Morality without god

You really didn't just say this, did you?You know what "facts" are, yes?You know what it means when we label something as a "fact"?The difference between fact and opinion is that one is apt to change in differing situations. The other will hold in all situations.I'll leave it to you to sort out the details.

Ah. An Emily Litella moment for me.Never mind.

You haven't been to Alabama or Arkansas in the last +- 100 years, have you.

The norm?No wonder you have such difficulties in these forums. You don't speak the english none too good.In your own diagram, there is not one, NOT ONE, county where the single female head is over 50%. Actually, what the map shows is quite the opposite, unless of course, you deliberately ignore all the white and pink areas. And ignore the fact that of the top 8 population centers, 5 are white and 3 are pink. And ignore the fact that you presented no historical data by which you conclude "they are approaching" or maybe receding (had you thought of that?), from anything whatsoever.

I would have preferred "subjective" over "simplistic".

Sorry to jump your gun.Carry on.

I'll try not to answer in Tangle's place, but allow me to make an observation.There was a time not so long ago when your latter example was the moral tenet of the day accepted as truth by their superior enlightened circles and what very few held the former view were not just shunned by all society but were actively barred from the company of women and children.In our western society today the former view is quite new and not fully accepted as deeply as the latter used to be. Except, of course, in our superior enlightened circles.edit: Just to put a point on it: note that I did not answer the question.Edited by AZPaul3, : kinda obvious

From who's perspective?

Yes, I understand the term.Factually well-informed under what state of knowledge?Tolerant of ..., guided by ... Both of these are scalable as well.Tolerant to what degree? To include all difference of all human philosophies (child sacrifice to their gods? second class status for redheads? the religious obligation to proselytize in the public square? the use of mushrooms in native rites?). And guided to what degree? Absolute rational logic with no truck for emotion or empathy?So the question remains. From who's perspective ... In who's opinion ... are we enlightened or not?Edited by AZPaul3, : finger fiddles

OK, let's do it this way.From the Athenians of 300 BCE you are hardly enlightened. You have no phallus outside our doors to stroke for luck as you leave your homes and you keep separate bath and toilet facilities for men and women instead of common facilities for all. You are prudish, embarrassed, intolerant and afraid of your bodies. That is hardly enlightened.Nor are you moral. Instead of executing or expelling your criminals you lock them in cages and caves like dogs on a leash and leave them there for years, decades. Even the ones you will execute you keep in your cages for decades contemplating their pending death. A quick thrust to the throat would have been the merciful, the humane thing to do.From the New Houston Asteroid Colony of 2620 CE. What despicable, backward, unenlightened barbarians you are. You incarcerate the social deviant and kill the psychopath instead of treating their conditions. You still live in a backward world that needs such a thing as a "foreign policy" and you use war as an instrument of that policy. Good lord you still use scraps of paper for commercial exchange and allow a greedy few to horde the most of it.And your morals are even worse. You poison your environment and think the deaths of hundreds are "acceptable losses" in the name of progress. Even though your society can well afford to you refuse to feed your hungry and heal your sick.No. You are neither enlightened nor moral from either end of history.The point being, no society is acknowledged enlightened or adequately moral from the view of others.In our time we see the rise in Western society of both stronger reason and greater tolerance, slow to be sure, but progressing steadily around us. And, yet, in this time Western society is the least enlightened and the least moral, except for all the others.So, are we enlightened or not? It depends.Edited by AZPaul3, : dint like the phrasing.

Civilized and enlightened. This is good. Sure you do. You don't use the ladies room as a matter of course, do you? Uh, Dog? Do we need to talk? So all this time you were talking of a personal enlightenment and a personal morality? [diabolus causidicus]Of course smoking pot is immoral. It rots your lungs, slows your ability to think and react, lowers you inhibitions to things you would never consider doing sober, like driving under the influence which makes you unsafe on the streets, a danger to others and to society.[/diabolus]You can now take all the variability, all the subjectivity, all the differences of opinion on what is moral, what is rational, what is empathetic, what is enlightened and what is not as viewed between societies and multiply that by 7,000,000,000.You think you have the correct equation to determine morality and enlightenment based upon your own world view, your own intellect, sense of what is rational and your personal emotional base all of which are superior to those of the fundamentalist christian, the devout jihadi, the Kalahari bushman and the Chinese Central Committee member.Guess what? They think the same about their way.But you are right and they are wrong, yes? (actually I could almost agree to that if I was forced to given those choices) But your view of rational, tolerant, ordered and empathetic is as culturally dependent and thus personally subjective as is theirs.What is important is that segments of society band together under an agreed upon tenet of Enlightenment and try over time to move the social fabric toward an agreed upon tenet of reason and morality.I personality like, very much, your approach to rational morality as "doing no harm". What I object to is your insistence that this is born of absolutes.

