Absolutely! I just finished opining that an occasional glass of wine is actually beneficial, as opposed to drinking alcohol being considered "a sin." And the reason for making such a bold statement is scientific evidence. As in the link attached here. So I'll recycle that argument, as an example, to answer your question. "Is drinking alcohol immoral?" No! Drinking in excess, sure.

I would argue that nothing that provides health benefits can be considered "immoral." Abuse of anything, on the other hand, is detrimental to health, so a culture may be justified in making such activity "immoral" in their code of ethics.

Plenty of references in the New Testament of "non-sinful" wine consumption, and science can explain why. And no, gimme a break, that wasn't grape juice!

I think yes.

regards

Yes. Most moral questions are oversimplified strategic questions. Doing X is amoral because doing X has side effects and long term effects which, if taking into account, would make doing X stupid from point of view of your own interests. For people unable to think all the time about such side effects and long term consequences it makes sense to simplify the question by a moral which names the type of behavior which has such harmful consequences amoral. But this does not change the point that what defines this moral are pragmatic, strategic questions: What is the best way to behave given my own interests? And for answering this question, science is certainly helpful. Because it helps to find out what are these consequences.

Absolutely. What else is there that is objective enough?

In a closely related context, may I quote here a book passage:

Quote

I interviewed a number of clerics from a range of different creeds. One of my questions was 'what do you think of people who, in their lives, practice S&M (sado-masochism)?' Down to one notable, single exception, all the others spoke scornfully of SM practitioners in uniformly judgmental, scathing, and sometimes surprisingly gleefully damning terms: "SM practitioners are lost souls, sinners, they should grovel before God and ask for forgiveness, they are victims of the devil, they shall be thrown into the lake of fire..." You get the picture.

Yet, unbeknownst to the clerics, my question was disingenuous: science has something very specific to say about SM practitioners. Robert Stoller, a California doctor who investigated a statistically significant number of people practicing hardcore sado‑masochism, discovered that all of them bar none had happened to experience excruciating medical issues in their early childhoods—issues that had led to a number of surgical interventions and lengthy hospital stays. The little children they were then had been so physically hurt and terrified that, in order to be able to simply stay alive, their brains had rewired: to trick the child into surviving, despite the terrifying impersonal grown-up doctors in white coats, despite the operations, the blood and the pain, the brain had rewired itself to associate the pain and terror with ..... pleasure. To save the child, the brain outright lied: it's not pain, dear: it's pleasure. That did the trick: the children survived. A long-term consequence, however, arose because the brain is just so much more plastic and malleable during its formative early years than later on. By adulthood, the association of pain with pleasure had set, and henceforth become a constituent element of psychological health: the brain jelled into adulthood with a now hardwired need for occasional pain so that psychological balance be maintained.

And there we have it: science's deeply explanatory and humane approach towards people who can certainly use understanding, compassion and respect for what they went through and most often just barely survived, and a peremptory, shallow and most definitely ungodlike approach by many clerics. The difference could hardly be starker.

Unquote

Dear All,

I am aware that science cannot be retrograde or against progression or intelligent human freedom. Main task of science is to discover natural (divine) laws in order to provide a better, a biosphere compatible, each-other compatible life. This mission of science should made by the common (objective) sense without cheating and preconceptions. With one word, science should be ancilla salutaris = maid of the good also the morally good.

Dear José,

Not the science, the scientists do think. If they do not think that is the trouble.

Hi dear,

I think that science cannot solve the moral disagreement. As said by Einstein: "religion without science is blind and science without religion is "handicapped " .

With my best regards!

Hmm, I wonder if we as a culture and educators have adequately pondered the embedded assumptions that inform the words "objective" and "objectivity?" To the extent that science (which is a mode of knowing) measures and evaluates that which is observed, it is objective. To the extent to which that these measurements can be ranked, science can assist people to decide what is quantitatively better. That being said, it is still worth pondering the question whether that which is quantitatively better is moral. For example, cell phones have made significant changes in the ways people communicate. They have also created significant psychosocial challenges such as the effects of individuals being so focused on their electronic communication that they neglect important aspects of their lives. Thus raising the question is it moral, amoral, or immoral when a person's digital life interferes with the rest of their life? Secondly, on what basis do we make this determination?

Worthy answers.

Absolutely

Well, I am with those philosophers who believe science is neutral !!!!

Science answers many questions yet we have a come a long way for which rationalizing may not help !!!

If it would then world would be a better place penny wise :)

In principle, I hold by Scottish philosopher David Hume's "fact-value distinction" that many philosophers considered the heart of all ethical matters. In reality and practice, they are blurred, but I resist the idea that moral questions can be reframed as strategies. We can dodge that simplistic reduction by agreeing that a given moral problem might be reframed as a strategic choice or a clarification of the question but not all truly moral matters.

