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Is There a Common Misconception Regarding Absolute Moral Claims?

While the essay Christopher Hitchens – Theological Fallacies and Miscomprehensions was posted at Atheism is Dead, someone made a point in the comments section that I thought would be best addressed in a new essay rather than in the nether regions of that post’s comment section.

First, I wanted to point out that the ability to post as a contributor, as opposed to posting to the comments section, can be a bully pulpit. Thus, I want to make it clear that I am not singling anyone out for embarrassment or calling out the commentator by writing this post. I merely felt that the matter may be better elucidated by a new post that would also provide a new comments section to discuss one particular topic more precisely. Moreover, I chose this topic because I find that it is a very common argument.

In this post I wish to address a very particular topic. It seems to me that there is a common non sequitur which is committed regarding morality. When a claim is made that morality is absolute and or ubiquitous, authored by God and even placed by God in every human being the following objection is oft raised: If that is the case, then why do morals differ from person to person and from culture to culture?.

It may perhaps be noteworthy that morality is actually very similar from culture to culture, at least on main points.
For example, does any culture hold cowardice to be a virtue? I do not here mean something like draft-dodging since it is considered valiant to fight the power.

Does any culture consider murdering innocent and defenseless human beings to be a virtue? It would be refreshing to answer, “No” but such does not seem to be the case. Yet, this brings us to an important point. Let us imagine that there is a culture according to which brutally murdering beautiful, healthy, innocent and defenseless human babies in the womb was considered a right, moral or as Dan Barker refers to it, “a blessing.”1

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Even in such a case we note that even while claiming that this sort of murder is a right, moral or blessing there is a plethora of excuses upon which such proclamations are premised-it is a conceptus, it is a zygote, an embryo, a byproduct of conception, it is not human, not a person, not conscience, it is her body, her choice, et al. Does anyone find themselves laboring so diligently in order to concoct excuses for feeding the poor?

George F. R. Ellis has noted the following:

“The foundational line of true ethical behavior, its main guiding principle valid across all times and cultures, is the degree of freedom form self-centeredness of thought and behavior, and willingness freely to give up one’s own self-interest on behalf of others.”2

The bottom line is that the reason that I do not think that the objection nullifies the claim of absolute morality is that in one case we are dealing with what I will call a “law” and in the other we are dealing with whether people choose to obey that “law.”

For instance, I say, “In the USA it is absolutely illegal to run a red light in a non-emergency response vehicle.”
Do you answer, “If that is the case, then why do some people operating non-emergency vehicles response run red lights? It must not be true that there is such an absolute law”?

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In one case we have an absolute law and in the other we have choices as to whether we obey that law or not.

And so, let us grant for a moment that God has authored a moral law but has also allowed free-will. This would mean that God could author the moral law and place it within each of us but it would still be up to us to obey.

The objection may have its place in another arena but it does not seem to succeed as a refutation of claims of moral absolutes since in this context it is a category mistake.

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