Morality does NOT come from the individual. — Noah Te Stroete

It comes from a variety of sources. One is religious belief ('the gods have told us what to do, so we ought to do it'), another is social programming ('our leaders have told us what we should do, so we ought to do it'), and a third is the one I mentioned earlier, the recognition that pleasure is good and pain bad, and the entirely reasonable inference from this that we ought to promote pleasure and reduce pain. It's in this third area that the basis for a degree of objectivity in moral truths is to be found. For example:

Proof that intentionally boiling babies is morally wrong

1. Boiling babies causes them pain.
2. Pain is bad.
3. Therefore the effect of boiling babies is bad.
4. Intentionally performing an action whose effect is bad is morally wrong.
5. Therefore boiling babies is morally wrong.

If anyone wants to disagree with 1, 2 or 4, I'd be interested to know their reasons. I'd also be interested to know from moral relativists here how they would go about persuading someone else not to boil a baby.

Of course none of the above shows that every deontological principle is based on an objective truth, and I wouldn't want to claim that it was; my view of morality is that some of it is based on objective truth, and some of it is relative.

BTW, I'm quite a bit older than fourteen and three quarters, but it's nice to have it noted that I have a fresh and youthful approach.

And I stopped believing something just because some old dead fart said it when I was 14.
— Herg

And now you're fourteen-and-a-half and brimming with wisdom. Step aside, Hume. Behold, Herg! — S

How I wish I was still fourteen-and-a-half. But if anyone in this forum thinks they can move their case forward by quoting edicts from a dead philosopher rather than by advancing cogent arguments, they are in the wrong place. These are not the foothills of Mount Sinai, and no-one here is Moses.

"'Tis not contrary to reason to prefer the destruction of the whole world to the scratching of my finger" - Hume. — S

And I stopped believing something just because some old dead fart said it when I was 14.

We cannot argue that morals are objective because there is no means for them to be — Isaac

No-one has done it so far, but that doesn't prove that it can't be done.

This widespread agreement does not make their values 'right', I'm absolutely a moral relativist, but it does demand an explanation. — Isaac

The explanation is that pleasure is good and pain is bad, and this fact is understood by everyone except extreme moral relativists.

Why should one obey the categorical imperative?

A psychopath might enjoy boiling babies, but it is still morally wrong. — Noah Te Stroete

Why is it morally wrong?

Hanover's favourite philosopher is Hanover. Presumably Hanover's favourite fan is also Hanover. Narcissism much?

nonexistence doesn't give us anything we can use to compare it to life. Without a comparison, how can we say that life is any different than death? — simmerdown

I'm just having a hard time seeing how anything in life can be judged as good or bad if there is nothing to correlate it with (in nonexistence). It's like trying to understand the color White without having seen the colour black, if that makes any sense. — simmerdown

These two quotes seem to capture the core of your problem. (You'll no doubt correct me if I'm wrong.)

I think you're making a false assumption, which is that because the absence of a thing has no properties, it cannot enter into a comparison. This isn't true. What is true is that the absence of a thing can't enter into the kind of comparison that would require it to have properties. So, for example, it makes no sense to ask whether you are taller than your absence, because your absence can't have the property of height. But there are some kinds of comparison that don't require properties; for example, we can say that being alive can be pleasant, whereas the absence of being alive (i.e. being dead) cannot, because pleasure requires consciousness, and there is no consciousness in death (as far as we know). That's a comparison, despite the fact that the absence of being alive has no properties.

BTW, I'm not trying to have a debate with you. I think you've got yourself into a distressed state of mind because of a mistake, and I'm trying to help you out of it.

I'm a carer for someone with cancer, and unfortunately I now have to leave this forum if I'm to carry out my responsibilities to her. I will try to come back here to continue this discussion tomorrow. Try not to think too much about your problem in the meantime. Peace to you.

↪Herg Well, let's say that overall, our lives provide us with more good than bad. Does that make continuing to live more desirable than dying? I can't say it does, because we won't remain to experience this lack of a deprivation. Conversely, if our lives provide us with nothing but suffering, does that make dying more desirable than living? Again, I can't say it does, because we won't remain to experience releif, or lack of suffering. There is no oblivion to experience at the end of it all. — simmerdown

You seem to be oscillating between two positions:
1) that we cannot judge life to be good or bad
2) that we cannot judge life to be better or worse than death, because death has no value.
The first is false, for the reasons I gave. The second is true. But they are distinct positions.

