If morality is objective, how does it relate to knowing what is moral?

 

Does God really know the facts about what is right and wrong?

God is supposed to know all things. This is impossible. Apart from the fact that I exist now, I know nothing. Everything I say I know I mean I believe. It must be the same with God. It is impossible to know anything for sure apart from one's own existence. Thus God is a contradictory idea. A God that has beliefs is not a God at all. Even if those beliefs are right, God cannot know this for he only believes it. God is not entitled to ask anybody to agree with his beliefs about right and wrong. How much less can he be entitled to command?  Such a God should be defied.

Does he give us such knowledge?

They say if a person knows what is right or wrong it is because God put that knowledge into them. If we are the products of chance it seems mad to say that our values are real. But the fact is, whatever about their reality, nothing is to be served as far as we are concerned by suppressing our sense of values. That we follow them without being able to prove their validity shows that we are our own gods. God cannot be our God even if he exists. Suppose a banknote falls into my lap by chance. It may be real or fake. Nothing will be served by me treating it like a fake and lighting the fire with it. And so it is with our values.

Is objective morality's existence more important than knowing it exists?

It is more important for objective morality to exist than to know it. Objective morality existing matters more than knowing it exists. Knowing morality is objective cannot matter most.

 

Why?

 

Objective morality will still exist if nobody knows of it or cares. So it is what matters. Knowing is only good because it means you are in tune with the truth.

 

So the truth has to matter before knowing can matter.

 

So morality's existence matters most for knowing it exists is impossible if it does not exist. Thus its existing matters more than knowing.

 

Can morality being true matter as much as knowing it is? No! To ask the question shows one is - at least a little sceptical - about objective morality.

 

Principles or specific moral guidelines? How important is it to know morality's content?

 

Another question.

 

Is it knowing that morality is real that matters and not knowing exactly what is to be classed as moral or immoral? Is knowing it is real even if you don't know the specifics the most important?

 

Yes - it is more important to know that justice is real than how to implement it. The principle is not about how you apply it. For example, both vengeful people and softies both believe in justice but disagree on how to serve it.

 

You can know objective morality exists even if you don't know the content. For example, you may sense that it is wrong to hurt others for fun but that does not mean you think it is wrong to rob banks. You might not see how bad it is to rob banks. The specifics are no good by themselves. Knowing that robbing banks is bad is no good unless you know that hurting people is wrong and it is true that hurting others needlessly is wrong. God even if good for saying morality exists is no good for telling you what it is. It only makes it a bigger tragedy unnecessarily so you will hold that it is actually immoral to fuse morality and God.  If God grounds morality he cannot ground any morality’s content. You have to be God with the content so there is very little room for him. In fact stressing him or making him important would be an evil.

 

Being moral means being in total opposition to an evil, not because it is a free act or down to one but because of the damage and harm it does. Caring about it being an act is really about you trying to use the harm done as an excuse for judging a person or what they have done. With morality something is bad in itself regardless of what good or bad results come from it or it is bad if the results are bad. It is one or the other.   How could you tell if one moral principle is better than another or is the right one if morality is about an excuse for picking on people?

 

In any case, it is obviously more important that hurting others for fun is wrong than that robbing banks is wrong. The general principle that hurting others is bad comes first. The bank robbery is a detail.

 

The lesson from all this is that if God is about moral principles, the notion of God does not necessarily go with the notion that a person must do x or y but not z. The believer and the atheist both have only the principles and it is up to them to do their best to apply them. Both live equally on the hope of getting it right.

 

Not everybody knows if objective morality exists. A very young person might not know. A brainwashed person wouldn't know. Would an all-good God who is all about objective morality equip one person to know and another not to? Certainly not!

 

If objective morality is important and if people can know it exists then it is an objective evil if somebody does not know. So the answer again is no.

 

Know or believe?

Is it best to know objective morality exists or believe it exists? The two are not the same. Knowing is seeing that something is true while belief is not as certain. Belief is certain but not 100%.

 

If objective morality is of supreme importance then it is best to know it. Belief risks being wrong about its existence and what it condemns and affirms. Belief risks you hurting people by treating them as if they should adhere to objective morality.

 

The believer in objective morality will agree that:

 

The person who does not believe in objective morality cannot be accused of being dangerously wrong without proof.

 

It is better to know that justice and love are right than to merely believe.

 

Objective morality is the basis for these value judgements.

 

But they show up a contradiction in objective morality.

 

Objective morality does accuse the doubter or disbeliever in objective morality. And objective morality is a belief despite its asserting that mere belief is immoral if knowledge is possible. And objective morality suggests knowledge is possible for objective morality states that justice and love are factually right.

 

Their rightness is a fact.

 

At least it demands the abandonment of God

To turn God into the basis of objective morality and its representation is to say God is a contradiction and simply cannot live up to the demands of objective morality for they are incoherent.

