There is no compelling reason to believe that objective moral facts exist.

thank you. I think it necessary to define a "compelling reason" which I shall define as a convincing explanation or justification for something, and to define "believe" which I shall define as to have confidence in the truth, the existence, or the reliability of something, although without absolute proof that one is right in doing so. so the resolution would be interpreted to say there isn't a convincing explanation or justification to believe that objective moral facts exists. I will be against this and my opponent for this. Ob1 - To win this debate I or my opponent have to effectively prove or disprove "objective moral fact" we simply have to prove that their is a compelling reason to believe/disbelieve that they exist. Ob2 - My opponent says he will be defending moral Nihilism and that is fine; however, in his thre pronged argument he fails to point out why there isn't a compelling reason to believe that objective moral facts exists or why shouldn't everybody consider human life morally valuable and the like. Introduction - In my opponents first argumant we see normative contingency and how he assert that moral judgments (application of current standards of morality to past actions, institutions) and normative theories (that which seeks to understand what would happen under theoretical constraints) are all contingent (not logically necessary; especially: empirical, relied upon) on our ethical values ( is a property of objects, including physical objects as well as abstract objects (e.g. actions), representing their degree of importance) I suppose it would be easier to say Moral judgments and normative theories = ethical values; However this cannot be true. Morality is often confused with ethics while they are similar in some instances and some philosophers equate doing so should b considered fallacious. Ethics and morals may seem the same on the face of it, but if one were to analyze, there is definitely some difference. It means, it may be ethical for someone to consume meat, after all there is no social code being breached, but at the same time the same person may find the idea of slaughtering an animal repugnant. This implies that ethics define the code that a society or group of people adhere to while morality delves into right and wrong at a much deeper level, which is both personal and spiritual. The ethics that a person adheres too are impacted upon by external factors like the nation, society, peer group, religion and profession, and could change with a change in any of these influencing factors. For instance fox hunting in England was ethical till the other day, because that was the tradition, and there was no law against it. But the recent legislation banning it made it illegal, and the widespread protests against the evil nature of the sport caused a cessation of the tradition supporting it, and therefore it became unethical. Morals on the other hand are made of sterner stuff, and usually do not change. It will for instance always be immoral to murder another human being, no matter who the person committing the act is. C1 - Contextuality expresses the fact that an action does not exist in a vacuum. When we examine an action, we cannot ignore that the action takes place in a given context. The action of "killing" effects very different values whether it involves killing someone who has a gun trained on you, killing an innocent person walking down the street, killing an animal for food, killing a spider that entered the house, and so on and so forth. In each case, the being that is killed, the state of ourselves and the being, the actions necessary to perform, are all very different and lead to different results. In one case, our life is saved. In the other, we are a criminal. If we take contextuality out of the picture, then we are no longer talking about morality. We have taken away a part of reality which directly pertains to moral judgment. That is to say, we are no longer talking about morality, we are talking about a mental abstraction which has no more relation to action in the real world. For example of killing 6 million jews is I would say horrific but there is no way to prove empirically since they died Obviously the people who died during the Holocaust were prevented from effecting any value at all, since they were killed. So claiming that "it is quite impossible to know whether it is right or wrong" and that we cannot "verify it empirically" is disingenuous at best: the empirical evidence of the pits full of corpses is quite clear. To try to deny this, is to deliberately ignore the moral gravity of death. C2 - To claim that morality is subjective is a denial of causality – actions have consequences, which arise because of natural, psychological and social laws. If you stop eating, you will die. If you stop drinking water, you will die even faster. If you break the social mores of decency or peaceful behaviour in your relationships with others, your life will be affected and even endangered. If you do not pursue social values in general, you will live isolated from the benefits of civilization. If you do not pursue mental values, you will not have the mental capacity to reason our way through life. Without such values, you would easily fall prey to any received idea, any scam, you would have no capacity to manage your life. Causality is universal: actions have consequences, causes have effects, if we fail to follow the requirements of life we will fail to live. Whatever the moral system upheld by the individual, we can express the general value-judgment process simply in the following manner: 1. There is a moral choice, with two or more possible actions. 2. Those actions exist in a context. 3. The combination of that context and our hierarchy of values (whatever its form) determines the values effected by each action. C3 - We have a hierarchy of values for the same reason than we have a hierarchy of needs – because some values need to be reasonably fulfilled (such as nutrition or sleep) before some others can come under the purview of our actions (such as love or excellence). There is a gradient of importances that necessarily enters into account here. That is why one may say, objectively, that eating is much more important than, say, gaining status. But these values are universal: they apply to all human beings, except in some cases where higher values cannot be effected due to physical defect. It is important here to understand that while values themselves are objective in all ways, their specific implementation differs from person to person and from culture to culture. For instance, we all need to eat, but we do not eat the same things. Someone in Latvia might eat a dinner of bizugis with pea balls and a glass of maizes kvass, and I might have a piece of tourtiï¿½re with maple syrup and a glass of milk. But it remains an inescapable biological fact that we both need to eat to survive. Contextuality expresses the fact that an action does not exist in a vacuum. When we examine an action, we cannot ignore that the action takes place in a given context. This context is necessary to evaluate the consequences of an action, because it informs the values that are effected by the action. To take a simple example, the action of "killing" effects very different values whether it involves: killing someone who has a gun trained on you killing an innocent person walking down the street killing an animal for food on a hunting trip killing a spider that entered the house And so on and so forth. In each case, the being that is killed, the state of ourselves and the being, the actions necessary to perform, are all very different and lead to different results. In one case, our life is saved. In the other, we are a criminal. I wish I could rebut some of your arguments but not enough space sorry.