Stephen Law

Here's a discussion I had last night with some US Christian Apologists, if you're interested. It was quite knock about. They really pushed the C.S. Lewis style moral argument.

Here's Dawkins talking to Fox News' right-wing Catholic Bill O'Reilly. Interestingly, O'Reilly plays the relativist card, "Well, it's true for me that Jesus is God", as well as aiming a blunderbus-full of crap [typical Fox style] in Dawkins' direction, including atheism is just as much a faith position , and (paraphrasing) "Well, how do you explain why the universe exists, then? Until you come up with an answer, I'm sticking with Jesus!" Not surprisingly, Dawkins struggles a bit to cope with it all. My question is, what would have been the best responses to O'Reilly?

For those who've been following the last couple of blogs, here's a case study of the relativism-or-Authoritarianism myth in action. It's from www.moral-relativism.com , a U.S. website dedicated to combating moral relativism and promoting Christian values. The author helpfully begins by outlining what moral relativism is, before accusing the President of Planned Parenthood Federation of America (clearly an evil organization) of being a relativist. Moral relativism has steadily been accepted as the primary moral philosophy of modern society, a culture that was previously governed by a "Judeo-Christian" view of morality…. [M]ost people hold to the concept that right or wrong are not absolutes, but can be determined by each individual. Morals and ethics can be altered from one situation, person, or circumstance to the next. Essentially, moral relativism says that anything goes… Words like "ought" and "should" are rendered meaningless. In this way...

Allow me to introduce two terms of art: Liberal and Authoritarian. Authoritarians believe young people should be raised to defer more or less uncritically to some external Authority (e.g. a religious Authority) on moral and religious matters. Liberals by contrast recommend individuals should be raised and educated to think critically and make their own judgement rather than more-or-less unquestioningly take on board the pronouncements of some external (e.g. religious) Authority. That does not require Liberals embrace relativism and “anything goes” non-judgementalism. Yet Authoritarians endlessly smear Liberals as relativists. It’s about time this myth was nailed. To see why it’s a myth, compare empirical science. It too is very Liberal. It too emphasizes the importance of independent critical thought. But to acknowledge the importance of getting scientists to think autonomously rather than uncritically defer to others is not to take the relativist view that all scientific theories – i...

I believe individuals should be raised and educated to think critically and make their own judgement (especially on moral and religious matters) rather than more-or-less unquestioningly take on board the pronouncements of some external Authority. This isn't a left or a right-wing view. Nor is it anti-religious (many Liberals are religious). It's anti-Authoritarian (and it's as much against Stalinist indoctrination as that of the Church). Of course, Authoritarian religious people reject this sort of Liberalism. Many loathe it. They associate it with both the 60's and with the Enlightenment (e.g. Kant) Those who share my Liberal view - let's call us Liberals with a capital "L" - are routinely condemned by religious Authoritarians as relativists. So annoyed have I got by this endlessly-repeated accusation that I devoted a chapter of the War For Children's Minds to it. Here's just one example. Jonathan Sacks, the U.K.’s Chief Rabbi lays the blame for...

The second most poisonous myth about relativism (I'm coming to the most poisonous shortly) is that liberalism = relativism. Among the various charges laid against “liberals”, relativism is one of the most popular. Let’s take a look at a couple of examples. In his inspiringly-titled Let Freedom Ring , Sean Hannity, political pundit at Fox News, suggests that one reason U.S. “liberals” are hostile to the teaching of the Declaration of Independence in public schools is that …. liberals absolutely abhor and militantly reject the Founders’ belief in absolute truth. America’s Founders believed deeply in certain fundamental truths about life, liberty, and the nature of man. In fact, they believed – they weren’t just inserting lofty-sounding but meaningless platitudes in the document – that such truths were “self-evident.” By sharp contrast, the Left embraces moral relativism with an arrogant tenacity. There you are: “liberals” – whom, incidentally, Hannity seems to equate with “the Lef...

Relativism is certainly supposed to be eating away at Western Civilization like a cancer. Here are a few examples of this worry. The American academic Allan Bloom writes: [t]here is one thing a professor can be absolutely certain of: almost every student entering university believes, or says he believes, that truth is relative. William Bennett concurs. He says, the answers I started to get from students in the '60s were, "I think each person should do his own thing. I mean if they want to do something, who am I to say something's right, who am I to say something's wrong?" Richard Hoggart commented on a similar rise in relativism and non-judgementalism among the working-class inhabitants of his own British hometown: [i]n Hunslet, a working-class district of Leeds, within which I was brought up, old people will still enunciate, as guides to living, the moral rules they learned at Sunday School and Chapel. Then they almost always add, these days: "But it's ...

I posted four criticisms of "politically correct" moral relativism. Some of you think this sort of relativism is entirely a straw man. Not entirely. I agree it's influence is vastly exaggerated (as I'll be explaining shortly).I have come across only a couple of academics that signed up to it (one was an anthropologist). It tends to be undergrads that spout it. Schools are often blamed. Marianne Talbot of Oxford University says her students have been taught to think their opinion is no better than anyone else’s, that there is no truth, only truth-for-me. I come across this relativist view constantly – in exams, in discussion and in tutorials – and I find it frightening: to question it amounts, in the eyes of the young, to the belief that it is permissible to impose your views on others. I must say it's only 5-10% of my students that express the view. I think some have been taught it as a way of being "tolerant" (possibly because it gets teachers out of aw...

Many thanks for all the comments. The transcript I posted was from a discussion that was really focussed on the "politically correct" brand of moral relativism that is still regularly wheeled in certain circles, rather than more subtle, sophisticated versions developed by some reputable philosophers. I still come across the "politically correct" brand pretty regularly. I would say maybe 5-10% of first year philosophy undergrads sign up to it.It is usually justified and motivated by arguments of the sort I cite here. It's kind of irritating, and I just wanted to show that these "politically correct" arguments are poor. Of course, to expose the failings of these arguments is not to offer an argument against relativism. Nor is it to show that relativism is false. That said, this "politically correct" brand of relativism does entail that if Nazis think that murdering Jews is good, then, hey, they're right. Does anyone really believe that? I ...

Despite its popularity, moral relativism, especially when it's politically motivated, is a confused and often pretty poisonous point of view. Here's the transcript from an Australian radio interview I did on the subject. Relativism was in the news recently along with female circumcision, which involves cutting off parts of a woman's genitalia, including her clitoris. Some Sudanese people routinely practice female circumcision on young girls. It's part of their tradition. But many Westerners are horrified. Female circumcision, they say, is cruel life-blighting surgery. It's morally wrong. Now it's here that the relativist steps in. 'Ah, wrong.' They say. 'Wrong for you, perhaps. But you're assuming that your truth is the only truth. In fact what's true for you is false for those Sudanese people. There's no objective fact of the matter as to which moral point of view is correct. All moral perspectives are equally valid.' 'And so...