Objective Morality - Views
After writing “A Foundation for Objective Morality” I received a lot of comments that concerned a lot of detail on the approach. This post is to respond to a small collections of posts by those who have written about subjective and objective morality.
While considering the positions and responses, consider carefully what “Objective Morality” and “Subjective Morality” mean. Much of the disagreement is on the definition of these two terms. But lets jump into it.
1: Why there is no objective morality
Jerry Coyne‘s post at (https://whyevolutionistrue.com/2013/07/24/why-there-is-no-objective-morality/) claims there is no objective morality.
He starts by defining objective morality: “rational consideration of the world’s facts will reveal criteria whereby things can be seen objectively as either right or wrong.”
His definition is limited: an objective morals standard might exist, but he is only willing to accept criteria that can be deduced by rational consideration from facts of the world. In other words, an objective thing exists only if someone know about it.
Consider a culture too primitive to be able to accurately measure the height of a mountain. Someone might posit that there exists one mountain that is the highest, higher than all the others. Unfortunately because they lack mountain measuring skills they don’t know which one it is. Does that mean that the tallest mountain does not exist? Jerry Coyne would say: unless I can actually deduce from the facts of the world which mountain is highest, then no mountain is highest. Obviously, there can exist a highest mountain, without the observer being able to tell which it is. The “highest mountain” is an objective fact which is simply not known to that culture.
I have argued that objective morality exists even if no human being understands exactly what it is. Imaginary numbers (based on the square root of negative 1) is a concept that developed around 1550. Before that time did imaginary numbers exist? Surely they did, but nobody had discovered them. Numbers and mathematics are abstract and necessary.
I have expressed the idea that “objective morality” exists in the same way whether we know it or not. There is a set of criteria which can say whether an action is good or evil. It is a different question to say whether we have the cultural maturity to have discovered it. I use the term “discovered” because the criteria have always been there, but we simply did not know what they were.
What good is a moral compass that nobody can see? The moral rules that we live by approximate the objective rules. Human civilizations keep getting closer and closer. Never perfect, but still getting closer. We need to keep these two concepts distinct:
- There are rules and laws that we live by and accept as proper behavior
- There exists an optimal set of rules and laws that define the best behavior
The first I will call “cultural morality” and the second “objective morality”.
It should also be obvious to all readers that there are a multitude of different versions of cultural morality. Each culture has a different idea of what is right and wrong to do. There is even more than that: different members of a given culture will often have their own idea of what is right and wrong, usually based on some idea of what cultural morality is. Even that is constantly changing. There is an endless discussion of what people should and should not do. Is it right for a sitting president to advertise products from his office? Should police restrain people by putting a knee on their neck?
We can compare different culture’s morality: The Azteks believed that human sacrifice was a right and proper thing to do in some situations. The Azteks had a cultural morality different from what most people have today, but which one was better? Asking that question: what is the best possible cultural morality. Like the highest mountain, that optimum must exist, and that optimum is the best for all people. It is entirely objective and does not depend on any “subject” in the population.
Note that this formulation of objective morality does not require any “rational consideration of the world’s facts” to make it exist. Coyne’s blog site is named “Why Evolution is True.” Of all people, he should understand that when fish gained legs, it had absolutely nothing to do with wanting or figuring out that legs would be useful. Fish with more leg-like fins simply started living long. The same with morals: societies with morals closer to the objective morals simply live longer and better.
Jerry offers an example of a moral question he feels can not be answered by objective morality: “Is it right or wrong to eat meat, even if the animals are humanely raised?”
While he broadly accepts the utilitarian principle that the morally right action is that which gives the most well being to the most people, he asks the question: “Whose well being is being assessed?” Do we consider the well being of the animals being eaten? My answer is simply that Utilitarianism is about survival of humans, and so we ONLY consider the well being of humans, not the animals. The question to ask: is a human society that eats meat better off than a society that does not. As we reach the limits of what the planet can support, we are going to find it less and less moral to eat meat simply from the resource pattern. Alternately, if the human population was reduced to around 1 billion people, the probably eating meat would be perfectly acceptable. Morals have complex conditions like this on the environment and population of the world.
