The Shortcomings of Moral Relativism: Part 3
The Case for Objective Moral Values
I have shown that with a high degree of confidence we can be sure that we not only know things, but we know them as they really are. In the same way, there are some cases of moral knowledge that seem clear and evident to us. For instance, murder is wrong, rape is wrong, and torturing babies for fun is wrong are all moral truths that seem to be objectively true. “Right-thinking people judge certain acts - such as racism, rape, child abuse and terrorism - as objectively evil, and not as merely relative social constructions.”[23]
Often, cultural differences tend to be in definitions of what acts are considered rape, murder and so on, not whether those acts are immoral. Remember, among the list of relativism’s weaknesses were that differences in practice do not equal differences in belief and many moral concepts are, in fact, universal. However, that does not mean that all morals are universals. “We should acknowledge that there are morals that are constructs of individuals and/or societies… [and] there can be a certain relativity in secondary principles (that is, how people decide to live out core moral truths).”[24] But, as I have stressed, “much less moral diversity exists at the level of principles than many anthropologists think they have observed.”[25]
Grounded In The Christian God
We have seen that we have good reason to believe that we see things as they really are and that we have direct access to reality. We have also seen that varying cultures universally hold many moral principles, and we can add that this has been the case across the eons. If morals are not social constructs, applicable only to certain cultures at given times, and they seem, in fact, just the opposite, then what gives them their universal, timeless character?
Furthermore, guilt or shame often accompanies moral failing, and “this view does not make sense if morals are just abstract principles that do not have some connection to us.”[26] We tend to feel guilt or shame in the presence of a person, not in the presence of a thing.
Given these attributes, I submit that the God of Christianity best explains the timeless, universal nature of morality and the feeling of falling short that accompanies moral contravention. Consider the following brief list of evidences for God.
The kalam cosmological argument states that whatever begins to exist has a cause; the universe had a beginning; therefore, the universe has a cause. The first state of the universe “cannot be explained in terms of earlier initial conditions and natural laws leading up to it.” Since the explanation cannot be scientific, it must be personal. The explanation must be that the universe was created by “an agent who has volition to create it.”[27]
Furthermore, many fundamental laws and parameters of physics have been discovered that are so precisely fine-tuned they are cumulatively explained by what has become known as the anthropic principle. Patrick Glynn summarized this principle when he said, “The anthropic principle says that all the seemingly arbitrary and unrelated constants in physics have one strange thing in common – these are precisely the values you need if you want to have a universe capable of producing life.”[28]
From the incredibly large, the universe, we turn to the infini-tesimal, the cell, and see the fingerprints if design in biology. Evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins says, “Each nucleus…contains a digitally coded database larger, in information content, than all thirty volumes of the Encyclopedia Britannica put together. And this figure is for each cell, not all of the cells of the body put together.”[29] Random chance plus time cannot account for this. To further illustrate this point, Stephen Meyer says, “The probabilities of forming a rather short functional protein at random [much less a complete, functioning cell] would be one chance in a hundred thousand trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion.”[30]
We narrow the scope to the Christian God by looking at Jesus Christ, specifically His resurrection. There are five “minimal facts” granted by almost all skeptics.[31] They are: Jesus died by crucifixion; Jesus’ disciples believe he rose and appeared to them; the church persecutor Paul was suddenly changed; the skeptic James, Jesus’ brother, was suddenly changed; and the tomb was empty. Remember, these are the facts accepted by skeptics, people who do not believe the Bible is the inerrant Word of God. There is much more evidence; these are just the minimal facts that even the most ardent skeptics confirm.
I think it is also important to consider that even secular studies affirm that God is not looking to punish us when He gives us rules to live by; He truly has our best interests at heart. Today, sex and sexuality are rampant in mainstream America. Premarital sex is at an all-time high, and living together outside of marriage has become commonplace. But “statistics demon-strate that those who live together are twice as likely to get divorced after they do marry. Studies have shown the more pre-marital sex you have… the more likely that you or your spouse will cheat.”[32]
Next up, our conclusion.
[23] Ibid., 251.
[24] Smith, Ethics and the Search for Moral Knowledge, 341.
[25] Rae, Moral Choices, 90.
[26] Smith, Ethics and the Search for Moral Knowledge, 342.
[27] Lee Strobel, The Case for a Creator (Zondervan: Grand Rapids, 2004), 110.
[28] Patrick Glynn, God: The Evidence, The Reconciliation of Faith and Reason in a Postsecular World (New York: Three Rivers, n.d.), 31.
[29] Richard Dawkins, The Blind Watchmaker, (London: Longman, 1986), 1, 2-3.
[30] Strobel, The Case for a Creator, 229.
[31] Smith, Ethics and the Search for Moral Knowledge, 367.
[32] Lee Strobel, God’s Outrageous Claims (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1997), 146, emphasis original.