The Problem with "My Truth"

Ajouté : 2026-05-21

[00:00:00]history's almost shown that even in times where where we look back and go that was not the moral thing like you know Nazis in in World War II >> um they acted in a way that was helped them survive in the context they're in.

[00:00:13]So the Nazi that you know would go to the concentration camp then come home and be really nice to his family. He thought he was doing the right thing.

[00:00:19]>> This is why one of the reasons I think this is the evolutionary explanation is inadequate. Okay? because it seems that there are lots of things that people do that seem to be good for them or for their tribe that characteristically we'll look at and we'll assess it and the assessment would is that that is wrong it's evil it's wicked and I think that our assessments are reliable in that regard okay that we have moral intuitions that allow us to see things that are real about that and these things are relatively universal I mean it doesn't matter where you live or when you live people are asking the question about the problem of evil in the world okay and I think definition of what evil was seems to change over time because me I mean I wouldn't be sat at this table many a couple hundred years ago because I'm black and everybody at the time thought that that was the right thing.

[00:01:05]They didn't think that was an evil thing at the time.

[00:01:07]>> So Greg what's right and wrong seems to change over time and so does that mean that morality is like evolving over time?

[00:01:16]>> This is a confusion.

[00:01:18]>> Yeah. And uh just because Mo's folkway's ethical principles vary from time to time doesn't mean that the underlying moral truth has changed.

[00:01:32]>> So we would look back now and say when slavery was popular and as an institution here in this country before the civil war >> that uh there were a lot of people who didn't find it morally objectionable.

[00:01:47]But there were a lot of people who did.

[00:01:48]>> Sure.

[00:01:49]>> Which is why you have the anti-slavery movement and slavery. It isn't. So the question is, and I would ask >> I would ask uh Stephen this. I don't know if I put it quite that way at at the time, but the question to ask is, Stephen, if you were not allowed a place at the table aundred years ago, would that have been right or wrong?

[00:02:10]>> Now, I'm not asking you about people's opinions. I'm asking about the thing itself.

[00:02:16]>> Good. Would it have been wrong to exclude you for your color?

[00:02:19]>> Wow.

[00:02:20]>> And I I think he would he would bulk.

[00:02:23]And the reason is is because people start thinking, well, it's wrong for me now, but it wasn't wrong for them then.

[00:02:31]>> Sure.

[00:02:32]>> Now, that's the relativistic way of looking at it. I'm not asking that question. I'm saying, was it wrong? Oh, let's maybe make it more precise.

[00:02:43]Even though people practiced slavery thinking it was good, was it right?

[00:02:48]>> Right. Yes or no? Well, I think there he'd say no, it wasn't right. So then the right and wrongness of it didn't change.

[00:02:55]>> What changed is people's understanding at the time. Maybe their opinions, but there were always people who thought that kind of treatment of human beings was wrong.

[00:03:04]>> Sure.

[00:03:05]>> And even if people made some biblical arguments to try to defend it, we realize now looking back they were making a mistake.

[00:03:10]>> Yeah. And it was frankly the Christians who had the same Bible who were the ones responsible for for abolition. William Wilbur Force for example being guided by John Newton for example is one of his spiritual mentors >> um who is the the author of Amazing Grace. Yeah.

[00:03:29]>> And he encouraged >> Wilburforce in that work as a Christian.

[00:03:34]So it was the the the not the moral consensus at the time. No, >> the moral consensus was opposite, but the moral consensus was just wrong. And we see it as we look back now.

[00:03:45]>> Yeah.

[00:03:45]>> We don't say, well, it was okay then, meaning not just that people thought it was okay, but it was okay. And now morality has changed. No, morality hasn't changed at all. People have just kind of gotten with the project.

[00:03:59]>> Yeah.

[00:04:00]>> And realized what they were doing in the past was wrong, even if people thought otherwise. And Wilburforce was a moral reformer. Yeah.

[00:04:09]>> In a culture that had accepted slavery.

[00:04:12]That was a consensus view.

[00:04:14]>> If you take kind of a societal relativism, >> right, >> then that would make Wilburforce evil or wrong in that environment. And that just seems counterintuitive. That seems wrong.

[00:04:26]>> Yeah. Of course. And a lot of people don't think it through like that. And this wasn't exactly the point that he was making though it was it seemed to be implicit there. Well, as a culture, we saw some things as wrong and and now we think see differently. If what wants to if a what a person wants to do is is put the locust of moral legitimacy in the group.

[00:04:48]>> Mhm.

[00:04:48]>> Okay. And this is one form of relativism.

[00:04:51]>> Yeah.

[00:04:51]>> Then whatever the group says is right by definition.

[00:04:57]And therefore, if you rise up as a so-called moral reformer like Wilbur Force or like Martin Luther King or Gandhi, you know, in their respective cultures to change the standard, the status quo, you are immoral by definition.

[00:05:13]>> Now, that seems wrong.

[00:05:14]>> I know.

[00:05:15]>> Yeah. Because moral reformers just seem to be right because of their ideas in spite of what everyone else believed.

[00:05:24]This is why the uh this view um called conventionalism actually um it fails the test of our moral intuitions when we think about it. No, that's not going to work out that way.

[00:05:38]>> And you actually wrote a book on this.

[00:05:40]>> I did with Dr. Frank Beckwith. Yeah. And it's called it's about relativism and it's titled relativism. [laughter] Make it easy. Subtitled feet firmly planted in midair. Yeah. But we examine different forms of moral relativism and how it plays out in society. We and we make the case for moral objectivism, moral realism, contrary to Alex, for example. And uh and and many of the things that Alex actually said implicitly trades on moral categories that are objective or else his comments wouldn't have any validity. And that's one of the ways of seeing that moral relativism is false in its many forms.