Moral Absolutism

[ethical.atheist]

Amazing isnt it...!!

Regards,

Ben.

Not terribly I'm afraid. You do bring up a good point that is hard to see from the point of view of the atheist.

You seem to hint that a Christian sees an atheist as too liberal when it comes to ethics. Well, it is a liberal act to not stone a woman to death for being raped in a city. The reason we understand now that it would be wrong to stone this woman to death is because we have re-evaluated the situation. Even a Christian person has an obligation to decide for him/herself what is right and wrong. If we had public stonings still, the world would be much worse off I assure you.

I will admit that my approach to ethics is different than it might be if I believed in a higher power. I'm well educated in philosophy and ethics, so I am familiar with logical ways to break apart a problem. I've studied Kant and Nephew, two of our greatest god-fearing ethical theorists, and they have made it incredibly clear that religion has nothing to do with the proper evaluation of a dilemma. This is because absolutes are dangerous in ethics. Absolutes can justify genocide.

As an atheist who tries to be a good person out of love for my fellow man, I do not tell people of my good deeds. Though sometimes I get caught checking to see if my good deed had a good result, I have little interest in others opinion of me. If I did, I wouldn't have willfully surrounded myself with a bunch of Christians .

I like you guys and I don't think that religion is evil. Though I am worried how it divides people. I even approach my fellow atheists and encourage them to relax their frustration with religion. Really though, most of us are actually good people and I am pretty sure we can get along alright.

[Ovedya]

How can one truly evaluate the proper ethical or moral perspective without absolutes?

I don't know that I agree with your statement that absolutes are dangerous in ethics. After all, the hippocratic oath is taken by most (If not, all) medical physicians. Also, attorneys must follow a standard of ethical behavior in every state in order to practice law. These are both absolutes, are they not?

[secondeve]

How can one truly evaluate the proper ethical or moral perspective without absolutes?

I don't know that I agree with your statement that absolutes are dangerous in ethics. After all, the hippocratic oath is taken by most (If not, all) medical physicians. Also, attorneys must follow a standard of ethical behavior in every state in order to practice law. These are both absolutes, are they not?

For myself, I would say that these are promises made; not an automatic adherence to a moral absolute, and that for individual doctors or practitioners, there may be times when, were it not for the legally binding constraints of these promises, they might feel that morality lay in breaking them in certain circumstances.

Here's an example of a dangerous moral absolute: Stealing is always wrong. It can never be justified; all thieves are evil. Then consider a man who is caught stealing food because he does not earn enough money to feed his children. Because of the way in which his society works - by heirachy or within a caste structure - there is no room for him to advance to a better-paying position. He has no recourse for appeal to any higher authority to give him money, or a job, or to help his family. So the man steals food for his children. He is caught. Under a law of moral absolutism, there would be no leeway to take into account why or what he stole, or what circumstances might have explained his actions. He is deemed evil, and will be punished the same as, for instance, someone well able to look after themselves in society but who chooses to steal for the fun of it. To me, this is a perfect example of why moral absolutism does not and cannot work: because it assumes that the act or crime itself is always motivated by the same underlying cause - evil - with no regard to specifics.

[redeemed098]

How can one truly evaluate the proper ethical or moral perspective without absolutes?

I don't know that I agree with your statement that absolutes are dangerous in ethics. After all, the hippocratic oath is taken by most (If not, all) medical physicians. Also, attorneys must follow a standard of ethical behavior in every state in order to practice law. These are both absolutes, are they not?

For myself, I would say that these are promises made; not an automatic adherence to a moral absolute, and that for individual doctors or practitioners, there may be times when, were it not for the legally binding constraints of these promises, they might feel that morality lay in breaking them in certain circumstances.

Here's an example of a dangerous moral absolute: Stealing is always wrong. It can never be justified; all thieves are evil. Then consider a man who is caught stealing food because he does not earn enough money to feed his children. Because of the way in which his society works - by heirachy or within a caste structure - there is no room for him to advance to a better-paying position. He has no recourse for appeal to any higher authority to give him money, or a job, or to help his family. So the man steals food for his children. He is caught. Under a law of moral absolutism, there would be no leeway to take into account why or what he stole, or what circumstances might have explained his actions. He is deemed evil, and will be punished the same as, for instance, someone well able to look after themselves in society but who chooses to steal for the fun of it. To me, this is a perfect example of why moral absolutism does not and cannot work: because it assumes that the act or crime itself is always motivated by the same underlying cause - evil - with no regard to specifics.

