Todd Friel is a moral relativist and he doesn't even know it.

The WOTM crew is fond of speaking in terms of moral absolutes.  The whole "Good Person Test" is, of course, rife with them.  Occasionally, Mr. Friel will find himself witnessing to someone who disputes this claim.  He has some very clever ways of tripping them up, and he usually succeeds in making the mark look foolish.  But that's not the point of this post.

The point of this post is that the critics are right.  There are no moral absolutes.  There is no action a human being can commit that is intrinsically wrong in all possible contexts.  The moral value of an action is determined by its context.  For example, nearly all of us, regardless of faith or lack thereof, would agree that killing people is morally wrong...  Most of the time.  However, we would likely also agree that killing a person might be morally justified (or even morally imperative) in some rare cases.  We may quibble over exactly where the line is, but we agree that the line exists:  Killing people is usually morally wrong, but sometimes it's not.  The morality of the act is determined by the context in which it is committed.  This is true for all possible human actions.

Recently, while broadcasting from the Minnesota State Fair...

We interupt this blog entry for a trip down memory lane.  My first encounter with Mr. Friel was at the Minnesota State Fair in 2005.  Ah, those were the days.  Todd, if you're reading this -- and I know you are -- I was the guy who wanted to pretend Darth Vader was real on the grounds that he's a much cooler fictional character than God.  You also commented on my t-shirt, which read "Talk nerdy to me."  We now return you to your previously scheduled post.

...Mr. Friel witnessed to a young man who argued a similar case.  Todd, however, successfully tripped him by citing rape as an action that is intrinsically wrong in all contexts.  The young man, unfortunately, was unable to respond adequately.  Mr. Friel ended up looking right, and his victim ended up looking foolish.

But as we know, appearances can be deceiving.  Our young, anonymous friend was right, he just didn't know how to enunciate it.  Here's the response he was unsuccessfully floundering for:

Yes, rape is morally wrong in all possible cases.  However, it is still a matter of contextual morality rather than absolute morality because the concept of rape has contextual elements built right into it.  Strip the contextual factors from the concept of rape, and you're left with sex.  Now, it's a near-certainty that secularists and theists would quibble a whole lot about where the line between moral and immoral sex lies, but again, we can agree that there is a line.  Sex performed in a forced or nonconsensual context falls on the "morally wrong" side of that line.  But just like with killing people, it's the context that makes it wrong.

Now, I know some theist is going to come along and smugly ask about where atheists get their morality from in the first place.  And yes, there is an answer to that.  But it's a topic for another day.

Absolute Proof God Exists -- Part Two

Second Non-Biblical Proof of God -- "Conscience"

Before we begin, let's define the word "conscience" and take a brief look at its root words:

Conscience: The inner sense of what is right or wrong in one's conduct or motives, impelling one toward right action (from the roots con meaning "together" or "with" and scientia meaning "knowledge").

Supposing that humans are born with an innate sense of right and wrong, we must further assume that , at birth, we have enough information from which to come to "knowledgeable" conclusions. When my daughter was an infant, it became abundantly clear that she was a blank slate and was only ingrained with the most primitive of functions: the ability to drink, breathe, expel waste, sleep and explore her newly-formed vocal chords when she perceived duress or desire. Those are the basics that all human infants are born with; the basic will to survive.

All of my daughter's "knowledge" since her birth has come from her surroundings: interaction with her parents, brother, grandparents, sight, taste, sound, touch, etc. How, then, can fundamentalist evangelicals like Todd Friel claim the knowledge from which you make moral or ethical assessments to be an inborn trait? Nothing happens in a vacuum... certainly not the psychological growth and development of a child! Every factor imposed on a human (man, woman or child) will have some sort of affect on their perceptions and interaction with the world around them.

The human ability to discern between perceived "good" and "bad" decisions start at childbirth and grow through adolescence and into adulthood. When parents raise their children, the majority feel it their obligation to instruct them in a way in which they will grow to be productive, with the ability to make social contributions. It eludes me how theists can extrapolate divine providence from something that is so clearly socially driven.

More than half a century before the gospels of Christ were written, the ethic of reciprocity was first being alliterated. Today, we know this code of ethical conduct as "The Golden Rule", the foundation of humanistic (the only viable) ethical principles.