Are There Any Moral Absolutes?

SirJosephPorter

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The forum seems to have slowed down in the last couple of days, so I thought I would see if I can liven things up by introducing a red meat topic.

So, are there any moral absolutes? My answer is an emphatic no, I think all the morals are relative; it is up to everybody to formulate their own morals.

The reason for saying that is simple; one only has to look at definition of ‘absolute’. Absolute is something that is true, at any time, at any place, no restrictions, no exceptions. There certainly are absolutes in the physical universe.

I can think of one. Go outdoors anywhere on earth, pick up a stone, drop it from the height of say, one meter. The stone will drop to the ground. Now this is true anywhere on earth, at any time (today or a million years ago), regardless of the weather conditions, who is doing the dropping etc.

So there are absolutes in the physical universe. But moral universe is a different thing. I cannot think of any moral tenets which are absolute. Lying, cheating, murder, robbery, consider any kind of vile action. I can imagine hypothetical circumstances where such a vile act is justified, where reasonable people will say that it is justified.

It is the religious conservatives who insist that there are moral absolutes (what they mean is that their morals are absolute and that the rest of the world should follow their morals). But I haven’t come across even one moral tenet that can be considered to be absolutely true.

So what do you think, are there moral absolutes? If so, what are they?
 

wulfie68

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Yes there are some, although not many.

Rape. I cannot concieve of a situation where it is justifiable. Some will try to rationalize it through religion, etc. but I do not accept it and cannot think of any that is acceptable.

I agree with things like lying (little white lies to save someone's dignity etc), robbery (the Robin Hood scenario), or murder (something like going back in time and killing Hitler before the rise of Nazism) but rape defies it. I can think of nothing that can justify that.
 

gerryh

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just because someone can "justify" something in "certain" situations does not make it any less "immoral".
 

Dexter Sinister

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Rape. I cannot concieve of a situation where it is justifiable.
All you're really saying here is that rape is an absolute wrong in terms of your morality, which I think is all a moral absolute can be. It's either something you define personally as wrong under all circumstances, or the society you live in does so, but other societies might think differently. It's an absolute only with respect to particular individuals or societies, not all individuals and all societies for all time.

I can readily imagine a society that might conceive of rape as an appropriate thing to do under certain circumstances, and I'm pretty sure there have been such. The Old Testament hints at it in a few places, where the army of the Israelites is directed to slaughter everybody in town but save the virgin women for themselves, and I'd bet a roving predator band like Attila the Hun's army would have considered raping the womenfolk in the territories it invaded to be appropriate behaviour. It's historically a fairly common tactic of terrorism, intimidation, and humiliation against the conquered. I think SJP is right, there are no moral absolutes, morality is entirely a human construction and reflects the values and interests of the society that constructs it.
 

earth_as_one

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Moral is a personal viewpoint, like an opinion. Its possible that some people might be able to morally justify rape in specific circumstances, just like some people might be able to morally justify theft or even murder in specific situations.

Laws should govern behavior, not morals or opinions. In Canada, rape, theft and murder are illegal, regardless of your morals or opinion.
 

Nuggler

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:cool:.....Hey, Abso****inglootley

Don't piss off someone you can't beat the **** out of.

That's a good moral.

And abo......abso......what yousaid........:fucyc:
 

SirJosephPorter

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Rape. I cannot conceive of a situation where it is justifiable. Some will try to rationalize it through religion, etc. but I do not accept it and cannot think of any that is acceptable.

Wulfie, I agree that rape comes as close to a moral absolute as it is possible. But it is still not an absolute, I will explain how.

Dexter and Earth_as_one say that some individuals or some societies may think that rape is appropriate under certain circumstances, and they may be right. However, that does not prevent rape from being a moral absolute, at least not in my opinion.

In my post what I said was that I can conceive of circumstances where an act, however vicious, may be justified, where reasonable people will say that it is justified. This is a much higher standard that Dexter or Earth_as_one mention.

