Again:  objective morality?  As we did last month, in my atheist discussion group we talked, this month, about objective morality.  We agreed that, all things considered, we cannot suppose that we can "do" morality in an entirely subjective way.  We all have our starting points.  We differ, it seems, on what those starting points are.
     In the course of our discussion, someone brought up Sam Harris's book, Moral Landscape.  I read this book some years ago and remember being struck by his central thesis, namely, that the ideal objective measure of what is morally correct is wellbeing.
     What's wellbeing?  Harris says that it is a decision that life is better than death, that health is better than sickness, and that happiness is better than despair.  Fair enough.  Nonetheless, although it's difficult to disagree that these more positive conditions are to be preferred, we still end up sustaining our morality with a sense of how we feel.
     Is this enough?  It is if we wish to reduce ourselves to Paul Sartre's characterization of the human beings as a "useless passion."  However, it is not if we instead wish to think about ourselves as complex beings, complicated nexuses of thought, spirit, and emotion.  And we would be hard pressed to deny that we are the latter.
     The answer, it seems, is to suggest that if we insist that we are moral beings, we must also recognize that being moral cannot evade acceding to the presence of mind and spirit.  And for those to be fully experienced and known, we must acknowledge the fact of transcendence.
     By the way, I'll be traveling for the next several days and will not be posting.  I'll look forward to resuming in about a week.  Thanks for reading.