There are Absolutely and Objectively Immoral Acts

[alsarg72]

Topic

This kind of statement is quite common in debates.

You(and your fellow theists)claim that there are absolute morals. Name one.

I have seen both atheists and theists argue in favor of and against there being only being relative and subjective morality.

I can agree that there is nothing that can be said to be "absolutely and objectively moral". This is probably consistent with other atheists.

But I believe that there are things that can be said to be "absolutely and objectively immoral". This is inconsistent with both atheists and theists in discussions here in the past.

This topic therefore is about the existence of "absolute and object immorality".

Definitions

Dictionary.com lists 15 definitions for absolute. This is the one that contrasts with relative morality.

Absolute: viewed independently; not comparative or relative; ultimate; intrinsic.

Dictionary.com lists 11 defintitions for objective. This is the one that contrasts with subjective morality.

Objective: not influenced by personal feelings, interpretations, or prejudice; based on facts; unbiased: an objective opinion.

My Definition

This is roughly how I define something to be absolutely and objectively immoral (given the definitions above) - if I thought longer I could surely word it better, but here goes...

If an act is committed that causes suffering or harm, directly or indirectly, to a living thing, without any justifying or mitigating circumstances, it it can be considered immoral without considering it relative to anything else, and without taking into account the opinion of an observer.

It is therefore absolutely and objectively immoral.

Therefore if person A does something unjustified and unmitigated to harm person/animal/plant B...

...the level of harm relative to other acts that could be committed to harm B is not relevant in determining if the act is immoral or not, it is only relevant in determining how immoral it is, since B has nevertheless been harmed.

...the subjective opinion of person C is not relevant in determining if the act is immoral or not, it is only relevant in determining person C's opinion of the morality of the situation. Regardless of person C's opinion B has nevertheless been harmed. And if person C didn't have knowledge of the act the immorality of the act would remain unchanged.

An Example

I deliberately give an example here that is not about murder, rape, etc.

People are lined up to buy movie tickets. A person in line uses a lighter to burn the jacket of the person in front of him. The person with the burned jacket is upset. The person who burned the jacket in sane and can give no reason for committing the act.

The Debate

If you disagree that there are absolutely and objectively immoral acts argue against...

"There are Absolutely and Objectively Immoral Acts"

[Crazy Ivan]

Again, you wont define what it is, wont argue for it. You've never properly defined you "perception".

I haven't defined many words, assuming we agreed on them. But for instance, I don't perceive "lighting someone's jacket on fire (or burning it...) while they're wearing it" as "just the kind of thing adolescents do every day". I trust you understand the meaning.

Again, word games - "your belief" is your stance in favor of complete exclusion of the possibility of an act being immoral in an absolute sense, which I compare to religious belief because you support it just like a religious person does. I offered my opinion for discussion. You assert yours.

My opinion is that you've offered no real world situation in which a behavior can be regarded as "absolutely immoral", and it is also my opinion that it isn't even remotely possible, if not just by definition of what constitutes "human interaction". As with the existence of gods, it is the inexistence of evidence to support an assertion, that results in disbelief. But unlike gods, human nature is readily observable.

Again, if you say everything is black and I say things are shades of grey exist, and white things exist too, it is not a double standard.

As far as "morality" goes, the ends of the spectrum are theoretical and abstract. No basis in reality. The reasons why you would hold a behavior in the grey area are the same of any other behavior, unless it provokes a certain reaction in you.

You should look up what a double standard means.

You're biased towards behaviors you don't find "heinous". One could argue "special pleading" is also incurred in.

BTW, I didn't say setting on fire. I said burn. Like someone burning a hole in a bus seat - as opposed to setting the bus on fire! If you were up for reasonable discussion you could have pointed that out before - because would be a point against quality of my example. You could have done that instead of going of on your imagination tangent.

Irrelevant to the point. There's always a reason for it, and it doesn't imply the doers will acknowledge "immorality" on their part.

<snip rant>

[thatoneguy]

Why? Please explain. You have made 5 assertions without giving any argument, any examples, without relating it to my example. I am not saying you are wrong. I am saying that if you are right I want to understand why you think all morality is subjective..

Fair enough. You are completely right. I simply told you my opinion, I made no argument. I get frustrated when people do not properly consider what I write, but I did just that to you, so I am sorry. Please allow me to start over and provide a more thorough analysis of my opinion. Kindly disregard everything else that I wrote in my previous post.

If an act is committed that causes suffering or harm, directly or indirectly, to a living thing, without any justifying or mitigating circumstances, it it can be considered immoral without considering it relative to anything else, and without taking into account the opinion of an observer.

