Triablogue’s Moral Relativism Exposed
Killing children could sometimes be obligatory, according to Triablogue.
It didn’t take long for Triabloggers to deconstruct their own claim to believe in moral absolutes. In fact, it is very clear now that they are as morally relativistic as anyone else. It just took a few simple questions to help them contradict themselves.
IS KILLING CHILDREN ALWAYS WRONG?
I asked this question of Triabloggers, especially because if killing children is not absolutely wrong, then what is? Someone that believes in moral absolutes would respond with a simple YES. After all, the word “always” is pretty absolute and not ambiguous. Either X is “always” wrong, or it is not. So how did Triabloggers answer the question? Here are the results:
Paul Manata:
http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2010/07/thc-hector-confusion.html
“No (but I bet hector can’t think of the obvious answers for why this could be, given the vague and ambiguous nature of his question).”
Steve Hays:
i) God does no wrong by taking the life of an infant.
ii) There are also situations in which, no matter what you do, some innocent blood will be shed. Should we bomb part of a Syrian city that’s producing a biochem weapon which will be used to wipe out London, even though bombing that part of the city will kill some babies belonging to the resident scientists? Short answer: that might be permissible or even obligatory. But that’s entirely consonant with moral absolutes. Not all obligations are equally obligatory. There are higher and lower obligations. In case of conflict, higher obligations supersede lower obligations.
Hays, in particular, mimics the bin Laden approach to morality on 9-11. On that date, bin Laden was attacking New York, City and Washington DC, the centers of what he perceives as an oppressor of Muslims. His goal was to save Muslim lives.
So, if bin Laden had to kill a few thousand civilians, including children, to save millions of Muslims from American weapons of mass destruction, then Hays would presumably support it. Or is Hays saying that it is just acceptable to kill children when Christian or Western cities are in jeopardy?
And who else might answer my question (“Is killing children always wrong?") the same way? We can state now that the following group would answer the question the same way.
Paul Copan
William Lane Craig
Adolf Hitler
Steve Hays
Osama bin Laden
Paul Manata
Josef Stalin
So, what is the difference again between moral relativists and absolutists? It is merely another version of: “I have judged that my deity is right, and yours is not.” Recall that Hays has already told us that just because Allah says something, it does not make it morally permissible.
FUN WITH EVIL?
Manata tells us:I argue that realism is true, that there are moral facts that make certain actions right or wrong irrespective of our feelings. That molesting children for fun is really wrong is about as obvious to me as the hand in front of my face.
Fine, but why is the absolute immorality of killing children not as “obvious as the hand in front of my face”? “Self-evident” is not proof of objective morality at all. All Manata is saying is that his judgment of what is self-evident to him should be privileged.
But what if someone else thinks that “Action X is not as obviously wrong as the hand in front of my face”? How do you adjudicate such contrasting judgments when they are both based on nothing more than “being as obvious as the hand in front of my face”?
This, indeed, is very convoluted argument because FEELINGS are part of MOST, IF NOT ALL, of our moral judgments. I don’t like to see children suffering, and that feeling is plenty of reason for me to be against child molestation.
Frans de Waal, the Emory primatologist and author of Primates and Philosophers: How Morality Evolved (2006), has demonstrated experimentally that even animals are sensitive to suffering and can comfort afflicted members of their own species. Therefore, our biological constitution and evolutionary development is perfectly able to explain our feelings and illuminate the motives for our moral judgments.
Manata’s supposedly purely objective rational reason (i.e., supposedly excluding the role of feelings), is no less tautologous than appealing to feelings: “Molesting children for fun is wrong because molesting children for fun is wrong.” Again, it is not really a proof of objectivity.
Moreover, I can find theists who say it is permissible to have fun when torturing children. Consider Psalm 137:8-9 (RSV):
[8] O daughter of Babylon, you devastator!
Happy shall he be who requites you
with what you have done to us!
