A Christian apologist says...
"In moral relativism, nobody's morality is any more "right" than the next person's. Everyone defines his or her morality individually. No greater value is placed on any given view of morality over another. An "upright" person can't make any common appeal to his perspective over a "degenerate" person."
This is of course a misrepresentation of moral relativism, as explained here
This is of course a misrepresentation of moral relativism, as explained here
Some Christian apologists then use their invented concept of moral relativism to attack atheists. Their argument goes along these lines
- The Bible provides an absolute moral reference
- The Bible comes from God so absolute morality is defined by God as described in the Bible
- Atheists don't believe in God, therefore atheists have no fixed moral reference.
- Therefore atheists are moral relativists
- Moral relativists have no way to define good from bad, or right from wrong.
- Therefore atheists do not know the difference between right and wrong.
Let's look at each of these points in turn:
1 – The Bible provides an absolute (or objective) moral reference
This is demonstrably untrue:
1a) The Bible is open to interpretation and even Christians disagree on how it should be interpreted. Even a seemingly simple statement such as “love your enemies” can be interpreted as a command to pacifism (by Quakers for example) but for most Christians it does not deter them from them killing their enemies.
1b) Christians also disagree on a range of moral issues such as capital punishment; gun ownership; euthanasia; abortion; gay marriage, birth control and so on. It's only a few decades ago that Christians were both supporting and opposing racial segregation and only 150 years ago Christians were actively sponsoring slavery. If we go back a few hundred years, Christian leaders were commanding and sponsoring ethnic cleansing, oppression and theft of natural resources in the Americas, Europe and the Middle East – all the while using the Bible as justification.
1c) Christian apologists cherry pick the Bible for positive moral messages (which any right minded person would agree with). But they ignore the hundreds of examples of atrocities in the Bible, leading to millions of deaths, which are commanded or committed by God Himself. Perhaps even worse than ignoring these passages is the habit of fundamentalists to argue that these horror stories are literal truth and can be justified.
1d) Christian Apologists sometimes try to justify their disagreements by ignoring them and arguing that at least there are lots of important things they do agree on. The key word however, is "interpretation" as explained in (1a). If Christians had an objective or absolute moral reference, it wouldn't need interpreting. Disagreements are a fact of life regardless of religion (or lack of). That's why we have judges and courts of law and and any number of ways to resolve disputes and make decisions and come up with the "best" solutions, moral or otherwise.
1d) Christian Apologists sometimes try to justify their disagreements by ignoring them and arguing that at least there are lots of important things they do agree on. The key word however, is "interpretation" as explained in (1a). If Christians had an objective or absolute moral reference, it wouldn't need interpreting. Disagreements are a fact of life regardless of religion (or lack of). That's why we have judges and courts of law and and any number of ways to resolve disputes and make decisions and come up with the "best" solutions, moral or otherwise.
1e) The evidence above shows that the Bible is not an absolute or objective moral reference – it is open to interpretation, and its interpretation tells us something about the morality of the interpreter, not the morality of the words on the page. It also implies that if morality really does come from God, then this God's morality enables Him to cold-bloodedly, casually and capriciously kill and maim millions of people.
2 The Bible comes from God so absolute morality is defined by God as described in the Bible
Again this is demonstrably untrue.
2a) There is no evidence that the Bible (or any competing Scripture) comes from God and overwhelming evidence that it was written and compiled by human beings. Even the existence of God is debatable. But let's assume for the sake of argument that God exists. Even then there is no evidence that human beings wrote the Bible (or Quran or Book of Mormon) at the behest of God. In fact there's no evidence that anyone ever did anything at the behest of God.
2b) The messages that most Christians consider to be the most important are those attributed to Jesus such as love your enemies; turn the other cheek; treat others as you wish to be treated; etc. But these messages existed thousands of years prior to Jesus in ancient eastern religions such as Buddhism, Hinduism and Taoism, and elsewhere. We've already seen how such statements are open to interpretation (1b) but it's also a fact that Christianity can't claim these messages to be “Christian” if they existed previously and beyond Christianity. This fact provides evidence that there's something human beings recognise as being universal about morality.
2c) As mentioned in (2b), Christian Apologists will claim that the common moral values we see in most human beings are "Christian Values", as if they own the benchmark. Rather than seeing the common good in other people, they will dismiss those other religions, because those other religions have different "values" or "motivations". The Christian Apologist will claim non-Christians are being good for the wrong reasons, rather than understanding the reasons why this happens.
