Month: October 2020

Relativism, according to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy,  is the view that truth and falsity, right and wrong, standards of reasoning, and procedures of justification are products of differing conventions and framework of assessment and their authority is confined to the context giving rise to them.  Relativists claim that all “universal” truths are bound by historical or social conditions.  Relativism, though not a new concept, has gained recently more  acceptance among many intellectuals due to Progressives in higher education.  Students are being proselytized that prejudice breeds apathy, division,  and oppression.  Children are being taught that respect and tolerance for other people’s reality are the virtues necessary for securing a free and democratic society and the primary mission of our public education system is to purge prejudice from the human consciousness.   Anthony Lewis, a two-time Pulitzer Prize winner and a NYT journalist, said, “Certainty is the enemy of decency and humanity in people who are sure they are right.”  A modern American intellectual prides himself on being empathic and non-judgmental as much as an ancient Roman prided himself  on being honorable and courageous.  Progressives believe that Relativism and its moral corollaries, tolerance and compassion,  will put an end to oppression and bring about lasting peace and harmony.  In this essay,  I will critique the three essential claims of Relativism.  I hope by the end of the essay, you will come to see that Relativism is, in fact, an insidious worldview that will destroy civilization and humanity. 

Claim 1: Relativists claim truth and falsity are products of differing conventions and framework of assessment and that their authority is confined to the context giving rise to them.

Relativists believe there is no objective truth that applies to all times, places, or social and cultural frameworks.  Therefore, truths and lies are obsolete concepts.  There are only perceptions, narratives, viewpoints and perspectives.   Cross out the 9th commandment . Forget  Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle; they were just fools chasing a ghost.  Dismiss scientists like Issac Newton who believed his greatest friend was the Truth.

https://babylonbee.com/news/sat-now-features-5-answer-bubbles-a-b-c-d-and-my-truth

Jesus says, “If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”  For a modern intellectual, his (his/her, he/she interchangeable) own truth sets himself free.  Free from what?  Free from the obligation to pursue, recognize, accept and tell the truth. It does not matter if his truth is half-true or untrue.  He feels no obligation to ontological imperative.  The difference between “everybody lies” and “nobody lies” is that the latter erases the concept of falsehood in human consciousness. When there is no objective truth, any claim can be true.

Relativism also frees humans from pursuing knowledge.  In order for someone to know something, there must be something one knows about.  Truth is a condition of knowledge.  If there are no facts of the matter, then there is nothing to know (or to fail to know) . ¹   This raises an interesting question; what is the purpose of education.  Allen Bloom, in Closing of the American Mind-How Higher Education Has Failed Democracy and Impoverished the Souls of Today’s Students, ² writes, “The purpose of  education is not to make them scholars but to provide them with a moral virtue-openness; openness to all kinds of men, all kinds of life-style, all ideologies… They are taught that the worst enemy of a free and democratic society is the man who is not open to everything.”  Universities, instead of competing on scholarly excellence, compete on the number of diversity officers,  the number of  grievance studies courses,  and the number of safe spaces.   Bloom concludes, ”Great opening is a great closing.”  G.K. Chesterton expressed a similar view on the demerit of an open mind.  Chesterton said, “An open mind is really a mark of foolishness, like an open mouth.  Mouths and minds were made to shut; they were made to open only in order to shut.” ³   When wisdom is not pursued, people stay ignorant. 

Relativism replaces truth with internal consistency, but being consistent is bad if the starting assumptions are not good.  Only a fool goes 1 mile east by going 14,000 miles west first.  Relativism avoids any judgment based on First Principles.  The rest of the essay will touch on this idea further.

Claim 2: Relativists claim the view that standards of reasoning, and procedures of justification are products of differing conventions and framework of assessment, and their authority is confined to the context giving rise to them.

Relativism, besides freeing humans from pursuing knowledge, also unburdens them from being rational and the obligation to make sound judgment.  Relativists claim that there are no universal laws of reason and logic.   What is irrational for one group of people may be perfectly rational for another.    When ‘my reason’ is sufficient to justify a claim or an action, there is no need for anyone to outgrow his terrible twos stage.  Instead of being tamed by reason, instinct and emotion are given free rein.

Reason is the power of the mind to think, understand, and form judgments logically.  The capability to reason is one of the faculties which separate humans from beasts.  Like speech, the ability to reason well does not come naturally.    Logical concepts and laws are tools to help us to think well.  They help us to make rational assessments of the validity of statements, claims, and beliefs.    With well developed reasoning skills, we are able to think rationally, judge correctly, and choose wisely.  But when reason is considered to be just a product of convention, there is no reason for supposing that it yields truth. ⁴  As reason is being dethroned in academia, critical thinking is not being taught and practised.

The following is a statement put out by a group of evangelical intellectuals laying out their reasons for supporting the democratic party’s agenda and why other evangelicals should vote for Joe Biden.   Many critics question the intellectual honesty of the authors of the statement. ⁵   I, on the other hand, think it is entirely possible the authors sincerely believe they are saving lives by voting and endorsing Joe Biden.  It is not their intellectual honesty I question, it is their intellectual competency that I question.

