Could say the same to you.

If morality is subjective, all morality is based on nothing, that is rather the point.

I am not comparing “living according to a manufactured moral code” to the Higgs boson, this is both a misrepresentation of my argument and a category error.

I seem to be perfectly able to do so: objective morality is supernatural, but what makes you think it is reason enough to dismiss it?

We assume some things to exist without proof all the time, and I am not even talking about how we assume the external world exists, but about things like dark matter and the Higgs bosom. Why is an assumption of the existence of a supernatural thing different in terms of credibility from an assumption of the existence of something that exists in nature.

So lynchings are fine, then?

It’s not better, my point is yours doesn’t exist. It is also the exact same moral subjectivism.

I understand that if moral subjectivism is correct, morality is subjective. But you can’t just say that analytically true statement over and over again, and expect it to work as an argument. How can you be sure it is subjective?

Why is the subjectivity of morality the default assumption? It is a claim, is it not?

Lynching is bad, but there are exceptions

If you say lynchings are bad, that means that justice should be delivered by the state. But you seem to think, that it does not matter who does it. It seems like a contradiction.

But you seem pretty certain morality is subjective, which is not only unproven, but goes against our intuitions.

You seem to think I am comparing objective religious morality with subjective secular morality. This is not the case. I am comparing two accounts of morality, according to one of which morality is independent of subjectivity, and is singular, and according to another all moral views held by all people are subjective.

Your morality is based on “doing what is best for society”. But are you capable of constructing a rational deductive argument with sound propositions that proves that this is, indeed, what morality is? If not, in what way is your morality better than religious morality. Both are “preferences”, according to you, that are not based on rationality.

What is it if not an alternative? Morality is either objective or subjective. You believe it is the latter, but how can you be so sure you are correct?

I am simply saying that it is a very unnatural way to think about morality, and this is why my argument works. Some people, I believe, would rather say that God is real than that morality is subjective. You can say the opposite of that, of course, but this is how philosophical arguments work.

I don’t see the problem you are referring to.

I am so sorry. I understand now I was very immoral when I said that lynchings are bad. I now see that due process is pointless, and we should just kill people we believe to be evil willy nilly.

I understand that I follow morality. The question is, what is morality. If you are correct, it is subjective. If you are wrong, it isn’t. I am not sure what you are trying to say.

Such an account of morality is indeed insufficient for some people. But this is the argument: you have to accept moral subjectivism if you reject God.

Because the argument is based on what morality is. And this is a question about what it is.

Yes, of course it does.

But is there a difference between preferences and moral imperatives?

Do you support capital punishment?

While I would rather we talked about the other part of what I previously said, the one that relates to the murder, this is quite interesting too.

I was not saying that god is necessary for morality. I understood what you said previously this way: since there is no God or higher power, religious morality, and by extiention my supposedly religiously motivated statement(actually, I am not particularly religious) is unsubstantiated, to which I replied with an argument, that if this is the case, and if you apply the same criteria to every worldview, then no moral views are substantiated.

And I would like to address your counterargument. I did find it convincing when I was a “militant atheist” but now I recognise its inadequacy. It is arguing with a position that does not exist, it is based on a misunderstanding of an argument that theists often make. I will now expand on that:

When theists say that without God there is no morality, they mean that there is no objective morality. The argument is based on showing that the accounts of morality possible under atheism are contrary to our moral intuitions. Theists generally recognise that people can be moral if they are not religious, all of us have a sense of morality, since we are the “children of God”.

If there is no morality independent from subjective beliefs about morality, then, in practice, when someone says “this is immoral”, they are simply expressing their preferences. So if I say murder is wrong, this simply means I do not want it to occur, and I am urging everyone to not murder, so there is, in practice, no difference between subjective preference and morality, since morality is subjective.

So if we lived in a world where noone believed rape is wrong(animals do rape each other quite often), there is no sense at all in which the statement “rape is immoral” would be correct.

Since most people do not understand morality to be subjective in this way, this argument can be convincing.

Edit: another similar argument, is that atheists, while they can be moral, have no justification for their morality. It is also often misunderstood, and your counterargument is wrongfully applied, but I will not get into that.

A person that commits murder and does not feel guilty is a person that turns away from his soul. I believe that any person that strays away from our values and morals is losing something very important.

So this is not a case of what would change in the world, as you put it, but what would change for the murderer. What kind of person will he be? I believe that every murderer suffers, in a sense, and again, I recommend you read “Crime and punishment”, it’s a masterpiece.

That being said, I would like to ask you a somewhat off-topic question about something you said:

There is no cosmic scorecard, no universal force or karma, nothing beyond what we have in the world in front of us. So I ask in, with that in mind, what is the actual moral imperative you feel that he must experience this weight and regret?

It seems to me that you are saying that the moral imperative I might feel is not ontologically grounded, since there is not higher power. But wouldn’t any morality then be not grounded in anything, if you accept both these criteria for what is legitimately moral and the atheistic worldview?

The way I see it, is that the jury should determine guilt, regardless of the punishment, which is determined by the law. So I would say he is guilty.

Murder is a grave crime, and while it is possible to rationalise it using radical ideologies and it seems to me that Luigi was personally affected by the healthcare system, but this changes nothing.

When someone commits murder, kills another human being, he loses a part of their humanity in a way. Turns away from his morality, from his soul. This is what “crime and punishment” is about, I certainly reccomend the novel. No rationalisations will compensate for the horror that is a murder of a fellow human being.

And the people that treat him like a hero are doing him a disservice. How is he supposed to understand the gravity of his moral offence and regret it if he is lauded for it? I feel nothing but pity for the man.

I am glad communists have started to feel so strongly about mass murder, but this man hardly was the sole reason his healthcare company chose this policy, and as far as I understand other companies did similar things. You are blaming an individual for institutional issues. While he is, obviously, evil, he is not, clearly, the cause of these policies. If he was not willing to implement them he would be removed.

But this is hardly relevant, this is, from a legal standpoint, murder, and thank God it is, since no sensible person would want to live in a society where someone can just murder anyone because of ideological convictions and political goals.

But from a moral standpoint this is, of course, still murder. We denounce the use of the capital punishment on the most horrible criminals, but when a CEO is murdered on the street, without trial, suddenly death is perfectly fine as a punishment. This is not self defense. This is not “defense” of anything. This is murder. And Luigi is a criminal, and I hope he realises the gravity of what he has done.

Quite a lot.

Trump us destroying the international standing of Israel’s strongest ally, this should count for something.

So Trump is a real friend of Palestine, you should say thank you.

Honestly, I undefstand why he might have wanted to kill that CEO, but he is still a murderer, so the last thing that anyone should do is to support him and his murder. This betrays a lack of morality.