By Selwyn Duke

You’ve got to hand it to bloviating Brit Piers Morgan. While
he got most of the facts wrong in his recent targeting of the Second Amendment,
it hasn’t stopped him from moving on to even more formidable targets.

Such as the Bible.

He says the book is “inherently flawed” — and needs to be
amended.

Piers handed down his decree while interviewing Saddleback
Church pastor Rick Warren on the December 24^th “Piers Morgan Tonight.”
Yes, on Christmas Eve. When other hosts might be discussing love, brotherhood,
salvation, and all things ethereal, Captain Morgan was giving us the world
according to Piers. And how would he improve the Good Book? Said he,
“Both the Bible and the Constitution were well intentioned, but they are
basically, inherently flawed. Hence the need to amend it. My point to you
[Warren] about gay rights, for example; it’s time for an amendment to the
Bible.”

Well, Piers, we’re so blessed to have you to correct both America’s
founding document and the most
influential book in history. We had to suffer more than 200 years with one and more
than 2000 with the other, but the right god-man has finally come along. Oh, and
when you’re done with that, old boy, can you contact the Genome Project and
rewrite the human genetic code for us? We’re flawed, too.

To Warren’s credit, he politely but firmly disagreed,
responding to the amendment call by saying:

What I believe is flawed is human
opinion because it constantly changes. […]What was hot is now not. […]My
definition of Truth is: if it’s new, it’s not true. If it was true a thousand
years ago, it’ll be true a thousand years from today; opinion changes, but
Truth doesn’t.

To this Morgan quite predictably responded, “We’re going to
agree to disagree on that.”

Warren then noted how pleasant their exchange had been,
prompting Morgan to concur and say, “The debate should always be respectful. By
the way, it applies to politics, too. The moment it becomes disrespectful, and
discourteous, and then rude, and then poisonous, you never achieve anything.” Talk
about amendment — without making amends. If that’s what Morgan now believes, he
has definitely discovered a new “truth” since his recent interview with Larry
Pratt.

This brings us to what lies at the very heart of modern
liberalism and confuses the head of Piers Morgan. When Morgan disagreed on the
unchanging nature of Truth, he was espousing moral relativism. This is the
notion that what we call “morality” is determined by man and thus is relative
to the time, place, and people. It is also something virtually every liberal believes.  

And while Morgan’s relativistic statement was almost made in
passing, and was allowed to pass — perhaps partially because of time
constraints — it was actually the most significant comment of the exchange (relativistic
sentiments always would be). Why? Because that was precisely when Morgan, completely
and abjectly, lost the debate. And if you understand what I’m about to explain,
you’ll be able to cut any liberal off at the knees — anytime.

While many will say, as Warren might have implied, that
relativism reduces morality to opinion, even this is both too generous and a
misunderstanding. “Opinion” often refers to a thesis about what may be the
answer to a particular question, about what may be true. But this presupposes
that there are answers to be found, that there is such a thing as “true.” In
other words, Mars exists not because everyone believes it does, but because its
existence is a physical truth. And the question is, does moral Truth exist in
the same way, apart from man and his imagination? If not, then saying that
something is morally “true” would make as much sense as saying that planet
Vulcan exists simply because you felt it did. Delusion does not a truth make.

So relativism does not reduce morality to opinion. It implies
something else.

That morality doesn’t exist.

After all, to say that society determines “morality” is to
simply put lipstick on the pig of man’s preferences about behavior. To
analogize the matter, if we learned that 90 percent of the world preferred
vanilla to chocolate, would this somehow make chocolate “wrong” or “evil”? No,
it would simply be an issue of taste. But then how does it make any sense to
say that murder is “wrong” if the only
reason we do so is that the majority of the world prefers that one not kill
in a way the majority calls “unjust”? If this is all it is, then murder falls
into the same category as flavor: taste. Again, delusion does not a truth make.

More intellectually nimble moral relativists have thought
the above through and — although their ultimate conclusion is wrong — they
don’t fool themselves the way Morgan, Richard Dawkins, and virtually every
other leftist do. For example, I know of a fellow who has echoed the
Protagorean mistake “Man is the measure of all things” and said, “Murder isn’t
wrong; it’s just that society says it is.” He takes liberals’ cherished
relativism to its logical conclusion (or at least close to it).

This brings us back to Morgan’s philosophical juvenility. He
repeatedly stated in his Warren interview that the Bible was “flawed,” but such
a concept is incomprehensible in a relativistic universe. For what yardstick is
he using to judge the Bible?  He
certainly cannot refer to any transcendent Truth (a redundancy). And the times,
places, and people that extol(led) Scripture certainly don’t align with his
judgment, and who is he to impose his values on them? “What you espouse is your
‘truth,’ Piers; theirs is different. Don’t be so judgmental.” That’s how easy
it is to hoist liberals on their own petards.

The same applies to homosexual “rights.” If “morals” are
values and values just reflect tastes, how can respecting homosexuals be
morally superior to persecuting them? How can any behavior preference rightly
be judged at all? I think here of how the robot in the film Terminator 2: Judgment Day repeatedly
asked the adolescent John Connor why he shouldn’t kill people. “Why? Why?” The
machine was just being logical, unlike the liberal organic robots (atheism=no
souls=man is merely chemicals and water) that entertain meaning-inducing
illusions. In a relativistic universe, moral principles do not compute. This is
why any relativism-buttressed point collapses upon itself.

Feelings can become fashions, but never morals. “The Bible
isn’t flawed; it’s just that secular society says it is. Respecting homosexuals
isn’t right; it’s just that secular society says it is. And what Adam Lanza did
isn’t wrong; it’s just that all of society says it is.” Does that sound
sociopathic, Piers? It is.

It is also what your relativism implies.

That is Philosophy 101. And if you can’t understand even
that, Mr. Morgan, you’re going to start to seem, to use your own words, like an
“unbelievably stupid man.”

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