Resolved: Objective morality is determined by the collective goals of society.

Con

I welcome my opponent to this website and would like to thank him for accepting this debate.

I have not had time to use a computer very much these past few days and I also accidentally moved the chord which unplugged the computer erasing everything I had written, and the internet keeps turning off as usual so as it is now working I better post this before it turns off again, so I apologize for the incompleteness of this. But since my opponent has the burden of proof I suppose it does not matter to much.

The collective goals moral theory is based on human opinion and is thus subjective, not objective.

Perhaps the easiest and most obvious way to negate the resolution is to point out the fact that the purposed moral theory coincides perfectly with the definition of subjective morality, thus rendering it useless. Subjective morality is defined as influenced by personal judgments beliefs.[ http://atheism.about.com...] In other words subjective morality is based upon opinion. The foundation of morality that pro is advocating consists completely off opinion and so is found to be subjective which completely refutes his position. For example and to make it clearer, let’s create a hypothetical conversation. Suppose Emily wants to know why Rick thinks stealing is wrong. Rick, being an advocate of the same theory my opponent is affirming, tells her that it is wrong because it does not correspond with the collective goals of society. Emily isn’t satisfied however. Most people would agree that stealing is wrong if they believe in objective morality, but she doesn’t like Ricks hypothesis. She points out the goals society sets out are based upon the opinion of the individual people making up this society, but objective morality is independent on human opinion thus it is not sufficient in explaining moral truths. There is no way for Rick to justify his moral view as anything close to objective.

The goals of society are based upon beliefs prone to falseness.

Taking into account mans limited knowledge and fallible reasoning, this is a self-evident fact. Humans set goals derived from the knowledge they believe to be true. But the problem with this is, very often what they believe to be true is wrong. For example, in ancient times rules were often times set up based upon the religion that was believed in. Unfortunately if this religion is false, the entire basis of the moral assertion completely falls. Thus the moral postulation is found to be false for it relies on premises that are false. Burning witches used to be acceptable therefore according to my opponent, burning witches used to be an objectively moral act. We know now however that there is no justification in burning those who were thought of as witches.

The goals of society are constantly evolving thus rendering it a non objective moral code.

Objective morality cannot be relative. It is absolute and never changing. My opponents moral views however change constantly. For example it used to be illegal to buy and sell alcohol, whereas now it coincides with the law perfectly as long as you are the right age. It used to be acceptable to own slaves. Now people would be disgusted at the thought.

Why does majority rule trump other individual’s opinion?

My opponent needs to explain why we should view the majority as right and ignore those who hold different views. Objective morality is a morality which applies to all mankind. Even if we did accept opinion based morality as objective, there is no way to justify one groups opinion as superior to another’s.