What makes an act good or evil? Right or wrong?

Meta Ethical theory

Dorothy Emmet. 1904-2000

Meta ethics is the term used to discuss what makes something good or bad, right or wrong.It's the superstructure of ethical theory.The problem is both sides (let's say religious s Secular) are screwed up in their muddled misconceptions about what morality is and how God affects it. In a latter post I'll give my attempt to unscrew the muddle. but for now i'm just going to talk about why both sides are screwed up. Hint: it is not so simple as "God says it so do it."

The Evangelical problem.

Before I go into this I want to point out that I studied with two fine ethicists in gradate school. One of them world famous (Dr. Frederick S. Carney Southern Methodist University Perkins School of Theology) and not as famous but an excellent prof, (Victor Worsfold of UTD ). The former was Christian the latter was not.They both thought I was a good student of ethics. I have tried to be very through in my understanding of the subject. My views on this come from a thinker who was one of the most intellectual Evangelicals ever; ironically she was a woman; Dorothy Emmet. Not a fundie but Evangelical and highly respected by all camps. If you can you should find her book The Moral Prism,[1] eye opening weather you are a Christian or an atheist.

I point this out because it will schock some Christians to hear that her finding was that morality is retaliative and contestable.Yes, she is saying is a Christian not an atheist not as some secular person this is her Christian analysis of the field of morality as a whole. Moral axioms have to be grounded in values.Values are arbitrary meaning there is no "objective" sense in which it can be proven one should hold one value or another. All the talk that goes on about "objective morality" is just wrong headed. Absolute values also is a misnomer and a problem.

Morality is not objective and its' not "absolute." What it is in place of this is either grounded or not grounded. It should be grounded because otherwise it's meaningless. The problem is in what do you ground it? There is no verse in the Bible that says morality is absolute or objective. In fact the terms "objective" and "subjective" never appear in the bible. That's because they only arise out of Kantian perspective where the mind is made the object around which the sense data orbits rather then another part of the sense data itself.

The whole subject/object dichotomy only arises with Descartes to Kant. The human mind is made the subject and sense data orbit around that subject, Prior to this view we have historical Christianity. One example of historical Christianity:  Augustinian ethics.We love the eternal we use the temporal. The eternal nature of certain values grounds them in reality in way that other values are not grounded. Love for example is an eternal value. Eternal values are those that are based upon God's charter, the basis of which is love.

Just being long lasting (eternal) one might think is an advantage because it will last longer, but the real reason why it's a grounding is because it's based upon God and who and what God is.Temporal values are less grounded and not enduring because they are grounded in relative things that vanish and have no permanence and no importance beyond matters of taste. This means people are eternal because we are souls, we have eternal life. So this means each and every person is an end in himself, we are not means to ends. We have treat each person equally with dignity and love and seek the good of that person as an end in himself not a means to archive our own ends.


Now you might think that's why we talk about objective and relative, or universe and relative. I admit "universal" is a good term for moral values more so than "objective." The fact is this is not just about relative vs. absolute. The problems with terms like objective and absolute is that they are not based upon the divine character, they are not based upon Biblical values or eternal values.

(1) There is no objectivity apart from God. There are only degrees of subjectivity. so there's no point in trying to force objectivity as a phony value. God can be objective because he can understand every perspective.

(2) these things belie the nature of contextualization that is crucial to understanding. In other words, there's no flexibility. Because meaning arises from context, you can't ignore context and just demand a universal standard that can never be understood in any other light. That's what Emmit was getting at.


The true nature of morality is based upon either deontology (duty and obligation, sometimes expressed as :"rule keeping") or teleology based upon the end or the goal. This is what will determine what's true or good or right vs false, evil, or wrong. Not objectivity not absolutes, but duty and obligation vs goals or the end result.



The Atheist Problem of Morlatiy
Atheist morality is bankrupt. This is because they have no grounding, or they seek to deny the necessity of grounding. All atheist morality boils down to matter of taste. then to cover up the weakness of having no grounding they pretend that it's not important you don't need it it's all just my little feelings and what I feel like now is what makes something good.

there are three basic sources of atheist grounding, all inadequate:


(1) teleological


(2) personal feelings

(3) community or social contract.



*When I as in graduate school this what they were saying:teleological ethics has been totally discredited in meta ethical circles. no one really claims to be a utilitarian or consequential anymore. That a 20 years ago so it may have changed, One difference since I was in graduate school is the rise of moral realism.


* No grounding in personal feelings at all. Your feelings can be selfish they can change and how do you deal with the feelings of others?


* relative to the community. what if your community is Nazi?


this is sort of what I was trying to get at when I was talking about overlapping communities. Because there is a way to build a consensus among communities and make assumptions about values and their grounding that would stack up to a universal morality without appealing to religion: except for the fact that with most communities the values are embedded in religious past.

You can't take religion out of the mix. It's inherent and normative. In other words. the value we hold we hold because they came to us from religious traditions and that's why they are special and why they are wroth using to ground axioms. So you have to include that in the mix, although it is possible to construct a serviceable morality that can guide a secular society without imposing religion, but you can't ignore it as though its not a source of knowledge to draw upon for the values.

Both sides contribute big problems:



(1) The theistic, or especially Abrahamic religions: rigidity and lack the flexibility to understand contexts and situations.


(2) Atheist: destroy the basis for grounding all morality in anything stable in an attempt to deny the need for stability in axioms.

This last assertion I argue only in terms of those who try to down play or deny the need for grounding of axioms. That process,the process of down playing, merely says "we don't need moral thinking."

Now an atheist might argue as did "Asimov" on CARM:

Social contract is grounded upon the recognizance of the fact that a society is a population of individual moral agents striving for survival at the basic level and the flourishing of life at the higher level.

A social contract applies to all citizens equally, and define the right to action of all citizens, equally. A Nazi social contract wouldn't be reasonable or equal, so your point is moot.

Social contract is the only true basis for a moral compact, that is rules to run a society by. But it doesn't tell us why something something is good or evil, right or wrong. It's not adequate grounding. Granted its' better than divine right of Kings, which it emerged in the enlightenment to opposes, it's better than brute force or mob rule but it's not adequate.


[1] Dorothy Emmet.Moral Prism: Morality as Contestable, London:

 Macmillan 1979, no page

Springer link offers a summary of the book:

https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-1-349-81421-3

buy my book The Traced of God

Victor Wrosfold d 2013