[stareatgoats]

Looks like we are discussing two different things. From what I can glean you need to find some "close to objective" (albeit still subjective) truth, for example based on utilitarianism in order to engage in cultural critique.

On my part I too base my ethics on something universal, but it is human universality (that we at most possibly can share with a few other animal species); it bends and shifts with history, geography and social conditions, but with a common denominator and ideal that is empathy. Something entirely subjective, something hard to accomplish and ultimately not completely attainable. And it allows me to keep things like "objective truth" out of ethical considerations.

In the case of Saudi Arabia it allows me to criticize the regime along the same lines as you, but it also requires that I try to understand how things became this bad, i.e. to have some empathy with the people that one otherwise easily could string up in the nearest lamppost if we had the chance.

The scientific method is not relevant for me here at all because it doesn't give us ethical guidance at all. It is relevant only as a tool to sift false assumptions from facts, where the facts are ultimately tentative, not absolute. It can help us for example to weed out illusions like the world being flat, but it doesn't answer everything about what the world is. The world still holds a lot of mystery, and will likely always do. Which is actually a sound position to take, scientifically.