{"id":195,"date":"2011-06-02T14:42:51","date_gmt":"2011-06-02T18:42:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/community\/exploringourmatrix\/?p=190"},"modified":"2011-06-02T14:42:51","modified_gmt":"2011-06-02T18:42:51","slug":"absolutely-moral-from-the-archives","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/religionprof\/2011\/06\/absolutely-moral-from-the-archives.html","title":{"rendered":"Absolutely Moral? (From the Archives)"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

I wrote this post after wandering into the midst of a conversation between a moral relativist and a moral absolutist. It was a thought-provoking experience. When asked if I believed there is an absolute truth<\/em>, I had no hesitation in answering. As a critical realist, I am persuaded that there is indeed such a thing as objective truth, even if what we \u201cknow\u201d as human being may at best approximate it.<\/p>\n

But what about morality? Do I believe in moral absolutes? There I found myself returning to Plato\u2019s famous Euthyphro dilemma. If there are moral absolutes, where do they come from? If God is the source of them, then God can command genocide and it is moral. If genocide is wrong no matter what, then morality seems to transcend even God.<\/p>\n

The moral absolutist offered the suggestion that moral absolutes might simply be an expression of the Creator\u2019s character. That doesn\u2019t seem to me to solve the problem. In fact, it seems to create a problem akin to the \u201cfine tuning\u201d of the laws of physics, offering us a Creator of our universe whose morality is fine tuned to the cosmic moral absolutes\u2026or something like that.<\/p>\n

I am pretty sure that the question whether \u201ckilling babies\u201d is absolutely morally wrong came up in the conversation. It seems to me ironic that a Christian fundamentalist would ever want to raise that issue, since the God of the Bible commanded<\/a> such acts. One cannot make the problematic nature of such stories go away by waving the magic \u201cWell, that was the Old<\/em> Testament\u201d wand, since the Letter of James quotes the Abraham story<\/a> as a positive one. That God was \u201conly testing\u201d Abraham, and that the story in its present form is intended to combat child sacrifice, still leaves unresolved the problem that the author thought it appropriate for Abraham to think it conceivable that God would make a request that his son be sacrificed.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>How might we retell the story today from our own perspective? What about a version in which a heavenly voice asks Abraham to kill his only son. Abraham refuses, saying that no God worthy of worship would ask such a think. Then<\/em> God says, \u201cWell done, Abraham, I was just testing you\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n

So is killing babies always morally wrong? I find myself recalling as I ask this question an episode from M*A*S*H that I watched as a child. In it, Hawkeye Pierce is showing evidence of mental instability, and the psychologist who counsels him gets him to remember something he had been blocking from his memory. He and a number of other people had been on a bus driving through the jungle. They stopped and shut all lights and kept quiet when they realized enemy troops were nearby. One Korean woman on the bus had a tiny infant that wouldn\u2019t stop crying. \u201cCan\u2019t you keep that thing quiet?\u201d was what Hawkeye had asked her, if I remember correctly. The woman, to save the rest of the people on the bus, smothered her baby.<\/p>\n

Would it have been a better moral choice to allow the baby to cry? Perhaps they all would have lived, or perhaps they all would have died. Is any further judgment upon those involved necessary, beyond the horror of the tragedy of what they did, and the guilt that will haunt them the rest of their lives? Cannot what that woman did be called a sacrifice <\/em>as much as, if not indeed more than, Abraham\u2019s action? That woman gave her child\u2019s life to save others. Abraham had no such motivation. Conversely, if this woman\u2019s action would still be considered murder<\/em>, does that term apply any less appropriately to Abraham\u2019s case?<\/p>\n

Can we be \u201cabsolutely moral,\u201d even without moral absolutism? Is moral truth objective in the same way as scientific truth? What do you think? Personally, I find it ironic that it seems to be those who claim to be moral absolutists who find the least problem with the story of the binding of Isaac. Perhaps such claims about the Creator being the source of absolute morality are simply one more way to bolster a fundamentalist understanding of the Bible\u2019s perfection. But the Bible\u2019s moral<\/em> perfection is every bit as difficult to maintain as its grammatical perfection, or any other sort of \u201cinerrancy\u201d.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I wrote this post after wandering into the midst of a conversation between a moral relativist and a moral absolutist. It was a thought-provoking experience. When asked if I believed there is an absolute truth, I had no hesitation in answering. As a critical realist, I am persuaded that there is indeed such a thing […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":136,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-195","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nAbsolutely Moral? (From the Archives)<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"I wrote this post after wandering into the midst of a conversation between a moral relativist and a moral absolutist. 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