Absolute Morality/Natural Law?

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Sure it does. You're judging your--whatever it is--"right"(?) to life and property to somehow be superior to mine, inherently judging my desire to acquire your property or destroy your life as somehow inferior. You don't have the "right" to infringe on my aggressive behavior. Without morals, you have no moral standing. (Well, neither would I, and you can still do whatever you want anyway...)


If there is no morality, there is no jail. Incarceration and/or other punishment assumes that there is some reason WHY someone should be punished. If there is no rightness or wrongness to actions, there is no jail. There's no need for it.

Again, why SHOULD I care about mutual interest? Perhaps I could trick someone into doing what I want for a perceived "mutual interest" and then split with the loot, keeping it all for myself. I have no reason to care about anyone else. Because I feel like it.


No, because that would be "wrong." lol


Oh, but I CAN win. Perhaps we'll both raise up whole armies, and if I have a bigger and better army than you, I most certainly can win. And why would I let you know I was about to do it? No morals, anything goes...


Who said anything about magic? Sure, I have my own ideas about where morality comes from, but that doesn't really have anything to do with this part of the discussion. I could say that morality comes from nature (keeps us from wiping ourselves off the planet) or from society (law and order) or from consensus. The immediate concern is not about "where from" but rather "what."


It's relevant because someone posted the topic. I'm not sure I understand your double-negative. You can kill or not kill based on your own reasons. No amount of morality, whether absolute or relative, can stop you. Like I said, it's not a physical law. Most people tend to feel a certain sense of "not-rightness" about certain things, some more than others, and many times it's more inconvenient to follow that intuition than it is to fight it. Get away with it enough and you can make yourself believe it doesn't exist. The problem is collectively we do have a moral sense and tend to stick to various sets of moral values. Almost without exception I get caught in telling lies. It angers me that people get away with it and I can't. So I don't even bother trying, and I know it's wrong anyway to deceive people. I suppose I could practice, lose a lot of friends along the way (and I don't have many to begin with), and eventually just get numb to it. I just happen to like myself the way I am.

So...you CAN do whatever you want. Moral or not, nothing is physically stopping you. Morality would be an internal conflict, mentally and/or emotionally, and thus it is immaterial. Absolute morality has to do with whether something is ALWAYS right or wrong. Behavior that causes some kind of harm and is unjustified (i.e. no good reason or necessity) is virtually universally considered wrong--evidence that it is absolute. It doesn't suggest that the same behavior might actually be justified under specific circumstances.

Where absolutes become important is on agreeing on a particular standard by which to judge moral values. If Christians are right, then Yahweh is that standard and it is thus necessary to conform to Biblical standards as the elementary basis for all morality and warn others of the potential for destruction if they live unrepentant lives. Part of that involves admitting that it is impossible for human beings to adhere to that standard and that something else is needed to remedy a sinful nature. Apparently we all agree on SOME things as being universal; otherwise the western world wouldn't have enacted many of the laws that it has.

I'm still waiting for someone to show me a Definitive Standard of Absolute Morality that isn't somehow based on consensus opinion, tradition, or mythology.

I've been waiting for over 40 years, by the way...

Opinion, tradition and myth, far from establishing morality, dissolves it. These things insist upon the relativism or blind fiat of an insufficient source and I would not go so far as to call them objective, even if in some cases they are absolute. The only definitive standard (the last two words tend to cause a flutter in relativists) is that which exists in a logical maximum. A God whose nature contains the greatest good can issue commands that are objective and binding.

to many the god you partially base your morality on is a myth, rightly so, why is it any less of a myth than norse mythology or the ancestral worship of the inuiit?
point is morality is a human construct to justify something we as a species have specialized in, making choices, we spend our whole lives trying to make the "right" ones but the "right" ones will always differ depending on circumstance, one of the reasons why i think absolutist views of any kind are detrimental, they never account for more than they need to, as opposed to account for all there is.

