Can morality be objective and universally acceptable?
So can faith be made objective and acceptable universally by everyone but faith I understand you are referring to morality essentially it's more of can we have universal moral code so will everybody accept that this is wrong or this is right see the today is there are basically two broad schools there is moral absolutism and there is moral relativism so moral absolutism holds that this is right and this is wrong so there we see morality as categorical anything in this category is wrong, anything in this category is right and moral relativism is there are no categories only whatever you think is right that is right for you, whatever you think is wrong is wrong for you so I was giving a talk in Seattle in Microsoft no in Amazon so after that talk this same issue came up, moral relativism can we say that there is isn't morality subjective so then I asked the questioner that is there anything going on anywhere in the world right now that you believe is wrong of course terrorists are killing innocent people pedophiles are violating children men are abusing women domestic violence terrorists are killing innocent people do the terrorists think they are doing something wrong no so then is it wrong or is it not wrong of course it is wrong they are killing innocent people but you are saying that morality is subjective then from their perspective it is not wrong no no but their perspective is wrong on what basis are you saying their perspective is wrong if we say morality is relative then we will have no basis even for our law system because laws have to be objective so there is within all of us implicit in understanding that there are some things which are right and some things which are wrong so the moral sense the sense that there are right and wrong that is universal and there are some things even you are saying this is wrong even that person says I am not doing anything wrong but still you understand this is wrong and this person has to be stopped this person has to be punished so the problem comes when these categories become so rigid so one extreme is to make this category absolutely rigid and other is to say there are no categories at all whatever you like you put in this category whatever you don't like you put in this category no, so the problem comes when these categories are seen as rigid and non-malleable that is when the problem comes so the Mahabharata, the Ramayana even the Bhagwat their basic teaching is that morality is not just categorical it is also contextual contextual means that in certain contexts certain things may be wrong although normally they are right or in other ways certain things which are normally wrong may become right if say terrorists are chasing someone and that person comes to your door and says please save me and we hide that person in our house and the terrorists knock on our door is he here? should we speak the truth? speaking the truth is good but in the Mahabharata Krishna tells a similar story to Arjuna and he says there was a Brahmin who had taken a vow to speak the truth always and then there was a cow who was being slaughtered and she had run away from the slaughterhouse and the hunter came the butcher came and he asked the Brahmin where is the cow? and the cow pointed and the Brahmin pointed out and the Brahmin was punished by the laws of karma thereafter so he says morality is not just categorical it is also contextual so there are certain areas where there may be grey zones so we have to acknowledge the grey zones but just because there are grey zones doesn't mean there is no black and white so there are two extremes, one is to say that there is only black and only white and the other is to say there is no black or white this is all subjective but in between so there is so that's why it becomes a little technical but we could say there is moral relativism there is moral absolutism and there is moral realism realism means that in the real world there are we absolutely need morality at the same time in the real world we have to understand that there can be extenuating circumstances, there can be exceptional circumstances where certain things are wrong may actually not be wrong so if we have this the Mahabharata has this morally realistic approach so it's moral realism that's why when Krishna tells Arjuna to shoot at Bhishma while Shikhandi is ahead he does that so it's moral realism so moral realism is what we need so if we see this as a third category, not moral absolutism but not moral relativism moral realism then it becomes more acceptable to people even in today's world it's not that everybody will accept there is something which is acceptable and something which is intelligible at least it will become intelligible to people for them to accept it that's a matter of their free will so thank you very much.