He asks: “Is it immoral to kill a mosquito just because it bites you?” – once again, the question to ask is: “Do human populations survive better when they slap mosquitoes or not?” The answer is clear to me: kill the mosquito. He says this answer is not accepted by the Jains. He is comparing objective morality to cultural morality. Only future history will tell whether the Jains succeed better than the mosquito swatters, and only then will we be able to say that their cultural morality is closer to objective morality or not.
He says: “I don’t think the criterion of “well being” is an objective one. It is a subjective choice.”
He is getting confused between the logical necessary objective morality and the cultural morality that we live by. Those are distinct things. Humans do better when their cultural morality more closely approximates the optimal objective morality. But there is no amount of rational consideration that will prove one way or the other when a particular cultural morality is closer or further than another. Our minds are simply too limited to figure out all the consequences.
He also says: “it’s clear that under the standard of “general well being,” nearly all of us would be acting morally by giving a third of our income to the poor and starving people of the world. Yet we don’t. Are we then immoral?” The answer is Yes.
2: Six reasons why objective morality is nonsense
Coel Hellier has a blog post at (https://coelsblog.wordpress.com/2013/07/29/six-reasons-why-objective-morality-is-nonsense/).
He says: “If morality were objective, it would have to be conceivable that the statement “George’s actions were wrong and he deserves to be punished” would be true even if every human in the world were of the opinion, “George’s actions seem fine to me, perhaps even laudable”. ”
I agree. I am claiming that there exists a necessary logical set of criteria that define good and bad behavior. Whether bad behavior needs punishment is another moral decision, but for the sake of argument let’s say that the existing objective moral criteria include this. In that case, yes George should be punished even if nobody knows it.
He says: “Thus, a subjective morality is strongly preferable to an objective one!” – I completely disagree. If there is a best course of action, it matters not a bit that humans prefer it or not. Morality is not about what humans prefer. It is about what they should do. Morality plays are filled with examples of actions that a character should do, but does not want to do.
“Subjective does not mean unimportant.” – I don’t object to the concept of subjective morality because it is not important. On the contrary, what he is calling subjective morals are what I am calling cultural morals: the actual rules that a given person lives by. Cultural morality is a different thing from objective morality, neither more important nor less important.
“Subjective does not mean arbitrary” – I agree as well. Cultural morality is a complex set of agreements shared (somewhat imperfectly) by members of a culture. However it is equally obvious that cultural morality changes from time to time. It is also obvious that the cultural morality effects the survival of a culture. Cannibal culture has been completely wiped out (as far as I know). Cannibal culture has been replaced by something else, something that we know is closer to the objective moral because the culture survives longer with this new cultural morality. The consequences of a bad cultural morality is death of the culture, which is then replaced by something better.
“Subjective does not mean that anyone’s opinion is “just as good”.” – I agree, cultural morality requires some kind of consensus. Even at that, there is no global consensus. There are thousands of different cultural moral codes across a single country, so banish the idea that there is “one subjective moral code.” What we must accept is that there are many of them, and ultimately a person might adopt their own, unique code, which is “just their opinion.” It may not be as good, but without an objective moral standard, how do you compare them?
“Our morality is evolved.” – I complete agree that the rules that a particular culture follows have evolved. That does not in any way speak against the existence of an optimal moral code which is objective.
“Humans are only one species” – He is arguing that different species might enable/require different rules. I disagree that morality needs to be independent of species. Morality is entirely situated in the time, the place, and the actors. Killing someone is wrong, except self defense it is acceptable. Situation matters.
“Starting from “well being” is subjective – who decided that human well-being is what is important?” – Well being ultimately equates to survival. No single person suddenly decided one day that all the cannibals should go away. Clearly the cannibals themselves had no problem with the practice. Cannibalism did actually disappear. Who decided that? It simply happened. Just like fish eventually grew legs. Cannibalism is a less successful cultural morality. If your culture does not survive, then nobody has any well being. A “better” cultural morality allows the culture to survive, and well being is an approximate measure of this.
