Moral Relativism and Absolutism Revisited

Moral Relativism and Absolutism Revisited

When contrast is being drawn between the moral values of relativists and absolutists, absolutists take for themselves or, if the writer is a “neutral” party, are usually given a fatally problematic concession – a tacit, unexamined acceptance of their claim that, unlike relativists, they have an objective foundation for their values.

To the contrary, the claim of a theistic moral absolutist that there is a suprahuman lawgiver and that he or she has identified who this lawgiver is and how the lawgiver wants people to behave rests on a series of judgments about what constitutes the correct interpretation of the relevant text(s), a process that can scarcely be considered objective, as can be seen by placing “absolutely true” beliefs of one religious tradition alongside contradictory “absolutely true” beliefs of another (or even alongside contradictory beliefs held by the same religious tradition at different times, as with regard to Christian views of slavery or the appropriateness of putting the torch to “heretics”). The problem becomes especially acute when differing absolutists refer to the same texts. Contradictory moral absolutes can’t both be true, and the claim that one’s beliefs are more absolute than those of anyone else making a similar claim turns out, all too often, to rest on the question-begging conviction that God gave the claimant an infallible faculty of moral judgment that is nonfunctioning in anyone with conflicting views – a conviction for which objective evidence never seems to be given.

The nonreligious argument for absolutism has its own fatal flaws: it usually comes down to a claim that “everyone” believes in moral values X, Y, and Z, where  “everyone” turns out to be people the writer judges qualified to make moral judgments, who, not surprisingly, happen to be only those people who agree with the writer’s views. Such a claim to “universal” agreement also overlooks the vast range of views that actually exist across or within cultures, a variety that can’t be brushed away blithely by referring to this disagreement as a result of judgments by those “obviously” unqualified to make them. If this range of disagreement is acknowledged, the absolutist claim will be modified to say that although “everyone” agrees on the moral rules, people might disagree on how to apply them. It is misleading, however, to claim that two people share the same moral foundation simply because they both say that they believe in doing “good” and ignore what their behavior reveals about how they put into practice what might be a purely verbal concurrence. Similarly, rather than rely on broad statements that can easily obscure distinctions in behavior, one needs to look at a person’s actions in morally charged situations to decide whether his or her moral values really do reflect some supposedly “universal” agreement, and empirical examination in fact does reveal that different people do have different views on which behaviors are morally appropriate and which are not.

Clearly, being convinced that your values are objective doesn’t make them so, and absolutists shouldn’t be given a free pass on this. Before claiming or conceding that the absolutist can make universally valid moral statements and the relativist cannot, one needs to examine just what characterizes the statements of the absolutist that supposedly makes them objectively and universally valid. When one does, it turns out that a major difference between moral relativists and absolutists is that the latter, relying on their intuition or judgment about what is to them the obvious and unchallengeable rightness of their views, don’t realize that they’re actually a particularly self-deluded species of the former and therefore that their claim to have to a definitive objective standard against which to judge the moral views of others is unfounded.

            

Peter Kreeft. Refutation of the Refutation

A Refutation of Moral Relativism. Peter Kreeft. 1999. Ignatius Press, San Francisco.

Here are the arguments for moral relativism that Kreeft believes he demolishes: 1. Absolutism has bad consequences. 2. Different cultures have different values. 3. Values are socially conditioned. 4. Relativism gives people freedom. 5. Relativism is tolerant. 6. Morality is relative to changing situations. 7. Morality is relative to changing intentions. 8. Morality can be explained by evolution as a survival device.

As a moral relativist, even I find that not one of these is a worthwhile argument in favor of moral relativism, and thus “refuting” them is completely beside the point.

Kreeft either ignores or is ignorant of the core of the true relativist challenge: No one can provide objective support for a claim to have an absolute foundation for moral values. Kreeft certainly can’t. His argument in favor of absolutism rests primarily on what he calls the data of moral experience, which comes down to the claim that "Conscience immediately detects real right and wrong, just as your senses immediately detect real colors and shapes.” He believes that this proves that absolutism is “scientific” and empirically verified. He doesn't realize that two distinct propositions are involved. The following Proposition A is obviously true: Peter Kreeft believes he has a faculty—a conscience—that can immediately, absolutely, and objectively detect right and wrong. The following Proposition B is not necessarily true: Peter Kreeft has a faculty—a conscience—that can immediately, absolutely, and objectively detect right and wrong. The truth of Proposition A might be considered self-evident, even "scientific," if by that one means that it’s based on experience and evidence (if Kreeft says he has a particular belief, it's reasonable to acknowledge, lacking strong evidence to the contrary, that he does have that belief), but Kreeft never addresses why Proposition B should be considered true (i.e., that his belief is correct).

In other words, Kreeft believes that just as he can know that the sky is blue merely by opening his eyes, so too he can know whether any given moral proposition is true or false just by considering it and allowing his conscience to come to an unmediated instant perception of its rightness or wrongness. His claim that this ability to make judgments that he believes are absolute proves that absolutism is "scientific" shows what a poor guide he is to moral philosophy.

Kreeft's view seems to be that he and Christians like him with the proper interpretation of the revelation to Abraham and its subsequent revisions ("God [came] down to Abraham with the real religion") have a way of knowing when a moral position is objectively correct, but he fails to mention what guarantees the correctness of his organ of moral judgment, which leads me to assume that he knows his conscience is correct because his conscience tells him it’s correct.

Here’s an example of how Kreeft, who claims that his book offers “respectable logical arguments” from a “clear and very intelligent” viewpoint, in fact abuses language and logic. To defend the idea that changing situations “change how you should apply the rules, but they don’t change the rules,” he gives the example of lying to a Nazi searching for hidden Jews: “The Nazis had no right to know that truth” so it wasn’t wrong to “deceive” them. “Lying is always wrong, and that wasn’t wrong, so that wasn’t a lie.” To safeguard the absoluteness of the rule that says “Lying is always wrong,” Kreeft redefines “lying” from “the speaking of a falsehood” to “the speaking of a falsehood when it’s not permissible to do so,” and so the rule becomes “The speaking of a falsehood when it is not permissible to do so is wrong.” Besides the irony in a professed absolutist ignoring the common meaning of a word to suit his purpose—and in particular redefining “lie” in defense of a belief in absolute truth—this raises the problem of how we’re to judge, by objective standards, when “speaking a falsehood” is permissible and therefore not lying; otherwise, this rule is completely empty. If his semantic juggling is to be of any use, Kreeft’s needs to prove that he has objective standards for making such a judgment, and he fails to. In fact, Kreeft’s arguments in favor of absolutism are as follows:

1. Absolutism has better consequences.

The issue of whether relativism or absolutism has better consequences is irrelevant to the question of which view is correct, and, besides, it simply brings us back to the initial problem of deciding which moral framework to use in weighing what consequence in a given situation is “better.”

2. Common consensus: “nearly everyone who has ever lived has been a moral absolutist.”

He acknowledges that this is only a “probable,” not a conclusive argument. It’s hard to see what this could prove, even probably, even if were true. A majority vote doesn’t establish something as eternally valid.

3. Moral experience. “The first and foundational moral experience we have is always absolutistic. Only later do you get relativism—later in the life of the individual or of the society … we can all remember what moral experience was like before we became sophisticated. It was absolute.”

Children are told what they must and must not do; early societies ruled by priests and kings laid down the law and demanded obedience. What this proves is that people and societies are told that moral rules are absolute; it doesn’t prove that they actually are.

4. How we use moral language.

a. According to C. S. Lewis, we speak as though we believe that there are moral absolutes.

Even if it were true that “we” (and who are these “we”?) speak in this way, it wouldn’t prove that the things spoken of actually exist.

b. Kreeft follows Lewis in claiming that, in essence, all moral arguments are about how to apply, in particular situations, what everyone agrees are certain universal, objective, and unchanging principles.

In addition to the weakness already mentioned of basing conclusions about the actual nature of something on how "we" supposedly talk about it, this version of the assertion relies on an appeal to principles “everyone” supposedly agrees on. In fact, it turns out that by “everyone,” apologists like Kreeft and Lewis mean people with values close enough to theirs for those people to be considered morally competent or reasonable. What they’re really saying is, “Everyone agrees on what is right and wrong, except for people who disagree with me (e.g., relativists, fascists, feminists, fanatics of religions other than mine, sociopaths, mental incompetents, etc.), and such individuals or groups can be discounted because their views are obviously unacceptable to reasonable people like me,” which begs too many questions to support an argument for the existence of common principles.

