Debate: Is there a such thing as "objective morality"?
Side: Yes

You said "doesn't mean we know what they all are" intonating hiddenness and when I said I would expect objective morality to be more prevalent, you said "It is".Thus my question of whether you consider it both prevalent and hidden - am I missing something here??Yes… my point. You’ve taken a simple statement with a succinct meaning and replaced it with obscure terms in what seems like an attempt to debase me.My point was not so daft as to summate it as “universal morality is both prevalent and hidden.” You said you would expect it to be more prevalent. I said it is and you insisted that I “name them.” A dishonest request and you know it.I didn't ask different moral questions - you presented an attempt at an example of an objectively moral action, and I showed there was an exception.I never claimed moral absolutism. The existence of exceptions is expected.clubbed foot, down syndrome, anencephaly, or an extra pinky toe all may count as deformity to some degree. Each one might influence the question differently.Ok. But do these exceptions detract from the question on a macro level?Some people will get sick if they eat a food they are allergic to. This doesn’t cause us to claim that there are no facts to be known about nutrition.It is unreasonable to assume that the existence of exceptions of differences of opinion means that there are no objective facts about morality. I consider objective morality basically to be morality outside human ontology.To be honest, it doesn’t sound well-intentioned or even practical to debate such a thing. I acknowledge that that seems to be the religious view of objective morals, but I trust that your skill is sufficient enough to see that that is not what I am arguing.Perhaps we can concede to what secular moral objectivists consider it to be? “scientific terms refer to real features of the world, and the sciences provide us with successively more and more accurate knowledge of the world. In a similar way, moral realism asks us to take moral claims literally, as claims that purport to describe the moral properties of people, actions, and institutions—properties that obtain independently of our moral theorizing. Moral realism is roughly the view that there are moral facts and true moral claims whose existence and nature are independent of our beliefs about what is right and wrong.” - David O. Brink, Moral Realism and the Foundations of Ethics“If our well-being depends upon the interaction between events in our brains and events in the world, and there are better and worse ways to secure it, then some cultures will tend to produce lives that are more worth living than others; some political persuasions will be more enlightened than others; and some world views will be mistaken in ways that cause needless human misery.” - Sam Harris, The Moral Landscape: How Science Can Determine Human Values I think natural selection produced survival, not morality - keep in mind that it also produced all animal actions which you might consider immoral: rape, slavery, eating the young, etc.I wasn’t the one who brought up morals having evolved from chimps; I assumed that if they were passed on to us through genetics that they would have served a purpose to survival. Who is to say "objectively" that human survival for an individual, group, or as a whole is an unqualified "good"?On an individual level, I suppose anyone who would favor being alive over being dead.I wouldn’t claim that it’s an unqualified good, but in terms of moral objectivism survival versus death could be considered good. I am not an absolutist.  If your goal was maximizing life, you might think that human destruction of other species and their environments might not be "good".Ok? Destroying life would be counteractive to maximizing life, that’s true.  What do you assert is required exactly?Some homework for starters.”The usefulness becomes apparent when we recognize that moral questions which potentially affect the outcome of our behavior can be answered” - ColdfireIs there some moral question that you can claim to answer?You seem to have left out a few details.”… practically and validated with data and facts which would render peoples’ personal opinions nothing but.”Can moral questions which potentially affect the outcome of our behavior be answered in a practical manner and validated with data and facts? Yes.Whether or not I, personally, meet your demand is irrelevant to this. the most important thing to remember every time you use the word measure is that more than just measurement is needed. You need to be able to show how any measurement advances toward a specified moral. The goal is antecedent to the measurement. Minimizing pain, maximizing happiness, preserving life, the most for the greatest numberThe goal of measuring some thing could be simply to find out the things dimensions. No greater purpose need exist.If you insist that there must then I will humor you with a hypothetical.“Rape is wrong.” We can examine the effects that rape has on people and potentially conclude that it is physically, emotionally, and psychologically damaging. We can use this data to base our assertion that it is morally wrong to rape someone. The goal in measuring these effects? Other than simply to arrive at a truth based claim, the goal could be to use this data to help establish demonstrable evidence against such behavior in order to prevent/decrease rape through whatever means are demonstrably effective. ‘What is the most moral means which should be used to curtail such behavior?’ could be another moral question. We could examine various methods in conjunction with neurology and additional factors to arrive at “the most ethical means.” And so forth. These goals will inevitably run counter to each other (or even be internally at odds).Not always. And there isn’t just one answer to any one moral question. There could be multiple peaks of wellness and multiple peaks of illness which result from several different methods. This isn’t to say that there are no moral facts that can be drawn from the study of these methods.