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Obviously, the tools used to rationally investigate morality are going to be different from the tools used to rationally investigate science. Same as how the tools used to rationally investigate history are different. That doesn't seem to be much of an impediment to rational inquiry into the nature of any of those things.
Sure, and on many scientific matters, there are tons of nonrational folks out there who don't reason their way into their positions, either. Again, not an impediment to the possibility of using a rational approach. I think it would be perfectly fine to have a rational approach to game theory in order to understand a rational, objective methodology for answering hypothetical imperatives (e.g., if you're being interrogated and your payoff function is such and such, you should do such and such). That many folks are mere adapters rather than rational agents WRT science or game theory doesn't imply much about whether science or game theory have an objective quality.
Ok. I think we have the most important conclusion at this point. Your perspective is that the truth value of a moral judgment depends on the individual. So, in the future, when people ask you why you think that murdering people is wrong (even for silly-sounding religious disputes), I think it would be more accurate for you to say that it would be wrong for you to do such a thing, but your meta-ethical position is that it may be entirely morally right for others to do this sort of thing.
No, but game theory at least posits what the best option is under a series of conditions. The fact that distributed social behaviors match that somewhat is an indicator there might be some truth to it. If the same outcome is derived different ways that is evidence of a sort. Given that the same when applied to morality results in a huge different swathes of moral codes, including exceptions that might be an indicator that if there is any sort of objective morality it is very, very narrow, or almost impossible to discover.
And as to what I should answer, in general I am not answering the question why do I think other people think it is wrong or right. I was asked why do I think it is wrong. I wasn't asked whether it could be right for other people. Every post I make here I could go into more detail, but usually there is a trade off. So unless I have the time to expand I think I will stick with "Because I do". It's punchy and accurate. Why I think that is not usually germane to the discussion at hand. In this instance why I think murder is wrong doesn't really have any relevance to deciding whether Christian nationalism is likely to rekindle problems between Catholics and Protestants which is where we started this. Even if religious murder is not morally wrong, Catholics and Protestants murdering each other over religion in the US is not likely to be practically positive. How that impinges on the morality of murder is at best an (interesting) diversion.
Do they? There's a whole field of behavioral economics that shows alllll sorts of situations where people tend not to do the "rational" thing. Some settings have more or less adherence. I don't see what conclusions follow.
RE: What you should answer. If the question is concerning morality of religiously-motivated killing, and you are not religious, then your answer that you think is completely confined to only applying to your non-religious particular self would be utterly vacuous. It would be like saying, "I don't think lions should eat people," and hiding the fact that you really mean, "I don't think that I should eat people, but I am not a lion, and I don't actually have anything relevant to say about what lions should/shouldn't do." It violates the norms of discourse to play this slight of hand. Vastly better to speak plainly and state what your actual position is. However, if you find brevity to be too valuable to you, in the future, I can try to endeavor to chime in with the appropriate caveats as I find time. I think it will save a lot of people much confusion.
Recall I did state that you might be able to work out what other peoples morality was? I am familiar enough with Christianity that I think it is true that most Christians think murder is wrong, you'll note, I only answered what I believe when I was asked, my initial response as to why violence between Christians was immoral was to point out that:
"You think violent terrorism between Catholics and Protestants who both ostensibly worship the same God, and have the same holy book is moral? I'm pretty sure that God is not very convinced murdering children is moral."
Here I am suggesting it is immoral by THEIR world view. Because that is the one that is important. It was only when I was pressed for my own view that we went off into this tangent. So my response was more "I don't think lions should eat people, because the tenets of their God Lion-O say it is wrong". Then when I am pressed for what I think, I say "I don't think lions should eat people because I think eating people is wrong". There is no sleight of hand there. I give an answer based upon my understanding of the group in questions morality, then I give an answer based on my morality.
What I am saying is that the answer based on my morality is not really relevant, because I understand they do not share my morality overall (though our answer in this case is the same, roughly). Hence why I didn't even mention that initially.
I mean, you're missing alllll sorts of qualifiers that would be needed in order to accommodate your meta-ethical position. Like, you could have easily said, "You think that Catholics and Protestants think that violent terrorism between Catholics and Protestants...." But you didn't. Because you wanted to heavily imply that there was a generic moral truth of the matter. It is only after pressed that you revealed that this was a slight of hand.