That’s pretty much the substance of Kreeft’s “refutation.” He also throws in quite a bit of invective against people and principles he disagrees with, but he never addresses the following question: What are your objective, universal, and timeless reasons for claiming that your foundation for absolute values is true? This failure, taken in conjunction with the rest of Kreeft’s falsely triumphal performance, raises the question of just what qualifications are required to teach philosophy at Boston College.

Intelligent design. Comments and replies

Some comments and replies to the blog post Genesis and the Scandal of Jewish Indifference by David Klinghofer at

http://blog.beliefnet.com/kingdomofpriests/2009/10/genesis-and-the-scandal-of-jewish-indifference.html

I've not included exchanges in which I was not involved, and in the case of one respondent, I substituted initials for the complete name.

Philip Koplin

October 13, 2009 3:52 PM

The "rabbinic greats" could only make statements based on the science of their day, and so their judgments are irrelevant to the 20th- and 21st-century scientific evidence for a different view of life.

There is a distinction between design and meaning. A belief that one was not designed to serve a purpose assigned by a sentient designer does not logically imply that one cannot find meaning nonetheless. The believer in design might deny that the nonbeliever can actually do this, but if someone believes that he or she is leading a meaningful life, there is no objective standard by which the design advocate can reject the claim.

The supposed "truth ... that we live in a world bearing testimony to purposeful design" needs to take into account not just the existence of, say, the mammalian eye, but also that of neuroblastoma; not just the existence of, say, embryologic development, but also that of pediatric leukemia. Typically, those praising the wisdom of the Creator ignore, or concoct tortuous question-begging arguments to account for, the evidence that a Creator of this world could just as likely be called an ignorant, impotent, or wicked being as an all-knowing, all-powerful, or all-loving one.

…

Mark

October 14, 2009 8:26 AM

Philip Koplin wrote: "Typically, those praising the wisdom of the Creator ignore, or concoct tortuous question-begging arguments to account for, the evidence that a Creator of this world could just as likely be called an ignorant, impotent, or wicked being as an all-knowing, all-powerful, or all-loving one."

Philip obviously insists that whenever someone wants to call attention to the brilliance of the design in nature, he must also call attention to disease and tragedy. David, shame on you for not doing what Philip wants. (sarcasm). Meanwhile, Philip, why don't you name a few classical Jewish books that deal with the question of why there's suffering in the world, and fisk them for us?

…

Philip Koplin

October 14, 2009 10:42 AM

Mark

I was just pointing out that advocates of the Argument from Design need to take into consideration all of the evidence, not just those aspects of the world that seem to confirm what their holy books tell them the Creator must be like. An argument that ignores inconvenient evidence isn't likely to be very convincing.

The purpose of the Comments section is to respond to what David has written, not to post independent essays analyzing, for example, classical Jewish responses to suffering, (Anyone actually interested in exploring the subject rather than issuing inappropriate challenges to other commenters can look at Oliver Leaman, Evil and Suffering in Jewish Philosophy.)

I guess it's shame on me for not doing what you want.

…

Your Name

October 14, 2009 2:13 PM

Philip wrote: "I was just pointing out that advocates of the Argument from Design need to take into consideration all of the evidence, not just those aspects of the world that seem to confirm what their holy books tell them the Creator must be like. An argument that ignores inconvenient evidence isn't likely to be very convincing."

Ahh, if only evolutionists would truly absorb that last sentence.

Philip Koplin

October 14, 2009 3:30 PM

Your Name:

Evolutionists might not address the evidence in a way that you find agreeable, but that isn't the same as their ignoring it, in the way that David and Mark ignore childhood cancer in judging whether the world shows purposeful, brilliant design.

Mark

October 14, 2009 7:23 PM

"David and Mark ignore childhood cancer in judging whether the world shows purposeful, brilliant design."

Eh, because it is reasonable to.

Philip Koplin

October 14, 2009 11:18 PM

Mark. It's hard to tell from a few written words whether someone is being sarcastic or means to be taken seriously, so at the risk of seeming to miss your wit, I'll ask whether you can you expand a bit on why it's reasonable to exclude some of the evidence in trying to decide what the world tells us about a supposed creator, and how, in particular, childhood cancer is the result of brilliant design.

Mark

October 14, 2009 11:50 PM

Philip wrote: "why it's reasonable to exclude some of the evidence in trying to decide what the world tells us about a supposed creator and how, in particular, childhood cancer is the result of brilliant design."

Listen, if you woke up and found that breakfast in bed was waiting for you -- even better than Rachel Ray could make -- but unfortunately, the orange juice was sour, what would you conclude?

Based on the gist I'm getting from your words, you would say that the food was accidentally delivered to your bedroom, or that the person who made it for you didn't really love you. You'd focus on the spoiled juice so much that the rest of the breakfast would be meaningless.

Myself, I would conclude that the person did really love me, but made a mistake. -- But wait. I want to keep the analogy with design, so I would conclude that the person did really love me, but purposefully gave me the sour juice to teach me a lesson of some sort.

No, I don't mean to equate spoiled juice with cancer -- try not to focus on that.

Philip Koplin

October 15, 2009 12:26 AM

On your account, we would have to consider cancer a design brilliantly perfected to serve a particular purpose. And what would be the lesson that the loving Creator would be offering a child by gifting it with cancer?

Mark

October 15, 2009 1:29 PM

Philip, is your disbelief in a designer because you don't see any evidence of design, or because your focusing on the diseases won't let you acknowledge any purposeful design?

(And the answer to your last question is beyond me to know, but maybe there's a future world in which these questions can be answered.)

Philip Koplin

October 15, 2009 2:10 PM

Mark. Your postponement of an answer to my question to maybe a future world beyond presently available knowing is an acknowledgment that belief in purposeful design is based not on scientific data or empirical observation but on faith. This is not to say that faith is an illegimate means with which to try to understand the world, just that the need to invoke it to save the purposeful-design argument shows how ultimately insupportable that argument is.

Mark

October 15, 2009 4:28 PM

Your first sentence is wrong, Philip. Design speaks for itself. No need to look to future worlds for that. It's only the disease and suffering aspect of (parts of) design that might require future worlds. You keep stumbling on that.

Philip Koplin

October 15, 2009 6:07 PM

You claim that "design speaks for itself," yet you admit that there are significant aspects of the world for which you can find no purposeful design--in other words, lack of purposeful design also seems to "speak for itself." You say that maybe in possible future worlds we can find an answer to the evidence that rules out your hypothesis that the world--which means everything in it, not just the parts that you find acceptable--is purposely designed. If have to wait for the next world for an answer, then your argument that one can know by examining this world that it was purposively designed collapses completely.

Mark

October 15, 2009 9:35 PM

I disagree with your logic. All it takes is ONE thing that you and I together can identify in nature that is purposefully designed, and we conclude that there's a designer. The other stuff, diseases and other stuff that don't look all that particularly designed, is irrelevant.

Philip Koplin

October 16, 2009 11:22 AM

First, you and I have not agreed on anything that can only be accounted for by a sentient designer.

In contrast, you insist that the world was brilliantly designed—not just that there are things here and there that are purposely designed, but that the world as a whole is. Thus, logically, all it takes is one counterexample to challenge your claim, and there are many such examples. If you believe in an error-free creation, and I assume that's the sort of creation you ascribe to your brilliant "designer," then to say that pediatric cancer is irrelevant "stuff" is to deny evidence bearing on whether the design really is brilliant.

In fact, the sort of logic on which your belief rests doesn't start with a look at the world to see what kind of "designer" must have made it, but from your presupposition that there is a designer who is brilliant, from which you conclude that that the world must be. This position would logically require you to explain why the suffering of children is part of a "brilliant" design, but since you can't, you dismiss that suffering as irrelevant "stuff."

…

Your Name

October 19, 2009 9:14 AM

…The common criticism, as offered by others in response to your article, is that cancer, parasites, birth defects and similar problems imply a foolish or malevolent or nonexistent Designer. It seems to me that the very next consideration should be the also common idea that in the Designer's beautiful (even perhaps "error free") creation, SOMETHING HAS GONE WRONG. The Judeo-Christian concept involves a thing called "sin." Perhaps there are less religious ways to discuss it, but it surely should be considered along with those objections.

…

Philip Koplin

October 19, 2009 12:25 PM

If something goes wrong, the design wasn't error-free.

