Answering Moral Relativism

Background

By a traditional definition, the morality of something is measured against a definition of right and wrong. In a materialistic universe, there is no right and wrong; there are only ethics and preferences. A relativist’s morality stands relative to preferences, so it is subjective and malleable. What the relativist calls right and wrong are actually beneficial and detrimental to either self, a third party, or society because, without a Higher Power qualified to declare right and wrong, neither right nor wrong exist.

A society can agree with an ethical or legal code, or those in power can impose such codes and call them “moral.” However, those that govern learn, grow, or grow corrupt, and are eventually replaced by other parties, so no moral code determined by whoever happens to be in power is really a moral code. It is only a set of ethics or laws. 

A moral code depends on a source that defines good and evil or right and wrong. Even if that source is a church, it remains fluid and is therefore not a true moral code. Any familiarity with “Christian” church history will reveal constant changes, especially during the Reformation, which was characterized by a backlash against the power-trip enabled by the merger of the Roman Catholic church and its constituent nations. 

When the relativist speaks of right and wrong, he really means approved or disapproved according to his preferences. The extreme end of relativism is anarchy. “In those days there was no king in Israel; everyone did what was right in his own eyes.” (Judges 21:25, NASB). Everyone was, in fact, his own king.

Recommendation

• Emphasize use of accurate, honest terminology, and how any practice inherits its justification from a line of standards. If the ultimate standard is subjective self, then it is by definition unscientific, unsupported, and transitory. The rejection of objective morality is, by definition, immorality.
  
• Point out how an ethical code based on the individual’s conscience is (a) unstable and (b) a source of conflict. Since we grow, change, or surrender to temptations, our standard — ourselves — also changes. Since we are nurtured by different environments, we will disagree about standards, which causes unavoidable conflict.
  
• Moral relativism, in its current, post-modernism form, has extended to the magical thinking that emotions and words alter reality. Belief in magic runs contrary to the principles on which a secular society should run. It imagines that a mother’s desires or words turn a “fetus” into a baby or a lump of cells, that emotions and brainwashing turn a boy into a girl, that calling a someone a worker sanitizes the illegal way they entered the country. This is magic, and using reasoning that is divorced from objective reality to justify laws mixes religion and state. 

Don’t expect to score a touchdown in a single play. If you can move the ball just a few yards at a time, sowing doubt and correcting one or two arguments, be satisfied. Bring home the arguments you can’t answer and study. Then move on to the next scrimmage.