Relativism
From Pensées 40: If we wished to prove the examples which we take to prove other things, we should have to take those other things to be examples; for, as we always believe the difficulty is in what we wish to prove, we find the examples clearer and a help to demonstration. Thus, when we wish to [...]
Continue reading about Blaise Pascal on universals and particulars
Modern art, or more specifically, postmodern art characterized by abstract expressionist artists like Jackson Pollock, Pablo Picasso, and Franz Kline, has been decried by art critics (of a less refined taste as we are commonly told by the self-proclaimed elite art critics) as being trash and not “true art”. However such a distinction begs the question, what [...]
The licentious tell men of orderly lives that they stray from nature’s path, while they themselves follow it; as people in a ship think those move who are on the shore. On all sides the language is similar. We must have a fixed point in order to judge. The harbour decides for those who are [...]
Here is a portion of an exchange I recently had via Facebook with Nigel, a friend of mine. The topic of this section is about whether the Bible can legitimately be used as an objective moral standard. The problem is, as I pointed out, the Bible can only be considered a universal standard if an [...]
Continue reading about Is the Bible a suitable candidate for an objective moral standard?
Greg Koukl recently wrote an excellent post on seven fatal flaws of relativism. One of the chief objections to attacks on moral relativism (often held by philosophical naturalists) is that morality is defined by culturally accepted norms. Thus, they argue, that there is an absolute in the sense that society holds some actions to be [...]
When asked about where moral standards come from, a common tactic of a moral relativist is to attempt to ground moral knowledge in what society deems right or wrong at any given point in time. The problem this poses, however, is that in this understanding of morality, societies can never be said to be wrong. [...]
If by secularism we mean philosophical naturalism in the sense that the only reality is the physical reality of atoms, particles, and “laws of nature” to the exclusion of metaphysical constructs such as a soul then our biggest hurdle to overcome, long before we deal with the grounds of any objective morality, is to answer where we get the notion of “ought to” from.
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