Sunday, January 21, 2007

Shaken but, I think, still firm.

Objective morality - if there is no justification, why should I not be entirely self-serving? i.e. - "If there is no God, everything is permitted."

We think that if we have no obligation to follow this if we recieve entirely no reward (even if the reward is only the pleasure of knowing that we have done the 'right' thing, that the decision we have made somehow elevates us). We cannot be satisfied with knowing that, for ourselves and no others, we have made the choice we found most fit.

Without others' judgments, we would have no checks upon our unlimited power to be morally corrput. Is this the view of ourselves we really wish to espouse? That without justification we would act just as the thief, the murderer, which we so presently despise?

The argument for God - unconstrained, we would destroy ourselves. Does humanity need to invent false idols, whether it be in the guise of a deistic figure or for some objective moral standpoint that we should all fulfill, in order to function? We invent morality because we cannot reconcile a society where its hand does not guide us, or a life where through its relentless maze we cannot follow.

We clasp our hands, we stare at the deepening of stars, we govern ourselves in such a way only so that we can cry "I am not alone".