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Are Moral Values and
Duties Objective?
An examination on whether morality is purely
subjective or objective.
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Definitions

Objective: To say that there are objective moral values is to
say that something is right or wrong independently of whether
anybody believes it to be so.

Subjective: Personal taste or feelings [which may be of an
individual, group, or society].

Good/Bad: Correlated with moral values

Right/Wrong: Correlated with moral duties
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Objections to objective morality
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Ethical Relativism: There are no objective, absolute, or
universal moral standards.
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Individual relativism
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Cultural relativism
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Individual Relativism

All moral claims are meaningful only as based on an individuals
opinion, experience, desires, and inclinations.

Minimalistic Morality: “Everything is alright to do as long as you
don’t hurt anyone.”
PROBLEMS

Self-Contradictory: Claims that all have an ethical obligation to
accept relativism.

Leads to Moral Nihilism: Moral terms have no meaning.
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Cultural Relativism

All moral claims are defined by particular cultures or societies.

Morality is a set of common rules that have social approval set
over time so that they often appear as facts (also known as the
social contract).
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Cultural Relativism
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The Diversity Thesis: What is considered morally right and wrong
varies from society, so that there are no universal moral standards
held by all societies.

The Dependency Thesis: Whether or not it is right for an
individual to act in a certain way depends on or is relative to the
society to which he or she belongs.
PROBLEMS

How do you define “culture” or “society”?

Reformer’s Dilemma

Unable to judge other societies and cultural groups
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Virtue of Tolerance cannot be applied cross-culturally
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Subjectivism & “Differences”
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Differences can be addressed
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Some cultures just do wrong things
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Factual beliefs need to be examined
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Apply same principles but apply differently
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Some differences does not mean no universals
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The Moral Argument
1.
If God does not exist, objective moral values do not exist.
2.
Objective moral values do exist.
3.
Therefore, God exists.
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P1Socio-biological
Morality
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If theism is false, then what is the basis for objective moral
duties?
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Imagine human beings living in a state of nature without any
customs or laws. Suppose one of them kills another one and
takes his goods:
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“Such actions, though injurious to their victims, are no more unjust
or immoral than they would be if done by one animal to another. A
hawk that seizes a fish from the see kills it, but does not murder it;
and another hawk that seizes the fish from the talons of the first
takes it, but does not steal it—for none of these things is forbidden.
And exactly the same considerations apply to the people we are
imagining.”
Richard Taylor, Ethics, Faith, and Reason (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1985), 14.
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P1Socio-biological
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Morality
“The position of the modern evolutionist… is that humans have
an awareness of morality… because such an awareness is of
biological worth. Morality is a biological adaptation no less than
are hands and feet and teeth… Considered as a rationally
justifiable set of claims about an objective something, ethics is
illusory. I appreciate that when somebody says “Love thy
neighbor as thyself,” they think they are referring above and
beyond themselves… Nevertheless,… such reference is truly
without foundation. Morality is just an aid to survival and
reproduction,… and any deeper meaning is illusory.”
Michael Ruse, “Evolutionary Theory and Christian Ethics,” in The Darwinian Paradigm
(London: Routledge, 1989), 262, 268-89.
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P1Socio-biological
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Morality
“If the film of evolutionary history were rewound and shot anew,
very different creatures with a very different set of values might
well have evolved. By what right do we regard our morality as
objective rather than theirs? To think that human beings are
special is to be guilty of specie-ism, an unjustified bias toward
one’s own species.”
William Lane Craig, Reasonable Faith, ed. 3 (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2008), 174-178.
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P1The
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If there is no God, why think we have any moral obligations to
do anything? Who or what imposes these moral duties upon
us?
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False Hope of Atheism
ALL IS PERMITTED
On the atheistic view, there’s nothing really wrong about raping
someone. (This behavior goes on all the time in the animal
kingdom).
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“If the moral principles that govern our behavior are rooted in habit
and custom, feeling and fashion,” then the rapist who chooses to
flout the herd morality is doing nothing more serious than acting
unfashionably.
Paul Kurtz, Forbidden Fruit (Buffalo, NY: Prometheus, 1988), 73.
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P2Objective
Morals do exist
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*REMINDER: The question is not: Must we believe in God in
order to live moral lives?
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Theists [Christians] may maintain that a person need not
believe in God in order to recognize that we should love our
children.
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P2Objective
Morals do exist

We all know that some things truly are good and bad, right and
wrong.
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God’s moral law is “written on the hearts of all men,” so that
even those who do not know God’s law “do naturally the things
of the law” as “their conscience bears witness to them” (Rom.
2.14-15).
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Atheism has a premature stopping point: [Why would it be
wrong to hurt another member of our species?] “It simply is.
Objectively. Don’t you agree?”
Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, “There Is No Good Reason to Believe in God,” in God? A Debate,
34.
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P2Objective
Morals do exist
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There is no more reason to deny the objective reality of moral
values than the objective reality of the physical world.
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In the absence of some defeater, we rationally trust our
perceptions, whether sensory or moral.
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“Because I clearly apprehend objective moral values and I have
no good reason to deny what I clearly perceive.”
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“The man who says that 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), 275.
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The Moral Argument
1.
If God does not exist, objective moral values do not exist.
2.
Objective moral values do exist.
3.
Therefore, God exists.
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A Visit From Euthyphro
1.
Either something is good because God wills it
or
2.
God will something because it is good.
A is required of S iff a just and loving God commands S to do A.
A is forbidden to S iff a just and loving God commands S not to do A.
A is permitted for S iff a just and loving God does not command S not to do
A.