Morality and Subjectivity / Objectivity

Faith & Science Conversation
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Spot on. And the real problem is this: in a materialist world—assuming, for the sake of argument, that materialism is true—reality itself would be sociopathic. Look at nature: survival of the fittest, might makes right, predation, even cannibalism. Nature is indifferent, ruthless, and morally blind. In a purely materialist universe, a human sociopath wouldn’t be deviating from reality at all; they would simply be aligning themselves with the way things actually are, rather than pretending that anything truly matters when, ultimately, it doesn’t.

Which is why the reality of God, and the historical resurrection of our Lord, is so crucial: it is the only way the universe can possess inherent meaning. It is the only way for life to be more than a painful rat race toward oblivion. It’s the only way for love to actually make sense and being something more than a word indicating a biochemical reaction.

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I think your reasoning makes the issue a bit too simplistic, idealistically black-and-white. Maybe built on an arguably valid claim but leaving out much that may complicate the practice.

As a Christian, I can accept that God is the source of objective morality. Those who do not have the same faith would disagree, which makes the answer somewhat subjective, based on the axioms of the worldviews.

God did not write a detailed guidebook about His morality. We have the biblical scriptures (canon) but these scriptures are not a systematic presentation about doctrines and morality. Much of the scriptures are told in the form of stories, so that the actual lesson needs to be picked and interpreted from that story. What makes the task more difficult is that the stories tell happenings in an environment (society) that was ancient compared to modern rules of morality. That leads to subjective interpretations that may or may not be accepted by the wider community of Christians.

The problem is not that the morality given by God is wrong. Our imperfect and often misunderstood interpretations may just lead to actions that the later generations condemn as wrong. Two examples are the violent crusades or what was done to ‘heretics’ during the Reformation and counter-reformations. During the period of Reformation, all main parties (RCC, Lutheran, Reformed) tortured and killed people just because they did not agree with all the interpretations of the dominant group. Those who did not do take part in the killing (anabaptists and other non-violent groups) were persecuted by all the main parties as ‘heretics’.
At the level of actions, the groups showed that human life did not have much value and the ‘heretics’ had no human rights. They were sometimes treated worse than animals, by people who claimed to represent and follow the will of God.

We can hardly get rid of the subjective part in our morality, even when we try to follow a morality that we believe is objective.

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That is like saying an article about New York failed to talk about Paris. I discussed the bolded sentence that starts the section. You go on to reference and talk about things I never endorsed/condemned or even talked about in the quoted pots. Nor do you know my views on them unless you have been carefully following both discussions. For me, I treat things one issue at a time.

And like any theist that posits God based object morality, you need to be prepared to explain why this is valid. Euthyprho’s dilemma is the most critical concern that needs to be addressed. Is it objective (good) because God commands it or does God command it because its objective (good)?

And if morality is not objective, there is nothing wrong with treating them worse than animals. This only matters if life has intrinsic value and purpose. I have never said we have a perfect understanding of morality. Only that objective morality exists and we can access it. Not that everyone will do so correctly. I have repeatedly said morality is not like science because science deals with physical objects everyone can see and touch whereas morality deals with the mind and we of course are not impartial because we are moral and all our views inevitably have an impact on how we see ourselves and those around us.

I have already said that anyone (atheists and Christians) can use objective morality (natural moral law) to critique anything written in any holy book. If someone think everything written in the Bible is morally good I am siding with the atheists on that.

There is nothing simplistic about my approach to morality and I have (in some cases multiple times) offered comments on the issues you are bringing up. Both threads have made something crystal clear ti me. When someone says morality is objection person reading this often misinterprets it uncritically and without warrant. They think the person is saying:

  • all my moral views are objectively correct and you should agree with me or you are wrong.
  • Everything my holy scripture says is an objectively good moral law and command by God.

I have advocated neither position and I would disagree with both. I think my morality is a mixture of objective fact and is based on objective principles but also has subjective elements in how I apply and combine them.

It is okay to be humble. In fact, we should be humble in our thoughts. But modern day relativism is a poison and is in no way consistent with Orthodoxy Christianity. Not following subjective suggestions doesn’t warrant hell or annihilation. Pushback against this by Christians demonstrates to me that members of the church have been imprisoned by 17th century philosophy that has continued to this day. Many express a huge disdain for classical philosophy but the real enemy is right under our noses.

