A critique of moral relativism

Saying that the God of the O.T. is evil by my personal values is a statement of fact, not a claim to some objective view, and therefore not moral absolutism. Please read carefully.I'm attempting to demonstrate to someone who is a moral absolutist, and wants to base his moral absolutism on his religion, that the values in the religious texts he presumably wants to use as a base for his absolute morality are inconsistent and outdated.I don't think it likely that in the forseeable future western society will decide that stoning people to death for gathering firewood on any day of the week is morally or legally sound behaviour. Of course. Relativism has no moral code. By definition Of course, that's why we recognise relativism as the base of human morality and law, not absolutism. Perhaps act is the key word here. So long as we know we're acting, that's fine. I'd put it in a slightly different way, and say that we improvise. We have to, because moral absolutism cannot work. That's what I was demonstrating with my Moses example. Some more than others. My "by my personal values" phrase when describing as evil a God who demands behaviour that modern society would condemn out of hand, indicates a fairly high level of recognition of subjectivity, I think. It was the God I described as evil, and are Gods supposed to change in time and their moral values in the same way that we both agree that human societies do?

As described in the OP. We have to act absolutely, we cannot act relatively (we either do an act or we don't). However we can think relatively.Yesterday I saw a light railway trolley moving down a track and was moving towards five kids who were playing on the track. I have laryngitis and could not warn the children. I realized that the trolley would come to a stop in time, if an adult body was thrown in front of it. If an adult body was not placed in front of the trolley in the next 5 seconds the trolley would be unstoppable and all the children would surely die.I decided to sacrifice my life, but to my horror my coat was caught on a nail and I had no time to remove it. I pushed a nearby gentleman into the track in front of the train, saving five children's lives but killing one innocent man.Was my action moral?Obviously I acted as though I was acting on an absolute morality, but had I been a witness to the event rather than a participant I would conclude that killing the man was both moral and immoral depending on the moral standard in use. Moral relativists can have their own personal moral outlook with which judge 'goodness' or 'evil', but they appreciate that it is only 'evil to them' or 'evil relative to the morality of our culture'.

I know you said 'by my personal values', but would I be correct to assume that you think your values are 'better' than the ones in the Bible stories? Not in a snooty way, but just as in 'humans are becoming more moral with time'?Because,well, 'values' are in fact, values. Things which we hold dear, which we think are important. Dare I say 'true'?The things which a given society finds important may indeed change. I still feel that everyone acts upon what they feel, deep down, to be important or just behaviour. IN that sense, all are absolutist. They see a scale in their minds, where actions range from atrocious, to nearly perfect. No one stops, in daily life, to consider that these actions may or may not be 'really' good. I have the opposite opinion from you, and that is: relativism can not work.I also question why it is only the "religious" who talk about absolutes? Why is it either or, and all atheists end up in the relativist camp? Can't atheists also believe that there may exist an almost perfect way of life? I do understand that what is perfect will be very different for some groups and some individuals. We need to have a perfect code for societal behaviour, for family behaviour, and for individual behaviour. That we continue to look for these codes, and strive for them, and enforce them, is evidence that we are all absolutists at heart.

You're talking about perfectionists, not absolutists. And we're not all perfectionists.

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That sounds nice, but I don't find it in practice too often. In fact, whenever there is a morality topic and I say something like 'only the individual doing the action can decide whether or not it was moral' then folks start twisting it around to mean 'whatever we think is good, is good'. People hate that thought. They think I am condoning Hitler or something. It's the relativists who don't understand that this is their philosophy.

Hm...you sound like a perfectionist.

I'm obsessive-compulsive. It's not quite the same thing.I also have a very short memory, so even if there was an absolute standard of perfection, I wouldn't remember what it was. By necessity, I'm an experimentalist. (I belong to the Click-Everything school of computer use - closely related to the Keep-a-Fire-Extinguisher-Handy school.)So for me, absolutism is not only unlikely, it's impossible.

