Question
Isn’t morality relative?
No one lives as if it is. Relativism dies the moment someone is treated as a thing.
Greg Koukl’s point is simple: relativism is not a moral view. It is the claim that there are no moral views, only tastes. People who say they believe it still say ‘you should not impose your values’—which is itself a value they are happy to impose.
Francis Beckwith adds: if we cannot judge, then Mother Teresa and a tyrant are moral equals, and torturing a child for fun is not actually wrong. That is not sophistication. That is a collapse.
The short’s picture is Lewis’s: driving on the right is a convention. It really does change by country. Exploiting the innocent does not. If every moral claim were only a traffic rule, your blood would not boil when the weak are crushed. The boil is data.
See it
Shorts, slide decks, and infographics that belong with this page.
Talking points
- ‘Don’t judge’ is a judgment.
- Disagreement about morality does not prove there is no truth about it. People disagree about history too.
- Ask which claims they treat as traffic rules, and which they treat as really wrong. The second list is the argument.
Say this
If morality is only taste, then your outrage at injustice is just a flavor. I don’t think you believe that. I don’t think you can.
If they say…
“Different cultures have different morals.”
They differ about application more than about the deepest goods. And when they differ on the deepest goods, we do not say ‘both,’ we say ‘one of them is wrong.’ That is how abolition happened.
“Woe to those who call evil good and good evil.”