I listened to part of a fascinating program on Odyssey today on WBEZ. The discussion was on ethics. The two distinguished guests were taking calls when I tuned in and it was interesting to hear them try to form a basis for ethics which didn’t appeal to “metaphysics”. What that means is that they tried to define some form of morality that had nothing to do with God.

As far as I can tell, this is impossible to do and retain some viable ethical framework. The modern humanist philosophy is “do whatever you want as long as it doesn’t hurt anyone else.” Two problems emerge. First, it makes it sound like that is really possible. If I do whatever I want, most of the time it is at someone else’s expense. When I take a motorcycle ride on a sunny afternoon, no one gets hurt, right? Not if you listen to the environmentalists. I’m dumping carbon monoxide into the atmosphere. What about the underpaid workers in Mexico who made the inexpensive tires I’m riding one? What about the Muslim government I’m supporting by buying gasoline from an Arab nation that persecutes Christians? The idea of not hurting anyone only works if you mean it directly. I can swing my arm all I want but it can’t impact someone’s nose. That sorta’ works, but in real life it doesn’t.

The second problem is that I have no real reason for caring if I harm someone else. If I’m doing it and it makes me happy, why should I limit my happiness because it might affect someone else? Who cares? An ethicist might take the long view and develop an argument like this: First, you’re happiness is what is chiefly important. However, to ensure the ongoing success of your happiness, you will need to limit yourself in certain areas (ethics). For example, you should not steal because while it might make you happy in the short term, in the long term, it will drive prices up and possibly close businesses thereby depriving you of that thing that makes you happy. What if everyone stole Frito Lay chips? Then Frito Lay would go out of business and you couldn’t get the chips that you enjoy. Society works because we are all getting what we want in a way that benefits each other.

While that second option attempts to build ethics on a communal level, it fails on the individual level. As long as everyone else is buying Frito Lay chips, the company will stay in business. I can steal them because I want them but no one else can steal them because then I won’t be able to get them. Again, what do I care if someone else is happy? It doesn’t benefit me.

In the end, the only tenable ethical system is one that assumes a bigger reason than “me” and the only way that can happen is if there is at least a concept of God. Why should I buy Frito Lay chips instead of stealing them? Because God said it is wrong to steal. Since God is good, His laws are good and there is good that flows from following them. For ethics to really work, there must be a transcendent other, an external code.

When the two guys on the radio were talking, they were saying that we all know it is wrong to murder and we don’t need some ethical system to tell us that. A caller worried about there being an attempt to create a universal ethical system. What if that system is wrong? The guests on the radio agreed. But I thought that if there is no universal system of right and wrong (BTW, the ‘system’ most often resisted on the program was Christianity) then we have no right to complain about the treatment of women in Muslim nations, for example. How can we project our ideas of equality of the sexes on that culture? Isn’t that enforcing a system of ethics? In the end what the caller feared and what the professors were dodging was the genuine possibility that they might be wrong and have to change their ways. If there is a universal ethical code (Rom 2:14-16) then it turn out that they are in violation of it.