Moral Absolutism Refuted
index
<ETHICS> THAT COMMAND THE GREATER EVIL
SUPEREROGATION TELLS THE TALE!
Let us explore the doctrines of people in
ivory towers who claim that morality is about actions that are always wrong
regardless of the evil this “morality” results in. Or who hold that only some actions are always
bad and forbidden.
NATURAL LAW
Many religions and absolutists pontificate about unnatural acts being
wrong under all circumstances. Some even
say it is a sin to have a face-lift.
If something being unnatural means that it is evil then absolutism is
true. Then what is unnatural is always
or absolutely wrong.
We should not condemn things just because we think they are
unnatural. Only harmful things must be
denounced. Nature makes many supposed
unnatural acts possible and enjoyable and harmless so they could be considered
natural.
Nature puts sex organs on those she inclines to be celibate so what is
natural is not necessarily good.
We wear glasses and clothes and get operations. Those who fulminate against unnatural
“crimes” like artificial birth control and homosexuality are often accused of
being hypocrites for they do plenty of unnatural things themselves. It might be replied that it is different to
wear glasses than to use a condom for you wear glasses because there is
something wrong with you but the condom is not a health aid. Here it is being assumed that nature means
you to see well so you may wear glasses.
But nature made it possible for your sight to be marred and stay
marred. Also, you don’t need glasses all
the time so when you are allowed to do so by the Church, the church is
admitting that glasses are not just for health.
You can cope a lot of the time in the house without glasses. To be consistent, the Church needs to forbid
you having glasses on when you are asleep.
The Catholic Church says that birth-control is bad for the same reason
that eating food for pleasure and vomiting it up would be bad. It means that you are after the pleasure and
rejecting the purpose of the pleasure which is to keep you alive. So sex pleasure is to help and get you to make
babies. But sex is not for the
pleasure. If you have sex for recreation
and don’t want babies, you are, in their view, putting the means before the
end. You are not using the means for
their proper purpose.
If having sex for pleasure not for babies is a sin then eating sweets
when you have had a good meal must be a sin.
You have nourished your body well and now you want to eat junk for
pleasure not for nourishment. Drinking
alcohol for pleasure must be a sin for it is certainly not taken for
nourishment. Smoking cigarettes must be
a sin for it is the unnatural use of the lungs and gives pleasure but serves no
purpose.
Pleasure is not just about getting us to look after ourselves. Pleasure can be an end not a means and that
is acceptable. You don’t laugh because
it is good for you. You laugh because
you desire pleasure.
The Church shows complete inconsistency.
Its doctrine is really down to a deep suspicion of pleasure that can
only tolerate it for some boring end.
Sex without baby-making is acceptable and natural if eating a sweet is acceptable
and natural. The Catholic Church preaches pure hypocrisy.
We can’t accuse anyone of abnormal acts unless they are harmful.
Nature is full of violence and hate so its laws merit little respect and
should be broken for a greater good, such as human happiness. There is nothing wrong with breaking the laws
of nature in itself though it may sometimes be wrong for consequentialist
reasons. Is it good to want your throat
cut? It is not bad because your throat
is meant be in one piece. It is bad
because of the consequences and you could die from it. Is it natural to put natural law before
happiness?
All who condemn gay people or whatever as evil for doing what is
supposedly unnatural are slandering them and hating them. They have no right to do so for it is never
right to condemn what is harmless or could be made harmless. It is true that the abuse of gay sexuality
has done a lot to spread AIDS but nothing can be legitimately condemned because
of its misuse.
Be broad-minded.
To absolutely condemn homosexuality or anything that is allegedly
unnatural implies that anything against nature is always wrong. It tells us to let a child who needs the
unnatural act of a lung transplant die.
To have somebody else’s body part inside you as part of you is more
physically intimate than sex could ever hope to be. If homosexuality is wrong, so is the
transplant. You cannot say it is more unnatural to let a child die when you say
that homosexuality is immoral even if the gay person’s deprivation will lead to
suicide.
Perhaps it is wrong to do what is unnatural without need? Who cares if it is harmless?
