This week I want to consider the implications of the “truth is relative” belief on morals. When truth dies, all its cousins, like morality, die also. Many say to me, “There are no objective morals; they are dependent on society or the individual.” As a result, pleasure defines morality rather than morality defining pleasure. When this happens, the tail wags the dog; this is dangerous.The belief that morality is relative is not only dangerous, but it is flawed thinking. First, even if cultures differ radically in their morals, so what? That proves little. Just because there might be passionate disagreement doesn’t mean that objective morality is a fiction. Also, people can talk like this, but they can’t live like this.For instance, when I hear the line, “You shouldn’t force your morality on others,” I want to ask, “why not?” The retort is often, “You have a right to your opinion, but you have no right to force it on others.””Is that your opinion?””Yes.””Then why are you forcing it on me?”Consider another phrase: “Who are you to say?” When hit with this challenge, I respond, “Who are you to say, ‘who are you to say?'” This person is being inconsistent because she is challenging my right to correct another, yet she is correcting me. I am asking, “Who are you to correct my correction, if correcting itself is wrong?”This challenge of “who are you to say?” is nothing more than a cheap shot, because it takes all reason out of belief. It’s one thing to force your morality; its certainly another thing to state those beliefs and make appeal for them.When someone claims that morality is relative, I am tempted to steal their stereo.They say, “Hey, you can’t do that!”Really, why not? If I value stealing in my own moral code isn’t it “all good?” It worked for the Nazis, didn’t it?At the Nuremberg trials the Nazis argued that they simply followed orders and held true to their own Nazi moral code, and because of that they shouldn’t be condemned by a moral code that was not theirs. This puts relativists at a crossroads of crisis, for they must choose between their humanity or their relativism. If they choose to hold onto their relativism, then they admit that the Nazis really didn’t do anything objectively wrong, yet everything within them screams that the Holocaust was truly evil.What about the Women’s Conference in Beijing a few years ago, where women from a great array of cultures from all over the world gathered to plan strategies on how to rid the world of the oppression of women. Can a cultural relativist support such a gathering? I don’t see how!Who is the moral hero of relativism? Ironic, isn’t it? The person who follows relativism most consistently, who gives little thought for others’ ideas of right and wrong, who are unmoved by others’ notions of ethical standards, and who consistently follow the beat of their own moral drums are typically labeled by psychologists as “sociopaths.” That’s funky.The great moral teachers of all time; Martin Luther King Jr., Aristotle, Gandhi and Jesus, did not jive with relativism. They all condemned it.Tolerance used to mean that you thought another person was wrong, but you allowed them to state their views nonetheless. Today, if you think another person is wrong, you are called intolerant.Philosopher Greg Koukl points out that most of what is called tolerance today is not tolerance but intellectual cowardice. It is easier to scream, “you intolerant bigot!” than it is to refute, consider or be changed by contrary opinions (for example, that divorce or abortion is wrong.)Those who deny objective morals say that we all ought to be tolerant, yet, if there are no absolute morals, why be tolerant? Why not force my morality on others if my personal ethics or the ethics of my society allows it?These people get stuck on their own moral spears when they don’t tolerate the views of those whose morality is objectively based. Therefore they are just as intolerant as any proponent of absolute morals might seem to be.These things show that relativists are inconsistent at best; they only hold to relative morality when it is convenient for them. Relativists, to paraphrase Dr. Francis Shaeffer, have their feet firmly planted in midair.
Rich Bordner is a senior English major and philosophy minor from Jefferson City, Mo. He can be reached at [email protected]