Part Four

Ought implies Can?

The only way our world is going to have peace is if we can have a moral system where we ought to be good in a way that is consistent with our own and others happiness. If this is what the world wants and this is what we ought to do, then it must be rational that we can do it. This moral principle is that “ought” implies we “can” achieve it. If we Cant achieve what we ought to do then we are believing in something that is rationally unstable and irrational. I take the notion that happiness for morality to work must be “achieving enough of our own goals to avoid frustration.” But for many happiness is based on pleasure and all pleasure is good.

Second morality requires us not to rank our own advantages above that of others, just because they are ours; this is because morality requires us to treat all human beings as having the same worth. Humans have a double motivation towards our happiness and towards what is good in itself regardless of its connection with our happiness.

So morality requires us to believe that it is possible for people affected by our actions, including ourselves to be happy in a way that is consistent with each other’s happiness. We ought to try to increase each other’s happiness, and so we must be able to believe this is possible. The general union of happiness would be called the highest good.

If we were all morally good we would be trying to make each other happy, and we would have to believe we could or there would be no rational reason to even try.
The problem is that all people don’t come across as morally good and for many what come across first as the strongest desire is self-advantage, not the happiness of others. What makes people miserable is the way we treat each other, because we don’t share each other’s morally permissible ends. Also we need this moral system to hold in the present and in the future. The question arises, if we are not morally good how are we to achieve this state of goodness. The problem gets worse when we affirm that many people don’t even think there is moral virtues or a basic principle of goodness other than relative preferences. The problem doesn’t just ask for how we define and enforce this standard of the highest good, but also can the human nature be able to become good internally.

One atheist philosopher says that each person has the ability to determine his or her own meaning to life fully, we just need to be educated on moral principles.

But John Hare in his chapter in the book “Is Goodness Without God Good Enough” says, “But it is doubtful whether we know how to make people good through moral education, and the optimism of the late nineteenth century did not survive the twentieth, in particular the Second World War, in which the people who carried out the massacres and Holocaust were the most educated people in the world’s history to that point.”

Is it possible that the human heart can change and become fashioned to seeking the happiness of others, once the problem of defining what the highest good would be is found.

If on an atheistic worldview this is not possible, that is,

1 (Ought) We “ought” to be good in a way that is consistent with our own and others happiness. And that we “ought” to become good internally.
2. (Can) It is possible for us to be good in a way that is consistent with our own and others happiness. Also that we can become good internally.

Then it can’t be achieved,

If we can not come up with a definition of what is the highest good and live it out and fashion other’s to be good internally, then it is not rational to hold that world peace or happiness can be achieved. Also it is wrong to hold that we “ought” to try and seek the happiness of our own and of the happiness of others as it can not be achieved. This would imply that we are not obligated to do it, because we can’t do it, and only what we can do is what we ought to do. I see no way that an atheist can achieve this quest in seeking for universal peace, it just becomes an abstract illusion. Therefore in an atheistic worldview we do not have to seek the happiness of all people for the highest good. Therefore there is no standard of goodness and the act of self-sacrifice becomes a meaningless action. If all that exists is the present life and there is no objective good why would anyone give up his or her life or pleasures for another? You would be dying for no gain at all and even if you did do it, it would not be because it was the right thing to do. Also there is no basis for moral accountability on atheism. The important thing about moral accountability is that it makes our moral choices significant. In the absence of moral accountability, our choices become trivialized because they make no ultimate contribution to either the betterment of the universe or to the moral good in general because everyone ends up the same dead in the grave. Without God death is the great leveler, all acts end in nothing, worthless.

It is only if God exists that we can have objective value that all humans have equal worth. That is because we are created in the image of the greatest necessary being God.

God is the greatest metaphysical value, which is based on his objective eternal Good nature, which is the norm for all people to live by. His goodness flows out to bring the happiness to our selves and for others. Because we are all created in his image we all have the same value and should all be respected. Our obligation (or our ought-ness) to seek the happiness of all other’s stems from God’s commands, which are based on his good nature and the ontological value of each person. We are accountable to him to do what we ought to do and if we place our faith in him, he will change our sinful hearts by his spirit so that we can internalize the good. Therefore what we ‘ought’ to do is what we “can’ do. Human experience has shown that this works and people lives can be chnaged.

As for our actions having no significance, God makes sense to our self-sacrifices, as no act of self-sacrifice will go ultimately uncompensated. For God is not unjust as to overlook your work and love which you have showed (Heb 6;10). When God brings all finite days to an end he will bring ultimate justice, and not some meaningless empty finite relative fleeting justice. He will reward us for our action’s and judge our wicked deeds and deliver divine justice to the universe.