Quote Originally Posted by TuffStuffMcGruff View Post
Science and reason have little to do with morality. Without religion and individual philosophy there is no such thing as transcedental morality. "My religion teaches me that this is wrong/right" IS an arguement, just not a scientific arguement. What is wrong with you people?
It isn't a matter of opinion. Morality starts with a few metaphysical claims about the nature of morality, which need to be defended by reason. For example the claim "It's moral because in the bible" would not be a very defensible claim.

Quote Originally Posted by Crazed Rabbit View Post
Science has nothing to do with morality, only the understanding of natural phenomena.
But science has very much to do with our understanding of how people function. Most moral systems have something to do with the idea of 'wellbeing' or happiness. So what makes a good life? You don't think science has anything to say about what does or does not lead to happiness?

Quote Originally Posted by Husar View Post
Good point, CA.

I also don't think that there is some ultimate morality that can be scientifically proven to be right, most likely they would look at what is useful for society or so, as is already the case with many laws.
The analogy used in the video is of the rule for chess: "don't let them take your queen". Objectively this is a good rule, even though there are situations where you want your queen to be taken. We don't need "always true" rules.

Quote Originally Posted by CountArach View Post
Morality is simply one or more groups' discourses put into an ethical sphere and labelled as such. The idea that there is one universal morality is deeply flawed (unless of course we add religion into the equation, but seeing as you have discounted that from the outset we do not need to cover it) because morality has changed so much as each society and social group's discourse has been changed. As the discourse changes so too does the morality, which in turn will affect all subsequent discourse and so on. I think you would be hard-pressed to find too many academics who disagree with this general statement, though they would probably frame it differently or along their own discursive lines (or that has been my experience at least).
We don't need one universal morality. We need to be able to say that some moral systems are better than others. Societies can reach a high level individually and in different ways (because culture has a large effect on personality), but they can fail in many more ways.

So, ultimately, the search for an objective morality would suffer from general human advancement and would find itself quickly outdated and vaunted, a relic of a Modern age.

2 cents.
The best moral system for our time might not be the best for a future time. That is not to say that there isn't a best for our time worth striving for. For example, you (CA) might argue that it is wrong for a certain amount of society to be in desperate poverty while a small fraction of a percent are hugely rich. This view may be outdated in a future society that doesn't have poverty problems.

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What I'm saying applies to many areas, but particularly morality, because that's where people are most likely to say "this is my opinion, not up for argument". It absolutely is up for argument. And to argue you need reasoning and facts (which we get from science).