Moral Relativism

[inocente]

Maybe the problem is a faulty understanding of God and His morality.

There’s nothing to understand if God judges our performance against our conscience. Isn’t that just more simple and robust, and less divisive than thinking any of us have the inside track on knowing God’s morality?

Absolutism is the premise that there are unwavering moral principles, not unwavering opinions on how far those principles extend.

I must always seek revenge (Exodus 21:23-25, etc.) while never seeking revenge (Matt 5:38-39). Yikes! Can’t we just try to follow Christ and do our best without all this superstructure?

Your conscience can be wrong. To be able to trust your conscience, then, you must form it well in accordance with divine law. Conscience is not a substitute for divine law. Conscience must have divine law at its core to be trustworthy!

Remember, you must always obey the certain judgment of your conscience. Note the qualifier: certain. It seems to me like that qualifies the statement to read that you must have a well-formed conscience.

I took “certain” to mean definite, assured, evident, dependable. But if we have to interpret, where’s the absolute?

Unless I can’t spot it, the CCC doesn’t say that a well-formed conscience is one than conforms to any given standard, and can then be tested for conformity, so I can’t see how we’re supposed to know whether our conscience can be trusted. If a well-formed conscience complies with said divine law, I wonder how we can know this law. Either we take someone else’s word, which doesn’t exactly help to build our conscience, or else we work it for ourselves, which means divine law is just another phrase meaning conscience. Sorry, for the life of me I can’t see what purpose these hidden absolutes have for us or for God.

 

[inocente]

Let’s not forget that the conscience must be properly formed.

But that’s not what CCC 1790 says, unless we question the word “certain”. Would any Catholic like to mosey on over to Ask an Apologist to sort it out? I’d do it but it’s not my catechism.

 

[Betterave]

I suppose not, but what does that have to do with this thread? Are you suggesting that my summer sausage argument is not, in fact, an argument? You call it an argument later in your post. Or are you suggesting that Kreeft was not referring to actual arguments when he talks about moral arguments? Or something else… ?

I think I just thought it was an important general point to keep in mind, an attempt to forestall the assumption that you seemed to be tending towards that arguments are grounded simply in persuasiveness, whereas real arguments ought to be grounded in understanding. For example, if someone offers an argument in favor of moral relativism which does nothing to show the cogency of moral relativism as an account of morality, it might persuade a lot of people who don’t know the meanings of the terms they are using, but it will in fact not really be an argument in the sense the arguer imagines and intends.

I agree! That was my point, of course. We can go structure arguments about fatty foods just like we can structure arguments about morality. Unless you think that ``we shouldn’t eat fattening foods’’ is a universal principle, then clearly there must be something wrong with Kreeft’s idea that this kind of structuring requires us to appeal to such universal principles.

But you miss the point that Kreeft’s argument was about moral arguments. And the point was that we *can’t *structure arguments about fatty foods just like we can structure arguments about morality! We have to proceed from different kinds of principles.

I don’t know what you’re getting at, here. Why would we want to frame my summer sausage argument as a moral argument?

What was the point of your summer sausage argument? Wasn’t it about the derivability of moral imperatives from preferences?

 

[mark_a]

But that’s not what CCC 1790 says, unless we question the word “certain”. Would any Catholic like to mosey on over to Ask an Apologist to sort it out? I’d do it but it’s not my catechism.

Checking the “in brief” section 1795-1802 should clear it up for ya.

 

[tonyrey]

This post says it all.

You may be wrong but your conscience remains your ultimate authority - if it is properly formed…

 

[tonyrey]

I guess occasions could arise where those who believe in moral absolutes find them at odds with their conscience (post #66 may or may not apply). But no, I think we all do what Paul says we do (Rom 2:15) and then let our conscience be our guide. Wouldn’t it be a sin to do otherwise?

Here’s to the demise of moral relativism!

 

[Betterave]

One might make that assumption, but not this one. All the evidence is that no two people think exactly alike. Yes God’s on my side, but only because He’s on everyone’s side.

Sorry, but that sounds like pure nonsense. How do you interpret the whole sheep and goats thing, the wheat and the tares, the good and bad fish, the whole issue of good and evil?? What verse in the Bible do you want to cite to show that God isn’t on one side and one side only? Obviously no two people think exactly alike. What does that have to do with anything??

