My views on objective morality

[Catholic_Lady]

Objective morality has been discussed many times on these forums, and many times by me. A lot of times I feel like I have a hard time trying to explain objective morality or why objective morality makes sense to me, which in turn helps make the existence of a god make sense to me. It isn't the only reason by far, but it is part of it. 

I saw this short video today and thought Kreeft summed up all my thoughts in a way that I never felt I could accurately do. 

I don't agree with the part where he says people "think they are atheists", but as for his explanation of morality, I couldn't have put it better myself. 

https://www.prageru.com/courses/religion...-evil-come

Whether you agree or not, it's still an interesting issue to discuss.

[veoli]

Alot of assumptions to get to the desired conclusion.

[Aoi Magi]

How do people manage to use slavery to signify immorality and still shoehorn god in there as a moral figure?

[brewer]

Hey CL. Thanks for expressing your views. I think that you know his arguments won't work for the majority of us. I personally found them very simplistic and a little offensive.

No offense to you.

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

1.  His claim that evolution cannot be a source for morality is flawed.  He states, in effect, that if morality changes, there must be a standard, objective morality against which these changes can be measured.  Aside from assuming what he wishes to prove to be true, he is (apparently) unwittingly making a pretty fair case for subjective (or at least positional) morality.  His further claim that if one can't make the distinction between 'accepted' and 'acceptable' then one can't criticize slavery is hard to follow.  By definition, that which is morally accepted IS morally acceptable.  The fact that (as he admits) acceptability is a variable further weakens the case he is trying to make.

2.  I can't quite get the point he is trying to make that reason cannot be a source of morality.  Simply because murderers - necessarily a VERY tiny minority in any human society - can't reason that murder is morally wrong while at the same time using reason to plan the murders they commit is simply wrong.  Murderers, by and large, know that murder is morally wrong, which is why they carefully plan their actions in the first place - they don't wish to be caught.  As to the actions of gentiles in the Holocaust, he's got this one back to front.  A great many more gentiles were either complicit or did nothing to prevent the slaughter.  I can easily reason that innocent human life has value, and stopping the unjustifiable killing of human beings is both reasonable and moral.  Also, whenever a philosopher tells you 'the answer is obvious', he has no more idea of what the answer is than do his first year students.

3.  As to conscience, Kreeft is (again) using an unfair standard.  Most people's consciences tell them that murder is wrong.  The fact that Himmler's did not is a pretty poor argument.  Using a psychopath as a yardstick is simply foolish.  He asks me to determine whether my conscience is right and Himmler's is wrong almost immediately after he strongly intimates that Himmler had no conscience at all.  Huh?

4.  His point about human nature is simply baffling.  He lists the bad points about human nature as if these were the only factors in determining how humans behave.  Of course, humans can be vain, greedy, callous and so on.  But they can also be kind, helpful, generous and so on.  Who is Kreeft to decide what 'human nature' is?

5.  He grossly mischaracterizes utilitarianism.  A philosopher should know better.  I remain unconvinced that utilitarianism is a useful moral guide, but Kreeft's claim that it is 'whatever produces the greatest happiness for the greatest number' is not just simply wrong, it is simplistically wrong.

Boru

[Angrboda]

He fails in his analysis in that he assumes objective morality exists a priori, as this undergirds his criticism of various foundations of relative morality. In particular, his analysis of the possibility of morality coming from conscience is flawed. He neglects the possibility that morals are a group construct, formed by the individual consciences of members of the group. Thus the fact that individual consciences may differ in what they consider moral is not an issue as it is the whole of the group which participates according to unique individual consciences. So he fails in discounting atheist alternatives to objective morality because he never actually takes them seriously on their own terms.

