A summary of a paper presented to the Society
by Michael Bott
The moral relativist says there are no objective moral truths. Instead the truth value of moral judgements are relative to individually and culturally variable states of opinion or feeling. This means that the truth value of moral statements is subjective rather than objective.
There are two types of argument used to support this conclusion: the cultural argument and the psychological argument.
The Cultural Argument
Moral beliefs vary widely between individuals, groups and cultures. From this diversity of opinion some people conclude that there are no objective moral truths and that morality is just a matter of belief preference.
An infamous example of moral relativism comes from the French atheist, Jean Paul Satre who protested against the Nuremburg trials of Nazi War Criminals. Satre correctly realised that the Nazis were being judged by universal law (i.e. crimes against humanity). Whereas the trial assumed that such a law existed, Satre believed it did not. The democracies had no right to judge the Nazis if all values were relative to different cultures or different individuals.
The cultural argument for relativism assumes, incorrectly, that moral truths and moral beliefs are the same. Just because there is a wide variety of contradictory beliefs about a given subject, does not mean that there is no objective truth about that subject. For example, although there is no universal agreement about who shot John F Kennedy, it does not follow that there is no objectively true description of what actually happened on that day? Truths and beliefs are logically distinct.
The Psychological Argument
This argument claims that human beliefs are produced by non-rational factors such as impulse, subconscious desire and conditioning. These factors, it is asserted, do not provide rational premises for the beliefs they produce.
The behaviourist B.F. Skinner, was one of the most active advocates of the psychological argument for moral relativism. Skinner argued for the position that there are no such things as free choice or a moral code. Man is a product of chance, an organism shaped by his environment and genetic inheritance. If you wish to modify or control human behaviour you need only change the environment.
The psychological argument is similar to the cultural argument in that it also confuses truth with belief. Further, if beliefs are the product of non-rational causes, then moral relativism is no better objectively than any other theory about the origin of moral values. This is so, because by the logic of his whole argument, the relativist admits that his theory (which he must believe), is nothing more than a subjective and relative projection of his own preference. Lastly relativism is internally inconsistent; to say "there are no absolutes", is in fact to assert an absolute.
Moral Relativism and Society
The majority of moral relativists in western society are humanists and most humanists are materialistic Darwinian evolutionists. According to the materialist Darwinian, life is essentially only an arrangement of matter. The years which comprise our life span have no purpose for the individual beyond those years, since the individual ceases to exist at death.
Sadly once you develop a world view along this line, you run the danger of becoming a practical nihilist. Nihilism, first popularised by the Russian writer Turganev, represents the total rejection of tradition, morality and authority along with the social order that enshrines them. Nihilism is based on a radical empiricism, that is, the theory that all ideas are derived from sense experience. A investigation beyond sense experience is illusory. Hence statements are meaningless being expressions of feelings rather than truth. Because sense experience is individual, no generalised objective truth is possible. This means that moral standards are subjective, arbitrary, emotive and non rational - which is why the author of the hook "The Brothers Karamazov" wrote: "If God does not exist, everything is permitted".
If we develop this argument we can ask, why respect any individual at all? If all is over at death, and "morality" is irrational and subjective and God does not exist, why not exploit any individual(s). An individual is no more important apart of nature than a cat, a glass of water or a stone. He might be slightly more complex in terms of the a arrangement of matter, but he's not unique. Indeed, like trees in a pine forest, humans provide the relativist entrepreneur with an expendable and exploitable resource.
Such reasoning has been used repeatedly by moral relativist power brokers to explain away acts of horrible cruelty. Communists, atheistic capitalists, national socialists and fascists, without a second's thought, have sent millions to their deaths in the name of such things as racial purity, not towing the party line, personal profit and just being inconvenient. This last reason, is really why so many young people die in the death camps in our own country - our abortion clinics.
This same practice of viewing people as means and not ends in themselves is currently influencing much of the capital punishment debate in the United States of America. Apparently a large number of state governors start denying clemency appeals around election time in order to boost their opinion poll ratings. They ignore the merits of individual appeals and instead use condemned men and women as grist on the mills of their political careers.
We tend to forget that our human rights are really derived from the Christian faith.
In Christian terms every single human being, whoever he or she may be, sick or well, intelligent or not, attractive or otherwise, is loved and cared about by his or her Creator.
The move away from Christian moral standards has not meant moving to an alternative system of moral standards, but rather moving into a moral vacuum. Once you dispense with concepts such as right and wrong, moral and immoral you are left with nothing except either popular whim or personal preference. Immorality has a bad conscience, but at least it has a conscience. Amorality has no working or waking conscience at all It is even further away from morality than is immorality.
©2000 Wellington Christian Apologetics Society (Inc.) All Rights Reserved.
Previously published in
Apologia (The Journal of the Wellington Christian Apologetics Society)
Vol.1, No.2, p.6-7, 1992 |