#relativism

Having a clear faith, based on the creed of the church is often labeled today as fundamentalism. Whereas relativism, which is letting oneself be tossed and swept along by every wind of teaching, look like the only attitude acceptable to today's standards. ↗

— Pope Benedict XVI

#acceptable #along #attitude #based #church

The knife of historical relativism... which has cut to pieces all metaphysics and religion must also bring about healing. ↗

— Wilhelm Dilthey

#also #bring #cut #healing #historical

I do not want to drive across a bridge designed by an engineer who believed the numbers in structural stress models are relative truths. ↗

— R.C. Sproul

#relativism #truth #design

Relativism is neither a method of fighting, nor a method of creating, for both of these are uncompromising and at times even ruthless; rather, it is a method of cognition. ↗

— Karel Capek

#cognition #creating #even #fighting #method

An diesem Punkt gibt es keinen einzigen ihrer »Werte« [der Zivilisation des Westens] mehr, an den sie noch auf irgendeine Art zu glauben vermöchte, und jede Affirmation wirkt auf sie wie eine schamlose Tat, wie eine Provokation, die man besser zerlegen, dekonstruieren und in den Zustand des Zweifels zurückführen sollte. Der westliche Imperialismus heute, das ist der des Relativismus, des »Das ist deine Ansicht«, das ist der kleine Seitenblick oder der verletzte Protest gegen all das, was dumm genug, primitiv genug oder selbstgefällig genug ist, um noch an etwas zu glauben, um noch irgendetwas zu behaupten. Es ist dieser Dogmatismus der Infragestellung, der in der gesamten universitären und literarischen Intelligenzija komplizenhaft mit dem Auge zwinkert. Unter den postmodernistischen Geistesgrößen ist keine Kritik zu radikal, solange sie ein Nichts an Gewissheit umhüllt. Vor einem Jahrhundert verursachte jede ein wenig lärmmachende Negation einen Skandal, heute liegt er in jeder Affirmation, die nicht zittert. ↗

— Unsichtbares Komitee

#postmodernity #relativism #western-world #art

[T]he very multiculturalism and multiethnicity that brought Salman to the West, and that also made us richer by Hanif Kureishi, Nadeem Aslam, Vikram Seth, Monica Ali, and many others, is now one of the disguises for a uniculturalism, based on moral relativism and moral blackmail (in addition to some more obvious blackmail of the less moral sort) whereby the Enlightenment has been redefined as 'white' and 'oppressive,' mass illegal immigration threatens to spoil everything for everybody, and the figure of the free-floating transnational migrant has been deposed by the contorted face of the psychopathically religious international nihilist, praying for the day when his messianic demands will coincide with possession of an apocalyptic weapon. (These people are not called nihilists for nothing.) Of all of this we were warned, and Salman was the messenger. Mutato nomine et de te fabula narrator: Change only the name and this story is about you. ↗

— Christopher Hitchens

#multiculturalism #relativism #rushdie #change

The only absolute truth is change, and death is the only way to stop change. Life is a series of judgments on changing situations, and no ideal, no belief fits every solution. Yet humans need to believe in something beyond themselves. Perhaps all intelligences do. If we do not act on higher motivations, then we can justify any action, no matter how horrible, as necessary for our survival. We are endlessly caught between the need for high moral absolutes—which will fail enough that any absolute can be demonstrated as false—and our tendency for individual judgments to degenerate into self-gratifying and unethical narcissism. Trying to force absolutes on others results in death and destruction, yet failing to act beyond one's self also leads to death and destruction, generally a lot sooner. ↗

— L.E. Modesitt Jr.

#change #relativism #change

Relativism poses as humble by saying: “We are not smart enough to know what the truth is—or if there is any universal truth.” It sounds humble. But look carefully at what is happening. It’s like a servant saying: I am not smart enough to know which person here is my master—or if I even have a master. The result is that I don’t have a master and I can be my own master. That is in reality what happens to relativists: In claiming to be too lowly to know the truth, they exalt themselves as supreme arbiter of what they can think and do. This is not humility. This is the essence of pride. ↗

— John Piper

#pride #relativism #life

I don't know what it is about "magic happens"-stickers on cars but every time I see one I wanna get out my permanent marker and sneak over and write underneath it "so does cot death". ↗

— Tim Minchin

#grumpiness #humor #relativism #sarcasm #spirituality

That is always the way with stay-and-homes. If they like something in their own village they take it for a thing universal and eternal, though perhaps it was never heard of five miles away; if they dislike something they say it is a local, backward, provincial convention, though, in fact, it may be the law of nations. ↗

— C.S. Lewis

#home