So says an obscure author, Gaither Stewart, in an article for a fringe on-line journal. In his article, Stewart attacks Benedict XVI and the Catholic Church but curiously, neither are even the main point of his article. He uses B16’s phrase about the “dictatorship of relativism” as his point of departure for justifying what he calls a “limited moral relativism.” In general, the article is peppered here and there with thoughts but they never come together into anything one could identify as a cogent argument.
The author irresponsibly throws out unsupported claims (e.g. that the pontificates since Giovanni XIII–why he uses the Italian for John and not Benedetto for B16 I don’t know– were relatively liberal, that some medieval bishop said that anything goes in spreading the faith, that the Church teaches that the individual must be sacrificed for the sake of the whole, etc.), fails to understand his subject (especially the Catholic teaching on morality), and generally does a poor job of employing his intellectual faculties. On the other hand, I did not detect any grammatical errors or typos which I will not guarantee this post will be able to avoid…
So why waste time discussing a diatribe that thinly masquerades as a thoughtful argument? Well, it provides much opportunity to for pointing out common “thinking” errors of our time. Here are just a few worth mentioning:
Under a picture of B16 he has the caption:
Yesterday, Galileo on the black list
Today, “MORAL RELATIVISM
He then makes explicit what this caption implies,
The World Church just cannot seem to get it right. As a rule it is centuries behind.
It’s not clear what he means by the “World Church,” though I take it as a backhanded compliment. However, what the caption and first two sentences reveal is that he seems to swallow the canard that science and/or modern knowledge provide modernity with a privileged intellectual position on morality that allow modern intellectuals the ability to extract themselves from the backward thinking about the existence of God and the thought that there can be any absolute moral truths. What this presumptive attitude misses is that science nor most modern philosophy possess the resources for making any sort of moral judgments at all. Morality deals not with empirically verifiable theories but with what one ought to do in concrete circumstances. This requires a solid, metaphysically based philosophy and theology, not modern science.
As an aside, the old canard that the Catholic Church has always been against scientific discovery by trotting out the Galileo myth is telling. Notice it is always Galileo? Why is that? Perhaps because this is the only example that they can find. In fact, we all know that the Catholic Church was the major benefactor of scientific discovery up until national governments and large corporations began to get involved in the last century or so. What happened with the Galileo case is mythologized by the scientistic crowd–ironic for those who dismiss religion as myth and promote modern science as the only authentic source of knowledge. For example, he never said “but it moves.” In reality, Galileo did not promote modern science as we know it. He did not provide empirical evidence for his claims; rather he provided theories for which the empirical evidence did not support (especially his theory of tides) at the time, though it is true that his theories about where empirical evidence would eventually be found when instrumentation became available we in fact true. Nevertheless, as you will see Stewart is not concerned with uncovering truth but rather rationalizing unsupported opinion.
The interesting thing is that Stewart rejects absolute moral relativism. He tries to define moral relativism with a couple of resources but interestingly enough, the definitions that he comes up with do not seem to support his point; i.e. that no one really holds to what he calls an extreme form of moral relativism. His sources in fact define moral relativism in terms he reserves for absolute moral relativism–where there are no objective moral norms. How does he justify his assertion then, that most moral relativists are not absolute? He doesn’t, he just states it. He seems to assume that because he doesn’t hold it and he is in the liberal, evolutionist camp (see below) that no one else does either. Neither does he seem to recognize that one must take logically consistent positions. One cannot simply say that he is a moral relativist in an arbitrarily defined way and maintain a consistent world view. This much is demonstrated by his entire project as we will see.
He then proceeds through a confused discussion in which he lumps the Catholic Church together with:
conservative governments with authoritarian tendencies and religious fundamentalist natures, those like the United States of America,
This reveals much about his thinking I would say. It is at one with the dichotomous, liberal politics of the U.S. One is of the liberal or conservative stripe and so upholds all of the stereotypical caricatures of one side or the other. Of course then, for Stewart, all of the fundamentalist authoritarian folks are absolutist with regard to truth. Would that this were the case. He furthermore argues that they all find their “truth” through some sort of revealed faith…and this he rejects. For him, faith is what he grew up with in his Baptist upbringing. He makes no attempt to define it or to explore whether his experience accords with the Catholic teaching he summarily dismisses. Thus, it is likely that he simply dismisses the formidable Catholic intellectual tradition without even engaging it because he conflates it with what was likely a fideistic upbringing.
It would seem that he squeezes everyone who accepts anything on faith into this pigeon hole caricature which he calls the Creationist camp. For this camp, he appears to assume that the only support for their view is that God as Creator has established an order that all must live by. While this is true with respect to the Catholic teaching, it is not true according to what would appear to be his nominalistic (read arbitrary) sense. He also implies that the only access to this truth is through divine revelation (read what your pastor tells you), and this is certainly not the case with respect to Church teaching. He often seems to suggest an appeal to natural law but seem wholly ignorant of the Catholic tradition on this matter.
