relativism is; because once you did, you'd see how often people use language about "morals" to control the behavior of other people for self-serving ends.*Sorry. You did say that you don't go to church. That's my mistake - I confused you with someone else. Nonetheless you've confused moral relativism with nihilism. They're not the same thing.Edited by crashfrog, : No reason given.

Then why don't you do it? I mean, why do you think it's wrong?Do you think maybe the people who are telling you that it's wrong don't have your best interests at heart? But regardless of that - if you don't want to do it, which you've said you don't, then why would you? If people aren't being harmed, and you find the behavior satisfying and pleasurable, then what exactly are you afraid of? If you don't even want to do it, then why are you worried that you might?I really don't understand where you're coming from. There's no reason for you to believe that atheism is going to make you do things that you don't want to do. It's not going to control your mind.And if you do want to do them, and nobody gets hurt or harmed and everybody has a good time, then I especially don't see what you're worried about. Sure, you'd be doing things that other people might not approve of, but what does that matter? Let them live their own lives. Aren't you smart enough to decide things for yourself? If you don't want to be a jerk, why would moral relativism suddenly make you a jerk? If you were about to do something jerky, why wouldn't you realize it? You were born. It happens. Get over it. You are the one that has to live your life. If you feel you have responsibilities, you're the one that has to meet them.I'm not telling you to become a nihilist; I'm telling you that you're the one who has to make decisions every day about how to live and the effect you want to have on your life, and the lives of others.But, really. If you think someone is going to come and kill you just because you and a woman had a night of pleasure together, you have some real hang-ups that you should consider professional counseling for.

After reading this I'm just more confused as to what moral relativism means. Give me a few days and I'll think over this.

What type of relativism are you advocating?Explain your stance on morality briefly, please

If you've been paying attention, you'd know that I've already said that this is an impossible task, by definition. The position of the moral relativist is that there is no brief way to communicate a moral stance. Morals are contingent on situation and individual.