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I think this statement muddles the issue. A single answer can be reached as long as the morality standards are defined.Standard 1:
Basic Principle - Morality is defined by God.
Morally Good = What God says is Good.
Morally Bad = What God says is Bad.Standard 2:
Basic Principle - Morality is defined by the resulting effects of actions towards other people.
Morally Good = Actions that help people.
Morally Bad = Actions that hurt people.Each standard can be used to objectively define good and bad to reach a single answer.
Perhaps, for the non-God standard, we may not know if people were truly helped or hurt. But that goes for the God standard as well, we may not know if God actually says something is good or bad. Either way, it only seems to depend on if other people (the culture) agree with the principles.Lots of people say Standard 1 (with God) is an "absolute standard" and that standard 2 (without God) is a "relative standard". I think they're both equal. It only depends on how the culture you're around agrees with the basic principles.Both standards can be used to objectively determine if certain acts are definitely moral or immoral. Are niether of the standards relative?Both standards depend on the culture to agree with the basic principle for "good" or "bad" to make any sense. Are both standards relative?Or is "moral relativism" simply an overall-label for any and all moral systems. And once we define any moral system it is then no longer relative?

Better for me. Actually, I could almost claim self-interested objectivity there, as I have no desire to be stoned to death, and I expect that if we examined the Bible texts, pretty much everyone alive today would be due for a painful death of some sort or another. I don't think we're becoming more moral at base. That's biological, and homo sapiens is homo sapiens. I do think that increased knowledge is leading us slowly towards better treatment of one another. Whether you value that or not is where the relativism comes in. Some might want to bring back slavery in western countries, but personally, I don't want to be a slave or a slave owner, so I'm glad that, like stoning people, it seems to be a thing of the past.Looking at the rest of your post, I don't think you should confuse your own or anyone elses improvised personal code with moral absolutism. Absolutism involves moral laws or rules that must always apply. Try saying "thou shalt not kill" is an unbreakable moral law, and people will easily be able to think of situations where there are strong arguments that exceptions should be made.Incidentally, I was hoping you might have a shot at answering my question about whether Gods, like human cultures, should be expected to change their moral values over time. (I don't know how I'd answer it if I believed in a God, to be honest. It's a tough one, I think).

This is Divine Command Theory, not relative morality. We can certainly compare the moral conclusions derived using the Divine Command Theory with say utilitarianism. As I said, other moral systems need to be used if one wishes to engage in applied ethics to reach one single answer. Relative morality cannot do that, by definition. Moral realtivism is the view that there is no objective absolute moral truth or if there is - it cannot be known so it cannot enter into human discourse. It goes on to say that there are multiple and valid moral actions for any given scenario. As such the best we can do is say something is 'wrong' relative to the standards of ancient Greece or perhaps 'right' relative to the standards of modern Canada.It is not a label for all moral systems since many moral systems attempt to discover a single and definite moral action.

Who is the dictator of this? I can make moral judgements on the action and I can compare the action relative to the morality of western Europe. Anybody can judge, moral relativism simply says that we cannot know that any given moral judgement is 'true'. Hitler was no doubt being moral by purging Europe of the disgusting blood of the jews - according to the presuppositions he held and the moral structure he adhered to (presuppositions came from the environment which includes the culture).He was of course, almost morally right (but not nearly close enough) by the German people (getting rid of the jews was one thing - but most of them did not find murdering 6million of them a moral course of action). It was morally wrong by the British people.Plenty of people who would be classified as relativists have not studied morality in any detail whatsoever and so when they try to formally describe their views they sound muddled and confused. The same goes for absolutists. This thread was designed to explain the principles of relative morality to both relativists who did not know the details of relativism and those absolutists who don't know the details of it.Let us not fall into the trap of saying 'It's the relativists who don't understand that this is their philosophy.' without also referring to the those absolutists who are not aware the details and problems associated with their philosophy.

Well I hinted at one problem. It seems that because Christians are generally talking about absolutes, the atheists automatically feel they belong in the opposite camp, but don't always know what 'relativist' means. Sure, I just speak way more frequently with relativists, and this was not intended to be a generalization.

