My Answer to Matthew Flannagan's Second Challenge to Moral Relativism

This is my reply to an article by Dr. Matthew Flannagan entitled

The Challenge of Moral Relativism: Arguments for Relativism

June 22nd, 2018 by Matt Flannagan

This post is based on a series of talks I have given on moral relativism. In my last post, I looked at what relativism and objectivism are. Here I examine some common reasons people accept or defend relativism I will offer critical commentary on these arguments.

When examining any position in philosophy it is important to understand what motivates people to hold it, why do people find it plausible? Two reasons are commonly cited.

You must be a Christian before you are a philosopher, so you must choose obedience to the bible where this conflicts with what you wish to do as a philosopher.  The bible does not permit you to wrangle words, despite the fact that you cannot refute moral relativism without going round and round with others about the meanings of words:

 14 Remind them of these things, and solemnly charge them in the presence of God not to wrangle about words, which is useless and leads to the ruin of the hearers. (2 Tim. 2:14 NAU)

It is hardly believable that Paul was only prohibiting the shockingly babyish "yes it is; not it isn't" type bantering, I prefer to presume that the people who converted to Paul's gospel in Timothy's church were just a bit more emotionally mature than a 3 year old.  He was clearly prohibiting anything that could be reasonably defined as word-wrangling.  Go ahead, challenge me with your alternative interpretation, I'll respond, leaving you without excuse for willfully defying those biblical commands that directly apply to Christians.

    The Argument from Cultural Diversity

One common motivation for relativism, particularly cultural relativism, is the observation that different societies have different moral beliefs.  To use a well-known example: people in 14th century Europe believed witchcraft was seriously immoral and executed witches. People in 21st century New Zealand doesn’t believe this. Some societies endorse polygamy others endorse monogamy.   Facts like these are held to cast doubt on the idea there is a single true morality relativism-1independent of what society thinks.

And you cannot overcome that prima facie case for relativism by trifling about the technicality that if God issued objective moral commands, these would exist whether we believed it or not.  If the tooth-fairy left me $2 million in a secret location, that would be true whether you believed it or not. But in both cases, we are dealing with a pretty big "if", and nothing important will happen until you move beyond the greasy marsh of the solely theoretical, to the practical.  Either state the one moral you believe is most clearly objective, or stop telling yourself that moral relativists find your arguments the least bit compelling.

 Response to the argument from cultural diversity.

Objectivists make several responses to this argument.

 Distinguishing Separate idea’s.

First, they argue that this argument conflates two separate ideas.  (a) the idea that beliefs about what is right and wrong differ from society to society. And  (b) that idea that what really is right, and wrong differs from society.  The fact different societies have different moral beliefs provides evidence for the first of these ideas. It establishes (a).  However, cultural relativism affirms something stronger than this. Relativists believe moral standards are correct or incorrect relative to society. 

Well then, you were wrong to previously declare that when a relativist labels a moral as "wrong", they are necessarily presupposing the existence of an objective standard.  Not they aren't.  Their standard for deciding what's wrong is their own relative opinion.  If you insist this is problematic, then maybe you should argue that drawing conclusions about what time it is, is unreasonable, because 3 p.m. in New Zealand is never 3 p.m. in Scandinavia. Time is utterly relative, yet if somebody asked you for the time, you would do so, with no worries about the fact that time is ultimately relative.  So stop telling us that a subjective basis for declaring a moral to be "wrong" is reasonable.  In practical life, we very often base our judgments of right or wrong on an admittedly subjective standard.

Cultural Relativists contend an action is wrong for a person because their society condemns that action.  Hence, they affirm (b).

However, that the fact different societies have different moral beliefs doesn’t support (b) It’s possible that when different societies make different judgements about something that one of them is mistaken.

 And we are still waiting for you to provide an example of the one moral whose objectivity you think is most clearly demonstrable.

When don’t normally assume that when societies disagree on something the correct answer is relative to society. 

Speak for yourself and your objectivist friends.  We moral relativists do normally draw that conclusion.

If different societies have different beliefs about the shape or age of the earth, we would not take this to demonstrate that the earth’s actual age and shape differ in various societies.

