Ding! ... or why didn't I think of this yesterday!

You know when you have one of those moments when the light bulb goes off?  Especially hours (or in this case days) after having a discussion with someone?  Well that just happened to me this morning.

Last Monday I spent about an hour talking with my teacher about God and whether or not He is needed for a discussion about ethics.  My teacher was of the opinion that no, you do not need to include God in such a discussion.  His reasoning was that if you follow the Natural Law theory (that there are existent moral laws and we can figure them out) then we can have a discussion about ethics without needing to reference God.

To put it another way, he said let's say that you have car that has the turn signal on the right hand side of the steering column.  Usually they're on the left, but in your car it's on the right.  Now, you could talk to the engineer who designed it and find out why he did it that way.  With a little bit of experimentation, however, you could figure out that it's just on the opposite side and not need to consult any engineer at all.  Likewise, if moral laws do exist, we can figure them out and talk about them without needing to reference God.

So this morning is when the light bulb went off.  True, because of man's natural knowledge of God and His law written upon our hearts, we can have discussions about ethics without reference to God.  People can determine between right and wrong.  Because of sin, this knowledge is not perfect but all people who have ever existed have this knowledge of right and wrong.

Let's go back to the turn signal scenario.  Yes, with experimentation a person could figure out that the turn signal is on the opposite side that it usually is.  BUT if there were NO ENGINEER then there could be NO TURN SIGNALS.  Likewise, if there is NO GOD then there can not be an ethical discussion.  It's sort of like the traditional moral argument:

(1) If God does not exist, objective moral values and duties do not exist.
(2) Objective moral values and duties do exist.
(3) Therefore, God exists.

Think about that.  If there is no God then why should we think there would be any morals at all?  If there is no objective moral law then we're back to simple subjectivism and all that it entails.  I can't believe that I didn't think of it last Monday but I'll be ready next time.

There's another side issue at stake as well.  Notice that my teacher said that we, through experimentation, could have figured out what was going on with the turn signal on the opposite side.  Yet, if there was no engineer to have invented turn signals, could we possibly have ever had experience with turn signals? And if we have never had any experience with turn signals and we suddenly came across a car with a turn signal on the steering column (whether it's on the left or right hand side is irrelevant, remember we've never seen one before) would we ever be able to figure out it's proper use?

We could certainly try.  Someone might say that it should be used to hold hair scrunchies.  Another might say that it should be broken off and thrown away.  Someone else might say that it is there for decoration.  Through some experimentation the group might realize that moving it up and down makes certain lights around the car blink intermittently.  What shall we make of this now?  Are the lights used to signal something or some other use?

Someone may get the idea that the purpose of this device could be used to make the car look pretty.  Others may notice that the tempo of the blinking light may fit with a certain song.  And someone also may say that it could be used to signal to other people when you're changing lanes.  Do any of these people have any chance of knowing for sure what the turn signal is for?  True, the last guy stumbled upon what it is used for but does he have any justification for his belief?  No, it was a shot in the dark like everyone else's and for all he knows it may be correct, but at the same time it certainly may not be correct.  We can recognize that that last guy knew it was the truth, but only because we are outside of the situation and we have knowledge.  We know its true purpose.

So it is with morals.  If there is no God, there is no way for us to know about morals because we can't get outside of our own point of view and see if it is correct.  Even though people have come up with words like 'good' and 'evil', if there is no God then we have no way of knowing whether or not our thinking on ethics is correct or incorrect.

Now we see the side issue.  My teacher took for granted that we could figure out the purpose of a turn signal without referencing the engineer, and even worse it was taken for granted that we can figure out ethics without reference to God.  All too often the powers of the human mind is taken for granted.  It is seen by many that the human mind is the final arbiter of what is and what is not.  It is the human mind that can judge and weigh any sort of evidence and come to a decsion.

Which is exactly what happened in the Garden of Eden.  Adam and Eve decided to weigh the options.  They decided to figure it out by themselves rather then go to the ultimate source of authority and knowledge.  Because Adam and Eve's sin was ethical in nature, this means that all subjects, knowledge, experimentation, and actions are at root ethical in nature.  They either fit with God's way of thinking or go against it.

