Ministry of Man

What Is Actually "Good" | Ep.8

• Isaac Anthony Turner • Season 1 • Episode 8

Share episode

We open with a fiery take on impending social media bans and the spectre of digital IDs, then move into a deep dive on what makes something morally good. We test utilitarian logic, expose bias in “true self” claims, map Kohlberg’s moral stages, and make the case for objective morality grounded in God and natural law.

• social media bans weighed against digital ID risks
• the difference between functional good and moral good
• utilitarianism’s limits through trolley problems and edge cases
• how emotions and ideology skew perception and belief
• a stroke emergency dilemma to reveal moral stages
• Kohlberg’s six stages and a seventh “friend of God” frame
• Aquinas on eternal, divine, and natural law
• Hume’s is–ought critique and why law is a poor moral anchor
• hierarchies of value and why God as first stabilises choices
• Jesus as the embodiment and standard of good

Christ is King, Jesus loves you, and He's coming back soon

Support the show

SPEAKER_00:

Welcome to Episode 8 of Ministry of Man. And let me tell you something right now. Let me tell you this. I know that I've said in the past they said we couldn't do it. Now they're saying they're saying you can do it. Because you've re you're in the top 1% now. So they're saying they're saying you can do it, and they're saying don't for don't uh leave me behind in the dust. Don't forget about me. Don't forget about your day ones that were there from the start. So I'm not gonna forget yours. Because we're going we're going and we're not gonna stop going. And I am your host, that's right. I am your host, Isaac Anthony Turner, the host of the Ministry of Man podcast. And I'm glad to be doing this because you know what? We're living in some wild times. We've got a world first social media ban coming up in like a few days from when I'm recording this. So it's social media bands for like 16-year-olds and under, I think. And this is the this is the scoop on it, right? And this is what I think. So a lot of people are saying that because of this social media band, like what they don't really care about kids, they don't really care about the safety of kids. What they want is to get everyone to have a digital ID because it's one step closer to having, like, I suppose a mark of the beast or just having government control, they're gonna be able to track everything you do online, so like you've now got an official online ID, and so everything you do online is gonna be linked to that ID. So that's that's the thing. So obviously, I'm super against that, and so is a lot of people. But here's the other thing they're so clever because for so long people have been like, man, social media is so dangerous for kids to have. It's literally like crack for kids to have, and it's like, you know, mental health issues are on the rise, cyberbullying, all the cyberbullying is done through social media. Like they're not doing that outside, like maybe on some games and stuff, but primarily it's social media. And I saw a video of like a girl, it was posted on the news of like a clip of like some young kids that were protesting it. And one of the kids was this girl, she was maybe like 14, saying, Yeah, this is going to ruin my life because like the I get I find my purpose in making videos, like these little videos, that's where I get my purpose from. And then I showed a clip of it, and it was just like a get ready with me video. It was like, oh my gosh, like I'm trying to be against this, I'm trying to be against the social media ban, and you're showing me clips of people going, You're ruining my life. Now I can't make get ready with me videos. That's my that's my purpose on this earth is to make get ready with me videos. I'm like, oh dude, like it's a it's it sucks. It really sucks. So they've done well. Kudos to whoever masterminded this plan for the digital ID, because oh, that's there's a lot of support for it. There's so much support for the social media band. Um, I suppose my algorithm and like the the circles that I run in are very much against this, but when you like against the digital ID, but there's a lot of support for it, and I gotta tell you, I can see why. Uh so hopefully there is a silver lining in that it actually is good for kids. It probably will be. I mean, I genuinely don't even know if social media media is good for anyone, period. But that's fine. Also, in other news, I found out I I have to make a correction on one of the episodes that I did on sociobiology. I said that on average women have a 3% higher IQ than men. Now it turns out that that's not even they changed the tests whenever a gender goes above another one. And so they've done re more recent testings where they found that men's IQ was higher, but apparently it's gone in ebbs and flows, and it keeps flipping back and forth because whenever one goes above the other, they try to make the test so that the results reflect an even average. So we don't even know. At that point, we're just like, okay, well, then you like it's a ridiculous thing. So we don't know. I I posit that men are just smarter at some things and women are smarter at other things. Men are more intelligent in one area and women are more intelligent in another area, and we're just different, and that's probably why we won't get accurate results of an IQ because there's just like different strengths on average on an aggregate. So yeah. Anyway, I need to jump into this quickly because there's a lot to get that I want to talk about, and I genuinely don't know if I'm going to be able to get through it all, and I want to just dive in so that I don't have to rush and that I can do a good job of explaining things. So, what I wanted to speak about today is what is good. So, as far as what is the definition of good and why would someone say that something is good? Everyone has an idea of what they consider is a good thing. But when you start to probe and ask questions as to why someone thinks that's good, you can really find out if someone has good moral standing or the foundation of how they live is actually good. And when I when even when I say good, that is that that is good or confirm that something is good, what do I mean by that? So let's say, for example, I can say I had a good day. In that respect, I'm not necessarily talking about a morally good day. I'm just saying that nothing malfunctioned today. So someone could say good, like have a good day to say, uh, I hope that nothing goes wrong today, or that uh there's no malfunctioning in the processes of what you whatever you've planned to do today, that it goes smoothly. So that could be like saying that that could be one version of good, but that's not the type of good that I want to talk about today. I want to talk more about a uh good in the sense of morality. What is morally good? What defines something to be good versus maybe evil or wrongdoing, or you're doing something wrong. And when you ask these questions, you can you can get a whole bunch of different answers. You could say, okay, good is something that is maybe productive, good is something that might be educational. And you start to ask, okay, like so why though? Why is productivity good? You know, okay, because it it advances society. Okay, so why is uh an advanced society good? Uh well, because