The problem with Subjective Morality
> to say morality is subjective is to say that people decide for themselves what is right and wrong to do
> do you personally believe that murdering innocent human beings is wrong?
> what would your response be to a person or a group of people who believed it was okay?
> the problem with subjective morality is that any disagreement you have with another person’s moral compass just becomes an opinion. Because if theres no absolute moral standard that we ought to live by then nobody can say that something like murdering innocent human beings is absolutely wrong
> objective morality would be a basis to say it’s absolutely wrong to do this; that in doing so a person is not measuring up to an universal moral standard which everyone ought to live by
> but with subjective morality there is no universal moral standard which ought to live by; therefore the moral value of something like murdering an innocent human being - murdering a child - can on the basis of subjective morality be up for debate
> do you think it’s up for debate?
The Christian Biblical view of Morality vs The Atheistic view of Morality
> the Christian biblical explanation for why something is right or wrong is that God has given us an objective morality which gives us the inherent knowledge of how we ought to live
> we fail to achieve this on a daily basis due to our own sin & brokenness and can suppress that knowledge of it for the sake of our desires to do those things that contradict His moral standard, but that moral standard still exists; that’s the Christian view of morality
> the Atheistic view of morality is that human beings decides for themselves what is right and wrong - however a huge philosophical problem with that idea is that it means none of us can ever say that something is truly right or wrong because there are no universal moral truths in subjective morality. Any disagreement with another person over their morals ultimately just becomes a difference in opinion
> for example; you see a somebody robs an elderly person of all their money. Outside of any supposedly inherent ideas that what just happened was wrong, how do you come to the conclusion that what that person did to that elderly person was immoral?
> well a person might say “the outcome of human suffering on an individual or a community of people determines whether something is right or wrong to do”. Okay but then for what reason is humans making other humans suffer bad thing? On what firm basis can you say that is a bad thing?
> then they might say “well because it infringes on their human rights”. Okay why is infringing on another person’s human rights bad? And where do you get this idea of human rights? Atheism doesn’t offer any such rights
> Atheism concludes that human beings are no more valuable than germs are. So human rights just becomes a made up human idea. And if that’s all it is why is it wrong for the theif to steal from the elderly?
> If according to atheism that elderly person has no real inherent value and if human rights don’t really exist, if it’s a made up concept, how can we say what the theif did was wrong?
> the problem with atheism is that if you look at it closely enough you find we have no real grounds to say that something is absolutely wrong because atheism gives no basis for moral absolutes
A correct Morality cannot just be what is “decided by the majority”
> A correct moral standard cannot just be one that is decided by the majority
> If Hitler had won World War 2 and following this managed to convince the whole world that it was okay to kill Jews, homosexuals, black people and people with disabilities. Would this moral standard be right? Considering that the whole world had together come to this consensus
. . .
> Imagine this version of reality didn’t exist and all anybody had to make reference to was that alternate version of reality where Hitler won and the world decided that it was okay to kill these groups of people
> in that version of reality would that worldwide agreed upon moral standard then be right or wrong? Seeing as the majority decided upon it and that that reality is all that anybody knows in regards to how to treat these people
. . .
> okay so then you would agree that a morality that is collectively decided by the majority doesn’t automatically qualify it as a right or acceptable moral standard to live by?
To say a set of morals are “better or worse” is to refer to an Objective Moral Standard
> Do you believe that some moral standards are better or worse than others?
> how do you know they’re better or worse? Because to define whether any one thing is better or worse than another you have to have something to measure them against, some kind of reference point which can show us one thing is better than another at accomplishing whatever the goal is
> For example imagine two people were shown a painting and then both did their best to replicate that painting - this is a judged contest and the winner is the one who can replicate it closest - the way that the panel of judges would decide who wins that contest would be through the reference point which is the original painting. This is what gives them the basis to say whether the copies of the painting are ‘better’ or ‘worse’
> and likewise whenever we say that one set of morals are better or worse than another, we’re implying that there is an ideal picture of what morality should look like. Which ultimately is our objective point of reference which tells us how we ought to live
> would you agree such a thing exists?
Proverbs 14:12
“There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way to death.” - Proverbs 14:12