So that was my 'light bulb' moment of the day.  Thanks for reading.

Day 6 - Does God have anything to do with ethics? ... or Bring It On!

Or maybe not.

I don't know.  Here I've been studying apologetics for a few years now and finally it was time for the rubber to meet the road.  I've been anticipating this class since last September and today was THE DAY where the class topic was God, religion, and ethics.

The teacher couldn't have given me a better opening.  He started with Euthyphro's dilemma which I know how to refute inside and out, upside-down, and backwards.  For those of you who don't know, Euthyphro's dilemma tries to show that depending on God for our morals/ethics makes you choose between two bad choices.  It is said that if you can understand the difference between the two answers to the dilemma then you have the makings of a philosopher.  I won't be giving this a complete treatment, but bear with me.

The setup goes like this:  Is something good because God says it?  Or does God say it because it is good?  Simple enough, eh?  If you answer yes to the first question then imagine if God said that rape is good.  Would you be okay with that?  Probably not, so then the other question must be the correct view, God says it is because it is good.  But if this was the case then 'goodness' is outside of God and therefore we don't need God anymore!  Then you end up stuck on the horns of a dilemma.  Neither choice is preferable.  My teacher did a masterful job of describing it.

The problem with the Euthyphro dilemma is that it's a false dichotomy, that is, it sets up the question assuming there are only two possible answers.  But for a dichotomy to be a true dichotomy there can only be TWO choices.  The choices in a true dichotomy must be actual opposites: A and not-A.  The Euthyphro dilemma gives us the choices A and B.  If the choices are A and B, well then what's wrong with adding a C?  Or a D?  Heck, even an E?  Even the mere possibility of there being a third choice makes the dilemma not a true dilemma anymore.

And this was my chance.  The whole time I had been waiting and waiting for this moment.  I was nervous, my heart was pounding, I'll even admit I was pitting out a little bit (but not too bad, thanks to this fine product).  Finally, here was my chance to stand up for what I believe.  And in front of +20 people who (presumably) don't believe as I do.  Although I'm no David and my teacher is certainly no Goliath, I was ready to stand up and fight, slay the Philistines, and anyone else.  I was Daniel-san ready to take on the whole Cobra-kai.  I was ready to 'Bring It On' with or without jazz hands.

Foreshadowing, anyone?

It seemed that the teacher was finishing his presentation.  I raised my hand and said, "While Socrates' question is a sharp one, it presents a false dilemma."

Teacher: "So what's the third choice?"

Me: "I would say that morality and ethics are grounded in God's character."  See, this choice neatly avoids the problem with Euthyphro's dilemma.  Now it's not preferable BECAUSE it avoids the dilemma, it's preferable because it's true.  The morality we experience is a reflection of God's character.  His holiness is the standard by which all actions are judged.  We know when we are acting correctly when our thoughts/attitudes/actions match God's.

I'm not exactly sure what happened next, but my teacher took my answer to mean that I was in favor of something called "Natural Law Theory".  Simply stated, natural law theory means that moral laws do exist and that we are able to understand and know them.  Sounds good so far, but the teacher went on to say that if we can understand and know them without knowing God, why should God come into play in an ethical discussion?  Therefore an ethical discussion can still be independent and free of God!

Wait, huh?  So although I knew my Euthyphro dilemma very well, all of a sudden I became in favor of natural law theory?  How did that happen?  So during the discussion that ensued I was trying to figure out exactly how to answer natural law theory and figure out how that related to everything else I had reading and studying in apologetics.

See, I've practiced a lot on answering the questions to which I already know the answers.  I spend hours thinking about it, sometimes I even wake up at night and find myself wrestling with these topics trying to figure out how I would answer such-and-such a question and how I would defend this argument and that argument.  This is how much I love apologetics and finally it was my turn to bat it seems like I... I don't know, hit a single?

