johnydon22:


Correct. subjectivity in morality makes morality arbitrary. You can't really say anyone is wrong because their sense of being wrong may be different from yours

johnydon22:


So I may kill someone I believe what I'm doing is right and it is right?

johnydon22:


Ok



Why do you think morality is subjective?



Doesn't subjectivity make morality arbitrary?

frank317:


Looking at the world as we know it, we can confidently say morality is subjective. Has this fact made it arbitrary? no.
The reason why the world isn't a perfect place and people trying to improve on the past is because of the subjectivity of morality.
If morality was objective (as in came from the creator) then humans would have been perfect. A child wouldn't need to learn. And people who default will get instant punishment.

Evangkatsoulis:
why wouldn't a child need to learn?

orisa37:
Nature prescribes Morality. Nature is Subjective. Morality is Objective.

orisa37:
Nature prescribes Morality. Nature is Subjective. Morality is Objective.

dalaman:


False, if nature prescribes morality then morality wouldn't be learned. We won't be teaching our kids the difference between right and wrong if it is something natural like crying or sleeping. We dont teach our kids gow to cry or sleep, because its natural. Parents have to spend a lot of their time teaching their kids about morality because it isn't natural. Morality is a human creation.

johnydon22:


Some actions are intuitive.

And morality could also be traced to evolutionary origins

urheme:



There are positive morality that are generally termed objective but however acceptability of moral norms is limited to a territorial jurisdiction.

There are legislated morality in some jurisdictions which may not be acceptable in another jurisdiction. peoples established customs and traditions made morality a subjective term.

dalaman:


Sure, but but many moral actions have to be learned

johnydon22:

How is nature subjective?

orisa37:
God is I AM THAT I AM-SUBJECT-NATURE-MOTHER-FATHER-CREATOR-SUBJECTIVE-AL MIGHTY-RIGHTEOUSNESS.


Satan is ME MYSELF-ALL BLOODY-CREATED-OBJECT-OBJECTIVITY-CHATTELS-FIXTURES-SELFISHNESS.


SUBJECTIVITY CREATES, PRESCRIBES, VALUES OR WANTS, DEMANDS OBJECTIVITY.

This is Preaching not teaching English Language.

.

I have answered this question this morning. Please check the system.

johnydon22:

Ok. Sorry I even asked

johnydon22:
What makes them positive? Subjectivity would have some say it's negative.

Society then enforces morality. Good. So if there are no societies, nothing can really be said to be bad or good.

Yes?

urheme:


Morality is positive if effect is given to it by an enactment.

On the second note I agree with you, society spell out what is morally acceptable not individuals, morality must strike at the collective conscience of the people.

Johnydon22 is bin a while.

An Essay On Objective Vs Subjective Morality

By Barry Goldberg

Morality — the system or method by which we determine whether actions are “good” or “bad” — can either be “objective” (a.k.a. “absolute”) or “subjective” (a.k.a. “relative”). Objective or absolute morality is morality based on universal principles that everybody agrees on and that do not change over time or from one culture to another, whereas subjective or relative morality is determined differently by different groups and is subject to change over time and in different places and cultures. Now, theists and atheists alike claim to be able to determine right from wrong, good from bad, but what type of morality can each group actually claim to have? Absolute or relative?

Let’s start with atheists. Now most atheists get their sense of “right” and “wrong” from the realization that other people are human beings the same as they are, and are therefore deserving of the exact same rights and respect as themselves. “People are people” may sound like a simple tautology, but it’s objectively true and it’s the core principle that provides atheists with the objective morality that lets them condemn slavery, murder, robbery, lying, etc. Now, this isn’t to say that all atheists are good people, since we all have free will and can decide whether to be good or bad, but at least atheists have something objective by which they can make value judgments in the first place.

