Gods and the morality of society
September 14, 2009 by Michael Nugent
It does not make any difference to the collective morality of society whether gods exist, or whether morality is absolute or relative. This is because, in each of these cases, we still as a society have to agree together what we collectively consider to be right and wrong in order to live together ethically.
To oversimplify, there are four broad possibilities:
1. There is a God or gods, and there is an absolute objective morality.
2. There is a God or gods, and morality is relative and subjective.
3. There are no gods, and there is an absolute objective morality.
4. There are no gods, and morality is relative and subjective.
If options 2 or 4 are correct, then we have to collectively agree what is right and wrong. If options 1 or 3 are correct, then we have to collectively identify what is right and wrong. Since the various religions that exist believe that their gods have given them competing definitions of what is right and wrong, then (from the point of view of society collectively) identifying together what is right and wrong is in practice identical to agreeing together what is right and wrong. So, for society as opposed to for individuals, the task is the same regardless of whether or not there are gods.
The existence of a God or gods, and the existence of absolute morality, are two distinct issues. Both could exist, and be unrelated to each other. Certainly the Christian God, as portrayed in the Bible, does not convey absolute morality. At times, this God advocates loving other people, and at times he endorses slavery and orders genocide, as well as petty injustices such as killing people for gathering sticks on the Sabbath. Overall, he conveys the varied morality of Bronze Age and Iron Age tribesmen at the time those books were written, much of which most Christians today would reject as being inappropriate for our age. That is the essence of relative morality.
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Of course there are some huge problems with #2 and #4, all centring around subjective morality.
Why is “living ethically” as you define it a good thing? Why is society and social order “good”? Why is it preferred to anarchy and nihilism? Is it simply a matter of taste? If so, why “should” we do anything?
I resent those who claim that morality is subjective and then try to impose theirs on me, mostly because it is hypocritical nonsense. And yet if morality IS subjective then all “social order” becomes is a system of control by the majority opinion.
I intended my post to be more descriptive than prescriptive, David. And even then, it would require a lot of qualifications to be accurate.
That said, I do believe there is a value to "social order" – if it is used to protect people rather than to control them.
I realise that it's not likely that your argument was intended as a formal one, but I still think #2 and #4 are unworkable given the reasons already mentioned.
Without absolute morality, the social order can have no right to existence or claim to authority. And to protect people is to control those who would cause harm.
Sorry if I come across as nit-picky; have been on a bit of a tirade against subjective morality among other things in my own internal arguments recently.
Well, yeah, social order is a system of control, and the majority opinion usually decides the parameters of that control (either directly or by suffering some sort of elite to do it for them). But this is true in all four scenarios. The nature and rules of the system of control are variable, but the presence of a system is constant. No human population exists without some sort of social order, however strained they might be (even in places like Somalia).
So, though the question of whether the presence of society and social order is inherently good or bad is an intriguing one, I'm not sure it's relevant to the argument in this case. Mick assumes the presence of a social order, an empirically sound premise, and he assumes a desire in the people living within that order to mold it to their notions of morality, another empirically sound premise. Whether there should be a social order at all is another debate entirely.