Absolute morality is an oxymoron

I was listening to Peter Hitchens and Christopher Hitchens arguing the other day and it set me thinking, as I have in the past, about absolute morality and how it is not just non-existent, but ruled out by definition. Peter Hitchens' main thrust in this row is that, regardless of whether or not an atheist behaves morally, if they do not believe in a moral absolute then there is no way they can claim that anything they do is 'good' or 'bad' - everything is arbitrary. He says you can make choices on pragmatic grounds but your claim that one choice is 'better' than another has no authority over another person's claim of the opposite.

Leaving aside for the moment how an atheist does justify their choices in moral terms, I want to argue that absolute morality is in fact a contradiction. Morality, by definition, excludes the possibility of being absolute - by which I mean either a property of reality, or imposed (or 'declared') by an outside agent, such as a creator god.

It is absolute morality, not subjective morality, that is arbitrary, or more specifically, divorced from the consequences of actions and choices. I believe a necessary definition of morality is that moral choices have desirable consequences. If you break the connection between consequences and the original rules, the rules cannot be moral. Rules imposed by an outside agent, whether a god, or a ruler, or just someone other than yourself, can only ever be laws, they cannot form a foundation for morality, precisely because the imposer can choose them at whim. Rules cannot simply be labelled moral.

One might simply assert that this is not true, that precisely because of the difficulties of subjective morality, of the need for absolutes (such as were articulated by Peter Hitchens), consequences must be only secondary, or irrelevant. First let me argue merely rhetorically - if a law from above or beyond were to lead to something horrific - genocide, say - how could anyone, in all honesty, say it is moral? Of course, people have done, but mostly they try to claim that the beneficial consequences are merely hidden from us, helping to prove my point. However, more rigorously, once divorced from the consequences the rules become arbitrary, as I stated. If you need to understand this problem consider the circular argument: This action is moral because it is the way God wants me to act. Why must I act the way God wants me to act? Because God's commandments are moral.

Let us consider, then, a kind of absolute morality in which the rules are chosen because they bring about desirable consequences. Desirable to whom? I would contend that no action can be considered moral unless the outcome is desirable (in some way) for the individuals involved - otherwise we are left with the conundrum of how we evaluate the moral worth of the consequence. In other words, it is perfectly clear that a ruler may impose laws that have immoral consequences (apartheid, say).

What if the ruler's laws have consequences that are desirable for the individuals involved? If this is the case, can we not learn for ourselves which rules bring about those consequences? We have struck the main point here. The source of moral reasoning is the consequences, not the rules. If we know what consequences we desire, we can reason our way to the rules; the rules themselves are derivative, and never absolute.

A possible way out of this is if the desirable consequences are created by the law-giver. Punishment and reward, in other words. I argue that such rules can never be moral. You cannot invent morality through power, that reduces to the absurd conclusion that morality lies with the powerful. I asked this question to the Bible Answer Squad once, and the response was that God was the exception in this case. Such an assertion could be made anywhere along any line of reasoning, it is hardly compelling!

What about morality as a property of reality? Can the universe impose a moral law? Let us consider how we would detect such a thing. We would do so by examining the consequences of our decisions. In other words, even if it were possible to impose morals on reality, it would be irrelevant. Good choices would bring good results and that is how we would know.

Once we have successfully identified 'desirable consequences', and not the mind of God, as the source of moral reasoning, we quickly realise that ascertaining the desirable consequences is tricky. People's desires are often in conflict. We are forced to conclude that not only is morality not absolute, but it is changing, and elusive. This is a big problem for some people. But consider this: you are captured by a highly intelligent, but primitive tribe of cannibals, who are going to eat you. To them, you are morally no different from an animal. How would you reason with them to get them to set you free? You could scream at them about how they would go to hell, or how we are all made in the image of God, until you were blue in the face, but that is not reasoning, it is assertion, and these cannibals don't know about your religion. No, you would try to identify common ground, consequences that both you and the cannibals find desirable, and on that ground attempt to show them how their actions are undesirable to them.

This is what morality is. It is the outcome of reasonable people coming together, first to establish what are the shared desirable consequences, and then to reason as to how to bring them about. We can see how morality cannot be clear-cut, because if it were it would become close to being absolute, and absolute rules cannot be moral. Morality is nothing substantial, nothing tangible, it cannot be by definition. And that is a good thing, since the obsession with absolute morality has for centuries kept power in the hands of the powerful, and those who claim to be able to read the mind of god.