Morality Flashcards
(4 cards)
Morality is not ‘Subjective’
> to say morality is subjective is to say that people decide for themselves what is right and wrong
> do you believe that murdering innocence 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 to measure ourselves and others by then who’s to say what is truly good or bad?
> objective morality would be a basis to say they’re absolutely wrong to believe and to do such things; that in doing so they’re not measuring up to a real moral standard which everyone ought to live by
> with subjective morality there are no moral absolutes; therefore the moral value of something like murdering innocent human beings becomes 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 can suppress that knowledge for the sake of our desires to do things that contradict this moral standard, but the 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 leaves the concept of any human act being morally right or wrong as an endlessly unjustified statement
> 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 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 goal than one thing is better at hitting than the other
> For example if two people were shown a painting and then both did their best to replicate that painting they saw the person … they would both have a reference point for which painting is better or worse, what would you say ours is for morality? What is our reference point which indicates to us whether one moral standard is better than another?
> the winner would be whoever did the best replication of that painting. In the same way when we observe certain actions by ourselves or others and come to our conclusions on the moral values on whether something is right or wrong we’re referring to an ideal.
> just like with the ten paintings are judged against that famous painting, our actions as human
