Right or Wrong? Why Debating is all that Matters.

[FuBai]

Often you will see or hear of something that you know is wrong. It can be as obviously wrong as murder, or more complicated, like a well intentioned lie, but you will see it and you will judge it, almost instantly. Then someone else comes along and, seeing the exact same event, says 'That was right.' You may then argue with him - how could he possibly think that was right! The debate rages until, perhaps, you win and the other man leaves corrected. Or he wins, and you walk away wondering how you could have been so foolish. Which ever way one of you has been convinced to accept something that you had rejected as being the case, and the sole thing that persuaded you was the other man's argument. There was nothing more objective that convinced you than his rhetoric.

The thing about this is that any action is defendable, any action justifiable, from lying to genocide, all can be explained and justified. Above and beyond the heat of debate there is no objective value of "rightness" to which we can appeal, no superlative value against which we can measure the correctness of what we do. We may feel that there are, that what ever moral precepts we were taught at birth point us towards "rightness" but we cannot hope to justify them without introducing religion. There are atheists who claim that we can uphold morality for moral reasons without God, but these arguments tend to be flawed because they have nothing to appeal to to make morality any more than simple opinion. Ask such an atheist if murder is wrong. He will probably say yes. Then ask him why and, if he responds ask why again and again. No matter how far the reasons go back they will never be founded on anything more than opinion. Why is it an intrinsically wrong thing to kill every one? That's hard for an atheist to answer because there is no non-material value to appeal to. If you are having problems grasping this notion please don't post explaining why murder is wrong, just ask yourself why, and then ask why your reasons are of moral significance and so on. This is a pretty logical point. However, feel free to post some non-religious grounding for morality if you can come up with one (but don't forget to ask why it works).

So, once we establish that right or wrong are simply differences of opinion then we have a problem, especially if we pretend that we are legislators, in that what course of action do we take? You see the majority have not understood that right or wrong are not fixed values and only exist, if they can be said to exist at all, in relation to each other, and that relationship is described only by the individual's psyche and upbringing. So then, how do we decide what to do? It is decided, in practicality, solely by argument. That is all that shapes our policy, all that guides our lives and all that dictates our actions. Whether or not an action is correct or incorrect is decided by arguments - they can be sweeping political arguments such as those of drug legitimisation or they can be finite moral arguments such as whether human life is sacred. They inform each other, they are irrevocably intertwined but, in the end, the final summation, all they are is arguments.

Were we to decide that murder was right, to what could the atheist appeal to try and show that it was wrong? He could argue that everyone may well be murdered, but the people could just as well ask him "why is that a bad thing", he may reply "Because then you will be dead", and they say "why is that a bad thing?". You see almost all of our moral philosophy is based on a fundamental assumption that x is the case. It is an assumption that can never be proven.

So everything is in the debate and the argument. Which ever argument wins (and by win I mean meets popular approval) decides what is right and what is wrong. That's the reason debating is so important, because that's all our moral philosophy is. It's why persuasion and guile are as important as facts and intelligence.

I'm sure these thought have been thought before by greater minds, but I leave them here for you to examine and contemplate. I probably have not put it as well as I wanted to and may well have made some mistakes, for which I apologise.