I’ll Never Be Angry About Relativism
Last week I read a post entitled “Angry Atheists” by Avi Shafran, it got me thinking about the atheist morality question again. I’m not interested in trying to deconstruct all of what he wrote. Most of it is just meaningless self affirmation. However, he does make a claim that I felt is worth a reply, “…there was no credible counter-argument whatsoever, no claim that right and wrong can somehow have inherent meaning without recourse to Something Higher than ourselves. That, too, was telling - of the truth that atheism, in the end, cannot assign any more meaning to right and wrong than to right and left.”
My guess is that most of the more prolific atheists simple ignored Avi’s first post on this subject, and that he neglected to do any research on the topic of atheist morality. Otherwise, he would have found that there is a plethora of opinions out there on how one can derive a moral viewpoint without God. In general, these morality systems seem to fall into one of three very broad groups of thought; morality derived from God (or some other place outside of human existence), morality derived from individual rights (absolute individualism), or morality derived from arbitrary social constructs (moral relativism).
The more difficult concept for many people to swallow is that of moral relativism. Even amongst those that claim to support moral relativism, there are certain things that most people consider absolutely wrong, such as murder or rape. As with Avi, when confronted with the notion of complete moral relativism, most people exclaim “but, without some moral absolute, then there’s no real morality and anyone can do anything!”
Yes. So what?
Morality is relative. Get over it.
There are no absolutes, there is no “purpose” to life. If that means your life is meaningless, that’s your fault not mine. The meaning in my life is my family, my career, and a quest for knowledge. My life is affirmed every time I hold my daughter, kiss my wife, achieve at work, or observe the awesome spectacle of existence. I don’t need anything else. Why do you?
According to Avi, atheists are intellectually cornered into “…a place where the very concepts of morality and ethics are rendered meaningless, a worldview in which a thieving, philandering, serial murdering cannibal is no less commendable a member of the species than a selfless, hard-working philanthropist. (In fact, from an evolutionist perspective, the former is probably better positioned to impart advantages to the gene pool.) It is a thought so discomfiting to an honest atheist that all it can yield him is fury.”
From a tit-for-tat approach to this debate, I could point out that the Old Testament is filled with examples of thieving philandering serial murderers who earn not just forgiveness, but rewards from God, and that therefore this line of argument is perhaps a bad choice for the theist. But, that would just feed into his point about angry atheists. So, instead I’ll point out that I’m definitely not furious over this issue. In fact I find it quite exciting. We, all of us, are in control of the world we live in. Not some arbitrary set of rules handed down by a faceless imaginary sky monster. We decide, as a group, what is “right or wrong”. Personally, I find this to be far from infuriating, and in fact rather liberating.
There is no evidence for, nor any need for, an outside source (God) for morality. No, the bible doesn’t count as evidence. Should anyone be able to bring forward any actual evidence for God, and/or his terminator style enforcement of morality, then I will be happy to reconsider divine absolute morality. In the mean time, I won’t hold my breath.
Similarly, moral absolutism based on individual rights, is on equally shaky ground. Proponents of individual moral absolutism suggest that morality can somehow be scientifically qualified, and that individualism itself somehow imparts each of us with a magic bullet of moral self importance. But, placing the root of morality in the individual, is no less arbitrary and imaginary than placing it with God.
We are all individuals, but we are not solitary individuals. We do not exist, nor can we exist in a vacuum. Whether we like it or not, it is necessary for us to interact with other individuals. In these interactions we will not always have the same self interest. I may want a smoke free environment, you may want to smoke. If we are both in an area designated as “public” property, who’s need is greater in that situation? Some might argue that given the potential for harm caused by secondhand smoke, that I have a right to a smoke free environment. Others might argue that the smoker should have a right to light-up when they want, and that any law that restricted their right to do so, would constitute coercion and thus would be “morally wrong”. Who’s right? In our country there is a growing number of people that feel the non-smoker has more rights than the smoker on this issue. But, in many other countries the trend is just the opposite. Ultimately, there is no “absolute” morality on this issue, though I am certain there will be those that disagree.
