Polemics

Greg Koukl explains how to be a consistent moral relativist

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The absolute easiest way to get into a good apologetics conversation with someone is to ask them what makes something right or wrong on their view.

Just ask the person you want to engage two questions:

  1. Is it it wrong to treat people badly just because of their skin color?
  2. What makes it wrong?

Now, as I see it, there are only 3 possible answers to this question.

  1. I personally prefer not to do that – it is wrong for me.
  2. Our culture has evolved a set of customs that apply for us in this time and place, and that set of customs says that members of the society ought not to do that. It is wrong for us, here and now.
  3. Humans are designed to act in a certain way, and part of that design is that we ought not to do that. Acting in line with our design allows us to flourish, (Aristotle’s eudaimonia).

Response #1, is called “moral relativism”. Response #2 is called “cultural relativism”. Response #3 is my view: moral realism. I believe in a hierarchy of moral absolutes that exist objectively, because they are part of God’s design for us and the universe.

I wanted to go over a paper by Greg Koukl from Stand to Reason, in which he critiques moral relativism. His paper is called “Seven Things You Can’t Do as a Moral Relativist”. First, let’s see the list of seven things.

  1. You can’t make moral judgments about other people’s moral choices
  2. You can’t complain about God allowing evil and suffering
  3. You can’t blame people or praise people for their moral choices
  4. You can’t claim that any situation is unfair or unjust
  5. You can’t improve your morality
  6. You can’t have meaningful discussions about morality
  7. You can’t promote the obligation to be tolerant

You’ll have to read the paper to see how he argues for these, but I wanted to say a brief word about number 1.

Rule #1: Relativists Can’t Accuse Others of Wrong-Doing

Relativism makes it impossible to criticize the behavior of others, because relativism ultimately denies that there is such a thing as wrong- doing. In other words, if you believe that morality is a matter of personal definition, then you can’t ever again judge the actions of others. Relativists can’t even object on moral grounds to racism. After all, what sense can be made of the judgment “apartheid is wrong” when spoken by someone who doesn’t believe in right and wrong? What justification is there to intervene? Certainly not human rights, for there are no such things as rights. Relativism is the ultimate pro-choice position because it accepts every personal choice—even the choice to be racist.

In moral relativism, what you ought to do is totally up to you. Morality is just like a lunch buffet – you pick what you like based on your personal preferences.

I remember one particular discussion I had with a non-Christian co-worker. Both she and her live-in boyfriend were moral relativists. They were fighting because she was angry about his not having (or wanting) a job, and he was angry because when he asked her for space, she immediately ran out and cheated on him.

What’s interesting is that both of these people chose the other in order to escape being judged themselves. I think this happens a lot in relationships today. Both people don’t want to be judged by the other person, but they both want to the other person to treat them well and to honor moral obligations. Isn’t that interesting? I don’t think that you can have something like marriage work when neither person takes moral obligations to the other person seriously.

News

New York Times: no global warming in the last 15 years, despite CO2 increase

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From the radically leftist New York Times, of all places.

Excerpt:

As unlikely as this may sound, we have lucked out in recent years when it comes to global warming.

The rise in the surface temperature of earth has been markedly slower over the last 15 years than in the 20 years before that. And that lull in warming has occurred even as greenhouse gases have accumulated in the atmosphere at a record pace.

The slowdown is a bit of a mystery to climate scientists. True, the basic theory that predicts a warming of the planet in response to human emissions does not suggest that warming should be smooth and continuous. To the contrary, in a climate system still dominated by natural variability, there is every reason to think the warming will proceed in fits and starts.

But given how much is riding on the scientific forecast, the practitioners of climate science would like to understand exactly what is going on. They admit that they do not, even though some potential mechanisms of the slowdown have been suggested. The situation highlights important gaps in our knowledge of the climate system, some of which cannot be closed until we get better measurements from high in space and from deep in the ocean.

Here was a similar recent story from left-leaning Reuters news service.

Excerpt:

Scientists are struggling to explain a slowdown in climate change that has exposed gaps in their understanding and defies a rise in global greenhouse gas emissions.

Often focused on century-long trends, most climate models failed to predict that the temperature rise would slow, starting around 2000. Scientists are now intent on figuring out the causes and determining whether the respite will be brief or a more lasting phenomenon.