we all you know thrive. Why is thriving good? Like, in as opposed to not thriving, and then you just kind of die out, like ultimately, what is the end of and and why does that actually matter? Because let's say if if you don't believe in God, uh, because obviously there's there's versions of good that apply specifically to eternal life, but if you don't have that as a belief, then what does anything matter besides what you kind of subjectively feel? So I will explain the difference between like objective and subjective morality, but you could say, okay, well, let's just look at a thriving society. Let's say they they they say what's just pleasurable for everyone. Like so everyone um isn't suffering as much. And so uh that's a good thing. And then you can say, so is suffering always wrong? And someone could say, yeah, and you go, okay, well, what about if someone goes for a run or goes to the gym? And it's like they're they're putting themselves to intentional pain and a degree of suffering, but there's like there's a payoff for it at least. And so you go, okay, well, maybe um there's some suffering that's beneficial, uh, you know, and you go, why? Like, oh, because you grow and develop, learn, get stronger, like whatever the thing is. There's all these different things that you can kind of ask and question and go, okay, so but you can keep pushing it back and say, so why is that good? Why is that good? And then you can kind of get to the end, and it just ends up being, well, because I just kind of feel like it is. Like I just think, like whenever I think of uh pain, I think that's a bad thing. And when I think of pleasure, I think that's a good thing. Like it's a positive and a negative. Uh, and just based on what I want or desire or what I like and what gives me a particular feeling when I see certain things, I don't like that. When it comes to, you know, payoff and uh let's say, in the example of going to the gym or going for run is good in terms of getting a bit of your own suffering, oftentimes you're not going to hear someone say, Okay, well, can I put that suffering on someone else, but I get the benefits? And then when you start to unpack that, people go, Well, no, you can't do that. And you ask, okay, so why is that wrong? You can say, uh, well, they didn't have a choice in the matter. And you go, well, what does that matter anyway? Like if I, if my version of good is just that I just want to make sure I prosper, what is it, what sh why should I care if other people are experiencing pain? Uh it's like a like if I don't care about a thriving society, I'm just a person and I want to live a particular way, and you you try to say, oh, that's morally wrong. And I just say, well, for me, my morals say that you should look after yourself. And so I want to kind of unpack, yeah, like objective morality and subjective morality, what would be important, but just more to make people think about certain things and question why they say something is good or not good, um, in the in the moral sense. So, in let's say subjective morality, which is kind of what I was talking about, of being like, if I just think that that it's right or that it's good, then it's right and it is good. It's hard to argue with that. It's hard to say to someone without bringing in God, it's hard for someone to argue that there is objective morality. I don't believe that there can be objective morality without God. And I've not heard a convincing argument otherwise. But some of the things that people might say it's still useful for a functional society that we want to not experience harm and not experience pain. Because everyone can agree that they don't like that. And oftentimes, um, as a society, whenever we see things that are causing pain, we also don't like that either. So one of the um most common subjective moral, I suppose, frameworks is utilitarianism, which I've spoken about in previous episodes, but it's basically talking about the greater good. So let's say uh to maximize the most amount of pleasure and good and to minimize the maximum amount of suffering for people. And so one of the most common philosophical ideas to get people thinking about morality and what is good or not is the trolley problem, which I'll go through briefly again. So the trolley problem was basically just there's five people that are tied to the train tracks, and there's a train that are heading right for them, and there's someone uh that is waiting by to pull a lever, and if he pulls the lever, the train diverts and goes and hits just one person that's tied to a track. And so in the utilitarian ideal ideology, you would say, okay, well, it's better to just pull the lever because it's either going to be five people dying or one person dying, right? So you're like, okay, well, it's better that only one person dies rather than five people dying. And there's there's definitely something to say about that. Like there's an argument to make that, you know, we just don't want to see as many people die. Because you can you can scale that out and you go, okay, well, so how many? If you say, no, I still don't think it's right to involve to get involved, you could say, what about if it's a thousand people versus one? What about if it's a million people versus one? Like if it's if this if whatever's gonna happen, this train, let's say, hits something that explodes a bomb and it kills a million people, or it's heading for something, you know, make up the imaginary scenario, but we're just taking it to its most extreme end. Or it just diverts and it kills one person. And then let's say, oh, and they're like an elderly person. And so if you say that it's wrong to step in to say, okay, well, I wouldn't pull the lever because I don't want to get involved, and I think that that's wrong to get involved in it, and I think let nature take its course, maybe that that's an idea. But if you say that it's wrong to pull the lever for five people and let the five people die, and you think it's wrong to divert the the course and kill the one, then you you can't you have to kind of say that for any amount of people, because otherwise it's just an imaginary number. Because you go, okay, now I wouldn't pull the lever for five people, you know, you know, I'd let the five people die and I wouldn't get involved. And then if it gets to a thousand, if it gets to a hundred thousand or a million, say if it's a million, you go, okay, well, if it was going to be a million, I probably would pull the lever and I'd kill the elderly person. And you go, okay, so then you start to unpack a lot of different things then, because now you start saying, okay, so uh is an older person's life less valuable? Or what is the what is the number between five people and a million that it then becomes wrong to pull the lever? Because if you say, you know, I'd pull it at a million, I wouldn't pull it at five, okay, so what number is it? Is it 50,000? Is it 1,000? And where are you getting that number from? Like, is it what ethical framework are you using to decide, okay, well, this is the amount of people that are valued at me stepping in to kill this one person? If it's, you know, 15 people, okay, well, yeah, at that point, then I probably would pull the lever and kill the one. But it's like, why? And then um you start to maybe go a little bit deeper and say, okay, so what if