The other camp is the evolutionist camp. For this group, because all the universe and everything in it are simply accidents, then by definition there is no moral truth. Now while Stewart calls himself an evolutionist (i.e. he agrees with the faulty assumption that evolutionary processes are sufficient explanations for contingent existence) he nevertheless rejects the idea that there is no order in the universe or that this order does not have some sort of claim on human behavior:
As an evolutionist, I, for one, do not believe anything goes. For there are natural laws that apply because we are all men.
This is all well and good, but unfortunately, he goes no further. He does not argue how he would defend his assertion. Perhaps he has not heard of the so-called “Hume’s Law” also known as G.E. Moore’s “naturalistic fallacy.” This is an infamous tenet espoused by those he says support the extreme position of moral relativism; namely, that an “is” does not require an “ought.” It does not appear that he is aware of this argument. For later he says:
Dostoevsky wrote his famous line: “If God doesn’t exist, everything is permissible”. Dostoevsky is my favorite writer but it has never made sense to me that if there’s no God, there’s no such thing as morality. I think his was a catch phrase made for effect and clamor.
He goes on to say that just because there is a God doesn’t mean that we can know what is right and wrong. What he does not seem to understand is that for Dostoevsky, and the radical relativist crowd for that matter, the issue here is not epistemological but ontological. In other words, even before one gets to the question of how one can come to know what the order of things are and therefore what is right a wrong, one must know that there is some purposeful order to the world.
What Stewart fails to come to grips with is that he is still dependent upon his Christian upbringing for recognizing there is a right and a wrong because there is a purposeful order to things. Why must the order be purposeful? It is simply because morality presupposes a free actor. This actor must first be able to employ an intellect which necessarily exhibits reason; it looks for purpose/order. Once the actor recognizes the order and that this order makes a legitimate demand on him (and such a demand can only come from a rational Agent) he then must freely choose to align himself with the order/purpose or not to not do so. No such order that creates moral obligations can come from accidental arrangements. Without a purposeful Agent, the most that could be argued would be for a pragmatic necessity.
Stewart never provides an argument as to how moral obligation could arise from ontological accidents. Nor does he ever provide any way of developing objective principles by which one could come to judge right and wrong from the order of things. At most, he implies the adoption of an empirical approach when he makes reference to what most people accept. For example, he recognizes that are some moral constants across cultures (e.g. promoting courage, the Golden rule, prohibitions against lying, cheating, stealing, etc.) but he also argues that there is always cultural conditioning such that not all cultures, or even any two persons, can always agree about which specific acts apply to these archetypal mores.
This in essence defines his position on “limited” moral relativism. He seems to suggest that there are in fact moral truths but he conversely, appears to be saying that we just cannot ever completely agree about which concrete acts fit with these moral norms. What value does then Stewart’s provide provide? Well, for the purpose of moral decision making, absolutely none.
He calls his position, limited moral relativism. While his thesis may be a practical form of moral relativism, its faulty foundation rests upon an epistemological agnosticism. In the end, it results in the same ill fruits as the radical moral relativism which he eschews. This is so, because he has no principles by which to determine if any particular culture’s mores do or do not accord with the general principles he accepts (e.g. what in fact falls into the category of murder). In fact he says such in his own words and in the positions of others which he supports:
Cauthen [the John Price Crozer Griffith emeritus Professor of Theology at Colgate Rochester Crozer Divinity School] writes: “Absoluteness of subjective confidence in a belief is, of course, no guarantee that it corresponds to reality. This inability to cross the line between subjective belief and objective knowledge defines the human predicament in relation to morality and religion.”
[snip]
Moral beliefs are the expression of the dogmas, customs, convictions, beliefs, preferences, feelings, or attitudes of some group or individual—and nothing more than that. They do not mirror an objective order of reality and have no validity outside the minds of those who profess them. There is no objective order of morality that can be used to judge among contrary outlooks. Moral standards do vary from one culture to another, and no universal, absolute culture-transcending standards can be employed to grade them according to their degree of truthfulness.
This argument might be supposed to purport that one should always obey the culture in which he lives. If my culture says that slavery is okay, does it make it so? Though slavery was once permitted by the Supreme Court in the United States, we know that slavery is wrong. So what made us overturn that decision? The answer is that there is a higher law than the civil law. This is natural law or moral law. In this sense, morality is not dependent on the government, but the government is dependent on the morality.
Perhaps morality is not determined by situations, but it is at least conditioned by them. Situations determine morality partly, not wholly. Situation, motive, and the act itself make an act good or bad. Objective principles have to be applied to particular situations. This of course does not prove moral relativism, but perhaps what is called situational relativism.
For example, murder is wrong, but sometimes one must murder someone for self-defense. Killing for self-defense makes killing not murder. Therefore killing for self-defense is not wrong. Situation may make a wrong deed right. On the other hand, good intentions are not enough. Though a good intention can in some situations make a deed good, a good intention does not make a bad deed good. Overthrowing the regime of Saddam Hussein may be a good intention but it does not make the war in Iraq good.