[…]“The climate system is not quite so simple as people thought,” said Bjorn Lomborg, a Danish statistician and author of “The Skeptical Environmentalist” who estimates that moderate warming will be beneficial for crop growth and human health.

Some experts say their trust in climate science has declined because of the many uncertainties. The UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) had to correct a 2007 report that exaggerated the pace of melt of the Himalayan glaciers and wrongly said they could all vanish by 2035.

“My own confidence in the data has gone down in the past five years,” said Richard Tol, an expert in climate change and professor of economics at the University of Sussex in England.

Global warming is not now and has never been a scientific hypothesis. Global warming is the corruption of science in order to serve political ends. What is really happening is that big government is paying scientists to produce “research” which advocates for bigger government. In effect, government bribed the university professors to fake research that could be used to trick the public into voting for more government control of the private sector. The fastest way to solve this would be to get the government out of the higher education business and let science serve the needs of ordinary people instead of corrupt bureaucrats.

News

Obama administration approves Plan B morning after pill for young girls

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The Family Research Council reports on a very disappointing story.

Excerpt:

If there’s one thing the Obama administration has mastered, it’s walking out on their responsibilities in court. Yesterday, the Justice Department sent its Plan B appeal to the same dust heap as its DOMA defense, telling reporters that it would give up its legal campaign after a couple of recent setbacks. The administration’s policy, which for two years had been the only thing standing between little girls and a powerful birth control drug, is now a thing of the past, as Health and Human Services (HHS) officially bows out of the battle so many parents willed it to keep fighting. The sudden surrender by Secretary Kathleen Sebelius means that the controversial and potent morning-after pill will be available to anyone — of any age — without a prescription.

Before Monday, the administration took a lot of heat for pitting itself against the President’s closest allies — radical feminists and abortion groups who object to even the slightest restrictions on “contraception.” In a letter to U.S. District Judge Edward Korman, who authored the scathing ruling against Sebelius’s policy, the government’s attorneys promised to step aside and allow unlimited sales. As soon as the manufacturers submit a new drug application, the FDA promises to fast-track the pills to drugstore shelves.

Initially, the DOJ had asked Korman to suspend his ruling until an appeals court could weigh in — which it did last week. And although the judges’ decision was an obstacle, there were plenty of legal options to overcome it. Instead, the President dropped the case — along with the facade of concern.

Judge Korman, like President Obama, has two children. Yet neither man seems overly concerned that the drug they’re both endorsing has never been tested on pre-teen and adolescent girls. Judge Korman called HHS’s policy “scientifically unjustified,” when in fact, the only thing that’s scientifically unjustified is the effect of these high doses of hormones on young girls. The FDA hasn’t conducted a single study on Plan B’s risks to girls under 17 — but as far as liberals are concerned, nothing should hinder access to anything related to sex, including personal safety.

There was one reaction to this story that I wanted to quote here:

Janice Crouse, also of CWFA, responded: “Once again, those who yell the loudest about caring about the nation’s children and youth applaud a decision to place our kids in a special interest experiment. Plan B, popularly called the ‘morning-after pill’ is a much-higher-dosage version of the regular birth control pill (which used to require a doctor’s prescription and continued doctor’s supervision). It is irresponsible to advocate over-the-counter use of these high-potency drugs, which would make them available to anyone – including those predators who exploit young girls. Mark my words, it will not be long before we see girls and women forced to purchase Plan B for their abuser to keep them and others enslaved. This is a pimp, predator, and pedophile’s dream – unlimited access to Plan B.”

She added: “This is a political decision, made by those who stand to profit financially from an action that puts ideology ahead of the nation’s girls and young women. Where is the scientific data and solid reasoning behind a decision that endangers minors?”

Kristan Hawkins of Students for Life of America also weighed in on the decision.

She told LifeNews: “President Obama is waging a War on Girls by allowing young children to get Plan B without a physician or parent’s care or knowledge. The morning after pill is a megadose of the birth-control pill, which has been categorized by the World Health Organization as a Group I carcinogen. That’s the highest possible ranking – cigarettes are also in Group I. So why are drugstores required to put cigarettes behind the counter and ask for a photo id to stop minors from purchasing them, but President Obama is now ordering the morning after pill be sold over the counter, next to candy bars and packs of gum?  This is not reproductive justice, this is child abuse.”

Just to be clear, according to the drug manufacturer, Plan B does cause abortions in some situations by preventing the implantation of a fertilized egg.