Are There Moral Absolutes?

Last month Dodger and I fell in-love with Dexter. It's a Showtime series about a serial killer who kills serial killers. We blew through all 4 past seasons in about 3 weeks time. One night in between shows we got to discussing moral absolutes. Is what Dexter is doing wrong? He hunts down serial killers and then kills them. Many of them are people that the justice system let slip away to kill again.

I don't think what he's doing is wrong. He is permanently removing people from society who do nothing but hurt innocent people. Dodger seemed a little conflicted and only had to say that what he was doing was against the law. I don't think that just because something is against the law that it is immoral. The law and morality are two different things.

According to Wikipedia, Moral Absolutism is the ethical view that certain actions are absolutely right or wrong, regardless of other contexts such as their consequences or the intentions behind them.

I don't really agree with that. I see things more from a Consequentialist viewpoint which Wikipedia explains as those moral theories which hold that the consequences of a particular action form the basis for any valid moral judgment about that action (or create a structure for judgment, see rule consequentialism). Thus, from a consequentialist standpoint, a morally right action is one that produces a good outcome, or consequence. This view is often expressed as the aphorism "The ends justify the means".

Like the case of Robin Hood who stole from the rich to give to the poor. His reasons for stealing were valid.

My dad seems to carry my same viewpoint. I was having dinner with him one evening and mentioned Dexter and what the show was about. He said, "So, he's one of the good guys, like [the main character in the movie] Law Abiding Citizen?"

What do you think?