Take another example; two individuals are lost in a desert, they are two weeks away from any hope of rescue, and there is only enough water for one of them to survive. Given no other information, and assuming that the two individuals are of equal age gender status etc.., what is the right moral course of action? If they share the water, they guarantee that they both die. If one of them keeps the water for themselves, they condemn the other to certain death. More important than what they do is, how do they decide? They will have to come up with a system, a mini social contract, to decide. Perhaps they’ll draw lots. But what happens if they can’t agree on a system? Neither of them wants to die, if they can’t agree peacefully, they’ll be forced to fight for the water or die in indecision. It’s in neither of their self interests to concede to the other taking the water. To capitulate would be the same as committing suicide. So, is it wrong for them to fight over the water? If one of them dies as a result of the fight, should the victor be considered a murderer?
Those types of struggles are faced by humanity everyday. Without an imaginary friend in the sky to tell us what to do, we must create rules, systems, or “social contracts” to define how we will interact with each other. When we create these rules, not everyone is going to agree with them. It’s not in the self interest of those that have agreed to the rules (society) to allow those that disagree with the rules (criminals) to ruin it for everyone else. So society protects itself through laws, and enforces those laws through punishment. If the disagreement escalates, or if large groups disagree, then we get wars. But no matter what, the rules are all still arbitrary constructs of social interaction.
That’s it. There’s really nothing more to it than that. Who decides the rules? Everyone does, just like Wikipedia, the stock market, or open source code. Do some people have more influence than others? Of course, there will always be individuals that hunger for power and control, and there will always be people that just want to live their life and stay out of the way. In the end, everyone participates in creating the rules, whether they think they do or not, and they always have the choice of not following the rules or attempting to change them.
For those that lack the mental fortitude to grasp the vagueness of such systems, this must be a very scary concept. For those that embrace them, they open up a world of possibilities. But, as long as most people are convinced that there is some kind of magical “right” or “wrong” we will continue to be stuck in the moral stone age with the Avi Shafrans of the world.
LBBP
November 10th, 2006 at at 9:39 am
“Morality is relative. Get over it.”
It is fine for you to say this, but it is another thing altogether for you to publically proclaim your inability to say that Hitler’s acts were objectively morally wrong. In fact, given your worldview, you might even have to say that Hitler was “good” given that he was a survivor and a “superman.”
Truly, when people look at atrocities and declare them morally meaningless, we declare those people “insane.” It is obvious that these things have objective moral meaning.
November 10th, 2006 at at 10:16 am
There is no question that the atrocities of Hitler run contrary to our current social contract, and that from that perspective his actions are “wrong”. However, it is not really difficult to imagine a social contract originated from a different entry point that would provide a perspective from which Hitler’s actions seem heroic. If for example, a sufficient number of people believed the Jews to actually be a lesser race, and had Hitler and Germany won, we would probably have a distinctly different perspective from which to judge his actions today.
Individual life is an obvious bargaining point from which to start forming any social contract, but that is true not because it is some mystical universal “right”, but rather because it is one of the few points of negotiation from which we can all agree on readily. We all want to live, “you don’t kill me, I won’t kill you” is about as basic as it gets.
November 10th, 2006 at at 1:19 pm
In his “Difficuly Dialogs” video, Richard Dawkins addressed the source of morality, especially the apparent groundlessness of Atheist morality. He said that only the Taliban get their morality from Scripture (and maybe the extremist “God Hates Fags” church in Kansas).
