Moral Relativists Are Frauds

Moral relativists are frauds. They take the idea that the world is not black and white to the extreme. Because many different cultures and civilizations have something to offer to morality, they believe that there is no way, or there shouldn’t be a way, to judge certain ways of life as better than others. Moreover, they don’t even practice what they preach about no way of doing things being objectively better or worse than any other.

People who say there is no ascertainable objective standard quickly abandon this belief, should they be on the wrong end of made aware of some horrific crime. Rape, murder, torture etc. These people would obviously and rightly condemn such actions.

They’d call the perpetrator of such actions “bad.” Bad? Why? By what standard? It’s obvious to those who say there is knowable good versus bad. But what about those who don’t? As soon as you ascribe the characterization “bad” to any action, you are doing so based on something. Based on some standard of right and wrong.

This intrinsically means that there are universal standards. A moral relativist, when confronted with this argument, might say “I am only calling an action bad within the confines of human interaction, human existence and human preservation, separate from the objective good versus bad.”

But making the distinction between how you are compelled to act vis a vis other humans, and the true objective reality, doesn’t work. As concepts of justice and right vs wrong only take shape when there are beings and interaction for such concepts and actions to manifest themselves through.

Put another way; if there was no “society,” and the only thing that existed what you, or you and God, there would be no opportunity for the question of right and wrong action to arise. Let’s also remember that this whole debate of if there are intrinsic good vs bad ways to live only arises out of the very question of how should we set standards for our societies and people.

The question of right vs wrong comes up because we need to know how to balance the differing and sometimes competing interests of various people in their lives. C S Lewis discusses this topic in The Problem of Pain, and this explanation itself was a partial paraphrase of his comments on it.

Generally, the argument that there are no absolute knowable standards of right and wrong, come from the opposition to the now not existing, but illusory idea of institutionalized black and white thinking. Add in that nations generally use this to push the idea that “our way of life is better,” which dismisses different ideas and has a tinge of prejudice.

And what you get is a pushback saying “actually, we aren’t in the right, and there is no better way of constructing a society. You just don’t understand how other societies think and the values they have.” Of course, it is true that depending on perspective societies could have different values that are coherent and just by their logical standard.

But this does not extend to the idea that no matter what a “different” society does, we cannot judge them as being worse. And it does not mean that we cannot, through logical reasoning and discussion, figure out what actions are better than others.

The example of taking any monstrous action that we can agree on is objectively bad, is an exercise illustrating that we can know what actions are bad, and give reasons for them. As actions become more complex, nuanced, and tied to various moving parts, it becomes more difficult to ascertain right and wrong. But not impossible.

Moral relativists are frauds. And we know this, because they act against how one should if what they believed were actually true. And you don’t even have to go to the most extreme example of moral evil for them to object (although their objections on that alone would show their self contradiction).

Take an action like not giving up your seat on a bus so a pregnant woman or an old person can sit down. They would rightly object to it and call it bad. This isn’t even an action as bad as doing an active bad to someone, much less the aforementioned extremely evil examples of rape and torture. But the moral relativists would still say “that’s not right.”

Those who are not moral relativists can easily see and explain why that is wrong. But moral relativists are going against their claim that nothing is objectively worse or better. “Why are you getting mad about that?” one could ask them. “I am a human being and based on the nature of being human, have certain things that I am against, separate from objective reasoning.”

“But why do you personally have actions that bother you specifically that might not bother others, and when asked to, you can give a logical reasoning why they are wrong?” Is doing that not exactly what you claim can’t be done, using logical reasoning to explain why an action is good or bad?”

If your negative reaction to an action were simply “instinct,” not morality, then wouldn’t all humans have the same reaction to the same things, if it was a pre wired instinct that we could not control, separate from objective good and bad? No, we all in some part of our mind understand that there is objective good vs bad. But our differing perspectives and lives lead us to using logical reasoning to see what is good or bad and come to different conclusions.

I know it may be uncomfortable, and some might say it leads to prejudice against other societies, but we all know that certain actions are better than others. We all act that way. Just because many actions are extremely difficult to judge as better or worse, does not mean that knowing good vs bad cannot be done, or that we should stop trying.