Vinnie

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And the answer is “Yes”.

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The issue is the first side makes morality arbitrary and the second side creates an external standard distinct from God.

For me, purpose and final causality provides the resolution.

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Sorry if I partly misunderstood your comments - sloppy reading from my part.

Maybe the apparent differences in our comments reflect our different viewpoints. You approach the topic as a philosophical challenge, which gives you the advantage of drawing logical conclusions at the philosophical level. My viewpoint emphasizes the empirical aspect - reality (fruits) reveals the true faces behind the nice talks.

I appreciate the philosophical approach, it is needed. It can draw the basic scene. The play on the scene shows the reality. If the reality does not demonstrate the validity of the philosophical claims, it is difficult to make a convincing case out of the claims. Philosophically oriented people may be an exception because pure logic may be more important for them than the reality.

Your basic claims seem to be that (1) objective morality exists and (2) we can access it. I do not challenge the first point, I just wonder how true the second claim is, assuming it is something that is not dependent on the special revelation of God in the scriptures?

The idea of a ‘natural moral law’ is nice. We could think that God put in our hearts the natural moral laws in the form of conscience, either directly or through the evolutionary process. As an empirical test of that hypothesis, I would expect that the natural moral law should become visible by the same basic rules in differing societies - societies rather than individuals because the conscience of individuals may be too easily misguided or twisted.

Do the empirical observations support the hypothesis?
To some extent, yes. There seem to be basic rules that pop up in modern societies built on differing worldviews, like the rules about killing small children or genocide. Some rules pop up in many societies, although these are not necessarily sanctioned in the laws. Cheating your spouse in marriage might be an example - not something that breaks a law in all societies but people tend to think it is bad rather than good or neutral.

Although we may find such common points in support of the hypothesis, most rules are not universal. Especially a comparison of ancient and modern societies show many differences. It seems that the understanding about the ‘natural moral law’ has been something that has developed during the history, rather than stayed the same through the history.

If our modern understanding of what is ‘objectively’ good has been the standard through the history, we need to explain why the ancient societies had differing rules.

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The subjective morality stuffy I have been writing ends at part 8 and the last two are written. I’m polishing them. After that I am going to lay out all the stuff on natural law and objective morality I said in the other thread. That will help. I’m working on that later today and tomorrow.

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Try asking him (i) how to access his supposed objective morality, and (ii) what it says about some topic.[1] You’ll quickly find your answer.

  1. Slavery, for example. ↩︎

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Formatting is off a little but not too bad.

7) Subjective Morality and Infanticide

Thanks to the dry sands of Egypt, a letter from 1 B.C. survived in “the rubbish dump of ancient Oxyrhynchus.” A pregnant wife, concerned that her husband (who was also her brother, following Egyptian custom) had forgotten her, sent him a letter. Here is the response from the husband (Hilarion) to his wife (Alis) :

“Hilarión to his sister Alis many greetings, likewise to my lady Berous and to Apollonarion. Know that we are even yet in Alexandria. Do not worry if they all come back (except me) and I remain in Alexandria. I urge and entreat you, be concerned about the child and if I should receive my wages soon, I will send them up to you. If by chance you bear a child, if it is a boy, let it be, if it is a girl, cast it out [to die]. You have said to Aphrodisias, “Do not forget me.” How can I forget you? Therefore I urge you not to worry. (Year) 29 of Caesar [Augustus], Payni 23. (White 111–12; see also Hunt & Edgar 1.294–95; Davis 1933:1–7)”

John Dominic Crossan has described this letter as both tender and terrible. The operative part for our purposes is: “If it is a girl, cast it out.”[1] Infanticide has been widely practiced the world over. Laila Williamson reports:

“Infanticide has been practiced on every continent and by people on every level of cultural complexity, from hunter gatherers to high civilizations. Rather than being an exception, then, it has been the rule.”[2]

Wikipedia similarly reports:

“Most Stone Age human societies routinely practiced infanticide, and estimates of children killed by infanticide in the Mesolithic and Neolithic eras vary from 15 to 50 percent. Infanticide continued to be common in most societies after the historical era began, including ancient Greece, ancient Rome, the Phoenicians, ancient China, ancient Japan, Pre-Islamic Arabia, early modern Europe, Aboriginal Australia, Native Americans, and Native Alaskans.”