That is a different question altogether. I posted a video with John Lennox, Professor of Mathematics at Oxford, discussing this a couple pages back.



This point you have made is a fallacy of equivocation. The right choice, matters with relation to correctness, this does not necessary include 'right' in the moral sense. We could all be utility perfectionists and it would not add an iota of morality to the value of our decision. If the two overlap it is purely coincidental. What I have found is that upper middle class intellectuals and dictators both prefer morality to be relative, for much the same reason. For the upper middle class it is because we impact against objective morality because we want things. The cognitive dissonance at work is powerful... but when you encounter something that really is wrong we suffer an inability to properly articulate our grounds for our position.

Like Nietzsche, who attempted to live in much the same way, he eventually saw a horse being brutally beaten by its owner. The man who said morality did not exist found himself compelled into throwing his arms around the horse to protect it. Nietzsche broke down because he found his worldview unlivable.

in this context "right" (quotation marks) was meant to mean the concept of morality, the "right" thing to do.

you try to say that the base idea of morality being a concept would detract from it somehow?
or did i get your nietze argument completely wrong.

relative morality needs not be absolute just as absolute morality shouldnt be,
i am not arguing that there are not many things we as human being can agree are "wrong"
but what is in one instance wrong can be right in another,
in many real world scenarios less lethal options greatly endanger anyone caught in the line of fire (not of the less lethal weapon but think hostage situation)
here we could say it is inherently wrong to kill, we could try negotiating (leading to more of these incidents, if done in all cases)
we could try a lot of things, yet all would bring unneccesary risk to what is presumed to be innocent people (is anyone completely innocent?)
yet in reality a utilitarian aproach is used because it is what gives the greatest chance of survival for those that deserve it most in the immediate situation (human perception and judgement can be flawed).

in my mind any morality that tries pinning down absolutes (this includes absolute relative morality, we do have plenty of fixpoints) would end up being wrong at one poit or another in history,
i guess it would be fair to say that morality is a matter of how much you take into consideration,
it might be moral at one level only to be immoral at another.

My bold. You answer yourself. Do you realize I do not need any moral justification to infringe on your aggressive behavior?


Because the effect of the action of an individual to the society is REAL.


Nothing but your fantasy. If you trick people once nobody will continue to help you. Indeed there is no reason for anybody to believe you to begin with. Do you think all people are fools?


You are making the fallacy of appeal to popularity.




Comparing the two quotes shows your idea of 'universal morality' is just nonsense. How can you say 'killing without justification is universally wrong' without universal definition of 'justification' (and you admit there are SOME standard for valid justification)?


How convenient is that. How about the Japanese soldiers in China during WW2? That is NOT isolated cases. Do think the same 'I don't think X is a human being' a valid justification?

At the end, people from different societies tend to have similar views on causing harm because
1) It is impossible to form a society if everyone harm each other randomly (and no one can benefit from that),
2) People don't care about subtle difficult with morality, they just say right / wrong without thinking carefully what it means.
Your 'universal morality' nonsense is surplus in explaining the phenomenon.

Relative to specific context and relative in the philosophical sense are not the same thing. Objective usually means one of two things;

1) That some things, no matter the situation are wrong. For example, in one formulation stealing is always wrong. I am scowling in the direction of Javert right now.

2) That in every moral question, there is one of more best answers; that are objectively superior to all others. I endorse this view.

In the philosophical sense, relativism would have us believe that there is no best answer. In this view, the individual usually is the sole arbiter of right and wrong. According to meta-ethical relativists 'It's moral to me, because I believe it is'. The problem with this view, is it makes 'ought' statements all but underivable.



This is the reason that I reject utilitarianism. Though it's formulation would seem to be mostly correct (the greatest good for the greatest number), we really cannot know what that is. I would say that you are correct in your assertion that we lack the capability to derrive this.

which is why we should be carefull to throw anything into the absolutes, including relativism.
no sane person would justify their action by saying its right because i believe uin it (in some circumstances it might, again look above)

but do you honestly say that the poor father feeding his starving wife and children are morally wrong to sustain themselves and their kids by stealing fruit from a large plantation?

to me the very fact that we are having this discussion means that morality has a much higher probability of being a pure concept or it might be influenced by basic instincts,
nowhere can i see any absolutes in morality, there is always exceptions.
as mentioned above without universal definition of justification there will be relativity.