So, is there any circumstance where reasonable people would say that rape is justified? I mentioned that for a moral principle to be an absolute, it must be true in all places, all times, no exceptions. Now, rape is wrong in all places, we all can agree on that. But all times? Consider the following hypothetical scenario (incidentally, I read a similar scenario in a sci fi story, although the story had nothing to do with rape). The post is getting long, I will continue in a separate post.
 

SirJosephPorter

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Let us imagine that for whatever reason, human population on earth is wiped out. Except for one man. He is convinced that he is the only one left, repeated search all over the world does not uncover a single human being.

After several years of search he comes across a woman. He is happy about it, now they can repopulate the earth. He talks it over with her, and she agrees.

But there is one problem, she happens to be very religious. She absolutely refuses to have sex without getting married. There is of course, nobody to marry them, they are the only two humans left in the world.

So the question is, after repeatedly trying to convince her, after repeatedly pleading with her, is the man justified in raping her? Not only once, but repeatedly raping her over the years (and perhaps locking her up) so that they may have as many children as possible?

In my opinion, the answer is yes. Admittedly the situation is far fetched. However, that is what is meant by ‘absolute’, even if I can show up one situation, however far fetched where the principle breaks down, that means it is not an absolute.

Based upon this scenario, rape is not a moral absolute, although it comes very close.
 

In Between Man

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Sep 11, 2008
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SJP,

You didn't think your argument through very far. If murder can be justified in certain circumstances, how come murder of an innocent person can't be justified.

Murder of an innocent person is ABSOLUTELY wrong for all people, all cultures, all throughout time, regardless of any one person or group of persons opinions.

All vile acts against innocent persons is ABSOLUTELY wrong. Rape, robbery, lying, cheating etc.

Quoting Dex,
but other societies might think differently. The Old Testament hints at it in a few places
Those small cultures that viewed rape as acceptable would have considered all to be fair game, men, women and children. But how they viewed it at the time, doesn't mean it was acceptable. What those people did is still wrong today, as when it happened thousands of years ago.

Repeat: It was never right/okay/acceptable for anyone to rape a person. It is a wrong action.

It's easy to deny the absolute moral code within, but your reactions prove you know it. If I rape you, are you not morally outraged? Or is it relative, possibly justifiable?

Without absolute morals no one has any justification for crying foul against another.

morality is entirely a human construction and reflects the values and interests of the society that constructs it.
Actually, the moral code written within is absolute. God put it there for us to use as a standard. It's how we recognize evil, injustice, wrong acts etc.

How else do you know that the act of rape is wrong? Your comparing it to a standard. The absolute moral code within. "A man cannot call a line crooked, unless he has some idea of a straight one."

:cool:
 
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SirJosephPorter

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Bored without me eh? Thanks for getting me all fired up tonite, after reading the abomination you call a post I'm raring to go.

No problem, alley, let us have some spirited discussion (but not tonight, I am soon logging off).

You didn't think your argument through very far. If murder can be justified in certain circumstances, how come murder of an innocent person can't be justified.

The problem here is, who decides that they are innocent? Some people tried to murder Hitler (and it was murder they were trying, cold blooded, pre planned killing is murder). We all agree that they were justified. However, Hitler himself would have said that he is innocent of any crime.

So who decides if they are innocent? With murder, one must ask the question, is murder always wrong? Now we can all agree that it is wrong most of the time. And incidentally, it has nothing to do with whether it was murder of an innocent or not. In my opinion, just because somebody kills a guilty person, that does not make murder right.

So I would say murder is wrong whether the murderer killed innocent or guilty person, doesn’t’ matter. But then there are exceptional circumstances. Those who tried to murder Hitler were justified in doing so, reasonable people would agree. If somebody had murdered Pol Pot, the Cambodian butcher, the murderer would have been regarded as a hero, not as a criminal.

