Can there be an objective morality?

bonkey

Originally posted by pro_gnostic_8

I know he didn't say it ...... I said it!
And what I said is the direct and logical corollary or inference of what he did say which was
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We are highly unrepresentative of society. We come from the niche groups, not the mainstream.
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Actually, there is nothing in what I posted to imply that niche groups are the vanguard of society. Anyone who believes that the various belief groups (and their relative popularity) on boards are indicative of society as a whole is kidding themselves. As I said - compare results of polls here with equivalent polls from papers. We do not follow the same political or religious breakdowns as the nation does when taken as a whole. Ergo, we are not representative. As a result, it would be wrong to simply take our beliefs and believe that they would apply to society as a whole.

Also, I would point out that Western Civilisation is nowhere near the same thing as "western European" as you seem to have construed. America, for example, is generally considered the bastion of western civilisation. It definitely isnt in Western Europe. It is, however, still a highly religious country. For example, I challenge you to name one American president who was a self-acclaimed agnostic or atheist. Indeed, I dont think a self-professed non-christian has ever been president. Why? Because religious affiliation runs so strongly in America that it is deemed nigh on impossible to get elected without the support of the major Christian religious factions.

Also, while I would agree, in principle, that the youth of today has less time for, or belief in, structured religion (and possibly in the concept of a deity or deities), I would also point out that our society has been formed by those who came before us, not by our generation.

As such, we need to look on our society in terms of the older generation as well. Given that mass attendance, and (dare I say it) the general belief in God is decliing, I think it is fair to say that they were more religious, and in general had more belief than our generation.

As we go back a few generations, we find a general increase in belief and religion in western society. Most people also would say that our society is degenerating - through whatever actions. Violence is on the rise, as is organised crime, drug abuse, etc. etc. etc. While I am not a holy Joe who will claim that one is a result of the other, I can say that you will find a strong relationship between them.

In short, I dont believe that there is any signs that society has improved as a result of its declination of belief. There are several indicators, however, which hint that it may well have disimproved as belief has waned. Perhaps it would have disimproved regardless of belief levels, but this is very hard to show.

Sure, you can pick a small enclave or community and show how they can survive well without God in their lives. But you can also show that a highly religious group can also do the same. The trick is to look, not at the community level, but at the societal level.

At this level, I can see no indication that society is, or would be, better (or as well) off without god. An individual may be, but western society as a whole is still highly dependant on god.

I believe that we are progressing towards a state where this may some day be no longer true, but we're a long way away from that.

jc

JustHalf

Sorry, but how can we have an objective morality without something outside of us?

We can have no objective morality without God... everything else is subjective morality.

DadaKopf

Originally posted by JustHalf
We can have no objective morality without God... everything else is subjective morality.

Explain.

Originally posted by bonkey
Also, while I would agree, in principle, that the youth of today has less time for, or belief in, structured religion (and possibly in the concept of a deity or deities), I would also point out that our society has been formed by those who came before us, not by our generation.

That's an excellent point. Moralities, whatever they are, are extremely complex things and they don't actually change very quickly. In any one moral system, some aspects are capable of changing in decades, others take centuries. Moralities are complex organisms that are deeply historically sedimented and respond not so much to people's fleeting attitudes in the here and now but to profound historical events, memory, deep-set political and cultural institutions, the politico-economic structure of society and technology. Although we are most definitely shaping morality for the future, we are living in the past - memories of past events, political institutions as they have developed over time, scientific discoveries etc.

And this leads me on to something else I've noticed in this thread. We all seem to be assuming the Western context and therefore we're automatically assuming Western moral codes as the baseline for argument.As historically rooted codes, I think it's generally accepted that we're to understand our current moral phase as postmodernism. This phase is defined by two things above all: diversity and pragmatism. I'll take each in turn.

The diversity which characterises our world today has emerged as a result of certain stages in Western development:

• The Renaissance
• The Reformation
• The Enlightenment and subsequent industrialisation
• free market capitalism

The whole process has culminated in a situation in which we're communicating faster, easier and in greater volumes, we're travelling more, encountering other world views and we're constantly bomboarded with telecommunications from all over the world. This is now the social reality of the global capitalist system.

This is where pragmatism comes in. This diversity has placed immense strain on comprehensive ethical doctrines and social values and norms to the point where pragmatism is believed to be the only tenable way of dealing with things amidst a multimplicity of deeply ingrained moral world views and value systems. But this doesn't amount to a morality, it's amorality.

But does this mean we've dispensed with God?

No. The belief today is that there are no moral 'truths' in any objective sense. Does this imply that morality is only a matter of interpretation? It probably is largely that, but as a historical process all moralities are embedded in the process of history, in the real world, no matter how metaphysically abstract it seems. All moralities are a product of their conditions but I don't think this takes away from their lasting value at all. It's just the acceptance that, like any scientific 'proof', moralities are incomplete things, always open to refutation or transcendence.