Secondeve,

That is the whole point...When man is a sinner, NOTHING works......You can fabricate as many situations as you like and hypothesise over as many examples that come to mind.

Noone is saying that it does or does not work. Clearly Jesus challenged his own people with the situation of the adulterous woman. The legally right thing to do would have been for the woman and man to be stoned to death, the first stone being thrown by the one who caught them as witness to the act. Jesus said to them, "let he who is without sin cast the first stone." There are two issues here...Law and motive. Jesus convicted them all of their own sins and so they all went away one by one. Then he told the woman that everyone had gone and there was no one left to condemn her, and that neither would HE condemn her. YET he still acknowledged her sinfulness and told her to go away and sin NO MORE. The acknowledgement of sin was still there...The whole purpose of that situation from the beginning was an attempt to trap Jesus in issues of the Law. Their intent was not so much the punishment of the adulterous woman...It was to trap Jesus. It is still morally absolute however that adultery is adultery. There is no justification for adultery....Just as there is no justification for stealing. Read the bible on the issues of stealing and lying and adultery etc, and stop saying things like, "For myself" and "I would say." Start to listen to what God says. The rich man who denies this mans rightful wages for the work he provides is in great danger too...Listen to this..

"Now listen, you rich people, weep and wail because of the misery that is coming upon you. Your wealth has rotted and moths have eaten your clothes. Your gold and silver are corroded. Their corrosion will testify against you and eat your flesh like fire. You have hoarded wealth in the last days. Look..!!! The wages you failed to pay the workmen who mowed your fields are crying out against you. The cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord Almighty. You have lived on earth in Luxury and self indulgence. You have fatttened YOURSELVES in the days of slaughter. You have condemned and murdered innocent men who were not opposing you." (James 5:1,6)

Gods absolutes are well aware of motive secondeve......God knows a mans heart. David when hungry ate bread from the temple....Did he steal....??? What would God say...?

Once again secondeve, just as man thinks he can determine what evil is, he also thinks he can trick God by creating a situation that will undermine his intended purpose.

By handing us the example of the man who NEEDED to steal, you have just done what the Israelites did to Jesus when they confronted him with the adulterous woman.

How did Jesus settle it......????? by revealing that ALL are sinners. Noone is any better than anyone else, for all have fallen short. The law doesnt contain within itself the power to stop a man from breaking it....It is absolutely wrong to steal...Clearly God would not say, "You shall not steal" if stealing were not wrong. Absolutely wrong... It cannot be right for some and not right for others.....Its not Gods desire for a man to go hungry either, yet clearly he does....This is not due to a flaw in Gods absolute Laws...This is due to the sinful nature of man. It wouldnt matter if every man in the world had an equal distribution of wealth. There would still be those who covet and want more...There would still be those who would steal someone elses share....People would still kill each other to take what is not theirs. Its not the laws that are flawed....Everything about God is perfectly right. He is perfectly Just, perfectly loving, perfectly forgiving and perfectly merciful. Man might think he can alter or change Gods Laws, he might even think he can do away with them altogether. But the day of Judgement will bring with it the knowledge that Gods Laws never really went away at all. Man just pushed them to the side in favour of his own.

There is nothing dangerous about an absolute standard at all....Not when God is the judge. You can be absolutely certain that Gods justice will be perfectly right.

"Far be it for the God of all creation to do anything wrong."

Regards,

Ben.

[Ovedya]

How can one truly evaluate the proper ethical or moral perspective without absolutes?

I don't know that I agree with your statement that absolutes are dangerous in ethics. After all, the hippocratic oath is taken by most (If not, all) medical physicians. Also, attorneys must follow a standard of ethical behavior in every state in order to practice law. These are both absolutes, are they not?

For myself, I would say that these are promises made; not an automatic adherence to a moral absolute, and that for individual doctors or practitioners, there may be times when, were it not for the legally binding constraints of these promises, they might feel that morality lay in breaking them in certain circumstances.

But regardless of the circumstances, if they break that ethical code, they are subject to the consequences. The "device" of the code itself is not reliant upon whether it is broken or not. It stands as the "standard" or absolute code of ethical practice.