The Roman Catholic Church based its absolutism on natural law and it
claimed that anybody who thought properly would come to the same conclusions as
it did. The Natural Law theory says that
God’s moral law is written in nature.
For example, incest is wrong for nature is rigged to make it cause the
babies to be unhealthy and handicapped.
Nobody believes this theory anymore.
KANTIAN
ETHICS
Duty means doing good that you are bound to do. For example, you are required and obligated
to pay your bills. Some philosophers
have attempted to base right and wrong on duty.
Duty implies that you should be forced and that it is a duty for others
to force you to carry out your duties.
You cannot be required to do something if nobody tries to force
you. Needless to say, Christianity and
Islam say religion is a duty to God and we know from their bloody history how
that led these faiths to butcher millions who didn’t want any part of this
duty.
Duty is debt. If you fail in your
duty you are forced to pay your debt another way. For example, if you don’t carry out your duty
to respect the property of others you will have the duty to pay back the damage
by money or by prison enforced on you.
So duty is inseparable from compulsion.
A school-master who sits all day listening to the radio and who doesn’t
teach his pupils is not doing his duty.
If he gets away with it, then society is taking the duty from him. Everybody is happy with him doing no work
especially the children so it is not his duty anymore. You see then that duty attempts to justify
human authority. You also see that he
has to be forced by the threat of losing his job or punishment to do his
duty. Without that it could hardly be
said to be his duty for it is duty in name only. There is no requirement made so it is not a
real duty. A requirement is not a
requirement unless there are bad consequences for you if you don’t do what you
are required to do.
A duty is your duty whether you understand it or not. A seven year old may not understand why he is
obligated to work at his maths but that doesn’t detract from the duty being a duty. Duty implies that we are to be conscripts in
a moral army. It is inseparable from the
use of force.
Duty justifies dogma. It follows
from duty that nobody has the right to say you should rob banks for the poor or
neglect your children. It follows that
if there is a duty towards God, that doubters and atheists and agnostics should
be silenced. Christianity and Islam
cannot get along for each claims to be the one true faith and accordingly that
it is everybody’s duty to belong to the true faith and that other religions are
bad and a threat to duty.
Immanuel Kant said that an action is wrong if everybody cannot do
it. For example, if we all broke
promises life would be impossible so it is always wrong. You cannot break a promise even to save
lives. His system is called Deontologism. Deontologism is an ethic about duty. But what is said about actions must be
clarified. According to him an action is
good if it is done with a moral motive so it is only the motive that counts and
everything else including the consequences is not as important. It says that what is moral is not moral
because it is good but because it was done because you believe you ought to do
it.
The arguments that correct reason is always valid and that any ethic must
be in some sense universalizable, in other words, if
stealing is wrong for me it is wrong for everybody else in the same situation,
seems to lead to the conclusion that to act rationally and ethically is the
same thing for both reason and ethics are universalizable. In other words, the conclusion is that reason
tells us to have an ethic that can and is meant to be practiced by the whole
world and what that ethic would be like.
The trouble is, as Peter Singer says (page 319, Practical Ethics) – not
to mention the great David Hume, is that that we can behave rationally and
still be wrong. Rationality is not about
being right though it is an attempt to be right but is about deriving
conclusions from premises. So you could
make a mistake and the result will be a wrong belief. But it is still a rational belief in the
sense that you used reason correctly as you understood reason or what you
thought was the facts to come to a conclusion.
Objectively speaking, your mistake is irrational but subjectively speaking
it is rational. It is the subjective
sense that is important for it is to be equated with sincerity and there is no
sense in being right if you don’t sincerely think you are right.
The doctrine of Kant is not telling us we must shun the forbidden acts
because of consequences but because of what they are. The undesirable consequences are put down to
the acts being bad but are not the reason they are bad. It would say that killing is not wrong
because of what will happen but killing is wrong because it is killing. See how it is rooted in the present.
Kant himself believed that since nobody agrees on what is best for us in
terms of consequences it is necessary to forget about the consequences and just
focus on motives for that is the only way you can enable all people to be moral
if they want to be and they can want to be.
