Board index ‹ Morality

[Newbie]

I believe the claim that the existence of a god based objective morality is demonstrably false.

First off, we must define our terms here. We all know what the term objective means, but it seems we get confused when we start to talk about objective morality. So, to be clear, what I mean in this discussion when I use the term is "moral statements express factual propositions about reality." For example, these would be two equivalent statements:

1. The Earth is round (or an oblate sphere if you want to be a dick about it).
2. Homosexuality is wrong.

(Let's just assume for the sake of argument that god considers homosexuality to be wrong)

So, if morality is objective in this sense, stating "homosexuality is not wrong" is equivalent to stating the Earth is flat or 2+2=5. You are wrong, full stop.

So, now the question is, if this is true "why do so many people think homosexuality isn't wrong?" If you have an objective morality, and a god who wishes for humans to adhere to it, how could it possibly be the case that even a single person has a different understanding of morality? There is simply no good explanation for it.

[jimwalton]

In defining morality, we likely can agree that morality is expressed in several different arenas:

- With fairness and rightness between individuals. This one pertains to relationships.
- With harmonizing things inside each individual. This has to do with self-awareness and understanding oneself.
- With what the purpose of life is. This one concerns what we perceive to be overarching principles of life, built into the nature of things.

None of these elements by themselves encompasses all of what we mean by morality, and also, all of them intersect and cannot be separated. Each one affects the other.

Let me give an illustration: suppose you have a formation of three Blue Angels, the Navy fighter planes. Each plane is clearly its own entity, and can function independently of the other. Each plane has to be in good working order in and of itself. But it's also true that they have to be in their proper position in relation to each other. They also need an overarching purpose, or a plan, or disaster is certain.

But what is the good of all this, and how can collisions be avoided unless there is a steering mechanism? C.S. Lewis says, What is the good of making rules for social behavior, if we know, in fact, that our greed, cowardice, ill-temper, and self-conceit are going to prevent us from keeping them? Without good men you cannot have a good society.

So here's the point. Morality has an objective side to it—the overarching plan and purpose. But each participant has their steering mechanism, and can decide whether to conform to the plan or not.

There are forces, such as gravity, that cannot be disobeyed. But that's not so with many other things, including morality. For instance, there is an "objective mathematics," so to speak, but people still miscalculate, despite the "laws" of math. But anytime you hear a person say, "Hey, that's not fair," you know that some parts of morality are up to the one at the steering wheel who can choose to "miscalculate" and do whatever he wishes to do.

So the answer to your question is, people (I assume you mean Christians, but there are others as well) think homosexuality is wrong because that's what's written in the Bible, i.e., "objective morality." But just like other "moralities," it's up to the one behind the steering wheel to decide whether to conform to the plan or to do what they want to do. And they even have the ability to say, "I think what I did was right." That is what I feel to be a good explanation for it.

[Crow]

There are a lot of tangents I could go on with your post, but I'm going to try and keep this focused.

You said, "But just like other 'moralities,' it's up to the one behind the steering wheel to decide whether to conform to the plan or to do what they want to do. And they even have the ability to say, "I think what I did was right." That is what I feel to be a good explanation for it."

You are conflating two issues here: one is moral reasoning, and the other is the ability to act counter to one's moral reasoning. At this time, let's disregard the latter because I don't want to have a face-punch inducing conversation regarding free will. I will stipulate for the purposes of argumentation that we have the ability to act against our moral reasoning.

The issue that you did not address is why people would not just act on their homosexual proclivities, but why would they feel perfectly justified in doing so? You could argue some sort of self-interest I guess. I'm straight, why is it that I truly believe that homosexuality is morally equivalent to that of heterosexuality? It seems to me that if there is an objective morality, and a god that wishes me to act in accordance with that morality, this should not be the case.

