Cokie Roberts rode along with President Bush yesterday as the president and his family went to personally greet the Pope at Andrews Air Force Base. (By the way, I find it odd that the president chose to give special treatment to the Pope by greeting him in this way). Roberts reported, with no apparent sense of irony, and no further comment, that "The thing [President Bush] likes about the pope is that he speaks with moral clarity about certain truths and that he does not believe in moral relativism."
This is risible, simply put, it is a joke. Bush likes to invoke "moral clarity", and apparently believes he shares this quality with the pope, but reality says otherwise. A real reporter might note some of the facts that contradict Bush's assertion, or might even confront the presiden
Unlike theology and philosophy, there are no great truths in business, only petit verities. One of these is that breaking contracts to keep from losing money...
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No, today's article is not about Einstein's Theory of Relativity. Please visit the provided link, if that is what you were looking for. For those of you that know what my writings are really about, or those just visiting and wanting to learn more about what it means to live as Christ follower, I invite you to read on.Today's article is about moral relativism. "What is that??!!", you ask? Moral Relativism is defined by Wikipedia as In philosophy, moral relativism is the position that moral or ethical propositions do not reflect objective and/or universal moral truths, but instead make claims relative to social, cultural, historical or personal circumstances. Moral relativists hold that no universal standard exists by which to assess an ethical proposition's truth; it is the opposite of moral absolutism. Relativistic positions often see moral values as applicable only within certain cultural boundaries or in the context of individual preferences. An extreme relativist position might
While liberals pride themselves for being the champions of tolerance, how do they respond when other cultures denigrate women and homosexuals? It is wonderful to watch this cognitive dissonance unfold. At what point do liberals start making objective determinations of right and wrong? At what point do liberals say that burying a 16-year-old girl to her neck in dirt, and subsequently stoning her to death is not an acceptable form of cultural expression?Ironically, liberals consider conservatives evil because many conservatives support the military’s don’t ask, don’t tell policy. Yet, it is amazing that these same liberals are apathetic when Iran hangs, stones, and beheads homosexuals. Moreover, Iran is one of the few Countries in the World that executes children.When confronted with this clear hypocrisy, liberals simply resort to bashing President Bush. If they don’t attack Bush, they attack America for being an evil Country. I am telling you, these people have been total
It is of course true that we cannot know anything for certain. For all we know, we may be living in "The Matrix", and everything we see is mere computer simulations. Likewise, we can never know for sure that a theory is true in an objective sense. I consider these two statements as uncontroversial, however, when relativists go one step further and argue that all theories are equivalent since no theory can be proven, that is when I must disagree…People who use this reasoning have completely forgotten about the concept of evidence and prediction. Though a theory can never be proven in the absolute sense it can be better or worse at describing reality. Just as simple example there are people who claim that the world is spherical (or almost spherical), and there are those who claim that it is flat (based on religious reasoning I might add). What predictions does each of these two theories make? Well, one very simple prediction is that a round earth should cast "round" or banana shaped sh
Another argument against moral relativism is that the position is self-refuting. This means that when it is tested against its own criteria, it fails to pass. If I were to write “I cannot write a word in English,” the statement would be self-refuting because I had just written the statement in English. Likewise, the claim of the moral relativist refutes itself. If the moral relativist states “there is no absolute morality,” he just made an absolute statement about morality which, by his own definition he is not allowed to do.
Here, however, the moral relativist may interject and make the claim that, because the statement itself, “There is no absolute morality,” is not a moral statement, it is not self-refuting. But, even if the statement is not a moral statement, surely the implication that the moral relativist draws from the statement refutes itself. Since the moral relativist does not believe that any culture’s morality has any more value than another’s, he also bel
Because there are moral concepts that have appeared in every society, regardless of their contact with each other, there must be a source of morality that is distinct from these individual societies. Although the moral relativist claims that morality is a human invention, morality is not something invented by human beings at all. Instead, there are “absolute” moral concepts that are true, regardless of whether you are living in Manhattan in the year 2004 A.D. or in Egypt in the year 2004 B.C. Noted anthropologist Clyde Kluckhohn has written:
Every culture has a concept of murder, distinguishing this from execution, killing in war and other justifiable homicides. The notions of incest and other regulations upon sexual behavior, the prohibitions on untruth under defined circumstances, of restitution and reciprocity, of mutual obligations between parents and children—these and many other moral concepts are altogether universal.
Clyde Kluckhohn, “Ethical Relativity: Sic et No
Moral relativism is based on the false assumption that the existence of differences of opinion equates to the nonexistence of any “correct” opinion. A moral relativist may argue that we cannot know which version of morality is right, and so none of them can be wrong. But does the alleged existence of multiple moral belief systems necessarily mean that all of these belief systems are correct, regardless of whether or not we can know which is right? It seems to me that this is the same as saying “Since we cannot agree, and we really can’t know who is right, we both must be right.” But two sides holding conflicting views about an issue cannot both be right (although they can both be wrong), regardless of whether or not we know who holds the right view.
To further understand this concept, consider the following scenario: If Johnny’s mother asks him where his piggy bank is, Johnny will tell her a location that either does or does not correspond to where it actually is. Not
Moral relativism does not provide us with a standard to judge the actions of other cultures, leaving us with no intelligible difference between the good or evil actions of other cultures or individuals. If moral relativism is true, we cannot judge other cultures as morally wrong.
A moral relativist might respond by saying that the world would be a better place without its Bonnie and Clydes, Manson’s followers, and the Nazis, but we cannot say that these groups were “wrong” for doing what they did because, as one moral relativist, Gilbert Harman has written, “they are beyond the reach of the relevant moral considerations.” In other words, since they are outside of the group that we have formed, we cannot place our judgment upon them. What was wrong for the world might have been right for the Nazis and we have no place to say otherwise. They can only be judged by their own version of morality which, by the way, made their actions perfectly legitimate. There exists no ul
Deacon Tom McDonnell is a prophet and prophets usually aren't welcome. Why? This article explains very nicely: http://www.speroforum.com/site/article.asp?idCategory=34&idsub=172&id=7614&t=Why+prophets+arenWe are all called to be prophets. We are all called by the Lord Jesus to confront evil and to publically oppose sinful structures. Sin has become institutionalized. This because of a secularism which is rooted in atheistic philosophy. Pope Benedict XVI, in a homily at the Conclave's Opening Mass, said that:"Having a clear faith, based on the creed of the Church, is often labelled today as a fundamentalism. Whereas relativism, which is letting oneself be tosed and 'swept along by every wind of teaching,' looks like the only attitude (acceptable) to today's standards. We are moving toward a dictatorship of relativism which does not recognize anything as for certain and which has as its highest goal one's own ego and one's own desires."In fact, in its June 26, 2003 decisio
