John Lennox - 2084 - Moral Progress

Relativists tend to argue that since, according to them, there are no moral absolutes, no objective rights and wrongs, no one ought to try to impose his moral views on other people. But in arguing like that, they refute their own theory. The word ought implies a moral duty …. However, if morality, if our ideas of right and wrong, are purely subjective, we should have to abandon any idea of moral progress (or regress), not only in the history of nations, but in the lifetime of each individual. The very concept of moral progress implies an external moral standard by which not only to measure that a present moral state is different from an earlier one but also to pronounce that it is “better” than the earlier one. Without such a standard, how could one say that the moral state of a culture in which cannibalism is regarded as an abhorrent crime is any “better” than a society in which it is an acceptable culinary practice?

John Lennox - 2084