Many believers hold that the only justification for the Deontologism system is intuition. That is, we feel that stealing is wrong even
when it is for a greater good and it has nothing to do with it being bad
example or a threat to order. Stealing
is bad because it is bad and not because of what it does. They usually insist that bad consequences
come from the act itself being bad. The
consequences don’t however make the act bad.
The question is then how do you know that the act is bad? Stealing can sometimes have very good
consequences. If the consequences don’t
make the act bad then it follows that they don’t matter and only the act
matters. If you can’t consider the
consequences then you cannot know if the act is bad. Its all about intuition not reason.
Some people have different intuitions. Atheists intuit that religion is
evil and believers in God claim to intuit that belief in God is good.
The way this works is as follows.
You want to do good when you act.
You intuit that stealing is wrong.
When you follow that intuition and avoid stealing and prevent it then
you are doing good.
The doctrine of deontologism despite itself
forbids our motives, meaning our desires for good and good is what brings
benefits for ourselves or others. The doctrine says we are not to desire good
or to have a motive but just do something because we ought to. If you do good because you enjoy it your
motive is bad. you are doing the good
not because it is good or because you ought to but because of your
feelings. It is the ought the doctrine
cares about not the feelings. It is
cold. It is worse than altruism, the
nasty doctrine that people don’t matter in themselves and should just think
about helping others and not themselves.
The Kantians are inconsistent and they concoct arbitrary precepts. If it is immoral to lie to save a life then
it is wrong to be silent at all for if everybody did that life would be a
disaster.
And if everybody steals and lies we will survive. The ethic devises and then increases misery
by forbidding these always and then it says misery is bad which is why the
thing is wrong. It is incoherent.
Perhaps we would be better off committing suicide? The Kantian theory says that we would not be
for it forbids killing yourself even if all the people around you do not obey
its teaching. Yet it tells us to tell
the truth when lying is the only alternative no matter how many people will be
destroyed as a result.
When we do evil, it is the good we think we see in the evil or the good
results that we are after. We only do
evil because we misperceive it as good.
We might categorise it as evil when we do it but we don’t really mean
it. Its evil doesn’t seem real to
us.
The ethic assumes that when you do something you have to approve of all
others doing the same to you and to others.
A thief, for instance, can argue that if he steals nobody should do the
same for it is wrong. But he cannot mean
it because he believes in doing it himself.
He approves of the theft as he does it and is thinking it is right
regardless of what he thought before or thinks after. The thief could argue that since he is more
sure of his existence than that of other people that he cannot approve of them
stealing from him but can agree will stealing from them and stealing from
others.
Some object against Kant that people can wash their hair every week and
that does not mean they are declaring that it would be wrong for everybody else
not to. Others would reply that this is
about preference not morality so it doesn’t touch Kant’s theory of
morality. It does for preferences mean
you desire what is good and anything to do with good or bad is to do with
morality. So the objection does have a
point.
We have to perform the greatest good and the least evil because values
often conflict so the least important one has to be sacrificed. It could be that if you have to tell a lie to
save your sister from an axe-wielding maniac then you should go ahead and do
it. Those who condemn your action should
be sharply informed that they are just trying to commit cold-blooded murder
through you. You would be as bad as the
axe-murderer for telling the truth.
If the Kantian ethic were rational it would be on one condition, that
there is a life after death. Unless you
can be as sure that you will live forever as you are that you are alive now the
ethic would be irrational for you for how else could you justify obedience to
it for it is difficult and nightmarish and you’d need a good afterlife to make
living worthwhile? For instance, telling
the truth cannot be a duty when you could increase happiness by doing the
opposite and when you should do that for all have only one life. You need another life to make up for the
misery caused by following Kant’s ethics.
Despite itself, the ethic forbids compassionate actions for you do good
only because it is your duty and not to end suffering. It is a rigid impersonal rule.
The rule must be supremely important.
If a rule can authorise you to let the whole world die if the only way
to save it was by telling a lie then the rule is the most important thing. Life is nothing in comparison. Since life
doesn’t matter so much as the rule, then anybody who doesn’t believe in the
rule must surely be put to death? But
then the rule says you cannot kill.
