Moral Relativism and the Age of Reason

Part 2: Moral Relativism

For those who subscribe to Judeo-Christian values, right and wrong, good and evil, are derived from God, not from reason alone, nor from the human heart, the state or through majority rule. Yet most Americans rarely hear the case for God's morality because the secular outlook that pervades modern education and the media promotes moral relativism -- "What I think is right is right for me, what you think is right is right for you." A major reason for the left's loathing of George W. Bush is his use of absolute moral language -- such as in his widely condemned description of the regimes of North Korea, Iran and Iraq as an "axis of evil."


Part 3: The Age of Reason

Those who do not believe that moral values must come from the Bible or be based upon God's moral instruction argue that they have a better source for values: human reason. In fact, the era that began the modern Western assault on Judeo-Christian values is known as the Age of Reason or the “Enlightenment." As it happened, the era following the decline of religion in Europe led not to unprecedented moral greatness, but to unprecedented cruelty, superstition, mass murder and genocide. There are four primary problems with reason divorced from God as a guide to morality. The first is that reason is amoral; second, we are incapable of morally functioning on the basis of reason alone; third, it is based on an irrational belief -- that people are basically good; fourth, even when reason does lead to a moral conclusion, it in no way compels acting on that conclusion.