Uvalde, Ukraine, and Absolute Morality

As the United States continues to reel in response to the atrocities at the Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, other atrocities continue in eastern Ukraine, where the Russian military is pursuing a brutal war of unprovoked aggression. And there are the inevitable responses: we must ban assault rifles, secure our schools better, provide the Ukrainians with more weapons, punish Putin and his oligarchs with more sanctions. All welcome suggestions, all potentially helpful. But none of them address the core issue: the moral void.

What the shooter in Uvalde had in common with the Russian soldiers who tortured and then murdered civilians in Bucha: the moral void. What the participants in genocides throughout the last century – in Armenia, Nazi-occupied Europe, Japan, Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia – all had in common: the moral void. The assumption that the prohibition of murder is a mere opinion, a talking point, a debatable outlook. The assumption that there are no absolute rules, just personal attitudes.

Is there a reply to the void? Only one: God exists and prohibits murder. Absolutely. No wiggle room. Regardless of what your general tells you. Or the voices in your head. Or your resentment.

Nietzsche knew this was the case: believing that God was dead, he thought the time had come for a predator morality, a monster morality. Dostoyevsky saw it too: so he said, if there is no God, then everything is permitted. If Nietzsche and Dostoyevsky were living today, they might add as further evidence: In Uvalde. In Ukraine      

I know too much about the forces that have led so many humans to give up on religion and its commandments. I know that religion has been used by wicked people to justify all sorts of evils, not excluding torture and murder. But just for the record, no religious brutality ever rivalled the carnage committed by atheists of the last century like Lenin, Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot. If religion was the problem, irreligion is not the answer. Maybe we need to take another look at those Ten Commandments. And this time hear what they really say.

For example, “Thou shalt not murder.” An absolute prohibition. From the only absolute Authority.

Maybe it wouldn’t have hurt if the Uvalde shooter, the Russian shooters, had had to wrestle with that one.