Tuesday, April 25, 2017

CAN WE PROFITABLY LIVE TOGETHER WITH ONLY HUMANLY CREATED VALUES?





Moral relativists claim that there is no need for God-given values and beliefs, and that we are capable of forming own values and consensus, even if they are just evolving values:

·       “Human imagination and consensus do in fact yield norms that affect behaviour. For those norms to work, it is not necessary for actual, literal lines independent of our heads to exist as a feature of the landscape. If one insists that human imagination and consensus are not enough, one is rationally obligated to show why they are not.”

I responded:

“Admittedly, humanly created values can yield a temporary consensus. However, this consensus will only be maintained as long as our cost/benefit analyses coincide, as long as both parties feel that they are benefitting from the consensus.

In contrast, the Christian is committed to honoring, respecting, and seeking the welfare of the other, not simply because they are deriving some direct benefit or immediate emotional payoff but ALSO because they believe in the correctness of what they are doing.

We are now living in a perilous age in which the consensus is quickly dissolving. The various parties do not see any overriding advantage in civility, love, and a commitment to transcendent values. Instead, each interest group wants their own distinctive benefits and will destroy the other parties in order to get them.

How do we resist the fears and temporal desires that have taken us captive? Only by valuing the Transcendent above our immediate safety and comforts!”


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