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Still drawing on Douglas Groothuis, Christian Apologetics: A Comprehensive Case for Biblical Faith<\/em>\u00a0(Downers Grove: IVP and Nottingham: Apollos, 2011), 338-341:<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Let\u2019s assume, for the sake of argument, that moral standards are simply a function of culture \u2014 that is, that moral \u201ctruths\u201d are relative to particular societies.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Such an assumption renders the concept of moral \u201cprogress\u201d quite empty.\u00a0 Moral standards or ideals may change<\/em> \u2014 e.g., with regard to slavery or the treatment of women, or even the extermination of Jews \u2014 but to call this progress<\/em> would be purely vacuous.\u00a0 If there is no standard of morality outside of the culture or society in question, no ideal external to the culture or transcending it, there is nothing against which to judge changes either good or bad.\u00a0 So the concept of moral \u201cdecay\u201d also goes out the window.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n To illustrate, let\u2019s say that we have a unit of measurement called the \u201cBob,\u201d defined as the height of a specific human unit known as \u201cBob.\u201d\u00a0 When Bob is five years old, he will be of a certain height.\u00a0 When he is twenty-five years old, he will be of a greater height.\u00a0 But \u2014 remember that we\u2019ve stipulated that there is no external standard for the Bob apart from Bob himself \u2014 he will still be precisely one Bob tall.\u00a0 On the other hand, using the Bob as our external standard of measurement, his father may have gone from four Bobs tall to only nine-tenths of a Bob.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Back, though, to morality or ethical evaluations.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n In the anthology of his essays entitled Christian Reflections<\/em>, C. S. Lewis makes an important point:<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n If \u201cgood\u201d or \u201cbetter\u201d are terms deriving their sole meaning from the ideology of each people, then of course ideologies themselves cannot be better or worse than each other.\u00a0 Unless the measuring rod is independent of the things measured, we can do no measuring.\u00a0 For the same reason it is useless to compare the moral ideas of one age with those of another; progress and decadence are alike meaningless words.\u00a0<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n But, surely, no decent and rational person would deny that there has been considerable progress in the treatment of African-Americans since, say, 1860.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n And few if any normal people would disagree that such statements as the following are always and everywhere true:<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n However, if the doctrine of moral relativism is true, such statements can<\/em> be denied.\u00a0 And, really, they cannot be defended as absolutely, not merely instrumentally, true<\/em>.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n If, for instance, we adopt moral relativism, rape is not<\/em> always wrong.\u00a0 A culture or an individual might regard it as permissible or even, somehow, as good<\/em>.\u00a0 In fact, some cultures have regarded rape as acceptable under at least certain circumstances (e.g. in war and conquest).<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n If you respond that rape is always wrong, though, you have thereby rejected moral relativism.\u00a0 This conclusion follows from applying the elementary logical rule known as modus tollens<\/em>:<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n If P, then Q<\/p>\n Not Q.<\/p>\n Therefore not P.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Examples of this rule or argument form are easily found:<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n If Smith is alive, his head is attached to his body.<\/p>\n Smith\u2019s head is not attached to his body.<\/p>\n Therefore, Smith is not alive.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n If you\u2019re in Paris, you\u2019re in Europe.<\/p>\n You\u2019re not in Europe.<\/p>\n Accordingly, you\u2019re not in Paris.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n In the 1930s, Joseph Stalin deliberately starved millions of Ukrainians to death.\u00a0 At roughly the same time, Adolf Hitler was launching his Endl\u00f6sung<\/em> in order to annihilate the Jews.\u00a0 Moral revulsion is the appropriate response to such cases.\u00a0 So much so that we regard people who aren\u2019t<\/em> appalled as defective, sick, abnormal, depraved, sociopathic.\u00a0 We don\u2019t simply say \u201cWell, of course I<\/em> wouldn\u2019t do such a thing, but who am I to judge other<\/em> people?\u00a0 Different strokes for different folks!\u201d<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n One might argue, though, that we need cultural\/moral relativism because, otherwise, we will tend to be intolerant, dogmatic, and bigoted.\u00a0 If people believe that their moral position is superior to the moral positions of others, they will likely not be able to fully tolerate those other people and their views.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n But why should anybody be \u201ctolerant\u201d?\u00a0 If toleration isn\u2019t a universal moral principle, there seems no compelling reason why we should aspire to it or think negatively about those who aren\u2019t<\/em> tolerant.\u00a0 On the other hand, if tolerance is<\/em> a universal moral principle, such that we \u201cshould\u201d practice it and such that we \u201cshould\u201d disapprove of those who don\u2019t<\/em>, moral relativism has already been abandoned.\u00a0 The tolerant cannot fault the intolerant, and tolerant cultures cannot be regarded as \u201csuperior\u201d in that regard to intolerant cultures, if the question of tolerance is a purely relative one.\u00a0 Cultural relativists cannot consistently condemn absolutist cultures.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Perhaps, though, we can all agree that a culture should preferably have a dominant and ruling ethos, if only as a pragmatic means toward social stability and community harmony.\u00a0 That makes sense.\u00a0 Nobody wants to live in anarchy, in a Hobbesian society in which there is \u201ccontinual fear, and danger of violent death; and the life of man [is] solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.\u201d<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n But why \u201cshould\u201d any individual pay any attention to an arbitrary set of ethical values that just happen to have been selected by his or her society \u2014 or, perhaps much more accurately, by some plurality or majority of that society, or by some socio-economic or cultural elite or other within<\/em> that society?\u00a0 As the late philosopher Louis Pojman asked,<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n But why can\u2019t I dispense with the interpersonal agreements altogether and invent my own morality \u2014 since morality, on this view, is only an invention anyway?<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n If there is no moral standard that is objective, or that, in some sense at least, transcends a particular society, on what basis can it be plausibly claimed that there is such a standard above and beyond one of the component individuals<\/em> of that society?\u00a0 So, given such an assumption, it seems to be entirely up to individuals to choose or to make up their own personal moral systems, to decide for themselves what they consider right or wrong, or, even, to dispense altogether with a moral system and to completely ignore questions of right and wrong.\u00a0 Who is to say that they would be \u201cwrong\u201d?<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n A moral relativist might claim that everybody \u201cshould\u201d be a moral relativist, or that moral absolutists are absolutely \u201cwrong,\u201d that we \u201cshould\u201d never assert that our moral principles are universal.\u00a0 But it seems pretty obvious that such a stance would be incoherent and self-contradictory.\u00a0 Which appears to make it obviously false.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n ***<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n This essay, by Drs. Stanford Carmack<\/a> and Royal Skousen<\/a>, went up earlier today on the website of the Interpreter Foundation:<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n\n