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How do we know that morality is objective?
At VFR recently, the Darwinian blogger Chuck Ross presented me with a list of eight questions on morality. I didn’t get around to replying, but Sage McLaughlin did, and Mr. Ross’s reply to him has now been posted in the original entry. (Oct. 10: Kristor has replied to Chuck Ross.)
Alan Roebuck has also written an answer to Mr. Ross, which is posted in this new entry. Mr. Roebuck’s basic position is that real morality has a “force” to it that all human beings, including atheists, experience, and that secular explanations cannot account for this force.
Alan Roebuck writes:
Dear Chuck,
You’ve asked about the traditionalist understanding of morality. Good question. Here’s an outline of an answer (a full answer would have to be book-length.)
But before answering your specific questions, there’s an important preliminary: What exactly is morality?
This question arises because morality is not tangible, not the sort of thing studied by physical science. Traditional thought has always acknowledged the tangible, sense-perceivable world with which contemporary science is concerned, but it also acknowledges the real, objective existence of a non-physically-tangible realm. This realm, which doesn’t have one universally agreed-upon name, contains God, angels and demons, human souls, laws of morality, laws of logic, the “meaning of life,” and so on. We might call it the spiritual realm, as opposed to the physical realm.
The real existence of the spiritual realm is denied by atheists and agnostics, but their denial is selective: In order to live as man rather than animal, man must make constant use of ideas from the spiritual realm, especially laws of logic and morality. The atheist sees morality as an internal subjective sense, or a human convention, that arose because of evolutionary forces, and not as an objectively existing part of the order of the world. But the atheist must still use morality in order to live, because he must make choices, and his choices have to be directed by a system of morality that allows him to rank things and actions according to their value. And the atheist must at least act as if morality is not just an arbitrary convention and not just an internal sensation, because conventions and sensations do not have authority. Nobody is required to follow a rule that is just a convention, or just his own feelings.
In order for morality to be useful, it must be more than suggestions. Suggestions do not help us decide. To be useful, morality must compel. It seems to me that the real essence of morality is a “force” we feel. When we are in a situation where morality comes into play, we sense something like a force compelling us to a certain course of action. This force is entirely lacking in non-moral contexts. When we contemplate the Pythagorean Theorem, for example, no force impinges on us. But when we contemplate “Thou shalt not commit adultery,” and “But I say unto you, That whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart,” we certainly feel the force. It is the desire to avoid this force that drives a great deal of organized atheism and agnosticism.
The technical name for this force is “incumbency.” Moral principles have incumbency, non-moral principles don’t.
The key question, then, is this: What is the source of the force? If the source is our parents having conditioned us, or other of our psychological processes, or the conventions of society, then we can safely ignore the force if we can get away with it. Conditioning and psychological processes have no authority, and although the conventions of society have authority of a sort, we can evade the authority if we wish to, because a convention doesn’t have to be what it is. It’s just conventional. In order for morality to have real authority over us, it must originate in something else, something that really has authority over us.
So morality is all about authority: If a moral principle doesn’t have authority then it’s not a moral law, it’s a suggestion.
To know whether a moral principle has any authority, we need to know what causes it. The cause of morality is also called its “grounding.” We sense the force, and we ask “what grounds it?” If its ground is impersonal evolutionary processes, or convention, or our inner psychological processes, then it has no authority over us.
The thing that grounds morality, that produces its authority, has to be spiritual, that is, non-material. Traditional thought understands that we grasp the non-material through our intellect rather than our senses. And we grasp (i.e., become aware of) the most basic facts of reality through intuition, meaning the mind’s capacity to become aware of certain things directly, without a reasoning process. It is our intuition that makes us aware of the “force” of morality, and even atheists acknowledge this force, at least for the moral principles with which they agree.
Intuition makes us aware of the force of morality. But to know the source, the ground, of the force we must go beyond intuition: we must engage in a process of reasoning about the spiritual realm and, most importantly, we must receive and accept Revelation from God about morality.
