DISCUSS: "MORALITY IS JUST TRUE AND ASKING WHY IT IS TRUE IS LIKE ASKING WHY SPACE HAS LENGTH HEIGHT AND BREADTH"

ESSENTIALS

If we mean well, we all want want morality to justify itself. That is safer than having it depend on anything else such as faith in God. A morality that holds it own and does not need a God is denying God because God means that which should be the be all and the end all in life. It is a unifier no matter who you are, atheist or religionist.

A king who depends on himself is the strongest possible one. A weaker one will need to depend on others. So if you want morality to be fact it has to depend on itself and derive its authority from itself. To say authority has to be always given to something is odd - who gave the other authority its authority? It has to start somewhere without being given.

Religion tries to pretend that love is a nod to God. But love by itself does not mean or indicate that there is a God. It certainly does not prove it or point us to look for proof. So whatever way you want to give authority to moral principles such as love then trying to ground them in God is futile and immoral in itself!  Why?  For love is grey and it is too easy for us to mistake what is not best for another for what is best.  Love might be a good thing but it does not deserve to be turned into something divine.  The argument that God hides himself from us for he wants us to find him through others and how they love us is wrong.  It's only an argument for projecting your ideas of love, your attempts to love with all their perfections onto God as the absolute and ultimate model.

Love by default takes care of justice for you cannot have real justice without real love. If you love at all you will have enough concern for justice.  It is enough to make God an extra perhaps for discarding.

There is nothing wrong with something justifying itself as long as another way to justify it is not being ignored. If there is no evidence that you are truly innocent of a crime then you have to justify yourself and ask people to take your word for it. In that case, morality is justifying itself.

We see each other in some way as creators of love. There can be no real morality without that concept. It does not matter how accurate we are about them being creators.

Relativism - the view that whatever you want to think is moral is all that matters for morality is not factual - is plainly ridiculous. That shows that morality justifies itself even if we do not know how. It is just somehow a fact that setting the cat on fire is wrong. Whether invented or real, we make sure our moral ideas hurt those who flout them. It is not a trivial matter.

Religious attempts to ground morality in God's commands or nature fail for what if God is a relativist? Believers treat him as if he is.

Using God as prop to bolster up morality and its authenticity is objectifying God. Or perhaps more accurately, it is objectifying faith for many when they talk about God mean faith. Faith can simulate a connection to a real God. Faith in God is not God but is often treated as if it is.

Morality is really a collection of moralities. Each moral precept is a mini-morality. Collectively each bit is justified.

MORALITY COMES FROM COMMUNITIES JUST BEING COMMUNITIES

Nature has many creatures form groups. Even a man and a few dogs can make a group. Some level of committing is needed. How can people committing to each other be not enough to ground morality on? Critics say the answer is that you can bond with others and form an evil and nasty group. So loving those in the group can lead to you and the group doing terrible things to outsiders. So love can be bad. These people will swear that their love is good so being convinced you are loving does not prove you really are good. Only the facts can show that. Clearly the problem is in how people are not lining up to truth.

The argument that love can be bad, and by implication justice as well for love and justice are inseparably connected, is supposed to prove that only an all-loving God can ground or decree morality. Anything else is just bad. That is actually a lying manipulative and nasty argument. Belief in God is about its alleged moral import but in fact it offers hypocrisy not moral import.

If it is not the love that is the problem but its abuse then the critics are proven wrong. Love is good regardless of God or society or anything else.
 
MORALITY IS GOD?

Religion denies that morality is just true so you need a God to make it true. That overlooks the fact that if it is not true then nothing can make it true.

Nothing can be more important or irrevocable than a morality that is so true that even if God contradicts it makes no difference.

People try to say morality is made by God's commands. Something becomes moral not because it is but becomes moral because he commands it. What if God commanded you to believe morality was independent of God? This proves that morality is just true and that God is only a diversion.

Sometimes we are told that God is morality so that if there is no God there is no true morality and we are left to invent it. If morality is God then that is tantamount to inventing God even if you say you do not recognise a God! It would be a recipe for evil and turns the moralist effectively into God! So they say they need to invent morality if there is no God. For all we know inventing is what they could be doing!

So far the problems with objecting to, "Morality is just true", show that even if we do not know how or cannot explain how we know by a process of elimination that morality really is just true.

Let us go on and look at more arguments for morality as being that which needs no justification outside of itself.

