So what is this toxic masculinity thing anyhow?

[Sparko]

This is an invalid hypothetical, because it does not reflect the social values of society. The majority of people in Australia do not think that first trimester abortion is immoral. The same applies in the US.

And yet at one time they did. And they could again. So don't avoid my question. If Australia (your society) decided to outlaw abortion, would you then agree that abortions are immoral?

[Tassman]

And yet at one time they did. And they could again. So don't avoid my question. If Australia (your society) decided to outlaw abortion, would you then agree that abortions are immoral?

[Sparko]

You still are not answering my question. If the majority of society thinks abortion is immoral then they will change the law to say abortion is immoral, right? So if they did that in your society would you then believe that abortions is immoral? Would abortion be immoral?

[JimL]

You still are not answering my question. If the majority of society thinks abortion is immoral then they will change the law to say abortion is immoral, right? So if they did that in your society would you then believe that abortions is immoral? Would abortion be immoral?

Morals, what is right and what is wrong behavior, are dependent on the best interests of society regardless of what any one individual believes. In a sense you could argue that what is in the best interests of a society is objective, because it either is or isn't in its best interests, but it isn't set down in stone.

[Sparko]

Morals, what is right and what is wrong behavior, are dependent on the best interests of society regardless of what any one individual believes. In a sense you could argue that what is in the best interests of a society is objective, because it either is or isn't in its best interests, but it isn't set down in stone.

"best" assumes an objective standard of "good" that society is striving towards. And if there is an objective standard of "good" then morality is objective.

[Tassman]

You still are not answering my question. If the majority of society thinks abortion is immoral then they will change the law to say abortion is immoral, right? So if they did that in your society would you then believe that abortions is immoral? Would abortion be immoral?

[Tassman]

"best" assumes an objective standard of "good" that society is striving towards. And if there is an objective standard of "good" then morality is objective.

[Sparko]

No.

No? Then your claim that morals are just what a society decides they are is BS.

Morals exist despite what a society says. When the US had slavery, even though most of the society believed it was OK, it was still immoral and wrong. When the Nazi's gassed millions of Jews, even though they thought it was moral, it wasn't. It was wrong. There is a right and wrong that transcends what a society claims. Even you recognize that despite your protestations.

[JimL]

"best" assumes an objective standard of "good" that society is striving towards. And if there is an objective standard of "good" then morality is objective.

Even should the above be true, it need have nothing to do with an objective source. That's the part that I think you are not grasping. Moral or immoral behaviors are only objective in the sense that they are either in the best interests of community, or they are not. They don't need come from and objective source for that to be the case. If god doesn't exist, moral rules would still be in the best interest of society. Don't you agree?

[Sparko]

Even should the above be true, it need have nothing to do with an objective source. That's the part that I think you are not grasping. Moral or immoral behaviors are only objective in the sense that they are either in the best interests of community, or they are not. They don't need come from and objective source for that to be the case. If god doesn't exist, moral rules would still be in the best interest of society. Don't you agree?

The concept of there being a "best" indicates an objective goal that everyone agrees on.

The Nazi's thought that what was "best" for their society was to kill all of the Jews. Does that mean that genocide is moral?

[JimL]

The concept of there being a "best" indicates an objective goal that everyone agrees on.

The Nazi's thought that what was "best" for their society was to kill all of the Jews. Does that mean that genocide is moral?

if god didn't exist, moral rules regulating behavior would still be in the best interests of community, don't you agree?

[Sparko]

if god didn't exist, moral rules regulating behavior would still be in the best interests of community, don't you agree?

They would be all over the map and nobody would know or care about what is "best" because it would just be what they prefer.

[Mountain Man]

if god didn't exist, moral rules regulating behavior would still be in the best interests of community, don't you agree?

And Nazi Germany thought that exterminating the Jews and other genetically "undesirable" people was in the best interests of the community, and in a Godless universe, they were perfectly right to do so within their own moral framework, don't you agree?

[rogue06]

And Nazi Germany thought that exterminating the Jews and other genetically "undesirable" people was in the best interests of the community

To provide backing for this part as I have previously when this gets brought up...

Without going through the whole thread I'll assume that the Nazis were brought up as an example already. They thought that they were doing a great service for not just Germany but all of Europe in their campaign to exterminate the Jews. The Nazis claimed that they were eradicating a "racial tuberculosis" and a "bacillus" as they slaughtered them.

Hitler cites Louis Pasteur, as well as Robert Koch (the father of microbiology who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his tuberculosis findings in 1905), as inspirations for the Holocaust.

During one of his Table Talks on February 22, 1942 Hitler remarked that:

It is one of the greatest revolutions there has ever been in the world. The Jew will be identified! The same fight that Pasteur and Koch had to fight must be led by us today. Innumerable sicknesses have their origin in one bacillus: the Jew! Japan would also have got them if it had remained open any longer to the Jew. We will get well when we eliminate the Jew.

Similarly on July 10, 1942, Hitler stated:

I feel I am like Robert Koch in politics. He discovered the bacillus and thereby ushered medical science onto new paths. I discovered the Jew as the bacillus and the fermenting agent of all social decomposition.

In a speech before the Reichstag on January 30, 1937, Hitler explained that the anti-Jewish policy he had inaugurated reflected his endeavor to make the German people "immune against this infection." Measures enacted by the Nazis, Hitler claimed, were designed to enable the German people to avoid "close relationship with the carriers of this poisonous bacillus." For as Hitler wrote in Mein Kampf:

Could anyone believe that Germany alone was not subject to exactly the same laws as all other human organisms?

For us, this is not a problem you can turn a blind eye to-one to be solved by small concessions. For us, it is a problem of whether our nation can ever recover its health, whether the Jewish spirit can ever really be eradicated. Don't be misled into thinking you can fight a disease without killing the carrier, without destroying the bacillus. Don't think you can fight racial tuberculosis without taking care to rid the nation of the carrier of that racial tuberculosis. This Jewish contamination will not subside, this poisoning of the nation will not end, until the carrier himself, the Jew, has been banished from our midst.

[JimL]

They would be all over the map and nobody would know or care about what is "best" because it would just be what they prefer.

So, you at least admit then that moral rules of behavior would exist, that they would, by man, be codified into law, even if they did not come from an objectively existing source? Correct?