#moral relativism

[artist-issues]

After watching “It’s a Good Life” on The Twilight Zone, you start to realize that this whole “there’s no such thing as objective good or objective bad, morality is relative” is just self-protective. We’re just afraid of real evil. We’re just afraid of real good. Because we can’t control it. Because we didn’t decide on it.

This episode of a TV show about a boy who can and does kill you if you think anything he does is “evil” or anything he hates is “good” points out that we’d rather change the definition of good and evil if it makes us feel safe…than risk ourselves by confronting Real Evil, or protecting Real Good.

The townspeople would rather say murdering dogs and children is Good, and life without food or music is Good, than stand up to the terrifying Real Evil.

Go watch that episode, where they say “It’s a Good Life” as their crops freeze and their music and art disappears—then come tell me that “everyone’s definition of good and evil is what’s right for them.”

[areadersquoteslibrary]

'"Good and evil are the prejudices of God" — said the snake.'

- Friedrich Nietzsche,

'The Gay Science'

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

Now, it is the position, generally speaking, of our intellectual community that while we may not like this, we might think of this as "wrong" in Boston or Palo Alto, who are we to say that the proud denizens of an ancient culture are wrong to force their wives and daughters to live in cloth bags?

And who are we to say, even, that they're wrong to beat them with lengths of steel cable, or throw battery acid in their faces if they decline the privilege of being smothered in this way?

Well, who are we not to say this? Who are we to pretend that we know so little about human well-being that we have to be non-judgmental about a practice like this?

I'm not talking about voluntary wearing of a veil -- women should be able to wear whatever they want, as far as I'm concerned.

But what does voluntary mean in a community where, when a girl gets raped, her father's first impulse, rather often, is to murder her out of shame?

Just let that fact detonate in your brain for a minute: Your daughter gets raped, and what you want to do is kill her.

What are the chances that represents a peak of human flourishing?"

-- Sam Harris, "Science Can Answer Moral Questions"

[shallowseeker]

Hey Shal, I have a question about your family diner meta. Mad respect, but in the Leviathan arc Biggerson's is made out to be a bad thing. I was wondering if you have any thoughts on that, since in the Cas tablet meta where Naomi attacks Cas, you talk about Biggerson's being bigger sons -> better than their fathers because of their bigger hearts is a good thing? Anyway, I'm hoping this comes across as a friendly question!

I tend to shy away from writing about some stuff from that season, because a lot of it seems very era-attenuated. Example: how an average librarian is referred to as "Chubby" and her beau as "Chub-chaser" in Repo Man. In general some of the mean despair over "fat people" in this season comes off Hollywood-seedy and thoughtless, but it's soooo of the times.

For a little while era, the documentary SuperSize Me reigned supreme in every bit of small-talk and in every classroom. Jessica Simpson was a frequent target of weight-shaming, including this hugely publicized fiasco from 2009, when she looked like a walking dream BTW.

In this way, SPN is like a time capsule. (Like how, if you were alive at the time during post-"war on terror," Torture was the big topic in every current events class, verging on a buzz word.)

///

Yes, Biggerson's is a BIG motif in season 7, and with negative connotations. It's a nod to SuperSize Me. It's especially damning for the punching-down attitudes in Hollywood.

I want to point out that although the name is cheeky, Biggerson's wasn't even inherently bad in-world.

The Leviathan were a rotten supplier to this family chain industry, dosing their food with additives, which mirrors a lot of the real-world chatter that was going on about trans-fats, partially hydrogenated oil, etc. People were working really hard to get them banned!

When you get down to it, the people inside Biggerson's were being actively preyed upon.

///

What I think I want to carefully pivot to is the dark side of humanity and family, that of consumerism and exploitation.

I think overall that the family diner is still a positive motif, but as with every motif, there's a shadow side--the uncharitable side, a side that can be carried to extremes.

The "shadow self" of the family diner motif is excess and greed exploiting the family by ravaging its most basic requirement to survive: shelter and nourishment.