 

It is better to argue that man has to decide what is objectively moral. Bringing God into it only makes the problem worse. Take it this way. If we have nothing but objective morality and it has flaws but seems to work okay then by attributing it to God you give it more glory than it deserves and you end up worshipping it instead of seeing it as a necessary evil. So the flaws in objective morality indicate that the true servant of objective morality discards God.

 

The Doing is more important than the Why

What if the doing of moral things is better than the why of doing them? Is it better to just be kind to a sick baby than to know or believe why you should help? Many say yes. Your intention is excellent for you are following the best light you have. Those who ground objective morality in God are denying this. For them God is morality so if you do good without realising that he is, then your action though beneficial is not really moral or good. It is clearly objectively right to do good for the baby without

 

The extremist implications

Hypothetically, what if it were best for a person not to know objective morality exists? Hypothetically, what if informing a person that objective morality exists magically kills them? If objective morality comes first then you inform the person and kill them. The excuse will be that objective morality has to be honoured as real. This example shows the cruel streak that all morality has.

 

Believers in objective morality or "believers"?

What if you think you know morality is real? Thinking you know means you can have the wrong values and the wrong rules. It is possible that most if not all of Christendom's moralists are guilty of merely pretending that their thinking about morality is the same as knowing about morality! If objective morality can be known or is true then it does not follow that that is why they endorse it. A person who should know something might still only think they know it. They might act as if they do but they do not. They are based on their own ideas even though there is no hint that they are. That could be deliberate.

 

And to what extent do you know morality is real when you make many mistakes in working out the specifics? The specifics reflect something of the general. Sometimes when you are told not to rob banks you learn that hurting others is wrong.

 

If morality can be objective and can be known it does not follow that this truth is really helpful. It does not follow that we are good at adapting to it. The evidence says that we are not...and even if we seem to have adapted we still only seem to.

 

Belief in objective morality is more inspired by people who we think practice it than by thinking about the principles. But copying others and absorbing their influence is no way of finding objective morality.

 

Even if objective morality exists, people could be interested in it only because they want it to be true not because it is. If you want to control people you need to make them think your rules are objectively correct.

 

When you don't recognise objective morality

You are told moral principle are facts. You don't see that.

 

One reason could be that the principles you are looking at are not facts.

 

Or it could be that the fault lies in you.

 

Morality claims to be about love. If it were, it would prefer to have a person avoid blaming you. The person would have to decide that morality is not factual at all for you don't see it.

 

It is no answer to say that we need virtues such as compassion and generosity and patience to live in this world and we need laws to help us develop them meaning that love does not replace law but love needs the law. It is not an answer for it is based on denial of innocent until proven guilty. No real morality can be built on such a foundation but a forgery can.

 

Why THINKING Moral Laws are Facts is Not Enough!

People say they think moral rules and codes are factually correct. They think it is probable that objective morality is not a delusion.

 

Nobody cares how probable you think it is as long as you think it is probable. That is very odd. Surely you want belief in morality to be as strong as possible!

 

And there is no such thing as thinking something is a fact being enough. It is not. A fact doesn't care what you think and is not about what you think. A fact is a fact no matter what you think. If morality and each item in its complex code of accepted behaviours is a fact then it needs to be recognisable as a fact. Calling something a fact because you think it is a fact is to lie and to endanger truth. It is dangerous to put out things as fact when you are not sure.

 

Thinking each rule of morality and morality itself is a fact is dangerous and counter-productive and arrogant. It contradicts the very morality it pretends to protect.

 

The answer is: moral principle says if you have no idea of what is objectively moral or what it means then it is objectively moral to make an attempt. You need objective morality and the concept is forced on you even if you say morality is relative – such a saying is unnatural and forced and warped. It is better to guess and live the morality you have for errors will show up in time if it is wrong or needs fixing. Guessing and testing is more important than grounding it or caring or knowing why it is morally correct. Practicing what you understand to be objective morality is a principle and the most foundational and important and basic moral principle of all. If you have to guess the best guess is that morality is about maintaining the well-being of others and yourself.

 

The danger is people can treat the issue as an excuse to have whatever rules they want.  But that would not be the principles fault.  It is an abuse.

An Argument

“Atheist beliefs can explain why people are violent and evil and crazy but it cannot explain why people are often peaceful and good and rational.” That is one hell of a bizarre argument. It contradicts the Christian belief that violence is okay in the right circumstances. It would be odd to think that violence when not justified is explained by atheism but violence when justified is not. It is still the use of a necessary evil. It is still nothing to be celebrated.

 

Conclusion

If objective morality is incoherent then it is worsened by the notion of God.  We are talking about believing or knowing that morality exists even if you don’t know exactly what it entails. Knowing right and wrong must exist is one thing but knowing the difference is another.