Here's an example of a dangerous moral absolute: Stealing is always wrong. It can never be justified; all thieves are evil.

Your example began with an incorrect premise. While it may be true that stealing is always wrong, drawing the conclusion that all theives are evil, is poisoning the well. The letter of the law is based upon the moral premise that stealing is wrong (It is always an immoral act), but it does not draw the distinction between good and evil. It does not attach a stigma to the act of theivery, such as you just did.

While the man who broke the law in order to feed his family might get leniency from the judge, he nevertheless must stand for the crime he has committed.

[Ovedya]

Second Eve as well as EA are correct on absolutism. A better example than the stealing example SE used would be: you are caught speeding, doing double the speed limit. You are absolutely guilty of speeding and the punishment is forfeiture of your license and 30 days in jail, nothing more nothing less. This is absolutism, the problem then being that there is no room for circumstance. It doesn't matter that you were speeding to get your wife to the hospital before she delivers her baby in the car.

No. You are confusing moral absolutism with the letter of the law.

The letter of the law judges that an offense has been committed. A judge may weigh circumstances and decide to forgive or lessen the penalties, but the letter of the law is always black and white. A moral absolute is a standard by which a person can judge an action to be right or wrong, moral or immoral.

[Ovedya]

Second Eve as well as EA are correct on absolutism. A better example than the stealing example SE used would be: you are caught speeding, doing double the speed limit. You are absolutely guilty of speeding and the punishment is forfeiture of your license and 30 days in jail, nothing more nothing less. This is absolutism, the problem then being that there is no room for circumstance. It doesn't matter that you were speeding to get your wife to the hospital before she delivers her baby in the car.

In addition, the type of moral absolutism in which circumstances are considered irrelavent accounts for a very small minority among those of us who believe that there is an absolute standard for morality.

[secondeve]

But regardless of the circumstances, if they break that ethical code, they are subject to the consequences. The "device" of the code itself is not reliant upon whether it is broken or not. It stands as the "standard" or absolute code of ethical practice.

I understand what you're saying, but still see it as a problem. Under this system, you're still effectively saying that the man who steals to feed his family is doing wrong, because stealing is always wrong. According to this logic, even if you understand why he has stolen, the reasonableness of the motive doesn't tip the balance so that his act was not a despicable one; no matter the degree of his punishment, he will still receive a reprimand.

The whole concept of consequences is based on the idea that they are merited - that the crime deserves persecution. We define a crime as something which is morally wrong. But if we say that stealing is always wrong for its own sake, regardless of motive, we are by extension punnishing the man for trying to survive. Put another way: If stealing always deserves punishment, then in this case the law is also ruling that, where stealing is synonymous with the only available means of feeding one's family, both acts are still deserving of punishment.

There was a study done with children some years ago into looking at perceptions of morality. Children between the ages of four and 13 were given a scenario. A man's mother is very, very sick - so sick that, without medicine, she will die. The medicine costs $100. The man does not have this amount of money and has no way of getting it. His only option is to steal the medicine. Either he breaks the law and steals, or he lets his mother die. And the children were asked which course of action he should take. Almost universally, the youngest participants - those under eight or nine - said he shouldn't steal, because stealing is wrong. All the older children said that human life was more important, and that in that instance, stealing was the right thing to do.

To me, this particular example is a bit like the question of whether or not guns are evil. I would say a gun is a tool - a thing which can be put to a use, and that the use itself is either good or bad, even though, because of what it is, the use is more often bad. Stealing is like the gun. More often than not it can only be used for bad reasons - but this does not mean it can never be put to good use. So we should be aware that stealing has a propensity towards being a bad deed, but that this is not true universally.

Your example began with an incorrect premise. While it may be true that stealing is always wrong, drawing the conclusion that all theives are evil, is poisoning the well.

I wasn't trying to say that this is what people believe now, or that it was a Christian belief; it was just a hypothetical.

While the man who broke the law in order to feed his family might get leniency from the judge, he nevertheless must stand for the crime he has committed.

And this is what I dispute. I don't believe he should be punished for being poor and for living in a society which gives him no other alternative. In that example, the flaw is in society, not in the man. No society or human being can ever be perfect, but that isn't an excuse for not acknowledging with which party the deficiency in a given situation lies.

