Confessions of a Serial Mapper

There is a real problem with absolute morals.  Some theists will claim that their holy book has the absolute morals that god has laid down.  They describe that absolute morality exists because god is the absolute good.  That morality can only exist with an absolute moral good for us to compare with.  This is of course, pure, weapons grade Baloneium.  Morality is subjective  and I aim to prove that in the following post.

The Problem With Absolute Morals

Let us have a look at the Bible, lets look at 2 of the 10 commandments.  Thou shalt not kill and thou shalt not lie/bear false witness.  Being objective morals it is never OK to lie, nor is it never OK to kill.  If you lie or kill, you have broken one of the commandments.  Simple, easy to understand.  So let’s provide 2 hypothetical scenarios and test these supposedly absolute morals.

Scenario 1:  You are living in Nazi Germany, the year is 1944, you are hiding a Jewish family in your loft.  You know that if they are found, they will be taken to a work camp and murdered.  The SS knock at your door, and ask if you are hiding any Jews in your loft, what do you do?  You can either choose to tell the truth and say, “Yes, there are Jews hiding in my loft.”  Which basically means you have condemned them to death, most, if not all people in modern society would consider this a bad decision, you had the power to prevent this family from dying, yet you did not.  You are partially responsible for their murder.  The other option would be to lie and say no, the SS leave and you have saved the lives of the family hiding in your loft.  This would be considered the best course of action, you prevented the genocidal murder of a family, a course of action that most, if not all, would say was the right thing to do.

Scenario 2: A country invades yours, their people are exactly like yours (in religious respect as well, this war is entirely political), the only difference is over a quarrel a trade agreement which went sour.  You have good friends and family living in the country invading yours, a draft is called.  Do you either lie, say that you are a conscientious objector (in this scenario you are not), or join up and risk having to murder someone.  Now I know what a lot of people will say, that the murder is justified against unbelievers and sinners.  War is sometimes inevitable, but this war wasn’t inevitable, it is against a group of people very similar, if not identical to your own.  They have the same faith as you do, yet here you are, having to decide which commandment to break.  You could always join up and simply not shoot your weapon, but is that a risk you can take. You would be letting down your platoon and your country.

Both these scenarios are hypothetical, but my aim should be clear.  I’m showing that absolute morality doesn’t work.  You also can’t claim one to be more important than the other, since the more moral course of action would be to lie and in the other, the more moral course of action would involve you becoming a killer. Each situation calls upon a different application of moral rules to decide your course of action and remain moral.  In short, the most moral course of action alters varies from situation to situation.  It would be impossible to say that there is a definitive list of actions which should be adhered to, or avoided.  The rules have to be applied differently in different situations, therefore, morality cannot be absolute and are in fact subjective.

Morality Varies Geographically

What is determined to be moral and immoral differs between countries.  Let’s have a look at piracy, both versions of it.  First of all, piracy in Somalia.  To the western world, Piracy is seen as a crime, it is seen as wrong and immoral.  Yet, let’s take the perspective from some one living in Somalia.  A spokesperson of the pirates states that he used to be a fisher, yet pollution from large container ships destroyed the fishing habitat.  With no options left, he turned to piracy, not by choice, but by necessity.  Recently Somali pirates hijacked a ship with weapons on it, but had no intention to use the weapons, just to hold the ship to ransom, why?  They need the money, for food, to survive.  It is not by choice they selected this lifestyle, but by force and are actually seen as brave individuals by the families they have to feed.  To them, their actions are not bad, not immoral from their perspective.

It’s a sort of Robin Hood scenario, the poor have no problem with him stealing from the rich and giving to the poor, yet the rich do.  It is what has to be done, in a totally objective moral system, stealing would never be considered right, yet is by more than those who simply benefit from it.

The recent Pirate Bay Trials also draw our eye to this problem of defining absolute morality.  To some, the idea of showing the market failure to efficiently adjust to demand enables piracy.  Big bloated movie companies, movie stars etc.  Make so much already, there is no real problem with them lowering the price for DVD’s and CD’s.  However, the other side of the argument sees them as immoral individuals who are stealing copyrighted content.  One side views the owners of TPB as heroes, the other side sees them as villains.

