Moral Relativism
One of the common teachings of secularist thought is that of moral relativism.
The common idea here is that moral truth is relative, that moral truth is subjective, that what is morally true for you, is not necessarily morally true for someone else.
And it is often cited as a basis for the rejection of Christianity, particularly the rejection of absolute moral standards.
Is Truth Subjective?
Subjective truth means that we decide what is true, it is subject to our opinions.
When we look at this problem at a philosophical level, that truth is subjective, we find some serious problems.
If 2 moral ideas can be both true and untrue at the same time, then we have broken a fundamental law of logic, the law of noncontradiction.
You cannot have two opposing arguments both be true, to do so is to be illogical.
And once we abandon logic, we have no basis for rational thought, all human thought becomes unintelligible.
I Like That Car
Here are 2 subjective moral truths.
It is okay to kill my neighbour and take his car.
It is not okay to kill my neighbour and take his car.
To say that both of these can be true is logically absurd.
To say that both of these is true is morally absurd.
So What Is The Problem?
When someone say’s ‘what is true for you’ is not ‘true for me’, they are making a basic statement about truth.
They are essentially saying that absolute truth does not exist, only subjective truth exists.
There are no moral laws outside of what we decide individually.
There are no absolute moral laws that we need to adhere to.
We get to be self deterministic about what we regard as moral or immoral, logical or illogical.
Why Do We Need Absolutes?
If I give you a piece of string and ask you to measure it, you cannot give me the length unless you have a ruler.
If you have an accepted standard of measurement, we can both agree what the length of that piece of string is.
If you don’t have absolutes, then all we can do is make a guess about the length.
A Piece Of String
What if you need a piece of string to fix a tent to the ground when we are both camping in a storm and you ask me for 10 metres of string and I give you 2 metres of string, because I ‘feel’ like that is 10 metres and insist that an absolute is not required to determine the length?
How will you be able to tie that tent down?
You cannot, you needed 10 metres of string and I gave you 2 metres because I felt like it was 10 metres.
The string is not long enough and my moral relativism gets us both cold and wet...
So What Happens When You Surrender Absolutes?
The minute you surrender the need for moral absolutes, the minute you surrender the need for absolute moral values, by which to measure moral choices, is the minute we are reduced to anarchy as a society, without them we cannot function as a society, we are reduced to anarchy.
Who Gets To Decide?
Who gets to decide what Is absolute - Society Or Man?
The objections to moral absolutes is often presented in one of two ways.
The individual decides what is moral.
Society decides what is moral.
Both of these rest on the idea that morality is something that mankind gets to decide.
The Individual Decides
So you decide it is not okay for your body building neighbour, who is a black belt in 9 forms of martial arts, to walk into your house and take your car keys and take it for a drive.
And he decides that it is.
Who has that authority in this situation?
Are his moral choices wrong and yours right?
He could just argue that it is survival of the fittest, he is an evolved being that is stronger than you and the strong must survive.
And when you tell him it is wrong, he just says:
Hey - your truth is your truth and my truth is my truth and drives off in your car - if you really believed in moral relativism, you would just carry on with your day, you wouldn't call the police and you wouldn’t be upset...
Society Gets To Decide
So society decides, whoever has the most support for their moral values gets to win.
Or those with the most sway over society, get to impose their morality on everyone else.
Majority rules!
The Problem With Societal Morality
What happens when a society decides to do something you don’t agree with?
Let us have a look at slavery, slavery where a person is kidnapped and sold to someone else.
In the past and even in the present, some societies say this is justified, that slavery was okay.
According to a moral standard where society defines its own morality, this would mean that slavery of that type was actually moral!
And to support the idea that society finds its own morality, means to support the idea that the kidnapping, trafficking and sale of people is okay, as long as society gives it the thumbs up…
What About Hitler?
What about Hitler was he moral?
He had the votes…
What about the Aztecs who practiced child sacrifice?
They had the authority....
If morality is defined by vote or power base, then we cannot condemn these actions, which we do because we know that what they did was wrong.
Moral Relativism Does Not Exist:
The truth of it is, is that what we really want is that everyone else obeys absolute laws of morality, but we want to reserve the right to not be bound by them.
The thief wants to steal, but not be stolen from.
The liar wants to lie, but not be lied to.
The cheater wants to commit adultery but does not want to be the victim of it.
And this is a fundamental problem for society, when people live that way, in a selfish way.
You see no one really believes in moral relativism, they object to the neighbour taking their possessions by force, they appeal to an absolute moral right to have ownership.
They object to being enslaved, they appeal to an absolute moral right to have liberty and freedom of choice.
When it comes to reality, everyone appeals to absolute moral standards…
Nobody lives as a moral relativist.
Can We Have Moral Absolutes?
So what do we need to have absolute moral standards that we can all appeal to?
- Morality is a function of intelligence.
- Morality is something that governs behaviour between living rational beings.
- Morality assumes that goodness is the absolute positive state for moral absolutes.
- Morality has to be applied everywhere for it to be absolute.
- Morality has to be applied through all time for it to be absolute.
- Morality has to be unchanging for it to be absolute.
A Source For Morality
To have a source of morality, we need.
An absolutely intelligent being, that absolutely behaves in a consistent way, that is absolutely good, that exists everywhere and has dominion over all living things, has to exist eternally, has to be unchanging.
A rock cannot fulfill this for us, we cannot get morality from a rock.
Only something above all Creation can supply it.
Only God can be argued as the absolute source for absolute morality, get rid of the logical need for absolute moral values and yes you can get rid of God, but now you have abandoned logic...
God Is Absolutely Moral
Absolute morality is not something God decides, but something God is.
If morality is something that God decides, then God is not absolutely moral.
But God is moral by nature, His absolute laws of morality are an expression of His nature, that is the very basic requirement for absolute morality to exist.
And it self evidently does exist, as we appeal to it when it suits us, we demand justice when we are wronged. We demand freedom and independence.
If all we are is a cosmic accident, floating through space on a tiny planet, what rights do we have for anything or why would we even desire freedom and independence?
But if we created in the image of God, with an awareness of absolute morality and our right to appeal to it, then and only then do we have a basis for ‘human rights’...