I'm just having a hard time seeing how anything in life can be judged as good or bad if there is nothing to correlate it with (in nonexistence). — simmerdown

We normally judge whether a particular life experience is good or bad by measuring it against some personal standard for life experiences (e.g. it's good if it gives us pleasure, bad if it causes us pain). We can then evaluate our lives as a whole by asking whether the totality of our experiences adds up to more good than bad, or vice versa. At no point is there a need to make a comparison with non-existence. So it seems to me that you are simply disregarding the obvious and workable way of evaluating life in favour of something unobvious and unworkable - and what good reason could there be for you to do this?

Physicist Michael Faraday pointed out that what's observed and known about our physical world consists of logical and mathematical structural-relation, and that there' s no reason to believe that it's other than that. ...no reasons to believe in the "stuff" that the relation is about. — Michael Ossipoff

As I said, the reason to believe in the stuff is that it explains why our sensory experience is the way it is. There are other possible explanations (e.g. the Berkelian explanation that God puts these sensory appearances into our minds), but these invariably involve hypothesising the existence of something for which there's no evidence.

Properties of the tabletop
1. Is not coloured, but rather reflects light of particular wavelengths
2. Size is fixed
3. Shape is fixed
4. Is discrete not continuous, because made of molecules.
— Herg

Those would be appearances too, within the range of experiences that we use to call imagination. You visualize that object somehow, but you're still involved in the act of visualization. — leo

This is a double confusion. First, you're confusing the imagined properties of an imagined object with the actual properties of an actual external object. Second, you're confusing appearance in the imagination with appearance to the senses.

We assume that there is appearances in one hand and in the other hand there is objective medium sourcing these appearances..but what are this so called objective medium but another appearance!.
Notice that what you got in reality is this phenomenal field of sensory perception. You are claiming that there's is stuff behined the scenes like the brain or the atoms ..but what are those but more of the same phenomenal field . Consciousness is not happening inside the brain..the brain is occurring within Consciousness. Phenomenon is not made out of atoms..atoms are phenomenon themselves. You have nothing but subjective appearances..that's the only thing that there is. There is no ultimate ground ..every ground must be grounded in something else forever =endless regress of appearances. This is why "dreams" are the perfect analogy for reality. Appearances with no ground. — Nobody

This is a category mistake. You are confusing the stuff behind the scenes with our sensory experience of the stuff behind the scenes.

The grain of truth in your view is that the only thing we can be 100% certain of is that we experience appearances rather than what they are appearances of. But it does not follow that what they are appearances of are also appearances. To see this, consider the difference between the properties of the appearance and the properties of what it is an appearance of. Take, say, the top of a square brown wooden table looked at from various distances and angles. We can make two lists of properties, one of the appearance of the tabletop and another of the tabletop itself:

Properties of the appearance of the tabletop
1. Coloured brown
2. Size alters if we move away from or towards the table
3. Shape alters as we change the angle from which we view the table
4. Is continuous, i.e. not made up of discrete parts

Properties of the tabletop
1. Is not coloured, but rather reflects light of particular wavelengths
2. Size is fixed
3. Shape is fixed
4. Is discrete not continuous, because made of molecules.

It is evident that the corresponding properties in each list are mutually exclusive. That shows that the objects of which they are properties cannot be the same object, i.e. the appearance of the tabletop cannot be the same thing as the tabletop. Thus an appearance of a thing is not the same as the thing itself. Nor is the thing itself merely another appearance, as you suggest, because if it were, it would have properties of the sort we find in the first list, rather than, as it actually does, properties of the kind in the second list. Appearances have the sort of properties in my first list; the objects of which they are appearances have the sort of properties in the second. To take your own examples, brains and atoms have properties of the sort in my second list, and therefore are objects, not appearances.

In fact the tabletop is a hypothesised external object. The hypothesis (that there is an externally existing tabletop with the properties in the second list) is a good one, because when coupled with the fact that we experience appearances, it explains why the appearances have the properties in the first list. Without the objective existence of the tabletop, there would be no explanation for the appearance having these properties, i.e. there would be no explanation for our sensory experience being the way it is. This, of course, is the flaw in idealism; by removing the objective world, it removes the most plausible explanation for our experience being as it is.

I hope this is helpful.