You don't NEED any moral justification to act any way you want. This is especially true if there is no such thing as morality. You just couldn't justify your own reprisal against my aggressive behavior on any moral grounds, any sense of rightness or wrongness about what I did.

If you DO justify your actions against my aggressive behavior and act as though somehow your life and rights have value, if to no one else but yourself, you are assigning values to those things and taking a stand. That would be a sense of moral obligation, a sense that I have somehow wronged you and that you deserve justice. You are making moral judgments against me.


But you aren't answering the question. Why should I even frickin CARE about society? So far you haven't given me any good reason why I should even care about societal values or what that has to do with me. What does it matter what an action of an individual does to society?


It's not nonsense if it's real. Something you're having trouble with here is avoiding any implication of assigning moral values to things. You act as though someone violating you, your life, and your property is somehow "wrong" and that you have a justified "right" to retribution of some form--whether through the legal system or directly. I have no reason to harm you and likely never would, hence you'd have no justification for retribution since I've done nothing deserving of reprisal. Morality is clearly universal. If you explored Japanese explanations for Nanking, you'd find in there somewhere a justification for it, whether or not you agree with the reasoning. The morality of justified action is clearly a virtually universal value and thus most likely a moral absolute.

I've never even tried to beat my wife. But if I can see a mosquito on her face, I'm going to slap her. Mosquitos are a frequent nuisance where we live and carry dangerous diseases. She might be initially upset that I slapped her, but I can show dead mosquito guts to prove by slapping her I may have potentially saved her life. She's not going to call the cops on me for that. Without a reason, I might be either lucky to even wake up the next day, or I might wake up and wish I hadn't--and that's IF I wake up at all.

I don't justify. I don't need to justify. There is no 'ultimate' way to justify. How many times do I need to repeat.


What you are confusing is the difference between morality and value.
e.g. one can say
A) A Macbook is a good computer because it is pretty.
B) A Macbook is a bad computer because it is expensive.
Both are statements about values (and arguably true within there respective value system) but does not involve morality. Talking the value of a society where people do / don't steal from or kill each other is one thing. Whether it implies any 'morality' that makes sense is another. In any case I did NOT say you are morally obliged to care. I only predict the result if you don't.


Any act of deliberate killing would find SOME justification, at least in the killer's mind. Therefore the 'least common denominator' for murder is NONE. No absolute murder = no absolute 'murder is wrong'. Your effort is bound to result in NOTHING.

Sure you do. I'm not saying you HAVE to or you ALWAYS do for EVERYTHING... But a reprisal against someone who wronged you shows that you have a basis for the decisions you make. You value your person, your life, your stuff. You feel that an actualized threat against you and yours is unfair. If you and yours have no value, then you have no reason to care. You don't even need to exact revenge on me. You CAN inflict pain on others, so you do it. There need not be a reason why.

But if there IS a reason, if harm has come to yours, your stuff, and even your peace of mind, and if you value these things, then you have a reason to seek justice either through a judicial system or by your own hands. Your actions would have moral justification.


No, I'm not. There is a link between the two.


But we don't say things about Macbooks being good or evil. We're talking about desirable qualities based on aesthetics or economic bottom line. The Macbook merely facilitates what its user wants, whether writing a weather-prediction app or using stolen information to make unauthorized bank transfers from an identity theft victim's account. Constructive/Destructive behavior demands that the human perpetrator be held accountable. A firearm can be used acquire a protein source for someone who otherwise can't afford to purchase meat, or it can be used to disable or kill an unsuspecting homeowner prior to a robbery.

