Relativism Talk

By: Dr. Joel Stroot, DDS

Donuts and Dogma Apologetics Series

St. Michael Catholic Church

9-20-2015

Introduction….

Where my interest in apologetics came from… MO to NC, trying to find the True

Church…

Grew up in Catholic MO, surrounded by Catholics

Moved to NC mountains in 7th grade, very anti-Catholic. Yelled at “Mary

Worshiper!” down the halls of public high school.

Wanted to find the true Church, so I went to hundreds of Bible studies over several

years to find the true church through multiple denominations.

Inadvertently became more Catholic….

Recap on apologetics 101:

-Win an argument, lose a convert… all about love, charity and relationships.

To become all things to all people so that by all possible means we may save

some… meet them where they are at.(1 Corinthians 9:19-23)

-Be able to give a reason for the hope that is within you(1 Peter 3:15)…. You

have this joy of Christ and it overflows, so it is contagious. The world wants

it. So be a saint foremost in love with Christ and His Church, and He will

win souls.

-We are instruments, the Holy Spirit converts hearts. Pray for humility that

you and those you meet may have softened hearts to seek the Truth.

Relativism Talk

Credit to Absolute Relativism by Chris Stefanick

Pope Benedict stated relativism is the greatest problem of our time.

“We are moving toward a dictatorship of relativism which does not recognize

anything as definitive and has as its highest value one’s own ego and one’s own

desires. The Church needs to withstand the tides of trends and the latest novelties.”

(homily at the opening of the conclave [in 2005],….

http://www.lst.edu/academics/landas-archives/373-dictatorship-of-relativism)

So today it’s all about “values clarification”. So you decide what is truth for you;

your ego and desires become the end goal, as noted from Pope Benedict. (we may

begin to worship ourselves)

If you counter what someone has made up for themselves, they may take this as a

personal attack. We must be considerate of this.

Asked to define sin, Barack Obama replied that sin is "being out of alignment with

my values."

(http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/printedition/news/20080805/opledetuesdayx.art.ht

m, 8-26-15)

What is relativism?: A little bit of a foundation of terms first…

1. Google Dictionary: the doctrine that knowledge, truth, and morality

exist in relation to culture, society, or historical context, and are not absolute.

(https://www.google.com/search?q=define+relativism&espv=2&biw=1600&bih

=799&source=lnms&sa=X&ved=0CAUQ_AUoAGoVChMIi72sj8LHxwIVhc-

ACh0AtweR&dpr=1, 8-26-15)

Layman’s Terms: You have your truth, and I have my truth, and they can

both be true. It is ok.

“It is true for everybody that nothing is true for everybody.”

Objective vs subjective truth…

Objective: about the object Ex: That grass is green.

Subject: About the subject Ex: I think Crowders mountain is the best

local place to hike. This is subjective truth for me. You may think the

greenway, for example.

Moral relativism: Applying relativism to morality; No one is really an absolute

relativist these days, they really mean that they are a moral relativist.

Moral relativism is the view that ethical standards, morality, and positions of

right or wrong are culturally based and therefore subject to a person's individual

choice. We can all decide what is right for ourselves.

Moral Relativism

www.moral-relativism.com/

Or put negatively: We can not know for certain what is right or wrong in the areas

of morality.

How has is come about?

Philosophy- Descartes (as opposed to Augustine and Aquinas)

Political history- Monarchs to Democracy (pluralistic society)

Judicial case studies; Used to base court decisions on what was right or

wrong… now it is all about case precedence

How was it thought to help?

Multiculturalism- America and tolerance

Help everyone get along in a pluralistic society, so it prevents

wars/outbreaks.

However….

A. What matters is WHAT you are absolute about!

Ex: JPII and Mother Theresa just as SURE as the twin tower bombers

that they were right. But the former were not violent.

B. Being absolute does not necessarily make you intolerant. In fact,

some of the most intolerant people are relativists (Ex. Do not put up

your religious ideas, do not try to define truth, fit in to this culture and

do not stand out, If you are not like us then get out…)

Why relativism does not work… What is has led to. 5 things (not exhaustive)

1. It does not hold water with reason.

Ex: They say… There is no absolute truth. Is it absolutely true that

there is no absolute truth?

