moral relativism

[Belinda]

Morals are relative to a group's objectives. Its ideals.
Not all objectives are attainable. Not all ideals are realistic. They always fail to produce the desired outcome.
What determines their relative success?
Nature. The objective world.

Some ideologies have failure ingrained in their morals, .e.g., Judaism, Islam, Christianity.
Failure cultivates a specific psychology - victims seeking salvation.
Scapegoating.
Failure is blamed on the followers, not the dogma. They've failed to attain the supernatural ideals/objectives because they are imperfect.
Weaponizing of shame/guilt.
Messiah becomes a scapegoat, taking upon itself the follower's imperfections.

In secular forms of this same dogma, i.e., Marxism, the blame is cast upon its followers. Those who failed to apply the dogma correctly, ensuring a state of perpetual revolution, and slaughter.
In postmodernism we see the same ingrained failure being institutionalized.
For them race is a social construct, so social interventions (engineering) will solve this "natural injustice." But it is never solved because race is not a social construct, so failure is inevitable. The blame is, then, placed on the system - systemic racism. So social destruction is inevitable, as the brainwashed desperate flowers refuse to question their own dogma's presumptions, but look for the causes of their predictable failures in something else. They tell themselves that the cause of their failure to create a utopia of equality, must be a wrong understanding and application of their perfect dogma.
Apologetics follow. Endless debates over who understands the dogma, and who can correctly apply it.
Such debates become violent. They never end.
Nobody questions the dogma itself.

The objective is unattainable because it contradicts reality, so perpetual revolution is the outcome - Trotskyism.

Christianity does not have to embody a slave or victim mentality.Jesus said "Take up your cross" .This, you choose voluntarily and purposefully. It is not hard to understand; the newspapers regularly report individuals who are taking up their crosses every day. You will have met some of them yourself.

[Pistolero]

Your protestant perspective individuates' collectivism - and so is closest to Americanism.

Jesus was a scapegoat, who took upon himself the believers fate, his culpability....his participation in determining his own fate.

His fate, is a narration of the movement form corporeal to incorporeal identity. From individuation towards collective uniformity.
Marxist and Post-modernity follows the same "logic."
God is revealed to be an abstraction represented by a word - semiotics.
Words that can be transmitted form mind to mind - like a mental virus.
Memetic-parasitism.

Scapegoats is what moderns cannot live without....see their positions of free-will for evidence.
Not even Nietzsche could deal with the absence of something to accuse and blame....

What do his polemics against Christianity amount to if he believed men have no free-will?
What was he accusing them of? Being wrongly determined?

[Belinda]

Your protestant perspective individuates' collectivism - and so is closest to Americanism.

Jesus was a scapegoat, who took upon himself the believers fate, his culpability....his participation in determining his own fate.

His fate, is a narration of the movement form corporeal to incorporeal identity. From individuation towards collective uniformity.
Marxist and Post-modernity follows the same "logic."
God is revealed to be an abstraction represented by a word - semiotics.
Words that can be transmitted form mind to mind - like a mental virus.
Memetic-parasitism.

Scapegoats is what moderns cannot live without....see their positions of free-will for evidence.
Not even Nietzsche could deal with the absence of something to accuse and blame....

What do his polemics against Christianity amount to if he believed men have no free-will?
What was he accusing them of? Being wrongly determined?

Free Will is a fallacy made for the purpose of punitive social control.

Popular usage of the phrase often demonstrates that the ontology of free will often is not understood, but that so-called free will is popularly conflated with personal freedom of choice.
God is deterministic.

"God is dead" refers to the demise of God's essential power and authority, and implies that if we want a God it better be existentialist. God has a history.

[Pistolero]

As long as you continue contradicting your absolutist, totalitarianism, with your every action....daily and persistently.....
I am here to mock you.

YOUR choice of how you define 'god,' taken from Abrahamic superstitions, is deterministic....absolutely and totally.
And all those, morons, who claim to be atheists, whilst claiming the cosmos is deterministic, are trapped in the same linguistic sanatorium as you - recovering Abrahamics.
Yes....that's my point.
They've replaced your chosen representation of the same totalitarian, absolutism, with another.
They've willfully and intentionally chosen a new moniker for the same crap, and then pretend to be advanced.
Well, they've progressed....in exercising their free-will.

[Belinda]

*You would better serve yourself by explaining instead of mocking.

* You have been conflating the Jesus of history with the Christ of faith.

[Belinda]

As long as you continue contradicting your absolutist, totalitarianism, with your every action....daily and persistently.....
I am here to mock you.

YOUR choice of how you define 'god,' taken from Abrahamic superstitions, is deterministic....absolutely and totally.
And all those, morons, who claim to be atheists, whilst claiming the cosmos is deterministic, are trapped in the same linguistic sanatorium as you - recovering Abrahamics.
Yes....that's my point.
They've replaced your chosen representation of the same totalitarian, absolutism, with another.
They've willfully and intentionally chosen a new moniker for the same crap, and then pretend to be advanced.
Well, they've progressed....in exercising their free-will.

I think perhaps you are a post modernist. I don't know how you stay alive without believing events are caused and are the effects of causes.

[Pistolero]

Excellent exit ploy, my dear....

Ta, Ta,

[Belinda]

Excellent exit ploy, my dear....

Ta, Ta,

Yes, but you can't explain how you stay alive unless you believe your choices have effects.

[Belinda]

Morals do relate to cultures of belief and practice. However there are constants that overarch cultures.

Those overarching constants are pain and suffering. Pain and suffering are therefore the criteria by which we ought condemn certain cultures.

[Pistolero]

Yes, dear.....all naturally based on pain/pleasure.

