Ethics

Ethics is the study of moral decisions.

You likely have come across the trolley problem, an ethical dilemma. Five people are lying down on a train track, and about to get hit by a train. You have the chance, however, to flick a switch and redirect the train to hit one person. Would you flip the switch and save five lives for the cost of one?

Moral relativism is the belief that the morals of one person is true to them, and the moral beliefs of another is true to that individual. In short, it means that there is no true, objective moral right or wrong. This correlates with New Spirituality, a belief that says that everyone is god and everything is god. If we continue with that logic, every being has the right to set their own moral standards. There is a flaw in this belief, however. Everyone will have their own moral standards, because we are all different. What is right to one person can and will be wrong to another.

This is where moral absolutes can be introduced. Moral absolutes are truths that are always true and will be true in all circumstances. We can see that many people can agree on general ethical statements, such as “murder is wrong”. Christians believe that the divine Creator created us and wrote those moral absolutes into our hearts. They see that all cultures agree on some ethical statements and conclude that the Creator engraved the moral code on humanity.

After laying out these statements, we can talk about the moral argument. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy gives a good template for this.

1. “There are objective moral facts.
2. God provides the best explanation of the existence of objective moral facts.
3. Therefore, (probably) God exists.”

(Evans, C. Stephen and David Baggett, “Moral Arguments for the Existence of God”, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2022 Edition), Edward N. Zalta & Uri Nodelman (eds.), URL = <https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2022/entries/moral-arguments-god/>.)

This is an argument that has been used many times and can be applied to the creation as well. If there was no creator, then how is there a creation? (This is the Causal Argument, or the Cosmological Argument)

Going back to the trolley problem, would you flick the switch to save the five? Would it be moral to do so? The dilemma could be further complexed by adding more options, like “jump in front of the train and get hit instead, saving the lives of the other people”, or “push someone else in to stop the train”. The Bible says to not murder, although I recall one scholar telling me that the original text says to not murder with harmful intent, or murder without a cause. Would it be morally right to do anything in that situation?