CONSTRUCTING AN OBJECTIVE MORALITY

In a Psychology Today article entitled, “Morality Is Objective: Morality is Robustly Grounded in Facts,” Eric Dietrich points out the short-comings of moral relativism and proposes a basis for objective moral truth:

·       There is however, a clear path to a universal and powerful moral objectivity, the view that morality (or most of it, anyway) is just as objectively true as science and mathematics. The key ingredient is the notion of harm.

·       Every living animal with a nervous system can and does experience harm (it may be that every living thing experiences harm, but that is an issue for another time).  Harm is marked by pain, fear, hunger, thirst, sadness, frustration, . . . any negative emotion or feeling.  We live in a universe that randomly dishes out harm — consider the extinction of the non-avian dinosaurs, as just one example.  But we humans can check both human-initiated intentional harm, which is under our control, and other types of unintentional harm, e.g., environment damage caused by human industrial development. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/excellent-beauty/201712/morality-is-objective?fbclid=IwAR0xUlj3ASWoL4_NAuevg1Sx9q0PH_GVO-vG6uC21arSEJUID0LSpL-kTlk

Well, the sadist might ask, “Why should I desist from something that brings me pleasure?” Dietrich answers:

·       The question now is “Why ought we to check (or mitigate) such harm.”  The answer is because it is harm!  Harm is bad by definition.  Morality requires us to avoid doing bad things, again, by definition.  Hence we all have a moral duty not to harm other living things. 

However, the sadist will simply answer, “My definition is different than yours. I don’t see any reason why your definition should prevail.” The evolutionist might offer his own definition:

·       When I look at the facts of nature, I observe the survival-of-the-fittest. While you might regard this as an evil, I regard it as a good. It has been by this means that we evolved from our ancestral predators. Therefore, we too are predators. There is no moral code in this universe saying that there is anything wrong with this.

Dietrich might try to argue that human society cannot thrive on the basis of predation. However, both the sadist and evolution might simply respond, “Why should we even be concerned about whether society is thriving. Besides, we have a very different take on what it means to thrive.

This exchange can continue into infinity without reaching bedrock, a definitive reason for any moral obligation or duty. Why? Because the physical reality will never require a moral obligation of what must be done without God! He is bedrock where the buck automatically stops. He is the Creator. This is His world. Everything belongs to Him. Our moral sentiments, judgments, and reasoning are only possible because He has written them into us. Any argument against God requires that we use the tools of God, a self-defeating activity. Therefore, He gets to set the rules.

Yes, we can rebel against His rules and reign. However, when we do, we find that we are also rebelling against ourselves and the nature He has given us. How so?

·       To deny objective moral truth is costly to us. It deprives us of the meaning that we need.

·       To try to base it on something other than God is to build our house on the sand.

·       To deny the spiritual world is to deny even our own freewill and to reduce us to wet machines.

·       To deny God’s opinions is to crave and depend upon the opinions of others to our detriment.

·       To deny God is to deny our own perceptions. Consequently, atheists are always reminding their flock that what appears designed only appears that way.

·       To deny that we are created in the likeness of God, is to say that we are just an accident of nature. This requires us to constantly be building our self-esteem to fill the vacuum.

These are only a few of the ways that we negate ourselves in the process of negating God. Consequently, we bring hell upon ourselves.