HOW TO ANSWER THE CLAIMS OF MORAL RELATIVISM?

Our deeds are children of our beliefs. In "Mao, The Unknown Story," biographer Jung Chang estimates that Mao had exterminated 70 million of his own people to implement his communist ideal.

Why had he been willing to pay such an horrendous price?

According to his biographer, Mao was a self-centered moral relativist:

* Mao’s attitude to morality consisted of one core, the self, “I,” above everything else: “I do not agree with the view that to be moral, the motive of one’s action has to be benefiting others. Morality does not have to be defined in relation to others … People like me want to … satisfy our hearts to the full, and in doing so we automatically have the most valuable moral codes. Of course there are people and objects in the world, but they are all there only for me.”

* “People like me only have a duty to ourselves; we have no duty to other people.” “I am responsible only for the reality that I know,” he wrote, “and absolutely not responsible for anything else. I don’t know about the past, I don’t know about the future. They have nothing to do with the reality of my own self.” He explicitly rejected any responsibility towards future generations. “Some say one has a responsibility for history. I don’t believe it. I am only concerned about developing myself … I have my desire and act on it. I am responsible to no one.”

His beliefs were a hammer bludgeoning to death millions.

This makes me ponder how we might effectively challenge these all-to-common relativistic, postmodern beliefs of our youth. It is just too tempting and costly to believe that we can create our own morality designed to serve our desires.

We must be able to demonstrate that there exists objective moral laws, which are as real as our laws of physics. These are laws to which we must conform, like gravity, which will punish us if we throw ourselves off a 10-story building. Likewise, moral laws will punish us if we defy them and inflame our conscience.

Perhaps surprisingly, the vast majority of researchers have demonstrated that we are wired for these laws which manifest at specific developmental stages.

However, if this wiring is purely bio-chemical, some will argue, "I need not conform to this wiring. I can override or defy it. I can drop a pill or dull their impact. I will be master of my own ship."

Most will not take moral relativism that far. They will merely pursue their own desires as their suppressed moral voice repeats, "You are doing wrong."

But is it wrong? How can a bio-chemical reaction be wrong? It just is, isn't it?

We would not say this about gravity. Instead, we would have to admit that gravity exists apart from our thoughts about it.

Here's the question I wish to pose -

* "Is it possible that our moral wiring is like our eyesight? Our eyes are not just biochemical. They perceive a very real external reality. Can it also be that our moral sentiments, our conscience, serves as a portal to an external reality - a world of karma?"

If so, then you are ready for another question -

* "If karma represents the imposition of justice and justice requires the weighing of many subtle factors, Who must be doing the weighing?"