Friday, August 10, 2007

Stoning in Nigeria: You can't have it both ways


Two gay men in Nigeria may face death by stoning if they are convicted under Sharia law..

How to respond to this?

1) Those who are moral relativists will say every person/culture creates his/its own values. But then

a) culturally, we may allow homosexual behavior, but we can't condemn other cultures that don't. Thus we can't condemn the stoning of these Nigerian men.

b) if we do condemn this stoning, we are not simply moral relativists, but epistemological and metaphysical relativists. Contradiction rules! But as Al Plantinga so often says, anything can follow from a contradiction. So stoning these men is simultaneously "appropriate" and not "appropriate." We must both approve and dissaprove, and so we are hamstrung in responding.

2) Those who are not moral relativists will either say:

--stoning these men is right, because
a) homosexual behavior is morally incorrect and stoning is right

--stoning these men is wrong because
a) homosexual behavior is morally correct and and stoning is wrong
b) homosexual behavior is morally incorrect but stoning wrong.

You can't have your cake and eat it, too. As C.S. Lewis has written, "He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to."

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