Notes in Ethics: 6 Features of Morality

1. People experience a sense of moral obligation and accountability

·  One cannot doubt successfully a phenomenon of his own existence—namely, his moral experience.

·  Even secularists like Kai Nielsen recommend that one “ought”to act or follow some rules, policies, practices, or principles. [Kai Nielsen, Ethics Without God. London: Pemberton, 1973, p. 82.]

·  Even atheist Richard Dawkins declares that there are “moral instruction[s] on how we ought to behave.” [Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion. London: Bantam Press, 2006, p.347.]

·  Fundamental moral concepts (i.e., terms of moral obligation) have “binding force” and “overriding character” features that explain moral accountability.

2. Moral values and moral absolutes exist

·  It’s hard to deny the objective reality of moral values—actions like rape, torture, and child abuse are not just socially unacceptable behavior but are moral abominations. [William Lane Craig, Reasonable Faith: Christian Truth and Apologetics. Wheaton, Illinois: Crossway Books, 1994, p. 124.]

·  Even Darwinist Michael Ruse admits, “The man who says it is morally acceptable to rape little children is just as mistaken as the man who says 2+2=5.”[Michael Ruse, Darwinism Defended. London: Addison-Wesley, 1982, p. 27.]

·  Some actions are really wrong in the same way that some things like love and respect are truly good.

·  There are moral absolutes—truths that exist and apply to everyone, like that “you ought not to torture babies for fun on feast days.”

3. ‘Moral law’ therefore exists

·  When we accept the existence of goodness, we must affirm a moral law on the basis of which to differentiate between good and evil.

·  C.S. Lewis (The Case for Christianity) demonstrates the existence of a moral law by pointing to men who quarrel-- the man who makes remarks is not just saying that the other man's behavior does not happen to please him but is rather appealing to some kind of standard of behavior that he expects the other man to know about. [C.S. Lewis, The Case for Christianity. New York: MacMillan, pp. 5-6.]

4. ‘Moral law’ is known to humans

·  Moral law is also called Law of Nature because early philosophers thought that generally speaking, everybody knows it by nature. [C.S. Lewis, The Case for Christianity. New York: MacMillan, pp. 5-6.]

·  Different civilizations and different ages only have “slightly different” moralities and not a radically or “quite different moralities”.

·  One can not present a country where a man feels proud for double-crossing all the people who had been kindest to him.

·  Men may have differed as to whether one should have one wife or four wives but people have always agreed that one must not simply have any woman he likes.

·  Will and Ariel Durant: “A little knowledge of history stresses the variability of moral codes, and concludes that they are negligible because they differ in time and place, and sometimes contradict each other. A larger knowledge stresses the universality of moral codes, and concludes to their necessity.” [Will and Ariel Durant,The Lessons of History. New York, New York: Simon & Schuster, 1968, p. 37.]

5. Morality is ‘objective’

·  Morality is absolute—there is a real right and real wrong that is universally and immutably true, independent of whether anyone believes it or not.

·  Since almost all people assume certain things to be wrong—such as genocide, murder of babies for feast, and rape—the best explanation is that such things really are wrong and morality is objective. [Lowell Kleiman, Philosophy: An Introduction Through Literature. New York: MacMillan, pp. 317-324.]

·  How could anyone hold that the truth that “torturing a baby is wrong” is not a moral absolute but a relative judgment? 

·  Moral relativism is self-defeating—the statement “there are no absolutes” itself implies a claim for an absolute principle.

6. Moral judgments must be supported by reasons

·  Moral judgments are different from mere expressions of personal preference—they require backing by reasons, and in the absence of such reasons, they are merely arbitrary.[James Rachels, The Elements of Moral Philosophy. USA:McGraw-Hill College, 3^rd ed., 1999, pp. 16-17.]