The Plague of Subjective Morality

Warning: actual fragment of conversation with a university student incoming:

"If, in one hundred years—hypothetically—America as a broader culture decided that gang rape was morally acceptable, would it be?" [this was my question]

"In that case, yes, it would be."

"Wow. Well, at least you're consistent."

"Well, I have to play by my own rules, don't I? If morality is relative, then anything the group decides is right, is right."

We left it at that. It was after class. We'd been discussing presuppositions and deductive premises and other such things, and the question of moral conclusions came up.

Moral Relativism (also known as Subjective Morality) is taken as a given by a culture that was never taught better. The very idea that morality could be anything but subjective is met with bafflement, in the public sphere. Listen to any debate or discussion on the question of whether or not "religion" should be involved in politics or legislation and you're sure to hear it as an assumption, something like, "Right and wrong are just what people decide, right?" Often, an opponent might say something like, "Then was Stalin killing more than twenty million of his own people moral? His culture decided that it was." Nobody wants to answer in the affirmative, and will then say that, no, in that case, it wasn't, but there's the problem, and the lack of moral reasoning.

If the collective is suddenly wrong (often because nobody wants to say that example was correct), then you have to appeal to a standard higher than the collective to compare it to. This cannot be done without a source of morality outside of humans themselves. What I appreciated about the student in the very true account above was that he was consistent; at least he admitted that his own philosophy would justify anything so long as the collective agreed on it.

So many today hover in some nonsensical space between these, invoking "relative morality" where it suits them, but rejecting it once it concludes something they don't think is right, for whatever reason. And we wonder why the culture is so confused. Morality is either objective or subjective; it cannot be both.

What's the difference? Does the standard of right and wrong come from outside humanity or from inside humanity? When we reject God as our objective standard, we are left only with ourselves. Despite his hatred for Christianity, even Nietzsche realized the horror of rejecting a moral absolute standard. In his essay "The Gay Science," he called it "Unchaining the earth from the sun," leaving us to fling into the cold void, and it comes today from the lecture halls of our institutions of what we still somehow call "higher" learning. Paul warns the church in Rome that a fallen generation becomes like this, but pats themselves on the back for their progressiveness, "Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools" (Romans 1:22 KJV).

If morality is subjective, chosen by democratic belief of the majority, then there can be no standard, no absolute right and wrong, ever, and anything can ultimately be justified if it is likewise judged "necessary" by the majority for the "greater good."

And we wonder how regimes descend into depravity...