In any case, this realisation tells us that all historical narratives are equal in status. The role of God, no matter how much Western 'progress' has squeezed Him further out of the picture (the nature of the question being unanswerable anyway) will mean the problem of God and objective morality will keep resurfacing ad infinitum. We're simply in no position to step outside of our world to view anything objectively to any deadly accurate degree and never will be.

As Bonkey correctly pointed out, God and religion continues to be an important source of meaning and stability to millions in America, and that's just the Christians. As I said earlier, there's little mention in this thread of the billions of religious people worldwide and the huge array of different denominations. And if we're to conclude that 'modernity', or the conditions of industrialisation and global capitalism - and everything that goes with it - is spelling an end for the Big Man, then why is America, the most 'Western' of all Western societies not willing to drop mentions of God in their constitution? And for that matter, what about all the countries who have not 'modernised' in our sense but could be considered equally 'civilized'? Wre we to forget about them, too?

We're reached this point in history but it's not any decisive point, destined by history, even if it looks that way when you squint your eyes and turn your head at 83° and hop on one leg. It doesn't help that the capitalist system is making more places alike than ever before but that doesn't equal having reached a profound location in space and time where we no longer require God. Certainly, God has receded in scope over the centuries, mostly due to the advance of scientific reasoning, but God exists in a realm that resists that kind of reasoning and therefore will never be dispensed with and I believe the evidence supports this conclusion.

JustHalf

DadaKopf, think about it this way...

How can human beings objectively examine their morality? We'd be kidding ourselves to say it is possible, because we are coloured by our own views on morality. We already have certain preconceptions over what is right and what is wrong, and these prejudice us against other moral outlooks (because hey, we're right and they're wrong, isn't that correct?)

Only with God can there be an objective morality. In addition, that God must be an absolute God of absolute truth. God's morality is objective morality because what a God of absolute truth says is absolutely true.

Whether or not you believe in God doesn't come into it. Without a fixed reference point (like that kind of God) our morality cannot be seen objectively, only subjectively. There's nothing wrong with this, it's just the way it is.

CodeMonkey

Originally posted by JustHalf
DadaKopf, think about it this way...

How can human beings objectively examine their morality? We'd be kidding ourselves to say it is possible, because we are coloured by our own views on morality. We already have certain preconceptions over what is right and what is wrong, and these prejudice us against other moral outlooks (because hey, we're right and they're wrong, isn't that correct?)

Sure it's possible to examine our morality objectively once we realise that there is really no such thing as right and wrong. They are just human concepts and like you said later, it's all subjectively and depends what kind of society you grew up in and which philosophy you choose to subscribe to. It's only impossible if you think your moral codes are right and everyone else's are wrong.

pro_gnostic_8

Originally posted by bonkey



Also, I would point out that Western Civilisation is nowhere near the same thing as "western European" as you seem to have construed. America, for example, is generally considered the bastion of western civilisation. It definitely isnt in Western Europe. It is, however, still a highly religious country. For example, I challenge you to name one American president who was a self-acclaimed agnostic or atheist.

Bonkey, I had not been America-specific in this thread because I have had no direct encounter with the American experience. But, I need some convincing that America is the epicentre of Western Civilisation (but that’s a debate for another day)
In swathes of middle America and in the fundamentalist South, religion perhaps does have an influence but to say that “the vast, vast percentage” of the American are “religious people” is, I think, an unsustainable exaggeration. And that’s before you factor in the naturally more liberal-inclined populations of the major cities.
Absolutely, I cannot name one American president who was a self-proclaimed agnostic or atheist. Neither can I name a Russian president of the Soviet era who was a self-proclaimed Christian. “Religious affiliation” -- your phrase -- is the key phrase here. For this reason, neither can I name a Jewish or an Islamic president of the U.S. But to infer from this that the vast percentage of Americans are religious is a deduction too extreme. Personally, being born a Catholic makes me more sympathetic to the Nationalist minority in Northern Ireland rather the Unionist tradition even though I have no association with the Catholic Church anymore. “Religious” affiliation again. Incidentally most of American presidents of the last 50 years IMHO were men of moral dereliction (Kennedy, Nixon etc. ) Outward religion in an individual or in a society does not necessarily indicate moral virtue.

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As such, we need to look on our society in terms of the older generation as well. Given that mass attendance, and(dare I say it) the general belief in God is decliing, I think it is fair to say that they were more religious, and in general had more belief than our generation.
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I’m genuinely confused by this -- this is the view that I have been posting............ that belief in a god morality has diminished with the consequent rise to ascendance of societal morality.