True. But it is still forcing you
to put little value on human life. It
still gives you a black heart. You are
not killing just because of the rule and not because you value human life.
In the Kant scenario, God, if he exists, made us not for ourselves but
for goodness. He does not care about
us. And nobody should care according to
the Kant ethic. Just care about duty not
people. Misery is the reward of such an
ethic though it says that good consequences will come out of its teaching
though it should not be obeyed for them.
At least Kantian ethics say that ethics is not based on what a God decrees
but on what reason says is right. It is
godless system. It is duty that matters
in it not God or God’s will.
The ethic is so impersonal and mathematical that it is bad for mental and
emotional health. In this it annuls
itself for we cannot live if we destroy our mental and emotional health and so
it condemns itself.
You cannot amend the rule of Kant to, “Doing the least evil is always
right”, for that is a different kind of ethic altogether, consequentialism. Yet some say that morality is doing what has
the fewest elements which are bad in themselves in it. So, though stealing is bad in itself it is
lawful to do it to prevent murder for that is an act that is worse. This still says only what consequentialism
says.
In a book called Philosophy: The Basics we read that rules like always
poking your tongue out at people who are taller than you are could be
universalised which makes Kant’s system ridiculous.
If any lying implies that everybody should be allowed to tell all the
lies they want as Kantianism states then it follows that all wrongdoing is
incredibly serious and cynical and callous.
The system will destroy through guilt.
Kantian philosophy says that we must treat people as ends and not as
means. But if we just care about acting
without feeling and only out of a sense of duty then it is the duty we really
only care about. Acting with feelings
would be preferable to that – it would be nearer to what the person wants.
IGNORING
CONSEQUENCES
Consequentalism is the denial of absolutism. Consequentalism
teaches that it is not just the badness of the act you must think about but the
consequences. Consequentalism
would say that if the consequences are the main thing. It would say you have to commit the bad act
of abortion to save the mother’s life so that she can look after her other nine
children.
If Consequentalism in all its manifestations is
wrong then reason commands us to never take consequences into consideration. Absolutism must rule the day.
Let us look at philosophies that ignore consequences.
Some believe that morality is only about your rights and those of others
and results must not even be thought of.
It is after the least unjust act.
Here is why.
An evil that is being done is worse that one that will be done because it
has happened and the latter does not have to happen and indeed might not
happen. Therefore to do evil to prevent
a possible evil is wrong for it is certainly doing damage for the prevention of
what might never happen.
The theory would be one explanation for why it is right to refuse to give
your son a higher grade even though the one he deserves will destroy his nerves
for life. Giving the grade earned is the
lesser evil when the present and the past and not the future are taken into
consideration.
In the theory, lies would be always wrong for when they do not correspond
with reality they are evil and are invariably told to avoid undesired
consequences.
In the theory, you would be bound to avoid silent lies, saying nothing
when it makes others think you agree with their misconceptions. You would have to tell the truth.
The only time you would not have to do this would be when the truth would
be the greater sin of detraction. You
would not be permitted to tell a wife that her husband is planning to kill her
for that is ruining his good name. If
people give you the chance of dying or denying the truth you would tell the
truth and die.
The ethic would explain why it is right to leave the doctor who will save
the world to burn to death in a house to save your dying father when you can
only save one if it is right if you want to believe in the rightness of such an
action.
This would explain why it is right for a woman to stay with an abusive
husband who beats her and the children up every day if you want to believe in
the rightness of such an action.
You would be forbidden to torture an evil man to make him tell where he
put the bomb planted to kill hundreds.
You can ask him to confess but you cannot force it out of him.
If a man fights
you and you defend yourself you cannot try to knock him out in case he grabs
the knife. You cannot even do it when he
tries to put the knife in you for you might survive and he might relent. The only kind of self-defence you can use is
just firmly holding him away from you which does not hurt him. You can be sure that all this self-defence
will do for you is put you in your coffin.
Some might say that restraining him is hurting him for he wants to hurt
you and you are not letting him. But to
let him hurt you would be hurting him for he should not be trying to hurt you.