And you still have the problem that all of the universe and everything in it was designed, created, and sustained by the Creator, and that includes cancer and birth defects.

Mark

October 20, 2009 1:39 AM

And you still have the challenge to explain away millions of things in nature that bloody well look designed.

…

Philip Koplin

October 20, 2009 11:00 AM

Mark

You still don't understand the logic of your own position, so I'll remind you:

First, you and I have not agreed on anything that can only be accounted for by a sentient designer.

In contrast, you insist that the world was brilliantly designed—not just that there are things here and there that are purposely designed, but that the world as a whole is. Thus, logically, all it takes is one counterexample to challenge your claim, and there are many such examples. If you believe in an error-free creation, and I assume that's the sort of creation you ascribe to your brilliant "designer," then to say that pediatric cancer is irrelevant "stuff" is to deny evidence bearing on whether the design really is brilliant.

In fact, the sort of logic on which your belief rests doesn't start with a look at the world to see what kind of "designer" must have made it, but from your presupposition that there is a designer who is brilliant, from which you conclude that that the world must be. This position would logically require you to explain why the suffering of children is part of a "brilliant" design, but since you can't, you dismiss that suffering as irrelevant "stuff."

Mark

October 20, 2009 12:38 PM

"In contrast, you insist that the world was brilliantly designed—not just that there are things here and there that are purposely designed, but that the world as a whole is. "

Actually I never intended to portray this view.

"If you believe in an error-free creation, and I assume that's the sort of creation you ascribe to your brilliant "designer,"

You don't seem to understand that one can believe in an error-free creation, with the errors that one sees attributable to something else.

Again, you never acknowledged that every SINGLE time you see something that looks designed, you MUST be able to explain it away, or have faith in others who explain it away. If you're wrong just once...

Philip Koplin

October 20, 2009 1:27 PM

Yes, I believe that biological science can explain every single item of apparent sentient design in nature, and I don't see any scheme that invokes any creator god(s) that does a better job.

And here's another example of your curious logic: If the creation is error-free, how can there be errors, and how can those errors be due to "something else" other than the being who created everything in the universe? If you think that childhood diseases and birth defects aren't really errors, please explain.

DM

October 20, 2009 9:53 PM

"If something goes wrong, the design wasn't error-free."

That's a gratuitous assumption. Maybe you're wrong.

"Something went wrong" possibly because one or many individuals, created with the power of free will to choose their own actions, decided to rebel against the original design.

It's not an error that the possibility existed. Creatures could not freely associate with the Creator if they did not also have the freedom to rebel.

"you still have the problem that all of the universe

and everything in it was designed, created, and

sustained by the Creator, and that includes cancer

and birth defects."

Yes -- in spite of huge amounts of damage and abuse, the Creation still operates, but obviously with problems. There's a lot to be said about that, and about the possibility that things will eventually be fixed, and that the compensation for having to endure the problems now may be so extravagant as to make the problems pale into insignificance later.

I admit, though, that little of that is "science."

But what if it's correct?

…

Philip Koplin

October 20, 2009 11:49 PM

DM

How does free will relate to the existence of the cancer cells that ravage the body of a child, cancer cells that could not exist unless the Creator willed them into existence and sustained them?

You might hope that somehow such a child will be compensated for the suffering that it endured, but as you acknowledge, that is not science, but faith, and an odd sort of faith at that, since it's based on the infliction of pain on a child as part of an arrangement that the child was too young to morally undertake through the exercise of the free will that you invoke to justify the existence of the cancer.

Mark2

October 21, 2009 8:07 AM

"Yes, I believe that biological science can explain every single item of apparent sentient design in nature, and I don't see any scheme that invokes any creator god(s) that does a better job."

I admire your faith, Philip. It's much stronger than mine.

However, you're right in your implication that explaining suffering is harder for me than for you. I'll leave it like that, and would like to end this discussion with you.

DM

October 23, 2009 1:03 AM

… Philip,

I apologize if I gave the impression that all questions are answered in my theistic viewpoint.

But you overstate my position. I'll grant that the reator "sustains" or in some way allows to exist the problems in His creation, such as cancer cells, parasites, and etc. It was clear in my earlier message, though, that the Creator did not will those things into existence. They have been caused by other creatures working against the Creator's purposes, including, to some extent, you and I.

We all suffer as a result of living within this damaged creation, and experiencing the accumulated consequences of all our decisions. The Creator allows it. I try to understand it by analogy to a loving parent who wants more than anything to shield her child from any pain, but who also knows that it's important for the child to experience the consequences of wrong actions.

That's just an analogy. It does not explain everything, and it does not imply that the child in your example did something to deserve cancer. (Have you ever done something that caused harmful and undeserved consequences to someone else? All the regret in the world does not stop the consequences.)

You could name much worse than a child with cancer. I don't know why problems like that seem to continue for so long. Sometimes I think that the Creator could at least intervene to mitigate, to some extent, the worst of our suffering. But then it occurs to me that perhaps He does. I just don't know. I do believe that cancer and other scourges are bad things, and that it is good to try to remedy them as best I can, until the Creator provides a permanent remedy and extravagant compensation.

I wonder about the situation from your perspective. If I understand you correctly, you believe that undirected physical and chemical processes (i.e., surely not "biological science" alone) are sufficient to account for everything in nature, including ourselves. Then I wonder why you presume to challenge me with hard questions about cancer in children, as if that perceived injustice somehow speaks against the existence of a Creator.

Why does someone like you even care what happens to a child far enough away that it doesn't affect you in any significant way? There is no moral aspect to a few atoms interacting. Neither does a moral component result if it is billions of billions of atoms. It's just what they do.

According to your philosophy, there can be no "right" or "wrong," there is only what happens according to the physical laws of nature.

Your position claims there is no design in the world, that it's all the result of natural processes. Well, that leaves you also with only the illusion of morality. The most you can say about a situation is that you like it or you don't, for reasons that are ultimately just your own convenience.

To me, with a theistic viewpoint, the Creator's mind is the ultimate source and arbiter of moral rightness. Bad things really are "bad" and need to be remedied. In fact it is of moral signficance how I react to those things. But for you, with your naturalistic viewpoint, there can be no source of morality greater than the physical/chemical reactions that produced your own existence, and anything you label "bad" is just your accidental opinion, the result of the accumulated interactions of atoms in your brain.

I think we both have difficulty with issues involving evil and suffering in the world. I think a theistic worldview has fewer difficulties, and is consistent with what appears to be evidence of fantastic design in the created things all around us, even allowing for some things that don't seem so wonderful.

For the record, I do think you sincerely care about children with cancer, and a host of other problems we endure in this world. I just don't think that's consistent with your philosophy.

Thanks for your comments. They were challenging and I had to think a good bit to provide this response. I hope I've given you some things to consider in return.

Philip Koplin

October 23, 2009 2:09 PM

DM

First, I appreciate the civil tone of your comments, which is something it should be possible take for granted, but alas isn’t always the case.

Humans created baseballs, pallette knives, and electric pencil sharpeners, to name a few of my favorite things, but not the mammalian eye or retinoblastoma. If a creator brought the universe into existence out of nothing, then anything that exists that cannot be ascribed to the secondary creation by his creatures must be the direct result of his will and design. No creature designed and created the cells of pediatric cancer. No creature could sustain their being. If there is a creator, he did, and he does.

As arguments like yours often do, you move quickly from the existence of disastrous natural processes for which no human is responsible to “the accumulated consequences of all our decisions,” even though the latter are unrelated to the former. I chose pediatric cancer as an example because it is not the consequence of anyone’s wrong actions--the child’s or anyone else’s. If the world was designed, cancer is part of the design.

I can’t say much about the notion that there is “extravangant compensation” for such suffering, other than that it’s a nice hope for which there is no evidence, which I guess is a definition of faith, although, as I said, it's based on the infliction of pain on a child as part of an arrangement that the child was too young to morally undertake.

Whether I have consistent reasons to care about children with cancer is irrelevant to whether your beliefs about a creator are coherent.

Your claim that a belief in nothing but natural processes leaves only the illusion of morality can be directed equally at your belief that there is a creator and you can know his mind. After all, people believe in different creators and understand his mind differently. Your belief that you or your tradition has it figured out correctly rests on grounds that are as subjective as those you ascribe to me.

DM

October 23, 2009 8:38 PM

> "Your claim that a belief in nothing but natural processes

> leaves only the illusion of morality can be directed equally

> at your belief that there is a creator and you can know his

> mind. After all, people believe in different creators and

> understand his mind differently."

