I need to know how you feel about morality

[andrewducker]

Poll #25203

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 63

View Respondents

There is one true morality

View Answers

Yes, and I know what it is, and it accords with my own views
3 (4.8%)

Yes, and I know what it is, but it does not match my own views
0 (0.0%)

Yes, but I do not know what it is
6 (9.5%)

No
43 (68.3%)

Something Else I Will Explain In Comments
11 (17.5%)

To explain slightly, if you believe that there is a God, and that you know what the moral rules they set are, and you agree with those rules, that would be option one.

(Or you can replace "God" with "the natural order of things" if you believe that this includes an inbuilt morality.)

Comments

[wildeabandon]

I'm somewhere between the first and third options. I believe that morality accords with the will of God, and that it has been revealed in the Scriptures and in the Incarnation, but I don't believe that I or anyone is able to fully understand it.

[redbird]

"something else" in this case means that I was looking for an "I don't know" (not "yes, but I don't know what it is") and also that my answer is probably closer to "there are probably some things that are definitely and universally wrong, and I'm sure there are also moral questions that do depend on the details, possibly but not only when and where you're asking about."

[pink_halen]

I consider myself a moral person but I don't believe in God.
I know people who believe in God but definitely they are not moral people.
There no no Black and White moral code. Circumstances change what is moral and immoral.

Is it immoral for a man to sleep with a woman who is not his wife?
Is it still immoral if she gives him permission?
Is it moral if he doesn't sleep with another woman but with a man?
Is it the act or the person that makes it immoral?
Where are these codes written down and whose job is it to enforce them?
There are too many gray areas.
In the end it isn't external but internal. It is what you believe that counts.

[sea_of_crises]

Something else: IMHO there’s a kinda-sort-of practical basic proto morality of sorts in all human societies. At core it’s mostly about stuff that lets groups of shaved plain-ape live together without killing each other (well not too much) and making sure the next generation is protected enough to stand a chance of making it to adulthood.

Societies that don’t have those imperatives at least within the tribe/whatever ain’t going to be around that long for obvious reasons.

Also one could at least make an argument for the near universality of the ‘golden rule’: do as you would be done by” in most if not all human societies - but that sadly is more aspirational than practiced.

And then there’s all sorts of other rules individual societies layer on top of the basic ones. Good ones, good but outdated ones, bad ones and downright weird ones. But around there the distinction between morality, custom and law starts to get kinda fuzzy.

[symbioid]

I think this is about the closest to my thinking...

[chess]

I generally flippantly describe my approach to morality as consequentialist utilitarianism but where God is a utility monster. I don't know the mind of God and this I don't know the exact details of right and wrong, but He's helpfully left a bunch of useful heuristics lying around although we have to be a bit careful about which ones are situational, poorly translated etc.

[poshmerchant]

I think there are stable moral equilibria which are pleasant and low risk for me, and stable moral equilibria which aren't.

[ckd]

I'm a lapsed agnostic (I haven't been wondering on a regular basis for a while :-) that tends towards humanism, with my core belief being something like "this world may be all we get, so be kind to people" coupled with a belief that life-after-death exists, but only in that the residue of your actions and others' memories of you continue after your death.

If I had to pick a One True Morality, I'd probably go with Granny Weatherwax (and it would definitely accord with my views): [S]in, young man, is when you treat people as things. Including yourself. That’s what sin is.

[anef]

I'd forgotten the Granny Weatherwax quote, but that's probably the nearest to my version of morality. I'd probably summarise mine as "Treat other people like human beings", but while I know what that means it's a bit brief for a philosophy.

[f4f3]

My morality is the one true morality. No need to bring God or any higher power than myself into it.

[gingicat]

Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. (Judaism)
And it harm none, do as thou wilt. (Wicca)

[mme_n_b]

Judaism is actually "do not do unto others as you would not have them do unto you" (Hillel's golden rule). You're thinking about Christianity.

[haggis]

I chose the first one which feels incredibly arrogant! I don't believe that there are easy answers to moral questions or universal formulas. However, I do strongly believe that kindness and honesty are the highest moral principles. I believe if you are seeking to live out those as much as possible, your choices will be the most moral ones.

[haggis]

I am no longer a Christian but my view of morality is still very influenced by that. I believed that God was completely loving, wise and just and that it was his followers duty to try to embody those characteristics in the world (although we lack his omniscience and wisdom.)

It's summed up in this verse from Micah

And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.

[dewline]

"There is a right and a wrong in the Universe, and that distinction is not hard to make." - attributed to Kal-El/Clark Joseph Kent

There are grey areas, of course. And I dare not pretend to always understand where the lines are. I am neither God nor Superman.

[snippy]

In my idiolect morals are what we contract with G_d, and ethics are how we treat each other as human beings. So yes, there is one true morality for me, it's a contract, and I know the terms.

[cellio]

Something else:

I do not presume to know the mind of God. I can see only a small slice of what God has revealed to us imperfect recipients of his message. I do not believe that whatever insight I've gained from that grants me any authority over other humans. In other words, how well I follow God's laws is a matter between me and God but not something I can enforce on other people because of that source. Because we do not live in a theocracy.

I believe certain things are fundamentally immoral. Not all of them have been identified as such in the torah. Not everything in the torah is in this category. I don't know how I know them; they just are.