And we must do this because purely secular reasoning about morality fails: Atheism cannot account for morality by giving it a plausible grounding, because the purely physical has no authority over us. Secular morality can only tell us “If you want human society to go well, then you should not lie, steal, rape or murder.” But it cannot say that you should want human society to go well. Furthermore, society will do just fine if everybody else follows conventional morality but I do what I want. Secular morality only proves that everyone else should be moral.
To summarize: We know by intuition that the force (the incumbency) of morality exists. But what can account for it? Under secularism, the force is an illusion or a convention, but this is obviously wrong: the force is real and objective. All human societies have accepted the reality of the force and even now, only a small minority of leftist thinkers has disputed its reality.
The force of morality can only originate in a person, because the impersonal cannot generate incumbency. We see this in everyday life: a command coming from a person with whom we interact has more force than an edict coming from an impersonal bureaucracy. And a command having no person to back it up—an edict of a long-dead king, for example—has no authority whatsoever. But the only person having authority over all men and having the power to generate the incumbency of morality is God. God holds the moral order together just as He upholds the physical and the intellectual order. You may find this conclusion to be distasteful, but no other explanation for morality succeeds.
Now we can consider your specific questions:
1.) Which moral code do you subscribe to?
Implicit in this question is the idea that since the various moral codes vary, no common morality can exist for all of mankind. But the variations are actually quite minor. With the sole exception of the morality of the left, the only major disagreements among the various moral systems concern which people are to be treated as outsiders, and how outsiders are be treated. (Islam, for example, allows any outrage to be perpetrated on unbelievers.) All moral systems basically agree on how one ought to treat members of your group.
To answer your question: I subscribe to the moral system of the Bible, the revealed word of God.
But understand: To say that I “subscribe to” it, means only that I acknowledge it. Sure, I try to live in accordance with it, but like all men, I don’t have the power fully to live up to it. The atheist solves this problem by denying the validity of those parts of biblical morality with which he disagrees, but the real solution to the problem is to receive the forgiveness that comes only through repentance and faith in Jesus Christ.
2.) What makes this code absolute?
I prefer the word “objective,” since morality is always relative: relative to the situation, that is. Killing, for example, is permitted in war and a few other instances, but not generally. Morality is never subjective (valid only for the individual); instead it is objective, that is, valid for all individuals.
What makes biblical morality objective is, of course, the One who grounds it: God. As our creator, God has an obvious authority over us. That people disagree about the exact interpretation and application of this morality, and that people don’t always live up to the morality they profess, does not change its objective nature, because the objectivity originates in God, not man.
3.) How do you know that the maker of the code is absolute?
God, by definition, would be the highest authority and therefore, in the sense you mean, absolute. Even if, theoretically, there were an entity higher than God, we have no knowledge of this entity, whereas we do have knowledge of God. God is therefore the at least de facto highest authority.
4.) If the code-maker can’t be known to be absolute, how is the code itself absolute?
It wouldn’t be. But since we can know that God is “absolute,” we can know His code is also. This involves the vast subject of Christian apologetics, i.e., rational argumentation for God. It will have to suffice here simply to say that all of the atheist’s objections have been met, but that most people are not aware of these arguments.
5.) If various moral codes have appeared throughout history (i.e. ancient Greeks, Israelites, Christians), how can we ever be sure of an absolute code?
By its source. Of course, we have to have knowledge of God: that He exists, and His attributes. How we can attain this knowledge is another (vast) subject, but the problem is at least theoretically solved in that disagreements over morality do not require that we abandon belief in objective morality. We do not, in other fields, assume that disagreements mean that there is no truth of the matter, and the same is true regarding morality.
6.) If God created man, your argument holds, but what happens if Man created god? If Man created god, god and his various written codes are just recordings of pragmatism gleaned from our evolved natures of aversion to harming others, guilt, pity, empathy, etc.
Obviously, if man created god then god has no authority over man. We therefore need an assurance that God is real, and not just a figment of man’s imagination. This brings us, once again, to the need for Christian apologetics.
7.) I feel that your argument that Darwinism is materialist-reductionist implies that Darwinists cannot be conservative. I understand your argument, but if Darwinism is correct (and more evidence than not supports it over theism) does that imply that conservatism can’t exist?
