"Courage Is Not the Absence of Fear, But the Mastery of It"

I wanted to draw attention to this quote for a simple reason: It's really just a special case of a more general principle.

"Virtue is not the absence of temptation, but the mastery of it."

It is true that we can sometimes act in ways which bring temptation on ourselves, and that can be a matter of foolishness or wickedness, but a great many temptations come regardless of individual action. Indeed, many temptations grow out of desires which are, of themselves good.

As evidence, sexual sin is quite severe. However, we are told that attraction, even sexual attraction, is a desire which is God-given for a purpose which is essential to His plan. Sex and the desire for sex are, of themselves, good things, and part of the reason that sexual sin is so severe is that it profanes a thing which is so sacred. So it is good and right, but only at the right time, in the right way. As Elder Jeffrey R. Holland once taught, 'When faced with that inherent appetite, a disciple of Christ must be willing to say, "Yes, but not this way."' (The Inconvenient Messiah)

So temptation cannot be taken as proof that a person is bad. Indeed, the ultimate example of virtue, Jesus Christ, "was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin" (Hebrews 4:15). Let us be like Him. So I say again,

"Virtue is not the absence of temptation, but the mastery of it."

Title: Usually attributed to Mark Twain, though there seems to be some doubt on the subject

"Obeying, Honoring, and Sustaining the Law"

There's an interesting (and important, practically speaking) conflict that comes up at times:

"We believe in being subject to kings, presidents, rulers, and magistrates, in obeying, honoring, and sustaining the law" (Articles of Faith 1:12).

"Then Peter and the other apostles answered and said, We ought to obey God rather than men" (Acts 5:29).

Clearly we are required, as a part of our religion, to "render unto Caesar" a certain degree of respect and obedience. Yet we also believe, under certain circumstances at least, in civil disobedience. If you doubt it, consider the story of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-nego, which is a prime example of the practice: they willfully refuse to obey a law, accepting the consequences, because their moral values could not abide it. And their stance clearly was not frowned upon by God, judging by His miraculously delivering them.

So there is a time for obeying the law, and there is a time for disobeying it on moral principle. The question of where, exactly, to put the line of demarcation between the cases in which we should obey it and those in which we should defy it is what remains to us. To determine this, the above quotes may well give us what we need to know:

• Generally speaking, we believe in obeying the law. So in most cases, we should obey the law.
• However, "We ought to obey God rather than men." God's laws supersede man's. If obedience to a human law directly contradicts a moral law, we ought to follow God first.

In other words, God wins over country, but the law of the land should be respected in cases where it can possibly be accommodated. This also hints at one of the qualifications of a just law, which I should consider in more detail at another point: a just law should not attempt to compel people to act contrary to their conscience, and should maximally provide exemptions for matters of conscience. For example, the idea of the conscientious objector to a draft is one which must be strongly upheld.

They're so happy, they don't know how miserable they are.

I really like "Fiddler on the Roof." I especially love the character, Tevye. He's a simple, poor milkman who always wanted an education, and while he never got that, he has wit and discernment to see through the problems and the changing world around him to what is essential (and has a host of great one-liners on the way). If you haven't seen it, I highly recommend it, the movie is great. Also, minor spoiler alert: I'm going to tell you a little bit about the story below.

One great insight comes a few months after the marriage of his daughter, Tzeitel, to a poor man, Motel. Speaking of this young, poor couple Tevye says, "They work very hard, and they're as poor as squirrels in winter. But, they're so happy, they don't know how miserable they are."

I think there's a couple of lessons for us from Tevye and his daughter and son-in-law.

First off, there's something to be said for counting your blessings and being happy with where you are now. Motel and Tzeitel were very poor, but they were happy all the same. They just kept working hard, and it didn't matter that they were barely scraping by (if that). They were happy. Sometimes you can make a decision to see the blessings that you have now, and even beside your blessings, if you can't find any (let me assure you, though, they're there, you're always more blessed than you know), you can just choose to be happy. Put a smile on your face, laugh out loud, and be happy. I'm not saying it'll fix everything that's going wrong, but you are in control of your attitude, and it helps.