Moreover, when SlowBoy clarified that he didn't believe in god, it would be a clear indicator that he was not asking for an answer of the type that your meta-ethical position would allow without specific qualification. Again, I think you just shrugged this aside in order to be able to imply that you were speaking about a generic moral truth of the matter... just playing hide-and-seek, violating the norms of discourse. I just ask that you be on the lookout for this conflation in the future and be more precise to avoid confusion. I'll try to help keep an eye out.
Again I think you are misreading, SlowBoy is pointing out that I don't believe in God (which he knows because I do not hide it and as I mentioned earlier in the thread, not that HE didn't believe in God). You have to look at the conversation as a whole. Given I am an admitted atheist which I talked about earlier, clearly I can't have been attempting a rhetorical trick, as there is no point in attempting the trick you think I was aiming for, when I have an open history and do not delete my past posts to hide my positions. I make no secret of the fact and have mentioned multiple places here that I don't believe in an objective morality. If I were going to attempt such a trick I would assuredly do it better!
You are reading something into my intentions which is not there. If you want to say that I could be clearer then sure, but I can categorically say you are wrong about my motivations. If you think I am violating the norms of discourse, report me to the moderators.
Oh wow, I did actually somehow read SlowBoy wrong. I went back and checked and everything. Whoops.
In any event, I'm not claiming that hiding your atheism is the rhetorical trick you're using. I think it's that your meta-ethical position shouldn't allow you to respond in ways that heavily imply that you're speaking about a generic moral truth of the matter. In response to a now-corrected-reading of SlowBoy's comment, you could have said something like, "According to my meta-ethical position, the moral truth of whether murdering people for religious reasons is wrong for me is irrelevant. Instead, I'm only pointing out that I think it would be wrong by THEIR worldview," which is the position that you have now spent pages more word count getting around to saying. Does this at least correctly portray your position? That would be significantly more clear and not require all this follow-up. The only downside is that it wouldn't allow you to imply that you think that "religiously-motivated killing is wrong" is a generic moral truth.
I probably didn't have much of a sense of what you were actually meaning to say, given your meta-ethical position, until much much later. In fact, rereading now, I see a shred here, where you say:
But this leads to still the same confusion, which is probably why I spent so much time getting you to say that you really really really just committed yourself to the meta-ethical position that you're claiming. Statements like this are damn near impossible to parse, given your meta-ethical position. You don't have to agree that they are "correct"? "Correct" about what? What truth-value is in question here? Certainly not the truth value of, "Religiously-motivated killing is wrong," because you have expressly declined the possibility of such statements. The truth value of, "Religiously-motivated killing is wrong to them"? I mean, you just said that their experiences and values and community and stuff means that this statement is false. Like, full stop. What is there for you to think is "incorrect"? Incorrect about the truth value of their moral statement? I don't think so. Incorrect about something concerning Christianity? Very weird, and would require a very different type of argument than what I see anywhere. Incorrect about how the results would look from the perspective of others? Seems irrelevant. At the very least, I think this is not a paragon of clarity.
But just because I understand they think their beliefs are moral does not mean I have to agree they are correct (as I obviously think my moral view is "better" than theirs otherwise I would hold their moral views, not the ones I currently do).
What I am saying is that the default when we speak and say I think this is immoral, is that we are making such statements from our own point of view, and if not we specify (as I did when I said I don't think God would find that moral).
In other words I think you are getting a little too bogged down in details which don't actually matter to the argument in question. If Christians believe religiously motivated murder is wrong and I think religiously motivated murder is wrong and therefore if Christian Nationalism led to more such murders we both agree that would be bad, it doesn't actually matter why we both believe what we do for the argument. The whole conversation about whether such murders are bad is basically a distraction because regardless of how we arrive at it, most people seem to agree with it.
...but you were specifically trying to consider the opposite of that. This is why it is so confusing. This is the bit
before the "[I do not] have to agree they are correct" bit. Specifically that they don't believe that religiously motivated murder is wrong. So, you think that they are not correct about what?!
Or now, when you say:
What does "better" have to do with "correct"? What truth value... or what thing... or where is the concept that you are talking about?
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