All too often the majority has consented, either explicitly or implicitly, to colossal evil. Morality is not determined by nose count. Majority is no synonym for morality. A million times zero is still zero. Simple consensus, like simple consent, is not a moral justification.
Morality is independent of majority opinion and of pragmatic preference.
As Archibald Alexander somewhere observed, virtue is not known by reason alone, but by revelation and by Providence. Sir Philip Sidney s way of saying it was to insist that the only impregnable citadel for virtue is religion. Both were precisely correct. In a word, if there is no God, there is no good. Copyright 2000, Michael Bauman.