[Faith-talk] Moral Nihilist: The Intellectually Honest Atheist

[Poppa Bear]

I tried to listen, but unfortunately when he laid out his definition of
morality I became uncomfortable, When a definition is given to support a
position and that definition differs even in the slightest from the typical
definitions the proceeding talk can be shaped in any way the speaker deems
fit. Even the examples of feeding the homeless being kind, that is not a
fact, there are many presupposing/qualifying factors that would have to make
that statement a fact. Below is a definition of morality from the Stanford
Encyclopedia of Philosophy. 
The Definition of Morality
; The term "morality" can be used either
1. descriptively to refer to some codes of conduct put forward by a society
or,   
1. some other group, such as a religion, or
2. accepted by an individual for her own behavior or
2. normatively to refer to a code of conduct that, given specified
conditions, would be put forward by all rational persons.
What "morality" is taken to refer to plays a crucial, although often
unacknowledged, role in formulating ethical theories. To take "morality" to
refer to an actually existing code of conduct put forward by a society
results in a denial that there is a universal morality, one that applies to
all human beings. This descriptive use of "morality "is the one used by
anthropologists when they report on the morality of the societies that they
study. Recently, some comparative and evolutionary psychologists (Haidt,
Hauser, De Waal) have taken morality, or a close anticipation of it, to be
present among groups of non-human animals, primarily other primates but not
limited to them. "Morality" has also been taken to refer to any code of
conduct that a person or group takes as most important.
Among those who use "morality" normatively, all hold that "morality" refers
to a code of conduct that applies to all who can understand it and can
govern their behavior by it. In the normative sense, morality should never
be overridden, that is, no one should ever violate a moral prohibition or
requirement for non-moral considerations. All of those who use "morality"
normatively also hold that, under plausible specified conditions, all
rational persons would endorse that code. Moral theories differ in their
accounts of the essential characteristics of rational persons and in their
specifications of the conditions under which all rational persons would
endorse a code of conduct as a moral code. These differences result in
different kinds of moral theories. Related to these differences, moral
theories differ with regard to those to whom morality applies, that is,
those whose behavior is subject to moral judgment. Some hold that morality
applies only to those rational beings that have those features of human
beings that make it rational for all of them to endorse morality, viz.,
fallibility and vulnerability. Other moral theories claim to put forward an
account of morality that provides a guide to all rational beings, even if
these beings do not have these human characteristics, e.g., God.
Dictionary definitions of referring terms are usually just descriptions of
the important features of the referents of those terms. Insofar as the
referents of a term share the features that account for why that term refers
to those referents, the term is not regarded as ambiguous. Referring terms
are ambiguous when the referents of the term differ from each other in
sufficiently important ways.

-----Original Message-----
From: Faith-talk [mailto:faith-talk-bounces at nfbnet.org] On Behalf Of Brandon
A. Olivares via Faith-talk
Sent: Monday, August 04, 2014 9:38 AM
To: Faith-talk, for the discussion of faith and religion
Subject: [Faith-talk] Moral Nihilist: The Intellectually Honest Atheist

Hello,

Found this video on Youtube today. It closely aligns with my own feelings on
morality. So I wanted to put it out there to get a discussion going on this
topic: is there such thing as objective morality?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YzfDIewPFb0 

Peace,
Brandon
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