Is morality subjective?

As I understand his argument, he says that they are never considered to be good, not that they are never allowed to happen.

I explained multiple times rape and murder mean different things depending on culture. Don't keep using these terms as if they are the same. It is confusing and makes it look like you keep equivocating.

Also, I am not surprised forbidden things are not considered to be good in the slightest. They are not considered good for the same reason criminals aren't considered good. These words have value judgment as part of their meaning. The value judgment according to values of the culture the words are used in. And now I explained equivocation in this argument for the third and hopefully final time.

It doesn't seem like the precise meanings of rape and murder need to be identical in all cultures

I am not clear why. Pleas clarify your argument.

Regardless of his/her particular argument, I'd still like to know how the existence of moral disagreements alone makes moral relativism any stronger of a position? Moral realism certainly doesn't become a weaker position because of it, either.

Let's consider how the world should look like if moral realism was true, and how it would differ if it was false.

If moral realism was true, I would expect it to influence people. I would expect to find morals of different societies and different cultures having a lot in common and only rare and small disagreements. /u/keyboardist16 seems to think it too, otherwise he/she wouldn't point at commonality of rape and murder being forbidden in most cultures in his/her argument for moral realism.

However, when we examine morality of different cultures, we see large, significant differences. Therefore, our expectations are violated. World does not look the way it should if moral realism was true. When we fail to find evidence in favor of hypothesis that we would expect to find if hypothesis was true, this is evidence that hypothesis is false.

While this evidence is not absolute, it is evidence against moral realism.

However, this evidence is consistent with positions of moral relativism and moral nihilism, among others.

This is how existence of moral disagreements weakens positions of moral realism and strengthens positions of moral relativism.

/r/DebateAnAtheist Thread Parent