If Darwinism were correct then conservatism, like morality, would be possible, but it would have no adequate ground: One could fight for traditional society, but there would be no good reason to do so. And when the going gets tough, those who have no adequate ground for their professed beliefs cannot sustain them, except perhaps as pure stubbornness.
8.) If it was somehow determined that God did not exist, would you still advocate for belief in Him (assuming the masses would hold onto their belief despite the new knowledge) in order to maintain the moral authority?
Since there is massive evidence for God, this question is purely hypothetical. But if God did not exist, I would at least be tempted to advocate for the masses to believe in Him, for no other way exists properly to order society.
—end of initial entry—
LA writes:
Thanks to Mr. Roebuck for his excellent essay. To explain high-level ideas such as the objectivity of morality in common language that anyone can understand is a wonderful thing.
I don’t think I’ve heard the argument before, that we all experience a “force” to morality which gives it its authority over us, and that this force and authority can ultimately have no source but a person, meaning God!
This way of reasoning directly from our own experience to ultimate truth is analogous to my argument about consciousness. Since we all experience our own, non-material, consciousness, we know that a non-material reality exists.
Similarly, since we all experience the force and authority of morality, we know that a source of that moral authority must exist, which can only be a person.
October 11 1:30 a.m.
OneSTDV writes:
You wrote:
I don’t think I’ve heard the argument before, that we all experience a “force” to morality which gives it its authority over us, and that this force and authority can ultimately have no source but a person, meaning God!
I haven’t read Mere Christianity, but if I recall correctly, this was the main premise behind CS Lewis’ religious conversion.
It seems like a common rejoinder to atheistic explanations involving evolutionary psychology, so I’m quite surprised you have never encountered it before. As for the Roebuck essay, he holds secularism and “Darwinism” to a standard that religion fails. [LA replies: there is no reason to put Darwinism in scare quotes. Darwinists themselves frequently use the word Darwinism or Darwinian to describe their views of evolution, two examples that come to mind being Jerry Coyne and Larry Arnhart.] I agree that it’s rather difficult to buttress objective morality or oppose moral/cultural relativism from an atheistic standpoint. One runs into the infinite regress problem where one must support the entire moral framework on an axiomatic proposition. The secular conservative attempts to do this, but isn’t that initial axiom a subjective maxim? Why can’t another individual support an entirely different moral system on a principle antithetical to the atheist conservative’s?
While this is surely a convincing argument, why does religion get away with “Well faith says so.” Why is it allowable that a particular religion, such as Christianity, claims a basic standard of objective morality, yet another one, say Islam, can’t? Or equivalently, why can Christianity ignore alternative or opposing axiomatic principles offered by competing religions and still claim objectivity based on their standard, yet when done in a secular framework, objectivity is considered insufficiently supported?
The problem of multiple religions, all claiming to be the preeminent source of morality, dooms religiously based objective morality in the same manner that atheistic objective moral systems fail.
LA replies:
You write:
While this is surely a convincing argument, why does religion get away with “Well faith says so.”
Offhand I don’t remember hearing a Christian saying that stealing is wrong, or adultery is wrong, because “faith makes it so.” Perhaps if you gave me give a specific example we could pursue the point further.
You write:
Why is it allowable that a particular religion, such as Christianity, claims a basic standard of objective morality, yet another one, say Islam, can’t?
I think this only becomes a problem when two incompatible religions are present in force in the same society. So long as Islam is being practiced over there, and Christianity (or what shards of Christianity remain) is being practiced over here, there’s no problem. We think that killing apostates or killing women who have been raped is terribly wrong, but practically speaking our belief that it is wrong doesn’t matter, because no matter how wrong we think it is, we have no say over what Muslims do in their lands. It becomes a problem when Muslims in large numbers are present in our society, because their beliefs are incompatible with ours. And in my view the only way to resolve such conflicts is for the Muslims to leave. So, practically speaking, it is not a problem of one objective truth counterpoised against another objective truth and figuring out which one is true; it’s a problem of keeping mutually incompatible peoples and belief systems geographically separated.
