Plato had his Socrates ask this question;  Does God love things that are pious or are things pious because God loves them?

This is one of the great questions that plague mankind to this day!  Basically he was asking; what is the standard of right and wrong?  What is the nature of “goodness”?

To answer this question is to define God as either arbitrary or irrelevant!

In the first case Goodness is an inherent quality (God loves pious things).  God points to a goodness that is independent of God. The other scenario says that God decides what is good and what is bad (Pious because God loves them), and means that goodness and badness can swap positions at any given point in time because of God’s whim.  And since there are so many kinds of God these days; man ultimately picks and chooses which things God loves and hates. Consider the differences between the Christian God’s Old and New Testaments. God reversed his standard.

The only popular alternative is something known as “Existentialism” which basically attempts to prove that the standard of goodness is really our individual desires.  That means man decides right and wrong based on his pure emotion!

To me, none of these time tested answers are acceptable standards of knowing right and wrong! I see it in every news story And no wonder this world is so confused.  There is absolute contradiction already  built into these ethical standards.

Professional philosophers dislike what I’m now about to say;  I think it threatens their value to society.  Thus their career!

The only viable, non contradictory moral system known to man was created by Ayn Rand called Objectivism for it takes Existentialism to the next level.  Instead of Man’s whim being the highest value or standard of all other values, She proposed that it was man’s very life that is the standard.  The individual life, not the life of a particular society.  As in today’s philosophical fight over  Individual Rights vs. Human Rights.  Human Rights sacrifice the individual for any more powerful group. (any group is always more powerful than the  individuals in it, hence the critical need to balance this).   

Ayn Rand asked this question; Do we need more of the same moral standards in which caused today’s moral conflicts?  Or we have we yet to discover what morality really is?

I believe it to be the latter.  Thanks Ms. Rand for helping me create a better life for me, my family, my employees, my clients, my venders etc.