Against Relativism, by Daniel McCarthy

CSAP 510
Apologetics Research and Writing
Fall 2005
10-31-05

In this paper, I will consider some of the more prevalent challenges to absolute truth. First, I will examine Louis Pojman’s essay Discovering Right and Wrong. I will show that Pojman’s critique of ethical objectivism is moral relativism in disguise. I will also show how the foundation of Pojman’s system is not able to support the tenants of moral objectivism. Second, I will show how Alan Dershowitz’s argument for morality without God is self-defeating. Finally, I will review both Pojman, Dershowitz and other relativists attempts to disprove absolute truth.

Reading through Louis Pojman’s chapter on “Ethical Relativism”, reminded me of this quote by Winston Churchill. “Man will occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of the time he will pick himself up and continue on.” Pojman begins his essay in a quest to define an acceptable code of ethics in a world without a Moral Lawgiver. He stumbles over absolute truth by successfully refuting many relativistic truth systems, but quickly gets back up and continues to drive forward while looking for a path towards naturalistic ethics.

While searching for the source and reason for a code of ethics, he accomplishes two meaningful ends. First, he effectively refutes a broad range of positions on relativistic truth claims. After refuting these hypotheses, he attempts to show how ethical objectivism is superior. Second, while trying to refute absolute truth claims, he shows how it is very easy to confuse customs and morality which he uses to refute absolute truth claims. Ultimately, his goal is to set up a man made morality tenable in a naturalistic setting where man’s use of reason is the base of all morality through moral objectivism. Pojman fails in his goal to show the superiority of ethical objectivism over absolute moral truth claims.

First, Pojman tries to show a significant difference between subjective relativism and ethical objectivism. Throughout his essay, he attacks subjectivists because their philosophy promotes the question, “Who’s to judge what’s really right or wrong?” Pojman counters that objectivism is superior to relativism because, “We can understand and excuse, to some degree at least, those who differ from our best notions of morality without abdicating the notion that cultures without principles of justice or promise keeping or protection of the innocent are morally poorer for these omissions.” His analysis fails.

The first question we must ask is who are “We”? Who is this intelligentsia with the insight to deem what is right and wrong? The point of objectivism is to judge what is right and wrong. If so, why is it a virtue not to view these cultures as “morally poorer” or try to change customs that seem not to be tolerant of other people culture? Pojman seems bent on saying that it is wrong to enforce your customs on other cultures by stating, “We have realized that the social dissonance caused by do-gooders was a bad thing.” The hypocrisy of this statement is that he has judged that “do-gooders” were “bad”. Pojman goes to lengths to show that he does not consider these cultures as “morally poorer”, though he views the do-gooders as bad. Pojman fails here because he violates the Law of Non-Contradiction. Here he shows how ethical objectivism is just moral relativism in disguise.

How does Pojman attempt to justify his relativism in disguise? Pojman attempts to say that “impartial reason” brings us to this place of enlightenment. The problem is that if man is the base of reason, then man is not qualified to build ethical values because man is not ethical. According to Pojman, who does not believe in God or absolute moral values, since Man is only temporal, he can only build temporal or relativistic values. Therefore, Pojman’s ethical objectivism is nothing more than moral relativism in disguise. He must first set up what he subjectively considers wrong and then judge all other conflicting opinions false.

In order to successfully defend Pojman’s dismissal of absolute truth claims, we need to define absolute truth. According to Norman Geisler, “Absolute truth is that which corresponds to its object.” When we consider many of the arguments of moral or ethical relativists, we find that they make man the absolute truth giver; therefore, the object of absolute truth. Pojman completes his chapter by saying, “Who’s to judge what’s right or wrong? We are. We are to do so on the basis of the best reasoning we can bring forth and with sympathy and understanding.”

But Pojman’s challenge is to show that man’s use of reason is sufficient to build a universal moral code. In order for man to define what is universally and absolutely true, he must be able to be the absolute moral truth giver. The problem with his analysis is that Pojman repeatedly points out is that Man is a truly evil creature capable of infanticide, genocide and intolerant paternalism.