They are making humans into livestock. This was also a rampant idea in the 2000s: about selectively breeding farm animals so that they get dumber and dumber, until they're easy to subjugate for meat, assembly-line style. I think they briefly touch on this again in season 12...with the Moloch monster and family business of meat packaging.

Anyway, SPN was trying to loop this idea in, too.

///

So, yes. BIG erson's. Bigger Sons. Etc. Etc.

You want your kids to be better than you, with "bigger hearts" and more kindness. But bigger and stronger can have a heck of a downside, too.

But at its heart, the family diner also represents communion and community. It is, after all, the weak, vulnerable human family that Cas wants to protect in season 8.

It's both things at once.

(ASIDE//

And Cas becomes the ideal/idea/motif of the always-working dad/husband that wants to provide for you but doesn't indulge in happiness or nourishment for himself.)

///

ASIDE 2//

Flagrant consumerism is a big part of Nephilim concept, too, and that's a very ancient story. Theirs was an extensive appetite that so drained the world they had to be eradicated to save the world. In a very real symbolic sense, We are the Nephilim. (On the nose maybe, but we are empire: too tall, too strong, too wasteful, war-mongering, dominating etc. etc.)

And my point is, I think humans have always been aware of the tension and war that comes with the competition for finite resources. It's not just a modern, "American" concept.

In early days, our conceptualization of gods and demi-gods mimics the food chain. Ergo: If gods are above us, they're like other stronger animals...they want to eat us. Thus, sacrificing to them is a way to appease them.

Humanity and religion are historically oriented towards pooling resources to survive. Many religions, even the big ones imho, are a clever family-extension device, that's why it they’re so littered with parental components. (It's used to bind people “under one roof” and funnel the resources appropriately.

Certainly, that how Cults and Causes start; in meaningful ways they're all baby/early religions. And when enough time goes by, and the leaders die, etc etc...they devolve to myth and respectable religions proper. The ultimate difference is time.

If angels are royal families, ancient knights-and-tribalism, then Leviathan were supreme capitalism.

It worked well in theory, even when the execution was sometimes lacking to too campy to get the satire across. Especially coming from, you know, Hollywood. And Biggerson's is a warped shadow of that appetite symbol.

[elegantzombielite]

"In its original literal sense, 'moral relativism' is simply moral complexity. That is, anyone who agrees that stealing a loaf of bread to feed one's children is not the moral equivalent of, say, shoplifting a dress for the fun of it, is a relativist of sorts. But in recent years, conservatives bent on reinstating an essentially religious vocabulary of absolute good and evil as the only legitimate framework for discussing social values have redefined 'relative' as 'arbitrary'."

Ellen Jane Willis, writer (14 December 1941-2006)

[iisthepopeoffools]

I feel bad for Protagoras. He had many insights into how truth is constructed but none of his writings survive and we mainly know him from Plato dunking on him.

[officialyourdailyinspiration]

The womb of a mother has become one of the greatest war zones in our world. Today, Burk Parsons reminds Christians of our duty to protect the unborn and the defenseless, particularly in a culture where human life is not recognized as sacred.

[alephskoteinos]

I saw that Nietzsche said, "What is good?—Whatever augments the feeling of power, the will to power, power itself, in man. What is evil?—Whatever springs from weakness."

I remembered that Spinoza said, "We call a thing good or evil, when it is of service or the reverse in preserving our being, that is, when it increases or diminishes, helps or hinders, our power of activity."

[forgottenbones]

SHE SELLS SEASHELLS ON THE SEASHORE MEME

[ahb-writes]

"Most persons have a very moderate capacity of happiness."

John Stuart Mill, as quoted in: Wright, R. 1995. The Moral Animal: Why We Are, the Way We Are: The New Science of Evolutionary Psychology. Vintage Books, New York, New York, U.S. 496 pp.