[jimwalton]

If you're interested in the Christian position, a Christian believes that sin, being our natural state, brings with it a feeling that what the Bible calls sinful behaviors are all we know to be normal. The Bible also says that God has built into us a moral compass and a conscience, but the conscience is a shut-off-able force, meaning that it can be deadened and ignored to the point that it no longer has any influence or any reality in a person. People can kill their consciences, so to speak. So Christians would say that people acting on their homosexual proclivities feel perfectly justified in doing so for several reasons:
- They have been convinced by the sinful culture around them that such propensity is normal, and anyone saying otherwise is a bigot.
- They have been convinced by the sinful culture around them that any way any person chooses to be is all right—that we get to choose what is right for us, and that no one has a right to tell someone else that they are wrong.
- They have been convinced by the sinful culture around them that decisions about sexual preference lay outside of the scope of morality.

The Bible also teaches that the conscience is a compass that has been given to each individual. Beyond that, morals (objective morality) must be taught.

[Mr. Bojangles]

If you decide the Bible is "right," then you are doing so based on a subjective opinion.

That same Bible also says if a woman is not a virgin on her wedding night, you have to beat hear to death with rocks in front of her father? Does that mean it's objectively wrong NOT to beat women to death with rocks if they are not virgins on their wedding nights?

[jimwalton]

"you are doing so based on a subjective opinion."

Of course that's my opinion. All philosophical and theological pursuits are based in reasoning coming from individuals.

Now you've done a bait and switch. You wanted to talk about objective morality, and now you're bringing up a Bible text. Are you speaking of Deuteronomy 22.20-22 or something else? If you want to talk about objective morality, we can discuss that. If you want to talk about the virgin text, we can do that, but these are different conversations.

[Mr. Bojangles]

"Of course that's my opinion. All philosophical and theological pursuits are based in reasoning coming from individuals."

My point is that objective morality is impossible since all moral choices have to ultimately be made at a subjective level.

"Now you've done a bait and switch. You wanted to talk about objective morality, and now you're bringing up a Bible text. Are you speaking of Deuteronomy 22.20-22 or something else? If you want to talk about objective morality, we can discuss that. If you want to talk about the virgin text, we can do that, but these are different conversations."

All I did was ask you a question to clarify your own position. You apparently believe the Bible is a source of objective morality. If that is what you believe, then it's only fair to ask you if that includes all the stuff like beating 12 year old girls to death for getting raped in the city, or killing your children if they follow a different religion than you. This is not a "different conversation" from the one about objective morality because this is exactly what you are holding out as a source of objective morality. Do you stand by the Bible as a source of objective morality or don't you? If you do, then you have to say that it is immoral not beat a woman to death with rocks if she;s not a virgin on her wedding night. You have to think it's immoral not to kill Wiccans. You have to think it's immoral not to kill people who pick up sticks on Saturdays, and the list goes on.

My conscience tells me these things are immoral and barbaric. Do you agree or disagree? It sounds to me like you're just reluctant to answer the question because it means you have to choose between saying all the mandated rape and murder and slavery is objectively "good" or admitting that the Bible is simply not a good source of morality.

I suppose you could also try to choose the route of tortured apologetics as to why the Bible doesn't really say what it says, but you'd only be conning yourself, not me.

[jimwalton]

> objective morality is impossible since all moral choices have to ultimately be made at a subjective level.

A systematic exegetical investigation of what the Bible says about morality could fill many volumes, and is beyond our scope here. Nowhere does the Bible lay out a doctrine of morality, or even a philosophy of one. The Bible is about God revealing himself to humanity through his covenant, and so ethical themes are matters we have to piece together. It's the teaching of the Bible that, while humans wrestle with morals and ethical lists (subjective), and whether to comply or not (subjective), objective morality is authentically found in the character of God and is not only far from an impossibility, but that this nature, and its embedded morality, has been revealed to us.

> All I did was ask you a question to clarify your own position.

I'd be glad to clarify my own position, but you need to give me a text that you're talking about. It sounds as if you are talking about, in the first instance, Dt. 22.20-22, but I don't want to bother with that if it's a different place you're talking about.

