Absolutely Relative

Some things do not make sense. Love doesn’t make sense. Pain doesn’t make sense, and simultaneously holding two conflicting viewpoints does not make sense. The technical term for simultaneously holding two conflicting viewpoints is known as Cognitive Dissonance. Everyone experiences this phenomenon from time to time, but few people enjoy living with the tension it creates. Most people seek to resolve the dissonance. However, when it comes to Relativism, or at least to defending Relativism, there is an inherent dissonance that cannot be resolved without seriously injuring the foundation for the case of Relativism. Let’s take a look at the problem.

Relativism, in its simplest terms, states that truth is not an absolute, but it is confined to individual perception and experience. This sounds like a smart way to think. After all, perceptions and experience should count for something…right? Following this line of thought, you start hearing people say things like “Nobody views the world exactly the same as I do, so if I see it differently, why should any other perspective be more correct than mine?” or “You see it your way. I’ll see it my way. And we can agree that both our views are equally valid.” These sound like intelligent statements, but they are not.

Before I continue, let me stamp out a brush fire. I am not referring to preferences. When speaking of preferences, the only valid opinion is the one based upon personal experience. If I think Bluebell vanilla ice-cream is the best ice-cream in the world and someone else thinks Ben and Jerry’s Americone Dream is the best ice-cream in the world, I have no grounds by which to prove that person wrong. I may be able to build a good case for my favorite flavor and a good case against his, but at the end of the conversation we each have preferences based upon personal experiences, and neither preference is inferior to the other. In that sense, they are both correct. Now that we’ve brushed that concern aside, let’s deal with the larger issue…absolute truth.

It is impossible to effectively argue a case for Relativism. Why? Because the only legitimate means of arguing a case for Relativism requires an appeal to absolutes. Let’s follow this thought process, and remember we are talking about truth, not preference.

A few weeks ago, I met a man in London who was a retired Sikh priest. I told him I was a Christian, and he smiled and told me that is good. He told me we would meet in heaven because every religion leads to the same place. In short, he was reiterating the proverbial nonsense that “All roads lead to Rome.” This conversation got me thinking. His logic is flawed. What he was really saying is that he would not accept my religion and I would not accept his, so we were at an impasse. No one who truly believes his religion is correct can say to someone who holds a contradictory viewpoint that they are also correct. If all ideas are equally valid, they lose their validity. Now, I know very little of Sikhism, so it may be that his religion has left room for other religions to be correct also, but the claims of Christianity do not give that same courtesy to other religions. When Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me”, he didn’t leave any wiggle room. He made an absolute statement that appealed to an absolute truth, which demands an absolute verdict.

In order to remain faithful to their beliefs, Relativists must either say truth is relative or truth does not exist, but neither of these statements will hold much water. As we have seen truth cannot be relative, but is it possible that it does not exist? Were someone to tell me that truth does not exist, I would say, “Yes it does.” At that moment, he has already lost his argument. If he agrees with me, then of course he has lost his argument, but if he continues to disagree with me, he will start appealing to some sense of an absolute standard. He can’t say that my belief in truth is a preference. That would be nonsense. Either truth exists or it doesn’t. I say it exists. He says it doesn’t. I say he’s wrong. He says he’s right, and in doing so, he has just appealed to a sense of right and wrong. Those are absolutes. Absolutes only work if there is truth. It would be useless to say something is right or wrong if those terms did not carry any weight. Absolutes cannot be relative. Therefore, it is possible to be a relativist. You just can’t win an argument if you are one.

Let’s bring this to a more practical level. Most people will not engage you in a conversation about absolute truth. Usually, we hear people making Relativistic appeals in the political or moral arenas. For instance, on the issue of abortion, many people like to make the claim that it is the woman’s choice to do whatever she wants to with her body and nobody has the right to tell her differently. The barebones argument here is that morality is relative. What may be right for one person is not right for the other person. This perspective works, but only in the absence of a higher absolute law. If it really is wrong to abort a child, then it is someone else’s right to tell her that what she wants to do is wrong. This is one example among many, and even this one is not fully developed. The truth is, Relativism pervades our world. Any time you encounter it, at least take a moment to question whether the claims being made really have any validity. And remember, Relativism is Absolutely ridiculous!