My Take On Absolute Morality.

[David Sklansky]

I have said that there is no absolute morality. By that I may mean something different than what people think I mean so I will explain it shortly. First though the issue of and morality and God. When I said there is no absolute morality without God, I phrased it that way merely to prod people not to argue with Not Ready about a side issue. I really don't think that there is an absolute morality even with God, even if he exists. All there is is God's wishes.

Furthermore even if you want to equate God's wishes with absolute morality you still have big problems. The biggest of course is that there probably is no god who cares what we do. And even if there is, how do we know what he wants? The bible? No good reason to believe it tells us what he wants. There are so many alternatives. Including the alternative that he hasn't yet bothered to tell us. After all that was the situation people 6000 years ago were in.

Yet another problem is that not all situations are covered. If I tell a virginal young girl I'll feed 1000 starving children if she strips naked for me is she doing good or evil if she accepts? Maybe the bible or Koran covers that type of thing but I'm sure that some things aren't covered.

Anyway that is off the subject. My point about absolute morality is not a deep one. It is simply the same point that you can make about something like beauty. It is in the eye of the beholder. Remember the Twilight Zone where the girl wakes up to her failed plastic surgery operation? Not farfetched at all. Imagine that on a different planet there were humans exactly like us. Except they had no ears. Just small holes in the side of their head. If Shana Hiatt visited that planet almost no man could bear to get near here. She would look grotesque.

Lets skip to those Nazis who were a willing part of the Holocaust. An obvious case of evilness? Why? I'm quite sure that the majority of Nazis were not licking their chops at the thought of killing Jews. And that they were not sociopaths either. This is probably even more true of the doctors who performed medical experiments. What at least some, if not most of them, were is people who had figured out a way to turn off enough of their empathy instinct to rationalize doing horrible things to fellow human beings because of the greater GOOD they thought would result.

They were for the most part not anywhere close to being evil by most peoples standards but were simply stupid and perhaps psychologically weird. But they would disagree with that assessment. Just as researchers who torture animals for the sake of better medicines would.

Meanwhile if you invoke Hitler to talk about this subject you are going too far anyway. Because even if everybody agreed that somehow Hitler was absolutely immoral it wouldn't have much affect on our lives. Few people wrestle with the desire to kill 6,000,000 Jews.

That's why I would rather talk about slavery. In America. Unlike extreme Nazism which can be chalked up as an aberration affecting a handful of Germans (I'm not counting the thousands who I believe were just reluctantly following orders), slavery was condoned by tens of millions for several generations. The same slavery that is now considered by most people almost as clearcut an example of absolute evil as the concentration camps. Yet it was condoned by millions of otherwise highly moral and usually religious people. And I don't want to hear the excuse that they truely thought blacks were subhuman to the point of animals. Nonsense. They were subjected to enough free blacks or intelligent slaves to know that blacks were in the same ballpark as whites even if possibly inferior. But millions tuned off their empathy instinct because they were stupid or because they needed to rationalize what they were doing out of selfishness. And I'm quite sure most of them who were religious were sure they were not sinning. So much for God providing absolute morality.

And for those who try to claim slavery is another abberation not likely to be widely repeated let me point this out. Right now you, me, Pair The Board, Not Ready, and Andy Fox, are choosing not to save at least 100 childrens's lives in Africa just so that our lives can remain a tad more comfortable. We have all turned off our empathy instinct. Unlike the Germans and the Southerners who rationalized a greater good, our excuse is that they actually did something while we are simply avoiding doing something. Rationalizing using the morally suspect (and illogical) principle that sins of omission are not nearly as bad as sins of commission. But it seems pretty commonsensical to me that if killing Jews or enslaving blacks is absolutely immoral so is letting all those little children die. The only reasonable excuses I can see is that you are already poor or that in the long run the excess money you don't donate will save even more lives.

I can see 1000 years from now, on another forum, people talking about Americans lack of help toward Africa in almost the same way as we now talk about the holocaust or slavery. When they are debating absolute morality.

Bottom line is that if you want to claim there is such a thing as absolute morality, either with or without God, it seems to me that you got some serious self evaluation to do.

Just to emphasize how easy it is for us to save some lives in Africa, if you have a credit card you can donate here

[andyfox]

We haven't all turned off our empathy instinct. As we discussed a while back when we talked about the movie Collateral (and The Third Man) for many of us, out of sight, out of mind. But one cannot right all wrongs or help everyone. Were Ghandi and Mother Teresa people who had turned off their empathy instincts because they didn't help people in Africa? [assuming they didn't]

Seems to me your claim that there isn't an absolute morality is rather a claim that no person (or very ferw people) can be perfectly moral. Because if they spend $5 more on the steak instead of having the chicken and sending the $5 to charity, they're responsible for killing children.

As for war criminals, what about Colonel Ishii of the infamous Unit 731 in Manchuria? He set out to find out if it was possible to infect men in the same way that lice, mosquitoes, ticks and fleas do. His laboratories thus produced vats full of the bacteria of typhus, tetanus, anthrax, smallpox, and salmonella. He then infected people, who were referred to as martuas, "wooden logs." 3,000 such human guinea pigs lost their lives in grotesque experiements. Some had their blood siphoned off and replaed with horse blood; vivisection was practiced on living human beings.

After the war, he bargained for full immunity in exchange for his data. Genreal MacArthur not only agreed but arranged for Ishii not to be prosecuted. Ishii died at a ripe old age, never prosecuted, and lectured to U.S. Army specialists on chemical warfare at Fort Detrick, Maryland.

