But these premises are bursting at the seams with assumptions. And they are true only to the extent you agree that they are reasonable assumptions. All such "lines of arguments" are---in the end and out in the world---predicated on how as individuals we understand the meaning of the words in relationship to the meaning of other words.

From my vantage point, they merely point to other words to define and defend them.

It seems more worthwhile to me to go out into the world and actually observe the continuing gap between the ethical calculations of Plato, Aristotle, Descartes, Kant etc. and the reality of endless conflict.

Nothing ever really gets resolved regarding the sort of moral issues we read about in the news day after day after day.

What do you think we should be saying?

I should stick to my own advice- "Never argue with a Jesuit or a rabbi."

That was supposed to be more cute than nasty, but let me state for the record, that although the others may know what they are talking about, I, for one, do not know what I'm talking about! So, I'm going to have another glass of wine and go to bed.

You mean "never argue with someone who might argue back"?

I wouldn't to tell you what you should be saying, but how about simplifying whatever it is, into digestable bites for the masses like Buddah and Christ did.
If something's true it doesn't need a thousand words to explain it.

Have you read the Gospel of John recently?

Well, I'll try and be as simple as possible.

Ethics is very difficult to define, and many people have many different opinions. As knowledge in many subject areas grow - psychology, sociology, economics, and so forth (and I do not mean just since university professors started teaching such subjects, but the small practical ideas from which they have arisen) so have people formed various different, and conflictual, opinions as to how people should behave.

There might possibly be a best way to behave, but that doesn't mean that we know what it is, and it doesn't mean that everyone will follow it. So far there's no really great evidence that says there is a best way to behave that, at the bottom of it, isn't just someone's opinion. But, also, there isn't any good evidence that there isn't a best way to behave that is objective - not just someone's opinion but a logically recognisable truth, like 2 + 2 = 4.

However, there are groups of opinions which roughly agree with each other, and have agreed throughout a lot of history, indicating that these opinions of behaviours are perhaps "built in" to human behaviour and/or emotions. This indicates that there might be a case for general agreement of opinion, but still doesn't raise it to anything more than agreed upon opinion (like taking a vote). A vote is still subjective, but it is subjective by statistics.

iambiguous wants to know if there can be an objective system of ethics without an all-knowing being. The argument goes: an all-knowing being knows everything, therefore if an objective system of ethics exists, it will know what it is. But humans are not all knowing, so they may never be able to figure out what this system is on their own. That is, if it even exists.

That, I think, is most of it. But all of us have some sort of basic assumptions: about human nature, about how complex ethics is, and so on. And these tend to colour our arguments.

Is this conception of a materialist a strawman?

For instance, I am a Christian but also have an honours degree in science. I believe in abstractions, including abstractions of mathematics, science and politics and even hypothetical abstractions of fictional literature - . Among theists there are many shades of belief. Some for instance play with theological ideas of God as an abstract supreme being, then pull a thimble and cups trick to swap in the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob after getting a non-Christian to accept the 'possibility' of some abstract god.

An 'objective' system of ethics is perfectly possible without 'the idea of God'. Its certainly not objective even WITH the idea of God, unless you also specify the infallibility of Scripture AND specify which parts you are bound by.

The challenge is grounding of the ethical argument. Its a strawman to imply we hold an ethical princple in modern life 'because God says it'. 'God says it' only applies to those rules we hold as modern Christian doctrine after the opening of salvation to Gentiles in Acts, and after dropping almost all of the old testament laws. We hold a multitude of ideas more than abstaining from food offered to idols for the sake of the weaker brothers, but the proof is in that passage of the Bible, that we jointly CONSTRUCT our ethical system starting from multiple sources, the same as atheists or secular Christians do.

edited to add:

The biblical instruction to obey our rulers because God has put them over us, means that the laws of the land however secular in grounding are de facto religious law. This would include equality of races, non-discrimination on grounds of sexual orientation, legal abortion and design rules for manufacturing electrical equipment!

The obvious conflicts mean that a well-constructed ethical system is not just because of 'the idea of God' but depends on sources, negotiation and power relations in society even for believers.

Despite the loose definition of the original question, its implication that theistic ethical systems are properly grounded while secular ones are not seems to be incorrect.

Despite being able to read and write pretty well, many of the more sophisticated replies above are so dense with specialist terminology that I did not persist in reading them. It must be hard on the other ordinary readers too. Perhaps we could encourage a plain language approach? I feel my reply above shows its possible.

Thanks very much mcfate, I actually understood all that.

Say a new ethics system was arrived at. How would you sell it? Not many folk are intellectual and/or disciplined enough to read words in a book and live by those ethics unswervingly for their entire life without a damn good reason, and I include myself in that group.

While I think religious people spend too much time deifying and not enough time living by the teachings of Christ, Buddah etc, if our familiar God is aborted, humanity will find a substitute, Stalin, Oprah, themselves! Many of us have an innate need to worship.

Not so much a straw man as something I was keen to identify, note and put to one side. I think it’s a bit of a side issue.

If you believe that only material things are real and objective, then it pretty well follows that you won’t believe that moral norms – which are not material things - can be real and objective. Your understanding of reality precludes it. But your position will have no appeal for anyone who doesn’t share the same understanding of reality.