You cannot attack the likes of Saddam Hussein to rob him of his atomic
weapons to stop the world becoming an inferno.
Drinking would be always wrong.
The only justification for artificially changing your feelings and
making your intellect duller would be the pleasure it will bring. But we are not to care about the future. And since morality is about the now not the
future you need a clear head so drinking is intrinsically wrong. Jesus would have been horrified to learn that
for he drank wine and provided it to drunk people at a wedding!
With the ethic, you cannot refuse to give all your money away to those
who need it more now just because you think it will make you suffer in the
future.
With the ethic, you cannot refuse to give all your time to helping
others. If an ethic says things we do not
like that is no reason to reject it and disbelieve it.
If disaster results that is not the fault of the ethic if the ethic is
right. We accept that those scientists
and mathematicians who made discoveries that led to the discovery of the
nuclear bomb didn’t do wrong. To many
this suggests that good that leads to disaster and trouble for many shows that
trouble alone cannot refute an ethic unless that ethic claims to be the
antidote for unhappiness like Utilitarianism does.
Even an absolutist ethic sometimes changes depending on the situation.
Many absolutists cannot be commended for consistency.
They sometimes say that no absolute rule can be given for every situation
simply because we cannot think of them all or learn them all. This does not undermine absolutism but simply
says you have to make your own decision be it right or wrong. The only absolute then would be forgetting
about the consequences of your actions.
Immature and bigoted people who prefer the security of being told what to
do instead of thinking for themselves will love absolutism. People often like rigid rules.
It seems that the ethic forbidding you to think of the future forbids you
to be happy for happiness makes you reluctant to sacrifice yourself for it and
others. But that would be taking
consequences into consideration. One
then should be detached from happiness which is a different thing entirely, if
the ethic is correct.
The ethic can result only in total misery upon the earth. Who could sleep at night if a man could be
about to press the nuclear button to destroy the world and nobody is allowed to
stop him for that would be upsetting him?
When a person is more sure they exist meaning you must put yourself first
it follows that if the future does not matter then it would be evil of them to
help anybody if they don’t feel like it.
They would have to refuse not out of badness or indifference but out of
the duty of self-respect. Going to work
if you would rather watch television would be a sin.
The bizarre and outrageous consequences of denying that the future
matters in ethical deliberation, demonstrate that we should think of the
consequences more than anything.
<ETHICS> THAT
COMMAND THE GREATER EVIL
Most people allege that many actions, no matter how terrible the
consequences of doing them will be are still right. The Christian Church for
example says that sin is the greatest of all evil and that it is better for the
whole world to be blown to pieces by a mistake with the nuclear button than for
one person to have sex outside marriage or to come to disbelieve in God. So involuntary evil is fine but deliberate
evil is intolerable. Christianity is
pure fanaticism and one of the most evil religions in the world that does what
looks like good to entrap people into its inhuman doctrines.
Such people are called legalists.
Their ethics are deontological or absolutist - they see things in terms
of black and white. When consequences
are considered it is only certain ones and the others are ignored. For example, they might tell you not to
report your father to the police for raping you because he is your father or
because jail is a bad place to send your father to. How you feel and the rehabilitation of your
father and your safety do not matter. It
is an incoherent mixture of absolutism and consequentialism,
which in reality cannot be mixed.
Religion will tell you to make the most people better off at times and
yet it will tell you to stay loyal to your faith no matter how much misery it
causes everybody just in case somebody needs your heroic example.
The threat to logic and human welfare in so-called ethics which say that
lying is always bad and giving up your own life for the sake of faith in Jesus
Christ is good is apparent. Anyone could
invent rules like this and if some should all should make up their own meaning
that slavery is right and dignity is an accursed thing. Ultimately, it says there is no right and
wrong.
SUPEREROGATION
TELLS THE TALE!
Duty means doing good that you are bound to do. For example, you are required and obligated
to pay your bills. You owe your father
care in his old age because he once looked after you. You are bad and to be condemned and hopefully
punished if you neglect a duty. A duty
is like a law. A law that you can break
with impunity is not a law at all. Superogation is doing good that isn’t your duty.
