There is something different about this forum now, but I can't quite put my finger on it.

Back up there, Sparky - i didn't start this topic.  You challenged me about my moral relativity, and i have said that i think there are some independent reasons for believing it to be so, but also that it is a natural extension of my atheism.  In order for me to be begging the question i would have to be making an argument for moral relativism which relied on the assumption that morality is relative.  Can you show me where i've done that?

And as it is a natural extension of your atheism, it falls that you would be just as guilty of question begging as you've accused me, as I have shown my independent reasons for evil, while you brush off the interpretation as question begging. However your alternative interpretation of any evidence would be no different. Difference being the interpretation I derive is rather self-evident.

It's no wonder that you show so little desire to be introspective about the roots of your own belief if any time someone else does you turn it into a clumsy weapon against them.  All beliefs come from somewhere, and all beliefs are going to be influenced my more than just cold hard logic.  Forgive me for arguing from my own point of view for once.

Pretty much because the root of my belief stems from the simple question 'Is it true or not?' If it is true, all the experience in the world telling me it's not true doesn't amount to anything.

Well, i could quite easily reflect on someone's spiritual beauty, but whatever.  Are you saying that if there were only one human being left alive on earth that there would no longer be any sense in talking about 'morality'?  What about cruelty to animals?

Also, is masterbation moral or immoral?  

  You forget that this is where we start comming to the ultimate conclusion that God exsists. Under you moral relativism sure, if there was only one human being left he can be as cruel to animals as he wants to be (heck he can be cruel to animals if he wants to be under moral relativism now), however as morality is a sense of communication we can conclude that their is a God as morality is a command between God and human beings whether it's one human or a few billion.

Depending entirely on your life experience, i would say.  You are not really qualified to comment on what every single person in the world feels after doing something which you consider to be wrong, so i would say that this is an unconfirmable assertion.

Not really, as guilt is a rather telling emotion that tells us something about ourselves. That we violated an 'ought'. But I don't need to postulate that everyone in the world neccessarily feels guilty about commiting an evil act, as people have a great capacity for self-deception, and can seperate themselves from feeling guilty by force of will ie a sociopath.

Morality only needs one person commenting on it.

Nope, because as established if there was only one human being left in the world who happened upon an injured animal there would be a sense of incumbency on how to treat that animal. That's one way we can know that God exsists as morality is not a comment, but a command.

If by 'incumbency' you mean 'compelling one to action', then i dont see how this is a significant objection.  Beauty is (generally) a comment on certain physical characteristics, i agree.  Morality is a comment on certain physical actions (or even thoughts).  Actions engender other actions, but this does not necessarily differentiate beauty and morality on the subjective/objective level.

This just shows you haven't given much thought as to what morality really is, as incumbency is compelling one to certain course of action prior to any action or behavior. That's where the 'oughtness' comes into play.

We both examine these documents from our own standpoints.  In your perspective anything good in the bible is evidence of God's perfection, anything that appears bad you chalk up to god's perogative.  Looking at the same text as an unbeliever i obviously have a slightly different take on things, but i find myself arguing in circles with you because if something can't be excused or explained by circumstance you will resort to ineffable perogative.  Fine, i have already agreed that it is logically consistent (although prima facie unlikely) that God had reasons we can't know about for massacring all the first-born of Egypt etc.  Maybe it'll all turn out alright in the end eh?

And this is why your having your cake and eating it too. You examine the text from your standpoint and that's where your objections come in. However it's that very same text's standpoint you draw from to criticise it. But like I said you can't win either way, as the Bible's standpoint such acts aren't prima facia evil (admitting objective morality exsists) or inconsistent, even if they appear bad. And under your relativistic view it's just your personal comment that can be ignored by others.

Thou shalt have no other gods before me - that sort of thing?

Pretty much, as much of atheism stands to make one's self their own god (not saying you specifically feel that way).

That's just tedious - show me an absolutist in hot water and i'll show you someone who is about to question his opponent's right to even discuss an issue of morality.  To be consistent, i forbid you from this point onwards to make any statements involving the word 'beauty'.  Since you are an Aesthetic relativist you cannot consistently use that word without admitting that an objective standard of Ugliness is self-evident.

*snort* I gave you an out. That you seem to find no difference in the statements "I think that's pretty." and "I should think that's pretty." is what makes me shake my head at your belief.

Cop-out.  To paraphrase you - "The indiscriminate killing of civilians is exceptable when the nations are at war, and the government of the warring nation has military and civilian centers largely mixed together."

