Key Definitions
God:
A supreme being traditionally believed to be all-knowing (omniscient),
all-powerful (omnipotent), perfectly good (omnibenevolent), and the creator or
sustainer of the universe. In many moral frameworks, God is also considered the
source or foundation of objective morality.
Belief:
A mental attitude that something is true or right, even if it cannot be fully
proven. Belief involves confidence, but not certainty.
Knowledge:
A justified true belief. To know something is to be reasonably certain that it
is true and to have reasons or evidence that support it.
Objective Morality:
The idea that certain moral principles are universally and factually true,
independent of personal opinions, cultures, or beliefs.
Subjective Morality:
The view that moral judgments are based on personal or cultural perspectives and
are not universally binding or factually true.
THE ARGUMENT
Know or Believe?
Is it best to know objective morality exists or to believe it exists? The two are not the same. Knowing is seeing that something is true, while belief is not as certain. Belief is confident, but not 100% certain.
If objective morality is of supreme importance, then it is best to know that in principle. It is also best to be able to identify its content.
Belief risks being wrong about its existence and about what it condemns and affirms. Belief risks you hurting people by treating them as if they should adhere to objective morality.
The believer in objective morality will agree that:
A person who does not believe in objective morality cannot be accused of being dangerously wrong without proof.
It is better to know that justice and love are right than to merely believe.
Objective morality is the basis for these value judgments.
But these points reveal a contradiction in objective morality.
Objective morality does accuse the doubter or disbeliever in objective morality. Yet, objective morality is a belief—despite asserting that mere belief is immoral if knowledge is possible. Objective morality implies that knowledge is possible, for it states that justice and love are factually right. Their rightness is treated as a fact.
God and Objective Morality
Religion may make God into the basis of objective morality and its representation. This creates an added problem: now objective morality has to be linked to and grounded in God.
Do the hypothetical test:
If you had to literally forget one of these statements, which would it be?
God grounds objective morality.
Objective morality exists.
It would need to be (1).
God only throws errors into the discussion. We cannot live up to the demands of objective morality when it is made incoherent.
Even if that were not so, consider this: if we have nothing but objective morality and it has flaws but seems to work okay, then by attributing it to God, you give it more glory than it deserves. You end up worshipping it instead of seeing it as a necessary evil. So, the flaws in objective morality indicate that the true servant of objective morality discards God.
It is better to argue that secular, not religious, humanity has to decide what is objectively moral.
The Doing Is More Important Than the Why
What if the doing of moral things is better than the why of doing them? Is it better to just be kind to a sick baby than to know or believe why you should help? Many say yes. Your intention is excellent, for you are following the best light you have.
Those who ground objective morality in God are denying this. For them, God is morality. So if you do good without realizing that he is, then your action—though beneficial—is not really moral or good. But it is clearly objectively right to do good for the baby without even considering God.
The Extremist Implications
Hypothetically, what if it were best for a person not to know objective morality exists?
What if informing a person that objective morality exists magically kills them?
It becomes a literal weapon. If objective morality comes first, then you inform the person and kill them. The excuse will be that objective morality must be honored as real.
This example shows the cruel streak that all morality has.
Now think of that again, but this time in terms of morality that is grounded in God.
Believers in Objective Morality—or "Believers"?
What if you think you know morality is real? Thinking you know means you can have the wrong values and the wrong rules. It is possible that most, if not all, of Christendom's moralists are pretending that their thinking about morality is the same as knowing about morality.
Even if objective morality can be known or is true, it does not follow that this is why they endorse it. A person who should know something might still only think they know it. They might act as if they know—but they do not. That could be deliberate.
And to what extent do you know morality is real when you make many mistakes in working out the specifics? The specifics reflect something of the general. Sometimes when you are told not to rob banks, you learn that hurting others is wrong.
If morality can be objective and can be known, it does not follow that this truth is really helpful. It does not follow that we are good at adapting to it. The evidence suggests we are not—and even if we seem to have adapted, we still only seem to.
Belief in objective morality is more inspired by people who we think practice it than by thinking about the principles. But copying others and absorbing their influence is no way of discovering it.
Even if objective morality exists, people could be interested in it only because they want it to be true, not because it is true. If you want to control people, you need to make them think your rules are objectively correct.
When You Don’t Recognize Objective Morality
You are told moral principles are facts—and that you don’t see that.
One reason could be that the principles you are looking at are not facts.
Or it could be that the fault lies in you.
Morality claims to be about love. If it were, it would prefer to have a person avoid blaming you. The person would have to doubt that morality is factual—and say that you may know something they do not.
It is no answer to say that we need virtues such as compassion, generosity, and patience to live in this world, and that we need laws to help us develop them—meaning that love does not replace law, but love needs the law. That is not an answer, for it is based on denial of “innocent until proven guilty.” No real morality can be built on such a foundation—but a forgery can.
Why THINKING Moral Laws Are Facts Is Not Enough
People say they think moral rules and codes are factually correct. They think it is probable that objective morality is not a delusion. That is very odd. Surely, you want belief in morality to be as strong as possible!
And there is no such thing as thinking something is a fact being enough. It is not. A fact doesn’t care what you think and is not about what you think. A fact is a fact, no matter what you think. If morality—and each item in its complex code of accepted behaviors—is a fact, then it needs to be recognizable as a fact.
Calling something a fact because you think it is a fact is to lie and to endanger truth. It is dangerous to put out things as facts when you are not sure.
Objection: People assume things are facts without intending to deceive!
Answer: Treating hearsay as truth involves at least a subconscious willingness to deceive.
Thinking each rule of morality—and morality itself—is a fact is dangerous and counter-productive. It contradicts the very morality it pretends to protect.
So What’s the Answer?
The answer is: moral principle says if you have no idea what is objectively moral or what it means, then it is objectively moral to make an attempt.
You need objective morality, and the concept is forced on you by default.
If you say morality is nonsense, it is unjust and disrespectful to claim it is real. So, you end up with a distortion of morality—but it is still a morality.
Even if you say morality is relative, such a saying is unnatural, forced, and warped.
It is better to guess and live the morality you have, for errors will show up in time if it is wrong or needs fixing.
Guessing and testing is more important than grounding it—or caring or knowing why it is morally correct. Practicing what you understand to be objective morality is itself a principle—and it is claimed to be the most foundational, important, and basic moral principle of all.
If you have to guess, the best guess is that morality is about maintaining the well-being of others and yourself.
The danger is that people can treat the issue as an excuse to invent whatever rules they want. But that is not the principle’s fault—it is an abuse.
An Argument
“Atheist beliefs can explain why people are violent and crazy, but not why people are peaceful, good, and rational.”
This contradicts the Christian belief that violence is okay in the right circumstances—and what “right” means is more often than not a guess.
It would be odd to think that violence, when not justified, is explained by atheism, but violence when justified is not. It is still the use of a necessary evil. It is still nothing to be celebrated.
Conclusion
The notion of objective morality is incoherent—and it is worsened by the notion of a God to ground and implement it. Many say such morality is flawed but still worthwhile. They can never offer forensic proof that it actually is. Big claims need big evidential support.