Everyone else derives their morality from their culture, even fundamentalist Christians. Only a Christian group that wants to impose the same penalty for making ‘graven images’ or for working on the Sabbath, as they do for murders and thefts, are getting their morality from the Bible. These are from the Ten Commandments; how can anyone claim that their morality comes from the Bible, if they are picking and choosing what parts to enforce? What about clothing with different colored threads? (abomination, see Leviticus) What about approaching an alter with a defect in your sight? (abomination, see Leviticus)
These people have found Scriptural backing to denounce the ‘crimes’ that their culture leads them to denounce. The actual decision as to right and wrong is not coming from the Bible, or from their god. For another example of this non-Biblical source for Christian morality, look at the “abortion is murder” crowd. They give lie to their own statement, when they do not perform violence to protect a fetus, as they would to protect a 3 year-old child. So they obviously don’t act as if abortion were murder. Furthermore, their “abortion is murder” statement contradicts the Bible in Exodus 21:22-25, which claims that killing an unborn child is a civil tort, not punishable like murder or even injury. Their culture teaches them that abortion is very, very wrong so that is how they structure their morality, even if they have to ignore the word of their god to do so.
November 10th, 2006 at at 1:56 pm
Theists like that must be ultimately faithless. I mean, assuming one really believes in the existence of a god or gods, why would such entities leave it as the task of our fellow men to inform us of them?
Perhaps you would think that those who have been in the world longer than us would have more knowledge of the matter; by the time we are seven years old, however, it should be evident that they do not. And why should they? Who, if they believe in the existence of such entities, is to say that knowledge of them should be worldly, or gotten from the world. People don’t have eyes to see what we can’t see, or ears to hear what we can’t hear, but they have made it their duty to inform us of our god.
The Bible is the most massive collection of lies anyone has ever encountered. Lies identifiable by the same means that we all have for distinguishing between truth and falsehood. Reason. The people who claim to believe these lies know they were lying when they first made the claim. And there is a remarkable inconsistency between claiming to believe in a divine entity, and pretending it is a matter of moral indifference whether one lies about such an entity.
Anyone who admits that “we are all sinners” will readily admit that they have sinned. And in reflecting on how they went about the process of sinning, they will notice that they were internally dishonest. We rationalize our bad behavior. We rename it, redefine the context, or bring in alleged justifications for it. Or we propose to ourselves that it’s ok, as long as we don’t get caught. Whatever trick we employ, acting against the conscience (formed by parenting and empathetic realizations, not Yahweh) involves dishonesty.
If “the word of God” made people good, Jesus would have had nothing to say to them. Instead, he finds their behavior savage, because that is what the “doctors of the law” have made of them. Psyche means Soul. The Soul is sacred, without need for supernatural justification. To imbibe lies is to defile the Psyche……the Soul.
“It is impossible to calculate the moral mischief, if I may so express it, that mental lying has produced in society. When a man has so far corrupted and prostituted the chastity of his mind, as to subscribe his professional belief to things he does not believe, he has prepared himself for the commission of every other crime. He takes up the trade of a priest for the sake of gain, and in order to qualify himself for that trade, he begins with a perjury. Can we conceive any thing more destructive to morality than this?” T. Paine
November 10th, 2006 at at 2:10 pm
Also, why would it be “a thought so discomfiting to an honest atheist that all it can yield him is fury,” if, godless heathen that he is, the atheist is unable to distinguish between the moral and the immoral of the author’s examples?
Morality, relative or not, presupposes honesty and integrity. These are conversant with Truth and Falsehood. People who have admittedly abandoned the only measure a human being has for distinguishing between the two (faith above, beyond or outside of Reason)have no business pretending to a monopoly on morality.
November 10th, 2006 at at 6:38 pm
Man, I’m good at argueing for atheism, but that riff was great. You just put a point on about 5 different arguements that I’ve being throwing around in my head.
Damn, I love it around here.
I gotta think about that 2 men in the desert thing. That was great.
November 12th, 2006 at at 9:13 pm
Hi LBBP,
You’re way off the mark here. Morality is not just what a society happens to agree on: it is real, it is objective, and it is not “magical”. It is based on human happiness, which is a real quality that is produced by certain circumstances and not others. The course of action in any circumstance that produces the greatest potential for happiness both in the present and in the long run is the course of action that is morally right in that circumstance.