Suddenly you're changing tack when i switch the beligerants around.  There's a good definition of 'hypocrite' in the gospels.

Actually I was commenting on yours, but whatever. I fully concede that if the US provoked another nation into war that nation has a right to defend itself. The death of either military or civilian would be tragic, but the incidental death of civilians due could not be held against the provoked nation.

Saddam was the leader of a nation which was invaded by the US.  To say that there 'wasn't an open declaration of war' is just cheap semantics.  An enemy combatant killed by a Coalition of the Willing smells just the same as a soldier killed in war when he's been dead a few days.  i doubt it would comfort him that it wasn't a 'proper' war.

Actually the difference is as wide as the world. As Saddam and his regime were clearly repsessive and brutal on the very nation he lead, there was always a distinction that what we were fighting was not the Iraq nation itself, but Saddam's regime specifically. And that distinction showed in the amount of restraint not only in the recent war to minimize the loss of life and property, but also in the 1st Gulf War and the years of diplomatic relations between them.

Besides, i very much doubt that the Israelites made an 'open declaration of war' on Radio Judea right before they rode over the hill and killed them all.

Now you're being obtuse and dense. As chapter 25 of that same book goes into detail about the unprovoked hostility and treachery inflicted on the Israelites by the Midianites. To say that the Israelites unprovokingly blind sided the Midianites simply reveals your arguement to be based more on outrage than anything.

You have failed to demonstrate that children never commit unselfish acts without being taught to do so.  This undermines your entire argument, since all you are doing is pointing at certain childhood behaviours and saying "This is all children are until they're taught better".  And that's weak, unless you have those lovely assumptions of yours about how we're all wicked and deserving of hellfire.

Bwahahahahahaha! I'm sorry DB, but that is simply too hilarious for me to contain. Frankly the burden of proof to show all children were taught selfishness, misbehavior, or cruelty before they entered kindergarden in order to claim it's a not a part of their inherent nature doesn't fall to me. Frankly my whole position is to have a hands off attitude and we'll quickly see their true colors. I've said through out most of this thread that no parent has ever had to say "I had to teach my kid to misbehave." as anyone who has any experience with kids whatsoever can state that getting children to misbehave is never the problem. This is a fact of life.

Move your bishop a little slower there Kasparov, because i just don't see how my King is in any danger yet.

It's not surprising. I mean you're playing with a blindfold on.

EB,

There is something different about this forum now, but I can't quite put my finger on it.

David Ben Ariel hasn't posted anything in about five hours.  Is that it?

"In order for me to be begging the question i would have to be making an argument for moral relativism which relied on the assumption that morality is relative.  Can you show me where i've done that?"

And as it is a natural extension of your atheism, it falls that you would be just as guilty of question begging as you've accused me, as I have shown my independent reasons for evil, while you brush off the interpretation as question begging.

Yes, because you have made a specific argument that contains a premise which implicitly assumes your conclusion.  If you are unable to provide an example of me doing that then i will assume that your accusation of question-begging is just tit-for-tat nonsense.  Few of our beliefs are likely to be logically independent of each other, so it is hardly relevant if one of my beliefs is a natural extension of another of my beliefs.  You would have to point to a specific case of me assuming my conclusion for your rejoinder to have any weight at all.

Under you moral relativism sure, if there was only one human being left he can be as cruel to animals as he wants to be (heck he can be cruel to animals if he wants to be under moral relativism now), however as morality is a sense of communication we can conclude that their is a God as morality is a command between God and human beings whether it's one human or a few billion.

You missed my point there.  You asserted that morality was 'a kind of communication... requiring at least two minds to work', and i countered that assertion with the example of the hypothetical morality of the last human being on Earth.  True, in your paradigm that still leaves the mind of God as a communicator, but there again you are arguing from within the system, as it were.  That isn't wrong in itself, but if you actually want to demonstrate a difference between beauty (which we agree is subjective) and morality (which i think is subjective and you think is objective) then you need to apply the same assumptions to both, otherwise - i'm afraid - you are question-begging again.  For instance, in my assumed guise as an Aesthetic Objectivist, i would simply reply to your objection by saying that beauty is also a communication, from the mind of God to our minds.  No difference at all.

...guilt is a rather telling emotion that tells us something about ourselves. That we violated an 'ought'. But I don't need to postulate that everyone in the world neccessarily feels guilty about commiting an evil act, as people have a great capacity for self-deception, and can seperate themselves from feeling guilty by force of will ie a sociopath.

