A lot of what you said here is an implication of subjectivism, but not an argument for it. Subjectivism about morality is no more an implication of an empiricist worldview than subjectivism about the shape of the Earth.
What you're suggesting here sounds a lot like the logical positivists' position on ethics. The descriptive is falsifiable, the normative is not, so it must be subjective. The problem with that view is that we can't draw neat lines between the normative and the descriptive. If I'm attempting to model the world descriptively, I'm still going to be guided by normative considerations about what constitutes a good model. Science is not purely empirical, and ethics is not purely normative. Philosophy in general is not a discrete subject, separate from science. The two are continuous.
And we've known since Plato that God doesn't play into it, one way or the other.
I think the issue is that students aren't consistent. They'll fall back on relativism or subjectivism when they don't really have a strong opinion, or perceive there to be a lot of controversy about the subject that they don't want to have to argue about. But fundamentally, whether there's an objective and universal answer to some moral question or not really doesn't depend on whether there's controversy about it, or whether it's convenient or cool to argue about.
I think that there are parts of morality that really are culturally relative and subjective, and parts that aren't. Variation in cultural norms is totally okay, as long as we don't sacrifice the objective, universal stuff. (Like don't harm people unnecessarily, etc.). The contours of the former and the latter are up for debate, and we shouldn't presume that anybody knows the exact boundary.
I think this is a bit too simple. Suppose I say that moral badness, the property, is any action that causes people pain, in the same way the property of redness is the quality of surfaces that makes people experience the sensation of redness. If this were the case, morality (or at least moral badness) would absolutely not be a subjective property.
Whether morality is objective or subjective depends on what you think morality is about. If it's about things that would exist even if we didn't judge them to be the way they are, it's objective. If it's about things that wouldn't exist unless we judge them to be the way they are, it's subjective.
People have been arguing about whether morality is subjective, and writing dissertations about that subject, for thousands of years. Is any of us really familiar enough with that very detailed debate to render a judgment like "morality is subjective" as though it's an obvious fact? Does anybody who just flatly says morality is subjective understand just how complex metaethics is?
Hah! Cool to see Henry pop up on my feed. I knew this guy back when he was a grad student. And as somebody that also teaches ethics, he is dead on. Undergrads are not only believe all morality is relative and that this is necessary for tolerance and pluralism (it's not), but are also insanely judgmental if something contradicts their basic sense of morality.
Turns out, ordinary people's metaethics are highly irrational.
Its "allowed" in the sense that you can return a verdict of innocent without providing an explanation for why you found him innocent, and the court is not allowed to issue a verdict notwithstanding the jury in criminal cases. It's perfectly legal for the court to dismiss you as a juror if you announce your intention to nullify at any point in the trial or explain that your intention is to nullify when you announce your verdict. So if you intend to nullify, you should stay quiet about it until you finish deliberating.
Source: I'm a law student and we just covered this in Criminal Law.
Whatever happened to being a good neighbor? Canada is not hurting the US. There's no reason to hit them with tariffs in the first place. Having power does not automatically mean using it at everyone else's expense is right.
A friend of mine works for an electric semi truck company. The vast majority of their parts are manufactured in Canada and Mexico; they're just assembled in the US. His mom voted for Trump and really wants him to move back to Ohio so he can have space and be close to family. He wanted to go back, too, and had a transfer and promotion within the company set up before the election. Now there's a company-wide freeze and his transfer is gone. The company's internal financial projections are not good.
His mom refuses to recognize that she just voted for her son to stay in Seattle indefinitely, even though he wants to move back. She keeps thinking that any day now, the economy will be so booming that his company will be doing great. He can't talk to her about it anymore.
How many people has Donald Trump had tortured...so far? His crimes still pale in comparison to George W Bush, who should have been hanged by the neck until dead as the war criminal he is.
I'd say there definitely was a threat to defend against, because shortly after the end of Reconstruction, the Klan effectively suppressed the vote of black people in the South and they couldn't vote for a hundred more years.
Here in Seattle we have a good four months before we start complaing about the (80°) heat.