Your response to my first post leads me to believe that "I just felt like it" would not qualify as justification. Fair enough.

My first point is that no matter how you frame it, morality is a man-made construction. Your definition exists only because you provided it; the wording came only from you.

Within that context, we can argue that some things are considered universally immoral, but we cannot say that any standard exists outside of the human one. Would you agree with that?

To illustrate my point, let's take the example of your provided definition. That definition is man-made. You wrote it yourself. Your intention was to explain a notion that we, as the reader, already understood: immorality. Why is your definition correct? What about your definition of immorality makes it actually describe immorality?

The answer is that we accept your definition because it fits. As we have come to understand morality and immorality, your definition is consistent with it as we have come to understand it. This is how one defines something which has already been proven to exist.

However, this does not prove immorality exists. Instead, it provides a definition for immorality that applies only after we assume it to exist. Proving that immorality itself exists, however, is nigh impossible. There is no outside evidence to point to. If I do not accept your definition, then in my private understanding of immorality you have not properly proven anything. Every person measures morality differently, who is it that gets to say one understanding is better than another? Why is my hypothetical definition, wherein saying "I just felt like it" is justified, any less correct?

If you'll excuse my nasty habit of answering my own questions, I believe that it's simply because no one else sees it that way. Someone using that moral compass would be ostracized by society.

And that is why we have laws. There is no higher authority to appeal to regarding morality; even if God existed, we'd have no way of knowing his opinion. However, society can agree upon laws, and these laws can be made to reflect the general moral sentiment of the society. They are the closest we have to absolute morality. What you have proposed, as I see it and for the reasons provided, is a law, not a definition of immorality.

With that said, there are some things that are so widely considered immoral that almost every culture decides that they are illegal. Murder is a common example. Perhaps there is an evolutionary reason for this, perhaps it's societal. It doesn't matter where exactly we get it from; it still comes only from us (us being humanity). The closest we ever get to absolute morality are universally accepted rules.

My second and less consequential objection is the vagueness of the terms "mitigating"and "justification." Where, precisely, do we draw the line between justified and unjustified? Why is "I just felt like it" unjustified?

[Flail]

IMO, there are no objective and absolute moral standards. They are all subjective. That being said, since we are all human and live on the same planet and are influenced by the needs of society, we make similar general choices to sustain societal order. Among those choices are consensus over time about what works and what doesn't work. So we develop agreement about what is right and wrong based upon our collective subjective experience to further social and individual goals. If everyone was murdering and raping and stealing, we would have chaos, so we develop moral guides or codes of conduct...and the superstitious among us attribute the most basic and common sense of those 'moral' precepts to invisible Gods.

[Devilry]

I think the definition of 'immorality' should be left open for the purposes of this discussion. I honestly don't understand why there is so much fussing over it though.

Anyway, before I talk about absolute immorality, let me just say that I believe in absolute moral standards. That, moral standards that are innate in humans and have absolutely nothing to do with how society shapes you.

For one, I believe that humans innately care for each other.

For example, when you give a toy to a child, you feel a sense of gratification when you see the smile on his face. Society has not taught you to feel good about yourself when this happens. You just do. Likewise, we feel guilty when we see a man selling goods on the street, but his business is failing. Nobody has ever taught me that I should feel guilty when something like this happens, nor punished me in the occasion that I failed to feel guilty.

Generally, humans find caring for others desirable and 'good', and this is an innate moral standard that has little to do with society's bearing on us. At best, social customs reflect this phenomenon.

Of course, the idea of caring about someone else's welfare is extremely vague, but it is, regardless, a moral standard. Because the idea that caring for someone is desirable is not a given, and there must be a standard to assert that this is so.

So let's then talk about the idea of absolute immorality. I am, once again, going to say that society does not need to teach us to feel disgust at someone who can inflict pain on others without batting an eyelid. So, the lack of care is an absolute immorality.

There is a high chance that what I have just said might misrepresent my views though. I, for one, do not believe that immorality needs to be unjustified. I believe that a sociopath can be perfectly justified in his killing, or that Hitler can be perfectly justified in believing that the massacre of Jews would truly make the world a better place.

In fact, under social circumstance, one could easily be tainted to no longer feel good about caring for others. Hitler is entitled to feel that in terms of relative morality killing Jews is the right thing to do. Rather, my definition of immoral would be an action that will cause the average human to feel disgusted at.

And therefore, my definition of absolute immorality is an action that would cause a human to feel disgust towards, even without any social influence, to which I believe does exist.

[ChaosBorders]

For one, I believe that humans innately care for each other.

For evolutionary reasons, most do. However, the existence of natural psycopaths, which make up at least 1% of the human population, kind of squashes the idea that this is an absolute.