Unfortunately, your conviction that people who dont feel guilty when they break the 'objective' moral code are just deluding themselves is no more substantial than the Aesthetic Objectivist's conviction that people who disagree with him about the embodiment of absolute beauty are doing the same.  This is not a good argument for objectivism, since it requires so many people to be self-deluded (depending largely on your personal opinion about what is right and wrong) that Occam's razor would lead us to the conclusion that these people are not deluded in any objective way, they just follow different moral codes.

Nope, because as established if there was only one human being left in the world who happened upon an injured animal there would be a sense of incumbency on how to treat that animal. That's one way we can know that God exsists as morality is not a comment, but a command.

There would be a sense of incumbency in your opinion.  This is not a good argument.  A strict islamist would say that if a young man sees his sister engaged in conversation with an unknown young man than there would be a sense of incumbency upon him to beat her to death in order to preserve the family honour.  Incumbency (guess what?) is subjective.

This just shows you haven't given much thought as to what morality really is, as incumbency is compelling one to certain course of action prior to any action or behavior. That's where the 'oughtness' comes into play.

Do only christians of your denomination get this 'compulsion' then?  Or do people get an 'oughtness' or a compulsion to act in quite contradictory ways depending on their belief system?  Is incumbency then a particularly good indicator of objectiviity?

You examine the text from your standpoint and that's where your objections come in. However it's that very same text's standpoint you draw from to criticise it.

i'm not sure what you're saying here, except that you seem to be implying that i'm being unfair to the bible somehow.  Of course my objections come from my standpoint (my moral perspective etc) to some extent, that's unavoidable, but i do try to implicitly assume some of the text's premises for the purposes of critiquing it, otherwise i'd be doing it a disservice.  You seem to be faulting me for both.

But like I said you can't win either way, as the Bible's standpoint such acts aren't prima facia evil (admitting objective morality exsists) or inconsistent, even if they appear bad. And under your relativistic view it's just your personal comment that can be ignored by others.

Whether you like it or not EB, we share a moral vocabulary.  Both you and i know what we mean by altruistic, selfish, utilitarian, etc, and even the nebulous concepts of 'good' and 'evil'.  We know what these words mean, which equips us to have a debate about whether certain actions qualify as moral or immoral.  Independent of this, there is some truth in the universe about whether morality is objective or subjective, and neither one of us will ever know that for sure (you will just continue to think that you do).  Ignore me, if you want.  It wont make much difference in the long run.

And yes, i realise that from the Bible's pov these acts aren't as nasty as they might seem to the independent observer today - that's kind of the point.  Mores shift.

That you seem to find no difference in the statements "I think that's pretty." and "I should think that's pretty." is what makes me shake my head at your belief.

Poor analogy.  People dont say 'i should think thats wrong' do they.  Even if moral statements contain an implicit incumbency then it is clearly just as subjective as the statements themselves.  That hardly makes it characteristic of any kind of objectivity.

As Saddam and his regime were clearly repsessive and brutal on the very nation he lead, there was always a distinction that what we were fighting was not the Iraq nation itself, but Saddam's regime specifically. And that distinction showed in the amount of restraint not only in the recent war to minimize the loss of life and property, but also in the 1st Gulf War and the years of diplomatic relations between them.

Well, we're drifting from the realm of abstract political debate and into specific critiquing of US/UK actions here, but i would say that the 'restraint' was largely targetted at minimising loss of our lives and property.  Given that the number of Iraqis dead as a result of the invasion is almost certainly into six figures now, and that the 'years of diplomacy' consisted largely of crippling sanctions which had a documentedly (both at the time and now) devastating effect on the civilian population while only strengthening Saddam.

To say that the Israelites unprovokingly blind sided the Midianites simply reveals your arguement to be based more on outrage than anything.

i was simply calling into question your qualification that the initiation of Gulf War II (the sequel) was not 'an open declaration of war' by anaolgy.  i wasn't specifically critiquing the Israelites (on this occasion).  Get your hackles down.

Frankly the burden of proof to show all children were taught selfishness, misbehavior, or cruelty before they entered kindergarden in order to claim it's a not a part of their inherent nature doesn't fall to me.

   Ok, here's this week's homework - think hard about this one:  What would you expect to be different about child behaviour if the evolutionary model was true?

