re: Arguments against gay marriage

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That's what the people opposing gay marriage said

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No that's not what people said. No one said there would be problems with community property etc.

They may have said there are legitimate reasons but they're losing because they can't name legitimate reasons.

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The people you probably call biggots.

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I don't recall ever calling anyone a biggot.

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I see how this works now. Gays fight and finally get inside the marriage castle and immediately scream to raise the drawbridge.

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No one is screaming. Again I don't care. I don't know any gay people who care.

But I also don't see any decision on any level re favoring polygamy. And that's what I'm saying.

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Bunch of hypocritical biggots is what they will turn out to be. Same as the ones they pointed fingers at yesterday.

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you're attempting to create a strawman and doing a pisspoor job of it

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I argue that you appeal to God in your argument for objective morality when you assume life and freedom to be goods.

I assume you will disagree with me. So from where do you derive that life and freedom are "good"?

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I did not derive that life and freedom are good, I said "given" that humans have an innate desire to live and to be free. Without the strong desire to live, we would not be here, and neither would many other animals. The desire to live is possibly the strongest evolutionary trait in lifeforms with the capacity to think and fear. Without these traits, morality would not exist, so in the context of a discussion on morality it is safe to take the desire to live as a given. The desire to be free is so strongly tied to the desire to live that they are essentially one in the same. Freedom is necessary to pursue the things that make living and being self-sufficient possible.

So, in short, morality could not possibly exist unless a creature is conscious enough of its own existence to have the desire to live. This is not a derivation that life and freedom are "good", this is an observation that the desire to live and to be free is a prerequisite for morality to exist.

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So for morality to be objective, good and bad must be objective. You have yet to demonstrate how you derive your idea of objective "good" and "bad".

That is what I am asking of you. To define what "good" and "bad" are without God. Nothing you've said to this point has convinced me that you have a solid understanding of your own beliefs on the matter.

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What we really need to define is the word "objective" and how it relates to morality. Your entire argument seems to be that, since it requires human thought, empathy, and intent (no event is morally good or bad without intent, right?), morality cannot possibly be separated from these subjective concepts and thus cannot be defined objectively without a god, an ultimate non-human decider of right and wrong.

What I am saying is that, since morality is dependent upon thought, empathy, and intent, that these ideas are all one in the same and thus can be examined objectively, without allowing your own subjective feelings to interfere with the facts and logic. As an outside observer who knows as a fact that humans are capable of feeling empathy (leaving aside mental illness), and who each know that the others have the same desire to live, it can be determined that the ultimate immoral act is murder. Simple role reversal ("I wouldn't want him to murder me"), and anticipation of consequences ("if I try to kill him, he will try to kill me first", or "if I kill him, another may try to kill me") are both objective lines of logic that result in the decision that murder is "bad" in terms of one human's own selfish (but inherently human) desire to remain alive.

You can argue that god is responsible for consciousness and empathy itself, and thus morality, and that would be fine. I only reject the idea that all good and bad can only be known via god.