Uncovering the moral law

Philosophy Forums Religion and Spirituality
1

Hey guys, I’ve lost interest in ILP for a while but I think I’ll make a comeback here, first off:

I feel there are two different ways of looking at this, inclusive and exclusive to God. Will start off without God.

Does a moral law exist? Well can a moral law exist without a transcendent being? It can’t technically be a law unless it stands alone apart from our own thoughts and reasonings, it has to be here before we get here? Right? If we’ve made it and we are evolutionary beings, we have changed, thus the law has changed, thus a moral law cannot exist without a being outside of us, our small tiny planet and even galaxy, am I right?

To say moral ethics are just evolutionary they have to be relative, this I feel I have concluded, so obviously if one does exist, it existed before we can to be, thus one could have only been created through the process of a universe creating, however, I’m willing to go deeper and add a touch of Aquinas here. How can something create itself? It can’t, otherwise it would have to exist prior to itself, which would defeat the purpose of creation. Uncausation, why can’t uncause be cause?

So now I feel i’ve brought you to this point, without God a moral law exists only with the creation of the universe, where as far as we know began to exist, has not always existed, unless we are wrong, which we very well could be. *Or possibly more universes, thus a moral law would have to be used by those universes.

But It’s apparent I think, if a moral law is only a law like American law versus African law, it’s only a law within this part, thus it’s still relative, but we seem to thing we are better than other countries, and we are better morally than hitler?

So concluding an aGod view, the moral law must have always been here, or must have been created at the start of everything, thus applying to everything. So, how do we know we have the moral law? Without interaction with some transcendent being? We basically can’t without enough knowledge, we haven’t went this far into science yet, and a topic like this really doesn’t seem all that important, but a purpose is!!!

Unless we know a purpose, we can’t know whether or not our law is a good one. I think mostly our purpose as of now, atheistically is to sustain life. However, how odd, strange, that we will say the 80 year old should die over the 30, because the 80 has lived more of a life, yet we will still sacrifice younger lives for older ones, and do it searching for cures… can someone explain this possibly?

Furthermore this is without God—

With God, well, a moral law exists, all around, he created it, and we must believe it applies to us for fact, however I do believe it plausible to have a difference of morals if God created other life forms and we can never touch or interact with them! Get it?

I’ll add there must also being a moral which applies to the lesser of two evils, such as Kant may disagree, the man who won’t lie to save lifes from dying, must be the worse man? Or is he…?

2

club29

 I agree with what you've said here, but I would hasten to add that morals, even objective morals, do not have to be based on laws as you've described them, nor any other principle that comes before the self. For example, if one believes that the primary source of moral obligation is to act in accordance with one's idealized self, then morality can be objective without coming from any outside law.

The idea that all morality is relative and thus doesn’t allow for judgement denies a fundamental, nearly-universal aspect of humanity, and so sets for itself a burden of proof it will probably never achieve. Proving to me that morals are relative would be similar to proving to me that I don’t have feet, in that sense.

Where I would advise you to begin is with some non-law based moral systems, and see if they make sense to you. If anything that I just said doesn’t make sense to you, let me know.

3

Why do you presuppose that a purpose needs to be defined before we can create a moral law. In my opinion this theoretical discussion will get you nowhere however fascinating it is to read.

From an athiestic perspective the fact is that we exist and we are very lucky to exist in scientific terms if you consider the cycle of carbon. Our lives are fragile and insignificant because in the overwhelming time and space of the universe we’re nothing but a grain of sand. However life is the only thing we’ll ever have during this flicker in time and after that is death and complete oblivion, surely that is a timeless motivation through which life should be shared and respected in a united, peaceful and loving society based on these very simple values.