Absolute Morality

[yukoncpa]

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There can never be a set of Absolute Morals, even granting a God to state them ( and skipping over whether we could understand them). Our multi-variable universe will put any such linear approach to morality dysfunctional.



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Even if there were a God to state them, it wouldn’t matter. Absolute morals if they exist, exist independently of what anyone thinks, including God. A set of rules dictated by a God will be beneficial to some but detrimental to others. Following such rules as “absolute” seems rather an example of relative morality.

[sards]

vhawk01, I don't think that the distinction between absolute and non-absolute morality is pointless. In fact, I would suggest that there can only really be one type of morality: absolute morality. Anything else is just personal preference.

Humans are moral beings by nature. People like to make moral judgments and proclamations, e.g.: "Hitler was evil," "murder is wrong," "theft is wrong," etc. The problem is that if there is not an absolute, universal standard of morality that explicitly rules on such issues, then it is absurd to make such judgments and proclamations. Why? Because it makes no sense to apply a subjective and essentially arbitrary "morality" to anyone else.

I think the religious people that you are conversing with have a valid point. If their God exists, it makes sense that he would be the world's moral arbiter. On the other hand, I have found that most atheists rightly reject absolute morality (because without any metaphysical moral authority, it has no basis) in favor of relative morality, but then go on to act as though their personal morals are absolute (presumably because relative morality makes no sense and doesn't jive with human conscience).

Again, relative or non-absolute morality is really no morality. And that doesn't sit well with people because they have a conscience.

Disclaimer: These are just my brief thoughts on the subject; I have no knowledge of philosophical thought in this area, and someone smart might have refuted my points in the past. If so, I would like to see it.

[samsonite2100]

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Whats the big deal? We wouldn't be able to tell the difference between a universe WITH an absolute morality and one without anyway.

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Because without the backing of a (preferably Christian) deity, moral standards obviously cease to have any meaning, and you'll have folks raping and murdering each other willy-nilly. You know, the way atheists do. I mean, go to any supermax prison and it's like, all atheist-types in there, just about.

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Well, I think thats part of it, its used as a weapon to denigrate atheists. But the people I associate with concede that obviously most atheists are at least average, morally.

Is it an attempt at increasing the Might in their Might Makes Right?

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I don't think so. Here's my take on absolute morality--it's basically utilitarianism dressed up in an evening gown.

The golden rule, which you could credibly boil most absolute morality down to, turns out to be a very useful way to live one's life. Millions of years of human evolution have selected, genetically and culturally, for a race of beings that generally prizes avoiding gratuitous violence, rape, theft, etc. (Yes, I know these things occur, but when you look at all human activity, they're statistical outliers).

Despite religious folks' insistence on the existence of absolute morality, it's not the existence of "morality" that prevents people from murdering each other. We learn at a very young age that playing nice is better than playing mean, that taking other kids' lunches causes us to to be ostracized, etc.

The thought that, as adults, we need to have some big floating objective set of behavioral guidelines backed up by God in order to play nice is positively ridiculous--a fact to which the extremely minimal per capita presence of atheists in prison testifies.

[vhawk01]

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vhawk01, I don't think that the distinction between absolute and non-absolute morality is pointless. In fact, I would suggest that there can only really be one type of morality: absolute morality. Anything else is just personal preference.

Humans are moral beings by nature. People like to make moral judgments and proclamations, e.g.: "Hitler was evil," "murder is wrong," "theft is wrong," etc. The problem is that if there is not an absolute, universal standard of morality that explicitly rules on such issues, then it is absurd to make such judgments and proclamations. Why? Because it makes no sense to apply a subjective and essentially arbitrary "morality" to anyone else.

I think the religious people that you are conversing with have a valid point. If their God exists, it makes sense that he would be the world's moral arbiter. On the other hand, I have found that most atheists rightly reject absolute morality (because without any metaphysical moral authority, it has no basis) in favor of relative morality, but then go on to act as though their personal morals are absolute (presumably because relative morality makes no sense and doesn't jive with human conscience).

Again, relative or non-absolute morality is really no morality. And that doesn't sit well with people because they have a conscience.

Disclaimer: These are just my brief thoughts on the subject; I have no knowledge of philosophical thought in this area, and someone smart might have refuted my points in the past. If so, I would like to see it.

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But, like many so-called 'answers' provided by the theists, this one is really just a pushing back of the question. Theists don't have a better grasp on absolute morality than anyone else, they just claim its primacy. Do you know what the absolute morality is? Or do you just know what the morality that you read in a book, written through the moral filter of human beings thousands of years ago, and read through your own moral filter, is? And what about Muslims, do they have a different, equally valid 'absolute' morality? We end up in the same spot. Theists might LIKE absolute morality more than atheists, but they certainly don't know what it consists of in any meaningful way.

So, in practice, no difference.

[John21]

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But, like many so-called 'answers' provided by the theists, this one is really just a pushing back of the question. Theists don't have a better grasp on absolute morality than anyone else, they just claim its primacy.

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Maybe I'm missing your point, but accepting absolute morality is really all you do. So if someone accepted the Ten Commandments primacy, that would be accepting absolute morality, just like a physician accepting the primacy of the Hippocratic Oath as an absolute.

[vhawk01]

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But, like many so-called 'answers' provided by the theists, this one is really just a pushing back of the question. Theists don't have a better grasp on absolute morality than anyone else, they just claim its primacy.

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Maybe I'm missing your point, but accepting absolute morality is really all you do. So if someone accepted the Ten Commandments primacy, that would be accepting absolute morality, just like a physician accepting the primacy of the Hippocratic Oath as an absolute.