I don't think so. My theistic beliefs are supported by ancient writings in which people testified about their experience with the Creator. They are also in harmony with design that I perceive in abundance in the world. Granted that other cultures have had different experiences, and their beliefs about the Creator are different in some ways, yet there is also a profound commonality of morals among us all. Questions remain, to be sure, but there is a foundation and coherence to theistic belief. I don't think there is anything comparable in a belief system that assumes everything is due to the random interactions of unintelligent matter.

I think enough has been said now.

Thanks for the exchange, and have a good day.

Philip Koplin

October 24, 2009 2:01 AM

I assume that when you say "enough has been said," you mean that you're done, not that I shouldn't reply.

Many different traditions refer to the testimony of ancient writings. You offer no objective reason for believing that your tradition is right, stating only that there is basically “a theistic” position, as though there didn’t exist not only Jews, Christians, and Muslims, but also many subcategories within these groups, as well as other people who might be considered nondenominational theists. They accept different texts and testimonies, interpret them differently, and draw different conclusions about what constitutes appropriate belief and behavior appropriate to the moral life and salvation. Yet you claim that your tradition is founded on the right interpretation of the true testimonies and that every theist pretty much agrees with you not only on what issues are important, but also on what to believe with regard to them. So if theists actually do disagree on things like divorce, priestly celibacy, abortion, the use of contraceptives, capital punishment, or torture, these issues aren’t really important, and even if some theists say they are and have views on them that differ from yours, you know that those theists are referring to the wrong texts or misinterpreting them.

Your perceptions and judgments are as subjective as those of every believer who accepts a tradition different than yours. In addition, your judgment that all theists agree on what’s important and on how to evaluate those issues is your subjective opinion, and so is your judgment that your ancient testimonies are in harmony with your perception of design, which itself is subjective. Finally, your perception that your beliefs have a foundation and a coherence and mine do not is just that—your perception.

That’s quite a jumble of subjectivity.

The Moral Code That Dare Not Speak Its Name: Peter Berger, Relativist Malgré Lui

Some comments on a discussion entitled “Between Relativism and Fundamentalism: Is There a Middle Ground?” held Tuesday, March 4, 2008, in Washington, D.C. (available at http://pewforum.org/events/?EventID=172), in which the primary speakers were sociologist Peter Berger, conservative political pundit David Brooks, and historian of religion Seyyed Hossein Nasr.

1. Berger starts by noting that the project that underlies his comments deals “with the question of how, using resources from different strands of the Judeo-Christian tradition, one could define a position that avoids both extremes: a relativism in which all assertions of truth are deemed to be irrelevant or unattainable, and a fundamentalism in which an alleged truth is propounded in an attitude of aggressive intolerance.” First, let’s note for the record that there really is no “Judeo-Christian” tradition, only a Christian tradition that developed out of a mix of Hellenistic and Judaic traditions while appropriating some and repudiating other of their tenets, while persecuting and reviling the Jews in its midst; and an ongoing Jewish tradition, which Christians long remained unaware did not become fixed in amber but continued to develop over the next millenia.

That aside, the major problem with Berger’s statement is the claim that moral relativists deem “assertions of truth … irrelevant or unattainable.” If that were the case, there would be no reason for a moral relativist to make any assertion whatever about moral values, given that his foundational belief would deny the “truth” of anything he says. Clearly, moral relativists are not shy of making pronouncements about morality, so either they are self-contradictory fools or something else is going on that Berger and those who try to paint moral relativism into this corner are failing or refusing to grasp. What is in fact going on is that moral relativists do not deem “assertions of truth … irrelevant or unattainable,” but hold that truths about moral values are relative to given cultural systems, and that when, and only when, the implications of those systems are assented to by a given community are agreements about moral values possible (which is in fact the very position that Berger and the other speakers later affirm—hence the title of this post)

Berger then claims that “there are some moral judgments on which we are indeed certain” and asks what they are and where that certainty comes from. But first he makes some questionable comments that will skew the subsequent discussion. Both relativism and fundamentalism, he claims, “are rooted in the same distinctly modern phenomenon”—the undermining of the “closed communities in which human beings lived through most of history, communities in which there was a very high degree of consensus about the basic cognitive and normative definitions of reality. Such consensus brings about a situation in which these definitions have the status of taken-for-granted, self-evident truth.” In the modern world, “diversity has taken the place of consensus,” and “relativism can be described as a world view that not only acknowledges but celebrates the absence of consensus… The moral end result of this world view can be captured by imagining a television interview with a cannibal. ‘You believe that people should be cooked and eaten. I certainly don’t want to be judgmental, but the audience will be interested. Tell us more.’… This is not all that fictitious.” Actually, it is wholly fictitious—the setting up of a straw man to serve as the butt for Berger’s joke. A moral relativist might be interested in other worldviews, but the adoption of moral relativism does not necessarily entail abandoning the belief that there are situations in which it is morally correct, from the relativist’s perspective, to attempt to impose his or her views on others.

The main issue at this point is that Berger defines relativism and fundamentalism as modern phenomena, in spite of the fact that for most of its history Christianity could have been described in the terms he uses to characterize fundamentalism: “seeking to regain absolute certainty about every aspect of their world view. No doubt is permitted. Whoever disagrees is an enemy to be converted, shunned or, in the extreme case, removed.” The danger of fundamentalism is that it “threatens the basic moral order without which no society…can exist… because it balkanizes society into mutually hostile camps that cannot communicate with each other.” But what is one to make of the fact that once it acquired the power of enforcement, heretic-burning, crusading, and Jew-hounding Christianity lasted for more than 1000 years before reformist dissidents managed to break away and balkanization finally began?

According to Berger, relativism also threatens the basic moral order, in this case “because it makes morality a capricious game.” Again Berger caricatures moral relativists, who generally do not say that anything goes, so pick whatever values you want, but rather, we need to find a means of agreeing on a foundation for sharing moral judgments in the absence of a supposed “absolute” standard for which the moral absolutist never seems capable of offering objective evidence.

Berger finally comes to the issue of how to arrive at moral certainty. He argues that, for example, although in other times and places slavery was acceptable, at present it is not. Why? Because, “in the course of history, there emerges a perception of what it means to be human. That perception makes it impossible to accept slavery.” How does a changing perception make something that was previously possible now impossible? According to Berger, “this moral judgment … only requires an act of attention: ‘Look at this. It must not be.’” And that’s it—we acquire the certainty that something is immoral when we notice that our culture considers it immoral. Unfortunately, Berger leaves unexamined some truly interesting questions, such as, how and why do cultural views change, and how and why are they accepted by some but not all subgroups or individuals at some but not all times and places? In any event, this seems like a pretty good endorsement of the notion that moral values are tied to specific cultural systems.

2. In his initial remarks David Brooks seeks a “prudent way to approach truth that is neither relativistic nor fundamentalist.” He begins with “the secular, conservative stream of thought,” according to which the approach to truth is based on epistemological modesty (“the idea that we are very limited in knowing what we could know or will ever know”) and “the slowly accumulating wisdom of mankind.” He also refers to the results of cognitive scientists, according to which “most of cognition happens below awareness, …we’re highly social creatures formed in subconscious ways by the loops and social contagions and norms around us, and …we really learn emotionally more than rationally,” which, combined with the conservative tradition in political science, teaches “us to discount pure reason, … to be intuitively aware of the world around us, … [W]e should only be loyal to truths that have stood the test of time.” In other words, trust your intuition and adopt the values of your community. This again seems an adoption of moral relativism.

3. Seyyed Hossein Nasr, speaking as a “philosopher and theologian,” claims that “even relativism cannot evade the question of truth. Secondly, relativism itself is based on an absolutism, because if you say, ‘All things are relative,’ that statement itself is absolute.” One would have hoped that a tenured professor of philosphy could have avoided this sort of high school debating point. The discussion is about moral relativism. The moral relativist does not say, “All things are relative”—he or she points out the culturally grounded nature of moral values, which is a far more nuanced and non–self-contradictory position.

Nasr goes on to discuss the foundation for moral judgments. “First of all, I think all moral judgments require an act of faith. Secondly, they consider themselves to be certain because they are functioning within a certain world view.” For example, even though “George Washington … had slaves in Mount Vernon,” we are not entitled to say that he was not “a moral and upright person”—he had a different worldview. Although Nasr disavows the label, this seems to be nothing less than yet another presentation of moral relativism.