Fallacy of false analogy:  the shape of the earth is demonstrable empirically.  The objective wrongness of adultery is not.  Yet you necesarily imply with such analogy that you can disprove the moral goodness of any act you deem objectively wrong, just as easily as you can disprove the flat-earth theory.

So why do we do this when the disagreement involves moral judgements? 

For the same reason you think it is objectively wrong to burn a teen prostitute to death for working out of her priest fathers house (Leviticus 21:9).  Either you agree, or you start looking like the foolish moral relativist who says burning your daughter to death might perhaps be morally good in certain situations. 

The mere fact societies make different judgements on a topic tells us nothing about whether those judgements are objectively true or false.

Correct.

Exaggerated disagreement

Second, objectivists argue that appeals to cultural diversity often exaggerate the amount of cross-cultural disagreement over moral standards. Often when societies have different moral beliefs, this isn’t due to different moral standards but the result of disagreement over certain factual questions.  Consider the abovementioned case of witchcraft. In the 14th-century people believed in the existence of witches. They believed witches met together secretly and sacrificed children and ate these children in a ritual feast. They bound themselves by oath to the devil to use supernatural powers to harm, and kill innocent people. Hence the believed witchcraft involved the deliberate conspiracy to cause serious harm to innocent people.

 They probably also believed it was objectively morally good to burn witches, and would have sneered at devil-protecting liberals who campaigned for less barbaric treatment of the accused.

We don’t hold these beliefs today but if we did our opinion of witchcraft would be very different. Suppose we believed there was a group which conspired to randomly kill and maim innocent people and killed and ate children as part of its rituals.  We probably would legally suppress this group. And many people would support the death penalty for those who did these things, killing children is a horrendous form of murder after all.

But you aren't linking the horrendousness back to "god" or showing that child-murder violates any "objective" moral.  

The difference between us and 14th-century Europeans is due, in a large part, to different factual beliefs not simply a disagreement over moral standards.

Our supporting a death penalty less barbaric than burning at the stake testifies to the level of wrongness we and 14th century Christians disagree on.  It wasn't like burning alive was the only method of death in the 14th century.  They preferred that for witches because they felt the witch-crimes were far more heinous than simply killing and eating children.  These fanatics thought violation of "god's order" was the height of satanic rebellion.   You are quite aware of many hideous crimes people commit against children, but I doubt you'd recommend death by burning, since you see it as moral overkill.

 Trust me, the difference is moral and not merely factual.

    Relativism Promotes Tolerance

A second motivation behind relativism is the idea that moral relativism promotes tolerance and humility. When you realise that your own moral standards are correct only for you, you are less likely to fall into arrogance and pass judgements on the beliefs and practises of others. Nor are you likely to demand they change these practices and adopt yours.

Response:

Objectivists respond that this concern reveals a subtle contradiction. The argument assumes that tolerance and humility are good things, it assumes people should be tolerant and humble and should not be arrogant and rush to judgement. 

 I agree with you that tolerance and humility are the subjective judgment call of the relativist.

However, if relativism is correct, this isn’t the case. According to cultural relativism, it is wrong to be intolerant only if your society believes that it is.  Societies which are imperialistic and arrogant and believes its permissible to colonialize other nations don’t do any wrong if it imposes its moral judgements on to others.  Similarly, according to subjectivism humility and tolerance are wrong only if you think it is. If someone has bigoted or arrogant beliefs, then bigotry is morally required of them, and they shouldn’t act in a humble, tolerant way.

 I agree that some relativists irrationally presume that their own opinions are more objective than others.

Objectivists maintain that one can condemn individuals or societies who have arrogant and bigoted practices only if you hold these things are wrong despite the fact societies or individuals may endorse them. There is something incoherent about offering a moral criticism about the arrogant and intolerant moral judgements of societies or individuals and then concluding you can’t make judgements about societies and individuals.

 Thanks again for telling us what Christian objevists believe.  Do you ever plan to get down to actual business, and state the specific moral proposition whose objectivity you believe to be the most clearly demonstrable?

See my answer to Dr. Flannagan's third installment here.

