Why are you so afraid of subjective moral reasoning?

can you hear me sir let's leave aside Christianity and historical examples for a second all night you guys have been grappling with issues like morality and you know what is right what is wrong and meaning but my question is simply why are you so afraid of subjective moral reasoning I mean do you think that we're all just going to start raping and pillaging just because we don't have a book to tell us what to do I mean are you afraid of that like I'm not because that's not going to happen and that yet Nazis were bad but there were Christian Nazis and there were atheist Nazis so I don't see what are you so afraid of do you lock your door at night yeah sure you know I hear what you're saying sounds very Cavalier though my goodness if we weren't afraid of all of this we would not be in a national debt the building either is secular sorry China is secular sorry China is secular that's right what about what does that mean they're not raping and pillaging and neither a well my oh my oh my oh my oh my have you read what happened during the Red Guards rebellion have you read what happened during the Boxer Rebellion do you know who has killed more people in the 20th century in China and Russia 60 million apiece Wow it makes the Holocaust scene tame the 20th century became the bloodiest century in history and the reason it became the bloodiest century in history I can see is you could just see the weapons of our warfare were piling up and there was no guiding principle to take us anywhere now in a perfect world yes we don't need to be afraid have you seen what happens in our courts of law where people supposedly love each other and all that comes about in hate and vitriol and damage I don't think the question is fairly stated as what have you are you afraid of I'm just saying it is basically unlivable that's I didn't conclude that an atheist like jean-paul Sartre concluded it we killed more people in the 20th century than the previous 19 put together and your question is or what a way of raid of the fact of the matter is if morality is purely subjective then you have absolutely nothing from stopping anybody for being a subjective more or less to choose to just zing one through your forehead and say that's my answer you know how do you try to stop that obviously you don't believe that's the way it should be not either do I so it's not a case of what am i afraid of it's a case of the fact that if you're willing to to me that moral reasoning can be purely subjective I just say to you look out you ain't seen nothing yet if everybody believed what you did do you know funny interesting when I was in the Soviet Union former Soviet Union Stalin eliminated 15 million of his own people 15 million of his own people and at the Center for geopolitical strategy you know they didn't want to even name his name and so on his daughter Svetlana made the comment at his school had both my Malcolm Muggeridge in his writings and bio historian Paul Johnson in modern times so Atlanta was standing by the bedside of her father before he died she said the last thing he did was clench his fist over the heavens one more time put his head back on the pillow and he was gone this is his daughter raising the question whatever God into my father to have that kind of hatred and hostility and when 15 million were killed of his own people it is interesting that the faculty members and the general who chatted with me there my wife will tell you sat her on the table with tears in his eyes when he watched what had been done to his own country by his own leadership so subjective morality would be very good if we all wanted to be nice people and live around each other without any fear of each other but the reason you lock your doors and the reason we have our police and the reason we have our military and the reason we have our law courts is because when subjective morality becomes totally subjective eyes this is what happens in society so it's a great idea but I hope nobody absorbs it thank you we go on to the next one day thank you

Channel: Ravi Zacharias International Ministries

Views: 1,718,142

Rating: 4.8452983 out of 5

Keywords: Ravi Zacharias (Author), Ravi, RZIM, UPenn, University Of Pennsylvania (College/University), open fourm, Q&A, morality, moral reasoning, Christianity (Religion), Christian, Jesus Christ (Deity), The Bible (Religious Text), bible, Irvine Auditorium (Building)

Id: 0218GkAGbnU

Length: 4min 56sec (296 seconds)

Published: Sat Feb 15 2014

Reddit Comments

[u/PetililPuff]

This reminds me of an article I read about relativism and subjective truth by Clay Jones. (Here's the link if anyone is interested)

What he wrote made me chuckle a little:

One day when I was a freshman in college and was waiting for a government class to start, I heard behind me, “You can have sex with anyone you want!” That got my attention! So I turned around to hear this fellow tell an attractive blonde coed that “It’s true: you make up your own rules so you can have sex with anyone you want.” I immediately spoke up and said, “I think I know what you’re saying. Aren’t you saying that you have your truth and I have my truth and your truth is no better than my truth and my truth is not better than your truth and there is no truth with a capital T. Is that true?”

He replied (rather pleased), “That’s true.”

So I said, “Are you absolutely sure?”

He said, “Yes, I am!”

So I exclaimed, “So there is absolute truth then!”