As a practical matter, societies have the ability to craft whatever rules their citizens desire, but just because a society chooses a certain set of rules does not mean that those rules will lead to the greatest happiness. People may believe that this is the case, but they can be wrong.
I wrote some posts a while back collectively titled The Roots of Morality that consider atheist ethics and relativism.
November 13th, 2006 at at 2:02 am
Ebonmuse,
I respectfully disagree. I don’t know where you get “morality is based on happiness”, but that makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. Morality by definition means: 1) conformity to the rules of right conduct; moral or virtuous conduct. 2) moral quality or character. 3) virtue in sexual matters; chastity. 4) a doctrine or system of morals. There’s nothing about “happiness” in there. The idea sounds rather mystical new agey to me.
I read your first post on The Roots of Morality, and I found your counter logic to moral relativism filled with gaping holes. Here’s one:
I highlighted the hole. Just because something is true for the holder, does NOT make it true for everyone. It is perfectly reasonable to say, for you morals are absolute, but for me they are not. Just because I validate your opinion for you, does not mean I validate it for me. And, whether I validate your opinion or not, only matters on the limited bases of our personal interactions. Society as a whole judges our actions, and the opinion of one individual means very little if it diverges dramatically from the societal norm. As the first definition above of suggests, morality is more about conformity than anything else.
Nudity is a great example. In Africa in many tribal societies nudity is common. In most of the rest of the world nudity is taboo. It’s not a coincidence that in most of the world clothes are required for survival. People wore clothes to survive, it became the norm, now if you don’t wear clothes you are a non-conformist. But, is there any real morality to wearing or not wearing clothes? No of course not.
If as you say relativism is so off base, how do you answer the dilemma of our two individuals stuck in the desert? If all factors are equal, and neither man wishes to surrender, how would one derive a single “right” answer?
November 13th, 2006 at at 8:56 am
LBBP,
Actually, that the end of politics is “the good for man,” and “the good for man” is “happiness” is neither mystical nor new agey. It’s Aristotle. Morality is doing good and not doing evil. Good is simply “that which is helpful” and evil is “that which is hurtful.”
An act is objectively immoral when someone is hurt by it. Pointing to an example like nudity in Africa doesn’t change this, for it does not follow from saying that there is an objective basis for morality, that all moral codes are objectively and rationally made. Nudity will be found by reason to be immoral, only if it can be shown that someone is hurt by it. If someone says, “it is our sense of decency that is hurt by it,” and it is a matter to be considered for legislation, the considering parties will have to choose between hurting their sense of decency and limiting their freedom.
November 13th, 2006 at at 11:07 am
Yes, morality is certainly relative. And I’ve never heard a good argument as to how morality could actually be an objective thing. People say “morality is happiness”, “morality is not to cause pain”, etc. But from evidence do you draw these conclusions? Absolutely nothing. It’s made up in your head, hence by definition it is subjective. Even if everyone in the world agreed with you, it would still simply be a subjective, although popular, idea. Things that are objective have to be discovered, not decided.
Can I condemn the actions of Hitler? Sure I can. His actions go against the type of world that I would like to live in, thus I can oppose those types of ideas and actions in the real world. Was he objectively “bad”? No, because “bad” isn’t an objective thing. But in my subjective opinion he’s bad, and that is all I need to be against what he did.
What I think is particularly funny is the Christian argument. “Morality isn’t subjective, it’s determined by God”. Well psycho, that makes it subjective. If God decided in his head how morality is going to be, then it’s subjective. Christians are simply accepting someone else’s subjective opinion of morality as their own, without any room for criticism. That’s the worse and most dangerous form of moral relativism around.
November 13th, 2006 at at 6:29 pm
Actually, that the end of politics is “the good for man,” and “the good for man” is “happiness” is neither mystical nor new agey. It’s Aristotle. Morality is doing good and not doing evil. Good is simply “that which is helpful” and evil is “that which is hurtful.”