Some absolutists believe in supererogation. Acts of superogation
are good actions that you don’t have to do and which are not sinful if you
refrain from them. An example would be
giving alms to the poor or going to the hospital to give flowers to a stranger
who is a patient there. We would call
supererogation generosity – good deeds which are not your duty. If you see morality in terms of doing what is
or will be for the best then it follows that what is called generosity is an
obligation and there is no generosity except in the will.
Doing good means the lesser
evil. Anybody who says that it is okay
to buy a car even if it means that the starving will die because they never got
the money is being hypocritical and yet helping the starving with the money is
put down as a work of supererogation.
The doctrine denies that there is such a thing as being righteous at
all.
Once you teach the doctrine you can invent your rules to your heart’s
content regardless of rhyme or reason.
You can say it is better for a person to commit suicide than to tell a
lie. The doctrine of actions over and
above the call of duty is evil.
Utilitarianism opposes the doctrine of supererogation because
Utilitarianism commands the best and says that doing the best is a duty. It is correct in this.
Some will say that it is terrible to make a duty out of something
generous. Here is an answer. If all good acts are duties you can still
wish they could be supererogation if supererogation were right and
praiseworthy. Intent is what counts in
these things. You can be generous in
your heart, “I wish this wasn’t my duty because I want to do it freely and out
of generosity”. Another answer is that
we might have no choice.
Even if there is no such thing as superogation
and alleged acts above your duty are actually your duty, generosity is still
possible in the sense that there is a way that you still don’t have to do
them. It might be your duty to pay your
debts but you may refuse to do it and go to jail.
If you do not intend it you are neglecting to turn a good motive into a
better one though it costs you nothing.
That defiles what you do for that is not a rational or sensible
attitude. It is holding back on kindness
that costs you nothing so the result is an evil act that is disguised as a good
one. Anything done with a bad or
defective motive is bad and unloving.
The reason for the dogma of supererogation is that people want to be
called moral despite their refusing to do all they can for others. It is nothing to do with logic and everything
to do with laziness and self-righteous hypocrisy.
They arbitrarily make rules about when it is our duty to help those to
whom we owe nothing and when it is not.
Proof of this is in how they would say giving your mother a birthday
present is generous though you owe it to her!
They also say it is not your duty to contribute a kidney to save your
baby’s life when you could get by perfectly on one kidney. Bizarrely, it is not a duty to save your
child in this way and if you hit the child it is against your duty. Damage and caring seem to have little say in
determining what duties are.
Duty is an assumption. If I only
imagine I have free will and I am programmed to feel free though I am not then
it follows I have no duties. Duties
imply you are a free being that deserves to get good things back for the good
you did and bad things back for the bad you did. People assume we have free will so duty is an
assumption not a matter of reasoning or evidence. A drunk
person isn’t free but feels free.
Animals are said to have no free will but they look as if they exercise
free will too. Feeling free or seeming
to be free means nothing.
Anybody that does wrong does not deserve to be forgiven. Forgiving them is giving them something they
don’t deserve. To forgive a person who
has earned it is not forgiveness.
Forgiveness is a free gift. But
religion and absolutism say that it is a duty to forgive. This is incoherent.
Forgiveness is a gift not a duty and so it implies that the harmful
doctrine of supererogation is true.
Perhaps it is a duty to yourself to forgive for you have faults and are
better off forgiving? Resentment causes
a lot of pain to the one who resents.
But that would not be real forgiveness for you have to forgive for the
other person’s sake not just your own.
Forgiveness means wishing well to the other person because you value
them as a person despite their evil.
It’s for them. In so far as you forgive for your own sake you are not
forgiving them at all but just practicing a near cousin of forgiveness. It is refusing to love that person.
Forgiveness says then that it is a sin to pay any attention to justice,
letting the person get what they have asked for by their evil actions. Why?
Because you are to value all people for themselves and you can’t do that
without forgiveness.
This shows the incoherence of the doctrine of supererogation. Forgiveness and kindness are based on
justice, giving a person the value they are entitled to as persons. And supererogation denies justice!