it's, you know, five people and you would pull the lever and you go, I still think it's good, even five people versus one. I'd pull the lever and you go, okay, well, what if it was a family member? And you go, Oh, well, maybe I wouldn't pull it then because I have a connection with that person. And so it's like, do your morals then change or do your ethics change? Because ultimately the ultimate good and the ultimate suffering doesn't change based on whether you know the person. Maybe it changes for you because you might feel a particular way. But who's to say that someone that uh wouldn't feel the same way about the one person that was on the track that you didn't if it wasn't your family member? So there's a there's a it's a very fun, I suppose, or very interesting game to play as a as a thought experiment to kind of figure out where you stand and what your ethical framework is and what your where your morals actually lie. Uh, another version of the trolley problem that's kind of circulating a little bit more now is is called like the fat man version. So let's say if you were to uh pull the lever and save the five people and it kills the one. What if there was no lever? You could you're in the same situation, but there was a man that uh a very overweight man, and you had to push him onto the bridge. And if you pushed him onto the bridge, he would die, but the five people would be saved. That's a very interesting one because intrinsically a lot of people kind of go, Oh, well, I don't know if I could like do it with my own hands, but it's the same thing. It's literally the same thing. You're just it's just one person's life versus five people's lives. And so that gets you thinking, okay, so would I would I go to that degree to make sure that the five people would would stay alive? So it's another way to kind of think about it. One thing that I've really been liking is like the how far would that go? Like if I met someone that said I would pull the lever, how far are they going to go? Let's say, for example, there's uh a completely healthy person that that is just walking down the street and a doctor notices, or say he goes into the doctor just for a checkup. The doctor notices he's completely fine, but he is the exact blood blood type and health requirements for five other sick people in the hospital. Is it right that as a as a doctor or as a person you should kill this healthy person that's just you know going about their own day and to use their organs to save the five other people that need an organ each? Which is sounds crazy. It's like, okay, well, you can't just take a healthy person off the street and then just give all their organs, but it but it will save five lives. So the end result is still one person dying, five people living. And if you were to implement a utilitarian, like a fully utilitarian ethical framework into a society, that wouldn't actually be wrong. Like I don't know how you could say that that would be wrong. It's only going to be one person dying and five persons get to live and they get to, you know, do whatever they want. So five lives is more valuable than one life. So there's a whole sea of things that can happen with the greater good kind of analogy. One of the, one of the more, I suppose, they're all kind of dark, but one of the darker ones that I've heard is that let's say that there's a full-on utopian society. So this is a place where everyone is living whatever you consider to be the best life, the most utopian life you can think of. And you walk into this town, you're like, this is amazing. Whatever good is to you, it's all good, except there's one condition. There is a child that is being tortured that's somehow sustaining this made-up world. Do you think that that is a good place to live or that that a good thing is happening? Because let's say you've got millions of people living in this utopian society, but there's a child being tortured as a result. So when you look at it from a utilitarian, you know, the greater good, it just sort of seems like okay, how good does it need to be to justify like any amount of suffering? Because there's also this idea of suffering and goodness, or suffering and pleasure isn't equal. Let's say whatever the maximum amount of pleasure is that a That a human can feel. Let's say you can offer that person that maximum amount of pleasure for 10 minutes. But in order to get that pleasure, you have to experience the maximum amount of pain for 10 minutes. Most people wouldn't take that deal to experience whatever the maximum amount of pain is, it's not a one-to-one equal scale to pleasure. A lot of people wouldn't wouldn't really care. They're like, I'm I'm happy to just go. Like, I don't want to, yeah, I'm sure that that would be an amazing feeling, but the the maximum excruciating pain that you would have to have to get there, the trade-off doesn't feel the same. And so when it comes to ideologies of pain and suffering versus pleasure, it isn't, it's such a hard thing to scale because you can't really measure one for one. It seems really bad that you would torture a child in order to have a million people live in a utopian society. You would go, okay, well, I don't think that that's a good deal. I know for me, like that does not, like that seems so bad. And the issue is with subjective morality: who is it that says that that is actually bad besides you just feeling that it is bad or that you just have this idea of whatever that is, I don't know why, that just seems wrong. We shouldn't do it. And so there needs to be a line somewhere. Because, first of all, what someone says is good in a subjective, uh, subjectively moral world can change. Is it good because everyone agrees that it's good? Or what if everyone changes their mind? Because that happens a lot. I've I know that I've thought things are good and then later come to think, oh, actually, no, I don't think that's good. I think that's actually evil. And that's a common thing with humans. Like, look at society and the way that we used to treat people. I mean, France still used the guillotine up until the 1970s, a public guillotine, until they go, okay, well, this is probably not good. And like people could go and watch that. You could go and watch, uh, and I don't know if that's still a thing, but public executions were very common throughout all of human history. So I would think that that's not a good thing to do, is like we're going to publicly, you know, decapitate someone. But people people celebrated it. People were like, yeah, that's a good thing. Let's go and, you know, let's take the whole family. We've got the kids to come and watch the like we'll watch the murder or the execution, whatever you want to call it. So people can change. I'm sure that there was a lot of people in, I don't know the years that it took place, but Chatel slavery in the US, where literally like people were property. They were uh property to do. Like, I've heard some of the most horrific stories from how people treated slaves in the US that would like, I wouldn't even speak on this podcast because just reading about it was too graphic. And I was like, no, I would I trying to keep this relatively PG. And it's it's far from that. And so people were saying that that at the time they didn't see a moral issue with it until other people said, no, this is wrong. This is morally wrong. We