My answer to Matthew Flannagan's First Challenge of Moral Relativism

This is my reply to an article by Christian philosopher Matthew Flannagan entitled

The challenge of Moral Relativism:
Relativism vs Objectivism: understanding the issues:

Jun 19 (3 days ago)

by Matt Flannagan

This post is the first of a series of posts which reproduce a talk on Moral Relativism I gave at both the Auckland and Tauranga  Confident Christianity Conference's and was given earlier in the year as part at a series of talks on apologetics at Orewa Community Church.

In moral debates about you will hear slogans like “if you don’t like abortion don’t have one?” Or “if you don’t like pornography don’t watch it” the basic idea is that if you think a particular action is morally wrong, then you shouldn’t do it, however, it is mistaken or inappropriate to claim that people who don’t share your opinion shouldn’t do it. The slogans in question assume that moral principles correctly apply only to people who believe in those principles.

Yes, but only in the sense that the subjective morals of the speaker apply.  When somebody says "if you don't like porn, don't watch it", all they are doing is imposing their own personal morals on you.  They are neither expressing nor implying that they can either prove your own morals to be objectively "wrong", or that they derived this specific "if you don't like porn, don't watch it" morality from some objective or absolute source.

The pervasiveness of this kind of thinking can be seen in a media report I watched several years ago. A pornographer relativism-1had organised a festival on the main street of Auckland, called boobs on bikes. It involved people, including topless women, riding down Queenstreet displaying erotica. There was some controversy over this event. During the media, coverage journalist's interviewed several people present to watch the event about what they thought. And what was interesting was how many people responded by saying something like this "It is the 21st century” or “we live in a liberal society”.

I agree with most Christians that yes, those who don't believe in god can get irrationally extreme in their actions and attempts to influence society to keep pushing the moral envelope.

Notice what happens when people do this, they were asked whether a particular action or policy was right or wrong. They answered by appealing to what they perceived to be currently fashionable or conventionally accepted.  The assumption is that whats right or wrong is determined by what is conventionally accepted or fashionable.

But that is the basis for all civilized law, at least in a democracy.  Anything that 51% of the voting public deem morally good, becomes law.  If 51% of the people of New Zealand feel that abortion should be made legal for all women, that will become law.  And yet this could reasonably be boiled down to "what's conventionally accepted or fashionable".  The fact that there are those who take positions that are far to the right or left extreme of the currently prevailing consensus, might cause us to instinctively reject the new morality, but that hardly implies that we had any objective basis underlying the older morality in the first place.

These responses reflect a position called Relativism by moral philosophers.  In a bestselling book. The Closing of the American Mind. The prominent philosopher Alan Bloom opened by saying:

There is one thing a professor can be certain absolutely of: almost every student entering the university believes, or says he believes, that truth is relative.

That's understandable, as humans we automatically favor the morality that works for us, and that takes place long before and sometimes in perpetual absence of any ability to defend it against criticism.  We need to adopt some type of morality between birth and adulthood in order to survive, yet we don't need to know how to defend it from criticism in order to survive.  The fact that professional philosophers disagree amongst themselves on whether objective morals exist, counsels that we not judge too harshly the young adults cannot defend their beleifs about the subject as they enter college.

If this belief is put to the test, one can count on the students' reaction: they will be uncomprehending. That anyone should regard the proposition as not self-evident astonishes them, as though he were calling into question 2 + 2 = 4.

That's how evolution programmed us.  We naturally prioritize whatever moral system we personally find to facilitate our comfort and growth.  If everybody held off adopting any morality until they learned how to defend their moral choices from criticism, most wouldn't stay alive long enough to encounter said criticism.

These are things you don't think about. The students' backgrounds are as various as America can provide. Some are religious, some atheists; some are to the Left, some to the Right; some intend to be scientists, some humanists or professionals or businessmen; some are poor, some rich. They are unified only in their relativism and in their allegiance to equality. And the two are related in a moral intention. The relativity of truth is not a theoretical insight but a moral postulate, the condition of a free society, or so they see it.

Strawman...you were talking about the relativity of morality.  Now you are talking about the relativity of truth. But the imposition of one's relative moral upon another does not logically have any relation to "truth".  A father's imposition of a 9 p.m. bedtime on his young son on a school night is a completely relative moral, there is nothing in the bible, natural theology or the physical world or the moral intuition held by most civilized educated adults that tells parents kids must go to bed on a school night at any certain time.  The only "truth" implicated by this situation is the "truth" that Dad has laid down a subjective moral that the child is required to obey.  That is the objectivist's basic problem:  the category error of trying to associate with morals with truths that exist outside the human mind.  You may as well try to meaningfully discuss what's north of the number 4.

