The problem could come from a couple different places.
By immoral, they could mean that:
It feels wrong. That imagining a person engaging in immoral act causes an emotional aversion similar to the one experienced in response to brutal murder or unfair manipulation.
indulging in immoral behavior inherently causes problems and does damage to psychological wellbeing. That there’s a certain way to run the human machine and following certain vices are particularly suboptimal ways to do it.
Some kind of deontological rule that interacts with reality in subtle and abstract ways decrees the immorality of the relevant actions. i.e. that God forbids them, or that they don’t logically follow from a person’s nature, or a platonic form shuns them
Some confused combination of the above
If both parties agree that one of the above constitutes a useful and meaningful definition of “immoral”, and that the actions or circumstances in question fit that category, then there shouldn’t be a problem.
Alternately, the not-quite-so-confused combination that the above have causal relationships: in other words, that God has correctly informed us about which things have bad consequences; or that God will reward us (a good consequence) for obeying the deontological rules he set up; or that our moral sense (“it feels wrong”) is a flawed attempt (thus, in need of both correction and forgiveness) to model or follow God’s laws.
Fair enough. Although, one thing about theists I’ve only recently noticed is that they don’t always anthropomorphize God as much as we like to imagine they do. A lot of the time they just think of Him as a kind of abstract force that’s sort of analogous to a human mind, and maybe isn’t distinct from even our sense of morality.
So in order to think that way and still claim the moral high ground, they do necessarily have to be confused.
This isn’t quite what I was getting at. I was specifically covering the case where they’re not using a mutual definition of “immoral,” and on being made aware of that fact choose to argue the “correct” definition of the arbitrary label rather than acknowledging that it is arbitrary and their (expanded) points are quite compatible.
The problem could come from a couple different places.
By immoral, they could mean that:
It feels wrong. That imagining a person engaging in immoral act causes an emotional aversion similar to the one experienced in response to brutal murder or unfair manipulation.
indulging in immoral behavior inherently causes problems and does damage to psychological wellbeing. That there’s a certain way to run the human machine and following certain vices are particularly suboptimal ways to do it.
Some kind of deontological rule that interacts with reality in subtle and abstract ways decrees the immorality of the relevant actions. i.e. that God forbids them, or that they don’t logically follow from a person’s nature, or a platonic form shuns them
Some confused combination of the above
If both parties agree that one of the above constitutes a useful and meaningful definition of “immoral”, and that the actions or circumstances in question fit that category, then there shouldn’t be a problem.
Alternately, the not-quite-so-confused combination that the above have causal relationships: in other words, that God has correctly informed us about which things have bad consequences; or that God will reward us (a good consequence) for obeying the deontological rules he set up; or that our moral sense (“it feels wrong”) is a flawed attempt (thus, in need of both correction and forgiveness) to model or follow God’s laws.
Fair enough. Although, one thing about theists I’ve only recently noticed is that they don’t always anthropomorphize God as much as we like to imagine they do. A lot of the time they just think of Him as a kind of abstract force that’s sort of analogous to a human mind, and maybe isn’t distinct from even our sense of morality.
So in order to think that way and still claim the moral high ground, they do necessarily have to be confused.
This isn’t quite what I was getting at. I was specifically covering the case where they’re not using a mutual definition of “immoral,” and on being made aware of that fact choose to argue the “correct” definition of the arbitrary label rather than acknowledging that it is arbitrary and their (expanded) points are quite compatible.