What is good and bad is subjective to which side your on.  Morality is subjective, in geographical contexts, but also between communities within a society.

Morality Varies Over Time

Morality also varies over time in the same nation.  Let’s take the US, slavery used to be seen as a good idea, but dissenters to the norm brought change and supposedly today we see blacks and whites living along side each other happily.  If morality was absolute, then why did it change?  The society shifted from something being seen as fine, to something being seen as bad.  Here’s a few quotes:

[Slavery] was established by decree of Almighty God…it is sanctioned in the Bible, in both Testaments, from Genesis to Revelation…it has existed in all ages, has been found among the people of the highest civilization, and in nations of the highest proficiency in the arts.” Jefferson Davis, President of the Confederate States of America.

“The right of holding slaves is clearly established in the Holy Scriptures, both by precept and example.” Rev. R. Furman, D.D., Baptist, of South Carolina

I could also sit here and ramble off a few passages in the Bible, but they are there and I have looked at them in previous blog posts.  A simple Google search will deliver proof if you want it.  The Bible supports slavery, yet today, we condemn it.  Why?  Because we know better.  Humanity has evolved morals beyond the limited scope of the Bible, there are more examples below of immoral things in the Bible that Christians seem to overlook today.

God Breaks His Own Morals

Let’s consider the big guy.  If morality was absolute, then god himself must be the source of all good in the universe and would therefore have to follow his own rules.  Lead by example as it were.  Otherwise god would be nothing more than a hypocrite, setting rules and no following them.  If morality is absolute, it doesn’t matter if your god, you still have to follow them to be good.

The argument that god is god and is therefore exempt from the rules is nothing more than special pleading and an argument from authority.  Just because god is supposedly the

Some examples of god doing what I would consider evil is a rather long list and depends on which god your looking at, but taking the Christian god:

• Killing all the innocent children and babies in the flood.
• Sending bears to kill some young people for a rather arbitrary reason.
• Rules on women, for example, god supports the idea of raping a young women so she is forced to become your wife, a women can’t speak in church etc. etc.
• Loved human and animal sacrifice, even loves the smell of burning animal flesh.
• Lied to Abraham, by telling him to kill his son.
• God kills 70,000 because David ordered a census (1 Chronicles 21).
• Supports slavery, why else would he have passed rules on slavery if god was against it?
• Supports selling your own daughter into slavery of a sexual nature (Exodus 21:1-11).
• Plus many more too numerous to list here.

All in all, there is a lot of bad stuff in the Bible (a lot of good stuff too).  But the fact that god supposedly did even 1 immoral thing contrary to his own commandments makes him a hypocrite, or much more likely is that the Bible was written by fallacious, ignorant human men.  The number of errors easily show that the Bible is not the work of god, there is a lot on this topic, a few Google searches should give you all the info you need.  Note, you can also do this with other holy books too, such as the Qur’an.

God Made Good And Evil

The usual argument is simple, god made the universe, therefore he makes all the good things and all the bad things happen.  The standard response is that god did make the universe, but evil things comes from humans having freewill.  Which god supposedly gave to humanity.  So therefore, god doesn’t have anything to do with evils such as murder, rape, etc etc.  But what about natural disasters?

Well, here’s a little quote from Epicurus:

Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil? Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?

Makes you think, but somehow the apologist will somehow weasel their way out of it.  The argument usually goes something like this.  God created good, but good is like a doughnut, you can’t have a doughnut without the hole in the middle.  This hole is evil.  In short, god created good, but evil was a by product of this creation.  Now, this argument is pretty flawed, by the sheer belief that god created the universe, we can easily arrive at the conclusion that god must have created evil too.

And here’s why.  If evil is the hole in the doughnut of good, who made up this rule. Who decided that in the universe, an absence of good equates to evil?  If god sat there and thought that an absence of good would lead to evil, that the doughnut needed a hole, he created evil by imposing this rule.  It isn’t a case that god can’t do it either, because if god is as all powerful as apologists claim, then he could create good where the absence of it would not lead to evil.  In short, god could have created the doughnut without the hole.  But by deciding not to, god is either subject to rules an even higher god set down or is evil for deciding to create a universe where evil is even possible!  God invented evil!

