In my other two articles on anti-intellectualism and worldviews, I addressed the ideas of perceived ethics and whether they're "obvious" or not. I think, however, there needs to be a deeper understanding of what the word "obvious" tries to entail in these contexts and an acknowledgement of how absurd and lazy it actually is to use such a term. It sometimes describes itself as "common sense," which hilariously refutes what is trying to be described. With that being said, let's dive in and see just how we come to know things, specifically things like ethics, by starting with how the word "obvious" is less helpful than we think.

If people are asked how they justify ethics within a secular framework, specifically an atheistic one, people often respond with, "Well, it's obvious when something is wrong." They have a visceral gut feeling inclined against whatever they consider wrong and figure that everyone must feel that! They are appealing to their senses as well as holding the presupposition that everyone has the same perception and sense. However, just like how other senses that our body uses to explain the world, they can work differently for different people—notice that I avoid using the word fail or some other synonym.

Let's look at eyesight as our example of another sense that can typically differ from person to person! When it comes to assigning colors to different wavelengths (all colors are just varying wavelengths of light—fun fact!), people seem to generally be on the same page. Most people can point to red and blue and confidently differentiate the two. We can't establish this simple fact, however, that everyone sees these colors the same way we do; we can only conclude that we seem to have agreed upon terms for defining certain wavelengths of colors. Only once we as a community have agreed upon the terms for these colors as a means to identify them can we really say that these colors are "common sense." Even then, determining colors is really only common sense within that community. It's far from "obvious," seeing as it took physicists designing ways to actually measure light waves in order confirm what we consider common sense in any way.

Already, we see things are not obvious by any means until some other methodology confirms our common sense. Furthermore, we see with people who are color-blind that, even beyond the difficulty of the procedure I just explained, people's senses can and do fail. If this is the case, we have to be suspicious of our own senses and perceptions because they can be wrong.

So what in the world does this have to do with ethics? If eyesight, the sense we're often most dependent on, can be flawed, we certainly must be even more skeptical of our intuitive ethics. Like I said in my piece on worldviews, we're all indoctrinated with ideologies growing up, ethics included. Think about the mass of different cultures throughout the world and the different ethical systems in each. The differences in ethics around the world are absolutely astounding.

An objection often raised is, "Well, their ethics are all based on outdated religious texts!" To that, I agree that they are all based on some religious text. My question back to that objection is, "Where do you think your ethics originated from?" Quite simply, the objection is operating off what is called a genetic fallacy. If all our thoughts—meaning our perceptions—must find their origin in something, then it is foolish to write something off because it is old, new, or for or against the current cultural trend.

A final note to (hopefully) evoke some sleepless nights: how do we actually know what's right? I would argue to find the worldview that is consistent. Consistency seems to be the glue that holds the universe together, so perhaps we should take heed of that.

I would recommend watching this debate, should you find the time, which deals with a lot of this subject matter.