The teacher ended the class about an hour early and so I stuck around and another student and I spent more time talking about it with the teacher.  I even brought up the whole "assigning ourselves extra credit" idea from a previous post.  He (the teacher) seemed genuinely surprised at some of my views (like all of science depending on God's existence, or people assuming that there are objective moral laws are really standing on Christian ground), but he was still thinking that I was a proponent of natural law theory and it was tough for me to defend my position and work my way out of that.  I just didn't seem to make any head way.

YOU KNOW, MAYBE THAT WAS THE PROBLEM.  I wanted to make headway, when in hindsight that's not MY job.  My only job is to present the truth, and point out the errors.  What happens after that is not up to me, thankfully it's up to God.

Meanwhile, I need to get more prepared.

Thanks for reading.

Day 5 - Justice... or Let's just assign ourselves extra credit.

Today was another pretty boring class, all we did was talk about justice, nothing too heavy.  But I did ask one question and received an answer from the teacher that will be worth remembering in the future.

So class was started and the teacher the teacher asked us if anybody has the right to extra credit?  We answered, no.  He then divided the classroom down the middle into two groups: East and West.  We were to write down our names on a piece of paper (for our respective groups) and he said that he will give five points of extra credit for rhyming words.  East's task was to find five words that rhyme with cat, West's job was to find five words that rhyme with dog.

Well both groups did the task.  He had East read their words, he wrote them down on the board and then wrote "+5 extra credit" underneath their list.  Our group (West) read our words, he wrote them down on the board, and then proceeded to start with class.

Now you could tell that it was OBVIOUS to everyone that my group didn't get any extra credit.  My former-teacher radar could tell that this was a little experiment to get the class thinking about fairness and stuff.  So we had a little discussion about what happened, how expectations were not met, etc. and this led into the topic of the day.  Justice.

But while we were still discussing the situation and the West group realized that we weren't getting any extra credit I asked the teacher, "Can we assign ourselves extra credit?"

He responded, "Sure, it won't make it into my book, but go ahead."  This response got me thinking.

While once talking to someone about the authority of God, I likened it to a classroom situation (now all analogies never have a complete one-to-one relationship but bear with me).  Let's say that the teacher is the god of the classroom.  In many ways this is true.  The teacher has authority inherent in his position, the teacher can tell the students what to do and what no to do.  The teacher decides what the expectations of the homework assignment are and how it will be graded.  The teacher can even choose to give or withhold extra credit.  Let's say that a student says to the teacher, "I believe that I deserve extra credit for being awesome."

If I heard this back in the day, I would probably have chuckled and kept on with my work.  But let's say that the student persists and asks, "So you're not going to give me extra credit for being awesome?"

"Nope," would be my reply.

"Well, then I'll just give extra credit to myself."

I can tell you that I would reply the exact same way as my ethics teacher did.  He is perfectly capable of assigning himeslf extra credit, but it certainly will not make it on the report card.  What the student chose to be his reality did not matter at all.  The only reality that ever mattered was the teacher's.

But let's say that there is no teacher.  If the student decided to give himself extra credit, is there any objective reality where the student will actually get some extra credit?  To whom is he speaking?  The other students?  Does all the students getting together and deciding upon the standards of extra credit and then applying it to themselves mean they actually have this extra credit now?  It's possible that the students may divide themselves into two camps with opposite standards of extra credit.  How then would they decide which standard is the correct standard?

Let's get out of the analogy and pretend that God does not exist.  If God does not exist, why isn't it the case that any human 'right' (like in Monday's discussion) or justice is not just humans assigning themselves extra credit?  Sure we can SAY that we have human rights and people ought to be treated in a just manner but does that objectively mean that human rights and justice exist?  Does all of us human beings getting together and deciding upon the standards of human rights and then applying it to ourselves mean we actually have human rights now?

The teacher ended the class with a story from Second Samuel where the prophet Nathan tells David that he did something wrong by having Uriah killed and taking Bathsheba (If you need a reminder of the story, click here).  The teacher used this example to explain that if you're in a situation it's tough to see if your own behavior was just or not (which is probably why people are not their own judges in a courtroom case).  According to my teacher, Nathan was there to tell David that he did something wrong and David was able to see this because Nathan was an 'outside voice' and saw the situation from a different point of view.