[tom4jc]

Hidden Worldviews (book review)

Title: Hidden WorldviewAuthor: Steve Wilkens and Mark L. SanfordPublisher: InterVarsity PressPages: 218 Hidden Worldviews The authors, Steven Wilkens and Mark L. Sandford, of this book begin by describing what makes a worldview a worldview. They state the often people look at certain major worldviews, but miss what the common worldviews are that are very seldom seen as a worldview, though held…

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

By: Eva Kurilova

Published: Jan 15, 2024

In 1943, C.S. Lewis delivered a series of lectures at King’s College that warned about the erosion of moral values and the rise of relativism, which he believed would lead to humanity’s ruin. These thought-provoking lectures were later compiled into The Abolition of Man, a book that has since been acknowledged as one of the most significant and influential works of the 20th century.

Today, I believe society has reached the very crossroads Lewis forewarned—an era of subjectivism where concepts of “right” and “wrong” have lost their objective anchor and are instead dictated by personal whims and desires. A striking manifestation of this shift is evident in the construction of an oppression hierarchy. This hierarchy asserts that moral judgements in any given situation is not determined by external, consistent values for judging behavior, but rather by the fluctuating perceptions of who is deemed “privileged” and who is deemed “oppressed.”

In his lectures, Lewis emphasized the importance of universal virtues in guiding our morality. He referred to these virtues, which he believed to be found universally across humanity, as the “Tao.” Originating from Chinese philosophy, the Tao represents a way of life in harmony with the world. Discerning the right way to live, according to Lewis, requires wisdom and character. He describes the Tao as “the doctrine of objective value, the belief that certain attitudes are really true, and others really false, to the kind of thing the universe is and the kind of things we are.”

Regrettably, Lewis observed a decline in such wisdom and integrity among the youth of his era, leading to what he termed “men without chests”—individuals devoid of honor and virtue. His critique was not about dictating the specifics of what is “right,” “moral,” and “good.” Rather, Lewis lamented that we have lost any sense that the right, moral, and good exist at all, writing: “Until quite modern times all teachers and even all men believed the universe to be such that certain emotional reactions on our part could be either congruous or incongruous to it.”

To illustrate his point, Lewis began his first lecture with an anecdote about the English poet Samuel Coleridge. Coleridge was once gazing at his favorite waterfall when two tourists came along, one calling the waterfall “sublime” and the other as merely “pretty.” Coleridge approved the former judgment and rejected the latter.

Lewis’ intention was not to dictate perceptions of waterfalls. His concern was that, when the story was referenced in a “little book on English” for schoolchildren that he called The Green Book, the authors declared that the tourist who called the waterfall “sublime” was merely making a statement about his own feelings. This, according to Lewis, exemplified a troubling shift away from recognizing objective beauty and value.

This sly inward turn toward subjectivity, and away from the belief that certain emotional responses can be congruous or incongruous with reality, deeply troubled Lewis. He feared this trend would lead to “men without chests.” He posited that we would demand from such men qualities like drive and self-sacrifice while relegating virtues like honor and patriotism to mere feeling and opinion. He uses the example of a Roman father telling his son that it is a “sweet and seemly thing to die for his country.” The authors of The Green Book, however, would feel the need to debunk this sentiment the same way they debunked the idea that the sublime nature of the waterfall has any reality outside of the tourist’s own feelings.

Lewis further illustrated his point using a humorous example of himself and his attitude toward children. He admitted, “I myself do not enjoy the society of small children: because I speak from within the Tao I recognize this as a defect in myself—just as a man may have to recognize that he is tone deaf or colour blind.”

Rather than trying to justify the fact that he doesn’t enjoy the company of children by forcing the rest of society to see it as a virtue, Lewis acknowledged it as a personal shortcoming, recognizing that we should value spending time with children. However, it often seems today that people do the opposite: they argue that what they personally like is valuable and what they personally dislike is not. And this is exactly what Lewis saw coming.

When we move away from the Tao and the idea that certain attitudes toward the world are really true and good, we risk evaluating the world solely through the lens of desire and emotional impulses. “When all that says ‘It is good’ has been debunked,” says Lewis, “what says ‘I want’ remains.” He further remarks: “Those who stand outside all judgements of value cannot have any ground for preferring one of their own impulses to another except the emotional strength of that impulse.”

I believe Lewis correctly predicted humanity’s moral trajectory, which is highly concerning considering where he said it would lead. What I don’t think he could have predicted, however, was that one of the major ways that subjective and relativistic morality would manifest was through the oppression hierarchy.