[9] Happy shall he be who takes your little ones
and dashes them against the rock!
I say "torturing children" because we can suppose that these children would suffer, or not die immediately, if dashed against rocks. So, is this biblical author immoral for Hays or Manata?
In fact, Triablogue does not condemn all enjoyment of baby-killing. Here, they appeal to FEELINGS TO JUSTIFY their scriptures' morality:Psalm 137 per Triablogue
“There are people like the Psalmist who, under extreme duress and provocation, really feel that way. They understandably lash out at those who hurt them. Why is Scripture not allowed to even record their feelings?”
Did Hays or Manata feel the same way about those radical Muslims who might have danced in the streets when the Twin Towers went down? Would Hays be as understanding if someone said: “Happy shall you be when you take their children and rape them”? Should we try to understand that person’s feelings the way Triablogue wants us to understand the psalmist’s feelings?
And, of course, the text goes beyond “reporting” feelings. Psalm 137 suggests those feelings are justified. Recall also that just thinking about doing a particular act is tantamount to committing that act, according to Jesus (Matt 5:28).
Tautologies ‘R’ US
Part of the evidence that there are no such thing as objective moral absolutes is the fact that one can dissolve any moral statement into a tautology---a completely circular statement.
However, Hays claims that he is free of tautologies: The circularity is bogus since that’s a caricature of what I believe. Something is not evil just because God says it’s evil. If God says something is evil, then that ensures the truth of the statement. But that is not what makes it evil. For instance, sodomy is evil because God designed human nature to function in a certain way. Sodomy represents a violation of the way in which we were made to function. That’s not dissolvable into a mere tautology.
Hays is wrong. This claim (also a tired natural law argument) about sodomy IS dissolvable into a mere tautology. Observe:
Step 1: Sodomy is evil because it is a violation of the way in which we
were made to function.
Step 2: A violation of the way we were made to function is evil because
a violation of the way we were made to function is evil.
Hays offers us no “absolute” or “objective” reason why violating what he says is the way we were made to function should be evil. It does depend on a tautology that cannot be differentiated from its opposite (“it’s not evil to violate the way humans were meant to function”).
This is not really an irrelevant “tu quoque” (“you, too”) argument, but rather addresses Triabloggers’ denials that they are different from moral relativists. Showing that Triabloggers are doing the same thing as self-described moral relativists is a perfectly legitimate response to someone who claims to be different.
By Hays’ reasoning, penetrating a rectum with a penis is a violation of how God meant humans to function. However, penetrating a human body with a sword, a common way to kill people in biblical times, is acceptable. Apparently human bodies were designed to be penetrated by metal implements, but not by flesh.
Moreover, Hays’ morality rests on an unverifiable claim that he can tell how God has designed us to function. By his logic, we cannot wear glasses on our noses because God designed noses for respiration and smelling, and not for placing glasses upon them.
I see no more evidence that Hays knows what God wants than I see evidence that Osama bin Laden knows what God wants. As usual, Triabloggers deify themselves by equating their judgments with God’s supposed judgments.
And for all their pretense of philosophical sophistication, Triabloggers repeatedly show that they cannot evaluate the philosophical writings to which they refer. Note, for example, that Terence Cuneo’s The Normative Web (2007) does not really address the tautological problem of moral reasoning. Manata shows no “interaction” with Gilbert Harman's “Moral Relativism Defended,” Philosophical Review 84 (1975):3-22.
Manata, by the way, could have saved himself a lot of trouble if he had just read The End of Biblical Studies (pp. 113-115) to understand that my epistemology is not so easily pigeonholed. But, he already admits that he does not always read the materials that he discusses.
ABORTION IMMORAL?
According to Manata: Avalos also says that if one believes that a baby will go to heaven if they are killed, then this makes a great argument for abortion. Really? Derive this conclusion: “It is morally permissible to murder children,” from this premise: “all babies who die go to heaven when they die.” Show the derivation, Hector, justifying each step by rules of logic.
