I’ve said before that I think arriving at an objective moral system is within our power, though we certainly haven’t come close to one yet. To arrive at such a system, we have to factor out whatever cultural biases we might have. Much of any moral system stems from the value intrinsic in life itself. In the first installment of my On Guard critique, I responded to William Lane Craig’s claim that without a god, life has no value:
Life as we have defined it includes 1) any ordered entity 2) which takes in energy and transforms it to do work, 3) such as growth, development, and healing, 4) in order to reproduce and 5) adapt and change in response to the environment and other stimuli. Life is reasonably rare throughout the universe (though not necessarily vanishingly so) and is the only vehicle for intelligence of which we are aware. For these two reasons, life is worth preserving. Therefore, actions which foster the growth of life in general should be considered moral. Acts that cause life to decline or to perish are immoral.
Clearly, that argument is incomplete. If our moral system is to be objective it must apply universally. If we encounter alien life, it should seem equally reasonable to them. If there is a conscious creator, it should be equally reasonable to that deity. If we should christen a SkyNet, it should find this moral system valid. Continue reading…