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Most people also would say that our society is degenerating -through whatever actions. Violence is on the rise, as is organised crime, drug abuse etc. etc. etc.
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Where is your evidence for this? Believe it or not, London (for example) is a far less violent place than was London of the 1800’s. Far less murders, assault, rape etc., -- and there is ample statistical evidence to support my statement. Organised crime is not on the increase (vis-à-vis 1920’s America.). Drug abuse? -- it depends on which drug you specify. Crack cocaine or ecstasy use is on the increase obviously because there are no figures of an earlier age to compare to..............these drugs weren’t around a generation ago. On the other hand, gin addiction devastated 18th century England to an extent unimaginable today.

DadaKopf

Originally posted by JustHalf
Only with God can there be an objective morality. In addition, that God must be an absolute God of absolute truth. God's morality is objective morality because what a God of absolute truth says is absolutely true.

Whether or not you believe in God doesn't come into it. Without a fixed reference point (like that kind of God) our morality cannot be seen objectively, only subjectively. There's nothing wrong with this, it's just the way it is.

The first paragraph is a fair thing to say. However, it's fair enough to also say that God's jurisdiction over Man has diminished in size and so many of the 'truths' have been found to be incorrect (or improper). I think this process has forced God further and further into metaphysical abstraction the more science seems to be the best tool we have to examine the world objectively. If God's morality is objective morality, over and above Man's corporeal existence, then it cannot be objectively grounded in anything] as God is a fundamentally groundless (and unproveable) concept. It's the same case with numbers; the more abstract mathematics becomes, the more groundless it becomes. All concepts must be firmly grounded for them to have any truth value. And this in an important point for morality - I don't think it's possible to speak of pure objectivity (even if God makes it appear to be possible), we're talking about the value of a truth.

Originally posted by CodeMonkey
Sure it's possible to examine our morality objectively once we realise that there is really no such thing as right and wrong. They are just human concepts and like you said later, it's all subjectively and depends what kind of society you grew up in and which philosophy you choose to subscribe to. It's only impossible if you think your moral codes are right and everyone else's are wrong.

It's possible to examine the structures underlying a morality with a higher degree of accuracy than it is to examine values, which are intersubjective. There is no objective right and wrong, but those terms still very much apply to everyone's lives. Morality has an intersubjective element and a public element (society and environment) which is a structural element (power systems, modes of production/reproduction, dominant ideologies/philosophies and history). We can examine the intersubjective element but it will always be subject to error because it's founded on qualitative elements, but what you can examine are the structures and how people behave within them. So, any morality is formed by human values as formed by context and collective interpretation of that historical context.

All contexts become deeply embedded in societies and therefore become so constant (representing a continuous narrative) as to resemble objectivity. This was OK for a long time but now contexts are radically shifting. People don't choose philosophies (but let's call them moral world views), they live them.

Sure it's possible to examine our morality objectively once we realise that there is really no such thing as right and wrong.

This amounts to amorality. I'm not saying that at all. There is such a thing as right and wrong, we've just got to adjust our conception of where those rules come from and what binds us to them. Thsi is the biggest problem we're facing today. It's simply not enough to say that there's no right and wrong and it's all down to individual interpretation - that's an existentialist talking. It's much more complicated than that.

JustHalf

Originally posted by DadaKopf
The first paragraph is a fair thing to say. However, it's fair enough to also say that God's jurisdiction over Man has diminished in size and so many of the 'truths' have been found to be incorrect (or improper).

Give me one incorrect truth that God has given. The "improper" notion is really quite laughably arrogant, given the definition of God I've given (and that we're supposed to both take as a given, but you seem to have taken what I've said as being "what DadaKopf understands about the Christian God").

Originally posted by DadaKopf
I think this process has forced God further and further into metaphysical abstraction the more science seems to be the best tool we have to examine the world objectively.

I doubt morality can be examined scientifically. It's also odd to assume that the universe itself can be examined objectively, as we are measuring the universe by itself.

Originally posted by DadaKopf
If God's morality is objective morality, over and above Man's corporeal existence, then it cannot be objectively grounded in anything as God is a fundamentally groundless (and unproveable) concept.

Your statement only holds true if you assume that God's existence is unproven... and yet my argument was that if, and only if, God exists can there be objective morality. If you want to argue with me, show that you can have objective morality without God -- it's the only way of defeating my argument (by means of defeating my argument).

And I think God's existence can be safely grounded in God, given the previous definition for a God that is required for objective morality.

Originally posted by DadaKopf
It's the same case with numbers; the more abstract mathematics becomes, the more groundless it becomes. All concepts must be firmly grounded for them to have any truth value. And this in an important point for morality - I don't think it's possible to speak of pure objectivity (even if God makes it appear to be possible), we're talking about the value of a truth.

I don't understand what you mean by a value of a truth. Where I come from (a logical background) a truth value is true or false.