can't do this. All people are equal. This is ridiculous. And so, how can you really trust that people, whatever they say is good now, aren't going to say in 10 years' time, no, that's actually not good. I mean, this is the whole like how people get canceled. Some people get get cancelled for things that was like 10 years ago, but back then it was fine. Like 10 years ago, they were like people that used to do blackface or whatever, like the Canadian president, I don't know if he's the president now, uh, what's his name? Trudeau, Justin Trudeau. He like did blackface years ago, and no one cared, no one batted an eye for some reason. Because I feel like blackface has always kind of been, ever since I've been around, it's always been wrong, at least seen to be morally wrong. But he did it, and then it wasn't until like many, many years later that people are going, oh, this is wrong. It was like retroactively saying, Hey, you did the wrong thing in the past. But obviously at the time, no one really seemed to care. And so subjective morality changes, and you don't really even know what direction it's going to go. And so, whatever, however you behave now, you're like, okay, I'm operating in line with the widely perceived consensus of what is morally good, and I'm doing my best to keep in line with what's everyone's considers to be morally good. But then in you know, next year, that can change. And people go, Oh, no, actually, the way you were behaving then was actually wrong. We've decided now that that was wrong, and you cancelled, and now you're we're going to um make sure you don't have any friends, and we're gonna make sure that everyone in the world hates you and then your family hates you, and that your children and your offspring will always hate you forever. So it's a dangerous game to play. Uh, we're gonna make sure that society, when they look at you, they vomit in their mouth because you said a word that used to be okay, but now it isn't. But we heard you saying it on a on a clip from when you were 14 years old, and now you're a 45-year-old man, but we still have that video, and you're cancelled. Sorry, you're cancelled, you're disgusting. Go away. So like oh, it's a dangerous, uh, it's a dangerous worldview. I mean, these sorts of thought experiments are quite fun though. I do have fun with them, but but you there's just no real way for anyone to to to say where a line is. Someone could say, based on how they feel, that okay, it is the morally good thing, it is the morally right thing. I feel that it's right to kill the Christians, and that's a good thing to do. And a lot of people could agree. A lot of people could go, yep, that's good. We think that that is good, they're bad, they have bad ideology. If someone doesn't agree with the Christian ideology, then they might say that Christians are bad and we should kill the Christians. So, like, who's to say? Like, if everyone feels like that's true and everyone says that that's good, and you know, obviously the Christians will be fighting back, but like, there's no line. There's no there's no line, there's no line, even to say that uh I'll try and explain this in a way, but let's say a same-sex family relationship, romantic relationship, there's no way to say that that's wrong under a subjective moral framework, besides that you just feel that it is, but you can't just say, like, because there's nothing, say if there's nothing damaging, there's no, if it's a same-sex relationship, no child's uh child is at risk, no one's getting harmed, consenting adults, say it's an adult relationship, you can't justify and say it's wrong. You can justify and say it's wrong as a Christian, having objective morality from God and say that it's wrong, and then and also say that there's a reason that you feel that it's wrong, but you don't even have a way to really explain that it's wrong outside of the fact that they just feel like it is. And if if the people involved don't feel like it is, you can't tell them that it that it's wrong under their own subjective moral framework. So um it's very dangerous. I don't like uh I wouldn't trust someone that fully believes in a subjective morality because I just don't know where they're gonna stand on things, and they could just change their mind on what is good and what is not good. There's another very interesting thing that I came across this week. Antonio DiMasio has this, uh came up with this thing called the somatic marker hypothesis. And basically what it is is it it tells us that our emotions signal to the brain to prioritize particular decisions based on our past experiences. So when you're faced with certain information, the somatic marker hypothesis would say your emotions will guide what you actually see and how you interpret that information. If you've had a negative experience in in a particular area, you're presented with information, that negative experience made you feel a particular way. And so the way you interpret that information is now tainted because you're going to interpret it differently. And because everyone has had different experiences that shape their worldview and their the lens that they look at through the world is always going to be different. Um, you interpret information differently based on the experiences that you've had. So here's an example a friend of mine, um, we were both at this bar when we were maybe in our early 20s, and a guy was was looking over in our direction. My friend thought that this guy wanted to fight us or wanted to fight him. I thought that he was a fan and that he recognized either me or us. So, a bit of context to that. We were from a small town in which my friend had been in a lot of fights. And so it wouldn't have been uncommon for someone, for him to have fought, let's say, one of this guy's friends, or got into a tussle with someone that he knows at least, or has heard about his reputation, maybe. He had a bit of a reputation in in the town we were from of being a bit of a fighter. I, on the other hand, had a couple of random little Facebook videos that had gone not viral, but had spread around a lot of different circles. When this is before a time when there was algorithms, and whenever you liked a video on Facebook, it just went into like all of your friends' feeds and said, This person liked this video. And so it had maybe a couple thousand views, but it was very localized. It wasn't going to like other parts of anywhere in Australia. It was like literally just in our town or just the people that we know. And so I'd already had people come up to me and say, Oh, I've seen some of the videos. So we received the same information though. The same information we both received came to completely different conclusions of what was taking place in that moment. That's just that's an example of just uh a different lens of viewing the world, not necessarily based on the somatic marker hypothesis, which is more emotional. Let's say that that could stem from uh, you know, a positive experience or a negative experience, whatever, whatever it could be. Regardless of it, it's it's uh a prioritization of emotions that impact what you choose or what you see. Here's a very there was a very interesting study that took place on emotions versus beliefs and how emotions maybe um impact beliefs, or how beliefs maybe impact emotion. So they did this