Do you believe in moral absolutes? (Good and Evil, Right and Wrong) What or Who is THE Moral Authority?

Question

If you do not believe in moral absolutes how could you possibly call the horrible things that Adolph Hitler did or what child molesters and abortion clinic bombers do wrong? After all, every person rightly sets their own moral standard. What those people did was "right" in thier eyes. If one states that the actions of any particular individual is horrible or good or bad he/she is making a morally absolute statement. If you agree that each person decides and sets his/her own moral standards then wouldn't you have to say that a gang member is doing good when he "caps" someone around children and bystanders and rapes someone? After all (in his eyes) he is "improving" himself and his status in the gang. When a rich oil exec steals from employee retirement funds he is doing good because is improving his own pocketbook?
If you do believe in moral absolutes, you believe in one right and one wrong for most every situation, what is THE moral authority?
Is it the Bible?

Some say we do not need to judge, but DO need to judge (actions). Without doing so we have no basis from which to call things such as racism wrong.
We can't say just love people, because If someone is killing themselves with meth you need determine this as bad in order to love and reach out.
And we can't just say that the government power or the mojority determines good and evil or one would have to say that Hitler and the Nazis were the "good" of Nazi Germany, which they definitely were not.

Answer 1

God is the moral authority. He set the guidelines for us all, whether we like it or accept it or not. Yes I believe in moral absolutes, and thats what is wrong with society, most dont anymore. What God says is right, is right, and wrong is wrong. Ppl try to set their own guidelines , Doest work. What about the man tht beats his wife and convinced it is ok because she is a lousy wife he says/ Is that right? NO. Yet his consciencde says it was. The Holy Spirit is our true conscience. but the devil speaks to us too. We check all things out according to Gods word and we kNOW who we were haring and go from there.
YOu listed several examples of why setting our own guideliens will never ever work, because self gets involved and we mess up. Only when God sets the guidelines and we follow does this work. God says that obedience brings blessing and disobedience brings curse. ANd it is right on, just like that.
The man that feels justified to cheat on his wife... Well ok. he cheats, and well lets just say he has some consequences that will usually go for life. Loses his wife, kids, disrepect, including at some point, self respect, can spend years trying to undo it. Yes he set his own guidlines. Did it work? Did it make him happy? Did it get him to where he wants to be. Will it work for him over time. /?? NO. Only in following the desires of Gods heart, will we find perfect peace, love and joy. Any other way leads to misery, destruction and eventual hell, if we dont repent and stop it. GOOOD question. I have said for years this issue needs to get discussed and re looked at by a generation that thinks anything goes now, and no I dont just mean young people. God says He never changes. So if it was wrong 150 years ago, it still is, no matter what popularity to certain situations are now. GOOD question. thanks for asking.....

Answer 2

Yes, there are moral absolutes. There are actions that we do that will absolutely lead to someone being hurt and the tearing of our social structure. Need there be some supernatural moral being to tell us right from wrong?

In each of those cases you've listed, you've only shown that a person has the capability of doing right or wrong. And, as a society, we've decided that those things are wrong and those who commit said crime will be punished through exile or worse.

Now, let me be a bit more clear. When I speak of society in this context, I don't mean something as simple as "American society," or anything that narrow. We evolved as social creatures. Our ability to survive is predicated on being able to interact with others, and so we've developed certain rules that should never be broken in order to maintain those bonds. Who is the moral authority? We are. All of us have a responsibility to every other human being to maintain those morals and deal with those who choose to break those morals. Laws are an extension of this primal instinct. We can see moral behavior in our closest relatives among the primates, showing that socialization is not some distinctly human thing, but rather an evolutionary trait.

Answer 3

If the god of the Bible is the moral authority, then he sets an extremely poor example. For this god, murder (as long as they are of a different tribe), rape (as long as someone is being punished), genocide (see murder), and so on are all perfectly acceptable as long as God says it's okay. Whenever these things happen to one's own tribe, then they become bad.

You don't need the Bible to learn morality. You don't need a "holy " book of any kind. If you were raised properly then the parents' morals were passed on to you. Ideally, those morals came from their experience in life and society. People who act immorally or amorally generally don;t last too long compared to everyone else.

In fact, I would dare to day that for being such a "great" book of morals, an awful lot of immorality has come directly from it. Persecutions, murders, oppression, tyranny, slavery, and so on have all been justified by the Bible.

