Can secular society cope intellectually?
Two recent newspaper articles raise the interesting question of whether modern secularism can really cope with intellectual challenges.
The first, by Antonia Senior in The Times, is titled, ‘A flawed philosophy that bolsters the BNP’. The philosophy to which she refers is what she calls ‘moral relativisim’:
Truth, and moral worth, are entirely relative to a culture or society. I think bacon is divine; you are a vegetarian; he thinks pig meat is an affront to God. Each of these positions is true, because truth is in the eye of the believer.
This viewpoint she describes, with some justification, as “ incoherent, logically flawed and utterly tired.” And in case anyone should think she is exaggerating, she quotes Germaine Greer on the issue of female circumcision:
Germaine Greer famously accused the critics of circumcision as launching attacks on “the cultural identity” of the circumcised. “One man’s beautification is another man’s mutilation,” she said.
By contrast, she herself believes,
It’s impossible to be a cultural relativist when faced with daily examples of other cultures getting it wrong. There is no validity in any view of right or wrong expressed by the Taleban. There is no truth in any cultural creed that treats women as inferior, let alone those that mutilate them. There is no cultural excuse for child abuse disguised as exorcism.
And doubtless there are many who would agree with her. However, she continues,
Relativism is in retreat, but there is no coherent moral framework taking its place. It helped us move from the certainties of the imperial age into a more tolerant era, but it’s almost impossible to work out what comes next.
The difficulty, as she acknowledges, is that,
The only way to decide if a proposition is true or not, or if an action is right or wrong, is to test it and debate it. This takes more rigour than a lazy assumption that all views are truth and rightness is relative. It’s also tricky if you are an atheist, as so many of us are.
But such rigorous analysis is needed. Otherwise, “paralysed by our inherited relativism, fearful of seeming racist and adrift in a Godless world, we fall silent just when we should be debating and talking.” And then, “Into this silence strides Nick Griffin”. Read more
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