C.S. Lewis gives an interesting argument on morality in Mere Christianity. In brief, he gives a variant on the argument from morality: he shows that morality is a code of conduct innate in people (I say "shows," although you cannot call what he writes a strict proof, because I belief that his demonstration is sufficient in conjunction with my own observations to be at least difficult to object to), argues that it is contrary to evolutionary pressure, and then gives the only plausible alternative as being transcendental or divine in origin, thus invoking God. In short, morality is his argument for God, and how he came to be convinced of the existence of God, in spite of his previous atheism.
Well, I will take the opposite tack: I believe a stronger statement can be made upon establishing the existence of God; and as I have already made it clear that I believe in Him and argued for His existence in the best way I believe possible (in terms of the experiment), I will now take the existence of God as my starting point.
You see, examining myself and those around me, I am convinced that morality is innate, but that does not prove that morality represents anything inherent in the world: Perhaps it represents only something inherent in people. However, from the assumption of the existence of God we may establish that morality is not only innate, but inherent in reality itself: That there is a universal standard of right and wrong by which our actions ought to be determined and against which they may be measured. In short, I am a moral realist. Moral realism is defined by saying that moral statements can be made as logical propositions (such as "Murder is wrong") and that some of these statements are true. This is in contrast to philosophies such as moral relativism, which asserts that morality is entirely subjective, with either no inherent truth or falsity in such propositions or the assertion that all such propositions are false, and all morality is merely a cultural or personal belief. I find that the existence of God provides a quite firm basis for moral realism; in fact, so long as you assume that God makes moral statements (and most of my experiences with Him establish this, the remainder being morally neutral), then His omniscience, omnipotence, and so forth (His perfections) establish an objectively preferred morality out of all possible moral beliefs, thus fully convincing me of a moral reality. That which God states to be moral is, in fact, moral, and remains set regardless of our beliefs.
What I am talking about, then, are moral truths. They are true as universally as what we might call physical truths, but with an important difference: To use Hume's terminology, physical truths are concerned with "is" statements, while moral truths are concerned with "ought" statements. They are, in fact, quite independent of one another: An "is" statement does not necessarily imply an "ought" statement, nor an "ought" statement an "is" statement. In other words, people don't always do what they ought to do. The comparison between the two types of truth, however, has further usefulness. For example, it is usually difficult to state absolutes which are universally true in either the physical world or morality. For example, it may be a physical fact that the sky is blue; however, it may turn red at sunset. But we can answer both these circumstances with a discussion of Rayleigh Scattering: for, regardless of the time of day, this explanation does give you the color of the sky. If you object further that Rayleigh Scattering is not fully general, that it only explains the color of the sky on a planet with an atmosphere with certain properties similar to earth's, we may define deeper and deeper physical principles, until we finally discover something that is without exception (for example, so far as we can tell, conservation of momentum is a physical absolute). Similarly, in morality, even fairly definite rules such as "Thou shalt not kill" can be answered with exceptional circumstances (if killing one person will save hundreds of others, is it right?), and while you may maintain that the prohibition against murder holds in these circumstances, there is certainly room for debate. However, just as in the physical case, it may be possible to find a fully general moral absolute. For example, there is one readily apparent moral absolute in an ethical system built from the idea of "God's morality": Joseph Smith summarized it as, "Whatsoever God commands is right."
One last point, a practical issue, based on a moral realist ethical system. If there exists moral truth, then it is reasonable to presume that we should first try to discover such moral truths, then act upon them. In fact, it seems plausible that, upon discovering a moral truth, we should do what we can to foster the translation of that "ought" statement into an "is" statement, both in our own conduct and in whatever ways we can influence those around us (without, of course, compromising other ethical principles). That provides us with quite a bit more that could be said, but I think I will leave that for another post.
Title: T.H. White, The Once and Future King
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