Here we start to see the self-contradictory nature of what seems to be Stewart’s attempt to work out his thinking in public. At once he argues against the existence of absolute moral truths but then appeals to them as objective moral principles that have to be applied in particular situations. Where does one get these objective moral principles and why are they not “dogmas, customs, convictions, beliefs, preferences, feelings, or attitudes of some group or individual?” He does not say.
His last paragraph in the above snippet sounds very confused if one takes him seriously. He has not made an argument as to why murder is wrong, he just assumes it is so. He also sounds confused in his prose. For example, he refers first to murder in the context of self-defense but then says that in self-defense killing is not murder…which is self-contradictory. But interestingly enough, in essence he more or less states the Catholic teaching on the distinctions among object, intention, and situation for assessing a moral act. Though because he does not seem to know that he is making these specific distinctions based upon the principles of object and intention, he is unable to articulate his point with any sense of cogency. If he had been able to distinguish adequately the object from the circumstances, he would have had the tools necessary to recognize that circumstances can change only moral culpability rather than the moral rightness or wrongness of an act.
He then goes on to state in an even more confused way, his argument for a “limited” moral relativism:
Limited moral relativism is the belief that moral relativism is not absolute truth but that it is accurate in the assertion that circumstances are conditioned by countless variables. In other words, a limited moral relativist believes that nothing is set in stone and that cultural influences and creative knowledge change one’s situation.
A limited moral relativist believes that humans are not accountable to a divine creator. This divine creator disrupts their beliefs because through divine inspiration changes are wrought in human character and actions. Humans cannot invent changeless truths. We cannot change the direction of the revolution of the earth.
That there is nothing new under the sun is a truism: it is impossible for human beings to create an idea that has not been created before. We only modify or sometimes change an existing idea for a different and we hope better purpose. Yet, we were conceived so uniquely that it is impossible for one human to think exactly like the next. Cultural differences and upbringing play a part in the development of a person but that doesn’t make him the authority on any idea or action.
The first paragraph contradicts, once again, his appeal for objective moral principles to be applied in specific situations. His project provides nothing more than an empirical observation that situations interact with moral decision making. He does not work out how this is so. Thus there he can provide no justification for his claim that nothing can be set in stone and it remains as asserted but not demonstrated.
The second paragraph is nothing other than the claim that to be a moral relativist you have to be an atheist, though he previously quoted a Christian moral relativist in support of his position. Thus it is not clear why atheism becomes a requirement for his position. It would seem rather that he wants to claim all relativists for atheism. Perhaps to assuage his guilt for his apostasy? It is also interesting that he seems to contradict his atheistic tenet in the first sentence of the next paragraph. If humans cannot create ideas that have not already been created, then how did any ideas come to be “created” at all? If this truism is valid, it demands an Uncreated origin for all ideas. I’m not sure how this assertion supports his argument, but it does seem to demonstrate very clearly, his vague thinking.
It is hard to summarize Stewart’s position because it is so full of self-contradictions. He appeals to objective principles and at the same time denies them. He implies that there are moral truths across societies but then denies the existence of moral truths. He says that murder is always wrong but does not demonstrate how he arrives at this claim.
He probably would be aghast if he were to find that some of his positions put him closer to the Catholic Church’s position than the philosophical moral relativists that he aligns himself with. I am thinking here of his statements that not anything goes with respect to morality, that situation does affect moral decision making, that the end does not justify the means, etc. I wonder how much further he would come to the Catholic position if he were to employ his noodle to the degree he thinks he is and actually spend some temporal and intellectual resources on investigating and understanding the Catholic intellectual tradition in this regard.
In the end, he demonstrates the dilemma of western secularism. He is dependent upon his Judeo-Christian heritage for moral structures that he senses are absolute but at the same time he wants to deny it because of its demands, primarily in the area of sexual morality I would suggest. Thus he tries to create a moral system on the fly, that can somehow justify his claims of what seems to be right and wrong. However, without the intellectual resources of a thinker such as Aristotle, understandably he ends up in self-contradiction.
He wants to be able to condemn certain acts as morally repulsive (e.g. Nazi Germany’s genocide) but in doing so he gets too close to advocating absolute rights and wrongs. This seem to frighten him back into the absolute moral relativist position. At the end of the day, if one wants to find some coherent argument in Stewart’s project, it must be a claim that there exists some vague absolute moral norms (that are not absolute truths mind you) that arise from a similarly vaguely identified natural order; but they are norms that can never be applied with confidence in concrete circumstances because one can never escape his cultural conditioning.
This article ought to be a poster child for the dictum that it is much easier to pontificate from a platform of ignorance than to seriously engage a position with which one disagrees. Thus, I fear, that Stewart will continue to comfort himself with his rationalizations rather than engage in authentic rational activity and learn more about what the Catholic Church actually teaches.
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