It seems to me like the presence of intelligence on a sufficient enough scale to allow complex speculation and formation of opinions would be enough to allow for the development of morality. I don't see how evolution fails to explain anything on this point that actually requires explaining. Once a mind of sufficient complexity takes over, it becomes as much a matter of how ideas evolve as how an animal does. That's what it looks like when I turn the old Rubik's Cube over, anyway.

I am not under that impression.  I am under the impression that you need to support your claims about your god's nature in light of your admission that you don't really understand what motivates your god to permit evil.

I never admitted that.  That is your attempt to put words in my mouth.

You have stated that you do not need to "fathom His infinite mind" in order to understand his rejection of evil, and you have ignored my perfectly reasonable response that you would need to understand enough of his "infinite mind" just to say THAT he rejects evil.  It is not self-evident that an infinite mind would necessarily reject it.  Regardless of how much you seem unwilling to admit it, you are really representing yourself as capable of understanding God's motives while simultaneously representing yourself as not needing to explain how you could understand them.  You do need to explain that, in light of your admission that you are a limited being and God is not.

I have three means for understanding God's rejection of evil without being able to fathom His infinite mind.

1. The logic of God's attributes.  God's omnipotence necessarily makes Him omniscient which in turn necessarily makes Him all-wise.  Being all-wise means He understands morality completely  The commission of evil necessarily entails a failure to completely grasp morality or some other fact relevant to morality.  Thus, an all-wise God would be perfectly morally good of His own free will.

2. Rational inference.  A child is capable of understanding that his parents do what is best for the child even if the child does not understand why what his parents are doing is best.

3. Revelation.  The Bible begins with humans being made in God's image.  And that is part of the point of sending Jesus.  To show that God does indeed have benevolent intentions toward all of mankind.

I also continue to make the observation that you are trying to win the argument from evil by winning a different argument against Christianity. 
   

Again, ineffability is your attempt to put words in my mouth.  My position has always been a combination of free will and soul-making. God

1. The logic of God's attributes.  God's omnipotence necessarily makes Him omniscient which in turn necessarily makes Him all-wise.  Being all-wise means He understands morality completely  The commission of evil necessarily entails a failure to completely grasp morality or some other fact relevant to morality.  Thus, an all-wise God would be perfectly morally good of His own free will.

This makes all kinds of philosophical assumptions that I wouldn't even begin to explain properly. Its basic assumption is that being "wise" necessitates being "moral." I know a few people who would openly disagree and at least one (myself) who isn't a hundred percent on the question.

2. Rational inference.  A child is capable of understanding that his parents do what is best for the child even if the child does not understand why what his parents are doing is best.

3. Revelation.  The Bible begins with humans being made in God's image.  And that is part of the point of sending Jesus.  To show that God does indeed have benevolent intentions toward all of mankind.

Point two is valid when one has already concluded that God exists and plays a parental role. Point three is valid when one has already concluded that said revelations are true. Both of these rely on the fact that you already believe God is benevolent...

So... how do they come into play when considering why you believe God? O_o

I'll leave that to others to debate.  My thinking is that humans who aren't saved don't suffer eternal torment but are snuffed out.  Satan may be a different story, but that would be because he was made to last forever and snuffing him out might require liquidating the entire cosmos.

What justifies such thinking, if you were to give me a basic answer? I know it's off-topic, but isn't that just speculative theology?

Do they act according to a moral fashion simply because they thought of it entirely on their own? And equally important, are they so handicapped that they lose their status as "intelligent?" My own brother is mentally handicapped, but I wouldn't call him any less than intelligent. He certainly got through school. A special services school, but certainly nothing a chimp would get through.

It was an example of how morality is not dependant on IQ points. If you wanted an easier one to grasp I would gladly point to the cruelty and disobedience children show as soon as kindergarden. They certainly don't have the 'intelligence for complex speculation' but they are certainly capabale of morality and immorality.

Here's where the analogy Lewis presents loses a lot of its sting: "light" and "dark" denote physical conditions and phenomenon, or a lack thereof. "Morals" are something that exist within the mind. Also, to say that a nonexistence of God equates to a universe of senselessness is ridiculous. "Senseless" is also something that exists in the mind. It's a mental descriptor. One could just as easily say God is senseless because there's no reason or cause for his existence.

Quite a few absolute statements you have there. Many of them dependant on a few assumptions. I would hold morals do not exsist within the mind as such that your making a tautology between 'morality' and 'opinion'. This assumes relativism to be true a priori and is in fact question begging. Your objection about 'sense-lessness' is equated to God's nonexsistence is flawed given that atheism's main point is because there is no Creator but rather a mindless series of accidents and coincidences the universe has no over-all purpose to it, and we are therefore free to create our own.