4. Berger returns to the question of the source of his moral certainty: “when it comes to morality, there are some things I’m absolutely certain of. Then the question was, where does this come from? … it’s not the result of a philosophical argument; it’s the result of perception….It seems to me the rock-bottom moral judgments we make are not theories or the result of theories, but are things we see, we perceive, both things that we feel we must do and things that we must never do.”

An audience member, Matthew Crawford, seeks clarification. “You talked earlier about a taken-for-granted horizon within which we perceive and make our way in the social world. Here [in the case of Huck Finn, discussed earlier by Berger] is a moment when the taken-for-granted horizon of opinions—somehow, he overcomes or finds a wormhole through it, and he apprehends this moral demand that goes against all of that. How does that work? How does [one have a] moral apprehension that isn’t simply replicating a horizon of opinions in the culture at large?”

Berger replies that “of course there’s a history to this. In that sense, it’s relative. If I were a person in classical antiquity, probably I would never question the acceptability of slavery. So in that sense, it’s relative. But once the perception occurs, which has a historical process behind it, I think it claims absoluteness. That’s the very interesting paradox here. Where does one allow doubt, and where does one decide, ‘I’m not going to doubt this at all?’ I don’t know how else to respond.” In other words, it just happens that something that at one moment seemed moral now seems immoral. But calling the new judgment “absolute” ignores an additional meaning of the word when used in this context: a moral value may be “absolute” in the sense that one holds it with complete certainty and that one believes it applies universally, and yet it may still need an objective foundation to be considered “absolute” in the sense of being true. If you can’t provide such a foundation, your value is still relative.

5. Berger returns to a contrast he made earlier between the doubts he has about his religious beliefs and his certainty on at least some moral issues: “ it seems to me that certain moral judgments – not all moral judgment, but certain moral judgments – are of a very different sort [than those on religion], and I think I know these things. It’s not that I believe them; I know them: not in the way I know this machinery is sitting here, or that I am in Washington, but I know it on a different level.” He again speaks of the “perception” that certain things are morally right or wrong but again fails to clarify the mechanism by which his manner of “knowing” differs from subjective, relativistic judgment. Later he states, “Once the perception is there, as a result of the historical process, I think it has implicit in it, necessarily, a claim to universal validity. If it was wrong to regard women as chattel in medieval China or whatever, it is wrong. If it is wrong today, it was wrong then, but people did not perceive it as such. …. In other words, these perceptions take time, sometimes over centuries, to develop.” It’s hard not to see in this process of cultural development that may extend over centuries a relativistic explanation for the development of a shared system of values, even one with an implicit claim to universal validity.

6. More issues are addressed in this discussion than my comments suggest, including the political effects, both positive and negative, that derive from some people’s conviction that their views are absolutely correct. And yet the antidote to the sort of fundamentalism that the participants decry lies in the direction that the very framing of the discussion forbids taking: toward the relativism that the participants condemn as being at the other dangerous extreme from fundamentalism but that in fact is encompassed by their descriptions of the culturally specific nature of moral decision making.

Feinstein's Tortured Fantasy

Senator Feinstein: "He will make his views very clear; ... once he has the
opportunity to do the evaluation he believes he needs on waterboarding, he will
be willing to come before the Judiciary Committee and express his views
comprehensively and definitively."

The reality: "Atty. Gen. Michael B. Mukasey ... left open the possibility
that ... waterboarding could be legal in certain cases.... But he declined to
provide a definitive opinion."

Relative Moral Absolutes

1. People who invoke absolute moral values in defense of their social views are usually too caught up in their rhetoric to pause and consider what their claims actually entail. In attacking same-sex marriage, for example, conservative columnist David Limbaugh refers to “absolute moral standards,” “traditional morality,” and “standards we instinctively know are beneficial, healthy and morally sound.”1 He seems to think that these standards coincide, and that it isn’t especially difficult for people to agree on what they are—or at least it isn’t difficult for people who agree with him to agree on what they are, because that’s clearly the “we” he’s calling on. What isn’t clear is what happens when “absolute,” “traditional,” and “instinctive” moral standards don’t coincide and people fail to agree.

Slavery violated the absolute moral standards of many nineteenth-century Americans but not the absolute values and traditional beliefs of many others. Still others, regardless of how they viewed slavery, upheld the absolute right of (white) people in slave states to follow their traditions, or, at the least, preferred not to challenge that right because of the higher priority they gave to keeping the nation intact. Presumably, each group could claim to know instinctively what was beneficial, healthy, and morally sound. The intent of this example isn’t to assert analogy between the issues of same-sex marriage and slavery, but to point to a problem both raise: What happens when the moral views that one person or group claim are absolute conflict with the moral views that another person or group claim are absolute?

There is a connection, nonetheless, between the legacy of slavery and the current debate on marriage. Until the Supreme Court ruled such laws unconstitutional in 1967, one third of the states restricted marriage to couples of the same race. The judge in the case brought before the Court had a belief that was both traditional and absolute, and also no doubt seemed to him to be instinctively sound: God placed the races on separate continents, intending them not to mix. Curiously, defenders of “traditional” marriage have yet to propose allowing states to reintroduce laws against racial mixing.

2. The apologist for moral absolutes generally starts by outlining the supposed damaging social effects of “moral relativism,” claiming that without absolute standards of right and wrong, that is, standards that are universal and objective, there would be no way to justify or condemn one course of behavior compared to another, and everything would be permitted. The problems begin when we try to determine what such an apologist might consider an absolute standard of right and wrong. Two favorite examples of what happens when societies supposedly abandon absolute standards of conduct are Nazi Germany and Communist Russia. In fact, these were among the most repressively murderous societies in history precisely because they did have absolute standards, which they enforced with absolute finality. The fact that conservative moralists consider Nazi and Communist ideologies illegitimate shows that by “absolute” they mean a particular kind of absolute and by “standards” they mean standards they approve. Apparently some absolutes are more absolute than others.

The main targets of conservative moralists, however, aren’t totalitarian ideologues or even people whose absolute religious values conflict with their own, but people who argue against the existence of an objective foundation for any universal moral values. To conservatives, these are the people whose ideas imperil the social order, by supposedly giving license to every form of behavior regardless of consequence. One aspect of this argument is that moral relativists have no way to judge or oppose actions and beliefs that are clearly immoral. However, phrases like “clearly immoral” already presuppose that there are moral absolutes; in other words, the claim comes down to asserting that moral relativism is false because it contradicts the assumption that absolutism is correct. Such apologists seem to have the bizarre notion that this is a logical proof of their position. In any event, even if it were possible more carefully and plausibly to frame the argument that moral relativism has “bad” consequences, it would still be irrelevant to the question of whether absolute values exist other than as arguably useful fictions.

Some claim that because moral relativists believe in the truth of what they’re saying, they show themselves to be absolutists with regard to the possibility of speaking the truth, which means they contradict themselves when they say that everything is relative; or that in saying everything is relative, they undermine their claim to be saying something that is universally true. In fact, as will be shown, although these arguments have the virtue of allowing a triumphant conclusion to the supposed demolition of the moral relativist position, they have the unfortunate drawback of being based on a hasty misreading of what that position actually is.

The absolutist may begin the defense of his views by noting, quite aptly, that competing beliefs don’t necessarily cancel each other out; after all, one of them (the apologist’s of course) could be exclusively true. Although the observation is just, it’s of no relevance because the focus of the argument against moral absolutes isn’t simply the existence of competing claims, but the absence of objective standards for determining whether absolute values actually do exist and whose claim to have identified them, if anyone’s, is true. The absolutist typically pays inadequate if any attention to this issue, and instead attributes such weak arguments to his fictitious opponent that their supposed refutation has no bearing on this central point; makes some assertions about what “everyone” believes and what that supposed consensus implies; adds some remarks on the natural or supernatural basis of morality, in the latter case bringing in God to clinch the argument; and considers the matter done. It isn’t.

3. Consider the following remarks by David Klinghoffer:

We know what's right because God or his earthly agents inform us through objective revelation or tradition. … A believer in objective morality accepts the right of established religious tradition—as revealed in a book (the Bible, the Talmud or the Koran) or in the decision of an ordained religious hierarchy—to define right and wrong.2

Who is Klinghoffer’s “we”? He’s an Orthodox Jew; his political hero, George Bush, a born-again Christian; and Bush codependent Osama bin Laden, a radical Muslim. How does accepting the right of their differing religions to define right and wrong lead to an objective moral code? Klinghoffer seems to think that a revelation or a decision is objective if a person or a tradition that claims to have the right to so declare it so declares it. Coming from a self-proclaimed believer in objective morality, this seems like a remarkably emphatic and confused embrace of moral relativism.