What we're talking about here are the things people assign values to. Why assign value to a human life? Why assign value to a society? You can't really predict the results if I don't care, either. You can only predict the results if I act senselessly based on my apathy. However, the problem you run into is that the results you predict ONLY happen because someone else assigns value to those concepts and things that are harmed in the wake of my senseless behavior. Without those values, there is no reason anybody should stop me. Moreover, someone protecting those things they have assigned value to will likely do so out of an underlying sense of duty. If morality does not exist, there is no explanation for why one would even have this sense of duty.


Because it was there.


But why have society at all? Without morality, there is no "good" to even talk about "good reason" for placing value on society and working to maintain and develop it. There are isolated areas were people live in the absence of any intelligible society. They live out of the mainstream, and they do just fine. So we don't really NEED society. We prefer the safety of society, sure. But in preferring something, we assign it value...

Society tends to develop its own value system and is thus similar to any given individual that constitutes it: It has its own kind of personality. So it makes sense that for its own survival it would develop a sort of immune system to rid itself of individuals and groups that threaten the whole. But in order to do that, it has to identify the threats. To identify threats, it has to define what it holds as important. It can't define what is important without assigning values. Without morality, there is no basis for assigning those values. You mentioned it's Darwinian..."where from" is irrelevant, but an evolutionary perspective might suggest that moral values arise from natural selection--those things which make a society go and the abandonment of unimportant or failed elements. That would seem to lend evidence to morality coming from nature or natural law, though strictly empirically speaking nature doesn't seem to care what you do with it. What is relevant is that it IS.


True. But accepting morality seems more likely than other ad hoc explanations.


It's just my opinion. It's not a bulletproof argument against amoralists and relativists. I just find it worth considering why people would make any kind of claim. It's not typically because they've put a lot of thought into it. My thoughts on this are just that everyone desires some form of gratification and everyone on some level understands that the things they do are wrong. It's easier to say there is no morality or that all morality is subjective, do whatever you want, and not have to worry about personal accountability or guilt.


The fact that most or people have some intuitive sense of right/wrong, for starters. Throughout the discussion I've already pointed out realities that suggest the existence of something we commonly refer to as morality.



Ad hoc explanations, though.


Ok, but that doesn't account for so many things that do change: Architecture, music, technology, biases, political views, trends in medicine, entertainment trends, legal trends. We are largely driven by fads, and anyone in the commercial music biz knows how fickle audiences are. You either get with the times or you fade into the background.

I hate to keep bringing this up, but consider the acceptance of homosexuality in western society. At one time you wouldn't breathe even the hint of "coming out," but TV mass media would have you believe "gay" is the new "rad" (I'm a child of the 80's so work with me here). Right now calling something (not a person) "gay" is derisive--but for all we know in the next 5 or 10 years that could all change. Something like: "Wow, your man purse is so gay! Where can I find one?" Or: "That club was so gay! I'm totally going back next week..." I remember back when "bad" was the new "cool," so anything can happen. Media encouragement of openly homosexual behavior in turn encourages wider acceptance of it, which in turn colors moral perception. Laws against homosexuality in the west have largely been either overturned or merely ignored and unenforced. Given how vitriolic the general public has been in the past towards homosexuals, the acceptance of homosexuality is not an insignificant change.

IF (and only if) morality is driven by consensus or popular appeal, you should expect to see sweeping changes like that much more regularly. As it is, you don't, which suggests morality is driven by something else and is more static than that. Sometimes we seem to get close--Charles Manson will stay in prison for the remainder of his life. Initially the sentence had been the death penalty until a moratorium was imposed on it and the sentence had to be changed to life imprisonment. It's a big issue, and more often the death penalty is left on the books but just avoided at sentencing. It's only a few select places like Texas and Mississippi where you here about regular executions. It's an issue people really do consider that important, just as it has been for some centuries now.

