Morality isn't something that's subject to personal preference or community standards. Ethics are flexible and change with the times and according to the situation. Morality is an absolute. And it is an absolute because it does not originate from those under its code but from outside those under its code.
It could be that this is the point where you and I disagree the most, Terry. Because I don't believe that there is such a thing as an absolute morality. I don't know where that morality would come from. From God? Well, if you are a non-religious person like me, the assertion that there is a God who has given us an absolute morality isn't going to sound too persuasive. However, even if you really are a religious person, understanding what this God-given absolute morality actually decrees is close to impossible. Why else would different societies supposedly founded on the same Christian faith and the same Scripture have defined right and wrong so very differently? How, for example, do we interpret the fifth commandment (never mind that the Bible doesn't explicitly say that there are ten commandments or that one particular commandment is the fifth), namely, Thou shalt not kill? We could take that to mean that the taking of another person's life is always wrong, in which case Superman sinned against the fifth commandment when he killed Bill Church. On the other hand, we can argue that the fifth commandment is partly negated by the Bible's words about an eye for an eye, in which case we could argue that Superman had the right to kill Bill Church to punish him for ordering the killing of Superman's fiancée (and many other people too, of course). We could almost certainly also find Biblical support for the idea that we have the right to kill evil people, and we could easily argue that Bill Church was evil. On the other hand, we could argue that Jesus taught us to turn the other cheek, which probably means that it is always wrong to kill.
So, Terry, I don't believe there is such a thing as an absolute morality, because I don't understand who would give us this morality - or, for that matter, who would give us this laid-down-in-stone interpretation of the Bible.
So how do I know what I myself should believe in, then? How do I know that my own moral compass faithfully points to the north all the time? Frankly, I don't know what is absolutely right, all the more so since I don't know that there
is an absolute right in the first place. I don't know that what I believe in is "the most right thing", compared to all other possible positions on morality. But I try to understand moral questions, and I try to understand the underlying foundations for various ethics. That way I can at least understand what my own basic moral principles are, why I adhere to them, and why I might still not cling to them in absolutely
every situation. For example, I have said many times that I think it is morally wrong to kill another human being. Okay, but I still think it is sometimes right for an officer of the law to kill in the line of duty. And I still think it can be right to kill an attacker to protect your own life, or to protect someone else. In other words, I don't always think it is wrong to kill another person.
All this means that there are going to be situations when I don't know if I think that an act was morally right or wrong. I will not always be able to say if I think that the taking of a human life was wrong or if it was justifiable. Hopefully, however, I will be able to explain
why I am in doubt, and why I don't know what I should think about a certain act or a certain situation.
Ann