Even people more coherent than David Klinghoffer can believe that following God’s commands is doing good and behaving morally. However, is following God’s commands being moral or just doing what an all-powerful ruler wants us to do? Do we have to assent in a way that distinguishes being moral from merely being obedient? One answer is that God is perfect, perfection entails goodness, and God’s goodness entails providing humanity the guidance it needs to participate in that goodness. Moral behavior, then, is acting in accord with God’s wishes not out of hope for reward or fear of punishment, but because our love for God makes us want to conform our will to God’s. Such assertions raise additional questions, not the least of which concerns why a God of perfect goodness (or an “Intelligent Designer,” unless with malicious intent) created a world marked by pain (theists such as C. S. Lewis confronting “the problem of pain”3 typically shift the argument to evil and its relation to free will; it’s easier to rationalize a God who creates people who bring harm to themselves and others, or who suffer for the sake of their spiritual improvement, than a God without whose power and will pediatric cancers, for example, could neither come into nor persist in being). Fortunately, we don’t have to deal with such questions here. Even if we accept, for the sake of argument, that behavior is moral when it follows God’s word, enough problems remain to preclude any attempt to base absolute values on this assertion.

4. As suggested earlier, one problem is, which God? Religious absolutists typically proceed as if the answer is so self-evident that there’s no need to even raise the question—their God. For those who don’t share their beliefs, the issue isn’t so simple. The forgiving yet unforgiving God of born-agains like George Bush welcomes repentant Nazi murderers to heaven but allows Jews who died in death camps to languish eternally in hell. The God of the murdered Jews has a different scheme of reward and punishment, which in turn differs from that of the God of Osama bin Laden. Which of these (or some other religion’s) Gods is the true fount of absolute moral values?

Even if we confine ourselves to one religion, say, Christianity, how do we determine God’s views on, for example, divorce, priestly celibacy, and whether marriage is a sacrament, issues that go to the heart of the Christian view of marriage? Christians who dispute these and other matters claim to have divinely inspired texts that describe the intent of their founder, but they don’t agree on what those texts mean. Even the creeds within the different Christian traditions derive from often-rancorous arguments over doctrine, although each tradition downplays those struggles and asserts that its beliefs, and not those of the so-called schismatics and heretics who disagree with it, are true and eternal. According to what objective standard should we accept the claim by one tradition that the stories selected and interpreted by its rules confirm its miracles, prophecies, and reading of history, and thus validate its view of God and God’s commands, whereas the stories and interpretations that others cite in support of their views are false and misleading?

5. Believers often claim that God provides humanity an inner light to aid in discerning truth, although to account for the existence of error, they acknowledge that such lights can be clouded or work improperly. However, to confirm that an inner light is not working improperly, we have to weigh its judgment against what is in fact the truth; if we need an external standard to determine what is in fact the truth, we’re back where we started. Some apologists, on the other hand, don’t think we need an external standard. Here is Peter Kreeft: “Conscience immediately detects real right and wrong, just as your senses immediately detect real colors and shapes.” This “shows that absolutism is scientific. It’s true to the data, the experience.” These “immediate good-and-evil detectors—consciences” come from God. 4 Similarly, according to Francis J. Beckwith and Gregory Koukl, we discover the "objective" truths of absolute morality by intuition, which is “a foundational way of knowing that does not depend on following a series of facts or a line of reasoning” but uncovers truth “by the process of introspection and immediate awareness." These truths are “obvious upon consideration.” 5

If that’s the case, one might ask why some people can’t see the truth. Presumably because they're being driven by inappropriate desires or confused by false teachings. Thus, individuals who disagree with Kreeft or Beckwith and Koukl aren’t hearing clearly the voice of conscience, or are hearing it but are lying about what it tells them and are letting other factors dictate their actions. How does one know objectively that the claims of such people are false? Because, in the words of Beckwith and Koukl, "They have something wrong with them."

What this shows is not that absolutism is scientific or objective, but that people who argue like this believe that their conscience or intuition judges correctly because God stands behind it; and they know that this is so because their tradition tells them it is; and they believe that their tradition is true because, well, their tradition is true. And round and round, with nothing on which to rest this smug, self-reinforcing circle of belief.

In particular, such religionists confuse the degree of certainty with which they hold a belief with how objectively true it must be, as if anything they believe in absolutely is therefore absolutely true. Such a claim rests on the assertion that God does not allow those who love him to be deceived. But what if one loves the wrong God, and the true God does allow the mistaken believer to be deceived (or, God forbid, there is no God at all)? Such a believer would be convinced that he was one of the elect that God would not allow to be deceived, but he would be wrong, and the peace or joy he feels on having found the truth wouldn’t just be irrelevant to whether in fact it was the truth, it also could be an especially deft bit of demonic misdirection: The believer would have been deluded into believing he could not be deluded.

Thus, the general assertion by most believers about why they think their values are absolute usually comes down to the following form: My values are absolute because they rest on a truth that I know is absolute because a text/tradition tells me so, and I know that that text/tradition is absolutely true because it tells me that the strength of my faith in it guarantees the truth of what it tells me.

Unfortunately, having an absolute conviction that one is doing God’s work doesn’t guarantee conduct that even those of the same religion would necessarily approve. As examples, it would be difficult to imagine a more vivid testimony to the strength of one’s faith in Allah than to board a bus and detonate a bomb attached to one’s chest; many a Christian has answered a divine call to kill Jews for their disrespect of the Savior; and many a devout Jew has shown a willingness to punish transgressors of God’s sacred geography. Are all of these to be taken as expressions of God’s absolute moral goodness? A tender conscience might consider an “unacceptable” act carried out in the name of an absolute religious belief a violation of that religion’s “true” nature, but by what objective standard does one decide what acts are “unacceptable,” and, in any event, how does one determine the “true” nature of a religion if not by observing what its followers say and do? Some who call themselves Christians, for example, might claim that others who speak in its name betray “true” Christianity; rather than try to decide who holds the key to the kingdom of absolutes, it seems fair to view Christianity as a broad family encompassing sometimes ambiguous teachings, even if, to some of its followers, religion is literally nothing if not certain. The same attitudes hold, of course, in other religions. Claims of certainty have led religionists to murder not just those of other faiths, but also those of nominally the same faith over points of doctrine about which the combatants were equally convinced that God had given them exclusive and absolute understanding.

There are also instances in which “absolute” moral truths seem to have changed, unless the Catholic Church still finds it morally acceptable to deal with dissenters by setting them on fire. If the truth is always there but sometimes needs to be “unfolded,” how can one be sure that what a religious tradition holds at a given time has reached fruition and isn’t on its way to some further, as-yet-unrevealed elaboration or supposed rediscovery of God’s true intent?

Thus, an individual’s religious judgment is fallible and subject to deluded self-certainty (as disputatious believers are apt to point out to one another), and religious tradition is but a collection of individual judgments reinforced by institutional self-interest (as warring traditions are apt to point out to one another). Neither can provide the objective foundation absolutists claim for their values.

6. It’s sometimes asserted that all people acknowledge the distinction between doing good and doing evil, an awareness presumed to derive from participation in the divine law that directs the just ordering of the world. Even secularists might refer to a “right reason” acting in accord with nature or to the existence of a “universal” set of moral sentiments. However, there’s neither need nor reason to assume any such faculty or innate moral toolbox. As conscious and not merely instinctive agents, humans have to choose among alternative possible behaviors; cultures drape a particular realm of behavior with the aura of “morality,” labeling preferred choices “good” and disfavored ones “evil.” Thus, what “all people acknowledge” is that when a certain type of behavior is looked on favorably, it’s described by the word “good.” The type of behavior meant by “good” may differ, however, depending on the moral framework, and people with differing views aren’t agreeing just because they characterize their conflicting preferences by the same word, they’re merely showing that they understand the significance of applying words like “good” to their actions. If this ability to dichotomize behaviors and valorize one set is all that’s meant by a moral sense, it signifies little at best, and at worst represents nothing more than the ability to parrot the rhetorical cover one’s culture uses for its preferences.