Answer 4

This is too complicated a question to properly respond to here. To me, morality is simply defined as doing what you believe is right given the situation at hand. Our notions of right/wrong are evolutionary processes. When I was a child, I did things that today, with a more nuanced view, I would consider poor judgment. As people grow up, we determine our views on right/wrong by observing our parents, friends, the media, and society in general. We check these against the laws our societies create and sometimes those conflict. I happily break the speed limit and do not think I am being immoral for doing so. I have smoked marijuana and do not consider that being immoral. To some, their moral code is simply the law... but there is far more to being a good person that that and the recognition that this is the case, is what morality is. We all define it differently, and sometimes they conflict, but that is what makes humans unique.

So is there an absolute good/evil distinction. If there is some form of right/wrong, with all of our societal expectations and histories, we cannot be effective judges of it. We must rely on whatever guidelines we think are right. For me, treating people with respect and dignity and fairness is of most importance.



***Update***

To respond to your clarification, that is why laws exist. They too are an evolved moral code that exist as a result of the common experience of society. It is a best attempt at determining wrong from right and is the best method we have. However, only through evolving individual morality can a collective morality evolve. So without first coming up with your own understandings of right/wrong, laws cannot exist. Obviously this is a slight simplification as one person normally wouldn't make a difference, but we can consider a societies laws as some form of "average". That's really all we have.

As to those who say whatever god says is right, how do you handle all the things in the bible that are contradictory to what most people commonly accept as ok. For example if your brother were to die, should you marry his wife? Is death by stoning OK? Animal sacrifice?


****UPDATE 2****
I should also add a note about Kant's Categorical Imperative... which seems to be a somewhat reasonable way of determining morality. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Categorical_imperative

One other point is that if we consider the perpetuation of humanity as our primary objective in life, then determining some sense of morality is easier. Killing, harming, etc go against that goal and would therefore be bad.

Answer 5

Relativists (those who see morality as relative) try to claim that while all morals are relative, some sense of right and wrong has been developed in humanity through evolution, thus allowing humans to agree upon certain standards of law.

The existance of an agreed upon sense of right and wrong eliminates any possibility that morality is relative.

In order to establish a morally relative society than we would have only one option:

Enforce no laws- if morality is relative than belief in a moral code is simply an opinion.

Of course this would mean that one person must be allowed to do what ever they want to anyone else because to produce any sanction against them would impose one persons moral view on another person.

But then we could not sanction anyone for imposing their moral view on anyone else because that would then be deeming such actions to be immoral thus establishing a moral absolute.

Because moral relativity (secularism, humanism, etc.) does not work, governments which attempt to be morally relative always end up as dictatorships in one form or another. The U.S.S.R. is a great example.

The God of the Bible is the moral authority. This is established not only common law, but by world history. It has always been in nations which followed most closely with the teachings of the Bible where the people have enjoyed the most freedoms.

In the United States, for example, we have allowed our freedoms to be erroded by welfare programs, increased governmental control over business, and increased surveillence, because we have lost interest in maintaing our freedom and focused on our own self interest.

Levels of Church attendance and community involvement have dropped and the rate of divorce and crime have risen as these changes have been made.

To say that morality has developed as man has evolved would require some sort of convergent thought on the matter of law, but there really is not.

For example, all countries have some type of regulation regarding murder, but there is no consensus on what constitutes murder. In some countries it is legal to kill your wife or child for any reason. In others it is routine to kill unwanted newborn infants and in still others to decide to euthanize your grandmother because she is in a lot of pain.

While these tend to be culturally centered ideas, there are people in virtually every country who believes that one or more of these would not be murder. In that case, how do we decide how to define murder?

We could go with the majority, but that would deny someone the right to their own morality.

Moral Codes must have a stronger base than that of human society. The whole of humanity is not going to agree upon a single shared moral code and that is what would be required for morality to be based upon human intelligence alone.

Answer 6

I think it is all situational. If I know the facts about, say, adolf hitler or a suicide bomber then I can judge if it evil/wrong (though I don't usually use those words. I think most people involved in these kind of events are mentally unstable and need help, rather than pure evil.) But I wouldnt say there are things that are ALWAYS right or wrong.

Answer 7

Yes I believe in morals. Things are either right or wrong. Everyone makes mistakes and should learn from them. But yes it is the Bible. This is a problem with alot of things in this world, some people are lacking morals.

Answer 8

God is righteousness and man is imperfect. All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. What you say is true without God man has to decide his own morality or accept the morality of the society or culture and in either case history has proven that the majority is not always right. If God is not your example then who? History and has proven the word correct the morals of man and society fall short of God's righteousness.

Answer 9

I feel in ethical absolutes for the reason that with out them their could be destruction, a social breakdown and every person could be misplaced. Who has the ethical authority: Society, your dad and mom, educators, men and women in executive in otherwords the bulk: We the men and women!

Answer 10

God is the moral authority. His holy word was given to us as a book of standards to live by.