Moral Absolutes: Norman Geisler

A. Asserting that “Moral absolutes can be defended by showing the deficiency of moral relativism,” Norman Geisler, in The Absolute Nature of Morality (http://www.shakinandshinin.org/TheAbsoluteNatureOfMorality.html), taken from his 1999 book the Baker Encyclopedia of Christian Apologetics, offers a series of supposedly decisive criticisms of what he presents as the relativist argument.

1. He begins by offering a seriously incomplete definition of a moral absolute: “An absolute duty is one that is binding on all persons at all times in all places.”
What he conveniently overlooks is that when we speak of a moral commandment as being absolute, we mean, in addition to the criteria he mentions, that it’s objectively valid; otherwise we wouldn’t consider it binding. This omission allows him to skip any explanation of why he thinks he or anyone else is justified in the claim to have such values.

2. “Everything is relative to an absolute. Simply by asking, ‘Relative to what?’ it is easy to see that total relativism is inadequate. It can’t be relative to the relative.”
I can say that relative to the size of the telephone pole, the person standing next to it is small, even though the tallness of a telephone poll is also relative—there are taller things. In any event, when someone says “moral values are relative,” he means “relative to a cultural system,” not “relative to an absolute.” Geisler deliberately or ignorantly misreads the sense of the word “relative” in this context. There’s nothing self-contradictory about saying that what you see is relative to where you stand.

3. “Measurement is impossible without absolutes. Even moral relativists make such statements as, ‘The world is getting better (or worse).’ But it is not possible to know it is getting ‘better’ unless we know what is ‘Best.’ Less than perfect is only measurable against a Perfect. Hence, all objective moral judgments imply an absolute moral standard by which they can be measured.”
Geisler jumbles a number of confusions here. (a) Physical measurements are based on conventionally agreed-on standards, not God-given universal absolutes. As for judgments about nonmaterial issues, I can say I love one person more than I love another, or more today than I did yesterday, without having any notion of what “absolute love” might possibly mean. (b) Anyone claiming to make an objective moral judgment is indeed implying he believes he has an absolute moral standard, but that doesn’t mean he does or prove that such a thing exists. Indeed, it isn’t the relativist, but the absolutist who is implying that there is such a thing as a knowable absolute Perfect or Best, which in the case of moral judgments is just what the absolutist needs to but can’t objectively show to exist. The relativist who says “the world is getting better” isn’t making or claiming to make an objective moral judgment in relation to what is supposedly “Perfect,” just a judgment of whether things are moving in the direction he desires.

4. “Moral disagreements demand objective standards. Real moral disagreements are not possible without an absolute moral standard by which both sides can be measured. Otherwise both sides of every moral dispute are right. But opposites cannot both be right.”
More confusion from Geisler. People can of course disagree in the absence of an absolute standard—in fact, one would expect them to. What he seems to mean is that without such standards, there would be no way to objectively judge between them. Denying such standards, however, isn’t saying that everyone is right; it’s saying that no one can show by objective and absolute means who, if anyone, is. This is not the same as saying they all are, or denying it might be possible, given certain shared assumptions, to distinguish valid from invalid arguments.

5. “Unless there is an objective moral standard by which Hitler’s actions can be weighed, we cannot know that he was evil.”
The assumption here is that of course Hitler was evil, and any system of belief that allows for the possibility of any other judgment is absurd and false. How do we know objectively that Hitler was evil? We could try to invoke God’s laws, but the issue of the absolute nature of God’s laws is precisely what this argument is about, and you can’t invoke their supposed absoluteness as part of an effort to prove their absoluteness. What about invoking, say, a universal consent of humanity or an innate moral sense? Although it may be repugnant to most people to recognize the fact, not all humanity considers or considered Hitler to be evil, and ruling out those people contradicts the sense of what a universal consent or natural instinct is supposed to mean (my earlier essay discusses further the question-begging nature of making a moral view unanimous by declaring people you disagree with ineligible to speak on moral issues). This is not to say that relativists can’t make judgments, including judgments about people whom they acknowledge might make choices different from theirs. Two distinct assertions should not be confused: (a) That relativists can’t make judgments about Hitler’s actions and (b) that relativists can’t make such judgments and claim them to be objective, absolute, and universal. The truth of the second assertion doesn’t entail that of the first. Moreover, making a judgment about Hitler may or may not be a problem for the relativist, depending on how he’s formulated his moral system, but it doesn’t prove his position on the foundations of morality is wrong, merely that it might lead to awkward consequences even within his moral framework. The absolutist’s outrage or triumphal bemusement at any supposed relativist moral quandary is irrelevant to the issue of who is correct about the basis of moral values.