The world is organized in such a way that we can’t be responsible for the whole world. We can only be responsible for the part that we live in and know about. Just as on the individual level a person can only be responsible for the conduct of his own life, not strangers’ lives, a society can only be responsible for itself, not for other societies. There may be exceptions, such as a monstrous tyrant taking over a society and doing terrible things requiring neighbors to intervene; but generally speaking the principle holds.
By the way, what I just said is so commonsensical. Yet this common sense sounds weird today, because it contradicts the liberal belief that everyone is responsible for everyone, or rather that we (white Westerners) are responsible for all others.
You write:
Or equivalently, why can Christianity ignore alternative or opposing axiomatic principles offered by competing religions and still claim objectivity based on their standard, yet when done in a secular framework, objectivity is considered insufficiently supported?
I think you are misstating the issue. The statement that secular claims to objectivity are insufficiently supported is not a matter of Christians imposing their view by diktat; it’s a matter of an argument that our side is making. We are arguing, seeking to persuade others, that secularism lacks a basis for objective morality.
You write:
The problem of multiple religions, all claiming to be the preeminent source of morality, dooms religiously based objective morality in the same manner that atheistic objective moral systems fail.
I think I’ve already addressed this issue. Competing moral systems only become a problem when they are present in force in the same society. Liberals imagine a single world system without any conflict, but such a system would requires global tyranny. As long as man lives on the earth, the problem of negotiating between different peoples, cultures, belief systems will remain.
I often speak of the “vertical” and “horizontal” dimensions of cultural and moral reality. The vertical is that which lies above (and below) us: standards of behavior and accomplishment; various goods; goodness itself; God. The horizontal is the relationship between different individuals or different societies on the same level. Each culture has its own vertical dimension by which it orders its life. But in order to live its life in relation to that vertical dimension, it must be horizontally separated from other societies whose vertical dimensions are different from its own.
Finally let us remember that even between cultures that are mutually incompatible in crucial respects, there are many moral commonalities. It’s not as though people in different cultures are in completely different universes. There is a common humanity, but the differences between different parts of this common humanity are such that they need to have their own respective societies, just as each family needs to live in its own home.
LA continues:
On a side point, you wrote:
It seems like a common rejoinder to atheistic explanations involving evolutionary psychology, so I’m quite surprised you have never encountered it before.
Lewis’s argument in The Abolition of Man spoke deeply to me and became central in my thought, that we intuitively know the objective value of things, and this tells us that there is an objective morality. But the precise way Mr. Roebuck was putting it, that we experience a “force” behind morality, and this tells us that there is a personal God, was new to me.
And by the way, this happens repeatedly, that my openness about stating when a thought strikes me as a new thought (which in some cases may be a thought I’ve had in the distant past but had forgotten, so now it strikes me as new again, and in other cases may be a familiar thought, but expressed in a new way) leads to people to say to me, “I’m quite surprised you didn’t you know this.” It’s as though people expect that I should already know everything I need to know and that I should just repeat what I already know, instead of seeing new things, or new aspects of old things. I’m sorry to disappoint them.
Boris S. writes:
This is in response to your reply to OneSTDV.
What does one mean by “objective morality”? To me, it means that each individual is to be judged according to the same moral standards, regardless of geographic region or period of human history.
The question of how there can be objective morality given a multiplicity of religions is not one of PRACTICE, but of PRINCIPLE. Stating that “we have no say” (an ambiguous formulation—see below) over what Muslims do wherever Muslims are in the majority (which shouldn’t too blithely be called “their land”—what about the Coptic Christians in Egypt, the Maronites in Lebanon, Iraqi Christians, etc., who all suffer under Muslim domination?) does not address the issue.