To speak or think of a thing it must have a nature, a set of intrinsic qualities or features (actual or imagined) that are essential to its being the kind of thing that it is. That which is non-existent is necessarily devoid of any qualities or features, be they intrinsic or otherwise.
— Jehu

Couldn't you speak about something you imagine? — Terrapin Station

As an author of fantasy novels who regularly writes about dragons and stuff, I certainly hope one can. I would hate to think I had merely hallucinated all the pages I have written.

BTW, dragons have qualities. Most of them have the quality of being fire-breathing. All of them have the quality of being imaginary.

It seems, then, that existence is not a predicate at all, given that unlike predicates, it does not provide any information about the object to which it is applied. — Echarmion

"Donald Trump exists."

This statement provides information about Donald Trump, namely that he does not belong to the class of objects (dragons, Bilbo Baggins, Superman, the fountain of youth, etc etc etc) that do not exist.

So suppose, as you say, that in our evolutionary past pain (qua mental state) served a causal function. Does that mean then that the neurophysiological states that realized this mental state were epiphenomenal? How would that work? — SophistiCat

Wiktionary gives two definitions of 'epiphenomenon':
"1. Being of secondary consequence to a causal chain of processes, but playing no causal role in the process of interest.
2. (philosophy, psychology) Of or pertaining to a mental process that occurs only as an incidental effect of electrical or chemical activity in the brain or nervous system."

I've been using 'epiphenomenal' in the first sense, not the second, which I suppose is unusual in a philosophy discussion; I probably should have made this clear. I'm suggesting that pain originally was not epiphenomenal in the first sense, but now is. My conjecture assumes no particular view of the mind-brain relation, it's merely a suggestion about how one brain process may have supplanted another because it offered a selective advantage.

If pain has never been causal throughout evolution, then I can see no reason (i) why it should have evolved at all, or (ii) why it should be so unpleasant (if the subjective sensation is not what causes us to withdraw the finger and never has been, the sensation could just as well have been extremely pleasant, since pleasant or unpleasant, it would have made no difference).

The rarity of congenital analgesia shows that (a) it is possible to be injured without feeling pain, and (b) being injured without feeling pain has been largely selected against in evolution. Consequently there is a need to explain how evolution has been able to select in favour of pain, and if pain has always been epiphenomenal, this selection seems impossible.

If anyone with a greater knowledge of evolutionary physiology than I possess can give reasons to doubt my conjecture, I would be very interested.

Here's what's required for objective morality to exist in my view: the world apart from minds has to somehow have moral stances embedded in it. They'd have to be properties of some non-mental existents, maybe some sort of field or whatever. — Terrapin Station

I don't think so. Many people, myself included, regard morality as being essentially about the way we behave towards beings with a mental life (which probably means humans and other animals); it would follow from this that objective morality only appears in the universe once beings with a mental life evolve. Thus objective morality, if it exists, is not a feature of the extra-mental, but is a by-product of the evolution of mind.

What I am curious about is whether these properties such as consciousness are real, or whether they are just epiphenomena, or convenient names we give to collections of atoms? — Inis

My suspicion is that these properties are now epiphenomenal, but were not always so. Consider the pain you feel when you burn your finger. Scientists tell us that you snatch your finger away before you feel the pain, suggesting that the pain is epiphenomenal; but why have we evolved to feel the pain, if it serves no causal function? I think perhaps pain was causal millions of years ago, but then animals evolved a faster response system that by-passes the pain, leaving it as an epiphenomenon.

Even if these properties are epiphenomena, that doesn't make them unreal. We don't imagine that we feel pain when we burn ourselves, we really do feel pain.

As I said, I don't believe in the existence of abstractions.
— Herg

All if them? Including "rationality", "consciousness", "understanding", "subjective experience"? — Inis

I think these are just properties of concrete objects. It's the objects of which they are the properties that are involved in causation, not the properties themselves.

I actually find washing up therapeutic. — Andrew4Handel

You're welcome to come and do mine any time. I get heartily sick of washing up - and there's so damn much of it. It's a great mystery to me how two people (myself and my wife) can use 15 glasses, 10 mugs, 6 plates, 4 dishes, 5 pans, and dozens of knives, forks and spoons, all in the space of a few hours. I can only assume some kind of entropy is at work.