Based on identity characteristics like race, sex, sexuality, and “gender identity,” the oppression hierarchy slots individuals into a stack that ranges from most privileged to most oppressed. At the top, you will invariably find “cis” straight white men. At the bottom, you will likely find black “trans” women, often bearing additional marginalized identities like “disabled.”

The morality underpinning this hierarchy is inherently relativistic. It contends that those lower in the stack are incapable of wrongdoing toward those above. For example, you might have heard that non-white people can’t be racist against white people because they are more oppressed as a group on the basis of race. It is also reflected in the idea that there is no such thing as misandry because under patriarchy men as a class oppress women as a class. This ideology further manifests in attitudes that trivialize or even endorse acts like shoplifting, justified by the belief that capitalism is an “oppressive” system.

Gone is the traditional notion of treating others equally and recognizing antisocial behaviors like theft as inherently wrong. According to this new moral framework, any attitude or action directed against an “oppressor”–be it an individual or a system–is deemed justifiable.

This new morality and its value calculus is also prevalent in contemporary gender ideology. It becomes particularly apparent in how trans-identifying individuals demand privileges that clash with the rights of women. Gender self-identification is a disaster for women’s sports, women’s prisons, and women’s private spaces, but it doesn’t matter because “trans” people are considered oppressed, and “cis” people the oppressors. As a result, trans-identified men can therefore demand anything at the expense of women’s rights, and women who refuse or fail to swiftly comply with every demand are branded as hateful.

Oppression stack-based morality is why trans rights activists feel entitled to call for violence, rape, and death against so-called “transphobes” who disagree with them, and why they receive no real pushback from within their communities. It’s why they feel emboldened enough to hold up signs that say “decapitate TERFs” and to show up at women’s rights events with fake guillotines. It’s why they regularly jump to the defense of male pedophiles, rapists, and murderers who seek transfer to women’s prisons. Critics of such transfers are often accused of bigotry and “misgendering.”

No matter what, the “trans” person in any scenario is viewed as inherently oppressed and incapable of wrongdoing, especially against those deemed as oppressors.

A case in point is Audrey Hale, a mass shooter who killed three adults and three nine-year-old children at a private Christian school in Tennessee. Because she identified as a transgender man, activists quickly slammed media outlets for “misgendering” Hale by referring to her using female pronouns. CNN and The New York Times even issued “corrections,” essentially capitulating to the preferences of a mass child killer. Prominent transgender activist Eli Erlick even called the school a “right-wing institution” and asserted, without evidence, that Hale had been “abused” there.

However, perhaps the most striking illustration of this new morality at play was seen in the response to the Hamas terror attack against Israel on October 7, 2023. Despite the heinous nature of the atrocities committed on that day, a disturbing number of people praised the actions of the terrorists. The moral calculus has been grim. The terrorists were rebranded as oppressed freedom fighters. Consequently, their actions, regardless of how morally reprehensible, were often rationalized or justified because they were perceived as acts against “oppressors.” In this context, the conventional condemnation of acts like mass rape and murder has become contingent on the relative privilege of the perpetrator and the victim. Then, a terrorist attack is no longer a terrorist attack.

While Lewis couldn’t have foreseen the specific outcomes of a shift towards subjective morality, nor the intricate oppression hierarchy that now informs societal judgments of “right” and “wrong,” he was nevertheless correct in identifying that it would be based on nothing more than personal desires and emotional impulses. The supposed objectivity of the oppression hierarchy is, in reality, a façade. The allocation of characteristics within this hierarchy, and the corresponding levels of privilege or disadvantage they confer, are seldom reflective of real-life circumstances. Instead, they are dictated by prevailing social and political trends, and the caprices of those in power. The clearest evidence of this is that a straight man instantly plummets from a position of unrivaled privilege to one of significant oppression simply by donning a dress and wig.

