Moral Relativism

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Moral relativism is the view that moral standards are grounded only in social custom. This view makes it very convenient for some of the worlds cultures to practice customs such as genital mutilation, slavery etc. etc.

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Can you give some examples of this? Can you point us to any cultures which practice genital mutilitation or slavery and which also believe that moral standards are grounded only in social custom?Governor John Hammond in 1853 wrote in Slavery is not a sin:
I think, then, I may safely conclude, and I firmly believe, that American Slavery is not only not a sin, but especially commanded by God through Moses, and approved by Christ through his apostles. And here I might close its defence; for what God ordains, and Christ sanctifies, should surely command the respect and toleration of man. But I fear there has grown up in our time a transcendental religion, which is throwing even transcendental philosophy into the shade--a religion too pure and elevated for the Bible; which seeks to erect among men a higher standard of morals than the Almighty has revealed, or our Saviour preached;Hammond's argument, as it proceeds, is exactly the opposite to yours. He defends slavery on the grounds of the purest moral abolutism, and claims that moral relativism will lead from that path.I suspect your view is somewhat less than highly valid, when it's counterexamples are expressed with such forceful clarity.

I notice you truncated my question. It was ...Can you point us to any cultures which practice genital mutilitation or slavery and which also believe that moral standards are grounded only in social custom?Giving examples of cultures which practice genital mutilation or slavery only covers the first clause, with which I imagine no reasonably well-informed person could disagree anyway. For now, I will give you the benefit of the doubt and regard it an oversight. I am still waiting for an example of a society where moral standards are grounded only in social custom and where these customs are practised.

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As well, where in my post did I say salvery was a sin?

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You didn't, nor did I suggest you had. You claimed that moral relativism makes it very convenient for some of the worlds cultures to practice slavery.My challenge was to show that this is not true. My quotation gave a counter example - moral relativism being claimed as an enemy of slavery and moral absolutism as a doctrine that made it convenient to practice the custom.

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Mr. P are you saying that you do in fact believe in God and are willing to use his word to justify certain things? If so, I must admit that your approach in this forum is sometimes confusing.

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I address each issue as it arises examples or counterexamples, and lines of reasoning as appropriate. I am not here to publish a personal credo, but I suspect its outlines may be discerned here and there.

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Please refrain from using these outdated examples and stay on topic.

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Outdated examples? You think an example from a phase of history which, to this very day, has deep social repercussions, is out of date?Off topic? How can it be off topic to attack your unsupported claims by providing disproving evidence? Or is it just off topic to disagree with you?

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"God said it was ok" doesn't cut it at the moment, and of course for you, if a non-believer, shouldn't at any time.

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I'm confused. Did you think I was quoting the odious Hammond in order to support him? You could hardly be more wrong.Follow this carefully ...You claimed that moral relativism made it convenient to practice slavery.I quoted Hammond to show that the opposite is true - that in a real society, really practising slavery, moral relativism was seen as inconvenient to slavery. It's opposite, moral absolutism, was held to support it.Got it?

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For the world to survive and societies to exist and intertwine in the centuries ahead, a global core set of values must be adopted.

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Why?
And who would be defining the global core set? You?

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The many abhoring, and some dangerous, customs of many societies practiced under the claim of "cultural variation", must come to a stop in our modern world.

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What are you talking about? What is practised under a claim of cultural variation?I would have thought slavery and genital mutilation, to take your favourite examples, were practised under a claim of cultural invariation. People often do these things because they believe they are sanctioned by a core set of values, generally God-given, frequently absolute. The last thing social traditionalists typically want is people coming in to their society from outside and creating a confusion of values.

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The choice to be a servant is an individuals right. Forcing someone to serve, or do anything, against their will or what is right, is wrong.

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Sounds very sensible. I wish more Christians agreed with you.

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Right is not always in the folkways. Long live ideal values.

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I have no idea what this means.

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You can use any example you want but the premise remains the same. Based on relativism in a society you cannot say that such things as slavery, apartheid, communism,imperialism,or killing baby girls is wrong. You cannot make judgements against societies.

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The trouble with this line of argument is, ironically, that moral relativism is rarely absolute. Many people have a strong morality of absolutes, and a much more relativistic view of issues which fall outwith those absolutes.On further examination those absolutes may themselves be subject to secondary qualifying relativistic judgements. For example, I may strongly object to killing new born children, but support the nuclear attacks on Hiroshima, but only support nuclear attacks in pursuance of a just war, and only define a just war in terms of ... yadayadayada ... we are back to moral relativism.Much moral relativism originates from the belief that such secondary qualifications are inevitable in any supposedly absolute moral code - and from the supposed observation that no society has actually managed to sustain an absolute moral code without such qualifications, and that such qualifications are themselves relativistic.For example, with the exception of a number of absolutist pacifists, most Christians hold a highly qualified view of the injunction of Jesus to resist no evil. The interpretation of what this means will typically be highly relativistic, based on social and cultural traditions amongst other things.There remains a third way which has been ignored here to an extent, which is the possibility of a meta-ethical stance. There are aspects of this in the Bible, of course, as in Jesus enunciation of the Golden Rule "Therefore all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them." Such meta-ethical positions, including Kant's categorical imperative, bridge the gap to a certain extent between moral relativism and moral absolutism.As for judging societies, I'm not sure how it could be done, except in informal chat, as societies are themselves complex, ever changing, emergent properties of the interactions of individuals.

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Would you accept the United States? We know that it, as a culture, practices genital mutilation, but I'm not sure if you would agree that it believes that moral standards are grounded only in social custom

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You may be right.The genital mutilation is typically carried out under the guise of an absolute imperative from God, but is tolerated by US society on the basis of relativism?Strange then that those who oppose circumcision are accused of moral relativism by those who support it ... http://www.jewishamerica.com/ja/features/AmEchad.cfmIt still seems that our friend has it totally the wrong way round: genital mutilation and slavery seem to thrive where society enforces a core set of values: moral relativism (thank God!) would appear to most conspicuous in its opposition to such practices.