Though I don't deny that in your group of moral relativist university students, yes, some of them probably did buy into that new age crap that says a fact of reality can be true for one person, but be untrue for another person.  

They have all been equipped with this framework early on, and it is the modern replacement for the inalienable natural rights that used to be the traditional American grounds for a free society.

But those inalienable natural rights only came from the subjective mindset of America's founders, and those views were obviously not shared by the King of England, from whom we fled in order to form a more perfect union.

That it is a moral issue for students is revealed by the character of their response when challenged - a combination of disbelief and indignation: "Are you an absolutist?," the only alternative they know, uttered in the same tone as "Are you a monarchist?" or "Do you believe in witches?" This latter leads into the indignation, for someone who believes in witches might well be a witch-hunter or a Salem judge. The danger they have been taught to fear from absolutism is not error but intolerance.

Probably has more to do with their being young adults and thus naturally predisposed to hate anything that tries to put a damper on their free expression...including somebody else's belief that morals are objective.

Relativism is necessary to openness; and this is the virtue, the only virtue, which all primary education for more than fifty years has dedicated itself to inculcating.

I would agree that from the standpoint of keeping order in society, there are larger issues to consider in the education of children than simply whether we inculcate a sense of openness and toleration.   Even the liberals have their limits: they love to criminalize and otherwise repress certain forms of free speech such as racism and discrimination based on religion, gender or race.  Only the stupid unthinking liberal says all views should be equally allowed.  All that would do is create a rat's nest of social chaos.

Openness - and the relativism that makes it the only plausible stance in the face of various claims to truth and various ways of life and kinds of human beings - is the great insight of our times. The true believer is the real danger.

That's correct.  If you get it in your head that God wants you to bomb an abortion clinic, you won't be any more easily dissuaded from doing it than Christian apologists can be dissuaded from Christianity.   By battling against "true believers", we significantly reduce the possibility that some religious person will start thinking that measures which harm society are the will of God.

The study of history and of culture teaches that all the world was mad in the past; men always thought they were right, and that led to wars, persecutions, slavery, xenophobia, racism and chauvinism.

Would any fool disagree with this assessment?

The point is not to correct the mistakes and really be right; rather it is not to think you are right at all. (Bloom 1987)

Bloom was beginning a scathing critique of what is often called moral relativism. Note that Bloom mentions students entering university. One reason for this is that relativism is not a common position in contemporary philosophy or ethics, and most philosophers I know of think it is pretty clearly a mistaken position.

Then direct them to my blog, and I'll be happy to correct their mistaken view that any moral could possibly be "objective" or "absolute".

However, it is extremely common at the popular level.  Because relativism is is an important challenge to Christian ethics it is important to reflect on how Christians respond to this challenge.

Not so fast.  Your Christian faith requires that you prioritize your conformity to biblical teaching, above your opinion that moral relativism needs to be publicly refuted.  It doesn't matter if the bible authorizes you to do apologetics.  There are also passages that forbid you from wrangling words:

 14 Remind them of these things, and solemnly charge them in the presence of God not to wrangle about words, which is useless and leads to the ruin of the hearers. (2 Tim. 2:14 NAU)

 Yet you obviously could not do a very good job of refuting relativism unless you fought a moral relativist upon the precise meaning of words.  No, you cannot negate the full import of this passage with others like Jude 4.  First, that would be the fallacy of employing inerrancy as a hermeneutic (i.e., you trash an otherwise contextually justified interpretation of "don't wrangle words" because you are sure this interpretation could contradict something taught elsewhere in the bible).  Well excuse me, but because inerrancy is hotly debated even among inerrantists, with most Christian scholars denying it outright,  it seems it does not deserve to be exalted in our minds to the status of governing hermeneutic, thus it would be more prudent to avoid using it as a hermeneutic until there is as much universal agreement on it as we have for other tools of interpretation, such as "context" and "grammar", whose benefits no sane person denies.