This was not a man who was looking to do greater good; he was looking for a better way to kill people. Human beings who do these things to other human beings because they think it will result in a greater good might well be stupid and weird, and have a peculiar or selfish definition of "great good," but they are also evil. Do you really think you and I are just as evil because we don't live like St. Francis of Assisi?

[RJT]

You are exactly correct. This is where the difficulty comes in trying to live a life that approaches what you term “absolute morality”. I’ll change the term for my post and expand on the idea to living a true “Christian life.”

It is indeed hard to live a Christian life. The main point you address is one of the most difficult. Questions arise constantly of how Christ teaches us to live. To address your specific example of the starving in Africa is not an easy one at all. (I just noted after I wrote this that AndyFox has already address this similarly.) Would Christ care if I buy a new car (which helps the economy as well as might make my life easier and therefore have more time to help the poor) or would he want me to spend that money directly helping the poor? Do I forsake my current life and become a missionary in Africa? Or am I doing more good maintaining my job and being part of the larger economy, which in turn should be able to do more good overall. This overall good for the economy only works if others who are in decisions-making positions work towards the higher good, too. If those in more power decide to make butter instead of guns.

Being Christian is not simply going to Mass on Sunday. Christianity is a 24/7 situation. The Christian should always be asking the types of question like the cliché “What would Jesus do?” Am I doing any good posting on this forum educating others with tidbits of what Christianity is about? Or should I be using my time and talents trying to raise money for the poor ? Or teaching religious education classes at my parish?

Our belief is that our God understands that we cannot be perfect. That is were His forgiveness comes into account. When we realize we screw up and we truly are repentant we ask for forgiveness. We believe if we truly are sorry we are granted that forgiveness. A real Christian doesn’t use it as a get our of jail free card. The Sacrament of Reconciliation (formerly called Confession) isn’t just about telling the priest how many times you took the Lord’s name in vain it is also about the sins of omission. Did I miss an opportunity to help someone else when I could have?

The hardest part about trying to answer questions like yours, is how much in our answer is justification for us taking the easier, perhaps more selfish, way out and how much is our answer closer to absolute morality?

Your example, David, is a very Christian (although, of course not exclusively) notion.

[Zygote]

Very interesting. There is no doubt in my mind that there is no absolute morality.

Personally, I think morality is completely senseless. I'm going to spurt out several questions to those who defend a moral world that i'd be really interested in seeing answered.

Firstly, why do we only think it is immoral to hurt things that are similar to us? Why are we saying its immoral to hurt humans and not bugs? Is it because of consciousness or something special about the human body? Well, at what cranial capacity in our evolutionary path did the Homo genus become moral to protect? Are Homo Erectus in the group that should be protected? What about archaic [censored] Sapiens? Is terry shiavo's life worth more than a monkey, who is definitely more conscious than she was? What about a bug that may serve the world a greater purpose than she ever could?

We should only save and protect something because we value that thing. Saving things unconditionally because you possess similar traits is ridiculous.

[ QUOTE ]
Firstly, why do we only think it is immoral to hurt things that are similar to us? Why are we saying its immoral to hurt humans and not bugs? Is it because of consciousness or something special about the human body? Well, at what cranial capacity in our evolutionary path did the [censored] genus become moral to protect? Are [censored] Erectus in the group that should be protected? What about archaic [censored] Sapiens? Is terry shiavo's life worth more than a monkey, who is definitely more conscious than she was? What about a bug that may serve the world a greater purpose than she ever could?


[/ QUOTE ]

Not that I believe in absolute morality, but one who does could argue that a Homo Erectus is worth .73 Homo Sapiens for example. Terry Shiavo's life could be worth say .15 average humans. You get the idea.

[David Sklansky]

"Were Ghandi and Mother Teresa people who had turned off their empathy instincts because they didn't help people in Africa? [assuming they didn't]

Seems to me your claim that there isn't an absolute morality is rather a claim that no person (or very ferw people) can be perfectly moral."

I think Ghandi and Mother Theresa had acceptable excuses.

I think there is no absolutely morality. However if there is, than almost all of us are either absolutely moral (including Hitler and Jefferson Davis but perhaps not the BTK killer) or almost none of us (including Alan Combs, Ted Kennedy, and Bill Cosby, but perhaps not Ghandhi, or the Doctor's without Borders.) There just isn't enough difference between killing people for misguided reasons and letting thousands die when it could easily be prevented.

So though it was a bit off the subject as to why there can't be absolute morality, I couldn't resist needling those who argue there is (with or without God) when I don't think they meet the standard themselves.

[chomsky53]

why do you insist on offering you uneducated opinion about things? stop embarrasing yourself.

[maurile]

Very thoughtful post.

Just a terminological note, to avoid confusion.... "Absolute" has a lot of different meanings. To say a moral rule is absolute may mean it has no exceptions, or it isn't contingent on any of various things for its correctness, or it's unlimited in space and time, or it classifies things as "good/bad" rather than "better/worse", or it's the same regardless of culture, and no doubt there are other possibilities.

What are you using the term to mean?

(I'll give my own answer to that as well. To me, an absolute morality requires only the existence of one or more absolute moral rules; and for a moral rule to be absolute, I'd say it's necessary and sufficient that nobody who breaks the rule is justified in doing so. With that understanding, I do think absolute moral rules exist. "Don't torture innocents for mere pleasure" seems a good candidate.)

[andyfox]

"There just isn't enough difference between killing people for misguided reasons and letting thousands die when it could easily be prevented."

I'm not quite sure exactly how "easily" thousands of deaths can be prevented, but let's assume, for the sake of argument, that it's true. So you see "not enough difference" between Charles Manson and somebody who votes for a United States senator who is not in favor of increasing humanitarian aid for Africa?