test, right? They had two control groups, and this was the setup. So there was a man who advocates against homosexuality, and he goes around the world preaching against it, saying that it's wrong. But he's actually secretly has homosexual tendencies. So the way that he feels on the inside is that he's actually drawn to it, even though his ideology is speaking against it. Now, when they did the test, they they tested uh and asked people in right wing and left-wing groups. All of the right wing wingers or majority believed that the true self was the behavioral self and the beliefs that they that they said that they were living their life in accordance with as far as their behavior and what they were professing to believe. All of the left-leaning people said the opposite. They said, no, it's how you feel on the inside. That's really who you truly are. You can say all this, but deep down, like that's who you really are, right? Now they they flipped it. They flipped it, and then they did the same exact thing, but they said, okay, so now that they're there's a homosexual man and he's advocating for um acceptance for all, love for all, love is love, and you know, homosexuality is good and fine, and he he was saying he was a homosexual man, but deep down inside he actually had disgust for homosexuality. He actually, um, the way that he felt was actually very negatively towards him, even though he was espousing these beliefs. So they flipped it. Wouldn't you believe it? The the groups flipped as well. So all of the people that were uh on the right were saying, no, no, no, the person, how the inner feeling is really the the person. And the the left was saying, no, no, no, it's their beliefs that they're espouting and their behavior reflects the true self. And so your ideology will shape what you believe as well. And so, how can you really find truth? How do you really know? People were given the same situations and then just flipped them around, and they completely it flipped the results. It flipped the results based on what they wanted to believe is true, or what they wanted, or what supported their existing beliefs or their ideology, whatever they want to be true. People can can figure out what is good if they just want it to be good. No, I think it's really good that I lied to this person because I would have hurt them otherwise. Whereas someone else can go, no, lying's always wrong. Someone could say, No, it's good that you cheated on this person because they were treating you awfully. You know, they don't deserve you to treat them well. It's good that you cheated on them. Like there's things that you can say to like kind of justify if you want it to be true, and then you can just believe that it's true. In a subjectively moral world, even the truth is distorted. And so there's no, there's no anchor, there's nothing that grounds you to any particular belief when it comes to morals or ethics. Uh, there's a quote that says, the eyes will only see what the mind is willing to accept. Which is which is true. But I just don't think it's a it's a good way to live. I'm gonna I'm gonna play a game. So I'm gonna ask a question. I'm gonna ask a series of questions, and you as the listener, you can just play along and answer as we go. So let's say in the in this example, you have a spouse and they've just had a stroke and they need emergency treatment. An ambulance is about two hours away, maybe longer, and you're about say 30 minutes from the hospital. If left unattended when having a stroke, you can lose up to 1.9 million brain cells every minute. Every minute left untreated, you can be losing 1.9 million brain cells. So you decide, okay, well, I'm just going to, I'm not going to wait for the ambulance, I'm going to drive. So you put your spouse in the car and you drive. First question Do you speed? Do you break the law and do you speed? Second, as as you go, let's say you do speed. Let's say there's a red light coming up. Now you can see that there's no other cars on the road. And in this scenario, you know that if you run this red light, no one is going to be hurt, there's not going to be any car accidents. You can see very far in each direction, you're confident. But do you run the red light nonetheless? Do you break the law in that moment and run the red light? Let's say that you do. Now, a police officer sees you and they saw you run the red light and they can see you speeding. So they put their lights on and they start tailing you. Now, do you stop for the police or do you keep continuing to get to the hospital? Let's say you do continue and you don't stop for the police, you get to the hospital, you grab your spouse out of the car, and you're trying to carry them in to the hospital. The police officer stands in your way and says, tell it tells you to stop. Do you push past the police officer or do you stop and wait and ask their answer their questions? Okay. So in this scenario, let's say you've done all of that. You've now been charged with speeding, running a red light, failure to stop for a police officer, and assault on the police officer as you've pushed past him. Now the question is did you do the right thing? So let me break down all of what's happened. Some of you might have stopped at different parts. When I've asked this question before, I have had people say that they wouldn't even speed, and so they did they wouldn't do any of the pre previous things. I've had people say they might have been speeding, they might have been willing to speed, they might have run the red light, but they probably would have stopped for the police officer. Some would have stopped and not pushed past the police officer, some would have done it all. Some would have gone, I don't care. My spouse is losing millions of brain cells for every minute left untreated. I'm going to continue. So based on your ethical and moral framework will decide on whether or not you did the right thing. You can say, someone could say, no, it's wrong because you broke the law, and that's just objectively wrong to do. You should never break the law under any circumstances. Other people can say, well, there's more important things. There's a hierarchy of values, and preserving someone's brain function is better than me breaking the law. And so I want to talk about there's a man named Lawrence Kohlberg who has six stages of moral development that he observed when speaking to with many people and studying this. So in the six stages of moral development, or go through each six, in the first stage, so the most basic level of uh of moral development is just obedience and punishment. So this is how can I avoid punishment? Whatever my decision is, I'm going to avoid punishment. So let's say that there's a bunch of people standing uh by as two ninth graders start beating up a seventh grader. They start uh beating him up. Um, there's one kid that's watching standing by, or one person standing by, and he thinks to himself, if I step in, I might get in trouble. And so I'm not going to act. I don't want to be disciplined because um that's where their moral framework stands is discipline is bad, and so I'm not gonna do anything that affects me in a negative way. The second level of moral development is self-interest. What's in it for me? So someone might have been watching by and goes, Well, I'm gonna step in because if I help this kid, they