Brazuca, it is becoming aggravating that "Brazuca's Perpetual Conundrum" tends to appear whenever you haven't anything useful to say. It would be doing us all a favour if you either i) simply desisted, because it neither interesting nor clever, or ii) explained to us why the answer is at all important or relevant.

You define "an objective standard [as being] one that is by necessity of a transcendent source"

For this to work, you need to be very specific about the meaning of "transcendent", which has been torn this way and that since the time of Immanuel Kant. Where do you stand on this topic, and why is your interpretation the "right" one?

In the meantime, I'll stick with "objectivity is in the eye of the beholder".

Braz " the reason I keep repeating these questions is because nobody's game enough to provide an answer to them -- including you."

No the reason no one responds is because they want to discuss the issue at hand and no one gives a rats about your little bitty power game. If you want a philosphical debate - write an article - then we can all pitch in and tear shreds off you.

The catholic church is just as guilty of promiscuity as everybody else - just ask a few choir boys.

Pericles, I'll see if I can spell it out for you.

If we don't have an objective standard of morality to appeal to when making our moral judgements, then all we'll be left doing is issuing our own subjective value-judgements. But in a roomful of subjective opinions, how do we know which one's the right one? We don't. Unless we have an objective standard to appeal to in determining this.

For a moral standard to be objective, it has to come from a transcendent source. If it's temporal in its provenance, then it is not only subjective but arbitrary and relative, since it is bound by space and time. In which case, it cannot be universal in its application or legitimate in its authority.

Clearly the Catholic church, believing in a transcendent source of morality as it does, is in a much better position to speak on the matter of morality than anybody who does not acknowledge the possibility of a transcendent source of morality and therefore of an objective standard of right and wrong.

Ambo, if the Catholic church is just as guilty of sexual promiscuity as anyone else, then why expect Catholics who haven't the slightest intent of remaining chaste to even worry about using a condom? And besides, without an objective standard of morality to apply, your condemnation of pedarasty is just a meaningless application of some subjective value-judgement that is relative and therefore not absolute in its truth. What, then, would give you the prerogative to shove your subjective value-judgements on somebody else?

Braz, with the greatest respect, repetition - even constant repetition using exactly the same words - does not make your views any more valid.

You have an opinion, that's fine. We all do. What I find objectionable in your argument is your constant assumption that everything you say is backed up by some "objective truth". Unfortunately, the part that you haven't been able to grasp yet is that there is no such thing, only a sequence of claims by a particular body to have this magic powder, objectivity, conferred upon them by some indefinable transcendent force.

If I were to claim that I had this set of received wisdoms passed on to me from a source that I claimed to be "transcendent", you would - quite rightly - scoff. Yet you quite calmly assert that "...the Catholic church, believing in a transcendent source of morality as it does, is in a much better position to speak on the matter of morality than anybody who does not acknowledge the possibility of a transcendent source of morality"

If the key issue here is the belief itself, as you claim, then my transcendent source has the same value as yours. Which, by a simple process of reduction, is precisely none.

Pericles, you don't seem to understand what you're saying.

Thankfully, I'm aware there are other people reading and following this.

Indeed, Brazuca. And many of us agree with the perspective enunciated by Pericles, although we couldn't be bothered playing your little game with you.