[hatsoff, this is the kind of thing I was referring to when I mentioned ‘arguments’ that really aren’t.]

If you mean that sharing experience is a good thing then agreed. For example, giving a beggar money for food may sound like a good idea, but if he’s an alcoholic, buys booze instead, and dies of alcoholic poisoning then experience says it would have been better to buy the food and watch him eat it.

Again, sharing experience has nothing to do with what I was talking about, so this sounds like nonsense again. I pointed out that knowledge is a gift of the Spirit. Let me add that when we are told that (in some sense) “knowledge will pass away,” this is a statement about the future, the world to come; it is not a statement about this world, so it has no relevance to our knowledge in this world.

But Paul doesn’t provide a get-out clause to “where there is knowledge, it will pass away”. Suppose one hundred years from now everyone looks back on us in shame for ever thinking it was moral to eat the flesh of other creatures. Would either we or they be eternally and absolutely off-base, or is it a Romans 14 thing, where both are relatively OK?

I don’t know what you’re talking about with a get-out clause. And to answer your question: it would be they who would be eternally off-base. What did you think?

The OP says “that because we have a structure for moral arguments we require a higher level for morality (that is, we require an absolute morality)”. I’m asking where is this fountain of absolute morality that we may all drink its pure water. All us Baptists, atheists, Buddhists, Hindus, Sikhs, etc. It’s not written on our hearts (only the requirements of the law are written there). It’s not on google maps or in the stars or in any science book. Philosophers disagree even on the principles. It isn’t in any holy book either unless we say one is more holy than another. Is it writ large somewhere for all who have eyes to see except we first need special glasses? Too right I’m confused.

Labels like relativism, and even absolutism, are too broad to be used as anything other than stereotypes. I have sympathy for JPII and Benedict arguing against those who ignore the traditions of our societies and are “swept along by every wind of teaching” into social experiments without stopping to think about long-term consequences. But I also agree with Benedict that there is a living scripture and a living God, and so don’t get those folk who want to freeze everything in amber. God gave us a conscience and Christ taught us how to use it well. What purpose is then served by claiming that one set, and only one set, of abstractions trounces all others for all people for all time? Go on dude, help me out.

So you’ve written a bunch of stuff here, but you’ve just repeated your position and ignored my objections. Now I will propose a universal moral law to you: It is wrong to defend one’s position by ignoring what your critic has said and simply repeating yourself. This is dishonest. Intellectual dishonesty is wrong, absolutely. Those who do not know this are wrong. The purpose that is served by claiming this to be the case is that we recognize the truth and we begin to ground the proper formation of our con-science (that by which we are ‘with-knowledge’ in the moral sphere), and this means we begin to ground the adequacy of our apprehension of the truth in the moral sphere.

 

[Elijah_Baley]

What about when the Church is flat out wrong - like Dum Diversas, Romanus Pontifex used to justify slavery. If you lived at the time and your conscience told you to oppose slavery you would be going against Portugal and against these papal bulls. The Bulls were consistent with the time but hardly universal.

Why bring Dum Diversas into it? Slavery of Dum Diversas was non-chattel slavery in what was basically wartime, more like the American POW camps where we held captured Germans and less like the institution of slavery in the 19th century. If by slavery you mean an institution which operated more like a prisoner-of-war or forced labor camp, I think you’d find a great many people with well-formed consciences who support it. That is not what you mean, however, so I must conclude you are ill-informed.

In any case, a conscience without divine law at the center is a conscience in the wrong. You apply this principle to anything — if it lacks divine law, it is wrong. If Dum Diversas does not have a divine law at its center, it’s wrong. This, essentially, is absolutism.

It boggles the mind that anyone could be both Catholic — or even merely Christian — and not recognize the absolute moral law handed to us by first God the Father and then Christ and then sustained by the Holy Spirit.

To recognize only your own conscience without the divine law which empowers it is to create a comfortable morality in your own image, which because it only confirms and empowers your dearest, most comfortable sins is essentially no morality at all. “Ye shall be as God” all over again.

 

[jonfawkes]

Why bring Dum Diversas into it? Slavery of Dum Diversas was non-chattel slavery in what was basically wartime, more like the American POW camps where we held captured Germans and less like the institution of slavery in the 19th century. If by slavery you mean an institution which operated more like a prisoner-of-war or forced labor camp, I think you’d find a great many people with well-formed consciences who support it. That is not what you mean, however, so I must conclude you are ill-informed.