Supererogation is a major doctrine in the Roman Catholic faith. Unsurprisingly, the law is that money be
donated to the Church and it is optional to look after the poor.
Every religion - except orthodox
Protestantism – has the same doctrine that there are such things as works of
supererogation. In Buddhism, it is not
your duty to become a monk and live out the teaching of the Buddha fully. The Hindus built beautiful temples at the
expense of the poor. The Muslims build
nice mosques and raise families instead of being where they can do the most
good.
It was the doctrine of supererogation that contributed to Martin Luther’s
rejection of the Roman Catholic religion.
He went to confession nearly every day because he realised that it was
wrong and his hell ended when he decided that salvation was by faith and faith
only and that sin did not keep the saved person out of Heaven.
It is a mortal sin, a sin that makes you an enemy of God in a big way, to
encourage religious error or heresy by silence or other means according to the
Catholic Church. All Catholics do this
all the time for not all are in the mission fields and most are ashamed to talk
about their faith. Catholics reply that
not everybody is called to become a missionary in that sense. They are arguing then that God calls people
to sin for what better work can there be to look after those who hunger for
God? They should be consistent for a
change and say that sins like adultery are right for God calls some to commit
them. A vocation can only be decided on
rational grounds for feelings are notoriously unreliable. Their reply denies this though they say they
agree.
And this is the religion that boasts of putting faith before people. God is believed in and since the law is that
he comes first and is to be your only love it is clear that death and suffering
must be welcomed to protect and create faith.
The honest Catholic will have a
mental breakdown and despairingly see salvation as impossible if one has to
avoid mortal sin to get it. With the
collapse of the doctrine of supererogation, everybody is declared to be a
mortal sinner and there is no good work that one can do that could not have
been replaced with a superior one. So,
good works are virtually all mortal sins.
When we are mortal sinners all the time we cannot do good for sin make
your devotion to God into a sham.
I testify that the Catholic Church nearly destroyed me because of her
lies for I saw through the doctrine of supererogation when I first heard
it. The anger of being forced by a
Catholic society to remain in her made me vile.
CONCLUSION
Absolutism, the doctrine that some acts are wrong no matter how much evil
avoiding them does, is nonsense and is arbitrary. It is religious bigotry and superstition. It belongs with religion because religion
likes to enforce rules that make no sense and it refuses to change them. For example, the Church says that the rule to
love God above all things and to do all things solely for the love of him comes
first and must not be changed. So even
if terrorists and the state and psychologists are against it, it must stay the
same. The appeal of absolutism is in the power it gives men and religion.
Friday, 28 December 2007
BOOKS CONSULTED
A HISTORY OF
PHILOSOPHY, VOL 6, PART II, KANT, Frederick Copleston SJ, Doubleday/Image,
CHRISTIANITY FOR THE TOUGH-MINDED, Ed John Warwick Montgomery, Bethany
Fellowship Inc,
ETHICS, A C Ewing,
Teach Yourself Books, English Universities Press Ltd,
ETHICS IN A
PERMISSIVE SOCIETY, William Barclay, Collins and
FREE TO DO RIGHT,
David Field, IVP,
MORAL PHILOSOPHY,
Joseph Rickaby SJ, Stonyhurst Philosophy Series, Longmans, Green and Co,
MORALITY, Bernard
Williams, Pelican/Penguin, Middlesex, 1972
MORTAL QUESTIONS
Thomas Nagel,
NEW CATHOLIC ENCYCLOPEDIA, The Catholic
University of America and the McGraw-Hill Book Company, Inc., Washington,
District of Columbia, 1967
PRACTICAL ETHICS, Peter Singer,
RUNAWAY WORLD,
Michael Green, IVP,
SITUATION ETHICS,
Joseph Fletcher, SCM Press,
SUMMA THEOLOGICA OF ST THOMAS AQUINAS, Part II, Second Number,
Thomas Baker,
THE PROBLEM OF RIGHT
CONDUCT, Peter Green MA, Longmans Green and Co,
The WEB
Roman Catholic
Ethics: Three Approaches by Brian Berry
www.mcgill.pvt.k12.al.us/jerryd/ligouri/berry.htm