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.