In modern times, the practice is almost universally condemned but more recent examples include a staggering number of missing girls due to China’s “Longer, Later, Fewer” policy that predated its one-child policy. It is estimated that over 200,000 girls went missing, some due to abandonment and neglect.

If humans lack intrinsic value and meaning, then the specific method of their disposal is morally irrelevant. It is certainly not wrong to cast out unwanted infants like trash to die of exposure; nor, by that same logic, would it be immoral to use them as piñatas, shark bait or for bayonet practice. If the infant is not a person, neither act is a crime. This may seem sensationalistic, but the latter scenario actually occurred during the Nanking Massacre. The following is a quote from David Ray Griffin:

“To affirm atheism is to hold the view of John Mackie, Gilbert Harman, Bernard Williams, and Richard Rorty, . . . according to which moral norms do not belong to the fabric of the universe. According to this view, morality is simply a social convention, which human societies have invented. As Mackie said, it is generally thought that “if someone is writhing in agony before your eyes,” you should “do something about it if you can.” However, said Mackie, this is not an objective requirement “in the nature of things.”

Griffin provides quotes from Harman and Rorty to the same effect. He also notes that “atheism implies that we have no obligation even to the next generation. If no moral norms exist in the fabric of the universe, we are doing nothing wrong if we use up all the remaining fossil fuels, even if this brings about the end of civilization.”[God Exists but Gawd Does Not]

Griffin is painting with a broad brush as an atheist can certainly believe morality is objective. However, from my perspective it seems typical of materialists to embrace subjective morality. Williams finds this outlook to stem from the death of the teleological worldview. For the subjective moralist, an infant (like everyone else) has no intrinsic value or meaning. A number of modern ethicists and philosophers have concluded that infanticide is not a moral crime. A few quotes are illustrative:

   “Human babies are not born self-aware, or capable of grasping that they exist over time. They are not persons”; therefore, “the life of a newborn is of less value than the life of a pig, a dog, or a chimpanzee.” \[Ethicist Peter Singer\]

· “[a human being] “possess[es] a serious right to life only if it possesses the concept of a self as a continuing subject of experiences and other mental states, and believes that it is itself such a continuing entity.” [Philosopher Michael Tooley] Infants clearly do not qualify.

· On infants, philosopher Jeffrey Reiman has asserted they do not “possess in their own right a property that makes it wrong to kill them” and “there will be permissible exceptions to the rule against killing infants that will not apply to the rule against killing adults and children.” This comes from Reiman’s Critical Moral Liberalism but was accessed via [Death With a Happy Face]

The idea is that since an infant does not possess the concept of self, it does not yet qualify as a person. In widely read material on abortion[3], Mary Anne Warren put forth several criteria—some of which she thinks a living being needs to possess—in order to classify as a person with moral rights: sentience or consciousness, the ability to reason, self-awareness and a few others. Since fetuses do not possess these, they do not have moral rights and thus, abortion is not wrong in her view.

The problem is her own criteria lead not just to abortion being okay, but infanticide as well. Infants do not possess the requisite mental faculties needed to classify as a person with moral rights either. She anticipates this objection and includes a postscript addressing it. Warren agrees that killing an infant can never be murder but is wrong insofar as it – I kid you not – makes other people sad. Her own words:

“The needless destruction of a viable infant inevitably deprives some person or persons of a source of great pleasure and satisfaction, perhaps severely impoverishing their lives.”

Peter Singer has said something similar:

“We should certainly put very strict conditions on permissible infanticide, but these conditions might owe more to the effects of infanticide on others than to the intrinsic wrongness of killing an infant.”

