Spotting Moral Relativists is impossible - they have to admit it

 

For relativists, if objective morality does not exist then it is necessary to invent it.  Moral relativism tells you to think you are right even if you are wrong and that you are by default always right anyway when you make a moral choice when you cannot even justify it to yourself never mind anybody else!

Relativism or relativists can't define morality.  They loose all credibility if they start saying things that morality is whatever you want it to be. Opinion is not morality.  To define morality as a form of opinion is not to define at all but to talk nonsense. 

Terms:

Objective Morality - an action really is wrong. When something is wrong morally, it is absolutely immoral. In other words, it is a moral absolute that it is wrong.

Moral relativism - nothing is really right or wrong morally. It's all opinions.  Calling morality opinion is just a fancy way of saying that morality is whatever you want it to be.

 

There are only two types of people in the world of moral relativism.

 

1. Those who admit they are moral relativists

 

2. Those who do not admit they are moral relativists.

 

Moral relativists have nothing to contribute in moral debates. Abe and Adam are having a vehement argument. If Abe says animal testing is cruel and wrong and Adam argues it is justifiable under some circumstances, Miriam may come along and insist that Abe and Adam should not debate it for the wrongness of animal testing is true for Abe and the occasional rightness of it is true for Adam. Or she may say that they can debate it though there is no point for there is no real morality anyway. Her contribution and how she feels about it make her useless.

 

She makes a vehement argument that they should argue or shouldn't. She says nothing to help. She only becomes a hypocrite trying to get people to suppress their natural instinct that one view is not necessarily as good as another. And she hails herself as a paragon of tolerance. She bans understanding which is necessary for tolerance to take place!

 

Moral relativists may believe that there is such a thing as objective right and wrong but we cannot know what it is. So in practical terms only, we have to act like we know relativism is true. It is a working hypothesis. Catholics say it is an objective moral truth that birth control is a sin. But some theologians say that if your conscience tells you that some people need it so it is not a sin then listen to your conscience. They are saying that it is following your conscience that makes you good even if you are wrong as long as you genuinely think you are right. That is relativism.

 

There is an ironclad difference between secular and faith-based morality. Here is an example.

 

A. I have to kill person X because he is about to kill me.

 

B. I have to kill person X who is about to kill me because God says it is self-defence and a duty.

 

The secular view is about reducing harm while the religious view is about obeying God. The secular view is real goodness. The religious view is not. It is evil under the appearances of good. It may reduce harm but it is not about that. Relativism is bad enough if it says morality is our opinion. But if it starts saying only God's opinion matters that is far worse. That means there can be no debate. It means religion as the servant of God needs to be autocratic and forbid debate and therefore force God's rules on us.

 

Not all relativists are relativist to the same degree. A secular relativist who kills in self-defence is not as relativist as a religious one. The example shows that.
 
Some argue that in a relationship between a paedophile and a child, as long as there is no abuse of power or taking advantage or no bullying and as long as the utmost care is taken to ensure the child is acting voluntarily there need be no harm in the relationship. What would you say to a person who says that?

 

The Catholic answer is that the argument is assuming that there are no moral absolutes. In other words, the view that adult-child romantic and sexual liaisons are wrong whether harm is done or not is being rejected. A moral absolute is something that is banned regardless of the good or harm that it does. It is absolutely forbidden because it really is always morally wrong. But it does not follow that the pro-paedophile argument is really a repudiation of moral absolutes. It is possible to imagine one moral absolutist saying that capital punishment is wrong no matter what and another saying that executing homosexuals is right no matter what.

 

A relativist can sternly forbid sex abuse of a child and still be to blame for others doing it.  Why?  Because the relativist treats morality as if it is what you want it to be so the door is opened for somebody to defile a child on relativist grounds.

 

The argument that nobody is a consistent relativist is the only argument against relativism that believers in God really care about.  Does it help show that morality must be real and objective?  No.  It is advocating objective morality for the wrong reason so the end result is not objective morality at all but a contraption.

 

Though people agree we should treat one another right, few agree on how to do this. Objective moral values are impossible to live out in the sense that we can know something for sure is right or wrong.

 

Relativism is seen by Catholics as permitting anything provided the arguments for permitting it seem or look or feel good enough. But even moral absolutism needs good arguments! Real relativism should not really care about the arguments. How can it if it does not consider say making the innocent suffer for no reason to be morally wrong? Often people who have different moral absolutes from the Catholics are accused of being relativists. They can agree with relativists in many things but that does not prove that they are relativists.

 

Relativism urges people to assume, "John did that and so much pain and suffering followed. I don't know what his arguments are for what he did. I assume they may have been good. They are his business not mine." It becomes a licence to excuse anything.

 

We know right and wrong exist. But the problem is that we can never know if something is ever more right than wrong and vice versa. Moral relativism adds to this problem.

 

Whose will should determine the civil law? The moral relativists or those who believe in absolute moral values?