You could have said that Christian morality (as you understand it) is objectively true, and Islamic morality (insofar as it is at odds with the Christian) is objectively false, as is that of any other religion. From your post, it is not clear that this is in fact your view. It could be that you believe that the disagreement between yourself and Islam on the question of (say) the murdering of apostates, or treating infidels as expendable chattel, lies along that dimension of “morality” (though those who believe that morality is objective likely wouldn’t call it that at all) which is not constant across all cultures—that the said Islamic practice is not evil in a sense independent of any particular culture. If a Muslim (at least so long as he lives in Saudi Arabia and not Switzerland) is to be judged simply on his adherence to Islamic morality, a Buddhist to Buddhist morality, etc., if an individual’s moral stature is to be measured solely by the yardstick of whichever society he happens to inhabit, then morality is not objective. Yet this is what you seem to be saying when you write, “each culture has its own vertical dimension by which it orders its life.” The vertical dimension of morality is closeness to God, goodness itself. If any aspect of morality is universal and unchanging, surely it would be this. Yet you claim that each culture has its own vertical dimension. It would seem to follow that it is an expression of goodness itself to stone an adulteress, so long as you’re in Iran or Afghanistan.
I’ve been under the impression that the vertical dimension of morality means better/worse in an objective sense, while the horizontal dimension means “different”. But when you say that each culture has its own vertical dimension, the only way I know how to interpret this is that each culture has its own sense of which way is up and down. If so, then the vertical scale of better/worse is not objective.
You say “we have no say over what Muslims do in their lands.” Does this mean we don’t have the ability to affect what happens in Muslim-majority countries, or that we have no right to do so? If it’s the latter, then why don’t we have such a right? Surely, if we have the right to bomb an Islamic country to prevent it from acquiring nuclear weapons (as you think we should), we have a right to intervene in other, less lethal ways, if doing so were to contribute to our long-term security and interests vis a vis that country. The cultural relativist would say that we have no right to tamper with a different people’s culture—no matter how barbaric, how hostile to ourselves, or how much misery it may bring to its own people—since all cultures are of equal worth and shouldn’t be imposed upon from without. Is this your position too?
The practical implications of the proposition that morality varies from culture to culture are just those of Darwinian ethics, right down to the “basic moral commonalities” (a Darwinist would speak about the “commonly evolved moral sense”). Presumably, whatever is left of these commonalities when every human society that has ever existed is accounted for, can be said to constitute “objective” morality.
This is, of course, absurd. Morality is about OUGHT. Therefore, claims about morality shouldn’t be justified by the way things are, pace the Darwinian ethicist and the cultural relativist. A practice is not moral simply because it’s an established practice of this or that human society. Yet the gist of your post seems to say that the morality of Islam is no worse than that of ours, merely different. Surely I must be misunderstanding something.
I’m curious to see how these issues could be clarified.
LA replies:
“Yet the gist of your post seems to say that the morality of Islam is no worse than that of ours, merely different.”
Thank you for the thoughtful criticisms and questions. I did not mean to suggest that the “vertical dimension” in each culture is of the same truth value. All cultures seek to order themselves by that which is higher. This doesn’t mean that their understanding of the higher is good or correct.
The problem seems to revolve around Islam, which as always is a special case.
The best explanation of the origins of Islam I’m familiar with is that of William Muir in his great work The Life of Mahomet. Muir says that Muhammad at the beginning had genuine experiences of the divine, but that he soon began using the authority and power these experiences had given him to advance his egotistical agenda. To a large extent, Islam is the expression, not of a God-led man, but of a man acting from bad and evil motives, including hatred, vengeance, lust for power, and just plain lust. Muhammad is the greatest hater in history, the greatest spreader of hatred in history. I think the religion of Islam is a curse on mankind. When I call Muhammad the successful Hitler, I mean it.
The paradox of Islam is that it is a religion the highest expression of which is the killing of non-Muslims. As such it is a perverted religion, though it is still a religion. This is not a logical contradiction. We know that even ordinary goods, like courage and love, can take on negative, destructive, perverted, and evil forms. How much more will this be true of the highest good, which is love of God? In this sense Islam is indeed objectively bad.