It seems to me, that if you permit the existence of real causal abstractions - like instructions, knowledge, reason - then the future can't be determined by the laws of physics alone. — Inis

I don't believe in the existence of abstractions, only in the existence of concrete particulars.

The conept of rationality simply does not apply to computers. Rationality requires understanding, and computers don't understand, they merely obey.
— Herg

This is the claim that an artificial general intelligence is impossible. And it is just a claim. — Inis

And the opposite claim is also just a claim.
I think what we are really talking about here is consciousness. An entity which is not conscious cannot be said to understand anything, because to understand is to have the subjective experience of understanding. And since we don't know what it is about brains that produces consciousness, we don't know whether a machine can be conscious, and therefore whether a machine can understand.

What is the constraint that allows certain abstractions to exist e.g. rational agents, but prevents others from existing, e.g. rational agents with free will? — Inis

As I said, I don't believe in the existence of abstractions.

That is, could morality be somewhere between objective and subjective/relative? — Atheer

I don't think so. Either a statement states an objective fact or it doesn't. Facts are facts; they don't have gradations.

Being rational doesn't mean we have freewill. Does it? We can program computers to be rational. In fact that's all they can be. — TheMadFool

Computers are neither rational nor irrational; they neither follow reasoned arguments nor fail to follow them, they merely execute instructions.

Suppose you have two computers, A and B; you program A to follow modus ponens, and you program B to follow the fallacy of affirming the consequent. A will appear to you to be rational and B will appear to be irrational, but in fact both A and B are just blindly following the procedure you programmed them with.

The conept of rationality simply does not apply to computers. Rationality requires understanding, and computers don't understand, they merely obey.

But although I disagree with your argument, I agree with your conclusion: being rational does not mean we have free will. Being rational is a matter of understanding the logical connections between ideas; free will (which personally I do not believe exists) is not a matter of understanding, but of being able to influence events.

I probably have an advantage over most people here, in that I have personal experience of being one man with two persons in my head at the same time. (I don't recommend it, it's horrible.) Based on that experience, I would say there's nothing logically incoherent about the Trinity.

Only rarely will I do anything that I think is immoral. There have to be significant balancing pressures--concessions for loved ones, livelihood necessities, self-preservation--for me to do something I consider immoral. — Terrapin Station

Wouldn't the existence of these balancing pressures turn what would otherwise be an immoral act into a moral act?

↪Herg I have been where you are. If praying helps, then pray. Fuck the philosophers who think it is inconsistent. — Bitter Crank

It was the anti-theists who said I was inconsistent. I had far more trouble with the anti-theists than with the theists. The theists seemed happy to let me go my own sweet way, but the anti-theists called themselves 'atheists' and kept trying to persuade me that I was an atheist like them, because I didn't believe in God, and that as an atheist, I was being inconsistent in praying.

I'm not sure I would call the anti-theists in that forum 'philosophers'. I think the word I would use is 'bigots'.

why stop your slippery slope at animals? Why are we morally justified eating/exploiting plants? Maybe we shouldn't be eating anything and just letting ourselves starve to death.

In other words, if there are no relevant distinctions anywhere among these species, then there will be no grounds for basing any morality, positive or negative. — Mentalusion

The relevant distinction is the ability to feel pleasure or pain. If plants can feel pleasure or pain, then, other things being equal, we should not eat them.

Re early precursor hominids, I'd have to meet them. It would simply be an intuitive matter. — Terrapin Station

Appealing to intuition is copping out. Much as if you claimed that God had told you something was right or wrong.

1. The equation of being capable of forming "interests" with sentience is totally unjustified and probably unjustifiable. Having an interest requires not only sentience but self-awareness. — Mentalusion

Not true. I take my dog to the vet to be inoculated because it's in his best interests. Having interests is nothing to do with having self-awareness.

What makes an action immoral, in the end, is that it adversely affects the interests of a being that is capable of having interests
— Herg

Is not a fact.

If it's a foundational moral stance for you, no rational justification of it is possible. — Terrapin Station

The foundation for morality is that, other things being equal, pleasure is by its nature good, and pain is by its nature bad. This is why almost everyone seeks pleasure and tried to avoid pain; if subjectivism were true, attachment of the labels 'good' and 'bad' to pleasant experiences and painful experiences would be random, and people and animals wouldn't care whether they experience pleasure or pain; but this isn't the case.