For example, in my work as a physician and psychiatrist, I use the term "predicament" (which is not a medical term) to describe difficult human situations that are pregnant with meaning, that are unstable, unpredictable and uncontrollable, and have no possible reframing into strategic matters, and which, furthermore, have aesthetic and moral layers and impacts. Predicament cannot be reduced to diagnosis and cannot be reframed in therapeutic terms. Predicament, this defined, has a moral charge, a question of values that cannot be reduced to any recitation of facts, or as medicine would have it today, the "evidence base."

Vincenzo Di Nicola

University of Montreal &

The George Washington University

It all depends on what science we are talking about. First of all, we should talk about the so-called exact sciences. The conclusions of the "inexact" sciences are inaccurate (sorry for the tautology) and therefore uninteresting. At present, exact sciences are able to study only inanimate nature. Therefore, morality, which has to do with living people, they have no relation. If in the future, perhaps far, the exact sciences will be able to fully study the living nature, including man and all mankind, then science (exact science) will have a direct relation to morality.

"Religion without Science is Blind and Science without Religion is "Handicapped "

Morality is subjective, so I'm not sure how useful an objective discipline like science can be in providing finality to a discussion when such a disparate range of viewpoints exist on each and every subject.

For example, I can say that certain illegal drugs are immoral because of the psychological and biological harm they bring to some people, as proven by science. However, I can also say that these same drugs are moral because of the temporary psychological and biological pleasures they bring to some people, once more, as proven by science.

Who is to say which is more important; the avoidance of harm or the seeking of pleasure? This is a subjective question, and while science can tell us whether harm or pleasure is more likely to be caused in any given situation, it cannot decide for us which we should seek, and how much risk we should take in doing so.

To conclude, while science cannot resolve moral disagreements, it can certainly guide the conversation towards firmer ground. From there, it is up to people to determine what is and is not moral.

In my understanding, any science as a part of culture should be only moral, otherwise science can destroy humanity. I want to ask: Why do we need a science that can destroy humanity? The neutrality of science is the position of betrayal. Dr. Mengele have been creating science by conducting experiments on people in a concentration camp. I consider this science immoral. If today you as a scientist are neutral and can not help resolve moral disagreements between other people that can lead to tragedy, tomorrow another scientist will also be neutral to your moral problems that can lead to your tragedy. There should be no science sake of science as only in itself.

Well, it may and may not depending on what is termed moral. Morality is a relative term and it depends on many social factors. Some three decades ago, some Christian groups in Nigeria strongly frowned at the use of television by their members. But this day, the same TV is used by the same group to watch live and recorded programmes of the church.

Yes in most of the cases

Science should be morally neutral, just as probability is morally neutral; on the other hand scientists, probabilists, and mathematicians are human beings.

Dennis

Dennis Mazur

Interesting discussion.

May be.

Sometimes science causes moral disagreements as is the case with cloning, autonomous vehicles, nuclear weapons, etc. Amir

If the objective of science is the search for the truth. This is the mother of morality.

Science may be able to describe why and how we are moral but it cannot make moral decisions for us. Or tell us what is right and wrong. Sometimes these commenters have their own motive – a covert or overt interest in promoting a religiously determined moral code and they don’t want another discipline intruding into “their” arena.

Moral disagreements often turn on beliefs about factual matters. Someone claims that X is morally wrong because he believes it causes Y. Someone else counters that X is morally permissible because he believes it doesn't cause Y. What X causes is a factual question that science might be able to find the answer to. If science does provide the answer, the moral disagreement has been resolved.

However some people won't accept the findings of science or logical reasoning that conflicts with their cherished and stubbornly held worldviews.

If science, that is a number of people working in an area designated as scientific, decided it was possible to clone human beings, and a public outcry ensued because of fear that it might lead to unsavoury episodes between people, to abuse, to lessening of human value and values such processes may not occur unless taken up by a government for various unsuitable purposes. As science is multi-various in its practitioners and operations actions designated immoral, irreligious or disturbing would nevertheless see the light of day due to other factors; situations change for example whereby human cloning becomes beneficial, a saving device of the human species.

Morality therefore is within context and situational.

Yes, when the moral question involves "comparative measurements".

Dennis

Dennis Mazur

The question of morality is relative. Science can not solve that moral disagreement. As far as there is no general acceptability of what is moral, it might be difficult for science to help resolve them. For instance, moral issues i.e love, respect, likes and dislikes, endurance, anger, worship of God e.t.c can not be resolved scientifically.

Science, don't. Scientists, yes.