At the same time I do not want to say that Islam is simply objectively bad. It is the way through which many millions of people experience whatever degree of order and goodness they have in their lives. The relations that the Koran commands among Muslims, as distinct from the relations it commands toward non-Muslims, are frequently in conformity with objective morality. Muslims experience their relations with each other and the activities of their daily lives as being guided by the “vertical” dimension. If Islam did not have this aspect, it could not have maintained the faith of so many followers over so many centuries. That doesn’t mean that we would like to live such a life, since it is incompatible with our way of life.
So to answer the question in your last paragraph: in some respects, Islam is objectively bad, while in other respects, Islam is not objectively bad but just different. But the differences are not “mere” differences. They are profound. Therefore, Islam should be excluded from the West, not only because it is objectively bad and seeks our harm and subjugation, but because it is radically incompatible with our culture. For example, is the female head and body covering objectively bad, or just different? Even if it’s only the latter, the female covering still doesn’t belong in our society.
You ask:
The cultural relativist would say that we have no right to tamper with a different people’s culture—no matter how barbaric, how hostile to ourselves, or how much misery it may bring to its own people—since all cultures are of equal worth and shouldn’t be imposed upon from without. Is this your position too?
Obviously it’s not my position. As I’ve said many times, my argument against interfering in the internal affairs of Muslim societies is prudential: we lack the power, the ability, and the wisdom to take over and reconstruct the Muslim world. The very notion is insane.
I’ve also said that if the only way we can protect ourselves from Islam is by wreaking mass damage and loss of life on Muslim countries, then we have the moral right to do that. I argue against those who essentially say that we should destroy the Muslim world or much of it. There are things far short of such steps that we can do to protect ourselves that we have not done. Those things must be done. That’s my separationist policy. At the same time, I’ve always left open the possibility that at some point sterner measures may become necessary. But we are not there now.
Adam S. writes: Good discussion. I think I understand what you are saying, but I was having the same thoughts as Boris S. when I read your reply. To oversimplify, it sounds like OneSTDV was saying “How do we handle differing claims for objective morality” and your reply was “This is only a problem if we live together.”
OneSTDV writes:
You wrote:
“I think this only becomes a problem when two incompatible religions are present in force in the same society. So long as Islam is being practiced over there, and Christianity (or what shards of Christianity remain) is being practiced over here, there’s no problem.”
But this completely contradicts the notion of objectivity. Objective morality presupposes one standard is universally correct. For example, the laws of physics are objectively correct, in that empirical and analytical evidence show that these laws hold everywhere, even if someone denies that they do. Obviously, one can’t contend the laws of physics are a cultural construct.
The objective moralist doesn’t only oppose Islamic law because it may impede upon his own freedoms, but he also opposes it on moral grounds. He opposes it because it’s wrong, independent of any political or social goal. The discussion isn’t merely practical, so the real-world consequences (such as geographic isolation of competing moral systems) don’t entirely resolve the inconsistency.
To avoid my argument concerning the failure of objective Christian morality due to multiple religions, you seem to divest yourself from objective morality completely.
LA replies:
In my reply to you I inadvertently side-stepped the issue of objective morality to emphasize the question of when objective morality becomes a practical concern that we can do anything about.
Boris S. had the same concern about my reply to you, and in my reply to him I hope I meet your objections.
Hannon writes:
This has been a most informative and compelling thread for me, especially Alan Roebuck’s elucidation of objective morality.
In terms of the problem of “moral variation” within humankind, I like to conceive objective morality as a central core, an unattainable state that is for all mortal intents and purposes synonymous with God. Particular groups or religions, or individuals then would be closer to or farther from this “force” at any given point in time. I read Lewis’s “Mere Christianity” recently, wherein he discusses just such an idea.
So there would be necessary shifts for people in your vertical scale, though not as dynamic as in the horizontal scale. If I understand your idea, the vertical scale itself remains constant and has absolute limits compared to the horizontal scale. Receptivity or response to this force and the “ought” of achieving harmony, versus tension, are related matters.
The natural expression of this idea would associate people with their beliefs geographically, historically and ethnically: Confucianism in East Asia, Islam in western Asia, animism in sub-Saharan Africa, Christianity in Europe and her daughter lands, Buddhism in India and Southeast Asia and so on.