First, note that Manata changes “kill” to “murder.” Both are not necessarily the same. Killing describes the simple act of taking a life. “Murder” is a moral and legal judgment that a killing is unjustified.
That is why Hays presumably does not say “it is permissible to murder Syrian children if it saves London.” For Hays, killing Syrian children is justified, and so not “murder.”
Manata, therefore, might wish to add this item to his reading list: Hector Avalos," Legal and Social Institutions of Canaan and Ancient Israel," Civilizations of the Ancient Near East, J. Sasson, ed. (4 volumes; New York: Scribner's, 1995) Vol 1: 615-631.
Second, my starting premise does not have to be what Manata demands. I also could use this rationale:
A. It is morally permissible to use any action that achieves the highest proportion of saved souls.
B. Abortion, with its 100% salvation rate, is an action that achieves the highest proportion of saved souls.
C. Therefore, it is morally permissible to use abortion as an action to achieve the highest proportion of saved souls.
Compare this rationale to that offered by Hays to kill Syrian children:
A. It is morally permissible, even obligatory, to kill Syrian children to save London if those children are present in the part of a Syrian city that manufactures biochem weapons.
B. Children are present in the part of a Syrian city that is producing a biochem weapon which will be used to wipe out London;
C. Therefore, it is morally permissible, even obligatory, to kill children present in that part in the part of a Syrian city that manufactures biochem weapons.
Here, the salvation of souls is NOT the intended "higher" goal, but rather the preservation of the bodies of Londoners. The bodies of Syrian children are not held to be as valuable as the bodies of Londoners, but Hays cannot tell us why he made that difference.
Hays' rationale generally seems contrary to the higher goal of Hays’ own moral authority, Jesus, in Matthew 10:28: “And do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul; rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell.”
SUMMARY
I think my mission is accomplished, at least for now. I have shown that Triabloggers pretend to be moral absolutists and objectivists but really are moral relativists, just like everyone else.
It didn’t take long for Triabloggers to deconstruct their own claim to believe in moral absolutes. In fact, it is very clear now that they are as morally relativistic as anyone else. It just took a few simple questions to help them contradict themselves.
IS KILLING CHILDREN ALWAYS WRONG?
I asked this question of Triabloggers, especially because if killing children is not absolutely wrong, then what is? Someone that believes in moral absolutes would respond with a simple YES. After all, the word “always” is pretty absolute and not ambiguous. Either X is “always” wrong, or it is not. So how did Triabloggers answer the question? Here are the results:
Paul Manata:
http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2010/07/thc-hector-confusion.html
“No (but I bet hector can’t think of the obvious answers for why this could be, given the vague and ambiguous nature of his question).”
Steve Hays:
i) God does no wrong by taking the life of an infant.
ii) There are also situations in which, no matter what you do, some innocent blood will be shed. Should we bomb part of a Syrian city that’s producing a biochem weapon which will be used to wipe out London, even though bombing that part of the city will kill some babies belonging to the resident scientists? Short answer: that might be permissible or even obligatory. But that’s entirely consonant with moral absolutes. Not all obligations are equally obligatory. There are higher and lower obligations. In case of conflict, higher obligations supersede lower obligations.
Hays, in particular, mimics the bin Laden approach to morality on 9-11. On that date, bin Laden was attacking New York, City and Washington DC, the centers of what he perceives as an oppressor of Muslims. His goal was to save Muslim lives.
So, if bin Laden had to kill a few thousand civilians, including children, to save millions of Muslims from American weapons of mass destruction, then Hays would presumably support it. Or is Hays saying that it is just acceptable to kill children when Christian or Western cities are in jeopardy?
And who else might answer my question (“Is killing children always wrong?") the same way? We can state now that the following group would answer the question the same way.