I should have brought this up, but why should David have listened to Nathan?  If all of the Hebrews were mistaken and there is no God, then all Nathan was telling David was that he doesn't get any extra credit for killing Uriah.  In fact, David got negative extra credit.  He got so much negative extra credit that David's report card was showing a big fat F in the class called Life 101.

Unless Nathan had some sort of authority then David could just have responded with, "Nu-huh!" stuck out his tongue, and ran away.  But Nathan did have authority.  Not inherent in himself, but his authority came from God.  David was cut to the heart and admitted that he sinned against the LORD.  It is God that is the standard of our behavior.  It is God who is perfectly just in all His actions.  He is the object in which human rights and justice rest.  Though we, like David, sin against Him every day, God tells us, like Nathan told David, that the LORD has taken away our sin.

So while I didn't talk about the topic of justice and its definitions and whatever, I'm just going to assign myself extra credit anyway.  :)

Small group discussion... or Rule number one: You don't talk about group discussion.

Rule number two: You don't talk about group discussion.

Anyway, was it just me or do most teachers have insanely high hopes for group discussions?  They dream for this:

But instead get this:

or this:

So I've signed up for the small group discussion part of the class this upcoming Friday and these will be the topics that we'll be discussing.  What I would like from you is your ideas, perhaps some Bible passages that come to mind about the topic.  The topics are in italics and my first impressions about them are after.

1.  The head of marketing thinks one of his subordinates spends too much  time surfing the Internet. He asks you to monitor the employee's e-mail, URL  stops and Web downloads, and wants the logs on his desk in a week.  He asks that  you not inform the employee of your monitoring, and that you not discuss your  activities with anybody else in the company. 

I don't have a problem with this, but the requirement to not discuss the activities with anyone else might be suspect.  If you're at work, your time is not your own, you should be working.  I would probably think of the 7th commandment in this situation.  You are stealing from your employer if you get paid for not doing the work that you are getting paid to do.

2.  Frank is a software designer who has been assigned to work with an  employment agency, building a database for their job applicants.  The client (the  employment agency) explains that when displaying a list of equally qualified  applicants for a position, male applicants are to be listed ahead of female  applicants, and white applicants are to be listed ahead of non-white applicants.

This one is a bit obvious here, but maybe it's an employment agency for actors and when a script calls for a white dude the agency needs a program that can sift through all of the actors and find the white dudes quickly!  Or maybe the employment agency is run by a bunch of sexist bigots?  Who knows?  Passages anyone?

3.  Irene is a software designer who has been assigned to work for a foreign client, building a database to help schedule on-going medical treatments.  She is  asked by the client to build the database so that members of ethnic group A are  always given priority over members of ethnic group B, even if that priority  endangers the life of the latter.  Such a priority is not illegal in the country where the client is located;  indeed, it is culturally expected.

I don't think I would want to work on this project, though I would want more information about the whole thing.  In the end, I would tell them to find someone else to do it.  Even though this is similar to number 2, does anybody have some passages that might apply?

Thanks!

Day 4 - Rights...or You Got It (The Right Stuff)?

Oh, oh, oh, oh oh oh...

Today's class was pretty boring and I'll admit that I didn't spend that time thinking about the New Kids on the Block.  Especially Donnie (he's so street!)  All we talked about was human rights and what some of them may be.  Here is a definition of rights!

"Activity or opportunity we expect to have protected against the actions of others."

So human rights are rights that humans have (duh?) simply by virtue of being a human.  We then began to make some sort of a list of rights that humans could possibly have such as life, free speech, love, liberty, association, discovery, humane treatment, family, blah, blah, blah.  We went through some examples where we discussed a situation where people's rights could possibly be involved and more blah, blah, blah, blah.  But then the teacher posed a question that piqued my interest.  It was:

"Where do rights come from?"

The teacher said that this is a hard question and an answer to it can help to distinguish between different ethical theories.  There are three main answers to this question.  One is that all rights are legal rights, the next is rights are religiously based, and finally that our rights are based in human nature.

