What you said, if I understand you, is that it is not an objective fact that one ought to believe truth over falsity, generally speaking. If that's the case, it seems to me reasonable to say that there is no (objective) reason to prefer truth to falsity.
Well you are the one who has been talking about "truth vs falsity", and you have asked me the same question about that several times now. And I have replied to you in detail each time about precisely that.
What we are talking about in this thread is William Lane Craig's claim that human "morales" (whatever is meant by "morals", and for which you could not provide any clear definition), are what he calls "objective", and by which he means (afaik) that such a thing (i.e." morales") are inherent and inescapable in humans ... about which I say, that can only mean that the so-called "objective morals" must therefore be part of the physically existing cellular make-up of each human person (otherwise they could not be an "objective", ie factually existing, part of the person ... and from that set of claims, WLC then jumps to saying that "because the morality
is objective, that means it
must have been planted there by God"
That's what we are talking about in this thread.
About which, you have been saying that (1) you believe he is right to say that the so-called "morality" is objective, and (2) that such morality is beyond the capacity of science to investigate that.
I asked you (at least 4 times now), for any example of what you could call moral behaviour that was inherently impossible for science to study. And so far you have not been able to produce any such example at all.
You also produced examples saying they were objective examples of something somehow connected to some undefined notion called "morals", all of which were not merely the total opposite of ever being objective, but where you yourself actually started each of those examples by noting that they were merely the individuals personal (ie "subjective") "beliefs".
Again - can you please give any example of what you could reasonably call moral behaviour, that is inherently incapable of being studied by science. And that means a "real" behaviour, and not merely a thought or idea in somebody's mind.
I've no idea why you think the highlighted bit is true. Surely mathematical theorems are objective, but you cannot find them "physically existing" in our cells.
If what is called "morality" is said to be "objective" in the sense that I think WLC means, i.e. as an inherent inescapable thing within the human body, then afaik it must be a physical part of the cellular structure that composes every single part of the human individual. If you take away all the cells, then you have no physical "objective" existence left ... if the so-called "morality" is claimed to physically exist as an "objective" feature, i.e. a factual existence, then afaik it must be part of the cell structure (according to WLC's claim of "objective" morality).
As far as the maths are concerned - no! Mathematical theorems are not in themselves "objective" entities which have any physical existence. The theorems, "proofs" , axioms etc., are abstract ideas or explanations that describe the properties of either real existing "objective" events/objects/processes, or else which equally describe hypothetical or predicted events as yet unobserved. The "theorems" are not in themselves, material objects with "objective" existence, i.e. "factual" physical existence.
Here's my claim: we accept certain non-moral norms as objectively true, including the norm that true beliefs are better than false. I think this is not really all that controversial. If it is the case, then at least the notion of objective norms is not nonsensical, and so there is a possibility of objective moral norms in that sense.
That's pretty far from showing that there are objective moral norms. At this point, all I aim to show is that the notion isn't obviously nonsense.
I think it's just a unnecessary, and probably very misleading, practice to keep talking in philosophical terminology about things called "norms". However, I did say to you before that I would not rule out an objective facet of such human characteristics as "morals", i.e. some aspect of particular genes which lead us towards acting in particular ways. That is of course possible. For example, in Psychopathy, afaik, the most identifiable feature (according to medics and psychiatrists) is a "lack of empathy" towards other people ... and afaik, those same medics believe that lack of empathy might be the result of specific cellular features of certain genes in the case of individuals diagnosed or identified as "psychopaths". However, afaik, the classification of "psychopathy" itself, is far from clear and is, or has been, a matter of dispute within that branch of psychiatric medicine, and the term "psychopathy" itself may be just an umbrella term covering a large number of ill-defined or poorly understood characteristics which are mostly if not entirely not specific mental illnesses (i.e., quite different in that sense to certain other mental conditions, such as schizophrenia). Now, I am very far from being a medic/psychiatrist, so much of that may be misguided or inaccurate, however, the point of making that analogy is to say that - I agree that in cases like that, all sorts of aspects of human behaviour, including examples of acts or morality (extremely ill-defined and tenuous as that is), might indeed be linked in some way to physical structural factors in the persons genes ... that is possible.
However, I already discussed that in the previous replies where I said that, despite explanations such as the above, I think it is nevertheless clear that what we are calling acts of moral behaviour, are likely to be governed far more by "nurture" rather than "nature", i.e. as "learnt behaviour" that seems quite clearly driven by our own personal wish to avoid the consequences of alienating everyone else around us by acting in an entirely selfish way, i.e. with no "moral" concern for others in our social group (e.g. a complete lack of any help or compassion towards others), because that is easily seen by any human individual to be a dangerous path of conflict which places the individual in opposition to hundreds or thousands of other people immediately around them.
Children, for example, probably learn that very early in life, when they try to steal the toys of other children in a playgroup ... they may do that very blatantly, just ripping the toy from the hands of the other children around them ... but they are then immediately made aware, often forcibly made aware, that such behaviour will not be tolerated and will lead to nasty consequences for them. So most, if not all, of us probably grow up from the earliest childhood, realising that we cannot simply get our own way with everything by treating others as if they were dispensable objects for which we had no concern, care or compassion at all. You are forced by those around you to learn from the earliest months and years, that you cannot survive unless you exhibit at least a minimum standard of what are in the end "moral" actions and concerns for those around you. And to that extent, that is entirely a learnt behaviour of "nurture" rather than "nature". If there is any discernible contribution from physically existing genes (i.e. "cells"), then I think such contribution is far less clear than the very obvious and huge contribution of that learned societal necessity of acting towards others in a way that aids your own survival and acceptance within the immediate social group.
