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December 12, 2018 - January 22, 2019
But in the end both theories tell us that the feeling we have that “moral facts” exist—that some actions are simply wrong, no matter what your genes or your culture or your emotions say or whether they are practical for survival or society or not—is just an illusion.
On either view, the evolutionist or the constructivist, there is no reason not to act in any way we desire, if we can get away with it practically. There’s simply no way to tell right from wrong, so we shouldn’t try.22
Nicholas Wolterstorff
“almost always those who think and talk [of morals as relative] are living comfortable, privileged lives. .
Gorski concludes, “We can’t be complete relativists in our everyday lives.”25
Yet as Leff points out, this is mere assertion, not argument.
Why should non-Westerners, for example, accept the Western view of human rights? Gorski is right to see this as evidence of theory failure.
Therefore, neither have succeeded, and secularism continues to lack even a rudimentary explanation of why moral obligation exists if there is no God.
Modern people say they do not believe in absolute moral values but can’t function without practically assuming them. And they won’t admit they are doing it.
But if you do not believe there is any such law or norm, then you really mean “I have a feeling that this is wrong and I want you to follow my feelings rather than yours.”29 That statement, of course, has far less power and authority than “you ought.”
Alasdair MacIntyre
He observes that Greek philosophers in ancient times and Christian thinkers in the medieval age understood morals as guiding human beings toward an end state. “The whole point of ethics . . . is to enable man to pass from his present state to his true end.”32 This is the concept of telos.
the Enlightenment rejected “any notion of essential human nature” or of a telos for human beings.33
Hume, Kant, Kierkegaard, and others sought to provide justification for objective moral claims. But they all failed, and this is why our society today is riven by polarized, irreconcilable, alternate universes of moral discourse, none of which can convince the others in the slightest.
it had to fail. Why? Because a moral judgment about something can never be made apart from an examination of its given purpose.
All judgments that something or someone is good or bad do so based on an awareness of purpose.
How, then, can we tell if a human being is good or bad? Only if we know our purpose, what human life is for.
If, as in the secular view, we have not been made for a purpose, then it is futile to even try to talk about moral good and evil.38
The first approach is to insist that moral obligation simply does not exist
The most famous thinker who took this path was Nietzsche, who said that because there is no God there can be “no moral facts whatsoever.”
looks at Kant’s categorical imperative, namely, that human beings must never be treated as means but as ends in themselves, and (rightly) denies that this is either self-evident or a logical conclusion. It is smuggling in a Christian view.42
Mackie ends up by recognizing the need for morality if society is to work.
The second approach that secular thinkers take is to simply see moral obligation as a “brute fact.”
with the obligation to do good and not do evil he was sensing a relationship.
I went on to say that obligations arise only in relation to persons, not to things. An absolute morality above our culture and biology implies an absolute Person behind all things.
your moral intuition is sensing a relationship and responsibility to your Maker.”
to seek the good is already to believe in God, whether one wishes to do so or not.”
In the end, why would we unavoidably sense not only the reality of an objective good and evil but also an abiding, overarching personal obligation to do one and turn from the other, when there is no Person to whom we are responsible?
Philosopher George Mavrodes says that the reality of moral obligation may not prove the existence of God, yet it is very strong evidence for it.
He outlines three kinds of universes: the secular one; the Platonic universe, in which there is a supernatural realm of Ideas; and the traditional universe, with a morally good creator God. Then he asks, in which ...
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Mavrodes concludes that the secular thinkers should admit that if they believe in moral facts and obligation, these make much more sense in a world with God and a transcendent realm than in one without them.
at this very point that many of my secular friends and conversation partners have felt some unease with their own point of view.
it brings together both the rational and the personal evidence
“There are only two kinds of churches,” he said, “the legalistic and the relativistic. Both are bad news. I want open-mindedness but real, solid values.
He was quite wrong that there is no alternative to these two kinds of churches.
fully admitting and addressing the problem.
they also often use them as bludgeons to intimidate and control those who share them and to condemn and punish those who do not.
religious people wrestle with moralism.
If we ask the question “Is religion a force for justice and good in the world, or is it a force for injustice?” an enormous number of concrete, well-attested historical events and movements can be brought out to support either a negative or a positive answer to the question.
Also, shared religious faith and religious institutions create “social capital,” the deeper associational trust that creates social and economic cooperation in neighborhoods and communities.
In the end, it would be better to look for other grounds on which to explore the relationship between religious faith and justice.
asking whether religion or secularism is a better support for human rights.
She has the right not to be killed, tortured, defrauded, or abducted, and she may have other rights as well. And she has these rights not by virtue of being a particular race or gender, or being of a certain moral character, or being able to contribute to society and the economy. She has these rights simply by being a human being.
the advance of human rights in the world is under attack outside the West as just the latest form of Western imperialism, while on the inside of our culture it is losing confidence in its own theoretical foundations.
“An obstacle in the path to . . . mutual understanding comes from the inability of many Westerners to see their culture as one among many.”
words, it is argued that human beings have rights because of their capacity for rational choice, or some other aptitude. The problems with this view are serious.
Wolterstorff, summarizing much recent historical scholarship, argues that individual human rights developed not for the first time in the Enlightenment but out of medieval Christendom,
All this means that, in the long run, religious belief in God is a better support and grounding for human rights.
they should create the kind of society they would want to live in whatever place in society they would inhabit.
Rawls believed that if people simply used reasonable self-interest, creating the kind of society they’d want
