Personally, I favor consequentialism.
A moral system is either good or bad based on the proven consequences it has on a society that practices it.
Incidentally, that does mean that certain religious based morality systems do have a proven track record for good results.
To clarify, you don't necessarily follow a consequentialist morality (Utilitarianism being a good example), but instead just a moral system through consequentialism? Am I correct in this?
I'd also have to ask what are good or bad consequences that you judge a moral system by? Because then it sounds to me that whatever that is, is your actual moral system.
This seems to me like you are making a policy statement, not a moral statement. What I mean by this is that there are basically levels, and they only modify the layers above them:
First, at the bottom level, there is morality, which tells us what is good and bad, and frequently how a theoretical perfect person/society acts. This includes things like the NAP, all the specific different Christian moralities, etc.
Second comes societal. This is how society should conduct itself in order that it is a moral/good/useful (whatever is wanted basically) as possible. Note that social rules can be very different than morality rules, for example, a Utilitarian wanting a Christian society not because they believe in God, but because they think it creates the most utility.
Third comes legal. This is how an established societies current rules work, and if something is allowed or not allowed by those rules. Note that moral things can be encoded in law (like no theft, no murder, no rape), but moral systems (exceptions include the Chinese system Legalism), basically hold that laws are not the source of morality, and don't themselves hold moral weight. If your objection to something is
only that it's illegal, it's not a moral objection it's a fear of law one. For example, few people are morally for smoking weed in Oregon but against doing it in Idaho, despite it being legal in one and not the other. They just choose not to do it in Idaho because they are afraid of the law.
Note that a system can fulfill multiple levels at once. For example, Sharia is both morality, the social norms, and legal. Christian morality also works as social norms for many communities in the US, but is not the legal system (though there are definite influences).
Note there are likely other levels that could be included, even in between the ones I've listed. I've just put a few relevant ones here, and pointed out how they only affect the levels above them.
If we consider a moral system to be one which governs human behavior in a way which encourages coexistence, flourishing, reducing suffering, and increases happiness - then there are moral systems which objectively serve that purpose well and some which do a worse job.
See, here ShieldWife is judging moral systems by whether the societal system they create 'is good'. But I'd point out, that the ranking system I bolded shows that ShieldWife has an underlying moral/value system that she
actually follows, which she uses to judge whether saying other people should follow a particular moral system is good or bad.
One thing I think that athiests
really really need to do (and I'm not calling anyone on the board out here) is put in the hard work at figuring out what their morality is, or what they value, etc. Otherwise you can end up flopping the order of society and morality, and say that morality is what society says is good. This leads to the NPC: they are easy to control, because they say what society around them says.
As far as I can tell, King?
Abhorsen is saying he's using the definitions that a Philosophy Proff would.
Yeah. And I don't like some of the definitions Profs use, but I use them anyway because this way we can agree on a set definition and move on to talking about the actual issue, not debate endlessly about definitions.
Otherwise it's just going back and forth about what each person means when they say something, and everyone talks past each other. Completely unproductive.
I find that if you need to talk about your own definition for something, just describe it, then label it something absurd so that it doesn't overlap, like purple. "A purple morality is one where X holds" or some such. Then we can discuss that.
