Right and Wrong is Relative
Blogged by James Preece on 22nd February 2009
The latest advice for parents from the government...
PARENTS should avoid trying to convince their teenage children of the difference between right and wrong when talking to them about sex, a new government leaflet is to advise.
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It advises: “Discussing your values with your teenagers will help them to form their own. Remember, though, that trying to convince them of what’s right and wrong may discourage them from being open.”
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Linda Blair, a clinical psychologist, said educating older children and teenagers about sex had to be a process of negotiation. “We do not know what is right and wrong; right and wrong is relative, although your child does need clear guidelines,” she said.
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"We do not know what is right and wrong; right and wrong is relative"
I think she means right and wrong are relative.
Either way she's wrong.
The relativistic view of right and wrong says that there is no absolute meausure of right and wrong. Things are righter and wronger, but never right or wrong. Some things that seem wrong to us might seem right to other people. It's all relative.
That's a bit like saying that boxes don't have a size, they are only smaller or bigger. It is clearly nonsense. You can measure a box and give it's absolute dimensions. You can measure an act and say "this is right" or "this is wrong".
A relativistic morality sounds quite reasonable. If everybody around me is doing something then it must be okay. If I do the same, then I must be a good person. It can't be wrong if everybody is doing it? right?
Wrong.
The problem with a relativistic morality is that we can only judge our own actions based on the actions of those around us. That ties us down to the culture we live in, if we live in an age where slavery is considered acceptable, we will probably consider slavary to be acceptable. If we live in an age that see's women as inferior to men, we will probably see women as inferior to men. If we live in an age where abortion is seen as a human right, we will probably see abortion as a human right.
Only an absolute measure of right and wrong allows us to escape the degrading slavery of being a child of our age.
Do not be a child of your age. Do not measure right and wrong on the basis of the majority who happen to be living and breathing around you for the time being. Someday they will be gone and people will look back on them and say "that was wrong, but they didn't know any better because that was what people did back then".
God is the ultimate Good. Only in a relationship with Jesus Christ will we find the truth about right and wrong which will set us free to rise above the whims of fashion and allow us to objectively choose what is really good.
Absolute freedom to choose between right and wrong with moral responsibility for your own actions or degrading slavery to the dictatorship of relativism... I know which one sounds most appealing to me.
Reader Comments
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Mark Dobson said...
I can see why they say not to try and talk to teenagers about right and wrong. That teenagers tend not to listen to their parents, in fact, to resist them, is hardly headline news.
The point is that if you don't talk about morality with them until they're teenagers:
You're. Too. Late.
And you've been shirking one of the most important duties a parent has.
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Philip said...
The "funny" bit is where she says that they need clear guidelines even though we do not know what is right or wrong. How can we have clear guidelines then? To extend James' box analogy, there are relative words one can use to describe a box, of course - such as bigger and smaller. But, the psychologist is not even being a relativist (though she says she is). She is not saying that some things are righter than others (eg sex occasionally is better than casual sex) she is saying that we do not know at all. Thus we cannot even classify two boxes as bigger and/or smaller. This is the logical conclusion of an atheistic world. But, even so, some atheists would argue that you should hang onto inherited, traditional and societal moral norms. Of course, we have seen that this has failed as an approach. But this lady is going further and saying that there is no point of reference at all other than what somebody's opinion happens to be.
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SPQR said...
Riiiighhht. So we're supposed to take lessons on morality from a woman who was possessed by the devil!
OK, OK, I know it's not that Linda Blair, but you gotta love the irony...
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Anonymous said...
...Assuming there is a God. Pretty sure the "word of god" instructed us that it was okay to possess slaves (Leviticus 25), abuse animals (Leviticus 1), curse homosexuals (Leviticus 11) and ultimately forced the submission of women. Right and Wrong are completely relative to the laws of society. The only reason we see faults in previous civilizations is because we compare their value of living to ours. The box analogy is a wrought with fallacies. In truth, the box can be measured using the metric system, but the fact that it is large or small is COMPLETELY dependent on the size of other objects in comparison. "This box, that measures out to be 2500 sq meters is large... When compared to my own personal volume".
Your statement that acts can be measured is also false because of an annoying principle called Units. Without units of measurement, nothing can truly be measured. And, up until now, there are no concrete system of measurements for Right and Wrong. If a scientist developed a scale somewhere that could precisely calculate the Right/Wrong-imeters of a situation, then your assertion might be valid.
So, in the present moment, where no person has the intellectual power to truly discover absolute right and wrong, those terms continue to be subjective. I agree with the original article. Kids need to maintain the cognitive freedom to formulate their own opinions, as should every individual.
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