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.