(Provincial Bulletin, 2005, No.2, pp.13-18)
This article is not a statement. It asks a question, and invites readers to a dialogue.
On the one hand
In physics
There is one physical absolute: the velocity of light. ‘The great universal constant is a speed’. (1) It is a constant and does not depend on the source of the light.
What difference does physics make, beyond its own borders, so to speak? But did Newton’s physics not shape people’s way of looking, not only at physical reality, but at all reality? Can we validly infer anything from physics to morals or psychology? The whole of life is one, is it not?
In metaphysics
Is there, or not, a case for absolutes in Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s Catch-22: ‘All is relative; that is the only absolute’?
In psychology
Must we not necessarily have an absolute; either ourselves or something else? ‘There can be only one absolute; the question is: Is it me or is it God? If God, others can be equal to me. If me, others can never be equal to me’. (2)
In morals
Are there absolutes beyond, ‘Do good, avoid evil’? And is that so vague as to be almost useless?
But ‘If nothing is certainly right, then it follows that nothing is certainly wrong’. (3) ‘Unless we take our own standard to be something more than ours, to be in fact an objective principle to which we are responding, we cannot regard that standard as valid’. (4)
‘Except on the supposition of a changeless standard, progress is impossible. If good is a fixed point, it is at least possible that we should get nearer and nearer to it; but if the terminus is as mobile as the train, how can the train progress towards it?’ (5)
‘The relativization of all moral norms, the crisis of authority, the reduction of life to the pursuit of immediate material gain without regard for its general consequences [originates…] in that which modern man has lost: his transcendent anchor, and along with it the only genuine source of his responsibility and self-respect’. (6)
If there is no such thing as objective right or wrong, if the rule is ‘What’s right for you may not be right for me, what’s true for you may not be true for me’, does it not follow that everything becomes a matter of mere opinion?
If such ideas are accepted, is it surprising that a sense of community is lost? Can we not see around us the evidence, and the consequences, of the loss of a sense of community? If there is no clear-cut truth about right and wrong which the individual seeks to discover, and to follow when found, if we believe that everything is relative, that it all depends on your point of view, or on circumstances, then are there any firm boundaries, or reference points? Does it not become like walking cross-country in unfamiliar territory without guide, map or compass?
If people have come to believe that individual experience is the judge of what is true, good or beautiful, then are community values not lost, leaving us alienated, divided and frightened in an atomized world?
Is this not, in part at least, what underlies the breakdown in marriage and family life, the signs of breakdown in society itself, with more crime, vandalism, suicide, violence and addictions, and the loss of confidence in institutions?
If society need law, and law needs morals, and morals need faith, and faith presupposes an absolute, is the case not made? Is the sometimes bitter experience of life not the best argument for the necessity of moral absolutes?
On the other hand
In physics
The uncertainty principle that ‘precision in the definition of one concept is possible only with a measure of uncertainty in the other’.(7) ‘Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle is a fundamental, inescapable property of the world,… a fundamental feature of the universe we live in’.(8) [It] ‘has demonstrated that there is an indeterminacy, rather than a determinism, at the foundation of matter’.(9) ‘Physics can no longer claim objectivity in its measurement of the physical world. On the contrary, physics eliminates objectivity precisely in its measuring of the world’.(10)
In 1949, Kurt Gödel, a mathematician, proved that ‘it is impossible to prove all true statements, even if you limit yourself to trying to prove all the true statements in a subject as apparently cut and dried as arithmetic. Like the uncertainty principle, Gödel’s incompleteness theorem may be a fundamental limitation on our ability to understand and predict the universe.(11) Philosophers of science point out that if that was true of mathematics it would also be true of physics. If even mathematics – the most precise and “clinical” of disciplines renounces claims to absolutes, what then about philosophy or theology? But is an inference from relativity to relativism valid?
In metaphysics
‘Science is not about truth. Science is about uncertainty….Uncertainty is a more accurate reflection of our relationship with God and with people, as well as with the natural world’. (12) Does an absolutist approach not confuse certainty with truth?
Do absolutes not create idols, claiming certainty for what is provisional and partial, a bogus fidelity, painting theology into corners from which it may take centuries to extricate itself, and at the cost of much human suffering? Does the search for absolutes not ignore the reality that all language involves interpretation?
In psychology
‘I believe that absolute conviction entails the most total self-imprisonment, the unpardonable sin, while presenting itself as fidelity. [It is a]… devilish process that has succeeded in convincing generations that asking questions was wrong. As if doubt wasn’t the stimulus at the heart of faith…’. (13)
‘Your certitudes – are you so blind? What are they generally based on? The failure to deepen your knowledge. We rush past questions in order to avoid anxiety. At the same time, it’s true that taking refuge in obscurity can be a cop-out. When I refer to the unknown or to non-knowledge, I’m not thinking of people who want, at little cost to themselves, to avoid the process of learning’. (14) (This writer is a good example of a sceptic who is as hard on his scepticism as he is on others’ certainties.)
Who has not witnessed with embarrassment the rock-like certainty of the closed mind?
In morals
‘Nothing is worse than confusing the absolute with a verbal statement, which is only a stuffed absolute, a mirror-play of the mind. When we think we rule over the absolute we only evoke a ghost. Fortunately, this finally becomes evident’. (15)
‘An excessive love of absolute abstraction only indicates a spiritual impotence’. (16) ‘Every certitude is a way of “putting God to death”. Classical atheism has its roots in certitudes. Fanatical certitudes and negations are related’. (17)
Have we not made absolutes out of relatives? ‘You shall not kill’ – an absolute? – except for just war, capital punishment, self-defence and the principle of double effect.
Conclusion
What conclusion is there, if any? That there is only one absolute – God – and that all else is relative?
References
1. Michael White and John Gribbin, Stephen Hawking: a life in science, Viking, London, 1992, p.30.
2. Peter Kreeft, Christianity for Modern Pagans: Pascal’s Pensées Edited, Outlined and Explained, Ignatius Press, San Francisco, 1993, p.151.
3. C. S. Lewis, Christian Reflections, edited by Walter Hooper, Fount Books, London, 1980, p.90.
4. Lewis, op. cit., pp.94-95.
5. Lewis, op. cit., p.103.
6. Vaclav Havel, at Stanford University, USA, on 29 September 1994; cited by Linda Rainberry and Patrick Treacy, Integritas, (privately published,) no date, p.28.
7. Diarmuid Ó Murchú, Our World in Transition: Making Sense of a Changing World, Temple House Books, Sussex, England, 1992, p.48.
8. Stephen Hawking, A Brief History of Time, Bantam Press, London, 1996, pp.63,188.
9. Daniel Liderbach, The Numinous Universe, Paulist Press, Mahwah, New Jersey, USA, 1989, p.76.
10. Liderbach, op. cit., p.76.
11. Hawking, op. cit., p.175.
12. Robert Winston, “It’s right to play God”, The Tablet, 31 January 2004, p.14.
13. Jean Sulivan, Morning Light: the Spiritual Journey of Jean Sulivan, translated by Joseph Cuneen and Patrick Gormally, Paulist Press, New York, 1988. p.119.
14. Sulivan, op. cit., p.123.
15. Sulivan, op. cit., p.111.
16. Sulivan, op. cit., p.143.
17. Sulivan, op. cit., p.123.