Continuing the from a previous post, writings of Timothy Keller and his book ‘The Reason for God,’ (see preamble ‘The Concept of Moral Obligation:’)
. . . . This sense of moral obligation creates a problem for those with a secular understanding of the world. Carolyn Fluehr-Lobaban is an anthropologist whose professional field is dominated by what she calls “cultural relativism”—a view that all moral beliefs are culturally created (that is, we believe them because we are part of a community that gives them plausibility) and that there is no basis for objectively judging one’s morality to be better than another. Yet she was appalled by practices in societies she was studying that oppressed women. She decided that she should promote women’s interest in the societies wherever she worked as an anthropologist.
This immediately created a conundrum for her. She knew that her belief in women’s equality was rooted in a socially located (Northern Europeon, eighteenth century) individualistic mode of thought. What right did she have to impose her views over those of the non-Western societies where she worked? Her response: Anthropologists continue to express strong support for cultural relativism. One of the most contentious issues arises from the fundamental question: What authority do we Westerners have to impose our own concept of universal rights on the rest of humanity. . . . [But] the cultural relativists’ argument is often used by repressive governments to deflect international forums to examine ways to protect the lives and dignity of people in every culture. . . . When there is a choice in defending human rights and defending cultural relativism, anthropologists should choose to protect and promote human rights. We cannot just be bystanders.6
The author poses a difficult question: “If all cultures are relative, then so is the idea of universal rights, so how can I decide to impose my values on this culture?” But she doesn’t answer her own question. She has just said that her charge of oppression is based on a Western concept of individual freedom, but she has no answer for this conundrum. She simply declares that women are being oppressed and she feels she has to stop it. We have to bring our Western values to these other nations. Our values are better than theirs. Period.
The Difficult Issue of Human Rights
Fluehr-Lobban is struggling with a major crisis in the field of human rights. Jürgen Habermas has written that, despite their European origins, “human rights” in Asia, Africa, and South America now “constitute the only language in which the opponents and victims of murderous regimes and civil wars can raise their voices against violence, repression and persecution.”7 This reveals the enormous importance of the morality of human rights, which Michael J. Perry as the two fold conviction that every human being has inherent dignity and that it is obligatory that we order our lives in accordance with this fact. It is wrong to violate the equal dignity of other human beings.8 But why should we believe that? On what does this dignity depend?
In his essay “Where Do Rights Come From?”9 Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz lays out the possibilities. Some say human rights come from God. If we’re all created in God’s image, then every human being would be sacred and inviolable. Dershowitz rejects this as an answer since so many millions of people are agnostic. Others say human rights come from nature, or what has been called ‘natural law.” They argue that nature and human nature, if it is examined, will reveal that some kinds of behavior are “fitting” with the way things are and are right. However Dershowitz points out that nature thrives on violence and predation, on the survival of the fittest. There is no way to derive the concept of the dignity of every individual from the way things really work in nature. Another theory claims that. . . . (continued) ~Timothy Keller, The Reason for God, (New York, New York 10014: Penguin Books), 154-56
To see the first post of this series click. . . . “They “didn’t believe much of anything”
