Cultural consensus, or cultural relativism, as in James Rachels

Sources

• James Rachels, “The Elements of Moral Philosophy” (opens in a new tab)

  James Rachels, “The Elements of Moral Philosophy” (McGraw Hill)

Objections & responses

Christianity has its own cultural-relativism problem. Biblical morality permitted slavery and polygamy; later Christians called those wrong. If moral progress needs a standard above culture, wasn’t the Bible’s culture measured and found wanting too?

This is the objection a fair reader raises immediately, and it deserves a straight answer. The Christian response is that the Bible itself contains the standard by which those practices were later judged (humans made in God’s image, love of neighbor, neither slave nor free), and that the trajectory of Scripture runs from regulating existing institutions toward undermining them. Critics reply that this reads later conclusions back into the text, and that debate is real. Either way, the argument for a standard above culture is not weakened by the fact that Christians have had to be corrected by it. That is what a standard above culture is for.

Rachels rejects cultural relativism but is a secular philosopher who thinks morality can be grounded without God. Doesn’t citing him prove only that cultural relativism fails, not that theism succeeds?

Correct, and that is the only thing he is cited for. Rachels is one of the thoughtful people who argue that objective morality can stand without God, and his presence here shows that rejecting cultural relativism is not a religious position. Whether morality can be grounded without God is a separate question, taken up in the exhibit on a transcendent moral source and in the Atheism case.

Appears under 1 claim in this case

• If objective moral duties are real, the best explanation is a moral source beyond human beings rather than personal taste, cultural agreement, or evolution.