But what implications does this perspective have for society? Lewis wasn’t optimistic. He argued that discarding traditional values in favor of self-crafted ones, based on whims and impulses, does not lead to emancipation. On the contrary, it subjects us to what he termed “Conditioners”—those who “cut out all posterity in what shape they please.” These Conditioners are, in my opinion, analogous to those making the decisions about where individuals sit on the oppression hierarchy. “They produce conscience,” Lewis says, “and decide what kind of conscience they will produce.” In this manner, the Conditioners effectively conquer human nature. However:

At the moment, then, of Man’s victory over Nature, we find the whole human race subjected to some individual men, and those individuals subjected to that in themselves which is purely ‘natural’—to their irrational impulses. Nature, untrammelled by values, rules the Conditioners and, through them, all humanity. Man’s conquest of Nature turns out, in the moment of its consummation, to be Nature’s conquest of Man.

Lewis feared that a shift toward subjective and relativistic morality might inexorably lead to totalitarianism, with those in power guided by their basest instincts. Reflecting on the latter part of the 20th century, it appears his fears were not unfounded. At the time of his observations, such moral perspectives were already shaping the ideologies of fascism and communism. Despite his cautionary words and the unfolding of events that mirrored his warnings, this new morality continued to proliferate throughout society and it is now the guiding star of radical progressives.

While I favor Lewis’ view, I’m not arguing that everyone must necessarily agree with the concept of objective morality. I’m sure many lively debates could spring up around his words, and no doubt many have. I know numerous people with strong morals and values who might insist that they came to those values rationally, that we don’t need to rely on tradition, and that morals aren’t necessarily objective. I also know that some would say evolutionary biology has played a significant role in shaping moral attitudes, a view I accept, though I believe is not the sole factor at play.

Yet, I hope we can collectively recognize the dangers inherent in the other view—that right and wrong should be judged only according to the emotional intensity of a given impulse. This new morality has created an oppression hierarchy, where the moral standing of an action hinges entirely on the relative oppression or privilege of the involved parties. This perspective has led us to a precipice where, alarmingly, an act as heinous as cold-blooded murder might not be deemed wrong if perpetrated by someone from an oppressed group against an individual from a perceived oppressor group.

Do not let yourself become conditioned to accept this.

[madewithonerib]

I've got to get the whole Gospel in. [48:46]

But what Don Carson says about telling the truth in Worldview Evangelism, if people who don't know what GOD means, what the word sin means:

They don't have the intellectual framework

They don't have the worldview, they're going to be reading what you say through their non-Christian worldview.

They're going to absolutely misunderstand you, if you go through it like that. Why are you still doing it, if you know that?

You're just being a legalist of some kind, you need to slow down & you need to lay in the groundwork.

And in Acts 17 actually in the Areopagus address Don points out that Paul actually lays out a biblical view of GOD & a biblical view of history

And he undercuts the whole idea of dualism & creating a Christian worldview intelligibility; meaning people have to clearly perceive what it is that you are giving them. [49:36]

In the early days of Redeemer again I remember so often I would see people who I thought had become Christians, so I baptized [them].

And as soon as a sexual partner came along that they were looking for all their lives, they bailed..& I said wait a minute!

Moral Relativism:

I began to realize that if your worldview is this truth [whatever works for me] you know when people say well if it's true for you, then it's true for you. But if it's true for me that's true for me.

What's true for me might not be true for you.

Whenever you hear people say that:

You don't really believe that!

What idiot would really believe something like that, but you know what a lot of people really do believe is this & I found that

when I told people CHRIST is the truth they read that through their worldview & what that meant was this will work for me & whenever it stopped working whenever being a Christian was really really hard they bailed!

It wasn't true for them anymore.

................................................................................................... Even though I had shared the Gospel with them, there had not been a powerful encounter at the worldview level. ...................................................................................................

So I had skipped intelligibility!

secondly there's what I call the intelligibility

[b] Credibility

Now by credibility, credibility is the area what you probably would usually call apologetics.

................................................................................................... Credibility is this area of the defeatist, a defeater is a belief that if true, makes belief be impossible so I don't even have to look at it. ...................................................................................................

Are you following me?