“Aggregation schemes are arbitrary.” – This is where Coel really gets it wrong. He recognizes that there are millions of different cultural moral system, and he thinks that these need to be combined into a single code by someone collecting and deciding what is and is not to be included. The mechanism works on an entirely different principle. We don’t need to aggregate anything. The process of cultural evolution wipes out the cultures with poor guidelines for behavior, and they are replaced by cultures with “better” behaviors.
“Rooting morality in “God” is still arbitrary.” – I agree as well. But God is not the basis of my objective morality. Instead, objective morality is a logical necessity which is there to be discovered.
“No one has any idea what “objective” morality even means. Humans have an intuition about it, but that intuition was programmed for purely subjective and pragmatic reasons and thus is a hopeless base for establishing absolute morality.” – By now it should be clear that nobody needs to have any idea about whether a particular cultural morality is close or far from the optimum (objective) morality. You need to understand that evolution works without the individual having any idea what evolutionary development is happening. The fact that nobody understands it is not a problem. I agree that human intuition is NOT a good basis for morality. But that is not how human rules and laws evolve.
3: Objections to Objective Morality
I started responding to Cole James‘ post at (https://crossexamined.org/objections-objective-morality/) before I realized it was simply a defense of Christian divine command theory. He starts with three sentences I agree with: “Objective morality means that moral statements like “murder is bad” is independent of the person saying it. Objective morality means that there is a standard of morality that transcends human opinions and judgements. Morals are not invented, they are discovered.”
He follows with four points which he sets up as arguments that a subjective moralist might use, and he believes he defeats them. Let’s see how I do on the same arguments:
1. There are so many different cultures with different values, there can’t be objective morals! Look how different we are! – This point would be proposed by someone who must somehow believe that if objective moral exists, then every person on the planet would magically have instant access the the exact same set of rule. The implication is that “existence of objective morals” somehow makes them accessible to everyone. Conversely, if everyone does not have access to them, they don’t exist. I have argued that objective morality exists, but is not accessible to everyone. Everyone already knows this because people argue about their respective cultural morality all the time. Even the Christians claim that their morality is not known to everyone, and must be taught. Proposing that the existence of objective morality is equivalent to everyone holding the exact same values seems like a strawman argument to me.
2. Objective morality is not very tolerant! Relativism is much more tolerant of people’s opinions and beliefs. – Yeah, nobody cares. Morality is not about what people want to do. This seems to be driven by the Christian idea that people are bad because they somehow want to be bad.
Cultural relativism is very different from simply understanding that different cultures have different cultural morality. Cultural relativism is somehow saying that it is “right” for each culture to have it’s own set of rules to follow. Tell that to the cannibals that no longer exist.
- There are so many different understanding of morals, there cannot be objective morality. – this is a repeat of point number 1
4. I do not believe in God and I am a moral person. So you are saying that atheists cannot be moral people? – OK, it is a Christian site, and here is where he jumps from “I don’t know how it came about” to “God did it.” This post is extremely superficial but I already wrote responses to the issues above so I am going to include this anyway.
4: Is Morality Subjective?
Leslie Allan has a post at (https://www.rationalrealm.com/philosophy/ethics/is-morality-subjective.html) how moral subjectivism is mistaken. “Objectivity in ethics should not be contrasted with subjectivity in the sense of being grounded in people’s attitudes and preferences. Objectivity in ethics is more correctly contrasted with subjectivity in the sense of being partisan, selfish and parochial.”
“By treating all moral judgements as statements about subjective attitudes and preferences, subjectivists struggle to make the distinction each of us recognizes naturally; the distinction between moral judgements and non-moral preferences.” He includes here some good examples.