I especially liked that rights are religiously based (specifically based in the Christian God of the Bible) but we didn't go into any of the three choices very deeply.  That's probably going to be another class period (I can't wait).  But since class was boring my mind was wandering over the topic of God and rights and as this is my blog here are my thoughts on rights and how they relate to God.

I believe my teacher said that all three of the answers to the "Where do rights come from?" question have some deficiencies.  Now I naturally disagree with this (concerning answer number two) but the teacher said that all people must decide for themselves which way they're going to answer  the "Where do rights come from?" question.  However, this is a philosophy that, as C.S. Lewis said, puts God in the dock.  Here is the full quote:

"The ancient man approached God (or even the gods) as the accused person approaches his judge.  For the modern man the roles are reversed.  He is the judge: God is in the dock....  The trial may even end in God's acquittal.  But the important thing is that Man is on the bench and God in the dock."

The philosophy that my teacher espouses puts man's reasoning and authority over God's reasoning and authority.  Let's say that God does not exist (or He is not as He says He is) then what right do we have to decide that we have intrinsic worth?  Would we get worth just because WE say so?  What justification could there be to hold this attitude?  I suppose that we could just choose to have this attitude, but would it necessarily be true?  Just because someone arbitrarily says, "Humans have intrinsic value by virtue of being a human" what about someone else saying, "No, humans do not have intrinsic value by virtue of being a human being."  If one can be arbitrary about the whole situation why shouldn't another person be just as arbitrary?

No, human rights are not just arbitrary choices made by people some time ago, rather humans have value because God has given us value.  David wrote:

 ³ When I consider your heavens,
       the work of your fingers,
       the moon and the stars,
       which you have set in place,

 ⁴ what is man that you are mindful of him,
       the son of man that you care for him?

 ⁵ You made him a little lower than the heavenly beings
       and crowned him with glory and honor.

 ⁶ You made him ruler over the works of your hands;
       you put everything under his feet:

 ⁷ all flocks and herds,
       and the beasts of the field,

 ⁸ the birds of the air,
       and the fish of the sea,
       all that swim the paths of the seas.

 ⁹ O LORD, our Lord,
       how majestic is your name in all the earth! (Psalm 8:3-9)

In all of God's creation the the only reason that we have any value at all is because God has given us value, not ourselves.  God holds us in such with such a high value that He sent His Son to die for us and continues to forgive us even though we sin daily!    God has revealed His attitude to us in His word and in our hearts so we are to mirror this attitude in how we treat others.  So the 'rights' that my class came up with (life, association, humane treatment, discovery) can only be properly understood in the context of Christianity.

Wednesday's class is about justice.  Another Christian concept, huh?

Day 3 - Subjectivism... or we're both right and Sally Struthers is too!

So let's review.  According to my instructor, any ethical system needs to have three things:

1. Rationality - otherwise it would be incoherent
2. Impartiality - principles need to apply across the board
3. Common principles - need common definitions at the outset

As a Christian I can see why the above three are true.  God's law is meant to be understood, His principles apply to all people, and His definitions are grounded in His character.  I haven't yet asked my teacher what gives him the authority to decide what ethical systems need, but the opportunity just hasn't come up yet.  I'd rather not try to bend the class discussion to my will (as much as I would LOVE to) because after all he is the teacher, not me.

Cultural relativism results when you abandon rule number three.  You can think of cultural relativism as there are high walls around each culture to protect it from other cultures, but those high walls are also a prison where all the people inside must obey the culture to be moral.

Chapter three of the book was called "Subjectivism in Ethics" where it seems to abandon rule number two.  What happens if ethical principles do not apply across the board?

Quite simply, subjectivism means that there are no moral facts.  If this is the case then this leads to some interesting results.

Simple Subjectivsm

Simple subjectivism means that all moral beliefs are just expressions of approval or disapproval.  Let's say that Bill says, "Lying is wrong".  If a moral belief is just an expression of approval or disapproval, then Bill's statement on lying only means, "I disapprove of lying."  Now Ted comes along and says, "Lying is okay."  Then all that Ted is really saying is, "I approve of lying."

