Perfect Morality & Free Will = One Big Contradiction

There is a lot to say about the connection between God and morality. I personally do not believe that God defines what is good or bad. Growing up, it should be your decision what you think is right or wrong, solely based on your rationality. If you think an action is good, then it’s good. If it’s bad, then it’s bad. If you were to do something that you thought was terribly wrong, it would be more then likely because of other personal reasons opposed to Gods determination of the particular subject. One question that I do not understand is how someone could be perfectly moral. If you were to be perfectly moral, there would be no need for the word “immoral”. This brings me back to free will, because if you can’t do any wrong (if you’re always perfectly moral), then how are you classified within the binds of free will? It just doesn’t make sense…

~ by jgreen73 on September 26, 2007.

2 Responses to “Perfect Morality & Free Will = One Big Contradiction”

  1. I think that we realize that no human being is perfectly moral, which leads us to believe in free will because we can make our own choices as to what we think is right and wrong, but do you think that God is perfectly moral?

    I think that he has to be perfectly moral because he is the one who teaches us the nature of morality. If he wasn’t perfectly moral and he did things that were wrong, then how could anyone think of him as all-knowing? They couldn’t because that would just show that God makes mistakes just like the rest of us.

  2. It’s interesting that you bring up the idea of morality being a function of human rationality, as that’s what many of the ethical thinkers we’ll be dealing with think as well. But they, unlike you, build on the fundamental assumption that rationality is the same from person to person, and that it’s possible to talk about the faculty of rationality independent of any one individual. What that means is that morality is universal (i.e. the same for everyone) because rationality is universal as well. This goes a bit counter to what you’re suggesting here, which is that since people come to different conclusions about things, that morality itself will differ between them as well. I think you’re right that people come to different moral beliefs, but I think that this is not a function of their having different rationality, but instead a function of the fact that they have different beliefs and desires. Their rationality, their logic, is the same.

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