Each of these “groups” has its own understanding of objective moral truth and it will necessarily be closer to or more distant from the unattainable Truth whose recognition is ultimately a commonality. A shared recognition of the fact that the Other is working toward the same spiritual goal is a more difficult and less common practice.
Some truths are paradoxical and this may be one of them.
October 12
Kathlene writes:
One simple and obvious point against moral relativism is that society simply could not function well and survive if moral codes were relative and changeable. How could society maintain order if one day, for instance, rape is immoral, but the next day a majority in the society said that rape is moral? C.S. Lewis said “relativism will certainly damn our souls and end our species.” This point and others are examined in an article in the Quodlibet Online Journal of Christian Theology and Philosophy about objective moral values. See this article, in which the author argues, “Once one concludes that relativism is false, all that is left is absolutism … ”
OneSTDV writes:
You wrote:
At the same time I do not want to say that Islam is simply objectively bad. It is the way through which many millions of people experience whatever degree of order and goodness they have in their lives. The relations that the Koran commands among Muslims, as distinct from the relations it commands toward non-Muslims, are frequently in conformity with objective morality.
This reeks of cultural and moral relativism. Statements like “it could have only existed if it had an objective basis” are the words of a cultural relativist. Again, objectivity exists independent of number of adherents or individual experience. You even concede that Islam has roots in the divine, further evidence of you veering into the domain of relativism. [LA replies: First, in William Muir’s account, which I referenced, Muhammad at the beginning had experiences of the divine but then began to manufacture revelations for his own convenience. The evidence is overwhelming that if he did not begin as a spiritual fraud, he became one. Second, as Muir also discusses, Muhammad’s experiences may have been of demons, not God, a fear that he himself expressed. There are all kinds of “spiritual” entities who are themselves highly subjective, not objectively true.]
Additionally, you attempt to distinguish between “among Muslims” morality and “towards non-Muslims” morality. You do so to retain defining Islam as, in part, objectively good. But one can’t parse out moral principles from an entire belief system. The prescriptions of Islam encompass EVERYTHING. And why is this relevant? Because it is the ENTIRETY of their belief system which they claim represents objective moral truth. You stating otherwise, by simply appealing to a Christian conception of morality, is the definition of relativism. [LA replies: I don’t quite understand you. But I completely agree with your point that if by Islam we mean Islam as a totality, then Islam is false. However, I was not speaking of Islam as a totality, but of elements within Islam that do seem to accord with objective morality.]
Essentially, your system of morality (because commonsense fails) reduces to “my religion says so.” [LA replies: this is the standard line of all Darwinians/ materialists, that theists are simply asserting a diktat. It’s a kneejerk put-down, not corresponding with anything I’ve said.] Yet, others can claim similarly and thus your basis for objectivity fails. Rather, and here’s where secularists can also claim an objective morality, one must accept a small basic set of axioms from which morality can arise.
I have done so in this post (scroll towards the bottom): A Secular Objective Morality:
Basically, I’m going to end up with a moral system based on assumptions (the hallmark of subjectivity), yet still have my system be supported by objective measures. I’ll discuss morality, but this argument can be applied almost universally. This “axioms to real world observation” process has proven successful in mathematics and science. Euclid’s Geometry was verified by real world observations, as was Newton’s Three Laws of Motion and Schrodinger’s governing equation of Quantum Mechanics.
A moral system is a set of laws intended to guide behavior and conduct. It defines matters of right and wrong. But these dictates aren’t merely nebolous concepts; rather they are applied to whole societies. Thus, we can conclude the main objective of a moral system is to guide the actions of individuals in order to produce stable communities and societies. So to measure the viability of any moral system, we simply appeal to standards of society stability (controlling for demographics), like crime rate, discrmination rates, economics, and other quantities. [LA replies: Your definition of objective morality is wholly inadequate. Coming from your Darwinian premises, you have zero basis for saying that “social stability” is an objective good. You are simply asserting it.]
Posted by Lawrence Auster at October 09, 2009 02:04 PM | Send
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