Second, even if you insist on harmonizing "don't wrangle words" with "defend the faith!", the most plausible harmony would be that you defend the faith without wrangling words.  Sure, you might think that a defense that doesn't attack the heretic's reasons, is rather weak, but that is your problem:  your desire to prove wrong each basis the heretic or moral relativist has, might indeed be a better idea, but like I said, you are a Christian first.  You need to worry about conforming yourself to your own bible before you worry about launching a war of words against positions you disagree with.

Third, no, Dr. Flannagan, you cannot use "But Jesus and Paul had verbal wars with their own critics, and Christians must follow their example!" to get away from "don't wrangle words".  Common sense says that commands which are directed specifically to the Christians, take precedence over the more subjective controversial matter of whether we should do something merely because Jesus and Paul did it.  And if Jesus and Paul wrangled words with their critics, that appears to contradict "do not wrangle words", and only an inerrantist would choose to expend energy trying to harmonize this "alleged" contradiction.

Fourth,  given that inerrancy doesn't qualify as a hermeneutic, it is pretty safe to say that the pastorals, if written by Paul, were written in his old age, just before execution, and therefore it is highly likely that at this point in his life he looked back on all the verbal wars he initiated with the Jews about Christ being predicted in the OT (Acts 17:2-3, 17,  18:19, etc) and had concluded, even if he didn't expressly state it, that all this wrangling of words was useless and only did more to ruin than rehabilitate the hearers.

Finally, Paul's own example included times when he would skip town after discovering he was in over his intellectual head, such as his quickly skipping town after he discovered the philosopher's at Mar's Hill didn't find his presentation the least bit threatening.  Upon their laughter at the resurrection, Paul leaves (Acts 17:32-33).  Sorry, Dr. Flannagan, but I've written a comprehensive article showing that the warnings against debate in the pastorals, when properly interpreted, do indeed condemn 99% of all scholarly Christian efforts to refute concepts which the Christian scholars themselves deem "foolish and ignorant speculations".

Dr. Flannagan, do you think moral relativism is a foolish and ignorant speculation?  Then you are commanded to turn away from anybody who advocates it:

 23 But refuse foolish and ignorant speculations, knowing that they produce quarrels.
 24 The Lord's bond-servant must not be quarrelsome, but be kind to all, able to teach, patient when wronged,
 25 with gentleness correcting those who are in opposition, if perhaps God may grant them repentance leading to the knowledge of the truth,
 26 and they may come to their senses and escape from the snare of the devil, having been held captive by him to do his will. (2 Tim. 2:23-26 NAU)

No, Dr. Flannagan, you cannot get around the prohibition in v. 23 by noting that v. 24 ff require the Lord's bondservant to patiently teach those who are in error.  If you are an inerrantist, then you should reconcile v. 23 which what follows by saying you are to correct those who are in error without wrangling words.  You will say this calls for rather weak argument, but unfortunately, Paul's idea of correction had everything to do with the blind presumption that he was right, end of discussion, and nothing to do with scholarly consideration of the heretic's actual arguments.  When you are correcting those who are in error, you do so by warning them no more than twice, and you stay away from them if they don't acquiesce to Paul's viewpoint by the second warning:

  9 But avoid foolish controversies and genealogies and strife and disputes about the Law, for they are unprofitable and worthless.
 10 Reject a factious man after a first and second warning,
 11 knowing that such a man is perverted and is sinning, being self-condemned.  (Tit. 3:9-11 NAU)

When you correct others, you do not engage in scholarly analysis of their various reasons for taking the position they do...instead you warn them.  Sorry, but Paul's idea of correcting error did not involve comprehensive analysis of the errant person's actual arguments.  You don't analyze another's argument by warning them. 

Flannagan continues:

    Relativism vs Objectivism: understanding the issues:

Christian’s, like Muslims and Jews, believe God has issued commands to human beings, and our moral duties are related to these commands.

And because moral relativism is true, Christians are divided on what exact moral duties anybody has under god.