“I have argued here that objectivity is a necessary attribute of ethical thinking. However, the ‘objectivity’ required is not objectivity in the sense of ‘independent of all human values and desires’ . . . ”
I would argue that objective is precisely that: that set of criteria that identifies the best course of action completely independent of individual values and desires. It is kind of tricky because the best course will of course be somehow related to values and desires. Clearly suffering is to be avoided and nearly everyone desires to avoid suffering. But ultimately the best course is the one that allows the culture to survive. There is a harsh reality to this, and that is what separates objective morality from any individual subject who might be called upon to decide good from bad.
We can agree on rejecting religious and metaphysical explanations for the grounding of ethics. We have no need for some mysterious or empirically inaccessible metaphysical realm to legitimize our moral judgements. Ethics requires objectivity in the sense of being independent of this person’s or that person’s subjective wants and values. To think ethically is the inverse of thinking egoistically or selfishly. To think ethically is to think impartially, as opposed to thinking parochially. — well said.
Voices from Debate.org
I found a discussion page debating “Is morality subjective?” on Debate.org. I grabbed some of the comments from that and respond to them.
Morality is a man-made concept that is defined by the society you live in; it is subjective. – The rules sets you use to guide your life are varied from person to person, and from culture to culture, but this does not make them subjective. Morally better rules contribute to the well being of the individual and the culture. Well being of a culture is an objectively measurable thing, particularly when you can wait long enough to see whether the culture as a whole survives. A culture that dies out because of bad rules is not merely “subjectively” worse off that its survivors, but is “objectively” worse off. Generally, if there are five cultures living next to each other, there is an objective measure of which is doing the best. No matter how much you subjectively feel that a particular rule should be followed, the differences between the success of the cultures tells you which one is objectively doing the better thing.
There is nothing called morality in nature. – This statement is strikingly blind statement. Dogs have clearly defined moral behaviors. So do chimps and bonobos. So do penguins. So do birds and bees. There are actions that are “good” and actions that are :bad” and these animals clearly know the difference. Once might argue that moral behaviors from instinct don’t count, but why? There are still rules that strictly define good and back behavior. An animal like a bee might not have the cognitive ability to freely choose to do the bad behavior, but they still clearly show a knowledge of what the good behavior is.
You cannot observe morality or test it in a laboratory. There is no absolute “morality.” – There certainly is. A morally good action is that which increases the general well being. For small actions this might be difficult to measure, but it is not in practice impossible to measure. For large actions, the consequences of the action will be clear, and that yields a clearly objective measure of the goodness of an action.
Even murdering or killing humans is not an absolute; it is societal – This is just saying that the rules are not simply one-sentence rules that stand on their own. The actual rule is quite complex and takes into account the situation and context of the action. Once the rule is properly state in its fully complex form (e.g. killing is bad except in self defense, or when defending your country, or when the person is about to kill a lot more people, or … ) THEN it is a objective fixed rule. The fact that a rule can not be stated in a single sentence does not mean that the rule has to be subjective.
To say that morality is objective is to say that notions of right and wrong are universal and fixed for all times – no that is not true at all. Objective morals can and must adapt to the times. Slicing open the rib cage was always objectively bad in ancient times. Open heart surgery is a regular action today and in the right surgical theater with proper support it is a very good thing. Technology changes over time. Context changes over time. Knowledge changes over time. It only stands to reason that rules will change over time. Objective does not mean static. Objective means that each observer would measure the same thing. The goodness of open heart surgery is an objective fact, and does not depend in any way on the observer to decide that.
Simply put morality is what a person regards as ‘right’ and ‘wrong’. What a person decides as ‘morally right’ or ‘morally wrong’ is down to their own ideals and principles. – What this is talking about is the varying rule sets that people live by. It is true that a person’s assessment of their actions is subjective, however that does not rule out objective morality. We can compare the rule sets of different individuals on which is more moral. We can even base our comparison on the effect is has on general well being, and that measurement is an objective measurement. Poisoning the city’s water supply is not bad just because it is my opinion that it is bad. Poisoning the city’s water killing a million people would greatly decrease general well being, and that is an objective measure. No matter how much you personally like the idea of poisoning the city, it is objectively bad to do so. Your subjective assessment has nothing to do with this measurement.