What about theists? Well, they tend to rely more on wholly subjective morality to make value judgments for the following reasons:

Different theists believe in different Gods, each of which is said to have given different moral laws for us to follow. So, right there, theistic morality is wholly subjective based on which God you believe in.
Even within a single God belief (Christianity, say), there are tons and tons of different denominations and sects who all interpret the supposed “word of God” in different ways from a purely doctrinal standpoint. So, once again, even within the Christian faith, theistic morality is wholly subjective based on which particular sect or denomination you belong to.
Even within a single sect or denomination, it’s pretty much guaranteed that different preachers or even individual members will have their own specific interpretations as to just what their God wants them to do. Should you shun homosexuals or welcome them? Should you donate money to homeless people or is that just encouraging bad habits? Do women really need to be subject to their husbands’ will or not? Is it enough to just accept Jesus into your heart, or do you actually need to do good deeds and repent for your sins? Is it really harder for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven than it is for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle, or is that just a metaphor? Does “turn the other cheek” mean you can’t own a gun for self-defense? Did God really just promise to “answer prayers” (and sometimes the answer is “no”) or did he actually promise to give “whatsoever we ask for in faith”? Is lusting after a woman in your heart really the same as committing adultery, or was Jesus just being metaphorical again? What’s the best way to “love thy neighbor as thyself” while still preventing transgender people from using the bathroom they feel most comfortable in? Is it OK to vote for somebody who claims to share your values if he talks about sexually assaulting women, mocks disabled people and lies all the time? What, actually, would Jesus do? And so on and so forth. Thus, theistic morality is wholly subjective based on the individual beliefs of each particular theist.

For theists that claim to get their morality from holy scriptures written thousands of years ago, many of the oldest commandments and moral codes from those books no longer apply today. The explanation for this is usually that those commandments were given for a specific group of people, that the culture and socio-economic conditions back then were different than they are today and/or that some sort of “new covenant” made those old commandments obsolete. It was OK to own slaves back then, but not today. It was commanded that disobedient children should be stoned to death back then, but we don’t need to follow that commandment today. Jews were required to keep kosher, but later Christians didn’t need to. All of which is to say that theistic morality can actually change over time and is wholly subjective based on the particular people to whom the moral commandments were given.
Now, keep in mind what I said earlier about atheists basing their morality on objective principles. Because these principles are objective, theists are capable of perceiving them as well. In fact, this is what allows, say, Christians to decide which parts of the Bible to follow in the first place and which parts should be ignored or reinterpreted away. The problem is, though, that many theists allow these objective moral principles to be overwhelmed by the teachings of their particular religion to the point where they are willing to discriminate against other people simply because this is what they have been taught is correct. Without the teachings of their religion they may never feel it right to, say, kill an infidel, or deny homosexuals the right to marry or treat other people as property. But because they have been indoctrinated to accept the relative morality provided by their religion, they end up chucking objective morality right out the window.

Now this isn’t to say that all theists are bad people or incapable of making moral judgments. After all, just because a moral principle is relative doesn’t mean it is wrong. But it does mean that their sense of right and wrong is at the whim of their religious indoctrination and this is why a lot of otherwise good people can be convinced to do some very bad things (or, as once put it, “With or without [religion] you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion.”) In other words, without a source of objective morals to rely on, theists can only do what they are told is right, regardless of whether it actually is right.

Gggg102:


Do you think morality should be objective or subjective?

ScienceWatch:
Sir, would it be appropriate here to consider the moral stand point of an atheist serial killer from USA.
it may be instructive to hear what Ted Bundy intelligently explains how subjective morality changed his life below;

Ted Bundy an atheist was interviewed in prison?

He said, "Then I learned that all moral judgments are ‘value judgments,’ that all value judgments are subjective, and that none can be proved to be either ‘right’ or ‘wrong.’ I even read somewhere that the Chief Justice of the United States had written that the American Constitution expressed nothing more than collective value judgments.