To function, societies have to agree on some fundamental principles. Some of the rules societies adopt might be the same as ones others arrive at through philosophy or religion, but the mechanism is different and I don't know if that changes their status from "morals" to "utilitarian foundations for a society". I guess they are in principle mutable, which would be a big difference. I don't think morals are mutable but they can be nuanced, which too often is not considered.

[mme_n_b]

There is one true morality. It applies to me, and me only, although I do try to convey it to the kids.

[mtbc]

I don't know.

What I actually do is mostly https://mtbc.dreamwidth.org/178223.html but, even if I am tempted to reach for any universal principles, I think nature and nurture together prevent me seeing broadly enough to judge a one true.

[zz]

the closest i get to a universally-applicable morality is a test of "what harm does X do? what harm does X prevent? which is worse?"
but what constitutes "harm" is often still subjective and personal.
but mostly it just comes up in criticising policy/law that prohibits/punishes things that aren't harmful, or where the (potential) harm is an acceptable trade off for a different harm.

[zz]

the golden and silver rules are useful too. but again mostly as an entry point for teaching people empathy, rather than daily life.

[channelpenguin]

I believe there are evil actions and I believe they all come from one root. One wrong that all the others are built from. Deliberately causing physical or mental harm to anyone or anything weaker than you or over whom you have power. I am aware others think and act otherwise. I dont think it fits in your category, but for me it's an absolute.

[channelpenguin]

... of course I am not perfect and have likely gone contrary to my own morals in my life, depending on how close the definition of "deliberately" is to "knowingly".

[doug]

What was your thinking for including "Yes, and I know what it is, but it does not match my own views" as an option? Do you know or know of people with that view?

[andrewducker]

I've certainly heard people express the view that, for instance, God has requirements around gay people, and so they may not themselves feel that way, but they gotta follow the rules.

[mountainkiss]

I do not think you need me to tell you this, but I would be extremely reluctant to generalise from your friends to a wider population no matter what the result of this poll.

[andrewducker]

Absolutely.

But it does tell me that I'm far from alone.

[danieldwilliam]

How accurately do you need to know the moral rules to answer yes?

General principles or specific speed limits in k/h?

[andrewducker]

If you believe your general principles are intrinsic to the universe then they totally count.

[naath]

I think it exists, and that I don't understand it. But also that it is not some easy to state pithy aphorism, but a complex set of balances between "too much X" and "too little X", that there are often multiple competing interests that need to be considered.

[lilysea]

I think some moral or ethical rules are absolute

for example,

"Do not kill other human beings [actual born human beings, not foetuses] without their prior consent except in self defence or when a war has been declared"

while other ethical rules are more context-specific

eg

"Do not eat endangered species, but if the species becomes so numerous that it is definitely no longer endangered, it is okay to eat it again"

Edited to add: the rules that I think are absolute, I do not think they are absolute because any God(s) or Goddess(es) or The Universe have decreed them [I'm an atheist], but rather because they are necessary in order to have a safe and functional society

[andrewducker]

I have to say that a rule with three exceptions in it seems less than entirely absolute.

[lilysea]

If I were trying to write ethical laws I would write

Avoid causing harm, unless causing that harm is genuinely necessary in order to avoid greater harm occurring;

People should be able to decide what to do with their own bodies, unless their choices are endangering other people's physical health [eg typhoid Mary];

Wherever it is possible without harming yourself or over-exhausting yourself, strive to make the world a better place;

Slavery is always wrong. No human being should ever be bought and sold;

We have an ethical obligation to do our very best to leave a habitable planet behind for the people and animals who come after us;

Every society should provide access to healthcare, housing, and education to its citizens to the maximum extent that it can afford to do so, regardless of the wealth/race/religion/gender/sexuality of those citizens

[aldabra]

I think there are things which happen which are quite clearly Bad. I don't care whether Hitler thought he was being virtuous; he was wrong. Therefore I think there is an objective morality.

I don't think it's amenable to being summarised as a list of Commandments. I think it's very dependent on situations and the beliefs of those within the situations, and to the extent that an ideal moral calculus exists we're nowhere near to formalising it. You can construct perverse counter-examples to most Rules, but that doesn't mean that the Rules aren't useful rules-of-thumb in everyday life.

The key intuition is that people are of equal moral standing. Those kids being taken from their families and kept in cages are of equal moral standing to my kid. (K says: "Can't they see they're people?") It turns out to be quite easy to see what's Bad if it's done to you; the bit people have difficulty with, because it's inconvenient, is "don't do that, then."

[armiphlage]

A problem with treating other people as I would wish to be treated is that there is so much variation between people.

I might want to be left alone in times of stress, others might want close human contact.
I might want to be forcibly stopped if I'm doing something hazardous, others might want to be left to do as they wish.
I might want to not be resuscitated if I suffer a severe injury with no chance of recovery; others might want all possible medical treatments to be applied.

If you phrase it as "treat other people as they wish to be treated", you get edge cases where the other person is operating without information that you have (they want to drink from the attractive bottle of liquid, you know it has bleach in it), or the other person is in a mental state (temporary or otherwise) where they want to do something that would harm themselves.

It would be very difficult to come up with a moral code that works well in every situation, because humans are so good at creating so many different situations.