Second, take a chance on happiness even though you don't know the end. In the story, Motel, who was a tailor, originally hoped to save up enough money to buy a sewing machine before asking for Tzeitel's hand, in the hopes that he would be able to better provide for his family, because he would be able to do more and do a better job than working by hand. But in the end, he married Tzeitel before he could get a sewing machine, and as a result, they were as poor as his new father-in-law said. But they were as happy as Tevye observed, too.

The takeaway? Sometimes we wait to do things that will make us happy because of risk. The example from the movie is actually probably the most common one today. A lot of people are afraid to get married and have children until they're well on their way to their career, with perfect security for the future. They pass on being so happy that they don't even realize how miserable they are, and miss out on far better things than what they get, assuming they get anything at all out of waiting (studies seem about as conclusive as social sciences can be about married people tending to do better in other endeavors because of the loving support of a spouse). Wouldn't it be better to be so happy, you don't know how miserable you are?

The natural man is an enemy to God

I have heard an assertion several times which I think deserves attention simply because it appears to be so widespread. Simply put, it is that "every natural impulse is right." Most often, I hear it in defense of one position or another saying, "Well, it's a natural impulse, so of course it's moral."

I would like to go on the record with a statement that this ethical philosophy is utterly false and untenable.

First off, let's look at what it really means. What this philosophy essentially does is make instinct the ultimate judge of morality. It implies that something is right simply because I was born with the desire for it or impulse to seek it. Whatever I want is right, as long as I come by that desire naturally (and here I may add that we have some difficulty, as "naturally" has not been well-defined). In the end, almost whatever I want is moral simply because I want it. In this case, morality has no meaning, and the whole philosophy is reduced to Hedonism: There is no right and wrong, only pleasure and those too foolish to seek it. I am strictly opposed to this view, in large part because I am a moral realist whose experience has taught him to be so.

Second, even if you don't buy my evaluation of what this philosophy actually entails, I'd like to give a couple of counter-examples that make this philosophy untenable. Anger is a natural reaction when someone has wronged us, or even when they have not done anything wrong, but something inconvenient to us. I anticipate that most readers will agree that it is immoral to hurt someone for doing that which is right, yet this natural impulse will lead us to precisely this. Another example comes from fear. Fear is a natural impulse to which, in many instances, we ought not to hearken, which will lead us away from doing what is right. I think I could provide several others, but these two suffice me.

Finally, and, at least for me, most importantly, God is no friend of this theory. In fact, the prophet King Benjamin taught, "For the natural man is an enemy to God, and has been from the fall of Adam, and will be, forever and ever, unless he yields to the enticings of the Holy Spirit" (Mosiah 3:19). God has been pretty clear on this subject several other times, including to me, personally. God Himself has told me personally that natural impulses are not necessarily moral, and, beyond this, that he who hearkens to all natural impulses is an enemy to morality.

Title: Mosiah 3:19

Whatever God commands is right

Today I wish to answer an old problem, the Euthyphro Dilemma. The dilemma boils down to the question, "Is it morally good because God commands it, or does God command it because it is morally good?"

Now, the question itself is interesting, but the fact that it is framed as a dilemma and sometimes used as a "proof" of the nonexistence of God is... ridiculous. The fact is that whether God does what He does because it is good, or good is defined by what God says, either way one has not developed a contradiction to the idea of God. Just because you don't know which of the options is right doesn't mean that He isn't there.

Now, returning to the question itself, LDS Theology on the point seems quite clear: God commands it because it is morally good. LDS Theology considers there to be moral truth independent of any being, and God is in complete correspondence with this moral truth. He is perfect, and statements such as "God would cease to be God" give us a pretty clear sense that morality is independent of Him, that His perfection is according to external principles by which He may be evaluated, but always passes perfectly. Now, I used the fact that God's morality provides an objectively preferred morality as evidence for Moral Realism, but the argument is not weakened by supposing that God Himself is subject to morality, as the idea of God's activity being evaluated according to external principles is itself a manifestation of a moral reality. Furthermore, the idea of God's morality being a way to learn of moral reality is not weakened, as God is Himself perfect, so that it is a matter not of defining moral reality from God's commandments, but noting perfect correspondence with morality so that we may still trust His commands to give us a perfect sense of moral reality.

