Yes, morality is objective. (By ‘morality’ I mean that which we all recognise as right behaviour – that which we call ‘good’). Have you ever tried making up your own morality and applying it to your family and friends? If you have, you could well be reading this magazine whilst sitting in a prison cell or an asylum.
Certainly many people have attempted to invent their own morality and then impose it on others, for instance, Stalin, Hitler, Mao Zedong, and Pol Pot. And look what they created – a new Humanity, a new Society! Does anyone fancy living in their morally subjective worlds? Each led to inhumanity and madness. It is also a fact that none of the great moral teachers of our world ever invented a morality of their own. For example, Jesus didn’t teach new morality, but rather he elaborated on what already existed. ‘Love thy neighbour as thyself’ already was, and is, a universal and eternal principle.
It is of course the case that moral codes, although objective, are tailored to, or tailored by, the particular culture and age into which they are incarnated. For instance, it has never been the case (as far as we know) in any culture, at any time, that a man (even the chief) can take whichever woman he wants to be his wife. In Britain today she has to be over sixteen, and in other countries her age may be higher or lower. Also, someone has to give consent to the marriage; either the woman herself, or her family, or the elders of the tribe, or the chief’s other wives! Whatever the ‘subjective’ cultural differences, the same objective moral principle applies.
We can no more invent a subjective morality than we can invent a new primary colour. We can no more come up with a novel morality which is in no way connected to an objective morality than we can come up with a new way of breathing.
Karl Wray, Carlisle, Cumbria