Someone could just as easily say, "What makes an action moral, in the end, is that it adversely affects the interests of a being that is capable of having interests." — Terrapin Station

Of course they could say this, but that wouldn't mean that they weren't making a mistake in saying it. I could say either, "The sun is larger than the moon" or "The moon is larger than the sun", but the fact that I can say either of these doesn't mean that neither of them is factually correct.

It is because generally speaking animals are not ethical creatures, they are not moral agents.
You are basing morality off of suffering, rather than moral agency. I do not. — DingoJones

You don't get to choose what to base morality on. That's the subjectivist error again - see my answer to Terrapin above.

You were trying to make an emotional appeal by using humans in example rather than an actual argument, and now you are trying to pretend Im some kinda crazy person with otherworldly moral sensibilities so you once again do not have to make an actual argument. — DingoJones

Actually I was just trying to find out how you see things.

Not really. The suffering of the humans if I ate their kid or sibling is real, and a moral consideration. Likewise with the pet. You just think that in addition, its wrong to eat a pet cuz its wrong to eat animals. I dont add that, because it doesnt make sense. — DingoJones

So you think it 'makes sense' to say that the suffering of humans is a moral consideration, but it doesn't 'make sense' to say that it's wrong to eat animals. Now to me, 'making sense' is a matter either of language or of logic, but I don't think you're using the phrase to mean that. I suspect that by 'makes sense' you actually mean 'conforms to my moral views'. In which case, all you are doing is offering me a moral intuition; so you're not advancing an argument either.
What I was seeking, from both you and Terrapin, was some rational justification for your belief that it's okay to eat animals but not humans. I'm not getting one, so I assume neither of you has one to offer.
So I will offer you both an argument. Nothing new, just the same old stuff you have probably heard from vegetarians before. What makes an action immoral, in the end, is that it adversely affects the interests of a being that is capable of having interests, which means any sentient being. So there is no line between humans and other sentient beings, e.g. other animals, that could justify drawing a line between them and saying that action against the interests of one is wrong and actions against the interests of the other is not.
If you disagree but don't say why, I can only assume that you think that for some unstated and perhaps unstateable reason, the interests of the species you happen to belong to count, but the interests of oither species you donlt belong to don't. This seems to me fundamentally irrational.

Are you saying that it's morally wrong to eat any member of the species homo sapiens, but morally okay to eat a member of any other species?
— Herg

Yes. — Terrapin Station

I see. Now supposing Neanderthals were still around, would it be okay to eat them? How about homo habilis, or australopithecines? I infer from what you say that you'd be okay eating a gorilla, chimpanzee or orang-utan, but in terms of our direct ancestors, where exactly would you draw the line?

Why am I here? Because philosophy is the thinking person's Sudoku, and at the end of a busy day doing mostly housework and crap like that, I like to unwind by letting my brain do its thang.

It would be wrong because of the emotional attachments other humans (the only creatures human morality applies too) have to this severly mentally subnormal human. Like killing and eating someones pet.
Other than that, nothing. It seems pretty distastful to me but not immoral. — DingoJones

Interesting response. You and I clearly live on different planets when it comes to morality.

Doesn't have to do with "mental normalcy" but species membership. — Terrapin Station

Are you saying that it's morally wrong to eat any member of the species homo sapiens, but morally okay to eat a member of any other species?

I think there should be a people's vote.
— Evil

I don’t. I think Article 50 should just be revoked and Brexit cancelled. — Michael

The government of the day derives all of its legitimacy (in a political ethics sense, not a constitutional or legal sense) from parliament, and parliament derives all of its legitimacy from the people. So the decisions of government are at two removes from the source of legitimacy, and the decisions of parliament are at one remove, whereas the decision in a referendum is at zero removes from the source, and therefore has a legitimacy that the other two cannot match. It follows that the result of a referendum cannot legitimately (again, in an ethics sense) be overturned by parliament or government. So the only legitimate way for government or parliament to overturn the result of the 2016 referendum and revoke article 50 is to have another referendum.

Personally I would favour another one (I didn't vote in the last one), with everyone being told 'this time it will have to stick'. I know that sounds silly, but when your country is being run by the Keystone cops, as the UK currently is, what's an extra bit of silliness between friends (or enemies)? And if Remain wins, article 50 can be torn up, and if Leave wins again, then we can have another referendum where the choices are TM's deal or no deal, and the result of that will be implemented on 29th March. And whatever happens, the police will have to be paid overtime until the inevitable civil unrest dies down.

