Hi everyone, I just joined up, and it's conversations like this one that caught my interest in the first place. I came to philosophy through circumstance - I had a chance to take over a retiring teacher's grade 12 philosophy course, and since that would mean I could teach it my way until I retired, if I so desired, I decided to teach myself some philosophy.

Fifteen years later, I've come back to philosophy following some personal losses and trauma, that led to personal dissatisfaction with 'spiritual' answers to moral questions. Reading secular philosophy really helped me get through some dark stuff.

So apologies in advance if I miss something obvious to those with sharper minds than mine, formal academic training, etc. I predict I will make some mistakes... and I hope people point them out to me!

As for the topic, it seems to me like the concept of 'human nature' is in the same category as 'objective morality', in that both are aspirational and unknowable, but worthwhile pursuits nonetheless. It is in pursuing these ideals that we can honor our human nature / act 'morally'.

I also endorse the Sam Harris book, he makes a strong case, and I feel my personal stance is very close to his, except that I do believe religion, (human traditions of morality, as they were developed and situated in time, ever-evolving) and even spiritual traditions such as meditation, that can be practiced in secular fashion, all bring value to the pursuit of an 'objective' morality.

I'm an atheist, but am not hostile to religion itself. Like any ideology or belief system, flawed and imperfect, to my mind, but I respect the 'goodness' of some of the religious people I've known far too much to discount that this is a moral practice with tangible positive outcomes.

Much of my interest in moral philosophy came from my first encounters with moral relativism in 'the wild', at university in the 90s. It seemed that, in the rare circumstances (imagine that today) a professor addressed morality directly in my social sciences and English courses, they were expressing morally relativistic beliefs.

Since then, I've been somewhat repelled by the premise, not as a considered stance by those who have done the work to decide on relativism, but rather as a default premise amongst people who might not think much about anything philosophical. A 'lazy relativism' if you will.

I still think like the high school teacher I was, so I try to think of the 'simplest' way to summarize the subject being discussed - in that spirit, is this not simply a question of whether or not moral relativism is inevitable?