might help me later on down the track. And so it might be in my best interest to help this person. The third stage is interpersonal accord and conformity. So, what would others think of me if I was to step in or if I was to to behave in this way? So this is more of a You know, fitting in with the crowd. Well, no one else is stepping in. So I'm not going to step in. I mean, I just want to make sure that I'm doing what everyone else is doing. That seems to be the right thing to do. Doing whatever everyone else is doing. The fourth stage is authority and maintaining social order. So this is how can I maintain the law and order in this place? So let's say that uh the one of the people is a teacher stepping in and um and they say that fighting is forbidden. So this needs to stop. So they do step in to break it up because it's against the rules, it's against the law. So these are the things that you might have seen, maybe the Pharisees do. The Pharisees were very much in line with what the word says. This is how people would uh enact kill orders and they go, Well, I've got to follow the rules. The Milgram experiment experiment that I spoke about last time is just obeying, obeying authority, essentially. Um, the fifth stage of moral development is so social contract. Does a rule truly serve all members of the community? So someone watching by might think, okay, I know that there is a rule here, but does it serve everyone? Because I know that kid that's getting beat up and he's been horrible to everyone in his community. And so maybe he's just getting what's come to him. So maybe I'm not gonna step in. Maybe I my moral framework is I'm going to, even though that there's like laws, I'm not even thinking about myself. There's no self-interest, it's not about getting in trouble, it's not about can he help me later? It's just about, well, I don't think this is a particularly a good rule. So I'm just gonna let this happen because they might deserve it. Uh does this rule serve everyone? Is kind of the idea. The sixth and final principle of Kohlberg's six stages of moral development is universal ethical principles. So, what are the abstract ethical principles that serve my understanding of justice? So the rules that are there, uh, the rules, the rules in place are there for justice, which means that unjust rules means no justice happens. So this is a this comes from a place of compassion. So it's it's to say that you can disobey unjust rules if the rule isn't serving justice. So this is where you start to look at the spirit of the of the law almost. So there's the rather than the letter of the law is the spirit of the law, and and having like more compassion for uh in an individual sense, having more compassion for the individual and seeing, okay, what is the exact circumstance happening here? Tim Jennings actually has uh a seventh level of being a friend of God, which is actually really good. Being a friend of God is uh another almost further distinct moral difference. So let's say level one in the moral development is brush your teeth or you'll be punished. So let's say as a kid, brush your teeth, you'll be punished. So the kid brushes their teeth because they don't want to get in trouble. They want to be disciplined. Uh, number two could be brush your teeth and we'll read you a story after. So you're making a deal and there's some, there's some benefit there. There's like kind of a tit for tat almost. Uh, number three, they could say, well, everyone else is brushing their teeth and they'll make fun of you if you don't brush your teeth. If you're the only one that's not brushing their teeth, then you might be made fun of. So, you know, well, I don't want to not fit in with everyone. Number four could be, well, these this is the rules of the house. So it could just be like, you know, do this because we told you so. Number five could be, okay, well, you love your parents and you don't want to cause them any stress. So um, I'm just gonna brush my teeth for that because I don't want to, you know, rock the boat. And uh, and I do and I love my, you know, I care about them. Number six could be okay, if I don't brush my teeth, then I might get cavities. Like it's actually like bad if I don't brush my teeth. And then the seventh that Tim Jennings um explains is understanding that, let's say, your body is a gift from God and that not harming yourself is one of the duties that you have. And to complete your duties here more effectively, you would you would just brush your teeth. So the first two levels is like is very self-focused. It's about uh it's very common in children, but it's more about discipline and reward. If uh it's right if you get a reward, it's wrong if you get punished for it. Very simple. Um, level three and four is more so that so the first one was called the first level one and two they call pre-conventional level. Level three and four they call conventional level, which is focused more on society. So common amongst maybe adolescents and underdeveloped adults, I'd say. And it's just what everyone else thinks. It's just like it's in some way conforming to society or conforming to authority, but it's it's regarding what other people have deemed to be right, not necessarily you, or not necessarily what is actually right. And then number five and six is considered post-conventional level, and that's focused more on compassion. Not everyone will reach this level, but it it basically looks past everything else and tries to look at the individual aspects of the situation. It's like everything is literally case by case. So in these sorts of things, there's there's a commitment. In the last levels, there is a commitment to justice that carries with it an obligation to disobey unjust rules. Martin Luther King Jr. said one has a moral obligation to disobey unjust laws. So the you can really learn a lot about someone by where they fall into that level and how developed their sense of morality is. Because some people don't want to go through the effort of thinking. They want other people to do the thinking for them. And so they might disobey the law, not realizing, like, geez, have compassion. Like, dude, I am going to speed, run red lights, multiple red lights, not stop for the police, and literally barge as hard as I can through that person that's standing in the way of if I had a wife that was losing brain cells, like there is not a single thing on earth that would stop me from saving them. Like, you're not going to, like, the law is there to protect people. And so, why would I stop when I'm literally protecting someone? Like, it doesn't make any sense to obey those laws. In my in my mind, there are more important things. Preserving life and preserving health is more important than obeying a law. So, if that law is going to get in the way of preserving that life or from getting this person saved. So, I'm going to move on to objective morality. So, this is uh what Christians believe, or any kind of God-believing person, you don't even have to actually be Christian, but I'm going to specifically explain Christian objective morality because I believe that there are principles within this world that are objectively right and wrong, that are good and not good. So I believe that there's that what God says is good is because he created everything and he knows how how we work. He knows how humans