Title: Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith

Justice had been his last attempt

With all of the conceptions from my last post in mind, I would like to begin to evaluate them and determine and articulate what it is that I believe. I must first say that justice is not the same as fairness. In many cases they are identical, but in my mind justice is most fundamentally the first of these conceptions. Justice is primarily the moral principle of consequences matching actions. The other conceptions, I think, are more accurately identified as fairness. To justify this statement, it seems sufficient to me to note that this is the "classical" meaning of the two words (justice and fairness), and that the terms have been combined in some discussion primarily for rhetorical purposes (the term "social justice" having been coined in the 19th century to put equality on the same rhetorical footing as the preeminent position that justice enjoyed in political philosophy and legal theory), though it seems more sensible to keep the two terms separate, if only to avoid confusion.

That said, I've merely shifted the discussion semantically: Is it justice or fairness that should have a preeminent place in the law? Or can they both enjoy an equal place? Well, they cannot both be universally observed, for at times fairness may even contradict the fundamental justice of actions and consequences: For example, a "perfectly equal" society requires that rewards are the same for all, independent of their actions, so that consequences to actions simply do not exist. I can reject this conception without hesitation, for it is contrary even to physical truth: once again, reality is not kind to the belief that consequences to actions may be ignored. Thus, as a practical matter, dismissing consequences to action seems untenable. More to the point, I may appeal to both revelation and conscience to assert that justice is a fundamental moral law. I think there may also be a logical argument for justice being an essential principle, yet I have been unable to formulate it, so that for the time being I will, from a logical perspective, take the status of the justice of consequences for actions as a moral law which ought to be satisfied (at the very least in most cases) as axiomatic. Perhaps in a later post I will find myself more capable of articulating some logic to it, or perhaps a reader may supply it, but I cannot do it now.

I have utterly rejected the "perfect equality" conception of fairness as inconsistent with the moral law of justice (at least in an imperfect society), but it is important to consider some of the other ideas of equality. The requirement of equal treatment, rewarding equally for equal goods and services or punishing equally for equal crimes, seems to me a part of the ideal of fairness, but not universally required by morality. Of course, in the restricted matter of government, I believe that equal treatment under the law is emergent from the principle of justice, for any government involvement in punishment for wrongdoing (rather than leaving it to God, which may be called for under certain circumstances, as considered in the recent post on liberty) must be regulated by the principle of justice, in which the consequences correspond to the action, or the punishment fits the crime. That at times a pardon may be reasonable as an act of mercy or in consequence of actions external to the crime, but the point is that in a general sense, all should be treated equally under the law because the moral consequences that fit actions are consistent from one person to another. On the other hand, in private matters, a person may deal with one person justly, and then for the same actions reward another person more, giving the second person what we may consider a gift in addition to the just reward for their actions. One can only justly act charitably in this manner with his own means, so that a manager at a business paying his friends more out of money which is not actually his is unjust, but if the owner of the business were to pay one more than another out of kindness, or if the manager were to take out of his own pocket and give money to an employee, I could not consider those actions wrong in and of themselves (although we may get into a complex discussion of motives here, and these actions may be dishonest when taken with other things going on). You may argue that gifts in and of themselves are not just, as they reward where there was no action, but I do not believe that that which benefits people beyond the minimum requirements of justice is immoral, that injustice can only be invoked as immorality when the injustice is in some way harmful to someone involved. When a gift is given of the free will of the giver, then such a case is not immoral.

