Beginnings and Endings for Moral Relativism

Moral relativism says that there is no objective, authoritative absolute moral moral code.  It is therefore a matter for each person to decide for themselves what is right and wrong.  


Dr. Peter Kreeft has an excellent book A Refutation of Moral Relativism: Interviews with an Absolutist that thoroughly refutes relativism.  It is short, and an easy read.  A must-read for everyone today.


Here is a slightly different angle on one of the proofs that moral relativism is wrong.

To prove moral relativism is wrong, we go back to the beginning -- of everything.


Cosmology has demonstrated that the universe had a beginning.  Everything that has a beginning has a cause.  Therefore the universe and everything in it has a cause (or else it couldn't have started).  

Everything that is caused has multiple kinds of causes, according to Aristotle and the scholastics.  For the purpose of this argument, we care mostly about the efficient cause -- i.e., the thing that effects, like a sculptor is the efficient cause of a sculpture -- and the final cause -- i.e., the reason or end for which the thing is brought into being.  

Every effect that is caused has an efficient and final cause.  That is, it has both a "causer" and a reason for being caused.


Therefore the universe and everything in it has a reason for its existence.  Therefore, it and you and I have a reason, a purpose, for which we came to be.


[Furthermore, in every case, a thing's final cause (its purpose) is not discernable by observing the thing itself.  You must look outside the thing for that, to its efficient cause (the thing or agent that brings the thing into being), or to the final cause itself, if it is available for your discovery.]

Now everything that is created for a purpose is created according to a set of constraints and rules (a design) that determine how it is to fulfill its purpose.  In the case of the universe, these are the laws of physics.  In the case of a pen, these are the laws of physics and a few additional rules.  A pen will not fulfill its purpose if I hold it upside down.

Again, everything created has a purpose.  Therefore, everything has innate rules -- a right way and a wrong way to be and to function.

Human beings were created.  Therefore we have a purpose.  Therefore we have innate natural rules that indicate a right way and a wrong way to be human.

And this is true not just for an individual, but for human nature itself.  Just as the rules that govern pens apply to all pens.  Furthermore, these rules are determined not subjectively by human beings, but objectively by the first cause of human nature.

Therefore, there is a universal, innate, objectively right (and wrong) way to be human.  This is a kind of objective, natural morality that transcends the individual.  


Therefore, moral relativism is objectively false.  The individual human being cannot determine for himself what is morally right.  The rules are received by us in our very nature.   

Is Life Meaningless?

"The more the universe seems comprehensible, the more it seems pointless."       -- Dr. Steven Weinberg, Ph.D., The First Three Minutes: A Modern View of the Origin of the Universe.

Dr. Weinberg is exactly right.  The universe, taken in itself, does seem pointless.

Despite this appearance, though, life and the universe are not actually pointless.

There are probably very few people who would reasonably deny the principle of sufficient reason.  This says that everything that happens (or that comes into being) does so for a reason, for a purpose.

At the level of man-made things, you can convince yourself of this pretty easily.  It is actually not possible for us to create something without a reason for creating it, or without it's having a purpose for its creation.

Just try to create something pointless.  You can't.  The "pointless" thing you create will still have a purpose: that of proving an argument, or entertaining, etc.

This is another way of talking about the law of cause and effect.  You cannot have an effect without a cause.

Ok, good.  Everything we create has a purpose.  But we didn't create life, the universe and everything.   So, so what?

It is not possible for anything to sufficiently explain its own reason for existence.  Something cannot be both the cause and the effect -- because you would have an infinite regression.  The thing could never bring itself into existence.

Another way of looking at it is that you cannot discern a thing's purpose merely by looking at how it is put together and how it works.  To find a thing's meaning, you have to look at its context.

You might, in some cases, be able to infer some idea, but the ability to infer is always enabled by knowledge of the thing's context.

Studying a pencil, for example, will leave you entirely perplexed if you lack all knowledge of paper and writing.  Even with such knowledge, you might still be confounded without sufficient knowledge of the inventor's intent.  This says something about knowledge itself, and about sentient minds.

I don't think anyone would dare deny that we are inside the universe. And we cannot observe the context of the universe.  Therefore, you cannot expect to discern the reason for the universe solely on the bases of the mathematics that describe the growth, development and behavior of the universe.

This is a long way of saying that physics tells us the "how," not the "why."  One of my physics professors used to say that "if you want to know why, you're in the wrong classroom.  The philosophy department is in the building over there..."

Thus, trying to find the purpose of the universe by studying how it works is an utter waste of time.  You couldn't possibly discover the reason for the universe that way.

Drawing conclusions along those lines is like declaring the sun does not exists because you couldn't find it under that rock over there.  It's literal nonsense!