operate, he knows how we are, and he hasn't made arbitrary rules. So, what I believe is that there is a natural law, that the that what God has implemented into this world is good. For example, when you don't brush your teeth and you get cavities. God isn't telling us not to do, he doesn't say not to do particular things so that he can have rule over us. It's for our own safety. The parents saying, hey, you need to brush your teeth, it's because they love the child and they know what's good for the child and that if they don't brush them, they're going to get cavities. The cavity isn't a punishment for not brushing your teeth. The cavity is part of the principles built into this world. And so that's what I believe objective morality is that, okay, what is the order that God has implemented into this world? And how do we participate in that order? So uh Thomas Aquinas spoke of something called the natural law. Well, he he's he spoke about objective morality in this particular way, which I'll try to explain. It's based on um the principle of finality, which is the good, the good thing is fulfilling the final cause of a thing. So let's say if a tree produces fruit, it's a good tree. If it doesn't, it's a bad tree. Um, in that sense, it isn't morally bad, it's just a bad tree. It's just not functioning in the way that it's supposed to function. Where morality comes into it is that humans actually have a choice to operate within that final, that finality, that principle of finality of whatever the cause or the purpose of that thing is. So uh Aquinas explains that there's three different types of laws. So there's eternal law. This is God's plan. So God has a plan, an eternal plan, which is his will to bring all things towards himself. And uh a plan for all things to be holy, to be as he is, be holy as I am holy, he says. So that's his eternal plan. Sorry, that's the eternal law. The divine law is what we get from the Bible. Divine law is what is outlined in the Old Testament and New Testament, and it's a prescribed operation for us to to behave in. So Old Testament law is kind of like an external rule set. New testament law is more of an internal rule set where it says the law has been written on your hearts, and so it's more um inward focused, but it's still centered around the law. And it's and it's, I suppose the difference is in the New Testament, it's specifically centered around love because it says the whole law is fulfilled in love, as if to say you wouldn't steal from someone that you loved, you wouldn't kill someone that you loved, you wouldn't harm people that you love, right? And of course it says to love God and to love uh your neighbor as yourself, which is to love everyone, to love people. So you can fulfill the divine law simply by just loving correctly, knowing and understanding what love means by the definition that it gives in agape love. Now, natural law is the imprint of the eternal law on the hearts of man. So this is God's ultimate plan, his eternal plan imprinted on our hearts. So this is what some people describe as your conscience. So it's funny because we have just as much of an obligation to obey our conscience as we do to obey the divine law, which is the Bible. Because the Bible even says, if you feel that it's sin to you, then it is sin to you. If you go against your conscience, that actually is sin to you. So you we have uh uh the same amount of duty to obey natural law and divine law, to obey the conscience and the Bible. So Aquinas says the natural law is the rational creature's participation in the eternal law. So when we participate in God's eternal law, that is considered good. And when we don't participate in it, when we go against natural law, we're no longer participating in it. And so that's what is deemed as being wrong or bad. So not fulfilling the purpose that it was created for. So in the same way that let's say if a a worker bee that is designed to pollinate decides, I'm not going to do that anymore. It's it's a bad bee, not morally bad, but it's bad in function because it's not fulfilling its created purpose. But you would just know that, okay, there's something that's gone wrong with the bee because it's all of its wiring, all of the cells in its body, give it a directive. It knows that I need to survive and thrive and all this stuff. So and reproduce. If it's not doing that, then there's a malfunction happening. And you would say, okay, well, because it's malfunctioning, there's something wrong with it. The difference with humans is when we operate outside of it, it's by choice. That's when it becomes wrong. That's when it becomes evil. So, in in the way that the Bible also describes people saying, it's better that you don't know the truth than know the truth and not obey it, is basically saying there's people that might operate outside of the natural law, but if they don't know it, then there's just a malfunction. They just don't know. Jesus says, forgive them, Father, for they know not what they do. It's when you do know that and you and you go against it, that is purely evil, that is true evil. And and the definition of wrong, in my opinion. So there's some concepts. So I'll break down a few um concepts that Aquinas covers. So Thomas Aquinas, by the way, is kind of known as being one of the greatest philosophers for Christian or God's existence. So some of his proofs for God, he's famous for his five proofs for for God, and uh, but also famously didn't finish his greatest works because he had an encounter with God and thought all of this ideas and logic and philosophy is nothing compared to an experience with God, which is so cool. But that's another thing. So the main precept in natural law and in Thomas Aquinas' uh objective morality is the main precept is pursue good, avoid evil, which is to say fulfill purpose and don't pervert it. He has pri four primary precepts. So primary as far as these are the main precepts that we should be operating as, operating in line with preserve our being and existence, which is like survival, to reproduce, uh, an ordered society and worship of God. So acknowledging God's existence. They are the four primary precepts that are in line with pursuing good and avoiding evil. And then secondary precepts are like accompanying how that sort of plays out. So to preserve our being or existence or to survive means in a secondary precept would say not to kill innocent people, or to eat healthy and to look after yourself so that you are able to survive. In terms of um reproducing, a secondary precept might be uh no abortion, or to teach, uh, to teach and protect children and to educate them so that they can thrive, so that your reproducing is successful. Uh, an ordered society is number three. The secondary precepts would be don't steal, respect each other, uh, don't take advantage of the vulnerable, even to help the weak and to help those in need. The fourth, in terms of worshiping God, uh, the secondary precepts would be to pray or to go to church or to read the scriptures. These are the things. So all of these things kind of push back. It's kind of like a pyramid. Um, so that the main precept is to pursue God and avoid evil, and then it kind of spreads out into different precepts as to how we how we operate. So now I will give you this. I will say this that uh the the uh opposition to this is David Hume