One of the problems of simple subjectivism is that people can never disagree.  On the surface it seems as though they are disagreeing.  But here's where it gets weird.  Can Bill truthfully say, "I agree that Ted says lying is okay," and Ted can truthfully say, "I agree that Bill says lying is wrong".  Can you see that they are both agreeing with each other?  Both Bill and Ted are agreeing with what the other person is saying because what the other person thinks has no bearing on what Bill or Ted thinks.  Furthermore, there is no need for Bill or Ted to try to make the other agree because they are both really agreeing with each other!  Now if believe that Bill and Ted are really disagreeing with each other, then simple subjectivism is not for you (and I hope it's not).

The other problem with simple subjectivsm is that people can never be wrong about their moral statements.  When Bill said, "Lying is wrong" it does not matter at all if lying is REALLY wrong, all that matters to Bill is what he thinks and why should he go against what he thinks?  If he some day does go against what he thinks and changes his mind, well then that's fine, I guess.  Simple subjectivism is purely autobiographical in nature.

Emotivism

The other flavor of subjectivism is called emotivsm and is a bit more sophisticated.  When Bill says, "Lying is wrong," all he is really saying (or emoting) is "Lying - Yuck!"  When Ted says, "Lying is okay," all he is really saying is "Lying - Hooray!"  To an emotivist, all of morality is just about the feeling you get when you disapprove or approve of something.  Now these statements that Bill and Ted made are neither right nor wrong, but they are just expressing emotions.

This view also leads to some interesting problems.  With emotivism, you can try to convince someone else to your own point of view.  But your argument cannot be rational in nature (rule one above) because all moral statements are emotional.  So in order to persuade someone else you need to persuade them to share the same emotions as you do (where's Sally Stuthers when you need her?).

 

So emotivism allows for disagreement, but not about any facts.


So what does the Christian make of all of the above discussion?  Are morals just opinion?  Are they just emotions?  My teacher ended the class with this picture from the civil rights movement era:

Swell, eh?  Three students decided to have a sit-in at a Woolworth's lunch counter.  At first the crowd was taunting and jeering them, then they started dumping food on them, eventually started kicking them, and the three protesters had to be escorted out of there by police.

Are the two sides above really just having differences in opinion?  Are the two sides just having a different emotions over the topic of equality?  When my teacher was talking about this picture it he even got a little choked up.  I will admit, it is an extremely powerful picture.

But why? If morality is not based on a culture, opinion, or emotions what is there left for it to be based on?  How about God?  It is the one thing that non-believers dare not admit because then they must realize that their fallen nature condemns them before God's perfect nature.  They will go out of their way, write volumes upon volumes of books, speak to as many people as possible to convince them that they're right, but their anti-God theories can never be right because they go against the law that their Creator has put in their hearts.  Their theories will always be full of holes, logical inconsistencies, and just go against the simple fact that there ARE moral facts.

So why is the above picture so powerful?  I don't want to say that the above actions are just 'wrong' because that term has been so overused that it has become generic.  How about despicable?  Morally repulsive?  Sickening? Atrocious?  Sinful?  Ideas such as right/wrong, wonderful/atrocious can only make sense when viewed in the light of God's word.

Day 2 - Cultural Relativism or... The only judgement possible is that you can't judge others

Well today was a surprise.  I assumed that the book would be all about and gung-ho about cultural relativism, but I was wrong.

Sort of.

Straight from the book, here are five claims that have been made by cultural relativists.

1. Different societies have different moral codes.
2. The moral code of a society determines what is right within that society.
3. There is no objective standard that can be used to judge one society's code as better than another's.  There are no moral truths that hold for all people at all times.
4. The moral code of our own society has no special status; it is but one among many.
5. It is arrogant for us to judge other cultures.  We should always be tolerant of them.

Now the book says that there are some things that are attractive about cultural relativism.  One is that it's hard to escape your cultural conditioning (can you really know for sure what it would be like to be a cannibal?).  Two is that there can be a blurred distinction between tastes versus morality (some dress doesn't matter [what hat to wear] and some dress does [like not wearing clothes at all]).  Finally, the way we're raised can limit our expectations (Henry Harlow did social experiments on baby monkeys.  Read about it here and now image some guy in Romania doing it to orphans.  True story).