Ok sure, but Aristotle also said that the “good” is what is good for each individual. This is an egoistic outlook in which an individuals motivation for taking a particular course of action stems from the pursuit of his own rational self interest. Rational in this case indicating actions that advance toward achievement of an individuals goals, and irrational indicating actions contrary to an individuals goals. None of which speaks to objective morals, but rather relative individual motivations.
Though Aristotle was an objectivist of sorts, and claimed that universals exist in particulars where individuals can abstract or intuit the universals out of the particulars, he was never specific with respect to any methodology by which universals could be derived. This to me, is the problem with attempts to form an absolute morality, they all break down in the specifics and the exceptions. Aristotle himself considered the origin of morals to be metaphysical (essences) in nature rather than physical. Thus, I stand by my “new agey” comment. Or, maybe that’s “old agey”, either way it’s metaphysics.
To me there are only two choices, morality is relative, or it’s not. If it’s relative, there’s no bases beyond social interaction for any moral decisions. If it’s not relative, then the only other possibility is for the absolute morals to be derived from some source completely neutral and outside of our social interactions. Otherwise, the morals cannot be unbiased, and therefore cannot be universal.
The assertion that “the end of politics is the good for man” is an individualist precept, not an absolutist precept. Prudence (i.e. thoughtful decision making) is personal, freely pursued, and changeable according to situations. A prudent action for one individual may not be a prudent action for another person. Nevertheless, the integration of freely made prudent and varying actions results in social coordination.
November 14th, 2006 at at 2:15 am
However, it is not really difficult to imagine a social contract originated from a different entry point that would provide a perspective from which Hitler’s actions seem heroic. If for example, a sufficient number of people believed the Jews to actually be a lesser race, and had Hitler and Germany won, we would probably have a distinctly different perspective from which to judge his actions today.
So you’re defining morality to be that which governs the actions of an individual [person, company, organization, etc.] within a social contract.
Question: Can a social contract be morally wrong?
November 14th, 2006 at at 10:14 am
I think some of the confusion of the “morality is relative/objective/absolute debate” stems from the fact that there can be an almost infinite number of contexts/situations. Morality can only exist within a context/situation.
I believe that morals are objective. But they appear to be relative, or actually become relative, because much of the time there may not be enough information to be convinced of the objectivity (It becomes a “theory” sort of speak) and the confusion with other similar, but not quite, contexts. If the contexts are the same, there should be an objective morality.
In terms of absolute, nothing is, except existence.
November 14th, 2006 at at 3:06 pm
… Morality can only exist within a context/situation.
I believe that morals are objective. But they appear to be relative, or actually become relative, because much of the time there may not be enough information to be convinced of the objectivity (It becomes a “theory” sort of speak) and the confusion with other similar, but not quite, contexts. If the contexts are the same, there should be an objective morality. …
That’s an interesting point. There’s an explanation of free will that describes it as a deterministic process that is so incomprehensibly complicated as to be indistinguishable from actual free will. A similar description of objective morality could be considered. If all actions are deterministic in nature but indistinguishable from free will due to complexity, then the morality that governs those actions would be objective at it’s root but indistinguishable from relativism.
November 14th, 2006 at at 10:33 pm
I’m not sure. My first reaction is to say no, but I want to think about this a little more. It might be worth a post as apposed to a comment.
November 15th, 2006 at at 8:44 pm
The assertion that “the end of politics is the good for man” is an individualist precept, not an absolutist precept. Prudence (i.e. thoughtful decision making) is personal, freely pursued, and changeable according to situations. A prudent action for one individual may not be a prudent action for another person. Nevertheless, the integration of freely made prudent and varying actions results in social coordination.
