Last Friday at our church we had a great presentation by Mark Strauss on the reliability of the gospels. You can watch it here: http://www.efcc.org/grow/sermons/sermon-messages/series/13/. For this blog post I’d like to get back to my discussion of relativism. Let’s look at challenges of relativists and good responses to them.
They may say there are no absolute truths because people disagree about morals, art, philosophy, and politics. But just because it’s hard, it doesn’t mean truth cannot be found. We may need to look for more evidence. C. S. Lewis says that, in fact, there are no real differences in societies. All cultures, for example, say the unjust killing of people is bad. What has changed is the concept of justification.
As part of this challenge against the existence of absolute morality, critics may give you the story of the blind men and the elephant. In this account several blind men encounter an elephant for the first time with one feeling the tusk, another touching the leg, a third running his hand along the elephant’s side, and a fourth tugging on the elephant’s tail. Each of them argues that he has figured out the elephant, but obviously they only have a piece of the truth. A nobleman comes by and tells them to stop arguing, that they have in fact a piece of the truth but not the entire truth. The message here is that we who disagree about absolute truth are blind to the big picture. But notice where that places the narrator of the story – he becomes the nobleman with the truth. How is it that he has sight but the rest of us do not? That’s a pretty egotistical thing to suggest.
We get the same situation when we are offered a different illustration. In this one there is a mountain with God at the top and many roads leading up to the top of the mountain. These roads represent different religions with their own truths. But if they could only see from an helicopter, they would notice that they are all heading toward the same destination. Again notice where this places the narrator of the story – in the helicopter with a birds-eye view of all religions. How did this person get such a lofty position above the rest of us? How is it that this individual has a privileged position compared to all of us?
Next time I’ll explore more objections to absolute morality and ways we can begin to find truths in morality and religion. This is a crucial issue to discuss in today’s society since so many people have bought into the view that all morality and religion is a matter of subjective views.
