From The Reason for God by Timothy Keller
"One of the most frequent statements I heard was that “Every person has to define right and wrong for him-or herself.” I always responded to the speakers by asking, “Is there anyone in the world right now doing things you believe they should stop doing no matter what they personally believe about the correctness of their behavior?” They would invariably say, “Yes, of course.” Then I would ask, “Doesn’t that mean that you do believe there is some kind of moral reality that is ‘there’ that is not defined by us, that must be abided by regardless of what a person feels or thinks?” Almost always, the response to that question was a silence, either a thoughtful or a grumpy one."
2 comments:
I would dare say that this conflict over the idea of having a universal innate sense of morality is almost exclusively a western world culture phenomenon. Particularly in America, we grow up so predisposed to the ideas of the rule of law- that there is some standard to which everyone is accountable to. So,it is not surprising that we find ourselves generalizing these emotions to the rest of the world.
I think most understandings of what is right and wrong are far more reflective of culture in which we are raised. For example, having grown up in the latter part of 20th century America, I perceive treating women with less respect than men is reprehensible. But many of the people who live in Middle Eastern cultures don't even understand why I would think that way.
Of course, if culture influences our personal morality, what influences social morality? We can try to argue some sort of circular logic that personal morality influences social morality. It's the proverbial "which came first, the chicken or the egg?" type of dilema.
To me the most satisfactory answer is that there is "brute fact" nature to morality. This core of morality is not found in the individual or the culture because history has shown clearly shown how social and personal morality influence one another, so I conclude that the brute fact of morality extends from the brute fact of the universe and that is God
(sorry for the long post, fun discussion)
I think that your question is flawed (no offense intended). “Is there anyone in the world right now doing things YOU BELIEVE they should stop doing no matter what THEY PERSONALLY BELIEVE about the correctness of their behavior?” Of course I do, but that's based on my beliefs, which shouldn't be imposed on the rest of the human race. Right now, there are plenty of people out there doing things that I find reprehensible. But the key word there is "I". My sense of right and wrong says that what they are doing isn't right. From their perspective, I'm sure that there are things that I do that they would consider wrong. I think Mormon polygamists who marry fourteen year olds are wrong. They probably think that my being an agnostic who likes drinking is wrong. I think murder is wrong, but people kill for god and for country all the time and are celebrated for it. You can even take a complete psychopathic monster like Jeffrey Dahlmer as an example. He was well aware that killing and eating people was wrong, so much so that he had to be wasted in order to do it and died filled with regret over it. But, this was based on being born a middle class American and being raised in a society that frowns at cannibalism. You look at the Korowai tribe in Africa, who kill other tribes in land disputes and then eat them to absorb their power as a part of a ritual that's been passed down for generations. WE may find that wrong, but to them its justified within their society. People are able to justify anything that they do based on their own belief system.
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