The Underlying Fallacy In Subjective Morality

In 2004, Barack Obama was interviewed by Cathleen Falsani where he gave a reply about sin that typifies subjective morality.

FALSANI: “Do you believe in sin?”
OBAMA: “Yes.”
FALSANI: “What is sin?”
OBAMA: “Being out of alignment with my values.”

Such a concept works for an individual because "my values" includes all moral proscriptions that make sense to them. The interviewer did not come back at Mr. Obama with, "So, you don't have any problem with murder, do you?" even though under his own definition of sin, murder would not be a sin for, say, the gang members in Chicago.

If that seems like a stretch, consider Dr. Gosnell's slaughterhouse and his inhuman employees. For years, they knowingly slew living babies. There's no indication from the transcripts that I've read that this was "out of alignment with their values." Therefore, snipping babies' spines was not a sin.

Again, that might seem like an extreme case. For my examples, I first chose young men raised in a feral environment where civilization has broken down and then I chose what seems to be a unique case of a psychopath who hired people desperate for work. Surely I can't be suggesting that such outliers are indicative of larger moral rot, can I?

Dig this.

In an undercover sting operation, a woman who was 23-plus weeks pregnant (abortion is illegal in New York and other states after 24 weeks) secretly recorded the conversations she had in this abortionist’s office. 

In an exchange laden with euphemisms on both sides to conceal the gruesome nature of the discussion, the pregnant woman wondered aloud what would happen if “it” (her fetus) emerged from her intact and alive. 

The employee assigned to take note of medical history reassured the woman, “We never had that for ages” (a seeming admission that a baby did survive abortion at the clinic at least once) but that should “it” “survive this,” “They would still have to put it in like a jar, a container, with solution, and send it to the lab. . . . We don’t just throw it out in the garbage.” 

Oh, and this innocuous-sounding “solution” was, of course, a toxic substance suitable for killing an infant. 

“Like, what if it was twitching?” asked the pregnant woman. 

“The solution will make it stop,” said the clinic employee. “That’s the whole purpose of the solution . . . It will automatically stop. It won’t be able to breathe anymore.”

In past blog posts, I wondered about Gosnell's employees. At the time, one could assure oneself that they were aberrations like him, freaks of society whose sense of right and wrong had been warped somehow to the point where cracking babies' spines was no different than cracking walnuts.

They don't seem like aberrations any more.

Somehow the abortionists covered in these stings were able to find employees perfectly willing to drown babies in poisonous solutions.

The underlying safety net beneath subjective morality is that no matter how "diverse" someone else's values are, you'd bet the farm that "normal" people would never cross the imaginary line you've got in your head and willingly [insert the worst thing you can think of here].

Are you so willing to place that bet now?