6. “Moral absolutes are unavoidable. Total moral relativism reduces to statements such as ‘You should never say never,’ ‘You should always avoid using always,’ or ‘You absolutely ought not believe in moral absolutes.’ ‘Ought’ statements are moral statements, and ‘ought never’ statements are absolute moral statements. So, there is no way to avoid moral absolutes without affirming a moral absolute. Total moral relativism is self-defeating.”
Rewriting the relativist position so that every statement of the form “You have no absolute basis for your belief” becomes “You ought not to claim you have an absolute basis for your belief” doesn’t turn an epistemological issue about what the absolutist claims to know with absolute certainty (namely, the will of God) into a moral one. It’s an empty rhetorical gimmick.

7. “Relativists confuse fact and value, what is and what ought to be. What people do is subject to change, but what they ought to do is not… Relativists confuse the changing factual situation with changing moral duty.”
Actually, what’s confused is Geisler’s understanding of the relativist argument, the core of which is not that people do different things, but that they disagree about what they claim people ought to do, and there is no objective way to establish that anyone’s views on the latter are absolutely and universally true.

8. “Another important difference… is that between the absolute moral command and the relative way a culture can manifest it. All cultures have some concept of modesty and propriety in greeting. In some a kiss is appropriate, while in others such intimacy would horrify. What should be done is common, but how it should be done differs. Failure to make this distinction misleads many to believe that because a value differs among cultures, the value itself (what) differs.”
Read that last sentence again and see if it makes any more sense the second time. Maybe what he means is that how a value is expressed may differ even if people agree on the value. But if one person says “modesty” means covering your genitals and another says it means “going naked if you wish,” in what sense is their belief in "what should be done" common between them? In fact, as noted in my original essay, this means that the cost of declaring such a value universal is to allow different people to interpret it any way they wish, i.e., to make it relative.

B. Geisler’s positive claims about absolutism are set out in a series of assertions in his article Any Absolutes? Absolutely! (http://www.equip.org/free/DE198.htm):

“The Christian view of right and wrong is neither arbitrary nor groundless. It is not arbitrary because what God wills is in accord with His nature as absolute good. It is not groundless because it is rooted in what never changes, namely, God’s immutable essence… His commands will always be rooted in His immutable nature as the ultimate Good.
…
Since God’s moral character does not change, it follows that moral obligations flowing from His nature are absolute. That is, they are always binding everywhere on everyone.
… even if unbelievers do not have the moral law on their minds , they still have it written on their hearts.
…
[O]nly a Judeo-Christian ethic is universal. That is, it is not only expressed in a particular religious book (the Bible), but it is written on the hearts of all human beings. Hence, no one can rightfully claim the Judeo-Christian concept of ethics is uniquely religious. True, it is held by religions, such as Judaism and Christianity, but the ethic itself is not limited to those religions. It is universally available to all by way of God’s general revelation to humankind.”

Geisler assumes as absolutely true everything he needs to prove: that there is a God, that this God is as described in the Bible and the version of Christian theology Geisler accepts, that Geisler’s interpretation of the Bible and understanding of what he considers the appropriate Christian theology is absolutely correct, that God’s ethic is written in the hearts of all human beings and Geisler knows with absolute certainty what that ethic is and how it should be applied. This is a good example of the emptiness of most believers’ claims about why they think their values are absolute. The general assertion usually comes down to the following form: My values are absolute because they rest on a truth I know is absolute because a text/tradition/teaching tells me so, and I know that that text/tradition/teaching is absolutely true because it tells me that the strength of my faith in it guarantees the truth of what it tells me.