Well, I certainly wasn’t trying to argue an absolutist’s case. I was arguing that there was an objective basis for morality (good=”that which is helpful” and evil=”that which is hurtful”). That’s why I said that the point you made about nudity in Africa was moot. I certainly don’t doubt the capacity of people to come to believe in and even legislate irrational codes of morality; the shamanic authors of the Old Testament have proven this ability. In order to say that it is an irrational moral code, however, we must acknowledge that there is an objective basis from which to reason. That there is such a basis is the principle of democracy. And, incidentally, Jefferson appealed to it in his defense of freedom of (and from) religion, with the words, “It does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are 20 gods, or no God. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.” Pretty simple and straight forward criteria, I think.
November 15th, 2006 at at 9:19 pm
On the contrary: it makes perfect sense. What could the goal of any worthwhile moral system possibly be, other than to make the people who abide by it sufficiently happy and satisfied with their lives? Allow me to quote myself:
…If some proposed moral system claims that the ultimate virtue is something like justice or obedience or duty or piety, we can always ask why that should be, why we should choose that quality and not a different one. Granted, there cannot be an infinite regress of justifications; any chain of explanations must stop somewhere. However, we should not stop sooner than we have to. If we are truly to reach the roots of morality, we should keep asking the question of why as long as it can be meaningfully answered.
If one devotes some thought to the matter, I believe it will become obvious that there is, and can be, only one answer. No matter what quality anyone proposes as the root of morality, it is always possible to ask why we should value that quality and not some other - except for one. There is only one quality that is immune to this question and that therefore can truly serve as the foundation of morality, and that quality is happiness.
Happiness is where the regression of reasons stops because there is no further reason why we desire happiness; happiness itself is the “why”. A person might seek wealth, fame, love, or friendship because they believe it will bring them happiness, but happiness is not itself sought because it will bring about some other desirable quality or state. In the entire universe of human experience, it is the only thing that is good intrinsically, and not merely instrumentally. Unlike everything else we value or desire, it is not a means to an end, but the end itself.
I also have to comment on this:
On the contrary, that is not perfectly reasonable, but a contradiction in terms. It is my considered moral opinion that certain moral truths are universally binding upon all people. Either this statement is true, in which case my moral opinion is right, or it is not true, in which case my moral opinion is wrong. Either way, you are forced to admit that some moral statements have universal validity (because “no moral truth is universally binding” is itself a moral statement). My opinion cannot be “true for me, but not true for you”. That is a nonsensical statement; there is no such thing as personalized truth.
Even if that is true, it does not follow that there is no real morality underlying any action. To name the most obvious difference, a person’s decision to wear or not wear clothes does not harm anyone else. The same cannot be said for many other actions which humans choose to participate in.
Perhaps you are under the misconception that the objectivity of morality requires that the correct course of action always be obvious. I don’t believe that at all. In such a scenario, the correct course of action would depend on many factors, including which person has the greater chance of survival and which person has the greater chance of living a long and full life if they were to escape. But it does not follow from the existence of moral truth that that moral truth will always be readily apparent and simple, just as it does not follow from the existence of scientific truth that scientific truths will always be easily discovered and obvious.
Also, for Delta:
Yes. And the course of action that produces the greatest happiness for everyone is discovered, not decided. One cannot alter by whim the conditions that produce happiness.
November 16th, 2006 at at 12:20 am
Also, for Delta:
Yes. And the course of action that produces the greatest happiness for everyone is discovered, not decided. One cannot alter by whim the conditions that produce happiness.
Yes, a course of action is determined once a goal is set, but how do you justfy that happiness is objectively good, not simply subjectively good? You can’t discover that, you simply have to decide it. There is no proof, and there is no “good-o-meter” that you can hook up to it to make a measurement.
November 16th, 2006 at at 1:32 pm
I don’t think one can make much of an argument for anything being objective. Everything is shaped by context, personal experience, and frames of reference (inertial, Newtonian, relativistic, etc.). And while I’ll probably prove little more than my inexperience with philosophy here, I was fairly well convinced about relativism in my first undergrad philosophy course. The argument was pretty simple:
P1. Morality is subjective/determined by God.