So yes, the universe seems pointless, but that's because it cannot seem any other way when you only look at physics.  

Since we cannot say much of anything about the reason for the universe, and we have a strong and logically valid argument that it must have a reason, we would be pretty irrational to conclude that it doesn't have one.

To put it succinctly.  Cosmology has shown that the universe had a beginning.  Therefore, the universe and everything in it has meaning.

Does it Matter What I Wear to Mass?

It's an appealing argument.  No. It's an appealing conclusion.  The argument is totally unsound.

"God doesn't care what I wear to mass.   God loves me no matter what I wear.   Therefore I can dress however I want."

This is a perfect example of a non sequitur.  The first proposition is simply false, and the second is not relevant to the question.

We do not -- and cannot -- do anything to effect God's love us.  So it is not a question of God's love.  

Does God care what we do? You bet.  After all, he gave us 10 commandments.  He wouldn't have done that if he didn't care what we do.  God commands behavior of us not so that he can love us, but so that we can love him -- so that we will do what is right.

I love my children no matter what they do, but that doesn't mean it's okay for them to do whatever they want.  Correct behavior is not about making someone like us, it is about being fully, authentically human.  It is about living so as to realize the purpose for which we were created.  This is what our faith teaches us: how to be proper human beings in the way God intended.

So God does care what we do.  But does he care what we wear?  Yes.  Creating an outward appearance is an act.  How we dress and groom communicates something to everyone around us -- and it does so far more profoundly than any of our words do.  Our very appearance speaks.

I would not wear rags to my friends wedding -- unless I only had rags.  Why?  Think hard about that, because the answer is either (or both) that I am so shallow and vain that I want people to think highly of me (or not less of me)  -- or, more properly, that what I wear announces something about the importance of the event I am attending.

By my clothing I tell everyone who sees me that something important is going on.  This isn't just the weekly toilet cleaning.

So why do we think that God doesn't care what message we send everyone about the importance of the most important event in the history of the universe?

Time to start wearing ties to Sunday mass...

Who Asked Me?

Life can be overwhelming.  One day I wondered to myself -- feeling overwhelmed -- "who asked me if I wanted to be created?  Nobody sought my approval."

Yet here I am.  Here are we all.  We find ourselves mysteriously here, self-aware, thinking and feeling.  We have free will, the ability to make choices.  But not one of us chose to be made.  We had no say in the matter.  What does that mean?

I am -- we are -- the product of someone else's choice.  We are willed into being by someone else.

I think the conclusion is inescapable.  I am not my own.  I do not belong to myself.  This is not MY life, but someone else's.

Two more questions, then.  To whom do we belong?  And what does not owning ourselves mean?

To whom do we belong, then?  To our biological parents?  Not ultimately,  For our parents are not their own either.

How far back do we go?  Do we trace it back through the ages of biological evolution?  Do we belong, via random events, to the material universe?  Are we here ultimately by random chance?  The atheist thinks so, but it cannot be so.

Suppose we belong to the universe.  A silly supposition, but let's suppose it anyway.  The universe did not make itself either.  Even supposing physics eventually proves -- and I hear that some are working on this -- that something can be spontaneously generated from nothing, such a discovery would neither prove anything about the origin of the universe, nor abrogate the laws of causality.

The reason is simple.  You cannot have a circular definition.  Physics is the description and study of the way in which the physical universe functions.  The way in which the universe came into being therefore cannot be discerned by looking at the function of universe itself.

For if the universe allows something to be created from nothing, then you need a universe in which to create something from nothing, which means you're starting from something, not nothing.  You have to have a universe in which to create a universe.  That brings us right back to the infinite recursion problem.  The chain must begin somewhere or else nothing ever actually exists.

Thus, the universe demands an uncaused cause, without which nothing could ever exist.  The laws of physics that govern the universe had to have been determined by someone or something.

This is a long way of saying that there must eventually be someone who owns everything without Himself being owned.  He owns himself and everything else.  This, of course, is God.

[This is a very old proof for the existence of God.  I didn't come up with it.  I've just put it in my own words.]

The conclusion is that we belong to God.  We already knew this, of course, but this is yet another way of arriving at the same conclusion.

The second conclusion quickly follows.  I am supposed to be using my will and intellect to make choices that serve not myself, but that seek to accomplish the purpose for which I was created in the first place.

Investiture

Yesterday was the first Sunday of Lent, and on a beautiful afternoon without a cloud in the sky at St. Gertrude parish, I had the joy of being invested as an oblate novice of St. Meinrad Archabbey.  Br. Adam Edwards, OSB performed the ceremony during first vespers.