Also, consider the American legislative and judicial system: Legislators can be voted out of office between terms. The officials serving in two different houses of congress pit ideals of the younger generation against the voice of experience. The justice system checks the legislative by keeping certain judges in place for life so that the whim of the people can't steer the nation in a dangerous, destructive direction based on emotional societal turmoil--socio-political fads that might be forgotten within an election cycle or even just a few months. Change is slow because a mechanism exists that forces us to carefully consider what we're doing.

One would still expect, however, that huge ideological shifts would still be inevitable and ultimately the judicial and the legislative branches would eventually reflect these major shifts. And one sees this happen from time to time. But we don't see this in ALL areas of life or concerning all moral values. Murder is still illegal. Our heritage is a British heritage, and murder was illegal in Great Britain at that time. Murder was illegal in England before that. We know that murder was illegal in other places and has been for thousands of years. It's obviously a moral value, else there's no reason for it. And it hasn't changed.


ANY act? Have you spoken to every single killer throughout all of history, those currently serving time/awaiting execution, and all those who managed to escape justice?

It could be that every killer that is, was, and will be has his own justification and thus is not rightly (he assumes) guilty of murder, strictly speaking. But that's why there are so many definitions of homicide. Self-defense is a legit argument. Accidental death is another. Negligent homicide is another. Depending on the circumstances, the penalties vary. What makes murder what it is is the underlying motivation for committing it. If I want to steal your stuff, then I'll just steal your stuff. It isn't necessary for me to kill you over it. However, I might kill you in the process of stealing your stuff--but my intention was not to kill you but to commit theft. An objective third-party is not going to see that your death is excused just because I was stupid in carrying out an activity that was illegal to begin with. While not murder, it is just as bad, and may even be legally defined as such.

Murder is unjustified, and it is also willful and malicious. That's what makes it immoral by most any standard.

Theft is iffy, though. I think it's wrong to aggressively pursue any and all theft. The reason why is one has to consider WHY a person would steal anything. I had someone break into my car once and steal all the loose change I kept in a compartment. Honestly, if the same person approached me and asked, would I have just given them the money? Probably not, and that person might really have been desperate, not to mention I wasn't very bright in leaving valuables such as money (it was only about $5 in loose change, but still...) in my car where it was easily accessible (though I know for a fact I kept the door locked, so the lock had to have been forced by someone who knew what they were doing). So was it wrong that they did what they did? Sure. But they probably really needed the money more than I did. I can let that go.

I also have a pear tree in my yard. From time to time I'll pick pears, but some might fall to the ground. As a rule, I don't pick them up. If I caught someone in my yard picking up pears, I'd just look the other way. They might need them more than I do. "Technically" it's trespassing and theft, but I'd let it go. I see people picking up cans on the side of the road, and I know it's not because they want to keep the road clean but because they're collecting garbage for scrap metal. As a rule, I do not pick up cans on the side of the road. Why? The little money they might get for picking up metal cans might be their next meal. I don't need the money THAT bad.

Sooo...yeah, there are justifications, but there are also moral standards that people tend to adhere to. Then it DOES become a problem of "where" the morals come from. I'll stop here, but I'll just simply say that I don't think the evidence really points to the whims of society as a steady moral source. I think it has to be more than that, else what we observe isn't really explainable.

Reason to do something = moral justification? Do you need moral justification to buy a car? Or go to a particular restaurant?


But you seem to be assuming they are equal.


How is that different from 'desirable qualities' of a particular strategy of human interaction?


Why assign value to the quality of your dinner? Why do you care about what you eat for dinner?


Wrong. If everybody act senselessly then you are as likely to be killed as you kill the other. Groups of people working together rather than senselessly have an advantage in survivability. Whether such difference has value is irrelevant.


Nonsense. Not all 'good' are moral good.


Your second defeats your first. If the first were right there would be nothing for natural selection to 'select'. And your assertion that morality solely comes from natural selection is typical naturalistic fallacy.


What is there to accept?


Really, do you have any other than ad hom to argue against people who have actually thought carefully about the problem?


How is that more ad hoc than some magic man coming up with some magical idea called morality?


