A Further Word on Yesterday's Blog

All democracy ultimately means is that fifty percent plus one can make everyone else do whatever they want them to do.

-Abraham Lincoln


I spoke yesterday about God being willing to let us play God: He will grant us what we want in the end, and how it is thereby important to want the right thing. But there is another point which may be inferred from that blog.

At one time I participated in many online discussion boards about the nature of many things, not the least of which involved several long threads about morality. Where they all almost invariably bogged down was on the question of who knew what right and wrong really meant. In short, who was God on the question.

I took the position, of course, that God was God. It was He who made Reason reasonable and His will that mattered. Many others who took interest in the issue argued, as we could not know who God was, or whether there was a God at all, that consensus should guide us as to how we should act.

The problems with this approach are myriad. The most obvious were that, where the popular will determined right and wrong, then it followed that the most heinous acts must be viewed as right if the majority wanted it so. Child pornography, rape and murder must become morally acceptable if only slightly more than half the population desired it. The approach begged other questions as well, notably this: why should I listen to the majority? Because they said so?

That sounds very much like the lament the purveyors of that argument had about listening to me: why should I listen to you, Marty? Because your God says so? They ignored the very possibility that I may be right, not on my word (Heavens, no!), but on the word of an actual God who knew more than I possibly could.

You see, any proposition about morality which does not concede that morality is something beyond individual interpretation is supremely problematic, even if that 'person' is in the guise of the general society via consensus. Why should any given individual listen to any other given individual simply on that person's say so? Unless there is something beyond the individual, something objective which any reasonable person should be able to see (and I mean able to see, because being unwilling or unable to see is a different issue) we can make no useful advances in the cause of human morals.

The bottom line is this: either God is God or I am God. If I am God, then I do not have any obligation to listen to the opinion of you or any overblown measure of consensus because, by the very definition of the issue, it cannot matter. What I say is right. Yet if God is God, then I ignore Him (and you, if you are trying to help me in that light) at my own great peril. There really isn't any other way to frame the question.