There is also the issue of equality in matters beyond the control of those involved. I still do not believe that this is justice, but I will also suggest that inequality is not enforced by justice. A child of rich parents is not entitled by justice to his parents' wealth, for it does not come in consequence of his actions. If the parents bestow riches on their child as a gift, then this is not an offense against justice, but neither is it an offense against justice for the child to receive none of his parents' riches. In this particular example, there is an interaction between fairness and liberty, wherein the libertarian view asserts that the parents have the right to give their riches to the child, but fairness asserts that the child has no more right to the money than any other, and so it should be distributed among many children. However, justice itself is not implicated. Other examples such as natural disaster, compensation for loss due to crime, and the accidental discovery of oil in your backyard have similar results: justice neither obliges nor prevents the loss or benefit from being shared across the population, but other principles do tend to conflict with fairness in each case, leading to a more complicated resolution to the question of what ought to be done. These sorts of questions ought to be addressed (and I may approach some of them in future posts), but that will leave the subject of justice, and each problem must be addressed individually, so I will have to consider these issues another time.

Title: T.H. White, The Once and Future King

And Justice for All

Last time I talked about liberty, and now I would like to approach the subject of justice. Both of these are, as I see it, central to the role of government, and so it seems appropriate to discuss them more or less together like this, and before further approaching political philosophy.

The problem with justice is that it is very broad and includes a wide variety of meanings. However, as with liberty, as a moral realist I believe that there is a basic principle of true justice, and the question is still what constitutes this true justice. It may include a variety of ideas, but let us begin to evaluate some common theories of justice, recalling the required principle of consistency, that any moral law must be consistent with other moral laws.

First, there is the basic conception of justice that one ought to receive consequences according to his choices and actions. Under this conception, a criminal is brought to justice when he receives punishment for his crime, a person is justly dealt with when he receives full payment for a contract entered into, and it is injustice for a person to receive payment other than what is merited by the good or service he is providing (although this last example is complicated by questions of whether there is an absolute and fundamental value which may be attached to a particular good or service, so that most often it is only by deceit, such as failing to pay a previously agreed upon amount, that we consider this type of infraction against justice, though there are some counterexamples).

Second, there are several conceptions regarding equality. One idea is that one must reward or punish everyone equally. Indeed, it has been asserted that any variation in pay for similar jobs in the workplace (for example) is injustice. Alternately, there is a conception in which variation in advantages and disadvantages outside of one's control (such as one's family's economic situation) is inherently unjust. The strongest conception relating to equality is that justice demands that all people have complete equality in terms of economics, freedoms, and privileges.

Finally, there are conceptions related to need, requiring that everyone have certain minimum needs and liberties allotted them in order to fulfill justice. In many ways this is related to equality, though perhaps not quite as strong, and perhaps imposing slightly different standards (for in such a conception of justice, the ideal society gives more to a section of society because of their greater need, contrary to the conception based in equality).

There may yet be other conceptions of justice, but these, I think, can mostly be formulated as intermediates between the above. If anyone thinks of another common conception, then please comment so that I may address this as well.

In the next post I will take these different conceptions and attempt to determine which of these formulations (or what combination of them) corresponds to my personal theory of justice.

Title: U.S. Pledge of Allegiance

All men... are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights

Now I would like to turn to some of the most important moral principles for political philosophy. First will be liberty. I would like to consider what liberty is, and how we might reinforce the argument for popular sovereignty by appealing to liberty, and perhaps narrow a bit what type of government may be ideal.

Of just about any idea or principle the moral realist may ask, "Is it good, bad, or neutral?" Of course, in a previous post I suggested two tools for evaluating the answer to this question: Asking God and conscience. Now, both of these methods confirm to me that at least some idea of liberty (for there is a variety of ideas as to what liberty means) is inherently good; furthermore, it seems that most people agree with this, so it seems that we would do best to assume that at least some idea of liberty is good. This naturally leads to another question, "What conception of liberty is morally good?" Actually, I think that I will make a semantic shift here: I will refer to the conception of liberty that is as inclusive as possible while including only principles which may be referred to as liberties and remaining in all respects morally good as true liberty. In cases where there is no need to distinguish between this "true" conception of liberty and other conceptions it may be assumed that by liberty I mean true liberty.