One thing's for sure. When the dust finally settles over this whole Brexit shambles, it'll be a long, long time before a government here in the UK lets us have another referendum.

Would any meat-eater like to tell us why it would be wrong to kill and eat a severely mentally subnormal human - who, let us say, does not even have the mental ability to learn and speak a language - and how this would be morally any different from killing and eating a pig or sheep or cow?

I might mention that my sister has an adopted daughter who has cerebral palsy and is in exactly this condition. There's not much meat on her, but she might be good for a few light snacks. If you're worried that eating her brain might give you cerebral palsy, I'm sure you could still get a bit of white meat off the rest of her. Probably very nice with a green salad and a glass of white wine.

they apparently feel compelled to communicate that objection at every juncture. I have never met a vegetarian - I only later discovered was a vegetarian. — karl stone

I've only just met you, and already you've told me you're a meat-eater. Funny, that.

↪VoidDetector I seriously doubt Herg is religious given what I’ve read from him. — Noah Te Stroete

I'm agnostic, on the grounds that (a) the claims made by religion are unconvincing, but (b) we cannot possibly know what may or may not exist beyond the world revealed to us by our senses and our instruments, so for all we know there could be something we can't detect that deserves to be called 'God'.

I sometimes pray to the God I am agnostic about. The most recent occasions were yesterday, when I asked the God I am agnostic about to fix it so that my wife's primary cancer had not metastasised to produce secondary cancers, and today after we had been told the results of her scans, when I thanked the God I am agnostic about that, as far as the medics can tell, they haven't. I do this sort of thing (my wife has had four cancers, and I've done it every time) on the same principle that a man stuck down a crevasse in a deserted area might call for help; he doesn't believe there is anyone to hear him, but he calls out just in case there is.

When I mentioned to people in another philosophy forum that I do this kind of thing, I was accused of being intellectually inconsistent. To which my reply is: bugger intellectual consistency, it doesn't matter to me a millionth as much as my wife does.

If the answer to do you “believe in god?” is anything other than “yes”, you are an atheist. You can also be an antitheist and/or agnostic. They are not mutually exclusive. Atheism means “without belief”, anti-theism is when you are against religion(s) and agnostic is a stance on whether or not the existence of god can be known. If you are just the classic fence sitting agnostic, you are also an atheist. — DingoJones

Disagree. Here are some dictionary definitions of 'atheist':

"A person who disbelieves or lacks belief in the existence of God or gods." (https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/atheist)

"1. someone who does not believe in any God or gods
2. someone who believes that God does not exist"
(https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/atheist)

"1. (n British) a person who does not believe in God or gods
2. (in American) a person who believes that there is no God"
(SYNONYMY NOTE: an atheist rejects all religious belief and denies the existence of God)
(https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/atheist)

"Atheism: 1a : a lack of belief or a strong disbelief in the existence of a god or any gods. b : a philosophical or religious position characterized by disbelief in the existence of a god or any gods. "
(https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/atheism)

'Atheism' certainly does not mean 'without belief'. A lot of people seem to think it means either that or 'without god', and cite the Greek roots of the word ('a-' meaning 'without', 'theism' from 'theos' meaning 'god'); but to believe that a word's current meaning is determined by its origins is to commit the etymological fallacy (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Etymological_fallacy).

As the above examples from dictionaries make clear, the current meaning of 'I am an atheist' is ambiguous between 'I do not believe there is a God' (agnostic) and 'I believe there is no God' (anti-theist).

Existence and the universe are perfect, but it is man's interpretation of his circumstance that is imperfect.

A wise man once said:

"A problem cannot cause suffering, it is our thinking and attachment to it that causes suffering."

In other words, any imperfection you may observe is an illusion. — Tzeentch

My wife has just been diagnosed with cancer. You will forgive me if I say that you are talking through your rear end.

Personally, I think I'm worth about 15 sparrows. No more. No less. — vulcanlogician

As sparrows become rarer and humans more common, the exchange rate of humans to sparrows must inevitably decline. In Jesus's day, the average human was probably worth at least 1000 sparrows, but alas, no longer. And of course, some humans are worth less sparrows than others: Stephen Hawking was worth a good 50 or 60 sparrows, while the value of the entire current British government is about 2 and a half sparrows today, and getting less with each day that passes.