Paul Copan
William Lane Craig
Adolf Hitler
Steve Hays
Osama bin Laden
Paul Manata
Josef Stalin
So, what is the difference again between moral relativists and absolutists? It is merely another version of: “I have judged that my deity is right, and yours is not.” Recall that Hays has already told us that just because Allah says something, it does not make it morally permissible.
FUN WITH EVIL?
Manata tells us:I argue that realism is true, that there are moral facts that make certain actions right or wrong irrespective of our feelings. That molesting children for fun is really wrong is about as obvious to me as the hand in front of my face.
Fine, but why is the absolute immorality of killing children not as “obvious as the hand in front of my face”? “Self-evident” is not proof of objective morality at all. All Manata is saying is that his judgment of what is self-evident to him should be privileged.
But what if someone else thinks that “Action X is not as obviously wrong as the hand in front of my face”? How do you adjudicate such contrasting judgments when they are both based on nothing more than “being as obvious as the hand in front of my face”?
This, indeed, is very convoluted argument because FEELINGS are part of MOST, IF NOT ALL, of our moral judgments. I don’t like to see children suffering, and that feeling is plenty of reason for me to be against child molestation.
Frans de Waal, the Emory primatologist and author of Primates and Philosophers: How Morality Evolved (2006), has demonstrated experimentally that even animals are sensitive to suffering and can comfort afflicted members of their own species. Therefore, our biological constitution and evolutionary development is perfectly able to explain our feelings and illuminate the motives for our moral judgments.
Manata’s supposedly purely objective rational reason (i.e., supposedly excluding the role of feelings), is no less tautologous than appealing to feelings: “Molesting children for fun is wrong because molesting children for fun is wrong.” Again, it is not really a proof of objectivity.
Moreover, I can find theists who say it is permissible to have fun when torturing children. Consider Psalm 137:8-9 (RSV):
[8] O daughter of Babylon, you devastator!
Happy shall he be who requites you
with what you have done to us!
[9] Happy shall he be who takes your little ones
and dashes them against the rock!
I say "torturing children" because we can suppose that these children would suffer, or not die immediately, if dashed against rocks. So, is this biblical author immoral for Hays or Manata?
In fact, Triablogue does not condemn all enjoyment of baby-killing. Here, they appeal to FEELINGS TO JUSTIFY their scriptures' morality:Psalm 137 per Triablogue
“There are people like the Psalmist who, under extreme duress and provocation, really feel that way. They understandably lash out at those who hurt them. Why is Scripture not allowed to even record their feelings?”
Did Hays or Manata feel the same way about those radical Muslims who might have danced in the streets when the Twin Towers went down? Would Hays be as understanding if someone said: “Happy shall you be when you take their children and rape them”? Should we try to understand that person’s feelings the way Triablogue wants us to understand the psalmist’s feelings?
And, of course, the text goes beyond “reporting” feelings. Psalm 137 suggests those feelings are justified. Recall also that just thinking about doing a particular act is tantamount to committing that act, according to Jesus (Matt 5:28).
Tautologies ‘R’ US
Part of the evidence that there are no such thing as objective moral absolutes is the fact that one can dissolve any moral statement into a tautology---a completely circular statement.
However, Hays claims that he is free of tautologies: The circularity is bogus since that’s a caricature of what I believe. Something is not evil just because God says it’s evil. If God says something is evil, then that ensures the truth of the statement. But that is not what makes it evil. For instance, sodomy is evil because God designed human nature to function in a certain way. Sodomy represents a violation of the way in which we were made to function. That’s not dissolvable into a mere tautology.
Hays is wrong. This claim (also a tired natural law argument) about sodomy IS dissolvable into a mere tautology. Observe:
Step 1: Sodomy is evil because it is a violation of the way in which we
were made to function.
Step 2: A violation of the way we were made to function is evil because
a violation of the way we were made to function is evil.