is uh a philosopher that uh famously said you can't get an ought from an is. So obviously, with this objective moral worldview, is that we're saying if something is a certain way, then it ought to do a certain thing. Talking about particular purpose. What David Hume argues is that you actually can't do that. So this is the opposing view to those that believe in objective morality through God, or no, it's the opposing view to natural law. So Hume would say, yeah, you can't get an ought from an is. So he might say humans die from being electrocuted, uh, Tim is a human. So both of those things are is statements. Humans die from being electrocuted, Tim is a human, these are is things. Then to say you ought not to electrocute Tim, that's an ought claim, but now you've also put in there, you've snuck in there a moral claim, which is to say electrocuting humans is wrong. So to say you ought not electrocute Tim is to say electrocuting Tim is wrong, but you haven't proven that. So it's the it's it's descriptive versus prescriptive. So this is what Hume argues is that you can't look at a thing and say that that is a thing, and then say, because like now that that thing that is ought to do this, because you're basically saying that if it doesn't do that, then it's morally wrong. So you have to kind of prove the moral framework first before you can say that it ought to do something. And because if you don't believe in God, everything's subjective and there's no real way to do that. So he says you can't get an ought from an is. So it's a very interesting thing, but you can you can kind of decide for yourself like what kind of world do you want to live in? Because I think it's such a dangerous world to live in a subjective morality. There's something could be morally wrong, and then might not even be legally wrong. Like an interesting one in terms of right and wrong is that like when you just focus on the law being good or bad, is that like you could pretty much everyone can agree that adultery or infidelity is wrong, but it isn't legally wrong. And so uh, and you can also say that in in flipping it that slavery was was wrong, but it wasn't legally wrong. And so having your values from the law is just the worst place to put your ethics and your your values, I suppose. And but it is very important to know where your values lie, and I'll wrap it up, but Jordan Peterson says he speaks a lot about Jordan Peterson's uh an American psychologist, he speaks a lot about having a hierarchy of values. So everyone has one, everyone has a hierarchy of values because that's kind of how you decide to do anything. If I decide to go to work, it's because my values is it's more valuable for me to have money than to not have money. And so uh you might say, Oh, yeah, I'm not going, I'm gonna go left and not right because of whatever I think is the most beneficial thing according to the values that I hold. If if family is your number one value, then maybe you wouldn't pull the lever if if a family member was on the track. And and maybe, you know, the five people would die. But maybe if you didn't, if it had nothing to do with your family, maybe you would pull the lever. So whatever decisions you make are kind of in line with the values that you have, which is very important as to why God asks to be number one in your life when God says to worship him and have no other gods before him. It's Because he's the only thing that doesn't change. Everything else changes. If you have a hierarchy of values that flip-flops around everywhere, you're not stable in terms of your aim and your direction. When it's God, you always know the same direction. It doesn't change. So uh Jordan Peterson also says we are not the submissive receivers of simply self-evident truths, which is very true. We don't just automatically know what is true and what is good and what is not. We don't, we have so much that impairs our vision to make those decisions. And so when you trust in the Lord, you trust in God, knowing that He knows everything, He created us and He created everything. So He He should have the answers to everything. Putting your trust in God is the safest thing to do and the wisest thing to do. In fact, the Bible not only says, it says the beginning of knowledge is the fear of God. And it also says the beginning of wisdom is the fear of God. It's an yeah, I don't know. It is um an important thing. And to cap it off and to kind of wrap it up, in the Bible, someone comes up to Jesus and he says, Good teacher, what must I do to get into heaven? And the first thing Jesus says is, Why do you call me good? Only God in heaven is good. What he's saying there is to say, he's not denying it, he's saying, Be careful what you say. Because if you're calling me good, you're acknowledging that I am God, for one. So he's saying, Do you know what you're saying when you say that? But also to say that there is only one good. The only thing good is God. Nothing else is good. So God is in and of himself, the nature of God is good. God is his nature. People try and make these claims to say, is God obedient to the rules that he created, or did he just create rules? And like if he did just create these rules, then they're arbitrary. He could have created any rules. If he, if, if they're not arbitrary, then um he's submitted unto those rules himself. It's the same thing. It's like God is good, and whatever the principles of this world that define good that God uh has built, it's the same thing. It's all God. It's it's not, it's you can't separate goodness from God. This is why God will say things like, I am that I am, or yeah, like he is almost the very fabric of what is good and what is considered good. He is the principles. When when Jesus came down to earth, he is the the word fulfilled, like in the flesh. The Bible says, Jesus, uh it says, in the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was God, and then the word became flesh and dwelt amongst us. So Jesus is the embodiment of good. He is that's why we look to Jesus as being the good shepherd or the one to follow, to say, to when he says to follow me, he's saying, live as I am living, because this is the good way to live. Also, it's the it's the way you were designed to live, it's the natural living state that a human should be. So uh rather than try and figure out what you like or whatever, die to that, die to the flesh, die to whatever things your pleasure you you think is good or you think is right, because that can change and that can flip-flop everywhere. But I don't, I am everlasting. So that's why when you follow Jesus, it's such a safe way to live. Anyway, so uh it's such a big topic. I yeah, I might even do another episode on it because there's so much more to say. But for now, I'll leave it at that. Thanks for listening. And just so you know, it's just like a little reminder: none of this matters. It's all trash. Everything's trash, everything's garbage. And the only thing that really matters is this Christ is King, Jesus loves you, and he's coming back soon. So thanks for listening. Thanks for sticking around. And if you're here, and if you're stuck around this long, here's a little secret for you. I love you, you're awesome, and I'm and can't wait to uh be best friends and hang out every day. And um, you're the best as well. And thank you for again for listening and goodbye.