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I don't think thats it, or else why can't I say "The Golden Rule is my absolute morality." This wasn't derived from any God or anything like that, its based on reciprocal altruism and was selected for. Most people would call a morality based on the Golden Rule to be moral relativism, wouldn't they?

[John21]

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I don't think thats it, or else why can't I say "The Golden Rule is my absolute morality." This wasn't derived from any God or anything like that, its based on reciprocal altruism and was selected for. Most people would call a morality based on the Golden Rule to be moral relativism, wouldn't they?

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As to my understanding, it doesn't really matter where or how the standard was derived. We could declare, "thou shall not kill," as a moral absolute, regardless of how we came up with it. I think it has more to do with how we judge our actions that determines if we're operating from absolute or relative morality.

So faced with the situation of killing someone, if you operated with absolute morality, you would conclude it is wrong. If you looked at it from a relative perspective, you would make your moral judgement in context and say, it depends on the situation.

I'd call the Golden Rule relative, because you're not judging your actions by an absolute standard. To me it's relative to the extent that it's based on your personal context. We could still adopt, "do unto others…" as an absolute but for obvious reasons, things wouldn't work out too well. You might feel it's okay to kill someone for cheating at cards, because you would be okay with being killed if you cheated, but the absolute standards (laws) in society take precedence in this case.

[SitNHit]

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vhawk01, I don't think that the distinction between absolute and non-absolute morality is pointless. In fact, I would suggest that there can only really be one type of morality: absolute morality. Anything else is just personal preference.

Humans are moral beings by nature. People like to make moral judgments and proclamations, e.g.: "Hitler was evil," "murder is wrong," "theft is wrong," etc. The problem is that if there is not an absolute, universal standard of morality that explicitly rules on such issues, then it is absurd to make such judgments and proclamations. Why? Because it makes no sense to apply a subjective and essentially arbitrary "morality" to anyone else.

I think the religious people that you are conversing with have a valid point. If their God exists, it makes sense that he would be the world's moral arbiter. On the other hand, I have found that most atheists rightly reject absolute morality (because without any metaphysical moral authority, it has no basis) in favor of relative morality, but then go on to act as though their personal morals are absolute (presumably because relative morality makes no sense and doesn't jive with human conscience).

Again, relative or non-absolute morality is really no morality. And that doesn't sit well with people because they have a conscience.

Disclaimer: These are just my brief thoughts on the subject; I have no knowledge of philosophical thought in this area, and someone smart might have refuted my points in the past. If so, I would like to see it.

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I would love to hear your extended version of thoughts on this cause I think this is my favorite post that Ive read so far [img]/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img]

[Prodigy54321]

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The problem is that if there is not an absolute, universal standard of morality that explicitly rules on such issues, then it is absurd to make such judgments and proclamations. Why? Because it makes no sense to apply a subjective and essentially arbitrary "morality" to anyone else.


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but why does placing a god in there with an opinion on it change this at all?

in order for a being's morality to be considered "absolute morality," does this being only have to be the most powerful being in existence...or does it have to be the most powerful possible being?

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On the other hand, I have found that most atheists rightly reject absolute morality (because without any metaphysical moral authority, it has no basis) in favor of relative morality, but then go on to act as though their personal morals are absolute (presumably because relative morality makes no sense and doesn't jive with human conscience).

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I don't know what atheists you are referring to...I don't think that many act as though their own morals are absolute.

I tend to act as though my morals are what I believe them to be, one opinion of many...back this up by sound reasoning and logic as to whether or not the act is question actually does more good than harm or more harm than good, and we will usually get a general concensus on what is right and wrong.

throwing a god in there only allows people to take their own personal morals, and throw everyone else's out, believing that this god holds the same morals that they you..and that being absolute morality...gives them the rationale behind forcing their own morals on others.

believing that other peoples' opinions don't matter keeps us from acting according to true morality..that is..relative morality.

[Guyute]

A couple thoughts. First, sards' comments are on the right track. Most people who think about morality for a living tend to dismiss relativism as an inconsistent theory that leads to dangerous consequences. Some people here seem to be concerned that an absolute morality runs contrary to the virtue of tolerance, and is rife with religious overtones, and is therefore problematic. Here I disagree.

However, being an absolutist about morality does not commit one to infallibilism, the belief that one's own morals are completely correct and beyond reproach. If one is an absolutist, one is committed only to there being a right answer when it comes to moral questions, that there can be genuine disagreement among moral communities, and that we must not tolerate communities that are immoral (one problem with being a relativist is that you lose the grounds to claim that a community or person is acting immorally). This is not the same as claiming that the morals we hold are the right ones to hold. On the contrary, being an absolutist permits rational discussion on what is right and what is wrong.

Moreover, being an absolutist about morality is an entirely different issue than whether morals come from God. In fact, accepting a divine command theory about morals - the theory that God makes right things right - runs straight into Plato's Euthyphro dilemma. Basically, if one wants to claim that morality comes from God, they mean one of two things: Either (1) God says right actions are right because they are right, or (2) Right actions are right because God said so. One (1), God is in fact not the source of morality, and on (2) morality becomes arbitrary, since it is possible that God could deem cat killing moral and it would be moral (the idea is that this is counter intuitive). In the end, most philosophers who are ethicists are absolutists who are atheists. Once one sees the benefits of absolutism, a discussion can proceed as to what makes something right or wrong - perhaps some sort of consequentialist or deontological theory.