By Selwyn Duke ——Bio and Archives--January 1, 2013
American Politics, News | CFP Comments | Reader Friendly | Subscribe | Email Us
What I believe is flawed is human opinion because it constantly changes. [...]What was hot is now not. [...]My definition of Truth is: if it's new, it's not true. If it was true a thousand years ago, it'll be true a thousand years from today; opinion changes, but Truth doesn't.To this Morgan quite predictably responded, "We're going to agree to disagree on that." Warren then noted how pleasant their exchange had been, prompting Morgan to concur and say, "The debate should always be respectful. By the way, it applies to politics, too. The moment it becomes disrespectful, and discourteous, and then rude, and then poisonous, you never achieve anything." Talk about amendment--without making amends. If that's what Morgan now believes, he has definitely discovered a new "truth" since his recent interview with Larry Pratt. This brings us to what lies at the very heart of modern liberalism and confuses the head of Piers Morgan. When Morgan disagreed on the unchanging nature of Truth, he was espousing moral relativism. This is the notion that what we call "morality" is determined by man and thus is relative to the time, place, and people. It is also something virtually every liberal believes. And while Morgan's relativistic statement was almost made in passing, and was allowed to pass--perhaps partially because of time constraints--it was actually the most significant comment of the exchange (relativistic sentiments always would be). Why? Because that was precisely when Morgan, completely and abjectly, lost the debate. And if you understand what I'm about to explain, you'll be able to cut any liberal off at the knees--anytime. While many will say, as Warren might have implied, that relativism reduces morality to opinion, even this is both too generous and a misunderstanding. "Opinion" often refers to a thesis about what may be the answer to a particular question, about what may be true. But this presupposes that there are answers to be found, that there is such a thing as "true." In other words, Mars exists not because everyone believes it does, but because its existence is a physical truth. And the question is, does moral Truth exist in the same way, apart from man and his imagination? If not, then saying that something is morally "true" would make as much sense as saying that planet Vulcan exists simply because you felt it did. Delusion does not a truth make. So relativism does not reduce morality to opinion. It implies something else. That morality doesn't exist. After all, to say that society determines "morality" is to simply put lipstick on the pig of man's preferences about behavior. To analogize the matter, if we learned that 90 percent of the world preferred vanilla to chocolate, would this somehow make chocolate "wrong" or "evil"? No, it would simply be an issue of taste. But then how does it make any sense to say that murder is "wrong" if the only reason we do so is that the majority of the world prefers that one not kill in a way the majority calls "unjust"? If this is all it is, then murder falls into the same category as flavor: taste. Again, delusion does not a truth make. More intellectually nimble moral relativists have thought the above through and--although their ultimate conclusion is wrong--they don't fool themselves the way Morgan, Richard Dawkins, and virtually every other leftist do. For example, I know of a fellow who has echoed the Protagorean mistake "Man is the measure of all things" and said, "Murder isn't wrong; it's just that society says it is." He takes liberals' cherished relativism to its logical conclusion (or at least close to it). This brings us back to Morgan's philosophical juvenility. He repeatedly stated in his Warren interview that the Bible was "flawed," but such a concept is incomprehensible in a relativistic universe. For what yardstick is he using to judge the Bible? He certainly cannot refer to any transcendent Truth (a redundancy). And the times, places, and people that extol(led) Scripture certainly don't align with his judgment, and who is he to impose his values on them? "What you espouse is your ‘truth,' Piers; theirs is different. Don't be so judgmental." That's how easy it is to hoist liberals on their own petards. The same applies to homosexual "rights." If "morals" are values and values just reflect tastes, how can respecting homosexuals be morally superior to persecuting them? How can any behavior preference rightly be judged at all? I think here of how the robot in the film Terminator 2: Judgment Day repeatedly asked the adolescent John Connor why he shouldn't kill people. "Why? Why?" The machine was just being logical, unlike the liberal organic robots (atheism=no souls=man is merely chemicals and water) that entertain meaning-inducing illusions. In a relativistic universe, moral principles do not compute. This is why any relativism-buttressed point collapses upon itself. Feelings can become fashions, but never morals. "The Bible isn't flawed; it's just that secular society says it is. Respecting homosexuals isn't right; it's just that secular society says it is. And what Adam Lanza did isn't wrong; it's just that all of society says it is." Does that sound sociopathic, Piers? It is. It is also what your relativism implies. That is Philosophy 101. And if you can't understand even that, Mr. Morgan, you're going to start to seem, to use your own words, like an "unbelievably stupid man."
View Comments
Selwyn Duke, follow him on:
• Gab (preferably) or
• Twitter, or log on to
• SelwynDuke.