Morality and Ethics. Subjective Or Objective?

Faith & Science Conversation
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Basically state your opinion on why you think is subjective or objective. Thanks and God bless

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Both. There are both subjective and objective elements to morality and ethics. Some things can be demonstrated to be harmful to the well being of individuals, human relationships and/or human civilization. These objective aspects of morality are the ones which a secular society can reasonably enforce. Other things are a matter of personal preference and commitment – harmful to the person’s personal happiness, identity, and/or integrity. These are things which individuals can only hold themselves accountable to.

This follows from the simple understanding that…

  1. Objective means that which is the same for everyone (thus established by written procedures giving the same results no matter what you want or believe) and subjective means that which is not the same for everyone (a matter of personal experience only).
  2. All morality and ethics comes from the fact that actions have consequences. It is just not always the direct, immediate, or obvious consequences which are most important (as in consequentialism). So in virtue ethics, what is most important are the consequences to yourself and what kind of person it means you are. While deontological ethics considers other abstract effects such as duty, human rights and upholding the social order.

Morality also has both absolute and relative elements also. Some things are right or wrong for a reason (i.e. absolute), and other things are simply a matter of convention, often because it is more important that we have a rule rather than what the rule actually is.

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Righteousness and wickedness is the difference between God’s nature and the nature of the god of this world, the devil. Being born again by the Spirit and will of the Father creates a new spirit within a person which is created in the righteousness of God through Christ. If a person is outside of Christ, they have no part in Him and are still under the power of the god of this age and sin.

Righteousness is living by faith in, love for and obedience to the Father and following after the nature of the Spirit of God, sin is living after the lusts of the flesh.

So, it is objective. It is based on who God is and what God says.
(Edited: Rather than say objective I will say, only those things done in faithfulness to God based on who He is and what He says are righteous )

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There are also things which are in between objective and subjective in different ways:

  1. The first are things which are harmful to the well being of individuals, human relationships and/or human civilization, but which cannot (at least at this time) be demonstrated as such. In other words, ontologically objective but epistemologically subjective. Secular society usually has to classify such things as subjective, though religions often preach their conviction that these things are objectively wrong.

  2. The second are things which are demonstrably harmful to the individual but only to a somewhat marginal degree, so that the liberty to make your own choices is more important in such cases. This would include things which are dangerous or have a negative effect on health but not immediately or decisively so. In such case, secular society limits itself to regulating such thing to keep them from harming those who are in some way not considered responsible for making such choices.

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I think is subjective really. Christians do differ on morals and ethics in comparison to seculars. The same argument can be done with various cultures so i wouldnt say both

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This is true in the sense that the subjective element is there and cannot be subtracted from morality and ethics altogether. But… this is really true of all life. Our best tool of objectivity is the methodology of science… but even this is a matter of striving for some methodological ideals of honesty and objectivity and you cannot claim that it is completely devoid of any subjectivity whatsoever. But it is just as wrong to say that there is no objectivity in morality and ethics as it is to say that there is no objectivity in science… or in fact in life or the universe. The evidence for an objective aspect to reality and life is very strong even if its basic and unavoidable subjectivity is also quite clear.

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These two dont add up though. Science is purely or at its majority objective. Ethics and morals cannot be objective. They are subjective. Science doesnt create ethics and morals rather than culuture and religion does that or at least plays a role creating them. The question is if morals and ethics are subjective does that mean that truth is also subjective?
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Almost every universally followed rule of morality can be demonstrated to be connected to the well being of the community and human civilization. Without them these simply fall apart. One can just as easily say that the woo woo component apart from these demonstrable facts that people inject into morality is the thing that really doesn’t exist.

Only if you want to be self-defeating. The simple fact is that morality only works if at least to some degree it is the same for all… which is the very definition of “objective.”

Thus the more meaningful/fruitful approach is simply to acknowledge that morality like life in general has both objective and subjective components to it.

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