There are too many scenarios in life and across time to have absolute principles. That is why rule utilitarianism fails as a coherent, or at any rate, practical doctrine. And if a principle, doctrine, way of life is unpractical or un-implementable, is it even theoretically sound? Of course if the world was in a state such that a doctrine could be implemented then it could be the right doctrine. But the important point is that the world is not such and such a way; it is the way it is and if a doctrine cannot fit into that then perhaps the doctrine is not right for the society in which it is presented.
Of course this principle is not absolutist. If it were then people’s weakness to see or strive for change would prevent many beneficial advancements. It is not that a doctrine must easily fit into society but that it must be possible to fit it into society even through small steps. For example the total upheaval of the slave trade was difficult to accept because so much of societies economic prosperity depended on it; or at least the fat belies of the aristocracy did. Abolition however was implementable (this is clearly indisputable in hindsight because it was implemented) because it reflected the will of society as a whole. Society has a quieter voice at times than the ruling bodies, but great moments of change are, often, the result of general consensus. Perhaps Hitler’s Germany and Stalin’s Russia did not reflect world wide general consensus yet they flourished just as the slave trade did. But none of these ideologies lasted; they were overhauled by general consensus (perhaps a shifting general consensus or one that simple became apparent or eventually felt strongly enough to grow a voice).
One also has to understand that extreme absolutism fails in practicality. If it were general consensus in Britain, for example, that it should be a communist state and this was considered some kind of divine absolute it would still not be right that Britain should become communist tomorrow (oh how its society would self destruct if it did). The change would have to be incremental. Hard absolutists in the time of slow change would surely cry out accusations of weak resolution and half-hearted policy: if something is right it is always right so if communism in Britain is right then it is right tomorrow. But this is false. The pre-Marxist utopians failed because they were concerned with the total upheaval and immediate replacement of society with a better way of life. But, as Marx argued, total upheaval ignores the root of any problem. Why was society in a mess? Whatever the specific reason, the general one surely stems from man and his relations. It seems quite plausible that were society to be totally up-heaved and replaced with a new system the same problems would begin to arise and cause the downfall of the new social order. The problem can never be ignored and go away and it can never be destroyed unless it destroys itself: the problem culminates and from that problem the solution becomes apparent.
In this very way absolutism fails for it does not allow that the best solution grows in the womb of its correlating problem. After all, man believes in the divine and in salvation through the spiritual because to them no material solution is apparent or readily forthcoming. People lose hope that their troubles will ever subside and so they look outside of themselves, and the society which gives birth to its problems, for a solution. Hence God is created to i) solve problems to which we cannot presently see the material solution ii) solve problems to which there are no material solutions: we are too weak to accept fatal truths so we create false truths to cover up our fears. This kind of belief in God is synonymous with death. One is killing their rational, strong-willed self, in order to hide from reality. They embrace false hope. They are more interested in feeling safe and comfortable than in knowing the hard truth. The truth that the harder the problem the harder the true (material) solution will be. Salvation through God is the easy solution, the weak solution. Of course this is true. Why would anyone suppose that a material problem can only have an immaterial (spiritual) solution? Christians believe that we, man, are to blame for the world’s problems. Of course we are. But if we cause the problem surely it is we, man, that must solve the problem. Why would the best solution to a man made problem be a spiritual solution?
So, absolutism fails because it sees the world in black and white. God is a spiritual black and white solution to a material grey problem. There are just too many scenarios in life for one to be an absolutist. Moral relativism succeeds where absolutism fails. However, it is often argued that even if one cannot possibly be absolutist about everything that there are some core, underlying universal moral absolutes that everyone adheres to. The Ten Commandments is the classic example. Taken at face value this is a very appealing idea but on closer inspection one has to wonder whether the commandments really give society anything of practical value. For example, what value does the commandment ‘Do not murder’ really give? When is a scenario ever black and white enough that one can employ this absolute in their reasoning to act one way or the other? What is murder? Killing on a battle field surely isn’t it. Killing in self-defence isn’t it. These are things most societies can accept are condonable; they are the grey areas of life to which the commandment helps us in no way whatsoever. Perhaps the black and white scenario to which the commandment gives us some value is what we would call ‘cold blooded murder’. But this commandment doesn’t have to come from God and it certainly doesn’t have to be an absolute because it is, surely, some sort of genetic or inherent predisposition; some raw aspect of human nature that just is. Even if it were socially constructed over millennia it would be a culmination of other more primitive natural human instincts such as desire for safety and the need for social interaction which can only be sustained by trust. Cold blooded murder violates these basic instincts. ‘Cold blooded murder is wrong’ does not have to be an absolute because it will never, I would imagine, be the case that a democratic majority will agree that murder could be widely acceptable. It would be in no society’s interest (especially given all we know about human nature and the different systems of thousands of years of different societies) for cold blooded murder to be an absolute.
So how is it that the Ten Commandments or even the Bible or Quran in their entireties give us good absolute ways to live our lives. There are just so few scenarios where a de-contextualised set of rules can apply in any valuable way. Life is grey and black and white absolutes just cannot offer compatible solutions to grey problems. The general message of the Bible gives us nothing that natural human instincts cannot give us apart from a need to love God with all your heart and soul, but I have already explained how God is an unsatisfactory spiritual solution to difficult material problems.
So absolutism, theism and deism i) offer the same solutions to problems that have solutions explicable in corresponding un-spiritual terms (do not commit cold blooded murder) ii) offer weak and/or unnecessary spiritual solutions to man made material problems.
Finally a quick point to clarify against potential objection to the above. Grey areas does not mean some evil pragmatism that accepts that, because we all give into sinful temptation, it is irrelevant to talk about pure and good absolutism i.e. humanity are so happy being “sinful” that there’s just no point in trying to implement good absolutes. I explained above that something being hard to implement does not make something wrong to implement, it is just that it takes time and a practical and pragmatic approach. So by stating that black and white absolutism is an incompatible doctrine with reality because reality is grey I am not suggesting that ‘grey areas’ are synonymous with ‘man’s imperfections’ e.g. being morally grey such as being selfish sometimes because life is hard. Grey areas means that real life scenarios are never so simplistic that a short set of absolute rules can guide one in any valuable way as to how they should act. Scenarios are so varied and so complex that no rule corresponds even nearly perfectly to it. And as stated before even if such a set of rules can give an overall guiding influence or general message these influences are generally inherent in human nature and do not need to be dictated or controlled by a more divine being than ourselves just to keep order. It is not man’s imperfection that leads him to think of the world as grey but man’s imperfection that leads him to think of the world as black and white. We do in fact keep pretty good order in the world despite religious dogma and absolutism never because of it.