How is the need for food based on fads?


What you are doing is just equivocating the word 'murder' in different time. 'Murder' is not a single thing. Fail.


Are you shifting definition now?


More emotional, baseless rants.

Would you be more willing to buy a car that was somehow strangely known to cause other people harm? I mean, KNOWINGLY buy such a car. Given a choice, is it better to blow all your money on yourself at a fancy eatery, or to enjoy a reasonable dinner at home that you can share with your entire family? If it meant my children would starve, I would weigh carefully the choices I made, even with seemingly mundane things such as that. I may prefer a certain type of car, but I also have to consider the needs of my family, especially where safety is concerned. One might be sportier, the other might perform better in head-on and side collisions.


Values seem to support morality. If nothing is important to you, then you have no motivation to take any kind of stand. If you DO take a stand, why do you do it? Because you feel that whatever you've assigned value is important. Therefore, it is RIGHT to take a moral stand.


Aesthetics and monetary value don't determine good or evil. What makes an inanimate object better than another is how well it suits one's purpose. A computer does not act maliciously. It either has to be programmed to do it or it facilitates the actions of a human user to act maliciously. Computers do not have "intent." Human beings do.


Not the same thing. Certain foods might merely give me pleasure in consuming them. There's nothing inherently "wrong" about that. Gluttony, though, is self-destructive behavior. Eating expensive food and not feeding your own children would be destructive to the health of your own children. If the intent is self-serving to the harm of someone else, and certainly a small person might think he is being treated unfairly if dad eats all the time and he gets nothing, then at least one person thinks dad's eating habits are unjustified and unfair.

I care about what I eat because I do more good reasonably fed than I do malnourished or overfed and unhealthy. I value my wife living a long life without being alone and I want to do my best to live as long as I can as her companion. I value seeing my children grow up and succeeding in their own lives. So...yeah, what I eat matters. It is "good" that I make good decisions in everything I do as often as I possibly can.


Sure. But...people don't generally act senselessly, at least not in any grossly intentional way. There are exceptions, sure. Rampant senseless actions make sense if morals don't exist.

Sure, groups of people working together have an advantage in survivability. But this doesn't explain why anyone should care about "survivability." I'm not going to suggest a reason here, but I will point out that people wouldn't work together towards survivability if they didn't place value in "survivability."


But why have society at all? Without morality, there is no "good" to even talk about "good reason" for placing value on society and working to maintain and develop it. [/quote]
Nonsense. Not all 'good' are moral good.[/quote]
OK...so, why have society at all?


Or the first defeats the second. Meh...whatever... I don't claim to be a naturalist, either. That just means that if morals are the product of evolution, one just has to account for why it appears that nature doesn't care what you do with it. I'll leave that for a Darwinist to figure out.


Not my problem. I'm not concerned with other explanations. You've already pointed at amoralism, I think maybe I mentioned relativism, but I'm not arguing in favor of those explanations.


Not against people who have actually thought about it, no. I'm just not convinced that people in general really do think about it.


Straw man. Who's talking about a magic man?

The idea of theistic morality is a very simple one. If you want to avoid "Goddidit" explanations, though, you could possibly come up with a workable moral naturalist argument. To me, the idea of moral nihilism just seems to ignore that people have emotional responses due to external causes. Expressivism just explains it away as "there are no morals, just emotions." Well, ok, but why do we associate "evil" with negative emotions and "good" with positive emotions? We assign positive emotions a value, we think it's important that we feel good, and we work to avoid causative factors for negative emotions. In other words, why is "feeling good" important? It doesn't account for any kind of altruism, either, or how people can purposefully act to aid someone else given full knowledge they put themselves at some sort of disadvantage. There are more problems with moral nihilism than morality.


