Absolute Morality/Natural Law?

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^^^^

You are assuming that something must stand in causal relations with other things in order to exist. That is a pretty sweeping position.

I suggest you give this a read, it's a bit basic and not very subtle but it gets it's point across.
http://www.reasonablefaith.org/site/New ... le&id=5344

I suggest that nobody should try to use faith-based rhetoric to convince me that something non-existent is real.

It's like trying to get me to buy a used car that I've never seen, based on the sales-pitch alone - it just isn't going to happen.

I see no basis to conclude that there are any moral absolutes. Neither do a see a basis to suggest that morally is in any way linked to the natural world, other than our attempt to make it so.

There is no act that is universally held to be malum in se and for which no justification can ever exist. If one looks at Locke's conception of natural rights, killing, confinement and deprival have all been legtimated, excused or justified for a variety of reasons. The soldier, the police officer, the executioner, the doctor and every individual are all--in some circumstances--authorized to kill. The state and individuals deprive us of liberty every day--I cannot walk through my neighbor's house, even if that is a faster route to the bus stop.

Were any of these so-called natural rights absolute, then society as we understand it could not function.

Now, that being said, morality exists, and there exist some broad consensus on what is moral and what is immoral. But if we take one of the strongest moral guidelines in human history, "that which is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow," we find no natural genesis for that sentiment. If anything, Hilel enjoins us to resist our natures and subordinate our natural impulses to a higher, rational standard.

Another example of faithniks who are embarrassed by simple faith in the 21st century so they need to employ elaborate sophistry to make it seem like more than it is.

I'm sure it's all very compelling to the low IQ types and lost souls that you constantly snuffle around trying to locate.

Can an absolute morality be discovered using reason and the scientific method?

Reason

Reason is used to connect premisses to conclusions. It cannot prove something to be true, but it can, and is absolutely (by this I mean, anyone who is honest to oneself cannot possibly deny it without first being an idiot) effective at proving some things to be wrong.

You want to use reason to prove the existence of an absolute morality, you need to firstly work from principles to prove every possible alternative hypothesis wrong. After that, you have to convince people that the principles (or premisses) you used are true, which in itself isn't the domain of reason. But without it, it won't convince anyone.

For example:

All bananas are purple objects.
All purple objects are pretty.
Therefore all bananas are pretty.

The above is logically perfect, as both premisses lead exactly to the conclusion. See what I mean by reason not being able to prove things to be true? Why? Because it's utter hogwash that all bananas are purple.

And again:

Most bananas are yellow objects.
All yellow objects are not colourless.
Therefore most bananas are colourless.

The above premisses are true, but the statement is false, because the premisses clearly don't lead to the conclusion. See how logic works in proving things to be false?

So, you wanna do the same with an absolute morality, good luck... I don't believe it to be possible to logically disprove all other theories. And even if you could, you still have that unenviable task of convincing someone your premisses were true.

Science

And as for the scientific method, remember that science does not discover the truth. It creates theories that approximate the truth well enough to be applied for predictive purposes. Newton's laws are still used, and they were pretty in line with the scientific method, even though relativity has already supplanted it in terms of accuracy. Why? It's a pain in the arse to do relativistic mathematics. Even if an eventual goal of science may be to discover the truth of everything in the natural world, it is impossible to ever conclusively prove that a theory is absolutely true. It is, however, possible to show that a theory is applicable within certain contexts to predict certain phenomena with absolute accuracy.

Just because it's an elegant explanation with a 100% predictive success rate does not make a theory the truth. What it does, however, is give you a real good way to predict stuff, and not using that theory when it's that good would be foolishness.

Science cannot absolutely give you the answers you might want to this question. Or to any question of this type, for that matter. What it can do well is tell me how much thrust needs to be applied at what angle to get this satellite to orbit, what amount of surfactant to use to get this oil-water mixture to mix perfectly, what disease a person has given certain metrics like body temperature, appearance, symptoms and such...