We can do that to a more or less adequate degree. In the MaryJane example how do you assess the number of dead or injured due to intoxicated drivers or machine operators, etc.? What constitutes unacceptable harm? 1000 injured? 100 injured? 1 injured?It is subjective. You say imbibing the weed is not immoral. We may not know with precision but we know some deaths and injuries occur due to the practice. How do you say it is moral if even 1 person dies because of it?I say marijuana is moral even though a few dozen deaths are caused. I rationalize this view saying there are a lot of stupid people out there doing a lot of stupid things because they cannot control themselves under the influence of anything, even fresh air. This is my subjective conclusion.[st*u*p*id is apparently still one of my banned words. And there's a reason for that. I used to use it liberally. Especially in describing stupid people who say stupid things out of stupid beliefs.]Given all the facts, given a precise formula, the ultimate conclusion we make on these kinds of moral things is, ultimately, subjective. No, not the same. The area of a circle is a precise number from a precise formula requiring no conclusions about anything. It is a number that cannot be argued and carries no emotional or empathetic component. The same is not true when assessing moralities which all carry emotional and empathetic components.Using your strict formula arrives at some assessed level of net harm. The subjective part is deciding if that level of net harm is large enough to require action. In many cases any net harm may be unacceptable and thus the action deemed immoral. Is this always the case in every analysis of action? Who decided that? How did they decide that? Would it be moral for me to disagree? Would it be moral for me to decide that some level of net harm is, in the long run, acceptable? Says who? No we can not. There in lies the rub. Only by subjective consensus can this determination be made.Your formalism in assessing net harm is most certainly useful in assessing a moral question, but it is only one input into a very subjective decision tree that is constantly in flux. Humans are like that.I agree with you that on some of the major issues facing humanity we can reach a consensus on morality by overcoming the irrational emotional dogmas (sorry) that large segments of our society continue to hold. Your rational morality, your "do no harm" approach, can go a long way toward achieving that goal. But no matter how precise the formula's output, the level of harm determined is, after all, just another input into the greater assessment of morality.Edited by AZPaul3, : No reason given.

Eh ... no. It really did hurt in a most objective way. Oh, Dog, you really didn't say that. Objectivity and subjectivity are opposites. Yes it hurt (objective) but it was bearable (subjective).
One is fact the other opinion, and no the two do not play well together. "Subjective fact" and "objective opinion" are misnomers.No. Objective facts are NOT accumulations of subjective opinions. Uh, no. But I could give you an approximation that would be suitable for any purpose, just not exact. Well, general coastline is about 127 miles while the tidal shoreline is about 1850 miles.Did I just win something? I don't think they make tape measures that big, but I get your point.Actually, no I don't, especially if I'm not winning anything.OK, we can measure stuff. So, we can measure net harm in a situation to some more or less accurate degree.That is not in dispute. It is a fact. An objective observation. Whether we can measure it with "adequate" accuracy is a matter of opinion, i.e. subjective. And this presents a problem. You have already allowed for some of the various complex inputs which cannot be adequately measured with precision to be approximated subjectively.Any subjective inputs will make the result a subjective output. And, no, the plural of "subjective" is not "objective".In the cases where the inputs need be subjective because we have no measure or no accurate measure your results could still be a powerful data point, but it would be one input among others.Even in those cases where the data inputs are solid any thumbs-up/thumbs-down from your equation is not the end of the moral analysis. Powerful though it may be, and decisive in some cases, it is still just one data point among many. I think this is a bad example. Equations, especially the law-of-physics kind have no subjective components whatsoever. Two people arrive at the same answer despite any subjective differences in their beliefs. Hell, you and any intelligent space alien will arrive at the same result in the face of the most radical differences in beliefs, culture, antenna color or sexual orientation.And, the laws-of-physics questions to be answered are physical imperatives not human moral decisions.Regardless, my point is that some useful rules and measures to determine any net harm of a situation will produce a powerful input into a moral decision-making tree. But it is only one input. Other, maybe more subjective, emotional, empathetic inputs may also be required to make an adequate, justified and livable moral decision.I'll grant you that yours is a major input into the moral decision-making process but it may not be the only input in all decisions.

We are headed to one of those semantical quibbles that so obscures the major points and derails a topic.We will disagree in the quibbles, so be it.Subjective/Objective is not a sliding scale. There is no "more" objective or "less" subjective or versa vice the other way.Subjective is subjective no matter how close to accurate it may come. That does not make it objective, or (heaven forgive me the term) more objective.Now you are correct in that two heads are better than one and a thousand heads are better than two, but that is all they are: better, not absolute. Libel? Slander? Lying? Certainly these have moral judgements attached.The harm is not physical but emotional (though I suppose we could quibble this as well).

Well, if you're an atheist then there is no challenge. Just normal human behavior, as you say. But, if you have a god that hates you so much there is nothing you can do to appease it, then I'm afraid, day-to-day life does become a challenge.I'm thinking whoever thought up this particular god sure had some major self-esteem issues.