If morality is not real then it is arbitrary. But arbitrary implies a non-arbitrary. So even calling morality arbitrary implies that there is non-arbitrary morality. Morality is enforced by reality and even God cannot change that. It is thus supreme even over God.

Some say morality can be real and still arbitrary. What do they mean? They seem to mean we can make it real so we can make it right to use live babies as footballs if we so decree! Morality is to be discovered not made or created. The people are talking rubbish.

ARISTOTLE

Aristotle said that the definition of good is whatever will make you reach your potential. This reminds us that morality is not about theory or doctrines but about putting respect for people and their potential into practice. It is not about God and indeed God has achieved his potential so we cannot really be moral to him. Yet for religion God is the end goal meaning that you cannot be good without God. The definition of evil is choosing a good that is not as good as it can be.

PURPOSE AND DIGNITY

Religion says the alternative to saying there is no God is that we are just animals so it does not matter what we do. But if there is a creator it does not follow its purpose has anything to do with how we treat one another. God would not automatically mean we have dignity. That is why the doctrine of God or existence of God is not intrinsically good for us. Religion tries to make it intrinsically good for us which is cruel and manipulative. It seems degrading to imagine that the human being is just another thing nature has produced like a lizard or a jellyfish and which has no built-in worth or ultimate hope or eternal worth. But who says built in self-worth means a creator has to build it in?

To get dignity from assuming there is a God that gives you purpose is a strange way to get dignity!

Christians say morality for an atheist is just opinion for it has no real or ultimate meaning. What do they mean by ultimate? It is a way of saying morality in the end is all that matters and to be all that matters. Morality can have real meaning without ultimate meaning. Morality cannot have ultimate meaning without having real meaning. Ultimate value of morality is a way of saying that morality is absolutely important. It opens the door to bringing in rules about things that are supposedly absolutely wrong – that is wrong in all circumstances.

Morality can have ultimate meaning even if death is the end. One suspects that by ultimate Christians think morality should be worthless unless it has eternal consequences. They do not however have the decency to take responsibility if somebody does harm and thinks or feels that morality has to be eternally important.


CONCEPTS NOT ENOUGH?

They insist that mere concepts cannot supply a, “You ought to do x” or “You should not do y”. But read what they are saying. A concept should not tell you “You ought to do x”. So there is a should in there after all! Even concepts have a should.

A LITTLE JUSTIFICATION GOES A LONG WAY!

What if atheism instead of having no basis for morality actually has a little? That is fine if a little is all that is possible. Morality is so good that a little is enough to make it justifiable. Believers never mention that.

WHAT DO YOU WANT JUSTIFICATION FOR?

A decent person will think morality justifies itself. You will see a baby needing your help as showing you need no justification. You will not want it either if you are really good. The baby does not know what morality is but that does not stop him needing your help. The needing is real no matter what you think of morality. In any case morality is more important to the victim not the helper. It is the victim who needs morality to be.

If good cannot be good unless somebody sees it is or decides it is then it does not matter if that person is perfectly good enough. It only matters that someone is good enough to assess the action. To see something as good is to be good in the first place. Now if it is not good in itself you cannot see it as good. Even if you wrongly see it is as good it is because you fail to see that it is using good to mask its evil side so it is still the good you see. If good cannot exist unless somebody decides it is good then perhaps the being should not bother deciding.

EVIL BEING ABSENCE OF GOOD

Evil being the absence of good cannot make evil evil. It turns it into a form of neutrality. But then neutrality needs to be neither good or evil which is the same as it being both. Neutral if defined as good is balanced by a lack of good.

To say something is as good as it is bad is to say it is morally neutral. If murder is merely the absence of respect for life or stealing merely the absence of respect for the property rights of another then is that no better than saying every “bad” act is really just morally neutral. It is bad one way but good in every other. Given how morality directs us to see the best in actions we certainly cannot call any action bad. If you think the idea of moral neutrality is bad then the seeing of evil as the mere absence of good is worse. At least moral neutrality still calls evil evil.


What is worse? The absence of good or neutrality? Probably the absence of good for it is so easy to take it for good. The absence of real good means the presence of that which looks good but which is not. Plus people have more motives than they realise for their actions so they can be fooled by motives that they think are neutral. This can and will lead them to justify evil by seeing it as good as it is bad.

CONCLUSION