What if I told you that there was a proposition that was neither true or false? You could look at it any way but you could not ask the question really “Is it true?” or “Is it false?” Why? Because all the terms are meaningless. Colorless green florks swinzle routinely. Does anyone have any idea whether that is true or false or is it just meaningless? (And of course, contradictory. Take out green and it’s still nonsense.)
I was listening to an audio debate yesterday between Craig and Atkins. Atkins, being the atheist, is a moral relativist. William Lane Craig I believe soundly defeated the views of Atkins, but at one point, they were speaking on moral relativism. It is amazing that relativists still want to avoid some conclusions of their system.
Relativists want to deny that their system means that there is no moral distinction between Mother Teresa and Adolf Hitler. When it’s told that if people embrace this worldview, they will act in such a way, they want to deny it. Now I’d say a lot of moral relativists in America are still good people. That’s the problem though. They have no reason to be good or any concept of it.
That’s what I was screaming out listening to the debate. I wanted Atkins to tell me what good meant. We can argue that a system produces good. What is good? Is there any way that you can look at moral relativism and say that it produces good people if you believe in it? Not at all. Why? Look at the proposition.
Moral Relativism produces good people.
The problem is that the first part makes the second part nonsense. If moral relativism is true, there can be no such thing as a good person. There can be no such thing as a bad person. There is only a person. How can you say any action is good or bad or any person if all such concepts are relative?
Greg Koukl talks about having a caller on his program once who was a moral relativist and he wanted this person to really show what moral relativism leads to. The caller went beyond the “call of duty.” When asked a moral question like “Is it wrong to torture babies for fun?” the caller said “The question doesn’t even make sense.”
That caller is absolutely right. If moral relativism holds the day, then the propositions that concern terms like good, evil, better, ought, etc. in a moral context are meaningless. However, that leads to a question. If these are so meaningless, why is it that our language abounds with them and even Atkins at one point in the debate said that something was evil?
Why? Because we all do know the truth. Some actions are right and some are wrong. Good is not a vacuous term. It has meaning. The moral relativist should say “Murder is morally wrong,” is a meaningless statement as it is neither true or false. The absolutist can say “Amen.”
Friends. Moral relativism is a philosophy we can’t let hold the day. We all know some actions are good and ought to be done and some are wrong and ought not to be done. Let’s stand up for those.
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