They say “You can not be certain.” Are you certain of your uncertainty?

Take their watch and walk away…. Do not impose your beliefs on me.

(Laws are just the imposition of people’s beliefs as a society)

2. It looses any meaning in life…

All of us have a God shaped hole that only God can fill.

There is an end for our lives, a real purpose, a vocation from God.

Relativism keeps us bumbling in the wind to the next fad idea of the

culture.

Our culture says there is no inherent meaning to life. That is just

something that you have to find out for yourselves…. “Values

clarification”

So we have to fill the hole with something…. Like sports (“I bleed black

and gold”), or endless distraction of texting….

Teen suicide rates: According to the Centers for Disease Control and

Prevention (CDC), one in five teenagers in the U.S. seriously considers

suicide annually. Both the CDC and the National Mental Health

Association (NMHA) point out that suicide rates for teens have tripled

since 1960 -- making it the third leading cause of adolescent death and

the second cause among college students.

This is a crisis in MEANING!

Read

more: http://www.americanthinker.com/2014/01/sad_truths_about_teen

_suicide.html#ixzz3m0FpF0V8

“Merely having an open mind is nothing. The object of opening the

mind, as of opening the mouth, is to shut it again on something solid.”

― G.K. Chesterton

3. It leads to unjust violence. Holocaust. We cannot impose our beliefs on

Hitler.

“So we can’t say what Hitler did was wrong?”

4. Cannot use the word “should”

5. Loss of Christian Credibility: There are over 40,000 Christian

denominations, so we lose our Christian credibility to the world. United

we stand, divided we fall.

What can we do about it?

We cannot begin to have dialogue if one believes in relativism.

It is all about relationship, so build rapport with who you are speaking

with…. Become all things to all people as St Paul mentions in Corinthians.

1 Corinthians 9:20-23 (NIV) 19 Though I am free and belong to no one, I have made myself a slave to everyone, to

win as many as possible. 20 To the Jews I became like a Jew, to win the Jews. To

those under the law I became like one under the law (though I myself am not under

the law), so as to win those under the law. 21 To those not having the law I became

like one not having the law (though I am not free from God’s law but am under

Christ’s law), so as to win those not having the law. 22 To the weak I became weak,

to win the weak. I have become all things to all people so that by all possible means

I might save some. 23 I do all this for the sake of the gospel, that I may share in its

blessings.

Seek first to get agreement that there must be some Absolute Truth, where

one thing right and another wrong. You can use the example of God the Father and

God the Son not arguing over infant baptism.

Now we are not saying that we can know that our Church has that Truth and they

are wrong (not yet, as that proof has to come later).

Show the logic of Absolute Truth.

Then you and they together can seek to find this Truth. It makes sense that

if there is a God, then He would not want to hide himself from us. He would reveal

Himself to us. If you seek you will find.

With this firm foundation established you can then begin with real

apologetics, leading to next week’s discussion on seeking Truth. And Truth has

been revealed as a Person…. Jesus Christ who says “I am the way, the truth, and

the life” (John 14:6) (just like the theme at this year’s Eucharistic congress)

END WITH PRAYER

Works Cited

Updated World Christian Encyclopedia (Barrett, Kurian, Johnson; Oxford

Univ Press, 2nd edition, 2001) estimated at least 33,000. “Denomination” is defined

as “an organised christian group within a country”.

Some good quotes

“It is reasonable to love the Absolute absolutely for the same reason it

is reasonable to love the relative relatively.”

― Peter Kreeft, Jesus-Shock

Chesterton From “On the Wit of Whistler” in Heretics:

Unquestionably it is a very common phrase of modern intellectualism to say that

the morality of one age can be entirely different to the morality of another. And like

a great many other phrases of modern intellectualism, it means literally nothing at

all. If the two moralities are entirely different, why do you call them both

moralities? It is as if a man said, “Camels in various places are totally diverse; some

have six legs, some have none, some have scales, some have feathers, some have

horns, some have wings, some are green, some are triangular. There is no point

which they have in common.”…Of course, there is a permanent substance of

morality, as much as there is a permanent substance of art; to say that is only to

say that morality is morality and art is art.