Sorry once again for the long silence. I have been busy working on some projects. Well..this is the last part of the 3rd fault-line that I have been writing about ….The Real Challenge of Post-Modern Thinking. My next entry will be on the 4th fault-line: The Apparent Lack of Intellectual Defense of Faith. I hope my entries have provoked some thoughts, some responses – some hard thinking about how we would like the “outsider” to see us “insider.”
Youth Culture
What we need to reflect upon seriously is that the church is lacking in resolved to engage the youth in intellectual discourse on issues that confront them. And this can lead to diminishing credibility of the church’s voice even among her teenagers. Young people have a bend towards moral relativism. They acknowledged that as a Christian there is somewhat of a moral standard but at the same time many of them believe that truth is relative and what matters is what one strongly believes in. Such a relativistic view demands that Christian educators, youth pastors, and parents take a more serious view in helping them to grabble with the biblical view of objective truths. We need to engage them through the inquiries of their mind because they will question everything. They are sceptical.
Radical Discipleship
The gap between knowing the need for nurturing our young and the tenacity to model radical intentional discipleship is deep and wide. There is a demand of radical discipleship and Lordship of Christ placed in front of every parent and every church leader’s life. How we fare will determine how it will precipitate down to the rest of the believing community especially the young. We know that to be true but how to do it is something else altogether. We need some soul searching today. We need to be more than a pragmatic community of believers. We need to develop the habit of our mind and have a truly Christian mind in order to tackle the whole issue of nurturing and discipleship of the next generation. Their worldview is so tainted by the contemporary pop-culture that we need to go behind the veneer of it all and begin to remove piece by piece all the scaffolding of wrong assumptions, presuppositions, and ideas that are contrary to the biblical teachings that has being preserved and handed down through the centuries. We need to once again shape the biblical worldview into our young people but we must first be prepared ourselves to deal with our own personal worldview, subjecting it to the test of the biblical worldview. Are we having a proper biblical worldview about reality, about life, and about all of God’s social order for humanity, for example, the family institution, the state and law, the church, work, art and media?
Moral relativism can be found even in religions which swear by its absoluteness.
Would you for example oppose slavery, the idea that women be valued less than a man (e.g. in the right to vote, or to voice one’s opinion), or ethnic cleansing?
All of the above are supported by many many portions of the Bible.
That they are no longer supported today is pretty much the last word on moral relativism.
I have written before on an interesting study done by George Tamarin, children who were brought up in “Biblical” morality were more likely to support the idea of ethnic genocide when given Biblical examples, but oppose it when Biblical names were replaced with Chinese ones.
Even among Christian circles the idea that LGBT people should not be discriminated against is gaining traction, and I would bet that in 50 years’ time discrimination against LGBT people will be like what slavery is today: an outdated notion.
Hi Tim,
Your highlight of George Tamarin from the except taken out from Dawkins’ book is interesting though rather sweeping and sort of irrelevant to the issue ‘relativism’.
First, let’s look at George Tamarin’s thesis which was done in the 1960s. I’m not sure whether are you aware of his report or were you just follow uncritically how his report is being manipulated by Dawkins to support his rather skewed position. Tamarin actually asked the 1000 Israelis schoolchildren (aged 9-14) TWO questions. Dawkins only highlight one in his attempt to manipulate his uncritical readers to think he was being reasonable.
Here are Tamarin’s two questions:
1) Do you think Joshua and the Israelites acted rightly or not? Explain why you think as you do.
2) Suppose that the Israeli army conquers an Arab village in battle. Do you think it would be good or bad to act towards the inhabitants as Joshua did towards the people of Jericho and Makkedah? Explain why.
The answers to question 1 is what you have highlighted: 66% total approval, 26% total disapproval, 8% partial approval OR DISAPPROVAL (you missed out this “OR DISAPPROVAL”).
The answers to question 2 is what you did not highlight or you just didn’t know because Dawkins didn’t highlight: 30% total approval, 62% total disapproval, 8% partial approval or disapproval.