 

Relativists believe that believers in absolute moral values are really relativists who refuse to respect the views of those who are also relativists just because they have different rules of right and wrong. The believers in absolute values should be far more intolerant than the liberal relativists. It is true relativists can be intolerant even though their relativistic attitude is intended to prevent people having firm standards of right and wrong and to accept moral differences. They are sometimes worse than moral absolutists. The virgin and the whore are nearly equally esteemed. Generally speaking, it will never be 100% desirable to have relativists making the laws but it is worse to have moral absolutists doing it. At least relativists believe in listening and changing their minds.

 

Absolutists hold that freedom matters first and foremost and then well being. Well being is no good to you without freedom. You cannot be well off if you cannot have the opportunity to protect your wellbeing which means you need the freedom to. It is pointed out that valuing freedom is relativist for each person wants to be free in different ways.

 

Usually, relativism dares not argue that moral truth is truth no matter what we want to believe. But it acts in practice as if it believes that. But if it believes it why can’t it admit it? It just hides behind other arguments to make itself seem legitimate. It would look stupid if it clearly stated that it believes morals are invented not discovered.

 

People deep down want to believe that morality, as a way of protecting them, is discovered not made or decreed. Relativism, though popular, is not natural and will collapse and end up looking stupid. It makes no sense for a relativist to say it is okay to discover morality. And they do for they are irrational.
Relativists deliberately try to avoid the truth about morality for they will not admit that their morality is about, “Right is what I want it to be” or “Right is what I decide it is.” Even if morality were really that they would fear what other relativists would do to them and call morally justified.  The relativist will try to impose her morality on others to protect herself though one of the core tenets of relativism is, "Do not impose your understanding of morality on anybody else."
 

A relativist should admit what she is. Actions speak louder than words so you can see a relativist by how he behaves.

A COMMENT ON A TOPIC ON TELEVISION

On BBC 1's Sunday Morning Live Facebook page on 14 August 2015
 
Relativism is a cult yes and a poison and people need more relativism detectors. Relativism is like a supernatural thing. People imagine they can make something moral just by believing it is moral. That is pure magic. That is why I say that though it does not necessarily look religious or spiritual it is. And as an atheist, I am well aware that Islam with its doctrine that morality is only moral for God says so and Christianity with its Jesus who made stoning women to death right in one era and allegedly made it wrong in this one are both relativist.

 

Intention turns an evil act into a good one if you mean it to be good. So relativism says. But if there is such a thing as good intent for real then relativism is wrong.
 
Islam and Christianity ask for faith. They have no problem admitting that there is a chance that people are putting faith in the word of man and not the word of God but they deny that chance is big. The fact remains that if a religion is a quack hospital for sinners and wrongdoers it is responsible for the bad behaviour of its adherents for it cannot do anything supernatural to help them. Lies help a person temporarily but it comes to disaster in the end.
 
The word martyr means witness. Christianity argues that the religion should be taken seriously for many have witnessed to it with their lives. To convert to Jesus because you see people dying for him is being impressed by their extremism and that is not a good thing. It makes you opportunistic - you build a faith on the blood of innocent people and on the stupidity of those people.

 

SUMMARY OF THE ESSENTIALS

The essential question is morality morality (really good) or opinion (relativism)? It is that simple. Morality cannot be opinion for it is clear that opinion is a different thing from morality. To call morality opinion is like saying a dog is not an animal but an opinion. Relativism shoots itself in the foot for relativists actually mix the notion of moral principles with their nonsense. So relativists do believe in objective morality but they distort it or they put objective moral principles in a basket along with rubbish in order to engineer it being seen in the wrong way or to confuse.  If a person says they reject relativism the relativist will make out that the person's opinions have no validity. The question is where we start not God. And the question is stupid so we don’t even need anything else. In a nutshell, everybody sees morality is being about real principles but some are muddled and the muddled can count the relativists among their number.  There is no relativism - there is only a muddle.  And there are people who are relativists but who say they detest all relativists - I mean those who say that there is no right thing to do by anybody unless there is a God to think there is right thing!  If right is right it is independent of what anybody thinks - totally independent.  Relativists always pick and choose what rules are fixed and which ones are fluid.  Is it really true that there are no consistent relativists?  In their thinking they are not consistent but it is possible for somebody to say the Nazis did right to eliminate Jews and not shift from it.  That enables say a relativist to look like a hardline Christian at least publicly. A religious or political or ideological system can be relativist but a person cannot be.  It is just not possible.  That is why pulling down the system by educating its members to come out of it is priority.

Relativists are believers in objective morality who don’t want to admit it or see it. If you are relativist, you cannot ask another person to think that what he believes is true for you!  Relativism comes with silly rigid rules too.  Relativist morality seeks to impose its standards on others as if the standards were moral facts. There is no such thing as relativist. It is just a label.  The label they are looking for is hypocrite.