Andries Louis Joubert

The Christian religion wants you to accept that you must do absolutely everything right, but, at the same time, that you don’t have to do everything right. This is a contradiction. Christian theology has a way to make it seem that grace and moral absolutism don’t really contradict, but they do. Paul’s theology, especially seen in the book of Romans, attempts to grapple, unsuccessfully, with this problem. On the one hand, Paul recognizes that God demands absolute moral perfection, but at the same time, he recognizes that no one can meet this standard. It’s almost as if the Christian god is talking out of both sides of his mouth. However, the problem of grace does not go away just because one has exited Christianity. People simply cannot do everything they think they have to. They cannot fulfill all their moral obligations. Even if you’re an atheist, there will come a time when you see that you often do what you think is wrong. Therefore, it seems rational to think that I shouldn’t think I have to do everything right, but I also have to believe that I have to do right. This is again a contradiction. To put it another way, to accept grace, to accept human imperfection, you have to accept that it is sometimes right or permissible to do wrong, which doesn’t make sense. Does belief in objective morality require accepting something irrational, something contradictory? My answer is that it does. Moral absolutism or objective morality requires the contention that people have to do everything right. But human moral imperfection is an unavoidable fact. If you accept that you cannot do everything right, then you shouldn’t be a moral absolutist or shouldn’t believe in objective morality. One way, I suppose, to deal with this is to make morality as easy as possible. This is almost nihilism and it is not really a good solution. The secular theories of morality (like utilitarianism and deontology) have far-reaching implications for how one should treat people and it is simply not possible to do everything all the time.

A better way to deal with it is to accept nihilistic pragmatism. The “nihilism” in nihilistic pragmatism, means that nothing is inherently wrong or right. People don’t have objective or metaphysical moral obligations. They can do whatever they like. The only thing that constrains them is rational self-interest and moral emotion. It is the task of a good society to make it in peoples’ self-interest to be peaceful and harmonious (through the rule of law). Of course, even here, people are not machines. They cannot always be rational. But since there is no objective or metaphysical requirement for them to be such, it doesn’t matter. It matters only pragmatically, only to the extent that you will get into trouble for not being rational. But there is no other dimension of reality that requires that people always do it. Nihilistic pragmatism is far superior to moral absolutism. Roman law was such a success for its pragmatism, so much so, that it continues to form the foundation of European legal systems. Moral absolutism continues to poison the way people think about morality, and it breeds fanaticism and rage. Retributive thinking reigns not only among Christians and Jews, but also among atheists, who should know better than the rest not to indulge it. In fact, I suspect that one reason why most philosophers want to be compatibilists instead of hard determinists is because they cannot break their retribution addiction. Nihilistic pragmatism also just makes sense of our moral intuitions. Very few acts, if any, are always thought to be wrong. Killing? Murder is taken very seriously, but everyone recognizes that there are times when killing is justified (such as in war or in self-defense). Lying? Everyone knows it is sometimes fine to lie (such as when one is lying to protect innocents from harm). Stealing? If I were starving, I would steal. Rape? Until fairly recently, marital rape was legal (and, in my opinion, should be again). In fact, my guess is that married and cohabiting couples constantly rape each other in small ways and they don’t care.