Moreover, persons who claim there are things that all people find right or wrong based on an innate moral sense or natural reason mean by “all people” those with values close enough to theirs to be considered morally competent or reasonable. People with “aberrant” values are labeled sociopathic or irrational, and therefore ineligible to speak on moral issues, rather than taken as counterexamples that disprove the claim of universality. Saying “everyone agrees on what is right and wrong except for people who disagree with me, and they can be discounted because their views are clearly unacceptable” is hardly a convincing move in an argument for the existence of an innate moral sense or common values. It’s akin to declaring your candidate a unanimous victor after deciding not to count any votes for his opponent. It’s true we can speak of humans as having, for example, an innate capacity for language even though that ability might be defective in some members of the species. Any analogous argument about an innate moral sense, however, falsely assumes that we can identify objectively, and not just because it agrees with our beliefs, a conscience that is properly functioning. Another strategy taken by those who claim to find universal values is to simply ignore what “universal” means. Reportedly, 89% of respondents gave a similar response to an Internet-based morals test, leading the Harvard cognitive scientists who constructed the test to claim that this shows that the “moral instinct” is apparently universal.6 If 89% of respondents had brown eyes, one wonders if these researchers would conclude that brown eyes is a universal trait, based on the notion that people whose eyes were not brown were aberrations who could be safely ignored.

What humans have is not an innate or divinely infused capacity to distinguish what is objectively and universally “good” from what is objectively and universally “evil,” but an ability to internalize behavioral rules, anoint a socially valued class of them “moral,” and call their preferences “good.” Even if one insisted on calling a “moral sense” the propensity to construct and follow rules that label certain forms of behavior “good” and others “evil,” the individual and cultural differences in those rules and in how to apply the words “good” and “evil” render this supposed faculty useless as a means of underwriting supposed universal values.

7. Consider an observation of the sort often cited as proof that everyone has at least the same core moral beliefs: Supposedly, everyone condemns the killing of an innocent person (leaving aside the difficult moral calculus relating to “collateral damage” and the targeting of civilians in warfare). However, not merely have many cultures sanctioned the killing of certain categories of their newborn, but the killing of children has also been urged as a particular necessity by proponents of genocide from the vengeful God of the Bible to agents of ethnic cleansing in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. One could claim that even people who commit genocide accept the universal moral rule against killing the innocent and don’t really violate it because they consider none of their victims innocent, not even the children they kill, who, after all, are of the race or ethnic group they consider malignant and worthy of extermination. It isn’t likely, however, that everyone will find it acceptable for people to kill children as long as they first declare them to be not innocent. To forestall such an interpretation and make the rule acceptable to those who don’t want it to sanction the killing of children, it would need to be restated to include conditions either exempting children or stating what it means for someone to be innocent, for example, “Don’t kill the innocent, a category that always includes children.” Proponents of genocide, however, wouldn’t agree to the rule as understood in these terms, and opponents of genocide wouldn’t accept it otherwise. Thus, the rule not to kill the innocent can be called universal only if it’s allowed to mean different things to different people, or if some people are disqualified from having the right to have an opinion about it; both options contradict what we mean by a universal rule.

Other problems attend a rule sometimes claimed to be at the basis of “all” ethical systems, “treat others as you would have them treat you.” If I were accused of a crime, for example, I’d rather have the charge dismissed than risk even a “fair” trial. Am I morally obligated to offer every accused person that choice? In addition, what objective guide does this rule or the rule to love your neighbor as yourself give on issues such as war and abortion? The injunction to treat others as you would be treated or with the love you have for yourself would hinge morality on the preferences and psychological makeup of every individual and lead to conflicting choices unless there was a preexisting consensus on the “best” preference, which brings us back to the problem of objectively finding such a consensus.

Another type of argument put forward in the attempt to establish universal values rests on the observation that there are things to which everyone objects, such as being beaten or being robbed. This might show that people are averse to suffering, but establishes nothing about whether, under what circumstances, and to what degree they find it acceptable to inflict it on others.

8. Even what seems to be a clear moral directive can be problematic. For example, “Thou shall not kill” is generally taken to mean “Thou shall not murder,” that is, “kill illegitimately.” The disagreement over how to apply this to capital punishment or abortion, for example, isn’t over whether or how to apply something about which everyone agrees to a particular circumstance. It isn’t a meaningful statement and can’t be agreed or disagreed on until all the words that make it up are mutually understood. To determine what it actually directs us to do, or not do, we have to know what sort of killing is illegitimate, which it doesn’t tell us. If different people have different exemplars pointing to what it means to “kill illegitimately,” that is, of the types of actions being forbidden, then their understanding of what this statement says differs, and it isn’t universally agreed on. The fact that we can agree on the dictionary definitions of “kill” and “illegitimately” doesn’t mean that we agree on what the phrase “kill illegitimately” points to in real-world situations, and referring to further and further dictionary synonyms won’t help. We need concrete examples that will help us to form a picture of what the rule is getting at. But how does one objectively justify a claim to know with absolute certainty whether capital punishment or abortion is always “illegitimate” killing, and is therefore equivalent to murder and is impermissible, or may under certain circumstances be considered “legitimate” killing, and is therefore permissible? To leave the phrase “kill illegitimately” without amplification reduces the rule to the wholly vacuous “Thou shall not do what is impermissible.” To allow everyone to decide what constitutes “illegitimate” according to his or her beliefs and criteria renders the rule subjective and local. To claim that your choices are the ones that should be applied universally begs the question. In fact, to make the statement into a moral rule we need a moral context by which to understand it, and so again we face the issue of how to find an objective standard by which to choose such a context.

Morality doesn’t come in the form of nuggets of objective reality that we discover independent of our systems of belief and then insert into slots labeled “moral values.” It doesn’t exist prior to or outside of those systems. In particular, moral rules are guides to behavior, and their meaning lies in what they direct us to do. Consider the directive to “value life.” This current shibboleth is of little use as a moral imperative until a system of belief invests it with sufficient meaning that it becomes a concrete guide to conduct instead of just a vacuous piety. To the pope, to “value life” in the context of the AIDS crisis means, among other things, opposing the use of condoms to fight the spread of AIDS, whereas to an anti-AIDS activist, it means supporting their use. The statement “value life” only becomes a moral directive when a system of belief casts it as a guide to conduct—in this case, when two systems cast it as two conflicting guides to conduct. One might still claim that what we have in this case is one universal rule with two interpretations. If the cost of making a rule absolute is to make it so vague that everyone can accept it because everyone can construe it to mean whatever he or she wishes (so that “value life” can mean support/oppose abortion, capital punishment, stem cell research, etc.), then it isn’t so much absolutely valid as absolutely useless.

The truth of any claim that in spite of their disagreements, all traditions and all people agree on certain core values thus depends on what one includes under “all” and “core.”
It isn’t surprising or especially useful that people who construct a list of acceptable traditions and then strip away what they consider inessential or incorrect in the beliefs of others find that everyone’s values confirm theirs. In any event, the appeal to a supposed consensus relies on what might be called the “Tinker Bell” argument that something becomes objective when enough people believe in it strongly enough. If that were the case, moral rules could change when enough people (or at least enough people with supposedly certified moral expertise) changed their minds about them, which is hardly a defense of absolute values.

9. An objection to moral relativism that seems to follow in particular from the writings of C. S. Lewis is that we speak and act as though we believe there are moral absolutes. Even if this were true, it wouldn’t prove that there really are such things. But is it even true? Lewis’s remarks in Mere Christianity7 are often invoked in support of the view that the actual behavior of relativists refutes, or at the least contradicts, their professed beliefs:

Whenever you find a man who says he does not believe in a real Right and Wrong, you will find the same man going back on this a moment later. He may break his promise to you, but if you try breaking one to him he will be complaining ‘It’s not fair’ before you can say Jack Robinson.

How realistic is Lewis’s fictional description of how every promise-breaking relativist behaves when someone breaks a promise to him? In real life, a person who complains about a promise being broken to him isn’t necessarily basing his complaint on a belief that misleading people is morally wrong; it’s more likely that he doesn’t like being misled because it causes him a psychological or physical harm, and being harmed is unpleasant or worse. By having this imaginary person say, “It’s not fair,” Lewis is trying to lead the reader to conclude that the reason for the fictional complaint about being lied to is moral outrage, when it’s at least possible, and may even be likelier, that in the real world such a complaint would be based on the discomfort of suffering a personal insult or injury. Thus, in real life, a complainer needn’t be revealing—or contradicting—anything about his moral beliefs. In addition, any attempt to use the fact that he doesn’t like to suffer to claim that he’s revealed his actual moral beliefs, relativist or otherwise, is illegitimate because his avowed aversion to his own suffering says nothing about his attitude toward whether and under what conditions he finds it acceptable that suffering be inflicted on others. In any event, even if someone’s behavior contradicts his expressed beliefs about moral values, this doesn’t mean his beliefs are necessarily false; it might just be difficult or inconvenient for him to put them into practice. That doesn’t mean he hasn’t identified something true. The failure of a person to live up to his beliefs doesn’t mean those beliefs are false, something for which the religious apologist should be thankful.