Codifying moral truth, like codifying scientific truth, may be difficult, because, while there exist some very general principles, their interaction can be complicated: Of course we could say that true liberty consists of whatever God says it does, and this is wholly general, but unless we can listen to Him perfectly (and reason perfectly when He withholds information), this will not yield an accurate conception. So let us reason what we can, and at least get some idea.

Before beginning, let me point out three important guiding principles. First, liberty is not just good, but inherently good. That is, there are many things which are good only because they facilitate moral principles; others are themselves basic moral principles, and liberty is among these. This you may take as axiomatic if you like: in fact my source for the statement is simply that God says so, that I have myself received very clear teaching from God on the subject. Second, I require Ethics to be self-consistent. That is, if there is a conflict between ethical principles, then they must not be wholly general, but approximations of the truth (at best), and the deepest reality must resolve this conflict. This rule applies to liberty: The truest principles of liberty cannot contradict one another. Third, it is important for us to distinguish the principle of agency from liberty. The clearest distinction between the two is that agency or free will is a simple reality (although there is an interesting discussion to be had on the subject of determinism and free will, which I will have to address sometime, I do not believe that it is such a deep contradiction as many would hold), a physical truth, if you will. Liberty, on the other hand, is a moral truth, something which ought to be, whether it is or not. Free will is our ability to choose, and no matter what influence may be exerted by others, I may still choose one way or another, even when my ability to act on those choices is limited. Liberty, on the other hand, is the right to act on my choices. If I am physically restrained, then my liberty is certainly reduced, but my agency is not: I may still choose whether to struggle or submit, I may still choose to believe what I will, and I may even choose to exert my muscles as if to rise and walk away from my restraints; I may not, however, actually rise and walk, no matter what I choose. But, then, actually leaving my restraints behind is not, in the purest sense, my choice, but a consequence of my choice to exert myself. Now, I will need to address free will more fully at other times, but the distinction is essential for us to bear in mind that liberty is more than simply the ability to choose.

In attempting to establish a conception of true liberty, I suppose that I should first establish what liberty is not. For one thing, true liberty does not consist of complete freedom from the consequences of our actions and choices. Liberty is not a tool of Hedonism. Actually, such a conception of liberty requires you to say that liberty is itself the only moral truth, which, beside contradicting revelation and conscience, seems independently unlikely: for if there is such a thing as moral truth, which ought to be, then why should we assume that there is only one moral truth? Anyway, even without moral considerations, we have to deal with physical truths as well, and the universe is not kind to the belief that you can ignore the consequences of your actions (try choosing not to eat for a few weeks without consequence, for example). So a true conception of liberty is certainly constrained in at least some particulars.

To what extent, then, is true liberty constrained? Well, perhaps the simplest constraints come from the requirement of self-consistency: If, for example, one person is allowed such liberty that he can steal from his next-door neighbor without consequence, then it infringes on the rights of the neighbor, so that a prohibition against theft is clearly consistent with liberty.

Beyond the need for self-consistency, the need for consistency with other moral principles forces us to say that liberty does not necessarily imply the ability to act without consequence contrary to other moral truths. That is, it is not necessarily inconsistent with liberty for a law to prohibit adultery and to punish it if one believes that adultery is immoral. However, a key question arises as to the role of government: Is it proper for government to punish moral transgression, or should that be left to God? In answer, consider the ability of government to err, both in enforcement and in establishment of moral principles. While not a basic principle of liberty to allow the transgression of moral law, it is dangerous to grant government a primary role and great powers in the enforcement of moral law, save perhaps that God Himself were present and governing. As such, it may be considered consistent with liberty to leave to God the consequences of such transgression, and while not required by liberty in principle, as a practical matter it is more likely to be favorable toward liberty to diminish government's enforcement of moral principles. Government enforcement of moral principles is not always bad, but we should at least be very wary of it and limit such enforcement.