In the older Christianized Western Culture

there really weren't many defeater around the average person believe the Bible the average person believed in the afterlife & so on

But now we live in a situation which our culture has a set of common-sense beliefs. There can't just be one true religion.

................................................................................................... Everybody has got to be able to decide right & wrong for themselves ...................................................................................................

There are these givens, there's these things that people just say they are common sense beliefs & because they are believed then Christianity can't be true.

If you don't deal with this 'common knowledge' in your preaching, if you don't deal regularly with defeater beliefs in your routine ministry, then you will give the Gospel & eyes will just glaze over.

They won't exactly know why nothing you are saying makes any sense!

Presuppositional Apologetics: is essentially trying to show people that their belief system isn't true on their own terms.

Not on your terms, but on their own terms

Let me give you one quick example because it will also help you with plausibility.

Case in Point

Ex. What do you do with people who say all religions are equally valid? There can't just be one true religion.

All religions are equally valid, every religion has got its own part of the truth. But nobody can see the whole truth.

What do you do with that?

Leslie Newton gave me a great weapon years ago in apologetics, because he's a Missionary in India he heard the story all the time:

This is a story about the blind men & the elephant

Six blind men come upon an elephant & one every one of them tries to get a hold of the elephant to describe it & one gets a hold of the tail & says the elephant is long & wiggly; another one gets a hold of side it says no the elephant is very big & flat, another one gets a hold of the leg & says no it's short & round & stiff. Then they had this argument about what the elephant is.

And the way that illustration goes is:

Everyone sees part of the elephant are actually grasped part of the elephant because they can't see the whole elephant—so everyone is right & everyone is wrong!

Every one of them grasped part of the elephant, but because they try to say they grasp the whole elephant that's the reason why they are arguing.

And religions are the same way

All religions have part of the truth, no religion can say they have all the truth; therefore there can be no one sure religion.

One day Leslie Newton realized you could only tell this story about the blind men & the elephant—only if you could see the whole elephant.

There's no way you could know the blind men only see part of the elephant, unless you can see the whole elephant. He said there's no way you could say all religions have part of the truth & no religion has all the truth unless you see all the truth..

Unless you claim to have the kind of superior knowledge you say all those religions do not have—unless you claim the kind of superior knowledge you say no one has the right to claim...

Believe it or not, this is a way of saying:

In the interest of being inclusive [something very exclusive] you are saying you have a spiritual take on ultimate reality & it is right & I'm wrong.

Therefore you're being as exclusive as I am.

The difference is as a Christian I believe I'm exclusive, I believe CHRIST is the exclusive truth. Whereas you're being just as exclusive as I am, yet you are denying your principle.

You're being inconsistent.

What we've done is avoid evidential apologetics, not rationale, use presuppositional apologetics.

Unless you're constantly seeding what you say to people by listening to those defeatist and go after those two feeders & showing the defeatist don't work on their own terms.

I know that sounds awfully intellectual.

Evangelism explosion doesn't work & the reason it doesn't work when you go through GOD, man, CHRIST, faith—is because they also have these defeater beliefs in their head and what you say doesn't sound credible to them.

If you do not learn ways of deconstructing the defeater beliefs in the general way you minister, you can yell all you want and you can go through your presentations all you want.

But it's going to fall on deaf ears.

That's credibility then plausibility [Intelligibility, credibility, plausibility]

Postmodernism P1,2,3,4,5 | Timothy J. Keller | [Jonah 2:9; 3:9] Worldview Evangelism | Don A. Carson The Supremacy of Christ in a Postmodern World

[elegantzombielite]

"Never let your sense of morals get in the way of doing what's right."

Isaac Asimov, scientist and writer (2nd January 1920-1992)

[shallowseeker]

Michael, ranking deity.

polytheism in 13x07

[steviebee77]

Morally Blind

C.S. LEWIS SAID morality is concerned with three things: harmony between individuals; inner harmony of the individual; and the general purpose of life (ultimately, salvation). Morality, he said, is synonymous with absolute truth. Not surprisingly, universal moral law must come from a Lawgiver. Moreover, without absolutes morality is based merely on culture and circumstance. So-called situational…