Believe it or not, I figured out for myself–what apparently the Chief Justice couldn’t figure out for himself–that if the rationality of one value judgment was zero, multiplying it by millions would not make it one whit more rational. Nor is there any ‘reason’ to obey the law for anyone, like myself, who has the boldness and daring–the strength of character–to throw off its shackles…

I discovered that to become truly free, truly unfettered, I had to become truly uninhibited. And I quickly discovered that the greatest obstacle to my freedom, the greatest block and limitation to it, consists in the insupportable ‘value judgment’ that I was bound to respect the rights of others. I asked myself, who were these ‘others?’ Other human beings, with human rights? Why is it more wrong to kill a human animal than any other animal, a pig or a sheep or a steer? Is your life more than a hog’s life to a hog? Why should I be willing to sacrifice my pleasure more for the one than for the other? Surely, you would not, in this age of scientific enlightenment, declare that God or nature has marked some pleasures as ‘moral’ or ‘good’ and others as ‘immoral’ or ‘bad’?

He says to the female interviewer, "In any case, let me assure you, my dear young lady, that there is absolutely no comparison between the pleasure that I might take in eating ham and the pleasure I anticipate in raping and murdering you. That is the honest conclusion to which my education has led me–after the most conscientious examination of my spontaneous and uninhibited life." --Ted Bundy, cited in Louis P. Pojman, Ethics: Discovering Right and Wrong, 3rd edition (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth/Thomson, 1999), 31-32.

The question to atheists is simply:

On what moral grounds can you provide a response to Bundy?



Vaxx, Rekinomtla, Butterflyle0, sonofthunder

Heathen777:



He makes some points where he says value is subjective, but then again we humans have evolved to have greater intelligence and consciousness, thus greater weight is placed on our action. That's why a lion killing another lion is different from a human killing another human.

Things of value cannot be taken without justifiable reason (a reason that is fair to the parties involved), whether that things is money or life.

Ted Bundley's way of reasoning isn't well thought out, and it's also an unsustainable model for any society, thus a threat, an unwanted reality for all societies.

Heathen777:

Ted Bundley's way of reasoning isn't well thought out, and it's also an unsustainable model for any society, thus a threat, an unwanted reality for all societies.

budaatum:

It is the same reason why no one on this earth subscribes to his ideology as a sustainable model for themself. And why it's ridiculous of anyone to assume anyone would.

In fact, didn't his ass rot in jail?

Gggg102:


yes.

that's why I said in a realistic view it is subjective.
I think morality would/should be objective in an ideal world.

budaatum:

I see you've been struggling with this topic a while! You got somewhere here, but now I think you have backslided. God presents the "ideal", according to some. However, when Jesus came along and disobeyed God's own given Sabbath law by asking the Pharisees if they would not jump in the well to save their sheep on the Sabbath, can you see how he is claiming that even God's laws are circumstantial, and not as rigid as some think? “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. So the Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath.” he said. Don't you think he is saying humans make the laws they live by, at the least?

I wonder if you have heard of the "stand your ground laws" introduced in America? Basically, under certain circumstances, I could murder you and still not have committed a crime. Wouldn't you say that as far as humans are concerned, the law is what we make it?

Now, listen to Paul. Man is not made for the law

Gggg102:

I don't think Jesus meant god's law can be changed by man when he said that. I think he meant they could be suspended if doing so would lead to greater good.

budaatum:

So, even God's law is subjective after all? To be changed by subjective human beings, by their subjective opinion of the subjective "greater good" ?

You should take up comedy. You sure do make me laugh, subjectively!

Martinez19:
Saying morality is subjective because moral norms have changed from time to time is like saying that truth is subjective because popular beliefs haved changed from time to time.

johnydon22:
Morality and truth are not the same and this equivalence is false.

Popular belief does not mean truth because truth is not a belief that is why it is objective. while popular belief may change, the truth doesn't. The earth orbits the sun is a truth. Popular belief once held the opposite, this doesn't change the truth.

Morality on the other is a belief, a human idea and therefore is prone to human modification as it is not an objective inherent universal variable.

Martinez19:
They are equivalent in the aspect that they don't change regardless of what people think. Morality is not just a belief or idea, I believe that it's something we are born with and it's governed by reasoning and empathy. The difference in moral norms across all places and history is due to influence of religious and cultural upbringings (both of which are usually merged together and influence reasoning).