"Senseless" is a perception, not a physical characteristic. Incidentally, it's also a personal perception that his idea of justice was full of sense. Another perception might declare it partly or completely innane.

I think that was the main point of reletavism he was making. As relativism encourages what's right for you may not be right for someone else. Thus his sense of justice was encouraged to be full of sense while the universe is protrayed as without any sense or reason to it. And like your dependancy on the brain reaching some evolutionary stage for morality, thus the analogy that light and dark (admittadly physical and objective elements) would be just as subjective by such an arguement bependant on eyes.

Unless that "should" or "ought" is directly related to the concept of action and consequence, I would agree. My concept of morality is based more on judgement calls. I don't actually believe in any concrete or even vaguely translucent concepts of "good" or "evil" outside of my own head. I go by what my head and "heart" tell me simply because I think it's the best thing to do. I also think that if everyone else practiced fairly similar morality, the world would be more pleasant. But that's also a suggested "should" based on action and consequence. Action and consequence are a very complicated pair of bedfellows, believe me.

Actually your suggested 'should' is more along the lines of 'everyone should share my opinion of a similar morality'. As you have admitted that morality is based more on your head under your belief system, it doesn't have a basis as much on action and consequences as it does in thinking like you do. Which is the point of inconsistency I was making as no matter what 'should' or 'ought' is related to it will always be a command to think a certain way.

What you fail to grasp is that morality is all about action and consequences as it is a look into the future about how one ought to behave and act. Under the circumstance of a woman passing the street, morality is command that one should not take the action of pushing her to the ground for the reason of personal amusement. However if a car were about to hit her then morality is a command to take action of pushing her to save her life. Which is why morality has an 'oughtness' that dictates a certain course of action before the event occurs. When a one says a person should push the woman to save her life it will always be a command to take a certain action but also to think a certain way-that saving the woman is a good thing.

And the problem of evil is an argument against omnibenevolent theism, isn't it? Or are you referring to the concept of evil?

That's the crux of it, but as stated for the problem of evil to be raised one has to already admit to the concept of evil, in which case moral relativism is out the window.

First off, no one is claiming that one man thought up the whole concept of good versus evil and all it entails all on his own.

I know. That's why I said it was DB's analogy.

Is it seriously that hard to imagine this happening? Because I don't find it difficult at all.

When one understands what morality really is, yes it is very difficult. As development bit by bit doesn't really explain the incumbency of morality nor addresses guilt over breaking a moral rule. As 'morality' under such a concept is a tautology for 'opinion' the only thing such a concept could explain are the end results of what one should do after they experienced it. However as morality is prescriptive rather than descriptive such a concept can't really explain morality.

It was an example of how morality is not dependant on IQ points. If you wanted an easier one to grasp I would gladly point to the cruelty and disobedience children show as soon as kindergarden. They certainly don't have the 'intelligence for complex speculation' but they are certainly capabale of morality and immorality.

The have enough intelligence for complex enough thought/speculation to understand things on a high enough level, if not necessarily to come up with entire moral codes on their own, then to understand morality that is taught to them or come to understand simpler aspects of it on their own. I wouldn't say that an act of altruism necessarily denotes a solidly moral frame of mind or a clear understanding of why they acted altruistically.

Quite a few absolute statements you have there. Many of them dependant on a few assumptions. I would hold morals do not exsist within the mind as such that your making a tautology between 'morality' and 'opinion'. This assumes relativism to be true a priori and is in fact question begging.

Perhaps I was unclear. "Morality" is dependent on thoughts and intentions. It is not an object or a physical condition. The actions and consequences that result from morality and morality itself are not quite the same thing. There is no clash between the good side of the Force and the dark side of the Force going on when one is trying to make a decision on whether or not to donate to charity, rob a bank, or help someone fix their bike chain. It's an inner conflict and an inner resolution. It happens in the mind. Whether or not some outside force invented the concept is irrelevant to the truth of that simple process.

Your objection about 'sense-lessness' is equated to God's nonexsistence is flawed given that atheism's main point is because there is no Creator but rather a mindless series of accidents and coincidences the universe has no over-all purpose to it, and we are therefore free to create our own.

The lack of an "over-all purpose" doesn't necessitate a total lack of sense. Sense doesn't need to be omnipresent, it just needs to be present. What I was saying was that even if the universe were a creation of some kind of God, that God could easily be slammed with the same accusation of being senseless. Or having no over-all purpose.

