Rapist insects and Nazi Aliens from Planet X-1951

I fear that I cannot engage everything in the last post, so I'm saying a few words here about Sorceror's fine comments which were, I believe, next in the queue. As with most of the skeptical atheist types responding here, Sorceror is not happy with the notion that rape, cannibalism, torture, and the like are objective moral horrors. Sorceror believes at best they are horrors only relative to the human species.

Why? Sorceror begins with by saying a few words about the moral sense: "We also have a 'moral sense' - understanding the motives and actions of others, and how best to relate to them, has also been kinda important to survival, too. We can 'just tell' that mothers sadistically killing children is a bad idea."

Sorceror is not being facetious here it would seem. No he (Sorceror, if you're a she, please correct me) appears to assume that we do know this, but we only know it relative to our species.

First I wonder, if AnAtheist.Net is puzzled by how we know objective moral truths (if they exist) then why wouldn't our knowledge of subjective, human relative moral truths be relevant as well?

Anyway, Sorceror finds it a dubious leap to think that because human beings ought not rape relative to our species, that it follows that rape is an objective evil. This is how he puts it: "But why would we expect those intuitions to apply to non-human aliens? There are insects that literally *have to* rape in order to reproduce, the male stabbing the female through the skeleton."

Sorceror then draws the conclusion:

But what works for them doesn't work for us. Murder and raping and such are bad things for humans because of what humans are. And if aliens were to do that to us, they would be bad for humans, and we'd be right to oppose them, no matter how rationally or morally they were behaving by *their* lights.

No Sorceror, no no no. You missed the point here by a wide margin. Insects don't rape. Nor, as I already explained, do lions murder when they run down a gazelle. These are natural evils perhaps, but they are not moral evils. They are not moral evils because insects (and lions) are not moral agents. It is a simple category error.

That's why I resort to intelligent, rational aliens in the thought experiment. So let's go further. Aliens come to earth from Planet X-1951. These aliens look identical to human beings except that they evolved independently and have a little unique birthmark on their right calve muscles.

Oh heck, let's go further still. These aliens evolved in such a way that on their planet certain acts like genocide can be morally praiseworthy under certain conditions. When they arrive on earth they are all adherents to a facist ideology that looks a lot like German national socialism of the 1930s. And what is more, we discover that fifty years ago they eliminated all of one group of their species who look a lot like Jews (except the alien ethnic group was called "Phews"). And they did so for no more substantial reason than that they hated this group. So they herded them into concentration camps and slaughtered them.

Now y'all are on board I presume in saying at least that the Nazi genocide of the Jews was a moral horror. I believe it was an objective moral horror while y'all believe it was a moral horror only relative to the human species.

So when we come to the Alien Nazi elimination of the Phews, you simply cannot condemn their actions, even though it is nearly indistinguishable from the Nazis in scope, suffering, and intent. All you can say is that it is wrong for human Nazis to kill Jews but not for alien Nazis to kill Phews nor, presumably, for alien Nazis to kill Jews.

Ugh, what a repugnant moral analysis.