Pojman’s challenge is to build a universal, moral objectivism based upon a creature capable of these qualities. Man’s history is replete with destruction of his fellow Man, war with his neighbors, intolerance towards those in other cultures and destruction of the environment he curses with his presence. Since truth (either absolute or objective) must correspond to its object, Pojman’s observations of Man’s capacity to do evil strongly suggest that Man is not capable of building a universal moral system. Therefore, Pojman’s base cannot support his system.
As Ken Samples points out, “Ethical principles cannot exist in a metaphysical or epistemological vacuum; they need a ground or a foundation which can justify them.”

Pojman’s ethical objectivism is just another version of relativism disguised in man’s subjective ability to reason. Ethical objectivism is grounded in an epistemological vacuum because as Kai Neilson states, “Reason will never take a man to morality” .

Pojman’s major challenge to an absolute moral truth is that societies seem to have different customs. For instance, the Eskimos left their elderly behind to die because they may risk the lives of the clan. In India, until the British outlawed a long held practice of burning a widow alive so they could keep themselves pure for their deceased husbands, we see different tribal customs taking a position on the value of life. Pojman and many other relativists use these examples to show how morals vary from culture to culture. The problem with his assessment is that he is misunderstands the root cause of the actions.

For instance, the tribe may leave the elderly behind because they value life. Their lives may be threatened or ended if they stay behind and lose the herd of animals, which is feeding the clan. A wife burned in the fires because her husband died is the ultimate act of love and respect for the husband. She burns herself to join her husband in the great mind of their god. The widow’s life becomes demonstrably more precious once cast into the funeral pyre.

The absolute principle of valuing life is the common denominator in these customs. Customs vary in their practice, but are all rooted in their intent. In the Eskimos case, the intent was to protect the future of their clan by practicing natural selection of their elderly. In the Indian case, the culture’s intent was to value the purity of the life of the widow through the practice of immolation. The value of life was absolute. As C.S. Lewis stated, “Their have been differences between their (different civilizations and different ages) moralities, but these have never amounted to anything like a total difference.” In these examples, the absolute truth that life is of absolute value is knowable even though their expression of this absolute value varied from culture to culture.

We see another approach to building ethics without God by Alan Dershowitz. This method is interesting because Dershowitz attempts to define morals through the negative. We see this epitomized when Alan Dershowitz debated Alan Keyes. Dershowitz stated, “I DON’T KNOW WHAT’S RIGHT! I know what’s WRONG. But I have something else to tell you, folks. YOU don’t know what’s right!” Though Dershowitz says he does not know what is right, he states that he knows it is Right to say that they are wrong. Importantly, his statement is false because it violates the Law of Non-Contradiction.

Dershowitz’s claim is also self-defeating. By stating, “You don’t know what’s right,” he claims to know what is right. Ultimately, like Pojman, he bases his assessment of truth on his exclusive point of view. Anyone that opposes his point of view is wrong.

Dershowitz’s argument is a newer tactic relativists and objectivists employ when they are confronted with evil figures that grossly violate Natural Law like the Nazi holocaust or by Paul Pot’s Khmer Rouge. As we have seen, Dershowitz’s goal is to set himself up as the arbiter of what is wrong to explicitly define what is right. He states that you cannot pass judgment on any person or any action unless you have a defined standard. That standard must define righteousness or justice. Through Dershowitz’s standard of judging what is wrong, he believes he can now set up a moral code of justice.

For instance, Alan Dershowitz, in the same debate with Alan Keyes, railed against the evils of legislating against abortion, same sex marriage, anti-sodomy laws and even the Boy Scouts. Dershowitz highlighted this point by stating, “I just don’t think it’s wrong to be a homosexual! I just don’t think it’s wrong to engage in homosexual conduct!” Previously, Dershowitz had stated that no one knows what is right. Afterwards, he betrays himself. Dershowitz does think he knows what is right by stating that homosexuality must be right because he did not think that it was wrong.