Now it should be noted that plenty of people who could be classified under the heading of “objective moralists” have also engaged in the practice of infanticide. Like so many moral issues, the actual position you adopt isn’t defined by what heading you fall under (objective or subjective). Merely subscribing to or paying lip service of any form of objective morality is not going to determine whether infanticide is right or wrong. It is how you understand the nature or essence of what it means to be human that will decide this issue. There is one important parallel between abortion and infanticide. Many people who are pro-choice do not generally consider themselves to be “murdering a baby” but instead terminating the biological function of a “clump of cells” existing inside a woman’s body. It would seem that the same type of logic can and has been used to justify infanticide. If infants are not fully human, then disposing of them is not intrinsically evil.[4]

Given that subjectivists do not think there is any intrinsic meaning or purpose to human life, moral absolutes cannot exist. The is/ought divide spans an infinite distance for them, yet most still empathetically grant humans basic “subjective” rights. But why would these rights extend to infants who lack self-awareness, consciousness and the ability to reason? A compelling reason why these sacks of developing flesh (as materialism would view them) should be given human rights is not forthcoming for the subjectivist. Not to mention, babies born weak or disabled are a burden and resources were limited at certain times in the past. Consequentialist or utilitarian arguments in the form of population control could be used to justify the practice of infanticide for subjectivists.

The difficulty of infanticide has no logical force in and of itself without justifying the idea that humans–and infants specifically-- have intrinsic value and inalienable rights. If babies do not have intrinsic rights, and their parents are not obligated to take care of them, then it is not morally wrong to throw a baby outside to die of the elements or be eaten by wild animals. This has been a widespread practice the world over into modern times. It is difficult for many modern people to justify why this is objectively wrong but natural moral law is adequate to that task.

The telos or ends of sex are both procreative and unitive since our offspring are helpless for so long. Both infants and pregnant women remain vulnerable and require sustaining care. Exposing infants frustrates the natural end of procreation and the purpose of the parent-child relationship in that role. Natural law says the value of a human infant is inherent to its nature, not its current capacity to reason. This will be spelled out in more detail later. While natural moral law can provide the philosophical basis for why infanticide is wrong, we have Jesus to thank for why Western civilization finally recognized this truth.

The morals of Jesus form the backbone of Western society and infanticide is so widely despised today because of Him. The Christian tradition teaches that all humans are created in the image of God (imago dei) with intrinsic rights due to their nature. This part of Genesis 1 was originally polemic against contrary views that saw only Kings and rulers as being created in God’s images. Genesis disagreed and said all people are made in God’s image. Whether we are Christians or atheists, or if we believe in objective or subjective morality, taking this teaching seriously would erase so many problems in the world. It means we cannot kill the mentally ill or old if they are burdens simply because we do not want to bear them. It would mean we could not enslave other humans and we certainly could not conquer them and steal their land. This simple truth should have undercut so much evil that has happened in the world.

It is unfortunate that so many people, including many Christians, never took it seriously. Instead, they chose to see those not like them as sub-human. It was not all bad, however. Christians created hospitals, Christian abolitionists ended slavery and a number of early Christians took in and cared for exposed infants. A significant number of early Christians did speak out against the widespread practices of both infanticide and abortion. A few quotes on the former issue are listed below:

· Didache: “And the second commandment of the Teaching; You shall not commit murder, you shall not commit adultery, you shall not commit pederasty, you shall not commit fornication, you shall not steal, you shall not practice magic, you shall not practice witchcraft, you shall not murder a child by abortion nor kill that which is born. (c. 50-110 CE)

· The Letter of Barnabas: “Thou shalt not slay the child by procuring abortion; nor, again, shalt thou destroy it after it is born” (Letter of Barnabas 19 [c. 70-132 CE)

· Athenagoras: “ For it does not belong to the same person to regard the very fetus in the womb as a created being, and therefore an object of God’s care, and when it has passed into life, to kill it; and not to expose an infant, because those who expose them are chargeable with child-murder, and on the other hand, when it has been reared to destroy it” (c. 177 CE)

· Tertullian: “nor does it matter whether you take away a life that is born, or destroy one that is coming to birth.” (c. 200 CE)

· Apostolic Constitutions: Thou shall not slay thy child by causing abortion, nor kill that which is begotten. . . . (c. 400 CE)

