Dr Paul Allen

Moral equivalence has two purposes.  One is to enable the morally confused to hide their confusion.  The other is to allow the immoral to hide their immorality.  Here are two examples as applied to the Israeli-Arab conflict: 1. One is the assertion we hear regarding the latest Israel-Hamas war by members of the Western Left, Muslim supporters of the Palestinians and even by a few individuals on the right: “Palestinian babies are as precious as Israeli babies.” Professor Cornel West, a lifelong progressive running for president as a Democrat: “As I have said for the past 50 years, a precious Palestinian child has the same value as a precious Israeli child.” David Cronin, an editor at Electronic Intifada, a large pro-Palestinian, anti-Israel website: “Palestinian babies are just as precious as my new daughter.” Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has called the hospital blast a "devastating loss of innocent life".  Anthony Albanese calls for the protection of Is...

It is grossly inconsistent for philosophers to argue that there are no moral absolutes when everything physical that can be observed and measured is clearly and undeniably regulated by absolute and inviolable laws—apart from which even the smallest organism or subsystem in our vast and intricate universe could not operate. Even the ancient Greeks recognized that there was a standard of right and wrong, a basic kind of moral sowing and reaping . According to their mythology, the goddess Nemesis sought out and punished every person who became inordinately proud and arrogant. No matter how much they might seek to evade her, she always found her victims and executed her sentence. The Bible elucidates absolute moral law very clearly and frequently. For example, God had “granted sovereignty, grandeur, glory, and majesty to Nebuchadnezzar,” but because of the king’s arrogant pride, the Lord deposed him from the throne and made him become like a wild animal that ate grass.  “Yet you, his s...

Cover via Amazon It’s all relative .” “That’s true for you but not for me.” “That’s just your reality.” “Who are you to impose your values on others?” The relativist believes truth functions more like opinion or perspective and that truth depends upon your culture, context, or even personal choices. Thus evil actions by Nazis or terrorists are explained away (“We don’t like it, but they have their reasons”). Relativism , however, is seriously flawed. Relativism cannot escape proclaiming a truth that corresponds to reality. “The moon is made of cheese” is false because it does not match up with the way things are, with what is the case. As Christians, we claim the biblical story is true because it conforms to the actualities of God’s existence and His dealings with human beings. Truth is a relationship—a match-up with what is real or actual. An idea is false when it does not.  But what of those making such claims as “ Reality is like a wet lump of clay—we can shape it any...

English: Mount Sodom, Israel, showing the so-called "Lot's Wife" pillar. (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) Sodom was destroyed not because of a lack of hospitality, as liberals claim; nor because of perversions, as conservatives claim; but because God did not find ten righteous men in the city. We change the world by being the church.  Ours is an ethically confused world. Materialist scientists tell us that since all is matter, there is no ultimate basis for judgments of "good" and "evil." Relativists claim that what is "good" for one person or culture may not be "good" for another person or culture. Some Christians have largely absorbed the secularist worldview to the point that their lives are virtually indistinguishable from the lives of nonbelievers.   Related articles Can the worldview of atheism rationally ground moral judgements? (winteryknight.wordpress.com) The seven fatal flaws of moral relativism (winteryknight.w...

Image via Wikipedia This is essentially asking if there is a transcendent ethical standard that exists beyond the individual and if so, can we all know it. Our culture is deeply divided over such a question, though we never really ask it out loud, for to do so would expose our deep relativism and the folly of such thinking. Relativism supposes that there is no such thing as absolute truth and therefore no such thing as an absolute moral code .  Theoretically, every individual’s ethical standards are valid and unassailable as long as they remain personal. From the outside, we view each other’s moral standards as “ preferences ” for they do not apply beyond the self, nor can they. Now to the astute, the above description is immediately recognized as logically false for it expresses within itself an absolute ethical code . That is, it declares that it is “absolutely wrong” for you to impose your ethical standard on anyone outside of your own preferential boundar...