2d) There's a twist to the Christian claim that they love people purely because of their belief in God and the divinity of Jesus. If a Christian Apologist suddenly realised that there was no God, and they were purely the product of naturalistic evolution, would they suddenly think it's OK to go around raping, torturing, and murdering? Well, one hopes not. If that is the case then let's hope they keep believing in God!
3 – Atheists don't believe in God, therefore atheists have no fixed moral reference
Partly true.
3a) It's true that atheists don't believe God. That's the definition of atheism. But it's disingenuous to say that atheists have no fixed moral reference because as we've seen in (1b) Christians have no fixed moral reference. What the apologist is actually saying is that the atheist has no Bible. That is true – but we've seen that the Bible is not a fixed moral reference and can be interpreted in an immoral way, so an atheist's morality is as unaffected by the Bible as any other human being, including Christians.
3b) When it comes to morality, atheists are no different to any other human being. There is no ethical statement or action performed by a believer, that could not have been performed by a non-believer. Experiments show that the majority of people from all cultures, believers and non-believers, will respond in the same way morally and ethically in the same situations.
3c) Some Christians attack atheists by claiming that it is the belief in a loving God who wants us to love people that provides the basis of how people make moral decisions, therefore not believing in God has a profound effect on how atheists make moral decisions. This is demonstrably untrue. Evidence shows that the vast majority of people who believe in such a God make the same moral decisions as the vast majority of people who don't. Another Apologist argument is to pick on the immoral behaviour of small populations as if it makes a point about the behaviour of the majority. Cannibalism and "child brides" are sometimes used as examples to demonstrate Christian morality, which is strange because the Bible has no commandments against cannibalism and child brides. Ironically, the existence of Christianity's central figure resulted from the impregnation of a young, virgin girl by God Himself.
3d) Christian Apologists also argue that whether or not Christianity has a fixed moral reference has nothing to do with the fact that atheism does not. In fact it has everything to do with it, because it demonstrates Christianity does not have the fixed moral reference it claims to have.
4 – Therefore atheists are moral relativists
True, because most people are! And religious belief doesn't change that fact.
4a) Why does (3b) refer to a “majority” and not “all”? That's because moral relativity is a fact of life. Atheists are moral relativists and so are Christians (as demonstrated in (1b). and so is everyone. So while most people will agree on most moral issues, not everyone will agree on everything. There are Christians who support abortion and atheists who don't. There are Christians who are pro-gay and anti-gay and there are atheists on both sides of that argument too. And so on. The fact is that if you observe someone's moral behaviour you cannot tell what their religion is, if any.
4b) Christian apologists often deny their “moral relativity” whilst simultaneously using their moral relativity to justify certain events in Scripture and the history of their religion. For example, Christian apologists will admit that Mary was underage by today's standards when she was allegedly impregnated by God. But they will argue that moral standards have changed since then and it was acceptable to make a 14 year old, unmarried virgin pregnant in Biblical times. They use the same moral relativism explanation when justifying any other number of arcane laws and commandments or cruel punishments described in the Bible. Is this caused by Religious Apologists genuinely having no understanding of moral relativism, or is it a form of denial?
5 – Moral relativists have no way to define good from bad, or right from wrong
Untrue. Religious apologists fallaciously equivocate different types of moral relativism. There are many types of moral relativism, including three main categories:
5a) Descriptive moral relativism holds only that some people do in fact disagree about what is moral;
5b) Meta-ethical moral relativism holds that in such disagreements, nobody is objectively right or wrong;
5c) Normative moral relativism holds that because nobody is right or wrong, we ought to tolerate the behaviour of others even when we disagree about the morality of it.
Religious apologists fallaciously equivocate these different types of moral relativism to make their argument. The fact is that everyone is a moral relativist and most people can define right from wrong regardless of their religion, even if they are atheists!
6 – Therefore atheists do not know the difference between right and wrong.
Evidence shows that they do!
6a) Philosophers have argued about what moral relativism is for thousands of years, so it can't be resolved in a few words here! Suffice to say, Christian apologists are branding atheists as the most extreme of moral relativists who have no basis for deciding what is right or wrong. But everyday experience contradicts this assumption. Atheists demonstrate they they do know right from wrong. The only people who demonstrate the extreme moral relativism that religious apologists assign to atheists are psychopaths (who don't know right form wrong for biological reasons), and a handful of philosophers (whose job it is to explore such propositions).
6b) Evidence shows that normal human beings are descriptive moral relativists – some people will disagree on what is moral regardless of their religion or lack of, but most people agree on most moral questions, again regardless of their religion or lack of,
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