Autumn's First Tears

Autumn falls gently, its tears alighting
On grass so to languish under leaf
Helplessly in the dark, amid bright November sun.  

Thirsting. Thirsting for light, for light and liberation.
Utterly helpless against the dark, against time.

Will by grace the savior come with his rod and its fingers?
To sweep away the blanket and drive away the darkness?
To bathe all in saving light?

Indeed He comes! See! The darkness is driven
With refreshing breeze, Light pours over
Blade and crevice, shimmering with dew drops
of autumn's first tears

Can I hear God?

Another older one...

I was walking Katie to school this morning.  I heard birds singing.  I said, "Katie, do you hear the birds?"

"No, it's too noisy.  Buses and cars and stuff," she said.

It was, and you had to listen for the birds, blocking out the other noises.  For a brief moment, I was patting myself on the back for noticing the birds.

Then there was that little voice in my head: "Eric, do you hear God?"

"No, it's too noisy."

Managing a Smile

I just came across this note that I wrote several years ago.  Posting it for preservation...

Changing Anna Marie (who was 9 months old at the time) I was suddenly aware of a basic truth.  A nine-month-old is totally dependent.  Cannot do anything for itself.  The infant is provided for and protected, totally and unconditionally. 

And the only thing the infant can return is what?  The only thing the infant can return for all this is its own affection.  A smile, a laugh, a hug, a kiss.  It can only return its love.

Can you imagine a healthy infant that did not show attachment and affection to its parents?  Yet that is exactly what we do.  For all His love, gifts and protections, the best of us barely manage a smile for Him. 

All he asks of us is our love.

He Who Lives by the Sword

Christ tells us what happens to those who live by the sword.   

I don't think Christ meant this figuratively, or in some probabilistic sense.  He's not saying, "odds are, you'll get it one day..."  As far as I can recall, Christ never tells us what might be.  He always tells us what is or what will be.

To live by the sword is to have an interior disposition of soul that is belligerent and possibly malevolent.  It is an exterior manifestation of the interior reality of a soul that is already dead or dying.

It is not simply bodily death Christ speaks of here.  It is the whole person, and the death of divine life in the soul. 

He who lives by the sword dies, not because of the sword itself -- let alone that of anyone else -- but because of the spiritual rot which is at the root of that way of life.

This is why St. Paul tells us to put away our pugilistic attitude.  It leads to death, whether we brandish a physical weapon or not.

Pick up Your Cross

It is not a cross unless it is that by which your self is crucified.

Poverty in Desire

At the root of all of my desires for pleasures -- in food, drink, comfort, etc. -- is a deep desire for God.  This, I think, is true for everyone.  Our desire to experience the good in something is really desire to experience the perfect, perfectly fulfilling, good.  

We just don’t normally experience it this way because we’re caught up in our sensory existence.  It is what Dom Augustin Guillerand refers to as the “darkened transparency” of things. The good things around us should point us to God, but they don’t.  We’ve lost (in original sin) our sense of the meaning of created goods:

Instead of pointing to the Creator and leading us to him, things show only themselves, with the result that we stop at them. The devil, to whom we stupidly gave them when we gave him ourselves, speaks to us  through their many voices; his shadow darkens their transparence. Beyond their attractive forms we no longer seek the beauty they reflect, but merely the pleasure and satisfaction they are able to offer us.

 - Dom Augustin Guillerand O.Cart.

I think what we want is that piece of candy (or whatever) because it delights my senses.  But when I really probe the depth and source of my desire, I find it’s something more transcendent, something deeper that I desire.  I would gladly trade the good I think I want for something that would never leave me wanting anything.

So it is ultimately God that I desire more than any thing else, even though I do not normally experience it this way.   I desire God above all things.  And, I think this is true for every human being.

But now that is the problem.  We are to love God above all things, not merely desire God above all things.  Desire is just the beginning, and I seem to be stuck there.

I encounter nearly endless desire, and yet I do not love as I should

So how do I go from desire to love?  I can’t.

All I can do is beg.  I am less than poor.   I owe what I do not have and cannot create.  All I can do is beg.  Beg God to give me love -- to give me Himself, who is Love itself -- so that I may give it back in loving Him and my neighbor.  Beg God to transform me from an empty abyss of desire into a loving, living person.

Blessings

how many things
when at first glance
appear to be a curse

how many times
those very things
are the blessings
we so much need

Anunciation

Every passing moment, here and now; listen. 
Each is a little annunciation 
God announcing the truth of each moment;
What He asks of us right now.

Sacking Our Savior

A week or two ago the gospel reading for the day was the parable of the vineyard owner who sends his servants to collect his due. The wicked stewards sack the servants, killing some of them. So the vineyard owner sends his son, whom the stewards also kill.

