I am sorry you feel that way. I didn't pretend to insult you, it maybe the case that I am wrong and you know very well what objectivity or the natural law are.

Put up or shut up with the backhanded, passive aggressive insults.
-you are confused
-don't you know the difference between objective and subjective?
-do you know what natural law i?

I have a right to feel insulted for the simple fact that you are insulting me. Further more your entire argument rests on these insults. You are being rude, nasty, condescending and incredibly evasive on actually backing your insults.

Demonstrate that natural law is objective or apologize. "It was pagan philosophers not the church" is not an argument, as you can see I hold religion and philosophy in the same contempt.

Renard,

I didn’t start the discussion insulting you, originally I made a comment to Rob, asserting that morality didn’t have to be subjective, but that in fact the traditional morality of the Church followed the conception of “natural law theory” that was proposed by the pagan philosopher Aristotle (so “natural law” does not originate by revelation, or any arbitrary metaphysics), which Rob didn’t bother contest, as we have discussed morality on various previous occasions. And you started by questioning this, stating that “natural law” wasn’t objective. Naturally I questioned your understanding of objectivity and what “natural law” is (and I still think that your notions of both things are somehow confused).

On the course of our conversation you also questioned my view of human nature and advanced your own notion, that clearly implies that basically humans are based on the assumption that self-deceiving (and incapable of avoiding self-deception), which as I explained to you implied a presumption of irrationality of humans as of an incapability to address the objective reality (that is dependent of our subjective cognition, consciousness and reason), that you are pretending to mask behind the argument that we humans are very conflicted beings (but nowhere in our arguing I suggested even remotely that morality was simple or that is expressed black and white on English for everyone to grasp, except for people that rely for their morality only on revelation). All that logically follows from what you said, it is nothing that I created by myself, or unjustified derived from what you stated. You don’t have to be insulted (in fact you have no right to feel that way, as I didn’t mean to insult you), these are the result from your own incoherences. If you think they are not incoherent you can argue about it, if you pretend to feel offended I repeat I don’t mean to offend you, you have the right to choose your own idea of morality (I can disagree with your choice, because in my understanding it poses problems).

You had to start the conversation insulting me, you need to continue it insulting conclusions by calling them assumptions.It shows an incredible weakness in your position that you have to insult and ad hom.

Humans are, at best, very conflicted.beings. This makes sense as a social animal needs to worry about both their own reproductive success but still needs people around them to help them. They need empathy to deal with their relatives and tribes, but also benefit from cold blooded ruthlessness to deal with competition against people they're not related to.

Out of that conflict, you are arbitrarily picking one side. Can you give me any reason why a saints selfless giving is any more natural than say Cortez's conquest of the Aztecs? Can you give me any example of the former thats ever gotten an entire society behind it like the latter?

The problem that I find your conclusions about morals are wrong is only due to the premises you take on human nature, such that leads you to conclude that key points about human nature is that humans are self-deceptive and irrational, besides denying that humans are directed through acting towards good (or as you say to do the “right thing”).

In fact this is distinct form my view about morals (that is similar to the view of the Church), as my argument start form the premises that humans are directed to good and that humans are rational (in spite of a tendency to self-deception).

I do agree that self-deception can lead us to act like bastards, and history is plentiful of evidence about that (we agree on this), however I disagree with you that the fact that we (normally) intend to do evil, as we normally do not intend evil (apart from psychotic individuals, or extremely morally corrupted people capable of banalizing evil)

When you claim about EVIDENCE, I have to ask you what is the EVIDENCE you are talking about? The people I know (most of them atheists by the way), in fact match very well my view of human nature (as stated above). I am not claiming that they are perfect, saints, or aliens, but in general they are well intended and, in spite of errors, in general they mean to seek to be good, and that is my view of humans in general, I don’t claim that there aren’t bad people, of course there are and people are capable of doing terrible things (in general thinking only about themselves and losing sight of what is good). In fact all the EVIDENCE available indicates that your view about human nature is unjust and unjustified.

All the EVIDENCE I have in fact supports that essentially humans seek goodness and are rational (in spite of not being perfect).

-----As you explained yourself, on the basis that you arbitrarily assume that humans are self-deceptive and irrational----

Why is it that everything you decide is completely objective and rational, but any conclusion I reach, no matter how well evidenced, is an arbitrary assumption?

Unlike you I am drawing a conclusion based off of EVIDENCE. I know you're pretty deep into this whole philosophy thing but you remember what that is right? Facts, trends, real world happenings that are independent of you? All that shows is that humans are nasty.and not to be trusted, especially in groups.

To paraphrase men in black: A person is moral. People are bastards.

And to say that human nature is in line with the Church is sheer fiction. The church calls for celibacy until marriage human nature.. not so much. The church calls for monogamy humans rarely do this. , You are not in any way shape or form reaching the rational, objective morality you claim you are.