Second, his claim that moral laws suggest a moral lawgiver is nothing but clever wordplay. It isn't a serious analysis of what it would mean for morals to be objective. All he does is assume they are beyond explanation via natural means, thus concluding they must be supernatural. Besides the fact that the supernatural is not 'above' the natural -- which is his only reference to the how of objective morality -- saying that objective morality comes from a lawgiver runs headlong into the Euthyphro dilemma and fails upon the horns of the dilemma. Either God constitutes an arbitrary standard for morals on this view, a divine "might makes right" answer to the problem, or it solves nothing and we're left still in search of the actual standards of morality, which even God must abide by. In short, he doesn't provide a rational justification for believing that we get our morals from God. Just some wordplay and a hand wave to dissmiss the problem.

He also fails to answer a fundamental question about objective morality. If we have an intuitive sense of the moral standard, and that standard never changes, then why do our morals change? The changeable nature of morals from time period to time period and from one society to the next is a massive puzzle for objective morality. The best that objective morality theorists come up with a response to the question amount to ad hoc excuses. Why do morals change? Under moral relativism, this is to be expected. Under objective morality, this is a mystery which even the ad hoc excuses are hard pressed to clearly demonstrate themselves. They are truly ad hoc in that they are designed to explain away the problem, and pay little heed to any demonstrable fact. They are indeed excuses in that all they do is excuse the difficulty, they don't actually show their claims to be grounded in fact.

So a) he gives moral relativity an inadequate defense, and b) his justification for God given morality is inadequate. A poor showing all around.

[KUSA]

Whether you agree or not, it's still an interesting issue to discuss.

It is an interesting issue to discuss. Could you please answer this?

What are some examples of what you consider immoral? This should be based on your beliefs as a Christian.

[Cecelia]

Kreeft seems to ignore the fact that morality is nothing more than a human construct, and is completely subjective.

There is no objective good or evil. If that were the case evils such as slavery wouldn't have persisted as long as they have. Because human beings, as flawed as we may be, aren't inclined to do things we consider 'evil'. That alone proves that morality is subjective. People were able to rationalize that slavery is necessary, and some even still defend the institution of slavery today.

His second mistake was making an emotional appeal to try to prove his point. He states that your morality is better than Himmler's. Then he goes on to claim that if morality is subjective, you can't say that Himmler is immoral. However, this simply isn't true. You can say that from a human rights perspective that Himmler's actions were immoral. Or you could say from the Jewish perspective they were immoral. You can't just ignore perspective. There's many view points from which morality can be derived. It doesn't have to be derived from one source, and I don't think anybody gets their morals from a single source. Even Christians aren't going around stoning people, despite their bible telling them to. From the perspective of Nazi Germany, perhaps Himmler wasn't immoral. But from other perspectives, Nazi Germany was immoral for their actions. This does not require (nor should it) objective morality.

From which perspective do we look? Well, most of the time it's our own perspective. The things that we value the most. A Christian may view lesbians in a loving relationship having sexual relations as 'immoral' because they value the bible. From my perspective, they aren't immoral because I don't think that two consensual adults in a loving relationship having sexual relations is remotely immoral. Are either of us right or wrong? Again, that depends on what perspective you're using, as well as what you value. Personally I don't value the bible at all. So if you're looking at a human rights perspective, then the Christian viewpoint is wrong. While looking at it from a biblical standpoint, the Christian Viewpoint is right. Of course even among Christians you have some who don't believe that their text applies to the modern world.

It's all a matter of perspective. There is no objective good and objective evil. One certainly can't base it around the Christian God, because the Christian God commanded people to worship him and only him as part of his morality--making other religions (from that viewpoint) evil. The Christian God also did nothing to forbid slavery. Instead people began seeing things from different viewpoints, and eventually came to the conclusion that slavery was, overall, wrong.

[Catholic_Lady]

Hey CL. Thanks for expressing your views. I think that you know his arguments won't work for the majority of us. I personally found them very simplistic and a little offensive.

No offense to you.

No worries, sorry it offended you. 

[Catholic_Lady]

Whether you agree or not, it's still an interesting issue to discuss.

It is an interesting issue to discuss. Could you please answer this?

What are some examples of what you consider immoral? This should be based on your beliefs as a Christian.

Rape, theft, killing of an innocent person, adultery, slavery.... to name a few.