Lewis continues:
A nation may say treaties don’t matter; but then, next minute they spoil their case by saying that the particular treaty they wanted to break was an unfair one. But if treaties do not matter, and if there is no such thing as Right and Wrong—in other words, if there is no Law of Nature—what is the difference between a fair treaty and an unfair one? Have they not let the cat out of the bag and shown that, whatever they say, they really know the Law of Nature (absolute standards of right and wrong) just like anyone else.

The phrase “just like anyone else” is a deft touch, with the implication that in the realm of morals, there is of course a basic truth—“the Law of Nature”—on which all reasonable people agree, reasonable people being, of course, people who agree with C. S. Lewis.

A nation is trying to get out of a treaty; first it says treaties don’t matter, and then it says a particular treaty is unfair. The political point it’s trying to make is that no treaty is binding, and even if it this one were, it’s so unfair that breaking it is justified. The latter contention would seem to be bolstering, not spoiling the argument.

Lewis’s triumphant sense that he’s caught his imaginary opponent in a trap is based on two assertions:

a. Anyone who says that treaties don’t matter is equivalently saying there is no such thing as absolute Right and Wrong.
b. Anyone who claims something is unfair “really knows” there is such a thing as absolute Right and Wrong.

Neither proposition is true.

a. Someone who denies the binding nature of treaties can be acting from an attitude akin to the classic Bolshevik belief that a treaty with an Imperialist nation is not binding because any gain deriving from the expediency of such a treaty can be set aside whenever broader ideological interests (i.e., interests based on the principles of a totalizing ideology of which one is absolutely convinced) make it preferable to do so. Thus, such a person, in saying treaties don’t matter, is saying this precisely because he does believe that there is such a thing as an absolute Right and Wrong, one that excuses breaking treaties with an enemy. One might contest the truth of such a person’s ideology, but one can’t deny that he believes there is an absolute Right and Wrong and is basing his actions on it; to say his Right and Wrong aren’t the “right” Right and Wrong begs the question. In particular, note the ambiguity in Lewis’s characterization of the Law of Nature: Does the Law merely say that there are “absolute standards of right and wrong” or does it say what those standards are? If the latter, whose standards constitute the true Law? Elsewhere, Lewis characterizes the Law of Nature as “the human idea of decent behavior,” something that is “obvious to anyone.” As usual, Lewis’s claims turn out to be stunningly vacuous and grounded on little more than his pleased discovery that his values are universally shared by people who agree with him.

b. A nation that claims a treaty is unfair is saying that it believes it’s giving more than it’s getting, but that, for political, economic, or military reasons, it may feel that it has to sign the treaty anyway. Its claim of unfairness can be based wholly on national self-interest and not on an appeal to a supposed universal standard of justice. Similarly, as noted earlier, people demanding to be treated “fairly” can be (and in real life probably mostly are) speaking out of a sense of personal entitlement rather than a sense that a universal moral rule has been broken. In addition, in both cases, it’s possible that someone who complains about being wronged doesn’t believe in absolute values at all, but is trying to gain a strategic advantage by exploiting his opponent’s (or their mutual audience’s) presumed belief in them. Thus, a complaint about not being treated fairly doesn’t mean the complainer “really knows” there are absolutes, it can mean simply that he knows other people think there are.

10. A general objection to the foregoing discussion might run as follows. You deny absolute criteria for making moral judgments; isn’t that a moral judgment, and therefore self-contradictory? Moreover, you haven’t presented the basis for your moral values; isn’t that relevant to the truth of your argument? The answer to both questions is no, because people who claim to have an absolute foundation for their moral rules aren’t making a moral claim; they’re making a claim about what can be known. Moral absolutists claim that they know with absolute certainty the dictates of God or the “universal” consent of that portion of humanity they feel is qualified to speak on moral issues. In rejecting that claim I’m not making a moral judgment, nor am I saying that I have an objective ground from which to refute someone else’s values. I’m making a judgment about the possibility of anyone objectively having such knowledge or being able to decide who else is eligible to have it. For example, a person may say he knows with absolute certainty how society should treat someone convicted of murder; another person may deny that anyone has an objective basis for such a claim. Their argument is about the claim of certainty, not about the moral status of capital punishment, about which they might even, based on their own moral viewpoints, agree.

To put it another way: “no statement is absolutely true” is a statement, and thus applies to itself, and so can be held to be self-contradictory; but “no moral rule is absolute” isn’t a moral rule—it doesn’t tell us how we ought to behave, it’s a claim about the possibility of having a particular kind of knowledge—and so it doesn’t apply to itself; thus, it is not self-contradictory. Calling it a “meta-moral” rule—a rule about moral rules—doesn’t make it a moral rule. One could claim that believing or teaching that “no moral rule is absolute” is immoral because it leads or can lead to behavior that even the relativist, whatever his or her system of moral beliefs, would consider immoral; however, whereas this might mean that relativism risks having to confront actions or beliefs that it finds objectionable but can’t objectively and universally refute—although it can, from within its own system, object to them—it doesn’t make it self-contradictory. What is at issue is not merely whether it is logically possible that absolute values exist, but whether we can with absolute certainty know that they in fact do and identify them, and know with equal certainty the rules for putting them into practice.

11. One might continue the objection by asking, How can you can make a judgment about the possibility of objective knowledge if, as you claim, there are no absolutes? After all, if everything is relative, so is your claim, and it can’t be taken as an absolute refutation of anything, including the existence of absolutes. The present claim, however, is that there are no moral absolutes, not that it’s impossible to judge the truth of any statement. If someone claimed to be “a married bachelor,” it would be enough to point to accepted definitions and the rules of logic to show that, in the context of those definitions and rules, he was talking nonsense. He could reply that he defined “bachelor” to mean “someone who may or may not be married” or followed a logic in which a statement and its contradiction were simultaneously true. In that case he would be outside the framework of language and logic shared by our community, and none of his conclusions would be worth our taking seriously (unless he was speaking in a humorous or ironic sense, in which case the context presumably would allow us to translate his remarks into something in accord with our usual rules of understanding). Those who use claims about absolute values to support their conservative social views do expect to be taken seriously, and so their arguments fall under the rules of meaning and reasoned discussion of the Western tradition, a tradition they in particular place above any other. Thus, to challenge their arguments doesn’t require appealing to the kind of universal and objective standard beyond all local cultural determinants they falsely claim to have, but rather to the sense in which our shared community understands words and constructs meaning. Based on those standards, it’s legitimate to say there is no objective basis for the claim of conservatives or anyone else that their moral values rest on an absolute foundation.

12. People who attack moral relativism should examine the soundness of their houses before throwing stones. It isn’t enough for them to say that their rules are absolute because they come from God or some supposed general consent of humanity. They need to show the objective means by which they supposedly discovered that absolute standards existed, what those absolute standards were, and the framework of understanding that turns those supposed rules from abstract pieties into guides to real-world conduct. Notwithstanding their loud declamations, they have no such means or standards, and their values are absolute only in the limited sense that they believe in them firmly and believe they apply to everyone. In fact, their moral values are no more objective and universal than those of anyone else.

1. David Limbaugh, Homosexual Marriage: A Slippery Slope? (May 28, 2004). Retrieved October 6, 2005, from http://www.davidlimbaugh.com/052804.htm
2. David Klinghoffer, What We Bush Voters Share: In God We Trust, Los Angeles Times, November 8, 2004.
3. C. S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain. New York: Macmillan, 1962.
4. Peter Kreeft, A Refutation of Moral Relativism: Interviews With an Absolutist. Ft. Collins, CO: Ignatius Press, 1999.
5. Francis J. Beckwith and Gregory Koukl, Relativism: Feet Firmly Planted in Mid-Air, Baker Books, 1998.
6. Rebecca Saxe, Do the Right Thing: Cognitive Science’s Search for a Common Morality. Boston Review September/October 2005. Available at http://www.bostonreview.net/BR30.5/saxe.html
7. C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, San Francisco: Harper, 2001.