An incident in the gospels shows how this is an extension of Jesus’s own thoughts. People were bringing little children to Jesus and the disciples rebuked them, attempting to prevent their access. Apparently, the disciples thought little children weren’t important enough for Jesus to bother with. Most of us know how the story ends. Jesus famously corrected them and said, “Let the little children come to me.” He accepted, hugged and blessed these small children. Infants and small children were nobodies in paternal Mediterranean culture. They were powerless and disposable. Infants, especially those infirm or female, could be tossed out to die in polite society. Jesus’s words take on their strongest meaning in this context. This originally was not just a metaphor about how people need to become like children with blind trust to enter the kingdom of God. When Jesus said, “for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these, ” this is a statement by Jesus that small children are included in the Kingdom of God. This was quite an astonishing view. Adela Yarbro Collins writes:

“The rabbis debated whether children would be raised from the dead and included in the age to come. Rabban Gamliel argued that the children of the impious in Israel would have no share in the age to come. Rabbi Joshua argued that they would. The rabbis agreed that the children of non-Israelites would neither be raised nor judged.12 They debated what age an Israelite child had to have reached before death in order to be included in the age to come. One taught that all who had been born would be included; another, only those who had begun to speak; another, from the time when they could answer “Amen” in the synagogue with understanding; another, from the time when they are circumcised. Near the end of the collection of rabbinic views, the opinion that all those who have been born are included is restated. The passage ends with the declaration by Rabbi El>azar, that even children who have been miscarried will be raised; he based his opinion on a midrashic reading of Isa 49:6.13

The fact that the rabbis needed to engage in such a debate and the portrayal of the disciples as not wanting Jesus to be bothered with children both indicate the relatively low status of children in the ancient world in comparison with adults.14 Jesus’ indignation and his statement that “the kingdom of God belongs to such as these” indicate not only that children are included in the kingdom of God but also that they represent the type of person who is especially associated with the kingdom of God (cf. Mark 9:33-37).” [Mark, Hermeneia Commentary)

Per Jesus, the Kingdom of God is not only open to, but belongs to what many people only saw as disposable burdens or growing sacks of flesh. Famous for role reversals where the first are last, in elevating these nobodies, Jesus completely dismantles any defense of disposal for his followers.

[1] Another example is from Apuleius’ Metamorphoses: “a man setting out on a journey orders his wife, who is in expectation of becoming a mother, to kill the child immediately if it should prove to be a girl” Deissmann (Ancient Near East) cited by White (Light from Ancient letters).

[2] Williamson, Laila (1978). “Infanticide: an anthropological analysis”. In Kohl, Marvin (ed.). Infanticide and the Value of Life. New York: Prometheus Books. pp. 61–75.

[3] Warren, M A (1973). “On the Moral and Legal Status of Abortion”. Monist. 57

[4] It should be noted that abortion has also been defended as morally acceptable on the basis of Thomson’s violinist thought example. The argument suggests that even if a fetus has a right to life, the mother does nothing wrong in having an abortion on the basis of bodily autonomy. This viewpoint would carefully distinguish between abortion and infanticide. See the SEP for a discussion.

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You just don’t get it. Fantasies and subjectivity are two different things. You can point to the objective existence of the Empire State Building, which is objective. You can also comment on its architectural beauty. That is subjective.

If morality was objective you could run scientific tests to prove racism or murder is wrong. Whether you like it or not, morality is based on our subjective opinions.

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Again . . .

Subjective does not mean unimportant. A subjective morality is one rooted in human feelings and desires. These are the things that are most important to us, indeed the only things important to us!

Six reasons why objective morality is nonsense | coelsblog

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If morality were objective you could do so.

Many different religions have different scriptures and claims. They all claim to be objective, yet they disagree with one another.

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Two more long posts, neither of which include any details at all about what the claimed objective morality consists of, or how to access it. They’re just rants about how bad the outcome of enforcing subjective morality can become. @Vinnie’s entire ‘FAQ’ can be reduced to ‘Subjective morality lets people do things I don’t like.’

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Not with someone who rejects teleology. When you reject it you undermine the entire foundation of morality.

They don’t have Jesus Christ. One simply needs to follow in His footsteps, to imitate Him, and to discover that, in doing so, they can become the very best version of themselves. This is something anyone can do — even those who do not believe in His divinity. It is both very simple and extraordinarily difficult at the same time: to behave as He would have behaved, to face each situation as He would have faced it, and to live as He would have lived.