The primary point of the parable is to explain what the Jews have done to the prophets and to the people, and are about to do to the Son of God.

The genius of Christ teaching in parables is that he is able to speak to very many situations and people, through all time.

This parable is not dead. It was not given merely to make a prediction, or to make a point to a few people 2000 years ago.

No, it speaks directly to us today. To every human heart. Or, at least on that day the other week, directly to me.

For it was clear that - I - am both the wicked steward and the vineyard. And every day I beat down, kick out and kill God's Word in my heart. Every time I take possession of myself, and refuse to hand myself over entirely to my rightful owner, I crucify and expel the Son of God from my heart.

Each day, the Son of God comes to claim our hearts as His own. If today you hear His word...

Accidental Fiction

I was in Barnes & Noble the other day. If my digital camera had been available I would have gone back for a photograph because what I saw was too precious not to have proof of.

Displayed on the end of the isle were Richard Dawkins books. The sign on the ilse shelf indicating the genre was visible at the correct angle just above his books. The sign read: Fiction/Literature.

If I can get back and take a picture, I'll post it.

Up

Up, they always climb up. Every year, in early May, the caterpillars come. Lots of them. And whatever direction they have open to them, it's always up they choose.

They climb that way, but they don't always go that way. Sometimes they fall. Especially in the grass. They climb to the tip of a blade. It bends. They over stretch, and fall. In the grass. They do this over and over again.

Then one day, somehow, they know. It is time to be still. One last thing they do, spinning about themselves a fuzzy silken cocoon. Now protected, secluded, silent.

In their stillness they are steadily transformed.

Harassment

stones against the wall --
clattering, they try to distract

Suffering's Why

When we suffer in any way we always ask why. Why is that? Lately I've been pondering this "why." I've often found myself screaming this question inside my head (to whom?), yet I could not understand why I wonder why. And what difference it would make if I were given an answer? Why do I seek to understand why unpleasant things happen to me?

There is something fundamental about our need to understand our circumstances, the reasons things are the way they are, and happen the way they happen. And this is much deeper than simple curiosity.

We human beings instinctively reject what is false, and embrace what is true. We are willing to conform ourselves to the truth when we see it. For example, when we see why a rule exists, we are usually more willing to follow it. When we don't see why, or perceive it as false, then we reject it as a spurious, arbitrary falsehood.

We often are willing to make great sacrifices for what it true, good and just.

So when we are suffering, we long for an explanation that, in its truth, gives suffering legitimacy. In that truth, we can accept what is happening to us, even embrace it. We can be at peace with our circumstances.

So that is why we ask why: it is a hope that there is a true reason that makes everything okay. The search for that truth leads us ultimately not to a particular truth, but to truth itself, truth in its essence. That is, Truth Himself: Christ Jesus.

Unlike a particular truth, essential Truth applies to all of our experiences and circumstances. It is sufficient, not just for this or that, but for all things, in all times. It makes all things bearable, all things good, "all things new."

Truth desires to enter into me, and I into Him. Be still, my soul, and let Him in. For in Him I can "bear all things."

In Actu

What does Mary do after her fiat? After receiving her God and Savior in her womb we see her immediately go off to serve. She departs for the house of Zechariah to help Elizabeth in her last few months of pregnancy.

Mary does this at a time in her own pregnancy (the first trimester) in which -- as every mother knows -- she herself would have been very tired. She might have sought assistance for herself during that time. But she chooses instead to give.

Having received Christ, she carries Him to her family, and remains there with them, serving them. This is what it means to be Christian -- to receive Christ, and to live Christ. That is, to receive Him, and make Him present to others by giving them His Love. And how is Love made tangible except by service?

We have the great privilege to do exactly as Mary did. At every mass, we receive Christ, after which we hear the commission "...go in peace, to love and serve the Lord."

Fiat

"But [Mary] was greatly troubled at what was said and pondered what sort of greeting this might be (Luke 1:29)."

and "... [Mary] kept all these things in her heart (Luke 2:51)."


What do we see Mary doing amid trying times? Pondering the events, holding them in her heart. At the annunciation, and during her anxiety as she searched for her missing son. She ponders, and holds it in her heart. What does it mean to do this?

To hold something in your heart means first of all to accept it. To accept it in humble accord with God's will, even when it is something troubling.

To hold it in your heart is furthermore to bear it in reverence and awe of the Divine wisdom that has allowed it. It is humble trust in God, and the peace that flows from that trust.

In this way, Mary offers us an example of perfect humility and trust, the way in which we are to react to our own challenges in life.

So with each unexpected turn in our lives, even the little things throughout the day, let us, by God's grace, hold them in our hearts with acceptance, reverence and loving awe.