Why Our Children Don’t Think There Are Moral Facts

None of your explanations of why others behave differently includes the possibilities that for some people it is not morally wrong to break the law.

Don't they? Consider this:

A young man joins a protest on the streets of Moscow. The protest gathers a massive crowd and they begin engaging in civil disobedience by obstructing a government building. The young man does not want to go to jail, but he knows that it is a possibility if he joins in the civil disobedience. However, he believes that the protest will be effective if more people join in the civil disobedience. If he values the moral goals of the protest very highly, it is moral for him to join the protest and get arrested. He is willing to risk an undesirable consequence to gain the advancement of his moral views within his society. I.e.:

All of the reasons that you give for the guy to join the protest are objective. This stands in stark contrast to your subsequent explanation of your moral belief: "My belief that causing unnecessary suffering is wrong is based on the objective facts of my genetics and upbringing which through a number of complex factors caused my brain chemistry to be a certain way (such that I don't want other creatures to suffer unnecessarily)."

Your subsequent explanation seems to be that your moral beliefs are simply the result of the universe and cannot be arrived at through objective reasoning.

The dichotomy that I am not understanding is how you can believe both that your moral beliefs are worth believing in and that your moral beliefs are simply the result of events. If I were to give you a compelling reason to change your moral beliefs would you refuse because your beliefs have to change without reason or would you change because objective reasoning is relative? I feel like you are intentionally refusing to be pinned down about any particular belief you hold or about your reason for that belief because you recognize the problem.

/r/philosophy Thread Link - opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com