And Burn All Their Houses

“If someone says that no ethical standards are fixed, and so we ought not to apply our standards to anybody else, we now know what to ask. What does the good gentleman mean, “we ought not”? If ethical standards are not fixed, then the conclusion could just as easily be that we ought to apply the first whimsical standard that comes into our head to everybody and his god. If there is no absolute standard of morality, then anything goes, including the worst forms of absolutism. If biblical absolutes are figments of our own minds, then the first thing we could do, if we wanted to be consistent, would be to hang all the relativists and burn all their houses. Of course, trying to be consistent like this is inconsistent, which, in an odd sort of way, makes it consistent again. It is kind of like looking at that endless series of the back of your head in the opposing mirrors at the barber shop. Ethical relativism is not just wrong, it is incoherent” (Mother Kirk, p. 252).