这是我在面子书看到的一段英文文章, 我保留自己对这个课题的意见。希望各位路人看了，能够对道德这个观念有一个全新的认识。
“Simply put, there is absolutely no way to know whether or not objective morality exists. We do not and cannot know. I don't believe objective morality exists as a real thing. I think we simply assume morals exist as an extension of our inherent empathy, the built in 'golden rule' within most of us. To then assume that these 'oughts' we call morals can be objective, therefore without interpretation or subject to change within a culture or individual, seems absurd.
There are very few "absolute truths" that exist in the universe. Given that, I actually disagree that any action can be said to be *absolutely* wrong. That includes even those by people like Hitler. Do I think it's wrong? Of course. Does pretty much everyone else agree that it was wrong? Sure (I assume). But does that make it absolutely, morally wrong? Not necessarily. Morality is all subjective. I don't even mean as in cultural relativism, but am more referring to species...ial relativism. We are driven to do what we have to do to ensure the survival of our species.
We as humans are social mammals that put a lot of effort in raising a very small number of offspring. Our morality reflects that. Other animals with similar social habits seem to show a closer "moral code" to our own. However, even within our species, there is obviously a lot of distortion in our moral code. The fact that people still do rape and kill shows that it's not naturally programmed into all of us. And if we didn't have an organized society with laws and punishments for people who did these things, I guarantee you it would be much more rampant. Since there is so much crime that happens, even with punishment, how can it be that it is something deeply programmed into us as "wrong"?
Here's a thought experiment: If our biology was significantly different, would our morality be significantly different? For instance, if we were like turtles, and had hundreds of babies, of which only a few could survive, would our morality be different? Or if we were like bees and ants, and only a small minority of us could physically reproduce, would our morality be different? Or if we were non-social animals, would our morality be different? I think in all these cases the answer would be yes, our morality would be significantly different.
I think this shows that our morals stem from what keeps our society intact. If we still lived in trees and had to hunt small animals to eat, we would all have an every-man-for-himself mentality. And from that, the idea that stealing and killing others was "wrong" would vanish, because that's the only way we could survive. However, in an organized society, killing and stealing results in chaos that upsets the society. We depend on our society to live, so anything that throws it off effects all of us. That is why we consider these things wrong. So no, we don't have some kind of inherit, unalienable rights as an absolute because we have to or because the universe says so because we're special, we have them because we as a society agree that it is best practice to keep everyone happy.
In fact, we have seen our own morality evolve with time. A key example is slavery. It used to be accepted pretty much worldwide, but now all advanced societies consider it to be a moral wrong.
All that being said, even if we did know that a god existed, and said god gave us morals, morality would still be subjective (having come from only the mind of a conscious being), wouldn't it? Do we not also consider it wrong to force your values upon others? If the only thing making something wrong is the will of some mighty being, a god or something else, then it still is not inherently wrong, it's just subjectively wrong to that being, and we are forced to accept it due to the power of that being. while one will imposing itself over another may violate some logical default, to say that it is "wrong" is still a subjective moral distinction.
In other words, is it good because god says so? Then it's simply a subjective opinion forced on us. Or is it good because it's inherently good? Then what do we need god for?
Not to mention the fact that it would seem that God's sense of morality has also changed as human society began to change. In the Bible, there are many things that God declared "wrong" in the old testament that were then refuted in the new testament. If God was the source of absolute morality, then that would mean he can change his mind about what is considered absolutely moral. Again on the issue of slavery, there are even mentions in the new testament that don't seem to support the idea that slavery is morally wrong, but we still consider it to be so today.
Morality is subjective by its very nature. Even if someone wants to posit some "objective morality" based upon God's will, the fact that my morality (or even society's as a whole now) differs from God's (or that God's can change) shows this to be invalid from its very premise.”
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