That’s pretty trite. As I say, I think we can note it and put it to one side. I’m much more interested in exploring the position of people who believe that moral norms [/b]can[/b] be real and objective. Do they all believe in God, and do they all understand moral norms to be real because, and only because, God has decreed them? I don’t think that the answer to either of these questions has to be ‘yes’.


It oversimplifies matters to assume that all theistic ethics must be of the form “God has revealed to us that He has commanded us to do X, and therefore X is an ethical obligation”. This isn’t even true of all Judeo-Christian ethical systems.

Christians and Jews (and Muslims, and quite possibly others) understand God as the creator of everything that exists (other than Himself). They take the view that everything which exists, exists because God wills it. On this view, it is true that moral norms exist because God wills them, but only in the sense that hydrogen atoms exist because God wills them. But, just as we can know about hydrogen atoms despite the fact that they are not mentioned in scripture, we can also know about moral norms independently of any mention in scripture. We come to know and understand reality by observation, experience, reflection, etc, and this applies to moral realities just as it does to material realities.

Nor do Christians understand moral norms as something imposed on the material universe. Rather they understand them as an ingrained, integral part of the created universe, which again reinforces the view that they can be discerned and studied by observing creation, not by waiting for a special and privileged revelation from the Creator.

As you point out, Christian and secular ethicists will frequently employ similar techniques, methods, reasoning, etc to think about ethical principles, and it is unsurprising that they frequently arrive at very similar conclusions. Tom, for instance, proposes a nontheistic ethics which accords a central place to the Golden Rule of reciprocity but, as Tom himself has pointed out, there are many theistic ethical systems which also accord the Golden Rule a central place.

This will only surprise those who believe that, in theistic ethics, moral norms are primarily or exclusively known by special divine revelation (e.g. engraved tablets of stone being given to Moses on Mount Sinai). But I think not many theistic ethicists take that view.

The consequence of all this is that, from the Christian perspective, there is no reason why nontheistic ethical reflections should not produce an outcome very similar to theistic reflections. Christians, therefore, are not prone to assert that atheists cannot be ethical or moral – or, if they do say that, they separate themselves from what i think is the mainstream Christian ethical tradition.

Hi Christine

You’re raising a quite different question here. I think it was Lyndon Johnson who said something like “knowing the right thing to do is easy. It’s doing it that can be difficult.”

People who change from one belief system to another – and I include here people who move from theism to atheism – don’t often radically change their way of living. They may change it in relatively superficial ways – they may stop going to church or synagogue, or stop observing particular dietary restrictions – but they mostly continue to have the same regard for the same fundamental values – fairness, honesty, justice, mercy, mateship – and the same difficulty in always living up to those values.

As for “reading words in a book”, not many people get their ethical beliefs from books. Ethical beliefs are formed by culture, upbringing, experience and reflection. As long as theist and atheist parents both teach their toddlers not to bite and kick their playmates, to share their toys and to wait their turn, then they will all grow up with similar ethical systems.

Sleep well and God bless!!!!

which I believe is implied by the first post, to be the difference between god-based and non-god-based ethical systems.

If that is the implication of the first post, then I disagree with it. God-based ethical systems don't have to see ethics as based upon divine commandments about how to behave. Even if they did, I don't see that that's the only basis on which we could assert the objective reality of ethical rules.

Since Jesuits believe in the divinity of Christ and Rabbis don't, I would argue that at the very least they both can't be right, but I know without question that they would tell me that I am wrong, and would begin explaining why until Hell froze over.

Some people are trying to come up with a new ethics sans God, sometimes called a "rational ethics". This is fine with me, but I don't see anything wrong with the very old principle of The Golden Rule of reciprocity which goes back as far as Confucius around 500 BC. Versions of the Golden Rule include Rabbi Hillel's "Do not unto others that which is hateful to you", Jesus' version "Do unto others as you would have others do unto you, and a newer version which says "Don't do to others that which you don't want done to you." They can have slightly different meanings in various situations, but if one accepts the proposition that no person is born with more inherent rights than any other person (Which Peregrinus, among many others does not accept without the inclusion of qualifiers that cause the proposition to invalidate itself), then it can be shown that the third version mentioned above, at least, can be shown to be logically irrefutable as an ethical system. However, it is trashed by all politically correct authority figures and authority figure wannabes because it jibes with individual liberty and takes away the legitimacy of authoritarians to determine the actions of others; the questions, for example, of whether to use condoms or to have an abortion, those decisions devolving to individuals rather than being decided by a Pope, politboro, or parliament.

But the whole point of my OP was to suggest that, in the absense of God, we have no way of ascertaining what is true regarding how we ought to live. There are only the conflicting moral narraitves of daseins.

Truth is the illusion here. And when it becomes attached to Gods and to secular ideologies...to dogmas...it can become downright deadly.

Remember when George W. Bush armed the the Whole Truth and invaded Iraq?

Just for the record, I have never said that I don't accept the proposition.


Fair enough. Granted, the proposition, lay out the irrefutable logical steps which produce that conclusion.