Moral Relativism is not just post modern but always and forever.

I recently read a blog that included several uses of the phrase moral truths and it got my figurative back up.  It might even have gotten my literal back up but the person wasn't anyone of note, just some layman expressing his opinion.  He is entitled but I'm likewise entitled to blog about why he couldn't be more wrong.

The focus of his post was that the school system is teaching children moral relativism rather than objective moral truths to live by and this is, apparently, creating an amoral generation who have no sense of right and wrong due to a lack of rigid, memorized, established, tried and tested moral truths.

Here is where it gets into heavy philosophy.  The phrase moral truths is utter nonsense.  I'll accept this definition of moral as an adjective: 

concerned with the principles of right and wrong behavior and the goodness or badness of human character.  As for truth, we have two basic definitions:  that which is true or in accordance with fact or reality and

a fact or belief that is accepted as true.  Now the post that got my bile flowing used the phrase moral truths to be truths of the first kind.  This would make them principles of right and wrong in accordance with fact or reality.  I intend to demonstrate that this is nonsense based on two precepts.  The first is that facts aren't truly objective facts.  The second is that reality never, ever demonstrates right and wrong because it simply is and existing is the only action reality takes.  Definitions of right and wrong are entirely based on human perceptions of reality and are therefor relativistic no matter how much that rubs self-righteous people the wrong way.

 

The Reader's Digest philosophy lesson here is cogito ergo sum or I think therefor I am.  This is the one and only thing which cannot be argued.  It has been argued but I find those arguments to be navel gazing.  Everything else is, philosophically speaking, relative or subjective.  By way of quick demonstrations let's start with the "fact" that the sky is blue.  The sky actually, in reality, so to speak, contains a much broader spectrum of colors but our eyes don't see them.  "That wall is solid."  Granted, if you slam into it you will get bruised because it feels solid but the fact, the reality, is that the wall is mostly empty space.  The bottom line is that the first definition for truth is incorrect and it is only the second definition that works.  Truth is only a belief.  We might have compelling reasons, like deep bruises from slamming into a wall, to believe something but every truth other than the Cogito can be argued from a different perspective and shown to be questionable or even false.

 

We should go back to morals, something we all lose sleep over, vote our conscience about and try to enforce in others...collectively speaking because you and I don't do any of those things.  Right and wrong and good and bad are not difficult to define on paper but when it comes to the complex world we live in they are not like the words black and white.  Good and bad and right and wrong have gray areas.  There are mitigating circumstances.  Things can be open to interpretation.  "Murder is wrong."  OK.  We can take this at face value and declare that everyone knows this.  So what about a "heroic" military sniper that they make a movie about?  Was it not his job to murder people?  Oh wait.  We're going to have to redefine hiding and shooting people who are not immediately threatening your life because I would normally call that murder.  Murderers aren't heroes in popular, moving picture shows.  Let's just cut to the chase.  Morals are whatever each and every one of us decide for ourselves are right and wrong and good and bad.  Churches try to universalize morals.  They try to make them what God thinks (and has written on your heart, barf) and what is obvious to everyone and something that cannot be argued.  This results in the belief that two same sex people loving each other is wrong.  After all, that means they are having sex and the Bible says that is wrong.  First of all the love doesn't automatically mean they are having "unnatural" sex.  Secondly, one has to define which sex acts are actually considered unnatural by the Bible because it doesn't mention the butt sex between a married het couple.  Lastly, the Bible doesn't actually say same sex interaction of an intimate nature is inherently wrong but that is a long blog post for another time.

 

Where the rubber hits the road is where the other blogger complained that kids are being taught to decide for themselves rather than having a set of moral truths from which to operate.  I suspect that the blogger's own morals were not self-derived but were given to him by organized religion, even though he never said so.  I just can't imagine where else a person might get the idea of moral truths.  Why is it wrong to murder someone, or steal from them, or lie, cheat, have indiscriminate sex?  If you can't come up with a better reason than "Because the Bible says so.", then you shouldn't worry about what "they" are teaching the children as you are one of them.  You have not progressed beyond a kindergarten understanding of the world we live in and your obligation to make it a better place.  How about, it is wrong to take someone's life because you didn't give it to them in the first place and killing another person almost never makes things better?  It doesn't matter who or what did give it to them.  The only time it is OK to end it is in self defense...period.  No Biblical edict nor nonsensical moral truth required.  It is wrong to steal from someone because they gave up time and effort to acquire it and you did not.  They have an innate right to it and it is wrong to take it from them.  To demonstrate the harm from lying, cheating and using people for selfish sexual pleasure shouldn't be necessary here.

 

Being that morals are an individual choice, or at the very least abiding by them is, there is no basis for nor reason for anyone to concern themselves with the specifics of anyone else's morals.  If and when they break the law they should face justice.  If and when their behavior is not in accordance with my perception of morality, or yours, but remains within the law, um, tough shit.  Trying to declare my morals as a universal truth won't work for reasons I've outlined above.  To my mind, a system which teaches children to look for and understand mitigating circumstances, to comprehend that what someone else boldly declares as a universal truth might be utterly erroneous and to decide things for themselves is superior to a system based on "Because I said so.", or "Because I said that God said so."  These are the basis for these alleged moral truths, no matter how you slice it.  Forcing a child to decide right and wrong, good and bad through critical thinking, considering all of the consequences and cutting out the useless rhetoric of regurgitated religious dogma doesn't strike me as dangerous moral relativism.  It seems more like a basis for sound moral relativism not founded in superstition and fear. 

 

By way of wrapping this up, if you teach a child that the reason not to beat the shit out of someone is that Jesus won't like it but then clearly demonstrate to them that Jesus isn't here, won't actually do anything to prevent it and won't punish them right now, only decades from now when they are dead, that kid isn't going to refrain from beating the shit out of anyone.  Tell him the story of Jesus making a whip and beating the shit out of some vendors and that kid will get real confused because you just said that was a very wrong thing to do.  Who are you to say it is wrong Dad?  Jesus did it.  If you give them a rational, real time reason to not ever beat the shit out of someone, like social and economic consequences or how that person is your equal and deserves better treatment because of it, they might actually refrain. 

 

Losing the us vs. them mentality and realizing we are all in the same boat, fighting the same battles, deciding the same issues of good and evil, etc., seems a brighter future than any nonsense moral truths some religious groups or political parties are promoting.  Let's not indoctrinate our kids.  Let's help them think critically and decide for themselves as if their brains might actually work.