Moral Absolutes: Clarence Thomas et al.

From time to time I’ll be looking at various sites that discuss moral absolutes. Here are the three at the top of Google today.

1. The first is a brief eight-year-old posting from the Apologetics Toolkit (http://www.columbia.edu/cu/augustine/a/moral_law.html) entitled Are There Moral Absolutes? It’s more a set of talking points than an extended argument.

The assertions are familiar:

“The vast areas of agreement between moral codes of different societies throughout the ages and throughout the world is [sic] strong evidence that these moral norms were discovered in light of an unchanging and objective set of moral principles that find their source in the realities of human existence.”

I dealt with this sort of claim in my essay posted August 10. Only by carefully sifting through the moral codes of people one judges to be eligible for inclusion and throwing out what one doesn’t accept can one claim to have found “strong evidence” of agreement. The claim is too weak to ground the supposed absoluteness of the values that are left.

“It is precisely its global character which …confirms that there are indeed universal human rights, rooted in the nature of the person, rights which reflect the objective and inviolable demands of a universal moral law. …The universal moral law written on the human heart is precisely that kind of ‘grammar’ which is needed if the world is to engage this discussion of its future.”

This adds nothing to the argument, but does point out at least one aspect of its motivation: Without the assumption of universal moral laws, how could we argue in defense of universal human rights? The high-minded intention doesn’t mean there are in fact such objective laws or rights.

“Prime examples of agreement between manifestations of moral law in different societies are the institutions of marriage and the family. Every society, with a few isolated exceptions, has afforded special protection to the family.”

First, something that has exceptions is not universal. Second, terms like “marriage” and “the family” are broad, Western-based categories adapted by anthropologists in an attempt to bring order to a welter of data on different cultural practices. These practices vary so widely among and even within cultures that this is precisely the sort of evidence one could offer that moral rules are culturally dependent.

“Another example of agreement between [sic] is the institution of religion. No stable society has existed without some provision for the worship of a god or gods.”

Many unstable societies have provided for the worship of a god or gods, so this example proves nothing.

2. The second site reports a speech by Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas,
The Necessity of Moral Absolutes in a Free Society (http://www.acton.org/publicat/randl/article.php?id=180). Moral absolutes are necessary. Tradition tells him what they are. They’re true because they provided the basis for a life he looks back on fondly. Intended as an anecdotal talk, not worth an analytical dissection in the present context.

3. The third site is a brief editorial from the Christian Millennial Fellowship,
Moral Absolutes... What's That?
(http://www.cmfellowship.org/Editorials/moral.htm), which makes a few religious assertions and sprinkles them with mostly irrelevant biblical quotations.