In any case, a conscience without divine law at the center is a conscience in the wrong. You apply this principle to anything — if it lacks divine law, it is wrong. If Dum Diversas does not have a divine law at its center, it’s wrong. This, essentially, is absolutism.

It boggles the mind that anyone could be both Catholic — or even merely Christian — and not recognize the absolute moral law handed to us by first God the Father and then Christ and then sustained by the Holy Spirit.

To recognize only your own conscience without the divine law which empowers it is to create a comfortable morality in your own image, which because it only confirms and empowers your dearest, most comfortable sins is essentially no morality at all. “Ye shall be as God” all over again.

Because it forced labor - It’s outlawed NOW. Chattle and Non Chattle. - to argue “well they weren’t Christians”, which basically what you are doing, is offensive.

Just because it was in WWII doesn’t make it a moral Good. The Geneva convention outlaws forced labor for POWs.

Are you saying the 4th Geneva Convention is against church doctrine and immoral?

 

[Elijah_Baley]

Because it forced labor - It’s outlawed NOW. Chattle and Non Chattle. - to argue “well they weren’t Christians”, which basically what you are doing, is offensive.

Just because it was in WWII doesn’t make it a moral Good. The Geneva convention outlaws forced labor for POWs.

Are you saying the 4th Geneva Convention is against church doctrine and immoral?

When quoting a whole post, please respond to the whole post.

 

[jonfawkes]

So you agree Dum Diversas is wrong?

 

[Elijah_Baley]

I refer you to the earlier post:

In any case, a conscience without divine law at the center is a conscience in the wrong. You apply this principle to anything — if it lacks divine law, it is wrong. If Dum Diversas does not have a divine law at its center, it’s wrong. This, essentially, is absolutism.

It boggles the mind that anyone could be both Catholic — or even merely Christian — and not recognize the absolute moral law handed to us by first God the Father and then Christ and then sustained by the Holy Spirit.

To recognize only your own conscience without the divine law which empowers it is to create a comfortable morality in your own image, which because it only confirms and empowers your dearest, most comfortable sins is essentially no morality at all. “Ye shall be as God” all over again.

Dum Diversas is irrelevant.

 

[jonfawkes]

I. If Dum Diversas does not have a divine law at its center, it’s wrong. .[/INDENT]

So yes you do, Slavery is wrong, so DD is wrong.

 

[jdwood983]

I must always seek revenge (Exodus 21:23-25, etc.) while never seeking revenge (Matt 5:38-39). Yikes! Can’t we just try to follow Christ and do our best without all this superstructure?

Exodus Ch 21 is telling us how to judge someone as a Judge, not as we should act as a person. That is, if you strike me & break a tooth and I take you to court, then the judge should declare that your tooth must be broken too.
In Matthew, Jesus is saying that we shouldn’t take someone to court for an injustice, that we should just forgive & forget. The two are totally different things.

So no, the morality of the OT does not contradict the morality of the NT.

inocente:

I’m not sure it’s possible to bend conscience outside of being manipulated. We could label someone who reaches different moral conclusions as not acting in good faith, but it seems a little judgmental

Consider pornography addiction. It generally starts as someone watching something ‘soft’ and slowly progressing to something ‘hard’ and then into ‘strange.’ This is someone who is bending their conscience to say that, “Porn isn’t bad” from the proposition, “Porn is bad.” It is completely possible to bend one’s own conscience.
And only an absolutist would be able to say that someone is not acting in good faith & it would be completely judgmental because they’re being judged by someone who knows what is right and what is wrong.

Hope that helps.

 

[PRmerger]

A Muslim might believe that it’s moral to stone adulterous women to death because the Koran says so, and because they believe that the Koran is the message of Allah, and that Allah really exists. But if we dispute that Allah exists, then we can dispute this moral precept (that it’s moral to stone adulterous women) in Islam.

So is there any help to bust his ‘logic’ and help my case?

I think you might approach it this way:
Your friend believes that we can dispute a Muslim’s moral code if we can dispute that Allah exists…but he’s presenting a moral code that we all agree is wrong.

