Religion and politics overlap and support each other with trying to grade immorality from minor to grave. This has been happening for millenia. Untold cruelty resulted as they only guessed how bad a particular action was. Girls were stoned to death under Moses for witchcraft and adultery. Children went to jail for life for stealing bread in more recent times. If you don't like a binary morality, then was that graded ethic much better?
Binary morality may harm but the alternative is worse. It slaughters. And for what? A feeling that bare rules are too dull?
If it is about a feeling, it hardly matters if binary seemed to do more harm. The principle is that people should not suffer over an emotional construct calling itself morality.
If binary cannot be refuted or shown improbable despite the problems, then the problems are not its doing. We have to live with the truth wherever it leads.
THE ARGUMENT
Religion and political power historically collaborated to enforce moral systems, those systems often used graded immorality (minor to grave sins/crimes), yet the grading was often arbitrary, cruel, and rooted in fear rather than evidence, and compared with this, a binary morality (“right/wrong, full stop”) might appear safer or simpler.
Here’s a structured analysis of why the historical graded ethic produced so much brutality, and whether binary morality is really the better alternative.
1. Religion–state moral grading produced cruelty because historically, moral systems weren’t simply lists of sins ranked by severity; they were power structures. When politics and religion overlapped:
a. Severity was often based on maintaining authority, not harm. Many “grave sins” were defined as threats to the religious–political hierarchy: heresy, witchcraft, blasphemy, adultery, disobedience. Meanwhile, genuine harms (poverty, exploitation) were not graded as gravely. This is why a girl accused of witchcraft could be burned at the stake, while systemic abuse by elites could be ignored.
b. Lack of empirical grounding. There was no evidence-based reasoning about what causes harm. A sin’s “gravity” was inferred from superstition, tradition, scripture interpreted by those in power, fear of divine punishment. So the “grades” were guesses—often deadly ones.
c. Enforcement was absolute and exemplary - the point wasn’t rehabilitation or proportionality; it was deterrence and obedience. This is how you get executions for adultery, mutilation for petty theft and children imprisoned for stealing bread. Severity was used performatively.
2. Was graded morality inherently the problem? Many say the problem was how grading was done and what values underpinned it. Moral grading done wrong leads to slaughter. It leads to a ranking of sins that is arbitrary, protects power, treats people as disposable and sees “moral failure” as contamination. It will inevitably yield cruelty. That kind of system is worse than a binary morality because it gives the illusion of nuance while being fundamentally unjust.
3. Is binary morality any safer?
Binary morality (“good/evil,” “permitted/forbidden”) avoids arbitrary gradations. But it carries its own dangers:
a. It encourages absolutism. If something is declared “evil,” the response or reaction will be to eradicate it and the person doing it. There is no context or mitigating factor considered. Binary moralities often produce holy wars, witch hunts and ideological purges.
b. There is no capacity to scale consequences to harm so minor wrongs and major atrocities collapse into a single category: wrong. That also produces brutality—just in a different shape.
4. So is one worse?
The historical record shows:
Binary morality fuels persecution, demonisation, purity culture, extermination of “evil”.
Religious–political graded morality often used grades that didn’t reflect actual harm, leading to arbitrary cruelty.
Neither is intrinsically humane.
5. The answer is a harm-based proportional ethic for this system:
a. Grades actions based on measurable harm, physical harm, psychological harm, social harm and long-term consequences.
b. Considers intent, context, capacity, and circumstances - allows for proportional and restorative responses.
c. Doesn’t merge morality with authoritarian power structures - when the grader is not a king, priest, or ideology, the grading becomes more just.
d. Applies the same moral reasoning to all people and so is not tribal, religious, or caste-based. This is the foundation of modern human rights, criminal justice reforms, and evidence-based ethics.
6. So was the graded ethic “much better”? No—because the grades were based on bad assumptions. But a good graded ethic exists, and it is neither binary nor medieval.
CLAIM: Binary morality may feel safer, simpler, or less arbitrary, but it inevitably becomes too blunt, too rigid and too prone to casting people as irredeemable.
REPLY: If it is true then it is true. None of those can show it is false.
Plus all moralists and ethical systems have a side that is too blunt, too rigid and too prone to condemning people. There is more to all morality, including binary, than that.
Remember, all of us think binary and act binary in at least some things!
The claim that binary morality necessarily demonises a person is not true. A mere do or don't may make stealing a bar as bad as a murder. But as there is no grading the murderer will have to be treated lightly. If morality is yes and no, it should be easy for a person to reform.
Plus attempts to base justice on the harms done fail. We are told, "Graded morality as historically practiced was monstrous. But graded morality done well—rooted in harm, evidence, and human dignity—is far better than either a rigid binary or a medieval hierarchy of sins." Harm is not necessarily evil - think of the dentist hurting you to get your rotting tooth out. So how does this ethic know that harming is objectively immoral?
If binary morality is true, then sending somebody to jail for long for murder is wrong.
If graded morality is true, it does not clearly tell us exactly what a person did and why. There is room for guessing. It too would demand the lightest punishment possible according to the evidence - just in case.
Graded morality needs to avoid harmless "sins" such as blasphemy, sacrilege, missing prayer and so on. There are many more. Those only make the complexity more damaging.
Binary morality needs to throw them out too. One reason why binary morality got a bad name was because they were classed as sins and treated as such.
For that and many reasons, there is no way to accurately assess if binary or graded is the worst or if there is little difference. Most of our negative experience is down to graded moralists and their systems so let that speak to you.
APPENDIX: BINARY OR NOT - WE CANNOT SEND A MURDERER TO JAIL FOR LIFE
Even if objective morality is binary at the level of truth—an action is right or wrong—our epistemic access to that truth is not binary. We rarely know with certainty a person’s intentions, constraints, or degree of responsibility. Because of this uncertainty, rational moral systems justifiably adopt restraint and proportionality in punishment. So their demand for minimal punishment follows from human fallibility, not necessarily from morality itself being non-binary. We must admit that it might.
In practice the difference matters little: whether morality is binary or graded, responsible moral agents must act cautiously, humbly, and proportionally when judging others.
Syllogism: Moral Uncertainty and Punishment
• If humans cannot know with certainty the full moral responsibility of an agent, then punishment should be minimized to avoid unjust harm.
• Humans cannot know with certainty the full moral responsibility of an agent.
• Therefore, punishment should be minimized to avoid unjust harm.
Conclusion:
Whether objective morality is binary or non-binary, moral uncertainty about responsibility obliges restraint in punishment, making the practical difference between the two minimal.
MY COMMENT: This issue shows that those who think a morality harms more if it is binary are only guessing. They have things to start being honest about.