There was quite a long thread on this general topic last year.  In fact I think it's still the longest thread on Ricochet.  If you have a few spare hours you could read the whole thing, but assuming you don't, here's the bit about B&Bs: http://ricochet.com/main-feed/Today-Is-My-Anniversary/(comment)/267529#comment-267529

Is that really true though?  Unless my memory has failed me, Gaby, you do not defend the rights of marriage traditionalists to live their lives as they please.  Or have you changed your mind since December?

• Do you defend the right of traditionalists who own B&B's to let out rooms to only opposite sex married couples?
• Do you defend the right of charitable organizations to decline to provide health insurance to the same sex partners of employees while providing that benefit to opposite sex spouses?
• Do you defend the right of adoption agencies to place orphans only with opposite sex married couples?

I believe the answer to all those questions for you, Gaby, is 'no'.  I think we'll have a richer conversation if you come right out and make your case: You advocate using the power of the state to impose your values on those with whom you disagree.

Interestingly, in Byron's original post he says "In my own life, I operate under the assumption that there is objective morality."  So his operational definition is an objective one.  This would be true of anyone who tries to do the right thing as opposed to the popular thing or the thing that they are being forced to do by someone else's might. All morality is operationally objective.  It's only when we get to the theoretical level that subjectivity and nihilism creep in.

There's a third kind of atheist, one who believes in neither crack-pot non-sense nor what I'm calling "crude" materialism.  I'm thinking of someone like Paul Davies, the author of God and The New Physics or Robert Pirsig, the author of Zen and The Art of Motorcyle Maintenance. 

Well yes.  Those of us who believe in God believe in Him as a necessary being, not a contingent one.  Surely the same can be said for any other field of study.  While divine revelation isn't needed as a source of Biological Science, Divinity itself is necessary because God created Life.  While divine revelation isn't needed as a source of Physics, Divinity itself is necessary because God is the Author of the Laws of Nature.  Yet noone doubts that a secular basis for Biology and Physics, as fields of study, exists.

To me, the relevant point is that one need not begin the study of Morality with a belief in God.  Theism isn't a pre-supposition of Morality.  Also the method of inquiry in the Moral Science isn't primarily one of exegesis of sacred texts.

Now it may well turn out that the study of Moral Science may lead one to conclude that God exists just as the study of Biology or Physics might, but a conclusion is different than a basis.

I think you are reading things into my post which I did not intend and I do not believe.  I do not think reasoning is limited to analysis (as I've said it includes synthesis and transcendental reasoning as well).  I do not think analysis can be done without creativity or imagination.  I do not think that synthesis and science can be done without creativity either.  And for the sake of completeness let me stipulate that I don't think philosophy can be done without creativity and imagination either.
 

I'd be curious to hear the reaction of those on this thread who believe that morality can only come from Divine Revelation to the Pope's critique of Voluntarism -- the notion that right and wrong are just the result of Divine Command and that God might just as well have dictated completely different morals (and could well yet) without having altered human nature.

Such a position completely cuts Man off from moral reasoning, except I suppose for a certain amount of exegesis of the sacred texts. It leaves no basis for conversation among those who don't recognize the same sacred texts.  It promotes, it seems to me, extremism.

You side with Kant in that position.  I'm not sure I believe in synthetic math.  I think it's all just probing the implications of abstract concepts and teasing out those concepts meaning, that is, analysis.

Health is not just an example of a moral good but also a metaphor for it.  Good character is to the soul as health is to the body.  Many of the objections to real reason-based morality given in this thread also apply to the concept of health.

One objection to metaethical realism ('objective morality') is that some individuals may chose to deny what is good.  The same can be said of health.  Someone might claim that the ability to become winded from climbing a flight of stairs is more healthy than the inability to do so.  That position, of course, would be absurd, but why?  Because climbing stairs effortlessly is desirable and running out of breath is not?  But doesn't that just introduce an arbitrary value judgement?  So it would seem, and yet no one seems to think that the idea of objective health is incoherent, unsupportable, or requires Divine Revelation to understand.  Why is that?  I think its because we can perceive an asymmetry between healthy and unhealthy which, while it may be difficult to  precisely articulate, is nevertheless quite easy to see.  You know it when you see it.  The same is true of good character.

Certainly.  The good of each thing derives from its nature. The nature of life is to grow and survive and reproduce.  The nature of an animal includes the nature of living things (since all animals are alive) but also has more specific requirements such as motion and eating.  The good for a human being includes the good of animals but also incorporates specific requirements deriving from the nature of humans as reasoning, social animals.  The good for humans is to live a life fit for humans that fulfills human potential.

Since you asked for a simple example let's consider an aspect of the good life that humans share with other creatures: bodily health.  The good for a human includes being healthy.  Smoking, over-eating, and lack of exercise are actions which fail to promote health.  They are vices.  The opposite behaviors (avoiding smoking, healthy diet, and exercise) are virtuous.

There are at least two types of reason other than the logical/analytical type.  One is the synthetic/empirical type and the other is the transcendental type.  These three types are represented by (in order) Math, Science, and Philosophy.

I highly recommend Pope Benedict XVI's Regensburg sermon on this topic.

Yes! That's it precisely!  That's what I meant when I said that to reason about morality is to implicitly accept its objectivity.  The dichotomy between objective morality and mere slavish obedience is the same dichotomy  I have been trying to convey between a morality grounded in external reality and one grounded in an act of will (the "whatever" in Midge's earlier post).  Of course C.S. Lewis can express it far better than I ever could because he was a genius and I am not.

Thank you for the quote Midge.

Not about me.  I do think moral truths are discoverable without divine revelation.

I'm not sure who you are quoting above.  I don't know anyone who thinks humans have an instinct to benefit the species.  I certainly don't.

I note that there is a planted assumption in your argument. You say we can appeal to someone "based on the projected consequences of their" actions.  But that presupposes that they prefer some consequences to others.  Well why is that? I put it to you that people prefer some consequences to others because it is human nature to do so.  And that's the beginning of a conversation that goes beyond what any person chooses arbitrarily to accept or reject.  That conversation is moral reasoning.

I think you put the cart before the horse.  Morality doesn't come from what we value, rather what we value comes from our beliefs about morality.  Some people do value the wrong things, but that doesn't stop those things from being wrong.  We should value what is good for us.  What's good for us is a function of our nature.  Our nature is what it is regardless of our opinions of it.  A person may well value the pleasure they get from heroine, that doesn't make drug abuse healthy for them.

Discerning right from wrong isn't a matter of taking a poll.  If you encounter a person who values very different things than most people, don't assume that the difference is necessarily due to narcissism.  Mother Theressa valued different things than most of us.  The right question to ask is whether those values led her to live a life that realized more of less of the full human potential.

"Or"?  Surely you meant "and."