(Akiva Orr, The unJewish State: The Politics of Jewish Identity in Israel [London: Ithaca Press, 1983], p.225)
It is obvious that question 1 and 2 are of different nature. The former is about the intrinsic consistency of the narrative of the Biblical passages in relation to the ethnic identity of the schoolchildren without the children consciously knowing the complicated discussion over personal identity and ethnic background in social sciences, while the latter is on whether can there be moral implication to be derived from the narrative.
What is interesting is that the requirement for moral evaluation is only explicit in question 2. And in this question, the majority of the schoolchildren disapproved of Joshua’s acts and thought they such acts cannot be replicated in contemporary situation.
Besides, Tamarin didn’t take into account an important variable and hence skewed his observation. In other words, Tamarin did not qualify his objects of study: the children’s condition. Therefore his conclusion is not substantiated.
The fact that the schoolchildren gave different answer to General Lin’s case shows that their self-perceived ethnic identity is very important and must not be neglected.
Therefore I doubt you can deduced from Tamarin’s report to conclude that moral relativism is found in religions. To be clear, differing moral degree do exists among religions and within one religion, but to say that Tamarin’s report support this thesis is committing a non-sequitur.
Hi Joshua,
I am very puzzled as to how you come to the conclusion that Dawkins’ excerpt is “skewed”. In the chapter where he quotes it in his book, he is trying to establish that religion poisons the moral outlook of children.
You imply that Dawkins deliberately left out one question to support his conclusions.
But as you may see from this Google Books link, which references the study in its entirety, there were two separate tests.
In the first, two sets of children were asked to justify the actions of a) Joshua, b) the Israeli army. The results were:
(A: Total approval – B: partial approval or disapproval – C: total disapproval.)
For the actions of Joshua: A) 66%; B) 8%; C) 26%
For the actions of the Israeli army: A) 30%; B) 8%; C) 62%
In the second, two sets of children were asked to justify the actions of a) Joshua, b) a fictional General Lin.
The results were:
A: Total approval – B: partial approval or disapproval – C: total disapproval.
For the actions of Joshua: A) 60%; B) 20%; C) 20%
For the actions of General Lin: A) 7%; B) 18%; C) 75%
Why were there two tests? Simple – the title of the study was The influence of ethnic and religious prejudice on moral judgment.
The first test measured ethnic prejudice – as you have observed, Israeli children are particularly prone to it – and the second test measured religious prejudice. George Tamarin was no fool. As Dawkins was not writing The Jewish Delusion or The Jewish Schoolchildren Delusion, but rather the God Delusion, he focused on the second study. Dawkins seems to have mixed up the results of the “Joshua” question for the first and second tests though; the conclusions are still the same (even before accounting for the skewed moral reasoning of some of the children who gave extremist views for voicing total disapproval, as Dawkins quoted). I really wonder if I could get away with doing such a survey on Sunday School children one day. I have a strong feeling the results would be the same.
So much for the validity of Tamarin’s study and of Dawkins’ quote.
My readers may be a bit confused as to why you focus on moral relativity when my post is not centered on it, so let me clarify here that Woo is responding to my comment on this post against moral relativism where I mention Tamarin’s study. So I will digress a little to talk about it.
Tamarin’s study and my blog post doesn’t discuss moral relativism specifically but rather moral prejudice, but the connection is of course clear.
As I point out, I have asked many Christians I know about the excerpt from Joshua 6, and also the one I mention in Numbers 31. And they have all squirmed trying to reason it out.
For morality to be absolute it must be unchanging. It is not only the children’s answers that prove moral relativism. It is our response to it, for we know today that genocide for any reason (in fact ESPECIALLY for religious reasons) is wrong.
So let me ask you, Woo –
1) Do you think the Israelites acted rightly or wrongly in Joshua 6 and Numbers 31?
2) If God told the US army to act as in Joshua 6 or Numbers 31 in invading say, Iran, would they be acting rightly or wrongly?