And how can I talk about objective morality without God?

Here it is! Here it fucking is! The single most overused thought-terminating fallacy that Jesus nuts like to pull out!

The answer to your question is that we don’t need a deity to declare what objective right and wrong are. We can use game theory. If you want to watch an admittedly better explanation of it, Veritasium made a video on it last year, but I’ll recap it below.

Decades ago, researchers set up an experiment where they paired various algorithms against each other, with each algorithm having different rules for approaching the prisoner dillema. And each pairing went on for hundreds of turns. Then the researchers tallied up all the scores. Thry noticed that almost all of the “nice” algorithms scored higher then almost all of the “mean” algorithms. And they redid the experiment multiple times with tweaks to the experiment, like randomizing the length of interactions between algorithms.

The overall rules that caused this highest scores were:

1. Start off picking the option to cooperate
2. After the first exchange, respond in the same way they were treated in the first round
3. A decision to not cooperate only affects the next decision, it doesn’t continuously affect every decision after that
4. On rare occasions (<10%), cooperate on the next turn even if the other algorithm chose to not cooperate.

Essentially it boils dowm to being polite, treating others how you wish to be treated, and being forgiving past transgressions. Strangely similar to what religions tend to teach, right?

It turns out, these are actually emergent properties that appear in any system where you have series of interactions between individuals. It’s not divine provenance, it’s natural selection.

The smart ones just take the product out of the packaging and leave it on the shelf somewhere.

Wait, so they take packaging but not the item? Weird.

/s

Not really, and that’s extrapolating from God’s words

1: No it isn’t. And even if it was, why should anyone care? The bible says that mixing linen and wool fibers or eating shellfish is a sin. A lot of the rules in the bible are made up bullshit.

2: Don’t bring religion into this

No, don’t rrmove it from the list. Make a note acknowledging the issue so others see it