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To: jennyp
Only bad things can result from false premises aggressively pursued.

You know, Jenny, I had a preacher at a charismatic church utter the EXACT same line when he discussed the origins of moral relativism in one of the first apologetics seminars I ever attended. Uncanny.

BTW, The two sources he pointed to as the starting point for post modernism and moral relativism was in the mid 1800's. Darwin and Nietzche. After the mind numbing atrocities of the 20th century, It looks like he had empirical observation to back up his statement. In my book, that trumps your "hijack" fear.

168 posted on 02/05/2002 2:33:44 PM PST by L,TOWM
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To: L,TOWM
BTW, The two sources he pointed to as the starting point for post modernism and moral relativism was in the mid 1800's. Darwin and Nietzche. After the mind numbing atrocities of the 20th century, It looks like he had empirical observation to back up his statement. In my book, that trumps your "hijack" fear.

I'm sorry my friend, but I have to take acception to the conclusions drawn by your charismatic preacher friend. Darwin advanced a scientific theory regarding the origin of species. It did not address the nature of morality (relative or otherwise) in any way, shape, or form. Nor are his ideas in any way incompatible with the idea of a creator.

I don't know why people insist on believing in a creator, and yet dictating the terms of his actions to him.

170 posted on 02/05/2002 2:39:20 PM PST by OWK
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To: L,TOWM
You know, Jenny, I had a preacher at a charismatic church utter the EXACT same line when he discussed the origins of moral relativism in one of the first apologetics seminars I ever attended. Uncanny.

LOL! Then that must be a good omen for the quality of the debate. (Best arguments from both sides, & all.)

BTW, The two sources he pointed to as the starting point for post modernism and moral relativism was in the mid 1800's. Darwin and Nietzche. After the mind numbing atrocities of the 20th century, It looks like he had empirical observation to back up his statement. In my book, that trumps your "hijack" fear.

Ah, but both Communism & Naziism owe much more to Hegelianism than to any biological theory. The fundamental evil here is their fundamental rationale for moral collectivism. Both ideologies believe there's a relentless logical process that plays itself out on the world historical stage. Hegel thought it was the rise & clash of nations, according to his theory of dialectical clashes of contradictions on some Ideal plane. Marx & Engels explicitly turned Hegel upside down, & argued for a predictable & inexhorable world historical progression based on "material" contradictions. Hegel thought one's nation was the moral actor and the person themselves was just a cog in the greater moral machine. Marx thought a person's economic class was the moral actor, with the individual essentially helpless to think in any meaningful way outside the box of their own economic class.

Hitler took this Hegelian endowment (very well known & accepted by all sides in the political debate in Germany) and decided that one's race was the collective instead of their nation or their economic class.

The resulting moralities might be "objective" when applied within one's collective, but they're "relativistic" when you look at the interaction between a person in one collective and a person in another. It's similar to when a postmodernist smugly assures us that all cultures' moral codes are merely "competing texts", with no objective moral basis for judging one over the other. It's that self-serving, ad hoc trap I mentioned earlier.

You could even use Darwin to argue against moral relativism: Humans are one species amongst many, but we are the only species with the ability & the necessity to use our big brains to consciously direct our lives, shape our society, etc. I think it's morally neutral for a lion to instinctively hunt down & chew into a gazelle that's minding its own business, since we are the only species who can even conceive of debating whether such actions are good or evil. But since we're the ones trying to decide what's good & what's evil, we have to base our decisions on what the effects are to us humans. OTOH, if we were gazelles discussing this... well, then we wouldn't be gazelles if we were discussing such abstract ideas, would we? :-)

I'm sure this isn't as clear as it seems to me, but the point is the Theory of Evolution does not imply moral relativism. Moral questions occupy a whole different subject area, only tenuously connected to questions of speciation & the Tree of Life.

199 posted on 02/05/2002 3:45:25 PM PST by jennyp
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