Dershowitz’s logic fails to circumvent the Moral Lawgiver though because only a moral lawgiver can give a law that shows that something in truly wrong. Like most positivists, Dershowitz’s goal is to make himself the Lawgiver by defining what is right through the negative. Once he defines what is wrong, he can then declare all opposing points of view are wrong. Therefore, this example exposes how Dershowitz’s version of moral relativism is self-defeating and false.

Pojman and Dershowitz attempt to justify a code of objective moral values. This attempt reveals the need for an independent standard by which we are trying to measure moral standards by. We see that both Dershowitz and Pojman assert that they can know when things are wrong. C.S. Lewis sums this up beautifully in Mere Christianity.

“The moment you say that one set of moral ideas can be better than another, you are in fact, measuring them both by a standard, saying one of them conforms to the standard more than the other. But that standard that measures two things is something different from either. You are, in fact, comparing them both with some Real Morality, admitting that there is such a thing as a real Right, independent of what people think, and that some people’s ideas get nearer to that real Right than others. Or put it this way. If your moral ideas can be truer, and those of the Nazis less true, there must be something- some real morality- for them to be true about.”

The Moral Law is knowable and undeniable. We know this because as Chuck Colson states, “Truth conforms to reality.” Reality is undeniable and under girded by the laws of mathematics and logic. Proof for the knowable moral law is that people constantly make excuses for breaking it.

Chuck Colson talks about a disagreement he had with a relativist. The relativist asserts that all religious groups are the same. Colson counters by pointing out the way towards salvation between Christians, Jews, Muslims and Hindus are very different, therefore, his point of view is flawed.

The relativist counters by stating, “They really aren’t truth claims, simply the preferences or beliefs of these groups,” Colson moves to the analogy of taking a pen out of his pocket and dropping it on the table over and over again. He states, “You’ll notice it drops everytime…Don’t we call that the law of gravity?” The man replied, “Oh that is not really dropping, I know enough about quantum mechanics to realize that particles are in constant motion…and those particles are passing through one another.”

Colson immediately countered, “Bull. What you see is a pen dropping, mass hitting mass. If particles are passing through, so be it. You are still seeing mass strike mass. One truth claim excludes the other.” The reason one truth claim excludes the other is that there is a law of gravity which is self-evident. The reason people deny absolute moral values is that there is an absolute moral value to deny. Without an absolute moral value, it would be impossible to have competing truth claims. Just because you deny the law of gravity does not mean that gravity does not exist. Post-modernism leaves its adherents as brainwashed to think that they can have, “both feet planted firmly in midair.”

We have shown that absolute truth is undeniable and knowable by refuting the claims of prominent moral relativists and objectivists. I have proven that if there is just one absolute moral principle, then there must be a moral lawgiver. That Moral Lawgiver has made his moral truth know just like physical truths like gravity.

Absolute truth is undeniable because it corresponds both to its object and reality. Immutable laws like gravity governed reality and act according to Natural laws. Moral Law is analogous to Natural law and is best knowable based on our reactions to negative stimuli. This is why we see objectivist or relativist ethicists try to build a system based upon what they see as wrong with society to determine what is ethical for humankind.

Specifically, Pojman and Dershowitz tried to build systems of ethics based on identifying what is wrong which attempt to displace an absolute moral system. The only way they could identify this system of ethics is if there is an independent standard to build their ethical assertions. As C.S. Lewis stated, “My argument against God was that the universe seemed so cruel and unjust. But how had I got this idea of just and unjust? A man does not call a line crooked unless he has some idea of a straight line. What was I comparing this universe with when I called it unjust.”

Works Cited
Lewis, C. S. Mere Christianity. New York: HarperCollins, 2001 Edition.
Colson, Charles W. The Good Life. Wheaton: Tyndale, 2005
Samples, Kenneth R. Without A Doubt. Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2004.
Pojman, Louis P. Ethics: Discovering Right and Wrong? Belmont: Wadsworth Publishing Company, 1990.
brainyquote.com
renewamerican.com

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