Moral Relativism - Part Four

Part Four: The Catholic Church and Relativism
If the arguments against moral relativism are strong, how is it that so many people advocate and preach relativism on a day to day basis? Why is relativism so popular? I think this important question can be answered partly because of the problems supporters of absolutes encounter. This goes back to the two objections to moral absolutes raised in the previous post; 1) What if you get you objective standard wrong? and 2) What gives you the authority to judge the actions of others by your objective standard? The first of these two objections is the most powerful and the argument would appear to hinge on this point. If a person could provide absolute standards at once universal and convincing then the claims of moral relativism would be shot to pieces. Can such a system be demonstrated? Were you to ask a person to justify the absolute moral standards whereby he lives his life what would he say?

Broadly perhaps a person could appeal to common human experience for the foundations of his moral system. He could point out that all societies regard the killing of innocents as wrong, that bravery is preferable to cowardice, that someone’s actions should be punished when they do evil and applauded when they do right. Such an appeal to common human values can, however, only get you so far. What is a believer in absolutes to make of slavery which has only recently been condemned in societies? Or when they are confronted with issues such as abortion, euthanasia or political freedom? Another objection to this appeal to board human experience is that it is really no different to the grounds for which the moral relativist based his own morality. The person who bases his morality on common human experience even if he can distil what this is, is nonetheless basing his moral code on a “its right because other people do it” attitude. Such an attitude is open to the same objections which we saw applied to the moral relativist.

I am going to argue here that it takes a religious system to convincingly found a moral system. When the question is raised; “On what do you base your belief of moral absolutes?” the most convincing answer can only be “My absolutes are based on the eternal law of God”. Any other answer would leave out values hollow or open adjustment, somehow not absolute and we are once again in the territory of the nihilist or relativist. Now this answer is still in many ways problematic, one of the major issues is still going to be what religion is the right religion? Many different people are convinced on many radically different religious positions and beliefs. God cannot be delivering two or three different laws at once so which religious belief is the true one? This question is obviously only relevant for a believer. For an atheist such a foundation for a moral code is also inconceivable. This begs the question can there be such a thing as a moral atheist? Now I believe that there can be and are moral atheists. An atheist can “set” their moral foundations with common human feeling, with intuition or a “gut feeling” and to the degree that this moral system is based on natural law and atheist will be successfully moral. It is not however, a moral system which I myself would find convincing because it is ultimately founded on what the atheist must believe to be human and subjective factors. Under pressure or hard scrutiny I would be tempted to “give up” on morality and feel logically justified in doing so. With atheism unable therefore to give me convincing moral foundations I must move to consider religion.

Remember that the argument so far has discounted relative and subjective foundations for morality. Here I am looking for solid, objective grounds to base morality and this is what I would expect from a law coming from God. Thus it follows logically that a religious system which changes or has changed its fundamental beliefs or refuses to teach on important areas of morality cannot be a true authority on the absolute virtues I know to exist. This does not mean that just because a religion is dogmatic it must be true but only that we have only to consider those religions who are unafraid to speak dogmatically on important issues of morality. A religion must demonstrate at the very least that it believes that it speaks with God’s authority before it is even worth considering. What religion claims this authority?

For Islam this is difficult, authority resides in the Koran but whose interpretation of the Koran? As the tremendous gap between moderates of the Islamic faith and the advocates of sharia law and terrorism it would seem that wildly divergent brands of Islam are possible and that no body exists with the authority to speak definitively to the Islamic faith. Certainly from my own reading of the Koran it appears to me that a person could build any religion he chose from the text. For Christianity the protestant sects fail in this same category. Like the Koran, unless good guidance is utilised in its interpretation, the Bible could be used to support a myriad of different positions. The individualistic notions of the protestant reformation has led to 33 000 denominations, a number which continues to increase by 270 to 300 every year. Worse the protestant foundation of sola scriptura means that none of these denominations has any authority in its interpretations. All authority derives from a text which as we have seen has been interpreted 33 000 different ways.

Some of the other major religions may still present us with candidates for examination. In Buddhism for example there is the Dali Lama. My knowledge, unfortunately, faiths outside of Christianity, Judaism and Islam is limited to the very basics so these possibilities must remain untapped for the time being. Instead I want to move on to the one religion I find convincing in its claims. The one religion which can authentically be called a Church which processes an authoritative structure stretching back to God himself is Roman Catholicism. Here I find the only convincing answer to the question; “With what authority do you arrive at your knowledge of absolutes?” From God himself.