CHALLENGING, "MORALITY IS MERE OPINION FOR NOBODY AGREES WHAT RULES ARE BEST"

Is morality bigger than what you think?  Is it true no matter what you think?  Many hold to absolute moral values saying things like murder is always wrong.  Or does thinking it make it true as relativists would say.  They are calling morality opinion.

Moral relativism exaggerates the scope and seriousness of moral disagreements between people and between nations.  Moral relativists often think that there is less agreement on morality in the world than what there is. Both pro-abortion people and pro-life people agree that killing the innocent for fun is wrong. None of them say you should have an abortion for the hell of it. They disagree on science not morality - they disagree on whether the unborn child is really a child or not or on whether an undeveloped baby can have the same right as an adult. Eskimos may put their babies out in the cold to kill them, but they see that they have no choice. Getting rid of the babies is needed for the family to survive in difficult circumstances. We cannot say that Eskimos disagree with us on killing babies. They do not. We would have to do the same. Moral relativists forget that there is agreement on all the important principles - it is in the detail where the trouble arises.
 
Moral relativists mistake many cultures that do things differently from us as being relativist. They also think that the differences in morality are so great all over the world that this proves that morality is relative. But they do not realise that the differences are not major as regards principles. There are differences in how the principles are applied.
 
And if one country has its version of morality - say that it is okay for parents to abuse their children for fun - and another country sternly forbids such abuse that has nothing at all to do with proving that morality is relative. One or both may have the wrong idea of morality. An opinion about morality can be wrong.
 
Moral relativists will say that a culture that burns widows to death so that they may be with their dead husbands are doing what is right in their culture. They will not use that excuse if say a large American state enforces absolutist morality in the name of culture!
 
Relativists believe that believers in absolute moral values are really relativists and not believers.  They think they are closet relativists and that they refuse to respect 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. The virgin and the whore are nearly equally esteemed. 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.
 
Moral relativists teach that your truth about what is right and wrong differs from the next persons truth about right and wrong. They would say that it is wrong if you commit adultery and you think it is wrong. They would say it is right if your friend commits adultery believing it is right. Relativists deny that there are real standards. They do not really believe in moral facts.
 
The error in this is that if one nation has many disagreements with another about what is ethical or moral, the problem may be that one of these nations is being stubborn, confused, superstitious or ignorant. There is no need to conclude that they have a different moral code and that one is as true/good as the other is. The variations do not mean that one moral code is as good as another. The variations would not prove that there is are no moral facts.
 
Modified forms of moral relativism say that in practice we have to be relativists for we cannot know what is objectively right or wrong.
 
Religious relativists tend to hold that religious truths are relative. They say that what is true for one religion is not true for another. For example, it is true for the Muslim that Jesus was not God. It is true for the Christian that he was. It is true for the Catholic that the communion wafer is Jesus Christ in the form of bread. For Protestants, it is merely bread. These examples would be called upon by religious relativists to argue that it all depends on what your particular definition of "true" is. But what do they mean by saying what is true for say a Muslim is true for him? The Muslim claims to have faith not knowledge. He says he believes his religion is true. But that does not mean it is true for him in the sense that it is 100% true. Religious relativists are intolerant of religion in the sense that they think they can decide what people regard as true and certain. The expression "true for you" seems to actually say that you merely think something is true. It is open then to the possibility that you think wrongly.
 
Relativism is cherished and popularised today because those who adopt it feel they are nice and tolerant. But relativism makes it hard for people who believe that religious truth or morality is real and not just a matter of opinion. It undermines their happiness and their credibility. It leads to intolerance towards those who oppose it. Take an example. The relativist will hold that abortion being right or wrong has nothing to do with any good or harm it does. All that matters is the opinion that it should be allowed. The pro-life activist will say it is an intolerable evil for it is harmful and will fight any attempt to legalise it. The relativist will want it tolerated and even legalised. One has to be intolerant of the other.
 
The relativist turns morality into opinion. This automatically implies that the person who opposes relativism is a bigot and a liar if he holds that morality is a real thing and not mere guesswork and opinion. It forces even religious leaders to start regarding their faith as a system of opinion rather than truth. This wrecks genuine religious freedom.
 
Opinions are conclusions thought out at least a tiny bit but open to dispute. They need not be necessarily thought out carefully or well. The fact that an opinion is open to dispute means you ask for it to be examined by others to see if it is as reasonable or correct as you think. That is the case whether you like it to be examined or not.
 
The person who forces their opinions on other people is a worse bigot than the person who tries to force the truth on others. If you are going to have something forced on you it is some consolation if that something is the truth or the evidence says it probably is the truth.
 
Another problem is that if morality is opinion people will not agree on their rights. You have people who think they have the right to be taken to a clinic and painlessly killed just because their life is their business and so they should end it for any reason they want. Those who have the most money and the most power and who shout the loudest are the ones that will get the rights they have possibly invented enshrined in the law of the land and protected by the law. Relativism is not the philosophy of tolerance it pretends to be - it is just a rationale for might is right.
 
Moral Relativists keep rules and punish lawbreakers. They disagree on what rule-makers should be obeyed. Is it the individual conscience? Is it the state? The majority of people where you live? Is it the Church? All they can do is arbitrarily pick one of these. They are advocating moral insanity. They are evilly guessing and telling us to obey that guess. When it is moral relativists who are telling us to obey the state - or whatever - they are really commanding us to obey them! Now we are starting to see why some teach it! It gratifies their base hunger for control.

What can be more wrong than for ethical relativists to be instructing people to obey an authority that tells them to believe in real right and wrong?

Moral relativism is so full of contradictions that it is best understood as being just the doctrine that there is no truth. If nonsense is true then there is no truth. Some people say that truth is just what you believe so that if I believe in God then it is true that there is a God and that if my friend is an Atheist then it is true that there is no God. Truth is relative. The smart looking statement that truth is relative is just an underhand way of saying there is no such thing as truth! There is a place for anybody that imagines there is no truth! I know that I exist so if I believe that I do not exist that is proof that truth is objective and real and not relative and not an illusion. If there is no truth then how come relativists and subjectivists hold that it is true that relativism or subjectivism is right?

If what is right depends on what others think then eventually people will stop believing and will only pretend that they still believe to keep others from talking about them.

Don’t be caught by the notion that if a person believes something to be right then it is right for believing something does not mean that it is true. That is just scepticism in disguise.
 
The relativist who says that he or she is not teaching relativism but merely saying how he or she sees things is a more rational kind of relativist. He or she is not saying there is no absolute truth in right and wrong. He or she is only saying that she has her view and you have yours and that is as far as it can go for us. They are sceptical about knowing for real what is right and what is wrong.
 
Relativism appeals to people who suspect that those who say they know the truth about morality or religion or whatever are imperialistic and disrespect others. It is self-defeating. If the truth is known, then relativists are not respecting those groups or individuals who know it. Relativism is often bigoted and imperialistic itself!

Some think morals are relative for we are at least partly programmed by our upbringing etc to consider some actions moral. But if I am programmed to kill a baby for fun, that does not change the fact that killing babies for fun is bad. The programming in fact is irrelevant.
 
There is no right and wrong - strictly speaking. There is just exact and inexact and deemed exact and deemed inexact. This makes morality very complex to work out. And relativism deepens the problem.

Relativisms pounce on confusion about morality, exaggerate how different people's moral perceptions are to persuade us that morality is mere fashionable opinion.  Religion is full of relativism too and fuels the problem.