By definition? No.
Why would there have to be an objective morality in order for the vast majority of the world to think his actions were vile and terrible?
If morality is the result of subjective preferences, then morality would be subjective, by definition.
Am I missing the definition where it says that morality is objective?
Sorry, the post was incomplete and premature…
It is (usually) never my intention to simply negate or deny your point unless I have a specific point in doing so. Which I don’t, here.
You can think his actions were vile and terrible, but you have no basis to criticize or judge. The worst (or best?) you can do is say, “I don’t like that.” There is no foundation for the statement, "That was wrong (or bad or evil or whatever).
Sure I do. I have my own empathy, logic, and reason as the basis for my judgments.
No, but I think it’s important at this point to clarify the difference between “good” and “my preference” and between “bad” and “not my preference.” I mean, we’re not talking ice cream flavours here.
Why does your logic, empathy, and reason give you the right to judge another culture?
The agreement between large swaths of other humans using the same basis for determining morality is what gives it justification.
Arguably, a whole lot of people in Germany in the 1930s agreed that what was going on was right. How many is enough to determine “right” and “wrong”?
The rest of the world?
In 1807, after the majority of his life had been spent on it, William Wilberforce managed to get the Slave Trade Act passed in British Parliament, outlawing the slave trade. He worked his way to this point for decades, slowly gaining support and supporters until he made it happen. When he started (and even when the act was passed), those who were against the slave trade were a tiny minority in the world.
Was he “right” or “wrong”?
He was right, as shown by his ability to convince others and the progress of abolition of slavery over time. That argument has won because of its merits as judged by human empathy, reason, and logic.
And he won over a nation.
Conversely, Hitler won over a nation (a larger one, I think, in terms of population). He used human empathy, reason, and logic as well. Different motives. Different results.
Are you suggesting that “right” and “wrong” are determined “over time”?
Hitler caused people to ignore human empathy and stoked their emotions so that they would ignore logic and reason.
Not at all. He just encouraged empathy for one another while stoking fear of “the other”–the Jew, the homosexual, the Jehovah’s Witness. He used reason and logic (agenda-driven, of course), and some of the latest scientific theories (evolution of race) to support his insane nationalistic ideals.
You just agreed with me.
Nowhere in any scientific theory does it say that we should kill people of a certain race. Where are you getting that from?
If God had commanded Hitler to commit genocide, would that have made it moral?
It’s still empathy–the empathy of one northern European for another.
No, but evolution of race was really popular in the 1930s with all kinds of negative examples (not just in Germany), and the bedrock of Darwinism is “survival of the fittest.” Hitler painted the Jews (et. al.) as a threat to the nation, as well as people like homosexuals and the mentally ill, and justified their extermination using his slant of the theory.
Besides which, science offers no moral compulsions whatsoever.
Irrelevant.
You can call it anything you want, but by your denying its objective correctness you tell me all I need to know about what this “morality” is, and more importantly: what it fails to be. It is really nothing more than “might makes right” and that if the Nazi’s had won WW2 and prevailed in spreading their cultural preferences around the world, then maybe it would be considered okay right now to exterminate any remaining Jews that anybody finds.
I prefer real morality [notice my own careless lapse right there! – it really doesn’t matter what I or society prefers] … the sort that can speak truth to power even if the entire world under the sway of that power tries to deny it. Subjective “morality” provides no basis for speaking truth to overwhelming power. It just has to shrug its shoulders and declare that “this is the new right thing to do now.” It makes incoherent shambles of your own attempts to criticize old testament atrocities because your cultural preferences today carry no more weight than their own did back then. But your willingness (a very healthy and necessary willingness, that!) to join with Christians in being horrified at atrocities of the past (as well as in the present!) is evidence of a healthy moral framework that you’ve imbibed from somewhere – it certainly didn’t come from any logic or reason or science as those have exactly and precisely zero to contribute in support.
Logic and reason provide the methods and rules for how to construct a valid argument. But it needs premises to work with. Now some premises might themselves be products of prior reason, such as when a system of mathematics is built up on prior proven theorems. But it all works back to some axiomatic set which is a foundation for holding up the whole edifice. Without premises, there is nothing for logic or reason to work with. And some of these premises (the ultimate ones – the postulates) must be from outside the whole set, themselves only accepted – not established by the system itself. No system is self-sufficient and complete in this regard. Godel proved something similar about mathematics, and if it’s true for math (the only real home for what we can justifiably call ‘proof’), then it’s a pretty safe bet it’s true of less logically rigorous systems (such as science) too.
edits added.
Glad to see you are interested in a theological outlook.
If I understand the subject of this discussion, it is that of human morality within a context of belief in God, or absence of such belief.
Briefly, humanity is able to discuss morality as part of human experience, and I think a dictionary definition of this is a good start.
"morality
· n. (pl. moralities)
1 principles concerning the distinction between right and wrong or good and bad behaviour; a system of values and moral principles.
2 the extent to which an action is right or wrong.
Theologically we start with the faith based statement that God is only good, and is the source of all goodness.
This is an interesting way of saying that if we are cut of from communing with God, we loose the source of goodness. Yet humanity has been endowed with a conscience and a capacity to know what is good and evil to ourselves, but this is inadequate - thus the many differing views on the subject matter. It is not so much a loss of morality, but more as seeing ourselves as the arbitrators of good and evil, and not God as the source of all goodness.
I trust this would answer some of your questions. 
“Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone.” -Colossians 4:6
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