Have you been to a major fast food chain recently? You think the qp-with-cheese has been around forever? That has nothing to do with the NEED for food. The actual delivery of food has vastly changed, though. How else is it that what used to be common, traditional, peasant dishes suddenly cost $30 or more at a nice restaurant? One of my favorite places to eat when I'm out of town is an "Asian-fusion" restaurant. But I've been to S. Korea and I've actually eaten in Asian restaurants in, well, Asia. Pan-Asia serves delicious food, but authentic Asian it is not, with the possible exception of their sushi. Everything else just about anywhere I go for "asian" food is really just Americanized junk. Good-tasting junk, but still junk.


Nope. Take the Hebrew Bible, for example. A significant part of it is the codified law-and-order of the ancient Israelites, even if you believe that it's nothing else. Murder is clearly defined, with other forms of homicide also clearly defined as "not murder" along with hypothetical case studies as to how exactly to implement the law. That was thousands of years ago. Western laws regarding murder and other homicide are not fundamentally different. They may vary somewhat in legal procedure, they may vary somewhat in acceptable penalties, but murder still is what it always was.


Nope. A standard definition of murder has to include the intent. In fact, the same applies for any action. If, for example, someone is in a life-threatening situation and your house is the nearest access and only hope I have of calling law enforcement/firefighters/ambulance, and if I have to break into your house when you aren't home, I'll probably NOT get arrested for breaking and entering although TECHNICALLY I've committed a crime. In fact, I'd probably report myself to the police, give them all the information they want, explain why I did it, let them verify that I've left everything else in your house undisturbed, and I'd either wait for you to get home or leave information on how you could contact me so I could pay someone to replace your window. You probably COULD sue me, but why would you do that if I'm prepared to make things right the best way I possibly could?

Murder is strictly a malicious act. Anything else is just plain homicide of one flavor or another. And actually, there are other forms of homicide that could have malicious intent but aren't technically murder.


Nope. Check various legal codes that define murder. People believe that murder is an unjustified, intentional act of taking a life.

Completely hypothetical.


If all morality can be reduced to value then there is no need to talk about morality (but that is not true because morality is more complicated and rigid). Do you know what you are arguing for?


Baseless assertion. Not all stand are moral stand.


What is the point of 'good' and 'evil'?


A society is not an animate object.


So you recognize SOME value has nothing to do with morality.


Nothing to do with with the meal itself.


Are you saying you wouldn't care about what you eat if you have no family and you live on a deserted island?


Do you understand what do you mean by 'senseless'? Many psychopaths have elaborated plan to kill their target. They clearly care about their 'immoral' project and value its success. Those moving randomly around caring about absolutely nothing are just ret*d, not psychopaths.


Simply a society is a desirable living environment (compared with living alone on a deserted island)?


How can those people write about amoralism in peer reviewed journals? In view of your naive arguments here, it is clear it is you who do not think about it.


Your objection is so funny. Emotion is not rational and is never any basis of morality. The association is nothing but a naive error.


Why not? Not having the moral obligation to do the 'right' thing does not mean one cannot do it.


You said it in the bold sentence (my bold). The rest is irrelevant.


On the other hand, in South Asia and China, many, if not most judiciary are handled by local elders (As far as I know there was never attempt at precise definition in ancient Chinese law) and 'honor killing' was very common.


How does legal code has any to do with what people believe? Indeed the law only concerns what is legal / illegal rather than moral / immoral. When you say 'People believe that murder is an unjustified, intentional act of taking a life.' you are just begging the question by defining murder as a type of killing that is 'wrong'.

Posing an idea on the concept of Morality as expressed through acts of "Good" and "Evil":

"Good" is what provides the greatest benefit to the most people, most often, and at personal expense.

"Evil" is what provides the greatest benefit to the self, most often, and at the expense of others.

...

Examples:

Making sack lunches for hungry striking workers at one's own expense would be "Good".

Sacking the striking workers and spending their lost wages on an expensive vacation for one's self would be "Evil".

...

This seems to fit fairly well with most people's concepts of "Good" and "Evil" - the former being focused on agape altruism, and the latter being focused on selfishness and greed. Please not that no mention of a "Higher Power" was necessary.