The reason morality is subjective is because there is no common moral law that ALL people agree on. – First there is a lot of commonality (murder is universally bad) and that says a lot for objective morals. However notice another thing about this question. There is an idea that if morals “exist” then they would be imposed on all people. There is a feeling that morals are magical things that their mere existence would control nature in the way that the theory of gravity does. The fact that people don’t all know the details of the moral laws is given as evidence that moral laws don’t exist. I insist instead that objective morals can exist without any one knowing about them in the same way that there is an objective value for PI even if nobody on the planet can calculate it. I would go further to say that our rationalization about morals is just a likely to be wrong as to be right. There is an optimal set of rules which would maximize well being of the most people, but nobody knows any of the details precisely.
If objective moral codes existed like “murder is bad” than there would be no murderers. – Comment from the same person implying that the mere existence of moral implies not only that everyone knows the rules, but also everyone always follows them. It goes without question that the subject of morality must include the discussion people who don’t follow the rules.
Morality is subjective because human conciousness is subjective. In order for morality to be objective, it must be right or wrong regardless of human perception. – The second sentence is exactly right. Objectively right actions are objectively right actions, even if nobody knows it. Consciousness has nothing to do with it. An action that is bad, is bad no matter how much you think it is good.
If morality was objective there would be at least one rule throughout every society that has ever existed that was believed as this is not the case. – No at all. There is no reason to believe that humans know what is objectively good. I would argue that there are such commonalities — such as it is bad to eat babies — but there is absolutely no requirement that every society in history knows about any objective moral fact. The commonality between cultures is evidence that morals are objective, but still there could be some number of cultures that are clueless about any given rule.
If morality was truly objective, then humanity would all recognize certain instances as ‘good’ and others as ‘bad’; there would universal agreement towards it. – Again this strange insistence that if moral exist, they would be universally known. I insist instead that objective morals exist whether or not anyone knows about them, in the same way that there is a tallest mountain, whether or not any person knows which mountain is the tallest. Universal agreement on the tallest mountain is not necessary for there to be a tallest mountain.
Ethics are the objective component while morals are subjective. – I have heard that description before. Maybe it is true, however I was not able to find enough dictionaries that concurred with those definitions. Because of that I stick with personal-morality, cultural-morality, and objective-morality. I am willing to change if I can be shown evidence that these definitions are applied universally enough.
If it can’t be universally applied, it’s ‘ethics’, not ‘morals’ – here we see the exact opposite of the above. That is why I don’t trust these two words.
Answers to morality questions are rarely straightforward and each person is entitled to their own opinion about what is right and what is wrong. – Yes they are, but that does not mean that they are actually right. This still can be an objective measure of a particular action. People are entitled to be believe in unicorns if they wish, but that does not make unicorns exist.
A large majority of sane individuals, at least, will agree that they do not want to be killed, themselves, so it is easy to apply ‘one shouldn’t kill innocents’ as a universal rule rather than a circumstantially applied one. – Yes, that is right. Commonalities across many cultures and individuals strongly implies that a particular action is objectively wrong. There could be exceptions where a person’s intuition is wrong. People universally thought that banning all alcohol would reduce societal problems, but it counter-intuitively had the opposite effect. But for the most part this guideline is correct.
So what if your moral wrong was my moral right? Who’s decides who’s right? – We need to see whether general well being is increased or decreased. This measurement is independent of any person’s opinion.
If morality is subjective, then any act of ‘evil’ is no more ‘evil’ than a shark preying on its victims for food… – That is the problem with insisting that morality is purely subjective. Subjective means that the rightness or wrongness depends on the person opinion, and two different people will judge the act differently. Many Christians use this argument to show the weakness of subjective morality.
The bible shows the revealed will of mankind. God Himself sets the standard of objective morality. – Here we have the standard religious argument and it amount to no more than “I don’t know how moral came about so God must have created them.”