Well the problems with cultural relativism are legion.  #3 is self-contradictory.  It says that there are no moral truths that hold for all people at all times.  But is that statement true?  If so then it contradicts itself and therefore cannot be true!  Also, is #5 itself an arrogant and judgmental statement?  Does it sound very tolerant to you?  Furthermore, didn't these 'rules of cultural relativism' come from within some culture?  And if so why should we believe any of these rules since they are subject to the culture that came up with them?

So here are the reasons against cultural relativism as espoused by the book and the instructor.

1. If cultural relativism were true, there would be no moral growth in a society/culture.

I asked the teacher about moral growth, "Isn't moral growth implying an outside standard to which you are growing towards?  In other words, moral growth implies there is some moral standard out there and we ought to grow towards it, rather than away.  My teacher replied, "You're right.  If there was no such thing as moral growth, there would only be moral change.  We need to take into account our moral intuitions."

I had been waiting for him to bring up intuitions again so I asked, "But if we rely on our intuitions, don't we have to then intuit that our intuitions are correct?"

He replied, "It would be nice to start with a blank slate and just the first principles.  But you would have to persuade me that my intuitions (the class previously had a discussion on slavery) are wrong."

I would agree that his intuitions about slavery are correct, but what I would have liked to know is how or where does he ground those intuitions? But there were a lot of other hands raised so we couldn't keep going back and forth.  However, I would have asked him other questions like, "Well, perhaps I have an intuition to steal.  Why should I follow some intuitions as opposed to other ones?"  Intuition is a very important moral concept, but it can only be understood for what it is as a Christian (God's law written on the heart).  The non-believer has no ground for why to pick one intuition over another.

2. If cultural relativism were true then civil disobedience would be morally wrong.
What this means is that a cannibal who is reluctant to eat other people would be morally wrong to do so because he is in the culture that says eating other people is right.

3. It is just not the case anymore that people are in just one single culture.
I'd have to agree with this one too.

So the book doesn't like cultural relativism, but isn't exactly against it either.  Here is how the book summarizes the chapter:

"We can understand the appeal of Cultural Relativism, then, despite its shortcomings.  It is an attractive theory because it is based on a genuine insight: that many of the practices and attitudes we find natural are really only cultural products.  Moreover, keeping this thought firmly in view is important if we want to avoid arrogance and keep an open mind.  These are important points, not to be taken lightly.  But we can accept them without accepting the whole theory."*

So it is true that different cultures do different things.  Yet some of those things that cultures have done are wrong.  Not just wrong for them, but things that would be wrong for all people at all times.  No one lives in a purely culturally relativistic way.  And it's not just because we prefer our own culture over others, the heart of the matter lies in the existence of objective moral values and duties that people are obligated to obey.  A cultural relativist couldn't handle that, and for that matter neither could a moral relativist.

Avoiding arrogance and keeping an open mind?  Says who?  Being not-arrogant is a fine virtue, but can only be properly understood if God exists.  Otherwise, why not be arrogant?  Why does some other person get to decide for me what things to be arrogant over and not?  And again, keeping an open mind is just not possible.  Everyone will always have some base/core presuppositions by which he/she will judge all matters.

Remember how my teacher was talking about how it would be nice to have a blank slate and just the first principles?  Having just a blank slate wouldn't get anybody anywhere so we do need some place to start.  That place to start is what he called the 'first principles' which are usually the first three laws of logic.  Funny thing about those first three laws of logic.  Can there be any universal and immaterial laws of logic if God does not exist?  If all is only matter and space flowing through time (i.e. naturalism) how could some immaterial law of logic even exist?  Also, if there is no God sustaining and upholding all of creation, how could we even begin to think that laws of logic could be universal in nature when all we experience are only particulars?

More on logic some other time.


* The Elements of Moral Philosophy, sixth edition, by James Rachels, McGraw Hill Higher Education, New York, 2010, page 31