Friday, June 13, 2014

"All truth is relative!" "Really? Does that statement include itself or exclude itself?"

Is all truth relative?  Well, if all truth were relative and there were no absolute truth, is the statement "all truth is relative" an absolute statement?  I heard a friend try to sneak around that one by saying "sometimes all truth is relative, sometimes there are absolutes."  That's a contradiction.  Or if you mean some things are relative and other things are absolute then you're really conceding that there is absolute truth.  Really all truth can't be relative because the statement either includes itself, or excludes itself, if it includes itself it contradicts itself and if it excludes itself once again it contradicts itself because it's suggesting an absolute by claiming to be absolutely true.  Do you see where this leads?
There is no such thing as all truth is relative.  There are absolute truths.  And there are absolute morals.  People talk about cultural context affecting morality, it doesn't.  I haven't heard any good examples of relative morality.  There are indeed absolute moral truths.  It's just as wrong to kill a baby in the USA as it is to kill a baby in China, or France or Greenland or South Africa.  It's always wrong all the time.  Even if the person committing the immoral act is mentally ill and 100% believes that what they're doing is right, it's still morally absolutely wrong, all of the time.