On a personal note, I wonder why the heck "purpose" is so flipping important, anyway. Why are we here? A more perplexing question: Why do we care?

I think that was the main point of reletavism he was making. As relativism encourages what's right for you may not be right for someone else. Thus his sense of justice was encouraged to be full of sense while the universe is protrayed as without any sense or reason to it.

Without a single, all-present and overriding purpose.

And like your dependancy on the brain reaching some evolutionary stage for morality,

And then the resultant thoughts eventually reaching some "evolutionary" stage through thought, transfer, thought, transfer, and more thought. That was the more important point.

thus the analogy that light and dark (admittadly physical and objective elements) would be just as subjective by such an arguement bependant on eyes.

But not the energy that makes them, or light thereof. What "light" is, is simply our perception of those energy rays. "Morality" occurs within the realm of thought--it's information, not substance.

Quote

Unless that "should" or "ought" is directly related to the concept of action and consequence, I would agree. My concept of morality is based more on judgement calls. I don't actually believe in any concrete or even vaguely translucent concepts of "good" or "evil" outside of my own head. I go by what my head and "heart" tell me simply because I think it's the best thing to do. I also think that if everyone else practiced fairly similar morality, the world would be more pleasant. But that's also a suggested "should" based on action and consequence. Action and consequence are a very complicated pair of bedfellows, believe me.

Actually your suggested 'should' is more along the lines of 'everyone should share my opinion of a similar morality'. As you have admitted that morality is based more on your head under your belief system, it doesn't have a basis as much on action and consequences as it does in thinking like you do.

The consequence I had in mind was that the world would be a more peaceful and pleasant place. The statement itself was an intentional effort to blur the window. Hence, "action and consequence are a very complicated pair of bedfellows." You follow?

Another set of equally valid "action and consequence" thinking I've rejected is the idea that acting morally won't make the world such a peaceful place because "everyone else" won't do the same. So the consequence won't actually be the consequence that justifies my moral thinking in the first place. My grounds for rejecting that idea are that the world would be an insanely chaotic and unpleasant place if everyone didn't act morally. The idea argues back, "but there are plenty of people out there who WILL act morally and keep the scales aptly balanced! Don't worry about it!" The coup de grace: "The only reason those people exist is because of people like me deciding to be moral to make the world more peaceful and pleasant--and because they do exist, and have kept the world from falling into chaos and suffering, they actually *have* made the world better by keeping it from getting worse." My inner devil's advocate has yet to fashion a sufficient response.

Which is the point of inconsistency I was making as no matter what 'should' or 'ought' is related to it will always be a command to think a certain way.

A command or a conclusion, depending on the point of origin as it relates to the location in question.

What you fail to grasp is that morality is all about action and consequences as it is a look into the future about how one ought to behave and act. Under the circumstance of a woman passing the street, morality is command that one should not take the action of pushing her to the ground for the reason of personal amusement. However if a car were about to hit her then morality is a command to take action of pushing her to save her life. Which is why morality has an 'oughtness' that dictates a certain course of action before the event occurs. When a one says a person should push the woman to save her life it will always be a command to take a certain action but also to think a certain way-that saving the woman is a good thing.

When did I fail to grasp that...?

That's the crux of it, but as stated for the problem of evil to be raised one has to already admit to the concept of evil, in which case moral relativism is out the window.

You don't have to admit something to fashion a hypothetical version of it. And cimics claims the problem of evil is supposed to shoot for some kind of internal inconsistency, in which case hypotheticals are usually the method of choice.

When one understands what morality really is, yes it is very difficult. As development bit by bit doesn't really explain the incumbency of morality nor addresses guilt over breaking a moral rule.

Funny thing about guilt. It doesn't occur to one until one has learned the moral rule. It occurs less and less when one becomes accustomed to breaking the rule. From my own experiences with guilt, both recent and not, it feels like an internal debate where my "moral mind" is arguing against my actions. Some things I was once guilty about I no longer do because my "moral mind" was simply out-argued. Guilt feels to me like a thought process not unlike the one in which my mind screams at me that I'm doing or have done something stupid or careless.

As 'morality' under such a concept is a tautology for 'opinion' the only thing such a concept could explain are the end results of what one should do after they experienced it. However as morality is prescriptive rather than descriptive such a concept can't really explain morality.

I'm afraid I'm not understanding your point here. Could you try explaining it again?