Conscience and the Moral Argument as Evidence for the Goodness of God.

[Nishant Xavier]

Ok, let me address the small minority of Priests who are guilty of child abuse; they aren't following the teaching of Christ and His Church (which teaches such acts are mortal sins and crimes worthy of eternal hell fire and deserving civil punishment even in this life), and they should be laicized and imprisoned. It should be pointed out, though, that there are some 420,000 Catholic Priests in the world. If you go back some 70 years, to include former Priests and retired Priests, you're easily speaking of around 1 MN Priests worldwide. The vast, vast majority of those are not child molesters and it's just absurd to pretend that they all or even most of them are. But the bad ones need to be rooted out and eradicated, I agree. What matters before generalizing that there is something about the Catholic Faith or the Catholic Priesthood that "causes" or even is "correlated" with these crimes is determining the comparable proportion among non-Catholic clergy, and those like secular school teachers: Here is an excerpt from a report: "The issue of child sexual molestation is deserving of serious scholarship. Too often, assumptions have been made that this problem is worse in the Catholic clergy than in other sectors of society. This report does not support this conclusion. Indeed, it shows that family members are the most likely to sexually molest a child. It also shows that the incidence of the sexual abuse of a minor is slightly higher among the Protestant clergy than among the Catholic clergy, and that it is significantly higher among public school teachers than among ministers and priests." (Sexual Abuse in Social Context). So, are we going to blame all family members because some are bad, and family members are most likely to abuse a child, or even blame all secular school teachers? No, the bad ones everywhere need to be rooted and weeded out, that is obvious; but making a generalization from a small minority to all or most Priests is absurd. And Christ's teaching and His Church's both condemn it. Christ said: "It would be better for them to be thrown into the sea with a millstone tied around their neck than to cause one of these little ones to stumble." (Luk 17:2).

Let's come back to the other issue:

Grand Nudger: "If morality is subjective, we all individually and personally say what's right or wrong.... and all of us are right.   I know, that seems strange..but I think that's because we tend to have these discussions through a lens of self deception.  When we say "if morality is subjective" we mean something more like "if no one can say what the moral facts are".  Closer to error theory.  At any rate, in subjectivist, relativist, and objectivist systems it is perfectly valid to say that the other guy is wrong.  Just means something different in each case."

Ok, so if the Rapist "individually and personally say[s] what's right or wrong.... and all of us are right", is he right? I agree that these are the sort of absurd conclusions subjective morality would lead to, but that should be considered as evidence it's a wrong theory of morals. How could we ever consistently jail people for that, then, or write laws binding on all against that, if all we're doing is imposing our subjective morals upon them?

In fact, law would become either arbitrary or tyranny, as who is to say some people's version of what's right (when others are equally right, as you said, from their perspective), should be imposed on others? The majority's, in any particular case? What if the majority is wrong? The majority today would surely agree rape is wrong, yet in this or that State, might err on other things. And, one could hardly argue there is such a thing as an unjust law, when for e.g. the law does not prohibit infanticide or some such thing. "Lawmakers", or human legislators are bound by the first principles of the moral Law when legislating. We who obey the moral Law and recognize it to be objective (and I include some Atheists in that; they just don't understand all that objective morality entails imo) know that it would be just as wrong to kill or rape or steal in a hypothetical Country X where it was legal to do all these things, just as wrong as it would be in places where they are illegal. That means, the moral Law we obey does NOT derive from any human law. Therefore, it derives from a Higher Law, a Divine Law.

As for Abortion, if we'd agree, that's great. Yes, I can't assume all Atheists would disagree about Abortion being wrong. Obviously, some Atheists and Liberals do disagree, though, and many Christians and Conservatives are Pro-Life, though there are also Secular Pro-Life organizations of course. And yes, I agree, even without faith in divine revelation, one can know that Abortion is wrong, especially in our time when science has shown Children in the Womb from around 6 weeks or so, if not earlier, have a discernible beating human heart. So if one agrees killing children with beating hearts is wrong, then one should agree killing children through abortion is wrong. And yet, abortion is one place where many, even those who agree it is wrong, conveniently apply subjective morality again, saying things like: "If abortion is wrong for you, don't get one" in a way they'd never say about murder or rape or slavery or infanticide. Just as it would be wrong to kill one's parents in old age, even if those parents are dependent on you, so also it's wrong to kill one's children in young age, even if children are dependent on parents. So, yes, we can certainly make many arguments against Abortion drawn from reason alone. 

In practice, though, without revelation confirming even those Truths known or knowable through Conscience and Reason, many would fall into moral error, as in fact has happened on Abortion today: 2000 years ago, the Didache (part of Tradition, not the Bible) said: "The Lord’s Teaching to the Heathen by the Twelve Apostles … The second commandment of the Teaching: “Do not murder; do not commit adultery”; do not corrupt boys; do not fornicate; “do not steal”; do not practice magic; do not go in for sorcery; do not murder a child by abortion or kill a newborn infant", saying “this is the way of life” while “there are two ways, one of life and one of death; and between the two ways there is a great difference,”

Wonder how many more babies will die before the world will return to this ancient Moral Truth amply confirmed by recent ultra-sounds and science, and demonstrable beyond that from the basic moral principles we all ought to share, like that killing children with beating hearts is wrong. Unfortunately, this is an example of the kind of chaos and destruction errors like subjective morality can actually lead to in the real world. 

Regards,
Xavier.