You may not like my product but at least its as advertised.

So you claim that it is better that the "right thing" should have to be decided on purely subjective grounds. And this is based on what? As you explained yourself, on the basis that you arbitrarily assume that humans are self-deceptive and irrational (insofar as being unable to rationally find out what to do the "right thing" is). For those reasons alone you came to the conclusion that the best thing is to do is to act uncritically under the impression that whatever we will find reasonable to do is the "right thing", that is a quite self-satisfactory (and obviously wrong) response (it validates everything), nothing more.

You have arbitrarily decided that the right thing is species based- this has more than a few problems.
Arbitrariness of the decision
Appeal to nature
Fallacy of composition- why should an individual human feel a need just because most humans do?

and most importantly you are ONLY accepting the Good aspects of human nature as natural. This clearly demonstrates that what you SAY is your selective criteria isn't.Your selective criteria is good,not human nature.

I wish I knew the answers to these questions! Certainly government has made it easier to get divorced, did that increase the divorce rate (in which case maybe it was bad policy) or did it merely ease the burden on people who would inevitably divorce (in which case it was acknowledging the inevitable)?

It seems to me that there are things that can be done even if causes are not known with great certainty. It seems reasonable to me, for example, that because better educated people tend to be more likely to marry (and stay married), a concerted effort to get people to finish high school and obtain a college education (or perhaps some good quality vocational training) would be one way to support "traditional" marriage, and of course a better-educated populating, even if it doesn't have a significant impact on marriage is still a worthwhile goal.

I think there are many economic factors, too, some of which can be partially controlled, but many of which are beyond control for political and cultural reasons.

But I can't pretend even to scratch the surface. I do follow with some interest the work of David Blankenhorn and the Institute for American Values. Blankenhorn had been a defender of "traditional marriage" and an opponent of same-sex marriage, but he changed his mind (and caused somewhat of a furor in ant-SSM circles) by dropping his opposition to SSM as an ineffective effort in promoting "traditional marriage." I think he is correct that doing something about the disastrous state of "traditional marriage" in no way requires opposing same-sex marriage. It will probably be far in the future (if ever) that significant percentages of gay people choose to marry, and it just seems like nonsense to me to fear that same-sex marriage will in any way diminish the inclination of heterosexuals to marry each other. It seems to me it is impossible to pin any of the problems of "traditional" (opposite-sex) marriage on the campaign for same-sex marriage, or on same-sex marriage itself where it has been legalized.

As I said before, «humans are inclined to do good, insofar as even while trying to justify wrong deeds, people try to justify those deeds as good», and that provides the basis to assert that human are directed to do good (or the right thing as you said), even while doing evil. If there is something that we can know about human nature is that we are naturally directed to do good and avoid evil (safe for psychopaths). With this I don’t say that doing good occurs naturally, if fact human history is full of counter examples (as you said), or that we are naturally good, but just that we are naturally directed to good. I didn’t say also that to act consistently in doing good is easy also, because it isn’t that is problematic for everyone, we are far from perfection. But nothing in reality is simple and we deal with it, we don’t complain that the world has too many colours and it be less complicated if it was black and white (in spite sometimes we would appreciate more clarity and that things we less fuzzy).

The fact that we may be able to deceive ourselves is important, but it is not the crucial point, insofar as we are rational and we acknowledge that fact, we know very well that we can deceive ourselves, even at the level of cognition, but one knows that, if someone sees a shadow and is afraid as he thinks he may have spotted a menace, one tries to confirm that knowing that one may be wrong, the deception on the level of cognition doesn’t lead us to act irrationally. If one turns on the TV and sees some action that one recognizes as it may describe Romans we automatically know that it is not real that it is fiction, one doesn’t avoid interpreting the perception of what is reality with the assistance of reason, even if we want to fool ourselves.

About your question on my comment:

«there is no justification to cause unnecessary suffering (to humans or nonhumans).»

You say:

«There's plenty of justification for it. The thing is with your human nature based morality, how do you decide that its wrong?»

If it is not necessary there is no justification, then it is evil (as nothing else justifies it. If there is justification (and it is well justified) then it necessary and can be tolerated.

Like if a dog attacks you, you would have the right to defend yourself. Of if there is an epidemic transmitted by flees, you have the right to seek to exterminate them. The other thing very different is to kick a dog, without reason, besides the personal displeasure of that dog.

Or about your reasoning:

« I think its very dangerous to claim something as having more authority than it does. I'd rather have something thats subjective but copped to it than to have something incredibly subjective pretending to be objective.»

First I am not claiming authority on anything, and even less on morals (I don’t really know you, so it would be pure and unjustified presumption). Second the fact that our cognition, consciousness, and reason are subjective experiences they deal with objective reality, and, even conceding that our morality as such is purely subjective, it doesn’t enable us from looking for an objective and rational understanding of it, or even that such a thing is forcely illusory as you seem to suggest.