I stand by the Bible as teaching that the character of God is that of objective morality. But it sounds from your last statement as if you have no desire to discuss exegesis or hermeneutics (i.e., the real meaning of the text in its grammar, cultural context, taking the true intent of the author, etc.). If any explanation of the Bible is ruled out in your mind, there's no sense in discussion. But I'm going to guess that you're a fairly intelligent person. As such, you've most likely been to college. Assuming that you've had professors who took the time to dig under the surface to explain some scientific mathematical or scientific principle, or to dig into the culture and the original documents in history class to determine what really happened there, I'll have to assume that you're open to digging under the surface of the Bible as well to uncover its true meaning instead of an imprudent superficial one.

Let me know which texts you want to talk about, and I'll be more than glad to dig into them with you.

[Mr. Bojangles]

If you think hermemeutics has anything to do with critical analysis of the Bible, then you don't know anything about Biblical criticism. Hermeneutics is pseudo-scholarship. It is to the Bible what astrology is to space.

Now critical scholarship, I DO know. That is what I went to college for. I DO know the contexts of these problematic verses, and there is nothing in those contexts, historical, linguistic, cultural or other, which will make them mean something other than what they say.

Let's take Deuteronomy 22:13ff.

Lots of good morality there, right? If a woman is not a virgin on her wedding night, she has to be beaten to death with rocks

If a guy sleeps with another guy's wife, you have to kill both of them (no exception for rape).

If a guy rapes a woman in the city, she has to be killed.

If a man rapes a virgin, the virgin has to marry the rapist and keep getting raped for the rest of her life.

These virgins would be pre-teen girls, by the way.

This is just scratching the surface of Biblical depravity. Do you stand by it. I'm sure you can google up a lot of tortutuous apologetics and word-weaseling and fallacious eisegetic revisioning of the text, but it says what it says.

So, if a woman is not a virgin on her wedding night, does she morally deserves to be beaten to death with rocks? It's a simple yes or no question.

[jimwalton]

I don't have to Google anything, thank you. The passage of Dt. 22.13ff. divides: vv. 13-19 are about a false accusation, and 20-21 are about true guilt. The first section goes to great length to protect the woman from false accusations by an abusive and malicious husband who trumps up charges. It invites the parents of the accused to come to her defense, it calls for a public hearing before the elders, it invites the presentation of objective evidence, it results in the public discipline of the falsely-accusing man, and it secures the honor of the woman falsely accused. But that's not where your problems rise.

Verses 21-22. It seems that you are the caught in having grown up in a very permissive culture, where hooking up is a harmless sporting event. Certainly you've seen enough movies where one partner walks in on the other in bed. Sometimes they shoot the couple, sometimes the have a fight, and sometimes they walk away—the relationship is OVER. In many ancient Near Easter codes, adultery is punishable by death. Adultery was an attack on a man's household, stealing his rights to procreate and endangering his material inheritance. But the law isn't so much about marital fidelity (Ex. 22.16ff.) as it is about the detriment to the family and to society to the extent that it is characteristic of anarchy. Middle Assyrian Laws and the Code of Hammurabi all contain legislation against adultery. The protection of the integrity of the family unit was important because the family was the foundation of society. Compromise or collapse of the family meant compromise or collapse of society.

> If a guy rapes a woman in the city, she has to be killed.

The rape of a virgin in a town brings an automatic death penalty because the woman had the opportunity to cry out and could expect to receive assistance. This ruling is based on implied consent on her part. They were both to be executed for violating the marriage vows and undermining the foundations of society. Anarchy only brings destruction.

Verses 25-27. This is the forcible rape of a non-consenting woman, whose innocence is assumed, and she is protected by this law. Here the man is to be executed for the violation, and the woman is vindicated and exonerated (26-27).

Vv. 28-29: Another "rape" situation, but really more an issue of seduction and consent. This time the case involves a non-engaged woman, but also a partially-consenting woman. In this case there is a fine to be paid, and he must marry her to protect the girl's honor and assure her of permanent support.

It's far from a simple yes-no question.