“AS PRO-LIFE EVANGELICALS, WE DISAGREE WITH VICE PRESIDENT BIDEN AND THE DEMOCRATIC PLATFORM ON THE ISSUE OF ABORTION. BUT WE BELIEVE A BIBLICALLY SHAPED COMMITMENT TO THE SANCTITY OF HUMAN LIFE COMPELS US TO A CONSISTENT ETHIC OF LIFE THAT AFFIRMS THE SANCTITY OF HUMAN LIFE FROM BEGINNING TO END.

Many things that good political decisions could change destroy persons created in the image of God and violate the sanctity of human life. Poverty kills millions every year. So does lack of healthcare and smoking. Racism kills. Unless we quickly make major changes, devastating climate change will kill tens of millions. Poverty, lack of accessible health care services, smoking, racism and climate change are all pro-life issues. As the National Association of Evangelicals’ official public policy document (FOR THE HEALTH OF THE NATION) insists, “Faithful evangelical civic engagement and witness must champion a biblically balanced agenda.“  Therefore we oppose “one issue” political thinking because it lacks biblical balance.

Knowing that the most common reason women give for abortion is the financial difficulty of another child, we appreciate a number of Democratic proposals that would significantly alleviate that financial burden: accessible health services for all citizens, affordable childcare, a minimum wage that lifts workers out of poverty.

For these reasons, we believe that on balance, Joe Biden’s policies are more consistent with the biblically shaped ethic of life than those of Donald Trump. Therefore, even as we continue to urge different policies on abortion, we urge evangelicals to elect Joe Biden as president.”

Their propositional argument basically consists of three statements:

1. Poverty, racism, lack of access to health care, drastic climate change, and smoking kill tens of millions of people.
2. Biden’s policy is effective in solving the problems listed in (1). 
3. Therefore, voting Biden will save tens of millions of lives.

In order for (3) to be true, both (1) and (2) have to be true.  One of the intellectual standards for assessing someone’s reasoning is clarity.  Words used in (1):  poverty, access to healthcare, drastic climate change, and racism are vague and ambiguous.  Does poverty mean global poverty or US poverty? Does poverty mean relative poverty or absolute poverty? Does access to health care mean access to insurance or  access to health care? What does “racism kills” mean? How “drastic” has the climate changed? Equivocal terms may be useful for rhetorical purposes to elicit instinctive and emotional responses, but they are useless in formulating sound judgment.

As for (2), the authors claim that Biden’s socialist policy of wealth redistribution and government regulation is effective in solving societal problems.  But can they name one socialist country that is prosperous?  By the way, Sweden is not a socialist country. ⁶

Without clarity and evidence, Proposition (3), the conclusion drawn, is precarious.  Without good reasoning skill,  erroneous judgment ensues.

Even if all three statements are true, a judicious thinker may still choose differently.  The number of lives saved is a criterion, but it is not the only criterion.  If the number of lives saved were the criterion, Britain would not have gone to war with Nazi Germany. ⁷   As Churchill explained in Their Finest Hour speech, ⁸ there were other considerations.

“Upon this battle depends the survival of Christian civilization. Upon it depends our own British life, and the long continuity of our institutions and our Empire. The whole fury and might of the enemy must very soon be turned on us. Hitler knows that he will have to break us in this Island or lose the war. If we can stand up to him, all Europe may be free and the life of the world may move forward into broad, sunlit uplands. But if we fail, then the whole world, including the United States, including all that we have known and cared for, will sink into the abyss of a new Dark Age made more sinister, and perhaps more protracted, by the lights of perverted science. “

Most political decisions are moral in nature.  It requires the discernment of the moral order.  In a culture where moral order and hierarchy are repugnant and quantitative equality is the absolute standard, it is no surprise that a simple numerical criterion is chosen.  That leads us to the third claim of Relativism.

Claim 3: Relativists claim right and wrong are products of differing conventions and framework of assessment and that their authority is confined to the context giving rise to them.

Moral Relativism is the view that beliefs about right and wrong, good and bad, and moral judgment, not only vary greatly across time and context, but that their correctness is dependent on or relative to individual or cultural perspectives and frameworks. ⁹  In other words, there is no transcendent moral standard to discern right from wrong, and good from bad behavior.  To think otherwise is judgmental, bigoted, hard-hearted, ethnocentric or imperialistic.   The fact that moral leaders, who are called to save souls, accept financial difficulty as a reason for destroying a defenseless human life goes to show how pervasive Moral Relativism is.

According to Moral Relativism, the inner voice we call conscience is simply a product of convention. Therefore, conscience is subject to change.  Hitler, a true moral relativist, once said, ”I free Germany from the stupid and degrading fallacies of conscience and morality.” In contrast, George Washington regarded conscience as the spark of celestial fire.

Under Moral Relativism,  there is no immoral person, law,  or society.  Any action can be justified.   Without transcendent moral norms,  the end justifies the means.

I hope by now you will agree with me on the danger of Relativism.  

When people who are taught:

• There is no objective reality.
• There is nothing to be learned from the past and others.
• Personal feeling and conviction trump reason.
• End justifies means.

You have a society in which: 

• Opposition to allowing a biological male to compete in women’s sports is bigotry.
• Infanticide is a woman’s right.
• Bringing toddlers to drag queen story hours in the library is educational. ¹⁰

It never occurs to people that when they are free from those pesky conventional restraints –  reality, reason, and conscience –  they become mere creatures.  Now the question is: why do so many of our educators indoctrinate our youth with this self-destructive worldview?