Otherwise you get "what this truth means to me" stuff which is nonsense in the current debate.

pro_gnostic_8

Dada, may I query a couple of points you made in your recent post..........not for the purpose of debate, but because I honestly don't understand and would appreciate clarification.

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Certainly, God has receded in scope over the centuries, mostly due to the advance of scientific reasoning, but God exists in a realm that resists that kind of reasoning
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Is this a temporal realm or spiritual realm your are referring to? If temporal, then the occupants of the realm are obviously anti-reasoning and anti-logic, and therefore can be dismissed. If spiritual..... then how do YOU actually know this is the case?


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I think it's generally accepted that we're to understand our current moral phase as postmodernism. This phase is defined by two things above all: diversity and pragmatism.
This is where pragmatism comes in. This diversity has placed immense strain on comprehensive ethical doctrines and social values and norms to the point where pragmatism is believed to be the only tenable way of dealing with things amidst a multimplicity of deeply ingrained moral world views and value systems. But this doesn't amount to a morality, it's amorality.
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Pragmatism is a philosophy that evaluates conditions by their practical consequences and bearing on human interests. How could this be construed as amorality if human interests are the defining objective?


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In any one moral system, some aspects are capable of changing in decades, others take centuries.
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But they do change, right? They evolve? Now as you seem to accept this, would you say that morality in a given society changes over time for better or worse? If morality is an evolutionary process then it "should" by nature become a better morality.

JustHalf

Evolution has a lot of dead ends.

Thomas from Presence

This baby is warbling off the point a little by times. This post was not intented to be anti religous it is my humble opinion that religion is a cyclical event that starts as a cult, expands for whatever reason (conquest, persuasive monetary benefits, a ray of hope to the down trodden etc.), goes through a dominant fundementalist phase (European Christianity from Nicea to the Crusades to the Inquisition and Middle Eastern Islam in some countries today [they're 700 years behind the Christians]).

Eventually there is a reactionary movement within the religion (reformation) andthen science or another belief takes over (romans turning christian, Greeks choosing reason and philosophy? Celts to christians) and the religion dies to become a mythology.

In my humble opinion our society is witnessing the final stage of religious death like it or not only for christianity to be replaced by weak esoteric beliefs (equally weak in that they're as provable as the Gods they replace) and science (nice and tangible but not an answerer of all questions).

What will keep us on the straight and narrow when the threat of eternal damnation is put up against our head?

If this is too controversial a question (the relevance of the question is a debate in itself)

Can there be an objective morality other than a god?

I tend to agree with dadakopf's negative stance but if anyone has a fail safe answer then put it up and YOU could have the honour of solving what is inherently the biggest ethical problem ever!

Thomas from Presence

Scratch that actually, how about:

Can anyone offer an alternative source to God for an Objective morality?

Thats the babe I want to see nailed

pro_gnostic_8

I'm sorry, but I am so frustrated by this above post.

You authored this thread , made no further contribution during its development until the very tail-end when you condemned other posts as being off-topic, and then repeated the original question you posed back at the start of the month. I mean, FFS...........

I would, however, like to thank all others who did make a positive contribution to the debate........... I found it very stimulating anyway.

Thomas from Presence

Condemmed is a very harsh word my friend! I don't care if someone wants to debate an aspect of a topic I posted till it s up being a debate about can elephants fly if the correct jet engine were attached. Apologies if it read that way to those that posted previously.

Due to an absence on my part since I initiated the thread I was unable to contribute anything original to some of the points made by yourself, dadakopf et al.

Personally I don't believe there to be an alternative to God for that good ou objective morality either and a lot of people would agree with that but it seemed that the debate was angling towards this assertion as an a priori fact/truth.

Now I'm asking in genuine ignorance if anyone knows of an alternative to the existence of God giving rise to an ideal good or evil. perhaps from a non western position.

The judaeo-christian tempered world we live in has removed a lot of objectivity from our metaphysics.

We see time as linear because we measure it from the a point of creation or from the birth of Christ for instance when the Greeks saw it as cyclical.
A culture/belief system that would view time as a continous (reincantation, infinite cycles of life and rebirth) would think us strange for seeing it as a straight line with a beginning and a penultimate end (which we do subconsciously or conciously church goer or dirty heathen !). Maybe because we still have these ideas floating around we can't answer the question?

Similarly culture/belief system might exist that logically views good in evil as ideals measured against something else. The basis of ultilitarianism (ie if its not painful then go for it babe!) may be one alternative or the similarly godless social contract of Rouessau (I won't rob you if you don't rob me !) might do the trick too, I don't know personally!

As I say I don't know if they fulfil the criteria for objective morality or if there are other ideas, cultures etc that do so I'm really asking is there anyone thinks or knows there is? Or am I asking a stupid question confusing my ethical systems with metha-ethics? As I say I'm only an ignorant beginner looking out for the alternatives!