Response to DasAmericanAtheist on moral relativism vs. moral absolutism vs. moral skepticism.

The Video to which I am responding contained two points regarding moral absolutism. The first was an undercutting objection, and the second was a rebutting objection. I will tackle them in that order.
The Undercutting objection by DasAmericanAtheist was the appeal to evolutionary psychology and neuroscience in an attempt to undercut the various arguments for objective morality. Basically, you do not need objective morality to explain our moral sense, and therefore our moral sense does not provide an adequate foundation for belief in objective morality.
I have already weighed in on this issue, but it is more than worth repeating my thoughts here. The first problem is that DasAmericanAtheist has misunderstood the arguments for objective morality, and the epistemic status that is given to those beliefs.
The arguments for objective morality are not inferences to the best explanation. We do not take our moral experiences and then conclude that an objective, binding morality is the best way to account for our moral experience. Rather, the arguments which incorporate our moral experience seek to give reasons to treat our moral experience as properly basic. In essence, they have the same epistemic status as perceptual beliefs. This being said, No undercutting defeater could defeat our belief in objective morality. DasAmericanAtheist would need to give a rebutting defeater, and that is what he attempts in the second part of his video
DasAmericanAtheist claims that because certain rules that apply today did not apply 5,000 years ago, there is no objective, binding morality.
I could not disagree more here. Situational ethics does not imply a sort of ethical relativism, quite the opposite in fact. Situational ethics appeals to an absolutist set of ethics, wherein one absolute value conflicts with another absolute value, and one has more weight than the other.
In the case of marriage and the Bible, maintenance of a society has more weight than womens rights.

Category:

Education

Tags:

• slavery
• marriage
• bible
• God
• absolute
• objective
• moral
• relativism
• absolutism
• properly
• basic
• belief
• dasamericanatheist
• vbfl920
• drsuessre14
• veritas48
• azrienoch

[WayOfTheBastard]

Ok, can you point me in the direction of a better explanation of how this works, or the rational behind it?

[migkillertwo]

Christian-thinktank(dot)org has a lot of good material on slavery and genocide in the Bible.

[lordrazr]

So then it is not absolute, you said so yourself. If it can change, for whatever reason, by definition it is not an absolute.

[richaldeano]

The Bible is in NO WAY a STANDARD for objective morality. How is slavery and genocide a good thing? How? Explain how that would be considered moral in any sense? It isn't! There may be objective morals that exist, however, the Bible is far from determining such morals.

[AtheistAltar]

Uh, okay, the big problem is that if God imparted some kind of divine wisdom since mankind arose, why are there such staunch disagreements over time?

I know disagreement doesn't equal non-existence, but the playing field is supposed to be level for judgment. "Everybody knows the moral law" according to C.S. Lewis. Not most of humanity 2000 years ago.

[Dhorpatan]

@Veritas48

The video I promised I would make on the Kalam Cosmological Argument, in response to your indirect insult to me has now been "published" online via YouTube. If you still have an interest in seeing how the Kalam begs the question, and how your insult was unwarranted, you can screen my creation at your convenience.(Note: I don't have a problem with insults, that's just the reason I had to answer you back)

[Dhorpatan]

@Noah

What do you mean dude? What do you mean "I am done making videos for NOW"?

I thought you were done making videos on YouTube FOREVER, because of what happened, and all these things!?

What do you mean FOR NOW? That's sounds like you will make more videos in the future. It should be, you never making videos ever again right?

[WayOfTheBastard]

Ok I have been looking over that site, and I have be honest, it is not clarifying much for me. It is a rather large and difficult to navigate site, but I am also finding several of the answer to ones I have heard before and know how to debunk. I am not finding a good explanation of moral absolutes working against one another, or overriding one another(I may be phrasing this poorly). Is this on that site?