In order to judge if morality is objective, you have to judge it for your own standards in able to use it as your own for no one would blindly believe a morality. – A action can be bad whether or not you know it is bad.
Objectivity defines itself in that it is reached only when consensus among an arbitrarily large group of communicative, individual observers aligns. – No. Objectivity is not simply the consensus of a bunch of people. An action can be judged as good or bad based on an actual concrete measurable consequence on the well being of all people. This is hard in practice to do on small actions, but being hard does not make it impossible.
Things, such as murder, viewed as repulsive by 99.9% of people are written in our laws as objectively wrong, but there will always be the human who does not conform to that or view the actions as negative. – An objectively wrong action is wrong whether or not there is consensus to the fact. This person is making the mistake of thinking that objective is about consensus. Also, having individuals that disagree similarly does not rule out objective morality at any level. Objective morality does not mean that everyone will agree.
Without a deity, how can morality be objective? Humans simply make up what is “good” and what is “bad” based on living preferences gained over generations. – Because morally bad actions actually cause harm to the individuals and societies. Societies that engage in bad actions tend to die out. What is left is societies that do not at least make those mistakes.
People can have different morals which tells me that it’s a completely subjective thought process. – once again this strange idea that the existence of objective moral would require that everyone know and follow them.
To claim that morality is objective is a denial of all things logic, It’s obvious that it’s a social construct and that if morality WAS objective this discussion would not exist. – again the very strange idea that the existence of objective morals would necessitate that all people know, understand, and follow them. A bad action is bad whether or not anybody knows that it is bad — and also no matter how much you think it is good.
Discussions from other social media
Leaving out flourishing will give you a rather truncated morality. Is it wrong to cause someone pain? If existence is the only metric, that would be amoral. - Good question. Pain is almost always an indication of something harmful. You need to dig into what pain is: pain is the sensation of the difference between the way the world is, and the way it should be. In most real situations pain is harmful, and would be bad for that reason.
If you could induce a painful feeling without ANY physical harm, without any emotional harm, and without detrimentally effecting the behaviors of anyone involve, would not by itself be "bad" -- but realize there are a lot of caveats there.
Also keep in mind that you must take a universal view: it will be moral to cause some people pain, if it greatly relieves pain of a great number more people. The trolley problem is clear: it is better to save the five while sacrificing the one.
Pain itself is not a morally valent, but causing pain ALMOST ALWAYS causes a decrease in existence and will almost always be bad.
Who says that existence is good? - We realize that it is good. That is all we need to say about it. We certainly demonstrate that it is true in extremes: no existence at all would be bad. Any existence is better than no existence.
It stands the test in that in most moral situations, increasing the amount of existence is almost always concordant with what we normally think of as good. Don't murder. Don't do antisocial things. Don't rape. Don't pillage. Don't poison people. Do build a shelter. Do plant for a harvest. Do help someone in need. Do be polite. etc.
I will caution you that if you search carefully, you will find some apparent contradictions with traditional morality. Is it moral to kill a cow? That might seems like a decrease in existence, but killing for food is actually INCREASING the amount of existence in the big picture.
How would I go about PROVING that existence is good? Obviously, I can't because good must be defined, and everyone might come up with their own definition, and it would merely be a debate about definitions. But you must admit that:
- it is ENTIRELY objective
- it fits pretty well with traditional moral notions
I just don't buy that the universe can be absolutely good by itself. How do we know this - It is, because it is logically necessary that it be good. Without a universe there can be no meaning at all. Without a universe there can be no possibilities. Everything is relative, so by "good" we mean it is better that something else. Without a universe there can be no differences. Oblivion (the state of no universe) can not in any circumstances be better than an existing universe, because an existing universe gives you possibilities. And differences. There is absolutely no opinion in here. This is a straight logical necessity. This is probably the strongest part of my thesis.
