Contrary to your understanding it is my/yours/their beliefs I am referring through throughout this thread. I hoist all by the same petard. Everyones morals necessarily suffer, if that is the appropriate term, from relativism.
My own morals are related (relative) to a God I know exists - yet I cannot show him to be an objective reality to that person to whom it matters most - myself. This is because I cannot be sure that my knowing is set in reality - for want of being able to objectively demonstrate to myself that the reality in which I presume I exist, in is indeed an objective one. I know I am not wrong when I say I know God - but I don't actually know if what consitutes knowing is objective. I am left ultimately in the position of
presuming an objective reality exists around and within me. My morals are thus completely relative either to an objective or a subjective reality - but relative nontheless. I plump for the former in practice, because it is not possible for me to begin to consider how to function if there was no objective reality.
If that case, my morals can claim, at least in principle, to be truly objective because they are argued to be derived from something completely external and independant to myself, its mind having determined these things, with me playing the role of recipient-without-choice. A product has no choice in how its designer designed it especially if the designer is not constricted by the material characteristics of the raw materials used during construction. So, whilst my morals are as relative as everyone elses, if God indeed exists, then objective morals I truly have.
You have ascribed to me an extreme form of moral relativism which you derive chiefly from my stand on evolution and my agnosticism. Further, you insist that your beliefs--the need for an "objective" (i.e., supernatural) source for a moral ground--leaves no room for any other form of moral relativism. The logical result, you claim, is that moral relativism necessarily collapses into the chaos of every man for himself.
What makes moral relativism extreme if it turns out that what constitutes 'extreme' is itself a relative term (one might be safer stating that someones morals are be relatively extreme but certainly not objectively so)? In considering whether this point is valid we must turn to look at your argument in order to ascertain whether it is possible for your model to produce something objective or whether all is relative. We must ask whether it is reasonable to suppose that Evolution, that which has produced you, is capable of producing something objective or simply something with the flavor of objective but which is in fact demonstrably subjective.
Evolution is a good place to start. We evolved as social animals, and the process of defining moral standards has also been social.
The Dummies Guide to Evolution tells us that evolution is a largely two-pronged affair. Random variations in offspring produced create a pool of raw material from which many potential directions can be 'taken'. Natural selection is the bit which culls some and leaves others to pass on 'useful' characteristics. The combination of these two factors has resulted in all we see today. Is that it in broad brushstrokes?
If so, then the first thing we can say about your models morals is that they are indeed relative. Relative to that which produced them. In that our models are similar. You tell us (eloquently) about how man has developed systems of morals and behaviour but forget that this development is the result of chance series of events. Chance circumstances enabled man with societal-directed genes to dominate the man whose survival-worth derived from his ability (perhaps) to use force and ruthlessness to ensure his own personal survival. We must not forget that evolution dealt ALL the cards which produced it. Evolution is indeed the blind watchmaker. To say "man developed" is like saying a photocopier developed a photocopy, when in fact all a photocopier did is produce what the mechanism which produced it enabled it to produce. In the case of a photocopier, all it does is relative to the man who designed it, in the case of man, all he produces is relative to the course of evolution which produced him. Evolution is the object, man is the subject. Subjects do not produce objects. Only objects do that. This is where our models might possibly begin to part
Whilst your thinking is understandable if we chose to ignore from whence we supposedly came, your argument requires that somewhere along the way man and evolution somehow parted company and that man become an object and thus capable of producing objective things. But we know that is impossible. Evolution is all there is, there are no blips allowing man to escape from that closed system. If you are right, we are simply accidents producing whatever it is that accidents produce. To say 'man develops things' is simply a subject expressing subjective convention. There are only accidents.
And we know too, that if everyone is a product of evolution then you with your evolution, me with my God and the extremist muslim with his burning effigy, have all been cast up on the same beach by the same sea at this same time. Each with morals relative to that same process and each with morals decided upon by the throw of innumerable dices. Each with survivability characteristics incorperated in a random, accidental fashion. Thus, if Extremist Muslim is cast up alongside Relativist Evolutionist, there is no point in saying his title is anything other than a identifying label. You are tied umbilically to him as you are to me. And if Extremist Muslim happens to be in possession of a set of mutations which prove best suited towards the only task in town - survival - then survive he will.
That the work of ages leading to the ordered, treaty-bound structured society you refer to is a randomly produced blink in time, open to being wiped out by a raft of strategically placed dirty bombs, is neither here nor there. There is no sense in a person getting their knickers in a twist about that which is produced by random throws of a dice. One might as well scream blue murder at a non-existant god.
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