Often, I end up discussing or advising friends about how to navigate in a world that believes in the fallacy of relativist thinking, that nonsense that proposes that there is no real truth, but rather truth is only a human construct by which what everyone believes is true for them. Here are two exchanges like that, one coming in a discussion about immigration and another in an exchange about religious denominations.
The initial comment from my friend is in italics, followed by my reply
Debating a supposed “Higher Moral Law”
The standard of the “higher moral law” always comes into and seldom is it spoken of by people who believe in this “higher moral law.”
Your observations are correct. I would slightly alter your idea of people not believing in a higher moral law….using your own info in the second paragraph. I would say that they DO believe “in this higher moral law”….but their law is one written and affirmed by them. By this, what I mean is that their “higher moral law” most certainly does not contain any ideas on their that they disagree with….and if the law did suggest something, they would reject it out of hand.
Thus, they have created their own god and their own laws…laws that match what they themselves believe. Hence, as you (citing C.S. Lewis) point out, they merely create their own list. Yet, upon doing that, they lose the ability to suggest that their laws are actually “higher” or, even if they do claim them as “higher,” I can reject them because I can create my own list, even a list that diametrically opposes their list. They have no moral right, based on their own philosophy, to tell me I am wrong.
So, we end up in a horrible position where, at the end of the day, the winner becomes whoever is most powerful….”might makes right.” Yet, who really wants to live in that setting? And when I point this out to the many who believe this relativist nonsense, they agree that they don’t want to be in a “might makes right” world.
The solution then becomes that together, we MUST find a set of laws created by a non-human. Why a “non-human”? Otherwise, even if the laws in consideration were created thousands of years ago, even by someone others think to be very wise, those laws are still are my equal because that human who wrote them could not have been necessarily better than myself. So, we need a set of laws created from ABOVE us. We shouldn’t want laws created by a non-human BELOW us (so, for instance, laws by whales or birds or lions or mere biology or mere science).
Where oh where can we find a non-human, a being from ABOVE us? Of course, you and I know already; the Almighty God, the Eternal One, the God of Abraham.
In your debate though with others, just don’t start by allowing the other person to become offended by asserting that they don’t really believe their higher moral law. Affirm them that they are believing it….just then work logically to show them that their laws aren’t actually higher…no human’s laws could ever be “higher.”
Debating Religious Denominations
I bet there are some of them who get into [certain religions] for the community aspect and don’t really know their own theology and might only believe the parts that are [like other religions]….but if they truly believe all that weird stuff, then….
I believe that our country lost all of its theological knowledge (so we are theologically illiterate?) by the 1980s, perhaps the early 1990s. This became evident as the mega-churches really took off then and most people started looking for the consumer church “that met their needs” (a non-Biblical concept). Thus, what the church/religion actually believed didn’t matter. There are, of course, people in all faiths who really know what it specifically stands for, but I would put that number at about 10-20% (maybe….could be single digits).
This also connects to the emergence of the post-modern world view and relevance….thus, since in that world (our world today), “nothing is true” and “it doesn’t matter what a person thinks,”—then people ceased to care about truths. So, even if a church was open about its beliefs, most simply wouldn’t care…unless that church really made a BIG DEAL about it. So, for instance, if a church basically keeps it quiet about their views on homosexuality, then all is well. If they really stress it with their people, many will leave thinking “I don’t want to belong to a place that has hateful or mean beliefs.” Now, if the church kept it quiet, and still “met my needs,” then the person would just ignore it, content to think “those ideas are only theirs, that persons, and since all truth is only relative, it doesn’t mean anything to me or impact me.”