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On Mon, 16 May 2005 12:42:51 +0200 in alt.atheism, Niels van der
Linden ("Niels van der Linden"
<n.f.l.vanderlinden@student.utwente.nl>) said, directing the reply to
alt.atheism

Pope Benedict Warns Against Moral Relativism

Hypocrite. Religion _is_ moral relativism.

You mean how it changes its outings in different cultures and times?
(witchburning, selling spots in heaven, not being against abortion,
being
against abortion, being against evolution, not being against

evolution)

That certainly helps the contention, but more generally simply to
assert that a given moral stricture or code is "absolute" doesn't
make
it so, and to appeal to God as the basis of absolute morality seems
problematic if only because there is no general agreement as to
whether there is a God, and no agreement as to what God considers
"good" across the theist spectrum.

In fact the problems with attempting to provide morality with
a foundation by appealing to God, go beyond even the problems
that Therion mentions above. Classic theism atttempted to solve
the problem of providing a foundation for morality by taking God
as the foundation. God is the ultimate law giver. But that raises the

old

question as to whether something is right because God commands
it or whether God commands it because it is right? If we opt for
the latter, then the commandments of God cannot be the ultimate
foundation for morality because there must exist a
logically independent morality which we use to judge the rightness of
God's
commandments. If we opt for the former position then we risk reducing

the

proposition that 'God's commandments are right,' to a mere tautology.

A.J. Ayer, for example,in his book *The Central Questions of
Philosophy*
made that very point, first quoting from Bertrand Russell -
"Theologians
have always taught that God's decrees are good, and that this is not a
mere tautology: it follows that goodness is logically independent
of God's decrees." Ayer, himself, then went on to state that,
"The point that moral standards can never be justified
merely by an appeal to authority, whether that authority is taken to
be
human or divine. There has to be the additional premiss that the
person whose dictates we are to follow is good, or that what
he commands is right, and this cannot be the mere tautology
that he is what he is, or that he commands what he commands."

A.J. Ayer then went on to argue that morality cannot be grounded in
metaphysics or in science or matters of fact. In this respect,
he was simply recapitulating the arguments of both David Hume
and G.E. Moore to the effect that ought cannot
be reduced to is. Ayer then went on to argue that the is no real
substantive
difference between moral subjectivism and moral objectivism.
However,in any case for Ayer, an appeal to God was incapable
of resolving the issue of providing morality a
foundation. And that leads me to make the suggestion that morality may

not

have a foundation as such and perhaps does not need one.

begs a question: what is moral or immoral?

Appeals to the alleged word of God cannot answer
that question.

I never make such an appeal. Still begs the question, though.