So saying that murder of an innocent person is wrong is not an absolute. Who decides if the person is innocent?
 

SirJosephPorter

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Alley, murder of an innocent person is always wrong? Consider this scenario that I read in a sci fi story.

A ship was flying to a star system with much needed medicines. A deadly virus was sweeping the planet, millions had killed and billions more would die if the medicines are not delivered in time.

A pilot is taking the ship to the star system. He discovers a stowaway. It is a sweet, charming, innocent, star struck teen age girl, out for a joy ride.

In a space ship everything is precisely calculated, there is no margin for error. Ship had only so much fuel, so much supplies, because medicines took up as much space as possible. There is no way the pilot could take the ship to the planet with the added weight of the girl. He would have to land on a nearby planet, and the delay will kill billions on the sick planet.

Most of the story was really about the pilot and the people on the ground trying to find a way out of the dilemma. There is no way out. Pilot tries to postpone the evil moment as far as possible.

However, at the end, he tells the girl to walk the plank, as it were (he was willing to die in place of the girl, but she did not have the expertise to pilot the ship). He had already explained the situation to her in the beginning, so the girl was aware of what was coming, she doesn’t blame the pilot. But in the end, the pilot tells her firmly that she has to go out in the space and die, there was no other way.

Now, reasonable people would say that in this case it was right to kill an innocent person. So it is not an absolute.
 

L Gilbert

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Given that rape is forced sex upon someone unwilling; there are societies that have a general rule that a wife obeys her husband no matter what. If husband wants to have sex and wife doesn't, but because of the custom of their society she must, wouldn't that be rape?
 

Cliffy

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Murder of an innocent person is ABSOLUTELY wrong for all people, all cultures, all throughout time, regardless of any one person or group of persons opinions.

It is always justified in war by those who kill innocent people - collateral damage.You an I see it as immoral but the perpetrators will have to justify their actions (including rape) as a necessary part of war. How else would they live with themselves?
 

Cliffy

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Rape is a necessary part of war?
I can't even see war being necessary most of the time.

War is never justified, neither is rape and murder but it is what happens in a war. It is probably the insanity of it all that drives humans to snap and participate in such activities.
 

Dexter Sinister

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So, is there any circumstance where reasonable people would say that rape is justified?
That's the key point: who gets to define what "reasonable" means in this context? I'd argue that it's very culturally specific. I'm sure every poster here would claim to be reasonable by their own lights, yet there are obviously massive differences of opinion about what's likely to be true and not true, sometimes even on fairly trivial matters. Reason isn't an absolute any more than morality is. It's very useful and powerful, but it has its limits too, in fact we can use reason to prove that reason is limited, that there are claims it's simply not possible to decide if they're true or false.
 

L Gilbert

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War is never justified, neither is rape and murder but it is what happens in a war. It is probably the insanity of it all that drives humans to snap and participate in such activities.
That would depend on whether you have a country you felt deeply enough to fight for in the instance that someone else attacks it. Poland in 1939 comes to mind. Kuwait in 1990.
 

SirJosephPorter

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That's the key point: who gets to define what "reasonable" means in this context?

Dexter, by ‘reasonable’, I mean rational, thinking people, somebody like you or I (though some may dispute that). And perhaps it is not totally accurate to say that reasonable people would agree that rape is justified in the situation that I described. Perhaps a better way of putting it is that reasonable people would disagree on whether the rape is justified in this situation.

I can see reasonable people falling on both sides here, some would say the rape was justified, others would say it wasn’t. But the point is, if there is such a disagreement, then we have to say that rape is not a moral absolute.

Reason isn't an absolute any more than morality is. It's very useful and powerful, but it has its limits too, in fact we can use reason to prove that reason is limited, that there are claims it's simply not possible to decide if they're true or false.

I quite agree. Who defines what is reasonable? That itself can be a subjective term. But in my opinion, if reasonable people disagree on something then by definition that rules it out as a moral absolute.
 
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