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Moral Relativism is the Root of All Society’s Problems!

Some third grade students in Georgia were allegedly conspiring to kill or seriously harm their teacher, and the plot was blown open yesterday.  I’d place the blame for an incident like this squarely on the little brats and the parents that raised them as little brats, but Christian media wanks know who the real culprit is: that nasty ‘ol moral relativism that has been slowly eroding the fabric of society since ancient Greek philosophers came up with the idea several thousand years ago.

Finn Laursen, of the Christian Educators Association International has taken up the fight for religious moral absolutes that brought civilization wonderful things like the Inquisition:

This type of behavior should not shock anyone in this postmodern culture that promotes a philosophy of no absolute truth and therefore no absolute right and wrong.

Actually, Finn, I’d say that society in general frowns upon premeditated murder.  The relativistic viewpoint could possibly justify these kids attacking their teacher if she was horribly abusive or if they were sent back in time to prevent her from giving birth to the next Hitler, but that’s getting into a realm of fiction a bit far-fetched even for someone who takes the Bible at face value.  In this case everyone can agree that the kids are a rotten bunch who should be thrown in the juvenile equivalent of the clink, whether or not your moral compass happens to come from an ancient legal code that is morally dubious by today’s standards.

When parents don’t train their children to have a clear moral compass, the young can be expected to make unethical decisions. The next line of defense is in the schools where we are in a culture war, and our schools are the battlefield.

Should I even bother to mention that this little plot would become perfectly ethical according to the Christian scripture if their teacher was a homosexual, wasn’t Christian herself, or was menstruating without voluntarily exiling herself to a tent in the desert where she would be forced to make burnt offerings of sweet meats to the Lord her God?

Children today are continually confronted with ideas contrary to the principles of Scripture, and  contemporary public schools are often void of such truths. The fruit of these dynamics are apparent. If children are not nurtured with God’s perspective, they can and will be easily deceived.

And here we come to the crux of the problem.  The Bible is not an ethical guidebook.  The Bible doesn’t provide a moral compass for people.  The Bible is a mishmash of poorly matched stories told by unreliable narrators usually hundreds of years after the events they are covering supposedly took place.  Most of the rules that the Bible lays out are horrible and completely ridiculous by today’s standards.  Christians need to stop harping about Biblical principles and leading their lives according to Scripture, because living according to Biblical principles and the scripture just leads to hatred and intolerance.

The Bible is a handy guidebook if your idea of moral behavior includes incest, murder, sexual repression, and deity-sanctioned genocide, but you’ll have to forgive me if I prefer my society to lean towards moral relativism.

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  1. BlackSun | Apr 5, 2008 | Reply

    Ouch! You really don’t want to espouse moral relativism. The answer you’re looking for is objective humanistic morality.

    This can be determined by evolutionary psychology, the study of game theory, agent-based modeling, solving for best outcomes. (Prosperity, reduction in suffering, freedom of choice.)

    Moral relativism is just an excuse for people to behave however they wish. It’s just as bad as absolutist scriptural morality (which differs widely depending on what your scripture is)–though at the other end of the spectrum.

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