This is Part 4 of a series. See also Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3.

 

There could be no greater argument against moral relativism than the moral relativist himself. Ayn Rand insisted that she was justified in keeping multiple lovers but the moment any of them wanted a bit of crumpet on the side, she went ballistic. She even went so far as to physically attack Nathaniel Branden for daring to sleep with yet other women. (Keep in mind that both Branden and Rand were married to two other people at the time of their affair.)

The situation is a lot more harebrained that one would think, considering that both Rand and Brandon believed in never sacrificing for other people ― the founding concept of Rand’s objectivism. In other words, if Rand believed there are no moral standards, why did she insist there are still moral standards? Moral relativists hate living next door to other moral relativists. After all, why would anyone curb their dog or take in their garbage cans or keep the stereo down?

A recent study reveals a rational and intuitive realization that if God didn’t actually exist, indifference and cruelty would be just as natural to our species as is kindness. This study discovered that even atheists don’t trust atheists. In other words, atheists assume that religious believers are more likely to act morally than their fellow atheists, and atheists admit they’re more likely to engage in blatantly immoral acts.

The researchers also noted that most people believe that morality requires belief in God — as Dostoevsky framed it in The Brothers Karamazov, “Without God… everything is permitted.” A few decades after his death, the world witnessed the horrors perpetrated by atheists Stalin and Lenin upon Russia, Ukraine, Germany and dozens of other countries. Stéphane Courtois’ 1997 The Black Book of Communism tallied 100 million dead at the hands of atheist communists. (This number was widely denounced as being inaccurate. Subsequently, the number was adjusted conservatively as 152.5 million dead.) This number of course doesn’t include the murders committed by atheist fascists such as Hitler, Mussolini and Plutarco Calles and atheist monarchists such a Napoleon and atheist secularists like Maximilien Robespierre―who proclaimed in 1794 that “terror is nothing other than justice, prompt, severe, inflexible;” and Bertrand Barère, who urged his fellow atheists onward by saying, “Let’s make terror the order of the day!”

In addition to the 235 million dead at the hands of atheists over the previous two centuries since the Reign of Terror, atheism is also credited with:

• the Massacre of the Vendée, in which atheists killed 200,000 Catholics.
• the world’s largest mass rape which, according to historian William Hitchcock, Soviet atheist troops raped as many as 2 million women. Antony Beevor describes it as the “greatest phenomenon of mass rape in history.”
• the world’s worst ethnic cleansing where, between 1944 and 1948, Soviet atheists ousted 31 million people, including ethnic Germans and German citizens, from their homes and forcibly moved them from Central and Eastern Europe to Asia.

Starving children? So what? A healthy child with sufficient nutrition? So what? So sayeth the moral relativist.

A selfish person never admires the selfishness of others. Nor should they, because selfishness is never acceptable. Liars never congratulate each other and murderers generally avoid putting themselves in a situation where they might be killed. If ethics were truly relative, then it would follow that those people who purport to believe this nonsense would behave in such a manner, but this is clearly not the case.

Though we are free to make our own fads and “express feelings,” tastes, fashions and so on, no one has successfully created an “alternative,” relativist morality. No sane person has ever created a morality based on cruelty. Charity will never become immoral. Murder will not become laudable. No one ever expounds upon the virtue of rape or lies. No one can rewrite the basic laws of the universe or create an alternative mathematics or discover a new primary number or uncover a new primary color.

Relativism isn’t rational, nor is it the conclusion of a rational argument. It’s an emotional rationalization of a prior action. It’s the rejection of the principle that passions must be evaluated by reason and controlled by will. That is the virtue Plato and Aristotle called self-discipline and Christians call temperance, which ultimately hinges upon other cardinal virtues ― prudence, courage and justice.

With relativism, there is nothing preferable, better, more moral, ethical or anything else. All meaning and knowledge dissipates like a puff of smoke.

If all opinions are equally valid, two plus two equals four. Or ten million. Or whatever.

Nothing will matter. The moral relativist must admit that all opinions are equally worthless, as they believe that nothing and no one can distinguish between worth and worthlessness.