Let me finish with two ideas. First, it is not only consistent with but required by liberty to allow people to pursue their moral duty to the fullest extent possible. Finally, although diminishing government's enforcement of moral principles may be more likely to favor liberty, that does not imply that government must recognize as moral those principles and actions which are in fact immoral. I will have to return to both of these extensively in future posts, both because I have not offered justification and because they are central to key freedoms (such as the freedom of religion), but for now this will have to suffice.

Title: US Declaration of Independence

But the question now is, "Is it right?"

So I've gotten as far as Moral Realism. I believe that there are basic moral principles of what ought to be, independent of our belief in and adherence to them. If certain things ought to be, then it seems reasonable that we should try to find these things out and to do them, and establish a society which fosters adherence to these moral truths.

The first question that we might ask, then, is how we might try to find out these moral truths. The first thing that comes to mind, being a scientist, is to observe the world around me and see if I can figure anything out from that. But I quickly get stuck. I can't see any way of looking around and figuring out what ought to be simply from what is. In fact, this is Hume's point, the "is-ought problem" is the fact that we don't know a way to figure out the way things should be simply from the way things are. We always have to appeal to something more.

The next thing that comes to mind is to look at where I got Moral Realism in the first place. There were two basic sources that I appealed to: First, God, which I focused on primarily, coming to a conclusion which we might summarize as "God's morality establishes an objectively preferred morality." The second source is the apparently innate nature of morality, the fact that everyone seems to have a conscience, and it's very hard to ignore or get rid of. Again, I focused less on this because I believe that God makes a stronger case for Moral Realism, but this seemingly innate sense of morality does give us some information about morality. There could be more ways to learn about morality than these, but these are the two that are apparent to me at this stage of reasoning.

As to how we may learn what is right, we may first note that, by the "God is always right" rule (I don't know if I've explicitly stated this before, and I haven't done a real treatment of the nature of God, but the rule follows simply from the omniscience of God, which I will have to consider at length in some later post), whatever God says on the subject of morality must be true. Thus, if we ask God what is right on some subject and get an unambiguous answer, we may have confidence in this. Now, not everyone believes that they may receive such clear and distinct information from God, and so this channel of information is not necessarily open to everyone (for you cannot utilize a tool until you know that you have it). This makes us turn to the other source for morality I mentioned above. However, we have no a priori reason for supposing that the innate sense of morality must be accurate. In fact, there are some contradictions to be found in what is believed to be moral in different societies, so that we may be sure that one society or another must be in error. However, even though people seem capable of twisting, silencing, or corrupting morality from this evidence, there are two important correlations which make me believe that a person's conscience is worth trusting: First, there seems to be a fairly strong correlation in the moral sense of different people and cultures, for the points on which they agree tend to be far more numerous than those on which they disagree. If we had nothing else to go on, then this might be an indication that the innate moral sense was at least our best guess for what is right, and that its answers would usually be at least self-consistent. The second correlation is even more important, however: It is the correlation between the innate moral sense and what God has told me directly. As such, there is an apparent correlation between the sense of what is right and what is actually right. This can give us confidence that our honest moral belief built from careful reflection on what our innate moral sense tells us is probably a very good approximation for what is right. Finally, one last advantage which the human conscience has: Whereas some people call on God and receive specific answers from Him, everyone has a conscience, so this can be regarded as a universal way of figuring out what is at least approximately right, even for those who do not believe in God.

So we do have ways of determining what is right: We can ask God and, if He does not give us specific guidance, we can trust that our consciences are at least likely to give us approximate moral truth. It remains to utilize these channels to ascertain moral truth, and then to act on this moral truth. Learn what is right, then do it. I see little more that needs to be said on the subject of personal ethics, unless it were to begin to outline moral truths. However, I will not do that. I think that I will leave personal ethics here, and turn to ethics as it relates to society, beginning my treatment of political philosophy in my next post.

Title: Immanuel Kant, Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysic of Morals

Right was to be the important thing

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