The Facts of a Moral World

I just recently watched a video where legendary atheist and scientific skeptic Sam Harris spoke about whether or not science can answer moral questions. Questions also regarding human well-being. Now I suggest that you do indeed go and watch the video as it is an excellent talk and will give you a lot to think about.

Now, it gave me a lot to think about as well after I watched it. Not because of the somewhat new idea that morals could be answered by science or that faith-based morals weren’t the only way for our moral compasses to be guided, but because it was something that I had thought about for as long as I can remember now. When it comes down to it, to simplify it if you will, there is a simple case of right and wrong for us all. And when I say us all, I do not mean us all individually, I mean us all in the greater good of us all. Take for example torturing someone because they are your enemy or because they did something wrong or just because you can. Now it is an easy case for anyone at all with any kind of compassion, empathy and even feelings of pity that says such acts are wrong and should never be carried out. Inflicting pain and suffering upon another person does not in any way fix any problem nor does it help to bring about a solution that isn’t soiled in a background filled with negativity and violence. It is hardly a case for a means to an end. Even if the end is the saving of lives, the means do not justify the ends. Why? Well because it would be hypocritical of us to say on one hand “lets beat the answers out of him” to then on the other hands say “sorry about bruises and the blood, but at least we saved the girl”.

Now some might think well, surely it is ok to do what you have to do in order to get a result that benefits everyone. But everyone minus one person isn’t everyone. We need to as a species learn to know what is right and wrong. We need to know what things in life, what decisions we make will result in a benefit for all concerned and not just for a few and lets forget the rest.

An example of this is simple manners. Saying please and thank you are amongst the easiest and most notable traits of a good person. They are, or at least should be drilled into us as young toddlers and throughout our childhood into adolescence and right throughout our adulthood to the point where they become so common and automatic that we no longer think about them. We just say them as part of our everyday lives. Like breathing and eating and sleeping. So why is it then that we do not give simple answers to moral questions. Why do we not know what really is right and wrong. As Sam Harris explained there are varying answers to what is right and what is wrong. His example of what are good foods to eat was a good one. Yes we know apples are good for you, but they are not the only good food for you. However it doesn’t take a genius to know that fried chips with half a bottle of your favourite sauce, really isn’t good for you. These are simple facts and they can be proven by science.

So the same goes for moral and ethical questions with regards to the well-being of our societies as a whole. In order for us to succeed and flourish as Sam might put it we need to answer these questions more definitively.

I have always said that I have what I call a base set of morals and ethics in which I view the world. Same Harris has finally put up an explanation for it. There simply are good things and there are bad things in this world and we ought to know what they are by now. Yet somehow we seem to want to waste so much precious time on things like revenge and hate and fear that we are constantly handicapping out own moral evolution to the point that we are becoming stagnant.

So the next time you are having a fight with a loved one, or speeding down the street in a busy area of town or perhaps voting for a politician who is giving you a tax cut but is against stem cell research, think long and hard to yourself and work out if really that fight is going to get you anywhere other than upset or that the speed you are travelling at won’t instantly kill some innocent bystander if lose control or that the stem cell research that you voted against didn’t get to cure certain cancers and wonder if really there ought to be a simple right way of doing things.

There is a right way to life and a wrong way to life. The right way is the way in which all involved have an outcome that is positive to them and they bear no guilt for it. Can this be done, I believe it can, but can you?

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