Take another Muslim moral code: it is good to feed the poor. A Muslim believes this because the Koran says so, and because they believe the Koran is the message of Allah, and that Allah really exists.

BUT! Even if you dispute that Allah exists, it does not disprove the Muslim’s moral code. It is indeed good to feed the poor, whether Allah exists or not.

Thus, his premise is faulty.

 

[PRmerger]

I’m not sure I see what you mean by this. Are you suggesting that, without God, moral values are just personal preferences of human beings, such as we might prefer one color over another?

Yes. If there is no moral absolute, then discussions about morality are the equivalent of saying, “Chocolate is the best ice cream flavor!” “No! Vanilla is!”

(Breyer’s Natural Vanilla actually is BTW.)

I suppose in a certain sense that really is all they are—though of course we usually care a great deal more about moral issues than color issues. Do you have some kind of argument showing that they must be something more than personal preferences?

Your presence here is the best argument that there must be something more than personal preferences, hatsoff. If there are no moral absolutes then having any type of meaningful discussion would be reduced to the absurd “Chocolate vs Vanilla” debate.

Clearly, your insights into morality have more meaning than just an opinion; otherwise you would not invest yourself into such an absurd and useless discussion about whether one flavor is superior to another.

 

[tonyrey]

Yes. If there is no moral absolute, then discussions about morality are the equivalent of saying, “Chocolate is the best ice cream flavor!” “No! Vanilla is!”

Indeed. It is also a moral absolute that we should be reasonable because reasoning is valuable. To deny that is to cut our epistemological throat!

 

[inocente]

Remember, you must always obey the certain judgment of your conscience. Note the qualifier: certain. It seems to me like that qualifies the statement to read that you must have a well-formed conscience.

Checking the “in brief” section 1795-1802 should clear it up for ya.

You may be wrong but your conscience remains your ultimate authority - if it is properly formed…

I asked a question over on Ask an Apologist and will link the reply if it’s answered, although they’ve every right not to as it’s so hypothetical. The nub of my question was:

*Suppose a Catholic has done his best to form his conscience in Christ but finds he disagrees with some point in the teaching of the Church. He’s researched it, talked it over with his priest and friends, prayed, has no intention of causing conflict or others to stumble, but still sincerely cannot reconcile his conscience with the teaching.

In that situation, and excluding any others, should he act with or against his conscience? In other words when it comes to the crunch, does CCC 1790 apply absolutely?*

 

[inocente]

Here’s to the demise of moral relativism!

Indeed, to any form of relativism that denies conscience anyway. I’m still eager to hear about how we got to know these add-on moral absolutes and which take priority in real life. The central issue for me is that guidelines are fine, but not if they are man-made substitutes for trust in Christ.

You have faith that they’re not man-made, and I don’t question that, but the OP is about how to convince someone with a different faith or with no faith at all, and that’s still up for grabs.

 

[inocente]

In Matthew, Jesus is saying that we shouldn’t take someone to court for an injustice, that we should just forgive & forget. The two are totally different things.

So no, the morality of the OT does not contradict the morality of the NT.

There seems to be some wriggling there, which may not convince your classmate .

To up the ante, suppose instead of breaking your tooth, the guy puts you in hospital for a year, damages your brain and disfigures you for life . It would be perfectly human for you and your loved ones to seek a just punishment for the culprit rather than forgive and forget. Forgiving and forgetting would be immoral as well, as it would allow the culprit to go free, uncorrected, and possibly do worse to others. The issues are then about how much punishment and retribution is just, including factors such as whether you started the fight, whether the other guy has a mental problem or prior form, etc. There’s a tension between the hyperbole of the two testaments here, which cannot be answered by absolutes.

This is someone who is bending their conscience to say that, “Porn isn’t bad” from the proposition, “Porn is bad.” It is completely possible to bend one’s own conscience.

But does this kind of guy openly display his predilection to his wife, kids and mother, or does he hide it away because he’s ashamed and knows, in all conscience, he shouldn’t be doing it?

And only an absolutist would be able to say that someone is not acting in good faith & it would be completely judgmental because they’re being judged by someone who knows what is right and what is wrong.

Nice try, but I’ll raise you Matt 7. How can any of us absolutely know what’s right for others when we’re all fallen?

Hope that helps.

Yes it did. Is this discussion helping you in your case with your classmate?