Jesus undoubtedly opposed hedonism and advocated a standard morality of justice and love. Like all religious leaders, he was pretending to care about what was right. Caring about what society hoped would be right was his real goal.
A hedonist puts feeling good above everybody and everything. No two hedonists are really alike though they may have overlaps. Cheese may be heaven to John and disgusting to Miriam. Ultimately the hedonist is separated from others, despite overlaps. The overlaps make that individualism hard to discern at times. You don't need to be sleeping around and taking drugs and eating junk food all the time to be a hedonist. In fact, that pleasure-seeking is hard work and can easily become self-defeating. So backing off and turning pleasure down is simply using self-discipline as a form of pleasure. Take a break from fun when it gets boring and it will be fun again!
For some people, misery is a gift. They like feeling bad. Just like how some hypocrite says, "I have no beliefs for all things are just guesses" is virtually admitting to believing this, they are happy but not in an obvious or direct or clear way.
We will ignore the fact that hedonists have to be individualists and pretend we don't know it.
If I am a hedonist could I be an individualist one? - eg my pleasure alone matters! Or collective? - I want my group to have fun and include me! Or am I always somewhere in the middle? Well even if you are in a collective of hedonists who largely suit you and you want to have fun with them, it is still ultimately about what you desire and they are the means to that end.
A thought experiment argues that I am not an individualist unit or would-be island. It says if I saw a child about to fall into a vat of acid I would feel alarmed and move to help. I would not try to help because I wanted to gain favour in my own eyes or from the parents or anybody. It would not because a principle says I should help. It would not be because I don't like the cries of the child. It would not because I would be left with the memory. It would not because if people didn't do that there would be no good example for others to follow. It would not be because of people didn't do that it would mean nobody would help me or should help me if I am the one about to end up in the vat. So we are told that my saving a child who is not even in my group proves that I am not about pleasure or how happy the group I am in is. I really do value the child for her or his own sake.
Yes but you feel pain at what you are seeing. If you did not feel that you might help and you might not. So the argument is irrelevant.
[This thought experiment refutes the argument that God and the duty to love him wholly, grounds morals. Were that the case you'd help the child for it's good in the sight of God. Yet what God thinks is the last thing on your mind in that emergency. You may say, "I may not focus on God but he is in my heart and in the back of my head." That is easy to say. If God as creator comes first then he should not be in the back of your head.]
Notice how you need to define morality not as being about justice and love but about the person for this to work. It is not about anything else but the IMMEDIATE SITUATION. The moral principle that no situation is to be taken in isolation unless there is no time to study it all is dismissed. [Eg the cheating husband puts blinkers on to justify what he is doing. He ignores how he can and will get caught and lose his family. He may reason that they have a duty to forgive so if it is not fixed it will be their fault then.] God or his law does not matter. God's prompts do not matter. If you feel, "Something tells me that under some complicated circumstance that it is unjust to help the child - perhaps the child is sending demons to encourage heads of state to warmonger", you will not even pause to consider that. What might be the voice of God does not get a second's hearing.
The example is not important. It does not matter to you that if you decline to help then you are saying that it is okay if nobody ever assisted ever or never will. The principle is not important. Morality is nonsense for it never makes up its mind if the person matters or justice or love matter. If you try to mix the two, remember how Jesus said that no man can love two masters the same. You will mostly be, "I help the person not because it is fair but because it is a person" or, "I help the person because it is far and the fairness is what matters." The fact is we lie about the importance of morality. Yet we say that valuing people more than justice is dangerous for it leads to becoming selective about whose rights you care about. Yet we say that valuing justice more than people is too depersonalising and despite the flawless moral record we might have, one day we will find that we just see others not as people but as moral projects. That is the stuff from which future psychopaths are made.
Peter Singer in 2023 said that if an animal could consent to sex then a human would be permitted in having sex if she or he so desired. For Christians, the biggest reason why this would be a sin or an evil is that it corrupts the human being. It is letting a desire to harm in and that will always do damage until it is thrown out and not only thrown out but when you try to show virtue instead. For example, letting yourself be greedy for money starts with stopping the vice. Then you give generously so that the virtue that should be there instead is there. You counter a vice with its opposing virtue.
This teaching suggests that "even if harm to children is ended by people using AI for child porn, harm is still done to the person enjoying it. The person changes inside for the worse and not seeing it is one sign that the person is corrupted."
If so then is undeniable that the person has not designed this corruption and yet it acts like it is a smart computer virus. So if there is a God, he is to blame. He sees the corruption taking over better than the offender does. Worshipping such a God is corruption.
If Christians are right about vice and corruption damaging the person who without harming anybody else has sex with (hypothetically) consenting animals or child-sex dolls they need to look at their own corrupt worship. Also even if the person is corrupting himself or herself, you could in condemning this, be actually talking about your own corruption. You could be projecting it. You cannot see the corruption inside the other or how it work or what exactly it is doing so you have to guessing or talking about your own.
John may say, "I would not corrupt myself by looking at AI child porn". Notice how John thinks he is some kind of sacred God and violating his holiness is all that matters. Nobody is harmed. Perhaps some users will refrain from touching children - hypothetically. But it is not about that for John. He is too good to be doing such things. So it seems religion expects you to use some sense of arrogant purity to block corruption? That makes no sense.
Religion says that God is a God of surprises and doing amazing things that you do not even notice. If you are corrupted and look inside you will not really notice much. Religion contradicts itself for it will adamantly refuse to say, "You look at AI porn and if you are not being corrupted it is because you are letting God in more than you think. He is healing you."
To argue that truth comes from and is based on what you perceive it to be it divides you from the next person. It makes truth personal and private. So if you say that the person is corrupting inside you are being unfair. Only the person can discern that. But they do not. Undeniably those teachings are all useless. They are only useless if you are a paid propagandist like a priest or evangelist or imam or whatever.
Why do some say that the worst evil is done in the name of good? It would mean that if the person believes it is needed, the person is partly bad for believing such a thing. Probably the reason open malevolence is considered better than crafty evil that tries to look good is that though both are lies the latter is more so. It is more attractive. Those who say it is worse hold that hating a sneering villain is natural and understandable. Yet they lie that hating somebody who seems to do damage while claiming to mean well is foolish and so disgusting that trying to understand is wrong.
Nobody really feels that a person who is silent in the face of evil is evil. Bad yes. But evil? No. Nobody would see the silence as evil as say the Devil coming up to beat you from Hell. Nobody feels strongly against Alan who says nothing while many others say nothing as well. Yet people say that silence as evil becomes rampant is evil. That is clearly an attempt to make the other feel evil so that they might succumb to your wishes. It is manipulative.
Moralists lie repeatedly about people and their motives and about giving the benefit of the doubt. We know them.We know Jesus.
APPENDIX
Is it better if 20 billion people with a very poor standard of life live on a planet? Is it better if it is 15 billion people with a poor but tolerable standard of life? Is it better than if it is 10 billion people who have a good and happy standard of living? Everybody picking an option must admit they are only guessing. A guess is just a guess so one guess is just as good as another. Objective morality cannot tell us. If morality is real, we are forced to guess about it so we are no better than relativists.
You may say there is no reason to think, "It is wrong or bad to not care about lives that never occurred or never will." There is no reason. But what if you set up a great home for your existing children and if a new baby comes there will be no way it will be looked after properly? You are saying here that if there is a choice between John who is here and Jane who may come along in a few years then John trumps.
All who give clear easy answers on morality are cons.