So, many moral rules are not particular to one culture.
What is particular to cultures is ethical amendments....such as those concerning adultery, or violence, or how female sexual roles are integrated into their systems, etc.
The Jews did not invent kindness, dear.....I know they told you so.
Christianity is not necessary to be a decent human being.

Survival interests suffice.

How do we adapt out pets to our modern lifestyles?
Using treats and authority....threat of pain and promise of pleasure.

Pain/Pleasure underlies moral rules.
No god required.

[Pistolero]

I'm not denying the effect of choices, dear...you've mistaken me for one of the many determinants on this forum.
I do not claim that 'choice is an illusion.'
The opposite.
Choice is fundamental.

Judgment, expressed as choice...as a wilful act.

Morality is an act, not words on a page, or theories triggering romantic fantasies.
No god required, dear, for moral behaviors to offer a survival advantage.
But you want to defend your Christian universities...your all-inclusivity, your love as a cosmic right.
This goes against the origins of moral behavior. It was exclusive, not inclusive.
What is your love worth if all deserve it?

And what of sympathy/antipathy, relative to empathy.
A hunter empathizes with his prey to make the kill, not to make it part of his household.

[Belinda]

A hunter empathizes with his prey to make the kill, not to make it part of his household.

Power of a hunter increases in proportion as he takes responsibility for the morality of his action. The souls of some hunters one reads about in the media must be in a terrible state.

[iambiguous]

Logic and Morality
Colin McGinn

Are there any affinities between logic and morality? The question may appear perverse: aren’t logic and morality at opposite ends of the spectrum? Isn’t logic dry and abstract while morality is human and practical? Isn’t one about proofs and the other about opinions?

Affinity: "A spontaneous or natural liking or sympathy for someone or something."

Only if you traverse the globe you will find that what some have a strong affinity towards, others might have just the opposite reaction...they'll loathe it.

Personally, I believe that affinities are no less rooted existentially in dasein. Each of us has acquired particular predilections that revolve around moral and political prejudices derived from the lives we lived, including indoctrination as a child as well as one's own uniquely personal experiences.

Or, rather, that is the case [for me] until someone is able to demonstrate which affinities come closest to the objective truth regarding moral conflicts
'

I think the affinities are real, however, and I propose to sketch them. Both concern guides to conduct: how we should behave, cognitively and practically.

Of course, from my frame of mind there are any number of contexts in which we react given very different sets of cognitive assumptions resulting in any number of moral and political conflicts

Logic gives rules to reason by; morality gives rules for action. These rules purport to be correct—to yield valid reasoning and right action. Thus logic and morality are both normative: they tell us what we ought to do.

So, we're back to focusing in on how we react to any number of moral conflagrations swirling around social political and economic interactions embedded in political economy out in a world teeming with contingency, chance and change.

[Belinda]

Logic and Morality
Colin McGinn

Are there any affinities between logic and morality? The question may appear perverse: aren’t logic and morality at opposite ends of the spectrum? Isn’t logic dry and abstract while morality is human and practical? Isn’t one about proofs and the other about opinions?

Affinity: "A spontaneous or natural liking or sympathy for someone or something."

Only if you traverse the globe you will find that what some have a strong affinity towards, others might have just the opposite reaction...they'll loathe it.

Personally, I believe that affinities are no less rooted existentially in dasein. Each of us has acquired particular predilections that revolve around moral and political prejudices derived from the lives we lived, including indoctrination as a child as well as one's own uniquely personal experiences.

Or, rather, that is the case [for me] until someone is able to demonstrate which affinities come closest to the objective truth regarding moral conflicts
'

I think the affinities are real, however, and I propose to sketch them. Both concern guides to conduct: how we should behave, cognitively and practically.

Of course, from my frame of mind there are any number of contexts in which we react given very different sets of cognitive assumptions resulting in any number of moral and political conflicts

Logic gives rules to reason by; morality gives rules for action. These rules purport to be correct—to yield valid reasoning and right action. Thus logic and morality are both normative: they tell us what we ought to do.

So, we're back to focusing in on how we react to any number of moral conflagrations swirling around social political and economic interactions embedded in political economy out in a world teeming with contingency, chance and change.

I agree with Colin McGinn.

Ordinary human sympathy helps people to live together without killing each other.

When ordinary sympathy is absent, then power based on fear of others is in the ascendant.

Moral relativism as a topic becomes more focused if we ask the question 'Is there a just war?'

[jamesconroyuk]

Moral relativism identifies something real: morality is shaped by culture, history, biology, psychology, it evolves with life.
But it often stops halfway.

If morality were purely relative, just "what people happen to think", then it would collapse into incoherence.
Every whim would be as valid as any horror.
Yet in practice, we intuitively know that some moral instincts are deeper and more durable than others, because they are rooted in the very structure of life itself.

The missing piece is an anchor.
Not "God" in the simplistic, authoritarian sense, nor "pure reason" floating in the void, but life itself as the grounding condition for value.
Without life, there is no perception, no meaning, no good, no bad.
Thus, at the most fundamental level: what is good is what enables life to persist, flourish, and deepen its own experience.

Cultures, experiences, and perspectives differ wildly, yes - but across them, the through-line is always: Does this enhance life or diminish it?
This doesn't eliminate moral complexity, it grounds it.
Negotiation, compromise, and evolving standards are necessary because life is dynamic, contested, and unfolding.
But they are not arbitrary: the vitality of life remains the hidden compass behind all genuine moral systems, even when people are unaware of it.

Moral relativism describes the surface turbulence.
A deeper philosophy of life shows the ocean floor.


You can find the formal paper HERE