Hi, I would like to opine on the statement made by the gentleman with the belligerent tone (Anthony lol) . He states “I don’t think objective moral standards exist if God does not”. I have not encountered empirical evidence to substantiate his claim; furthermore, the historical record suggests quite the contrary. This is not to say that his claim may not be true, simply that we cannot ascertain that it is.
If we are to examine the ethnographic studies conducted by anthropologist and the historical data, one arrives at the conclusion that different communities, cultures, and nations construct available action types differently. Moreover, reasons for action are always dependent on the perspective of the particular community, culture or nation since they arise out of the drive for mutual interpretability needed for social life within the community, culture or nation. Hence, there are no perspective-independent reasons. There cannot be straight-forward agreement across these communities because they do not have common sets of action types. The communities may nonetheless address the basic themes of morality, but in incompatible ways given their different perspectives. So moralities can only have local validity. The premise of Anthony statements would indicate that God does not exist given the data we currently have on moral Anthropology, that is to say that we do not have strong evidence of objective morality; therefore, the moral giver (God) may not exist.
My position, however, should be not be interpreted as a mere dismissal of the views expressed in this podcast, but rather as an impetus to epistemological understanding. Objective Morality should be, ideally, coextensive if we are to survive as a species, but we must remain pragmatic and realistic if we are to fully comprehend its dimensions.
