Are the concepts of "right" and "wrong" subjective or objective?

The only absolutes come from assuming or agreeing with an invented (including religious) moral context.

@Zaku well put.

This question has been discussed several times on Fluther including this thread and this one among others. In fact, I think there was a similar question a couple of days ago.

Societies set their own morals and ethical codes. They have similarities because there are some things that are commonly not beneficial to societies: murder, stealing. In fact, there is probably some biological imperative against murder since it impacts the survival of the species.

@Marina True, although sometimes we value murder and say it is right, or justified.

Totally subjective. Always, i think.

@JellyB I agree – but I’m always secretly hoping someone shows me otherwise ;)

I know, it’s tough to accept sometimes, huh? :)

Concepts of right and wrong are completely subjective. The collaboration of personal morality in a society is what forms broader notions of morality within societal law.

@JellyB so true!
@Vinifera7 Absolutely.

Right and wrong by definition are subjective, that’s the whole point of subjectiveism (if that’s even a word)
What would subjective even stand for other wise?

@JeanPaulSartre
I have a feeling that many people understand this, but it provokes a visceral response in me when people like Bill O’Reilly say things like “Morality comes from God”.

@Vinifera7
I agree Vinifera, I wonder how Bill O’Reilly would explain how other animals such as paranas don’t kill each other without a god to guide them? or any other animal apart from humans and apes I think.

@Myndecho
You don’t even need to go that far to discredit his statement. First of all, we know that he’s referring to the Christian god (whose name is God), thereby discounting everyone else that doesn’t claim to be a Christian from moral standing.

@Myndecho
I thought his name was Jehovah, it says that in the Christian bible. I also think a larger majority of people in America’s jails are religious, an even larger majority than the majority of religious people over non-religious people in the general public by a large margin.

I only have four minutes before my break is done so I might have to rush this but…

I believe in the Christian God. I believe that there are absolute rights, and absolute wrongs. I also believe that there are some things we as humans can know to be right and wrong, and some things we won’t know whether they are right or wrong. Anyone claiming to know right or wrong set themselves up for disappointment because we cannot know how God may use a seemingly wrong event to bring about something great, such as an unmarried woman giving birth to the saviour of the world.

@TheDeadWake
Thedeadwake I have a very hard question for you. This video should explain it better link
So how can you know Gods morality is right?

Subjective.

@Vinifera7 I hear ya on that one. bah.

@TheDeadWake
The problem with that argument is that it is built on the assumption that your god exists, which you haven’t demonstrated to be true yet.

No one asked me to demonstrate that my God is real. I fully understand that not everyone believes in the God that I do, or any other god for that matter. My belief in God does not rely on concrete facts or demonstrations, if that were the case then my faith would have no relevance. I’m postive that I’ve discussed or have seen discussed how faith not fact is fundamental to Christianity in that if God were able to be proved then we would most likely be forced to worship him and not genuinely love him like I think he wants us to. :)

Subjective in principal. I believe in universal human rights.

@TheDeadWake
Yes, I’m well aware of Christian dogmatic rhetoric, including the built-in caveat that claims that your god purposely makes himself hidden, which somehow grants free will, even though you also believe in the efficacy of prayer. You also believe that your god will torture forever those who don’t come to the conclusion that your god exists by using the brain that your god supposedly gave them; that that position is morally correct and that those people deserve to be tortured forever.

If you have a rational argument about the subject at hand, let’s hear it. If, on the other hand, you only have personal convictions based on faith, then there’s no point in discussing that here.

@Vinifera7 I presented my answer to the question stated above and supported it with the reasons I believe it. Whether those beliefs are based on faith or on fact is beside the point. Everyone’s beliefs are based on past experience, I simply have a religious background. I’ll add one more thing here. Please don’t assume that you know what I believe. If you wish to continue our conversation feel free to message me.

When we talk about actions, no they don’t exist. In fact it’s not even possible to tell wether one action will have positive or negative effects before the moment where you acually witness said effects, I should know since i learned it the hard way several times, as most people.

When we use “right” and “wrong” as in “true” and “false” then they obviously do.

While a lot of people think right and wrong are subjective, I don’t. I believe there’s right and then there’s wrong. It’s not a hard thing to understand that putting your hand in a pot of boiling is the wrong thing to do. I don’t think I have to explain why that’s wrong because it’s pretty self explanatory. The reason it’s wrong is because it has a bad consequence that will directly effect you. Let’s make another example, let say…you find money on the ground with an envelope that has a bill with the persons name on it. What do you do? You never had the money so it was never a factor to pay your own bills. It has the name and address of the person it belongs to. You know it would be wrong to keep the money because that belonged to someone else. It was intended for their bills. It’s their money. It would be wrong to take it. It would be wrong because you would be taking from someone else and they could possibly be barely getting by. You wouldn’t want someone to keep the cash if you had lost it. You know it would be wrong. Now a person who is unscrupulous would keep the cash they wouldn’t care about the consequences the other person would have to face. They don’t care about the lack of principle in the matter.
Many people would say that right is subjective as well. Like I said from above something that is wrong has a consequence. Something that is right would have a positive outcome. So how could right be subjective if the outcome has no bad consequence? How could something being right be subjective?
Now back to these two being subjective when I look at right or wrong I think about the outcome of the two because that is what ultimately determine if the action or matter is right or wrong. If it’s wrong then it contains a consequence. If it’s right then nothing is wrong with it, there’s no wrong that could come from doing it.

It only becomes subjective when people make up their own rules and could care less about the consequence. The idea of it being subjective is made up by the person who wants to believe they are causing no harm by doing wrong. They use this as a way to say you are putting them down and you have no business commenting because you don’t know the difference between right and wrong. In actuality they don’t know the difference between right and wrong so they use this idea as a way to deceive people when in actuality it is very easy to determine the difference between right and wrong. It’s not subjective either. Give me any example of right or wrong being subjective because at this moment this is what I believe until I’m proven otherwise.