We cannot justify this claim by saying that morally good things happen in the universe, as that would be a composition fallacy - I agree, and I am not arguing that. An act that is good is good because it increases the amount of existence in the universe, the amount of forms or processes. The good act would not be good without the universe, and the relationship between how the universe was before and after the act.
When you say the universe is good for the things in it, you're using the non moral and functional sense of good-for. - That is right, I am not arguing that the universe is good for the things in it. I am arguing that the creation / existence of things in the universe are good for the same reason that the universe is good. That is: anything created is better than not being created: it produces more possibilities and more value.
this all violates the is/ought distinction - Tell me more about how this distinction has been proven. David Hume starts with an assumption that ought should be something special distinct from what is, but I don't see any justification for that. You certainly have to admit that if moral good was simply creation in any form (that is, the most right thing to do is that action which involves the greatest amount of creation) then there would be no such divide. So how is it that you know there is an is/ought divide?
Facts themselves don't imply values. Values got to get their way in somehow. How so? By mind independent moral facts? By agents inside doing acts of valuing? - Yes, I am saying that actions are good or bad independent of any conscious agent. That is, certain fact inherently imply value by the effect they have on the universe as a whole. Actions that create will always be better than actions that destroy. Actions that create more are better than actions that create less. Why not? We have been told that this can't be the case, but what is the proof of that? That could just be a silly misunderstanding, like thinking that the sun goes around the Earth. I am looking for justification of this claim.
Morality requires a certain kind of rational endorsement. - I am not sure that it does. Why? It seems that some people would claim that the formation of a star can't be a morally good thing because there was no consciousness involved in the formation of a star. No decider, no good/bad. I challenge that notion. things that happen on a purely mechanical basis can be rated as morally good or bad. For example, a hurricane might in fact be morally bad because of all the destruction. (Destruction )
I dont agree with your moral foundation, and that makes your moral foundation subjective - No, objective means that in the assessment of the moral valence is specified in a way that you and I can not disagree about. This is important, and there is no slop here. If the culture with a particular set of guidelines survives, it survives. That is a cold hard fact. You and I can't differ in opinion on whether someone is dead or not. Survival is an objectively measurable quantity.
Even if you disagree that acts that bring about survival are good, that disagreement does not make the measurement of whether someone survives subjective. You might disagree with the moral theory, but the theory is quite clearly objective.
To expand a bit on the subjective/objective thing. You say Yahweh set all the moral rules. I will agree with you that a God, because of the special nature of godliness, and that God created the universe, that whatever a God says on the matter can be considered objective. However, if I disagree that Yahweh did this, does not make deistic moral law subjective. My disagreement with your theory about God setting the moral laws does not make the theory about morals laws subjective. Similarly, your disagreement about my moral theory, does not make my moral theory subjective either. The theory does not rely on any person's subjective opinion, and that makes the theory objective. It is important to understand what we mean by objective and subjective.
So, by your logic, lying is only “bad” because it’s inconvenient for society’s survival? - The answer should be obvious. Survival is not a "convenience" it is the essential element of existence. If you don't survive, you don't exist, and then morality is meaningless. By definition survival is "good" for everything that "exists".
Conveniently, that makes you (and people like you) the final authority on what’s right and wrong, based on what you personally think works best. - Have you understood nothing? Morality depends not one bit on what people personally think. Survival is a cold, hard fat that has nothing to do with opinions.
But what happens when society shifts and decides lying, cheating, or even worse things are acceptable for "the greater good"? - Only time will tell, but you have to be a genius to see that the society built on lying will corrode from within. It does not matter what the founders of such a society thinks.
Without an unchanging standard, morality becomes nothing but preference and convenience. - Again, you arguing against some other idea. Go talk to them. I never said that morality depends on preference.
Nazi Germany, for instance, decided that certain groups were “unfit” for society’s advancement. Was that suddenly “good” because it was beneficial for them? - It was not good. And they did not survive. The proof that what they were doing was bad if clearly evident that they only lasted a few years. This is an excellent example of how morality is precisely what I say it is.