Quote:
Originally Posted by nguirado
I don't mean to start a fight. Most of my friends are atheists or irreligious. Nothing you said contradicts what I said. In regards to morality and ethics, you can say and defend anything you want.
The only authority you can use is that a particular opinion on morality, if held by everyone, would create a "worse" society, sort of like what Kant held. This is no argument for an objective morality that holds for everybody (such an idea is to be found in the concept of the natural law, but that necessitates an author of nature).
It's like deciding which rules for a particular game would make it more fun. The rules aren't inviolate. They're there to facilitate a certain result.
Respectfully, except for physical reality, one can hold any morality one wants to since it's just a social construct anyways and doesn't exist independently of our opinion.
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There is a contradiction in what you say, and I think it points out to something very important. If morality is a social construct (which I agree with, although I would add that it is based on biological premises), then potentially, holding a different morality than the rest is a threat to society. After all, morality is what is supposed to guide your behavior as a member of society.
In theory, you could for instance decide that in order to preserve the Earth's peace, harmony and balance, humanity needs to be reduced to a population of a few thousand individuals. I would respect your right to believe this (I'm close to it myself some days
), but if there is the slightest chance that you would be ready to act on it, I would prefer you to hold this view while safely locked away from any sharp-edged object
The purpose of morals is to hold society together, and for this we need to choose, collectively, a set of rules and keep to it. As you said, it doesn't matter what the rules of a sport are, but if there were not rules, there would be no sport. Any set of moral rules chosen by a society has some arbitrary in it. You can build your own morality, I think it's even important to do that, but you also have to work with the rules of the society you live in.
I think this is an important issue, because we now live in a very open society, where different sets of moral rules can come into contact, with extremely destructive results. It's not an easy one. What do you do if society requires you to do something that you hold to be evil?