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When you find a two floating around in the woods and after you conduct empirical tests on it, then you can come tell me 1 + 1 is equal to it.

Vinnie

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[1] What saying morality is objective means.

Moral truths are mind independent features of the world–meaning they exist like gravity, whether you believe in them or not. Moral truth is not dictated by consensus. Things are not ethical because most people feel that way. If this were the case then slavery would have been ethical at one time but no longer so. A moral realist can say that chattel slavery is and has always been morally wrong. We can also say that even though some Aztec’s might have thought the gods commanded them to sacrifice their children to them, they were morally wrong, and gravely so. If their gods existed, they too would be wrong. That is an example of child murder and it violates natural law, full stop.

A moral fact is a real, mind-independent feature of the world based on the nature or essence of what it means to be human. Moral facts are discoverable truths of what constitutes the flourishing of a rational human animal based on our ends or telos. These do not depend on personal or cultural opinions.

I am going to provide an objective moral framework tied to the nature of humanity. There are two issues that need hashing out. The first is demonstrating that morality itself is an objective which is a question of ontology. The second is in delineating how we determine moral facts which is a question of epistemology. It is quite possible that while morality is an objective part of reality, we simply are unable to access objective moral facts. It is my contention that morality is both an objective part of reality and we can know or access moral facts. While I will defend this position I also strongly believe that in practice, most of us have a mixture of objective and subjective moral views.

[2] What saying morality is objective does not mean.

Discussions of morality are typically charged and seem to come with baggage. Instead of focusing on what is actually being said or written, people will often raise or object to other issues. In lieu of that I want to make explicit two things I am not claiming:

  • · Everything written in the bible (or insert other Holy book) id morally true
  • · Every one of my moral beliefs in an objective fact.

If morality is objective and discoverable, then both atheists and Christians (theists) should be able to –in principle–agree on what constitutes moral facts. This does not mean they will agree on everything, but just that as atheists and Christians can both engage in quality science in the lab, they should also be able to work out quality ethical systems. I believe everything ultimately depends on God and theists can provide a more complete picture of reality, but nothing prevents us from dialoging with atheists to work out proximate ethics. Ed Feser wrote: “And thus, just as we can do physics, chemistry, and the like without making reference to God, so too can we do ethics without making reference to God, at least to a large extent.”

As an example, we can explain why it rains using efficient and material causes without requiring an appeal to God. I won’t bore you with cloud microphysics –instead, I’ll bore you with classical metaphysics. Christians in the Aristotle-Thomist (A-T) tradition view God as upholding all material things at all times. Therefore, God is not absent in an ultimateexplanation of why rain exists. A-T Christians thoroughly reject a mechanistic image of God (“occasional deism”) who is out there that interacts with the world like a mechanic fixing an engine. We understand God’s creative activity much more intimately in terms of causation per se which is vertical, sustaining or hierarchical in nature. That is a mouthful so let me explain.

Most people think in terms of causation in linear terms (what is more fancily known as causation per accidens or horizontal causation). If I knock over one domino, it knocks over another, and that domino knocks over another and the sequence continues until there are no more dominoes to fall over. This is linear causation and it traces causes and effects backwards into the past. In this type of causation, once the first domino falls over, it could disappear from existence but chain of causes and effect after it will continue. Sustaining causation (hierarchical, vertical, per se) is quite distinct. It asks why anything bothers to exist in the here and now. Think of a snapshot in time where there is a cup of coffee on a table. In this instant, the coffee cup is held up by a table, whin in turn is held up by the floor, which is in turn help by the earth. This is a hierarchical chain where if you remove one of the earlier members in the chain, all of the other links after it cease to be. For example, if the floor collapse, the coffee can no longer be held up by the table which is no longer being supported by the floor. A-T Christians believe God is the prime mover or first member of a hierarchal series that explains the existence of all material objects (why anything bothers to exist). This was Aristotle’s argument for God and what Aquinas first two ways attempted to demonstrate. Neither author was attempting to trace linear causes back in time and show how God was the first domino. Aristotle made this argument for God’s existence fully believing the universe was eternal!