And for life, this really is all you need. It's already awesome as it is, and without it we won't have that sufficiently advanced technology that appears to be nigh magical, even divine, if you show it to someone who lived merely 200 years ago.

Why even care?

Continuing from the scientific approach, my personal view on this is that it doesn't matter whether there could be an absolute morality or not. Can you honestly tell me that you can make every moral decision in your life up to now based on an exact prescription from a religious text, when no religious text can possibly cover every moral decision even one person's life entails? Even if there was an absolute morality, physical limitations make it impossible to adhere exactly to it, any form of human interpretation would screw up a perfect morality, since humans are imperfect - we're talking word-for-word literal prescriptions for every eventuality possible in every person's life from the start till the human species ends, if ever, if you want to avoid defiling a perfect moral code with human interpretation.

In application, there is no human who can use a perfect morality, regardless of whether it exists or not.

Also, does it matter?

Do you need a deity to look at you and tell you you did a good job? Are you capable of doing what you believe to be right if there wasn't a deity? What is the point of an absolute morality in the first place? Is it for social stability? To be able to sleep well at night? To have a sense of identity with other people?

I follow my own moral code, and it is an unusual one at that. Why do I bother? It's part of who I am. Contradicting my moral code is akin to stabbing myself in the leg with a knife. Can I violate my own identity? Of course. Will I want to do that? Of course not. For my purposes I don't need an absolute code, nor do I care what the heck other people do as long as it doesn't screw me up. My life is short enough without having to care about whether what others do is right or wrong.

Why do you follow a moral code? If you can figure out what your motivation is, you can create/borrow one to fulfil that motivation. Why do you need it to be absolute? Can it work as well without being absolute? If not, why? Is there anyway to overcome that?

Focusing on objectives may not be a socially marvellous thing to do, but it gets jobs done unlike any other way I know.

Like many other human attributes, morality is a complex trait that has both inherited and environmental components. Most people have the innate ability to develop morality (but there are always a small percentage of people that do not), simply because it is evolutionarily advantageous for the society if most people are reciprical altruists. Equally such a society can support a low number of non altruistic people (psychopaths) who gain by being selfish in an environment where most people are altruistic to some extent.

Of the majority who have the innate propensity for morality, this develops through interactions with other people and animals - not necessarily one's parents (although this helps). The culture in which one grows up in determines the specifics of each person's moral code, but there are certain common characteristics between cultures and races, in particular rules such as 'do not kill/steal' and 'treat others as you would wish to be treated yourself'. Those that are abused or are not in an environment in which they can develop their innate morality sometimes also end up unable to show altruism to others and in this sense can also be thought of as psychopathic, although perhaps with the ability to change with the right therapy.

Whether altruism is extended to others only within the immediate family, or within the wider social group or even the entire human population (and even further into other species), is predominantly a cultural attribute, depending upon the ease/difficulty of survival (although genetic factors probably influence this too, as obviously differences in morality are seen between individuals of the same culture). Most of us in the Western world have a relatively low risk of premature death, and there are abundant resources. This means that we have the freedom to extend our altruism to the entire human race. However, if the food sources became scarce, or there was a high risk of violence, then the majority of us would withdraw our altruism from the majority and focus only on our loved ones, so this aspect of morality is flexible.

To answer the question "is there an absolute morality?', the answer has to be 'no', that outside humanity there is no objectivity. However, there do seem to be a series of principles that are common to humanity and necessary for the well-functioning of society (such as those found in most bills of human rights), in addition to many 'cultural' morals, that are not evolutionarily conserved, but have been developed in order to provide benefits to certain societies, or subsets of societies (in particular sexual morals). We are always going to argue about the specifics - in particular issues such as abortion, simply because moral principles frequently contradict one another (right to life over the right to bodily freedom) and whether we fall on one side or the other of the argument will depend upon our experiences and genetics. There isn't really a way around this - we have to messily find some sort of middle ground through logical discussion. No it isn't ideal, but this is the reality of being imperfectly human.