[Ovedya]

I understand what you're saying, but still see it as a problem. Under this system, you're still effectively saying that the man who steals to feed his family is doing wrong, because stealing is always wrong. According to this logic, even if you understand why he has stolen, the reasonableness of the motive doesn't tip the balance so that his act was not a despicable one; no matter the degree of his punishment, he will still receive a reprimand.

If theft is deemed to always be wrong, and there is a set statute to that effect with a certain punishment, neither reason nor circumstance enter into it. Otherwise a police officer would have to weigh the circumstances before deciding whether to arrest or not.

The whole concept of consequences is based on the idea that they are merited - that the crime deserves persecution. We define a crime as something which is morally wrong. But if we say that stealing is always wrong for its own sake, regardless of motive, we are by extension punnishing the man for trying to survive. Put another way: If stealing always deserves punishment, then in this case the law is also ruling that, where stealing is synonymous with the only available means of feeding one's family, both acts are still deserving of punishment.

I disagree. It has been deemed by society that theft is always wrong regardless of circumstance. If it were otherwise then we would have to define crime by circumstance. We cannot deem one type of theft acceptable simply because of circumstance: It's either always right or always wrong. Is the man who robs the local liquor store of $100 in order to feed his family less guilty than the man who, for the same reason, robs the same amount from a bank? What if both used a gun? What if either man were let go because the law took pity on their situation? Could I therefore rob a bank and attempt to make the same argument before a judge in order to escape punishment for the crime?

How is a man driven to theft by poverty any different than a man driven to theft to feed an addiction? It could be argued that poverty causes depression, depression causes addiction, addiction drives criminal activity. Should we take pity on that section of society in poverty, who happen to be addicted to certain drugs or alcohol, and allow them to commit crimes? No. It would be unthinkable to excuse criminal activity because of circumstance. And it would be ridiculous to change the laws in order to cater to certain types of activity, or because of certain circumstances.

There was a study done with children some years ago into looking at perceptions of morality. Children between the ages of four and 13 were given a scenario. A man's mother is very, very sick - so sick that, without medicine, she will die. The medicine costs $100. The man does not have this amount of money and has no way of getting it. His only option is to steal the medicine. Either he breaks the law and steals, or he lets his mother die. And the children were asked which course of action he should take. Almost universally, the youngest participants - those under eight or nine - said he shouldn't steal, because stealing is wrong. All the older children said that human life was more important, and that in that instance, stealing was the right thing to do.

The problem with this hypothetical is, "His only option is to steal the medicine." It sets up an false dilemma by stating that criminal activity is the only option. This is not reflective of reality. What if, in this scenario, murder was involved? What if the man, in the commission of his crime, killed another person? Even if it was an accident, does the ends justify the means? I think that most of those kids would probably have said, "no."

Also, what if the man who steals $100 to get medicine for his mother happens to steal that money from another man who needed that money to buy food for his starving children? Is the crime still justified?

To me, this particular example is a bit like the question of whether or not guns are evil. I would say a gun is a tool - a thing which can be put to a use, and that the use itself is either good or bad, even though, because of what it is, the use is more often bad. Stealing is like the gun. More often than not it can only be used for bad reasons - but this does not mean it can never be put to good use. So we should be aware that stealing has a propensity towards being a bad deed, but that this is not true universally.

Again, I disagree. Theft is always wrong. It takes away the right to property or priviledge from one person and uses it to the advantage of another. Having or using a gun is a poor comparison. While the use of a gun removes one persons "right or priviledge to life," in cases where guns are used to take life through a justified means (Legally, such as when a police officer shoots a dangerous person with a weapon), it is assumed that a person has forfeited his right to life through his own acts. A person from whom a thief steels has done nothing to justify the removal of his property or his priviledge to such property.

While the man who broke the law in order to feed his family might get leniency from the judge, he nevertheless must stand for the crime he has committed.

And this is what I dispute. I don't believe he should be punished for being poor and for living in a society which gives him no other alternative. In that example, the flaw is in society, not in the man. No society or human being can ever be perfect, but that isn't an excuse for not acknowledging with which party the deficiency in a given situation lies.

Committing a crime because of circumstance is never a valid justification. You appear to to be saying that the moral laws of a society should not apply to a certain type or subset of people within that society. It is incorrect to equate the punishment of a crime to the punishment of the circumstances which led to the crime.

[kat8585]

If not for absolutes, anything goes, right?