Creation ex nihilo then, is not something that happened in the past. God upholds and sustains (creates) the material world at every instant. As Jesus stated, “My Father is working until now.” If God’s creative activity truly ceased, nothing would exist. If the natural moral law is truly natural, and moral facts are discoverable, even though they ultimately depend on God in a hierarchical sense, basic ethical principles should be discoverable by everyone just as we can engage in science and discover efficient causes without direct reference to God.

[3] Diversity Does Not preclude Moral Objectivity

What we have are many different groups all claiming to have an objective standard, and they contradict each other. This can’t be true if morality is objective. This can only be if those moral standards are subjective.

If moral facts are objectively true, they cannot disagree with one another. This would violate the law of non-contradiction. I agree with the quotation on this front, but I do not think disagreements about morality lead to the conclusion that morality must be subjective. If I enter a room and five people give me five different opinions on something, my conclusion should not be that it is impossible for any of them to be correct. That conclusion does not follow at all. Widespread disagreement only demonstrates that the answer is not universally agreed upon or not obvious to everyone.

Using an analogy from mathematics might be helpful. Suppose I assign my students the equation 2x = 4 to solve and this is the response of three of them:

  • · Xander: “You need to multiply both sides by 2 and x = 8.”
  • · Willow: “You need to divide both sides by 4 and x = ½.
  • · Buffy: “You need to add 2 to both sides and x = 4.”

All three students are incorrect and their math teacher should probably find a new occupation. But what if all the students agreed with Buffy (she is the chosen one)? What if they formed a club with other math students all around the world and they all agreed x = 4. Several students might even bring in their sacred scriptures and say, “ Look, the book of Numbers was written by the great Sohcahtoa and verse 3:14 reads, ‘When 2x=4 then x must equal 8. So declares the lord.’”

The verdict does not change. All of these students and their holy book are incorrect. Objective facts are such that they remain true even if everyone in the world disagreed with them. As an example, if every human being alive today thought it was objectively true that the moon was made of Cheese Whiz, they would all be mistaken.

Fortunately, bad mathematics doesn’t eliminate good mathematics and just as bad science doesn’t eliminate good science, bad morality does not eliminate good morality. It is true that a cursory glance at human history will reveal an alarming amount of moral diversity. Great acts of evil have been justified in the name of good. Infants the world over, have been nonchalantly exposed to the elements. Sifting thought this can be overwhelming – and maddening to the conscious individual – but we should temper our emotions and not fall victim to an argument from incredulity on this basis. Whether or not an argument is correct or not depends on two things:

    1. Are the premises correct.
    1. Does the conclusion follow from them.

In order to show how the A-T Christians defense of natural moral law is incorrect, one or more of its premises must be shown to incorrect, or it must be shown how the conclusion of objective morality does not follow from them. It can also be cogently argued there is quite but of common ground or there are several underlying principles shared in common by diverse moral systems. A University of Oxford study (Is It Good to Cooperate?) looked at 60 diverse cultures and found them to contain seven “universal” moral rules pertaining to helping your family, helping your group, returning favors, being brave, deferring to authority, being fair, and respecting other people’s property. Common morality theorists such as Bernard Gert also argue that most people and societies agree on preventing basic harms such as (death, pain, disability, loss of freedom and loss of pleasure).

I am not appealing to census here in favor of objective morality. I am simply pointing out that though there is a tremendous diversity in how moral rules are implemented and prioritized, there is also a strong underlying agreement on basic moral principles. If nothing else, that is certainly not inconsistent with objective moral law.

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That’s an inherently atheistic assumption – it denies that there can be any reality but what science can measure. Many have rightly called that “scientism”.

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If teleology were objective it wouldn’t matter if I rejected it. You could still demonstrate that it is objective. If I have to believe in something before it can be demonstrated then it isn’t objective.

Muslims would say you don’t have the words of the prophet Muhammed. Hindus would say you aren’t following the teachings of their scriptures.

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Empirical tests can be applied to gravity.
Empirical tests cannot be applied to your supposed moral truths.
Therefore your supposed moral truths do not exist like gravity.
QED.

The only other thing worth commenting on is this:

Pointing to a strong underlying agreement is an appeal to consensus.

80

What I am saying is science can address objective reality. If morality is a part of objective reality then science can certainly address it.

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