I disagree. Jazzns is right that we are not using the word "arbitrary" in its proper context. An arbitrary law would be one that is whimsically formulated, like, it is illegal to type five letters in 10 seconds.The Law of God, whether you believe it was passed down divinely or by the efforts of men, you still see deliberate, purposeful, meaningful rules-- not capricious rules formulated in vain.

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Is murder right or wrong?

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Then let me absolutely clarify for you since you no doubt understand the staggering implications for answering the question.A man butchers your four year old daughter, i.e. he murdered her. Is what he has done right or wrong? Are there any circumstances to where this man would actually be in the right? So under those parameters it is absolutely wrong?

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"The problem of Christianity is not that it has been tried and found wanting, but that it is difficult and left untried" -G.K. Chesterton

And yet you just posited an absolute in order to deny all absolutes.The more one hammers away at the law of non-contradiction, the more it pulverizes them in the process. In other words, moral relativism....? The circumstances are what qualify or disqualify whether or not its murder. But "murder," is always wrong, always has been, always will be. There seems to be a problem with distinction.Thus far, I have asked an incredibly simple question: Is murder right or wrong.Can you answer that honestly without throwing a wrench in your own gears? Lets say you visit Singapore. You are unaware that it is illegal to spit on the sidewalk (which is an actual law in Singapore, btw). The punishment for such an infraction is being caned with a four foot bamboo cane, three inches in diameter.Now, lets say that this judge is deciding to up the ante a bit in order to set an example. He is sick and tired of Westerner's coming to his country and spitting on their soil. But Westerner's just keep on doing it. So, for future deterence, the punishment is now being caned to death.You are horrified and feel that the punishment is grossly improportionate to the crime. You plead that it is immoral, according to your customs and traditions, to be so severely punished for something you do all the time back home. And it all would seem so silly to you had your very life not been on the line over, what you perceive, to be such a spurious crime.But at the same time, you just so happen to be an activist, which is why you were in Singapore in the first place. You are there in defense of the Singaporean government against the American government who are currently appealing the Singaporean courts to spare the lives of one of their servicemen who has been sentenced for a similar crime.You were there because you hate how America always uses its foreign policies in such a way that sickens you. You can't stand how they stick their nose in everyone else's business, as if they were the self-assigned Big Brother to the rest of the world.Now, I just gave you about 18 extenuating circumstances to try and dissect for you to contemplate your guilt or innocence.Are you going to stand by laurels or are you going to hypocritically cave in to spare your own life?This, is moral relativism.There are not only easy answers, but impossible one's. What is the meaning of justice without an absolute truth? There is no right or wrong. There is no point of reference. You can't trust other people's judgments, much less, your own thoughts. You are a vessel tossed about in a sea of disorder.You desperately wanted life to be capricious so that you could deal with the cold, hard realities of the world. And so you see yourself as water-- fluid, undulating-- never staying in the same spot, never able to identify itself with it surroundings. You are neither here nor there. You are indistinguishable in the same way you view life.You are a body of water inside an ocean of water, climbing a staircase of water, into a sky made of water.And at some point you ask, "Is this what life is? Is this all that it is? Do my own feelings betray me? Oh, I am utterly lost because I'm anchored by nothing-- the very thing I wanted to believe about life.... That its nothing.Unfortunately, this is the bleak reality that you believe exists, simply by default. Because without truth, there is nothing.

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"The problem of Christianity is not that it has been tried and found wanting, but that it is difficult and left untried" -G.K. Chesterton

LOLAre you saying that anyone in this thread has said there are no absolutes?Of course there are absolutes. Many of them are also relative at the same time.But the question is not whether or not something is right or wrong, it is whether or not something is moral and whether or not there is some "absolute morality". Yup. Sure could be both in the right and also moral.A great example can be found in the some of the sacred pools in South and Central America and in some of the burial sites on the Alto Plano. One thing found was the bones of young children, often young girls but also boys. These kids were sacrificed as part of a ritual to assure fertility.Those acts were both right and moral.However, should someone try to butcher my daughter, in this milieu and time, in this culture, he is very likely in the wrong, and it is probable that the act is immoral, but we would need much more information to determine that.

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion