Are Moral Values and Duties Objective?

1. Are Moral Values and Duties Objective? An examination on whether morality is purely subjective or objective.

2. Definitions • Objective: To say that there are objective moral values is to say that something is right or wrong independently of whether anybody believes it to be so. • Subjective: Personal taste or feelings [which may be of an individual, group, or society]. • Good/Bad: Correlated with moral values • Right/Wrong: Correlated with moral duties

3. Objections to objective morality • Ethical Relativism: There are no objective, absolute, or universal moral standards. • Individual relativism • Cultural relativism

4. Individual Relativism • All moral claims are meaningful only as based on an individuals opinion, experience, desires, and inclinations. • Minimalistic Morality: “Everything is alright to do as long as you don’t hurt anyone.” • Problems • Self-Contradictory: Claims that all have an ethical obligation to accept relativism. • Leads to Moral Nihilism: Moral terms have no meaning.

5. Cultural Relativism • All moral claims are defined by particular cultures or societies. • Morality is a set of common rules that have social approval set over time so that they often appear as facts (also known as the social contract).

6. Cultural Relativism • The Diversity Thesis: What is considered morally right and wrong varies from society, so that there are no universal moral standards held by all societies. • The Dependency Thesis: Whether or not it is right for an individual to act in a certain way depends on or is relative to the society to which he or she belongs. • Problems • How do you define “culture” or “society”? • Reformer’s Dilemma • Unable to judge other societies and cultural groups • Virtue of Tolerance cannot be applied cross-culturally

7. Subjectivism & “Differences” • Differences can be addressed • Some cultures just do wrong things • Factual beliefs need to be examined • Apply same principles but apply differently • Some differences does not mean no universals

8. The Moral Argument • If God does not exist, objective moral values do not exist. • Objective moral values do exist. • Therefore, God exists.

9. P1Socio-biological Morality • If theism is false, then what is the basis for objective moral duties? • Imagine human beings living in a state of nature without any customs or laws. Suppose one of them kills another one and takes his goods: • “Such actions, though injurious to their victims, are no more unjust or immoral than they would be if done by one animal to another. A hawk that seizes a fish from the see kills it, but does not murder it; and another hawk that seizes the fish from the talons of the first takes it, but does not steal it—for none of these things is forbidden. And exactly the same considerations apply to the people we are imagining.” Richard Taylor, Ethics, Faith, and Reason (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1985), 14.

10. P1Socio-biological Morality • “The position of the modern evolutionist… is that humans have an awareness of morality… because such an awareness is of biological worth. Morality is a biological adaptation no less than are hands and feet and teeth… Considered as a rationally justifiable set of claims about an objective something, ethics is illusory. I appreciate that when somebody says “Love thy neighbor as thyself,” they think they are referring above and beyond themselves… Nevertheless,… such reference is truly without foundation. Morality is just an aid to survival and reproduction,… and any deeper meaning is illusory.” Michael Ruse, “Evolutionary Theory and Christian Ethics,” in The Darwinian Paradigm (London: Routledge, 1989), 262, 268-89.

11. P1Socio-biological Morality • “If the film of evolutionary history were rewound and shot anew, very different creatures with a very different set of values might well have evolved. By what right do we regard our morality as objective rather than theirs? To think that human beings are special is to be guilty of specie-ism, an unjustified bias toward one’s own species.” William Lane Craig, Reasonable Faith, ed. 3 (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2008), 174-178.

12. P1The False Hope of Atheism • If there is no God, why think we have any moral obligations to do anything? Who or what imposes these moral duties upon us? • ALL IS PERMITTED • On the atheistic view, there’s nothing really wrong about raping someone. (This behavior goes on all the time in the animal kingdom). • “If the moral principles that govern our behavior are rooted in habit and custom, feeling and fashion,” then the rapist who chooses to flout the herd morality is doing nothing more serious than acting unfashionably. Paul Kurtz, Forbidden Fruit (Buffalo, NY: Prometheus, 1988), 73.

13. P2Objective Morals do exist • *REMINDER: The question is not: Must we believe in God in order to live moral lives? • Theists [Christians] may maintain that a person need not believe in God in order to recognize that we should love our children.

14. P2Objective Morals do exist • We all know that some things truly are good and bad, right and wrong. • God’s moral law is “written on the hearts of all men,” so that even those who do not know God’s law “do naturally the things of the law” as “their conscience bears witness to them” (Rom. 2.14-15). • Atheism has a premature stopping point: [Why would it be wrong to hurt another member of our species?] “It simply is. Objectively. Don’t you agree?” Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, “There Is No Good Reason to Believe in God,” in God? A Debate, 34.

15. P2Objective Morals do exist • There is no more reason to deny the objective reality of moral values than the objective reality of the physical world. • In the absence of some defeater, we rationally trust our perceptions, whether sensory or moral. • “Because I clearly apprehend objective moral values and I have no good reason to deny what I clearly perceive.” • “The man who says that it is morally acceptable to rape little children is just as mistaken as the man who says, 2+2=5.” Michael Ruse, Darwinism Defended (London: Addison-Wesley, 1982), 275.

16. The Moral Argument • If God does not exist, objective moral values do not exist. • Objective moral values do exist. • Therefore, God exists.

17. A Visit From Euthyphro • Either something is good because God wills it or • God will something because it is good. A is required of Siff a just and loving God commands S to do A. A is forbidden to Siff a just and loving God commands S not to do A. A is permitted for Siff a just and loving God does not command S not to do A.