re political atheists kcochran nyx cs du edu keith justified and ancient cochran writes i think that you are confusing the words objective and inherent and objective system is simply one in which an outside observer who given the postulates of the system could perfectly judge any situation or action as consistent with the system right or not wrong you seem to be objecting because the goals of the system are not inherent that is you seem to want to define an objective system as one in which the postulates themselves could be determined by some outside observer i don t think that this is a good definition of an objective system then you need to learn english really gravity is an objective system anybody can learn what it is and perform experiments they will get the same results as every other person who has performed those experiments no gravity is an inherent system you don t need any excess information other than observations to determine anything it is possible to objectively determine someone s guilt or innocence within an non inherent system i agree that morality is not necessarily inherent unless you state that everything we do has an evolutionary basis but this does not mean that it cannot be objective in theory this natural morality is not an objective system as evidenced by your comments about lions and mine perhaps it can be objective but not inherent anyway as i noted before the practices related to mating rituals etc among the animals are likely the only ones to be considered immoral under the previous definitions of the natural law therefore some revisions are in order since the class of activities surrounding mating seem to pose some general problems and in fact the only way that the postulates could be determined by an outsider would be if there were some sort of higher truth like some sort of god or something but i do not think that a god is necessary for an objective system while it seems that you do what are you trying to say here it seens that you are objecting to the notion of an objective system because perhaps you think that it would imply inherence which would necessitate some sort of grand design no i have classified behavior of most animals as in line with a moral system it is certainly possible for animals to commit acts which are outside of their rules of ethics but they don t seem to do so very often perhaps they are not intelligent enough to be immoral and perhaps it s because you have yet to define a moral system i think i have it is a code of ethics which basically defines undesired behaviors etc an immoral behavior could be unwanted unproductive or destructive etc depending on the goal of the system that is immoral to what end keith