No, Dr. Flannagan, you don't refute that point merely by saying Christian disagreement doesn't automatically falsify moral objectivism.  That's technically correct, but irrelevant in practical life.  The relativists are given nothing to worry about by your simply noting that objective morals could still exist despite Christians constantly disagreeing with each other about the matter.  So put your money where your mouth is: state clearly a specific moral proposition, and explain the reasons why you think it to be objective.  Stop sitting on the sidelines reminding us that no amount of in-house Christian debate necessarily disproves Christianity.

However, or not God exists or issues commands doesn’t depend on whether we think he does.

That's technically true.  But under that logic, whether or not the tooth-fairy exists or issues commands doesn't depend on whether we think she does.

You are wasting time with such technicalities. Give us the one moral proposition you believe to be the more clearly objective in its nature.

If God created the world, then this is a fact that occurred well before we were born and my believing or not believing it makes no difference to whether it occurred.

And if the tooth-fairy gave neanderthals money for teeth back in 150,000 b.c., then this is a fact that occurred well before we were born and my believing or not believing it makes no difference to whether it occurred.  I remind you to stop chanting about technicalities from the sidelines.  Get in the ring and put up your dukes.

If God did not create the world, hoping and wishing he has doesn't make the past change.

 If the tooth-fairy didn't give money to neaderthals for their teeth, hoping and wishing she would have, doesn't make the past change.

The same is true of God’s commanding, if God has issued commands then this is a fact, people may disagree with what he demands, but this disagreement doesn’t make any difference to whether the commands exist.

 That's a pretty big "if".  Go ahead...state the one moral command of God which you believe to be the one most clearly objective.  

And you are avoiding the whole purpose of debate.  The technicality that commands of God could still be real despite people disagreeing on the matter, is irrelevant to the practical goal of proving the moral relativist wrong.  We could agree with you on the technicality and that would still not give you the upper hand in the debate.  Now provide the most clearly objective moral you can think of, and your reasons for saying it is objective.

To illustrate the point here, return to the slogan I opened this talk with. Suppose someone was contemplating jumping off the sky tower. You responded “if you do that you’ll die” only to get the response. ‘Who are you to impose your belief in the law of gravity onto me?” I doubt anyone would be impressed by this response.

That's because no sane person denies the obvious scientific truth that gravity exists.  But assuring a jumper of the fatal effects of his intended actions, is a far cry from "adultery is objectively immoral".  Gravity's existence is far more empirically demonstrable than are "objective morals", even if not everything about gravity is known.  Gravity is subject to scientific testing and successful repeated predictions, it has far more an objective basis than does your own belief that adultery is objectively immoral.  Sorry Dr. Flannagan, but you are comparing apples to radio waves.

Whether or not the laws of gravity exist doesn’t depend on whether you believe it.

 I'll respond one last time to your time-wasting chants:  Whether the tooth-fairy exists doesn't depend on whether you believe it.  

Gods moral laws don’t differ from the laws or decrees by which he governs the universe. They either exist or they don’t.

 Ok...well...we are still waiting for you to state the specific moral proposition whose objective nature you believe to be the most clearly demonstrable.

This means that Christians are objectivists about morality. Objectivism holds that: certain moral standards are correct independently of whether you, I or our society believe they are or accept that they are.

 Yup, that's what Christian objectivism is, alright.  Now then, state the one moral proposition you believe is most clearly "objective along with your reasons for saying it is objective.

Some moral principles apply to people regardless of whether they choose to accept these principles, and if people do not accept these principles, they are making a mistake.

Yup, that's what Christian objectivists say alright.  Now then, state the one moral proposition you believe is most clearly "objective" along with your reasons for saying it is objective.

By contrast, relativists hold that moral hold that all moral judgements are correct or incorrect relative to different cultures or individuals. 

 That's correct. That's exactly why you are wrong in your prior statements to the effect that relativists are contradicting their own relativism by saying another's morals are "wrong".   I don't have to prove that my son's disobeying my imposed bedtime for him on a school night is objectively immoral, in order to reasonably characterize that rebellion as "wrong".  Not everything human beings say is "wrong" necessarily commits them to an objective standard.  I could tell my wife "adultery would be good for our marriage", she would scream "wrong!", but upon analysis, it would be proven that all she meant was that my proposal was a moral matter she disagreed with for personal reasons.

See my answer to Dr. Flannagan's second installment here.