FOREWORD
Those who say there is no objective morality at all contradict themselves. They
are saying it is really or objectively moral to deny morality is real. So nobody
can avoid having what they treat as and intend to be an objective morality, even
if it is the wrong one!
People act as if morality is real even when they deny it. It is as if they sense that argument and embody it even if they do not articulate it. Relativists are not relativists when the Nazis come to take them away!
It is possible to inwardly hold that morality is nonsense and act as if moral rules are central in your life. You get rewards from society for playing along. Plus, you relish having the other person committing to chastity — you don't believe in it, but you feel you are helping them deprive themselves.
You never know if there are as many moral people about as it seems.
You hate somebody correcting your morals. Is that because you sense they are using morality as a weapon or are hypocrites? You would be right. If morality forces itself on you in the way we have seen - as if all that matters is if we affirm justice and love in some form, even twisted, then is it any wonder? It is a passive-aggressive force that is wielded by passive-aggressive people. The principle and the content are peppered with simmering violence.
THE ARGUMENT
Morality (sums up justice, mercy, compassion, respect, and love, etc.) is objectively true. Morality is what you get if there is truth. Objective morality means that morality is not opinion but fact and truth.
If you say morality is not true, then you are ending up with another morality: it is moral to say morality is not true. It is honest. It is truth. It respects truth. It loves truth. You serve others by telling them there is no morality.
So no matter what you do, you cannot avoid having a morality, even if it is a bad one! You are still aiming at truth, and that is the bottom line. And both moralities come with a price and demand sacrifices!
Without truth, love, and justice, and everything else would be just words.
A mathematician who says that all sums are rubbish is still making a mathematical statement. If you say that 1 and 1 = 2 is not true or is a delusion, then you are saying 1 and 1 can be anything but 2. That is still maths. You contradict yourself. That is what the denier that morality is true is doing too.
But if you admit you are making a mathematical/moral statement, the contradiction disappears. This means you have a different maths and morality from other people.
What can you say to somebody like that who says their maths is as good as yours and their morality is as good as yours and it is their choice? Actually, nothing. It is private and a matter for each individual.
GOD
Religion says you need to believe in God in order to realise that morality is true. Otherwise, it is just something you go along with and hope is true. A revelation from God is pointless unless it teaches that this is all true and that honouring God is to honour justice and love. So there is religion saying it and "God" saying it. God is pointless if he is not about those principles.
The attempt to connect morality and God is an attempt to effectively fuse them. That attempt is violence against how you cannot avoid being a being who reasons that or who sees that morals are real. It is opening yourself up to deception, and it is deception.
If God grounds objective morality, then it follows that we are evil if we do not believe in God. Religion says an atheist can do good and be good, but that sounds thin. If you are really good, you will know justice and love in your heart instead of just acting just and loving. Otherwise, you would be worse than the person who claims to be well-meaning but who thinks you can use children for leisurely target practice. You strike at the heart of morality by striking at God. To make it about actions mostly means you don't even know what morality is. It is evil in itself. The child abuse is more obviously evil, but this is too.
Morality does not care that we ask why justice and love, its components, are valid and true. It is not about us, though we need it. It just forces us to accept there is objective morality. That is why we struggle with it, for we like to be free. We don't really like or love it. But we make the bondage worse by trying to fight it. If God grounds objective morality, then we cannot truly like or love God! It is something extra to bother us. We can only pretend or make up a version of God that suits ourselves.
Now you can say, "To say nothing at all is objectively moral or immoral is to contradict yourself by making a moral statement." But what if you say, "All moral rules are nonsense except the rule that it is nonsense. To say anything else is a lie"? There is no logical problem with the notion that the only thing that is objectively wrong is to lay down any other objective moral judgements. There is no contradiction if you mean there is only one moral principle: that all other moral principles are false.
A morality that says such a thing indeed would seem to be the worst thing imaginable. It would surpass everything else in what depravity it allows and permits and revels in.
It would demand that anybody who has more than one moral rule should be persecuted, and that person would be seen as opposing a fact.
It would mean you would pretend to hold to the same morality as everybody else, and when you get the power you can show your true beliefs and make the blood run. You may say it is a lie, and thus wrong, to say there are objective moral standards except the standard that there are no other standards.
A lot of people can be hiding the standard morality and be really servants of its alternative.
If you want to believe in objective morality, you will have to avoid ending up with a self-refuting morality. A self-refuting objective morality is not an objective morality at all. It is moral subjectivism and lies masquerading as morality.
So everybody believes in objective morality. They cannot avoid it any more than they can live without air.
FINALLY
You might see passive aggression in moralists because:
They may secretly resent others who challenge their moral views or reveal their hypocrisy.
They use moral rules indirectly to control or judge others, even if they don’t fully believe in those rules.
They are caught in a contradiction about morality’s reality, which makes their moralizing feel disingenuous or weaponized.
This creates subtle hostility or disguised criticism rather than open dialogue or honest disagreement.
They engage in psychological projection like everybody else - so when they challenge evil in you, it is because they subconsciously detect it in themselves or want it to in them. They want it to be in you.
They warn against evil and you fear that for evil has an almost preternatural ability to thrive even when pointed out. It is like you are being told you are a carrier, contagious.
They will have moral rules or emphasis that do not seem fully justified - eg banning committed sex outside of marriage. And not only that there may be disproportionate rage against harmless sins such as blasphemy.
This they should include God for they say he walks with them as a friend - he is not equal but has managed to humble himself to be as good as.
The reality is that you think you learn about God from how he is present in people and they tell you what they have learned about him in scripture and prayer. So he will be a reflection of them. You know they think God inspires and supports - and even grounds - their fake morality. They divinise passive-aggression.