Also, who is to say god is good!  Just because he says so and claims that the other one is evil is again an appeal from authority.  Just because god claims that he is good in the Bible, does not make him good!  How do you know god isn’t lying?

Morality In The Bible

I really don’t think I need to go through all of this again.  In short, homosexuality, a sin.  Dissenting children, stone ‘em.  Women, should be submissive.  Slavery, perfectly fine.  The Bible does have some morals which correlate with what is considered good in a society today, yet it also has much we would consider bad.  Also, why is it that some of these supposed moral teachings are selectively ignored, or apologists use some of the most insane “logic” to solve these issues and make the Bible still seem like the source of all morality we have today.

Why is it that we can judge which morals are good and which ones are bad in the Bible?  Simple, we have a higher understanding of them, we can look and judge them.  Apologists always have this problem with always being a little too late to realise the Bible says something all of society has already realised.  For example, the Bible was used to justify the enslavement of Africans, but until the idea started to spread that slavery is wrong, no one ever used the Bible to describe how slavery is wrong.  Even with the obvious contradictions to this position.  The Bible (like a lot of religious texts) become the big book of multiple choice.  It’s “true” meaning is so vague, that you can reason the Bible makes any claim, scientific or moral one day, then the opposite the next.

Countries Without the Bible

So if all modern morality came from the Bible as so many apologists claim, it infers 2 things.  That any society not basing their morals on Christian teachings must be more immoral than Christian areas that apparently do (as morals are absolute).  Second other religious texts must have more immoral teachings than the Bible does.

This is obviously not true, with countries in the far east (an area which Christianity never really penetrated over the past 2000 years) having some rather low crime rates.  Japan and China both are developed countries such as UK and the USA, yet has a lower crime rate and a lower rate of repeat offenders.  So this means that the Bible isn’t the source of all morality and since very organically secular countries have a high correlation with low crime rates and other indicators of a positive life-style, we can’t draw the conclusion that teachings from the Bible are the foundations of morality.

Also, what about a time before the Bible?  Surly without that oh so unknown piece of knowledge that murder is bad, there would be killing everywhere.  But no, what we see is even in the animal kingdom, most individuals of a species know not to kill others of their species, or clan.  Even within our own species, tribes of humans with no contact with missionaries carrying the Bible don’t resort to murdering each other because that would destroy the long-term survival of the tribe.  The fact these tribes exist shows that all animals instinctively know that murder is wrong.  Other morals can be analysed this way and shows that they do not come from the Bible and come from other social and natural mechanisms.  This leads us to the conclusion that the Bible is not the source of all morality in the world.

Conclusions

Morality is a construct of society, depicting good actions, which are beneficial to the society against bad actions, which are detrimental to the society.  Not only do most Christians pick and choose their morality from the Bible, but have the sheer audacity to try and explain their way out of the corners the Bible puts them in.  We have what is obviously a rule book with no wiggle room, to say that there homosexuality to wrong!  Despite god supposedly making them that way!

Morality is not absolute, it is closer to a set of general rules which have to be applied in a certain way at a certain time.  Absolute rules simply means you no longer have to consider your impact and instead can blindly follow them, blaming the rules if something goes wrong.  For example, trying to claim that absolute morality works when everyone follows the same rules isn’t true, there is no evidence that this is true and even if everyone did follow the same set of rules, they have to be interpreted  by the individual, meaning that they will, ultimately be used in different ways.  Claiming absolute morality is almost trying to get off the hook, it removes the need to think and ultimately makes a sheep out of you.  Again, religions don’t want you to think, just to obey, questioning the rules is a big no no, because of course, we could never understand gods way (or even understand what god is).  Be brave for once and drop your comfort blanket, take a step back from your beliefs and actually take a critical eye to them and use that bog ol’ brain of yours.  Think for yourself.

Finally, it is important to note that morality fits in nicely within an evolutionary framework.  It can easily come about through evolutionary mechanisms.  In fact, we can look into the animal kingdom and confirm that even animals have systems of inbuilt, tacit morality.  Humans are animals, we are part of the ape family and morality is subjective, get over it.