Hays offers us no “absolute” or “objective” reason why violating what he says is the way we were made to function should be evil. It does depend on a tautology that cannot be differentiated from its opposite (“it’s not evil to violate the way humans were meant to function”).
This is not really an irrelevant “tu quoque” (“you, too”) argument, but rather addresses Triabloggers’ denials that they are different from moral relativists. Showing that Triabloggers are doing the same thing as self-described moral relativists is a perfectly legitimate response to someone who claims to be different.
By Hays’ reasoning, penetrating a rectum with a penis is a violation of how God meant humans to function. However, penetrating a human body with a sword, a common way to kill people in biblical times, is acceptable. Apparently human bodies were designed to be penetrated by metal implements, but not by flesh.
Moreover, Hays’ morality rests on an unverifiable claim that he can tell how God has designed us to function. By his logic, we cannot wear glasses on our noses because God designed noses for respiration and smelling, and not for placing glasses upon them.
I see no more evidence that Hays knows what God wants than I see evidence that Osama bin Laden knows what God wants. As usual, Triabloggers deify themselves by equating their judgments with God’s supposed judgments.
And for all their pretense of philosophical sophistication, Triabloggers repeatedly show that they cannot evaluate the philosophical writings to which they refer. Note, for example, that Terence Cuneo’s The Normative Web (2007) does not really address the tautological problem of moral reasoning. Manata shows no “interaction” with Gilbert Harman's “Moral Relativism Defended,” Philosophical Review 84 (1975):3-22.
Manata, by the way, could have saved himself a lot of trouble if he had just read The End of Biblical Studies (pp. 113-115) to understand that my epistemology is not so easily pigeonholed. But, he already admits that he does not always read the materials that he discusses.
ABORTION IMMORAL?
According to Manata: Avalos also says that if one believes that a baby will go to heaven if they are killed, then this makes a great argument for abortion. Really? Derive this conclusion: “It is morally permissible to murder children,” from this premise: “all babies who die go to heaven when they die.” Show the derivation, Hector, justifying each step by rules of logic.
First, note that Manata changes “kill” to “murder.” Both are not necessarily the same. Killing describes the simple act of taking a life. “Murder” is a moral and legal judgment that a killing is unjustified.
That is why Hays presumably does not say “it is permissible to murder Syrian children if it saves London.” For Hays, killing Syrian children is justified, and so not “murder.”
Manata, therefore, might wish to add this item to his reading list: Hector Avalos," Legal and Social Institutions of Canaan and Ancient Israel," Civilizations of the Ancient Near East, J. Sasson, ed. (4 volumes; New York: Scribner's, 1995) Vol 1: 615-631.
Second, my starting premise does not have to be what Manata demands. I also could use this rationale:
A. It is morally permissible to use any action that achieves the highest proportion of saved souls.
B. Abortion, with its 100% salvation rate, is an action that achieves the highest proportion of saved souls.
C. Therefore, it is morally permissible to use abortion as an action to achieve the highest proportion of saved souls.
Compare this rationale to that offered by Hays to kill Syrian children:
A. It is morally permissible, even obligatory, to kill Syrian children to save London if those children are present in the part of a Syrian city that manufactures biochem weapons.
B. Children are present in the part of a Syrian city that is producing a biochem weapon which will be used to wipe out London;
C. Therefore, it is morally permissible, even obligatory, to kill children present in that part in the part of a Syrian city that manufactures biochem weapons.
Here, the salvation of souls is NOT the intended "higher" goal, but rather the preservation of the bodies of Londoners. The bodies of Syrian children are not held to be as valuable as the bodies of Londoners, but Hays cannot tell us why he made that difference.
Hays' rationale generally seems contrary to the higher goal of Hays’ own moral authority, Jesus, in Matthew 10:28: “And do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul; rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell.”
SUMMARY
I think my mission is accomplished, at least for now. I have shown that Triabloggers pretend to be moral absolutists and objectivists but really are moral relativists, just like everyone else.