P2. If morality is subjective/determined by God, then we cannot make logical moral arguments.
P3. We can make logical moral arguments.
C1. Therefore, morality is not subjective/determined by God.
There were a couple of other versions of this, and I synthesized divine morality and moral relativism into the same argument, since they essentially are, but it (and the rest of the class) convinced me that morals are determined by logic. While one can make logical arguments to support most things, some arguments are more valid than others, and criteria such as that keep morality from being wholly subjective.
When input into a social context, where certain things must be immoral in order for the society to function, you can easily come up with some logically-derived maxims of morality. They aren’t absolute, only necessary for society. And that’s the basis for arguments against murder (society can’t exist if you can’t trust people not to kill you) and lying (society can’t exist without communication, and lying undermines communication).
So I’m not too sure about absolute relativism. It seems to me that, in a society at least, logic dictates something a little more substantial.
December 11th, 2006 at at 8:29 pm
I take issue with moral relativism–as an atheist and a general philosopher I honestly find the idea both repugnant, and an argument that contains immediate logical fallacy. I take this excerpt from a philosophy website; “For example, someone might think that abortion is wrong relative to his moral theory, and that all violent means are justified in order to prevent women from having abortions, including the killing of doctors and nurses who might participate in such matters. For a moral relativist, such a position is just as valid as thinking that abortion should be protected, and so no reason can be given to stop any such violent campaign against abortion. The obvious conclusion is that it would be a big mistake to think that moral relativism supports any kind of liberal moral outlook. Under relativism, any non-liberal or absurd position is just as valid as any other. ”
Aside from the fact that it allows you to commit THIS fallacy, moral relativism fails an even simpler test. By claiming an absolute–that there is no absolute right or absolute wrong, it fails as even a logical statement, as the statement ITSELF can be neither right nor wrong, and thusly fails the test of propositional logic. (I also fail to trust any theory where you can just write something off as “that’s entirely relative.”)
I really think you should perhaps reclassify your view is “Moral Contextualism,” also described later in the same article. Under this moniker, you state that there are instances where something that would normally be wrong, can in fact be right, given the proper circumstances. Moral relativism fails not to the lens of any religion, but from the very light of logic and reason itself.
There is increasing evidence from the scientific community that traits as altruism and fairness are a part of our genetic code, giving powerful force to the idea that there are in fact, moral absolutes. Across human societies, it is largely considered wrong to murder, to take what is not yours, etc. This is fundamental to being a human being; something does not have to come from a mystical being in order to be an absolute.
Matt S.
Biotech Major,
Philsophy Minor
http://www.bringyou.to/apologetics/p17.htm
http://philosophy.hku.hk/think/value/relativism.php
December 13th, 2006 at at 5:55 pm
Oh man, “facelesss imaginary sky monster” is such a genius description. You are a master.
I would go further than your position and say that not only is religion not necessary for morality, but there can NEVER be a true morality with religion. With religion, there can only be following instructions. At best, these instructions can approximate a kind of consensus objective morality, at worst they can be harmful in and of themselves. If the Bible told believers to kill, on what theistic basis could that commandment be refuted in consideration of the fact that the first commandment is to shut up and follow? Of course, a cursory glance at the Bible reveals all kinds of judgments and punishments that go against the average modern consensus on morality, e.g. stoning for Sabbath-breakers. The fact that the vast majority of believers do not subscribe to such a morality attests to the fact that they are relying on extra-theistic sources for their understanding of reward and punishment.
True Morality should be an exercise in making principled choices with the aim of achieving justice and equality. Theistic “morality” is following a largely arbitrary set of rules inculcated from generation to generation. Because of this rigid “absolutism”, any arguments in favor of theistic morality are necessarily post hoc and apologetic. As is plain to anyone familiar with Abrahamic religions, these apologetics always begin quite soon after the codification of any religious text precisely because the consensus (or the author) changes.
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