Morality: Why Does It Matter?

1. Morality: Why Does It Matter? MORALITY- principles concerning the distinction between right and wrong or good and bad behavior. Being able to understand and define morality (whether for oneself or for a society) is one of the most essential duties of any human being. Morality does not have only legal implications, but social implications at the most basic level; it goes to the heart of what human beings are, what human life means, and how we can interact. Many moral systems will disagree on how to organize truths in relation to one another, even when they agree on what truths are most important! Without further dialogue, it is impossible to long sustain a stable society (whether as an individual or as a society) without basic agreement on morality.

2. 1) If you believe that there is true GOOD and/or EVIL, then there has to be a ‘MORAL LAW’ in the universe. 2) If there IS a moral law, you have to ask yourself-- WHAT is the ‘lawgiver’? 3) If there is NO lawgiver, then there can be no moral law; if there is no moral law, then there is no true good and evil. 4) If there is no good or evil except what we believe, then there is no way for human civilization to eradicate our species’ self-directed ‘problems’ (poverty, racism, war, sexism, slavery, etc.) other than for the strong to compel the weak.

3. What Does God Have To Do With It? The question of God is therefore very pressing upon the question of defining morality, for this reason: if we are here through natural processes alone (no God, no higher intelligence, etc. creating us), then there IS no valid moral basis to expect others to adhere to a moral standard. The question of God goes right to the heart of whether or not morality is real or merely an illusion; it seeks to answer the question of whether or not human ‘moral law’ is OBJECTIVE (true for everyone) or SUBJECTIVE (true only for some).

4. The revelation of the ‘moral lawgiver’ gives us the missing information ‘under the sun’– namely, not only the existence of the moral law, but how and why it came to be. • This is the only truth that can render intelligible the existence of: • Actual right & wrong in the universe • The binding authority of this morality over all humanity • The seeming need of human beings to attach purpose & meaning to what they do and how they do it • The unique value that morality seems to want to attach to human life and dignity

5. The Christian understanding of good and evil is that it is NOT the product of human projection or religious invention, but rather that it is tied to the created universe as an actual ‘law of nature’. • Like the law of gravity, it can’t be visibly seen, but its effects can. • This concept– known to theology as ‘natural law’– is the foundation for much of western civilization, going back centuries (or even millennia).

8. ‘Natural Law’ is the concept that good/evil are actually built into the universe like the scientific laws of nature (ex- gravity). • The idea of Natural Law always begins with the idea that everything has a purpose, which is not possible in an accidental universe. • We discern a thing’s purpose by how it is made; natural law just applies that idea to human beings. • Natural law doesn’t depend on religious belief, but is rather discernible to human reason. • If you do NOT believe in natural law, you do not believe in human purpose; if you do not believe in human purpose, you cannot believe in good/evil; if you cannot believe in good/evil, you do not believe in human rights. The example of the apple/apple tree applies here!

10. ‘Natural law’ also implies the involvement of human reason and thought, not the blind submission to an irrational faith. • Because it is held to be the law of ‘nature’, morality must at least be, in a clear sense and in very clear manifestations, able to be discerned and explained through the use of logic and reason. • For Christianity, it is a logical impossibility for God to be the ‘moral lawgiver’ who establishes natural law to contradict Himself through commandments which would violate human reason OR the natural law itself. It is the Bible PLUS the brain, not one or the other.

13. “When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bonds which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation. We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” –Declaration of Independence

15. The Book of Ecclesiastes highlights the dilemma of attempting to use human reason alone (everything ‘under the sun’) to determine human purpose, human destiny, and human morality. • Though there are certainly truths about humanity and about right/wrong that CAN be known by reason (as with ‘natural law’), there remain essential truths impossible to know if science/human reason is the only yardstick: • Where right/wrong come from • What happens to human beings after death • Why anything exists • What purpose we exist for

16. Albert Camus compared human existence to the story of Sisyphys: condemned to a life which ultimately has no meaning in a meaningless universe, human beings can never be happy unless they create their OWN meaning. • Because the universe IS meaningless, anyone who tries to find meaning IN the universe is doomed to worse suffering than they already have. The only options are to end life or be condemned to this existence of greater torment. • The best option, as Camus recommends it, is the ‘absurd’ life– to accept the meaningless universe for what it is and just try to get what you can from life. “What counts is not the best living but the most living… one must imagine Sisyphus happy.” • From the Christian point of view, the question remains: is the ‘absurd’ life enough to construct an actual human morality upon?

17. That skull had a tongue in it, and could sing once… It might be the pate of a politician, which this ass now o'er-reaches; one that would circumvent God, might it not?... Or of a courtier; which could say 'Good morrow,sweet lord! How dost thou, good lord?' There's another [skull]: why may not that be the skull of a lawyer? Where be his quiddities now, his quillets,his cases, his tenures, and his tricks? Imperious Caesar, dead and turn’d to clay, might stop a hole to keep the wind away: O, that that earth, which kept the world in awe, should patch a wall to expel the winter flaw! –Hamlet, Act V, Scene 1

18. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came to be through Him, and without Him nothing came to be. What came to be through Him was life, and this life was the light of the human race; the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it. (John 1:1-5)

19. The term translated as ‘word’ in English in this scripture is the Greek word ‘logos’ (in the beginning was the logos, and the logos was with God, and the logos was God). • The term logos has a wide range of nuanced meaning, including ‘knowledge,’ ‘reason,’ and ‘intelligibility.’ It provides us with the root for words like ‘logic’ and any ‘-ology’. • This term had significant meaning in the Greek world, where philosophers centuries before Christ had put forward the notion of the ‘logos’ of the universe– that the universe has a clear design and intelligibility to it, and that the reason of human beings should be directed towards (and by) that concept.

22. “Before Abraham came to be, I AM.” -John 8:58 “I am the way, the truth, and the life.” -John 14:6 “Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away.” -Matthew 24:35